Jack Mallers

31:21You don't get an advantage by taking calculus to an at Stanford University or by having super computers at Facebook, headquarters. The only way is its pure randomness, which means you have to just use a computer to guess once, then guess twice, then guess three times. That requires real energy to be expensed. Atoms in the universe have to move to do that. So that proves real world work. What that real world work ends up producing is that random number. And then that random number could be used as proof of work is why it's called that. It's proof of real work. And in a sense, the whole point of it is the proof of work, because the random number doesn't mean anything.

32:10Exactly. You're not working towards an actionable goal other than showing that the work was done to get to this thing that doesn't mean anything, is that right? Exactly. proof of work was initially created to solve for email spam because there's no cost to write an email. And so one of the problems is that we all get thousands of emails a day of a bunch of nonsense. And so it was, can we impose a physical cost on someone to send an email? And Dr. Adam Back created proof of work and saying, what if in order to send an email, you had to prove computational work which if a normal human sending a few emails a day is no problem, but a bot farm sending a million a day is computationally expensive.

33:02And that's why it was created as the arbitrary data means nothing except for the fact that it's proof that you had to expend real world energy. And energy at the end of the day is the currency of the universe. It's something that we all have access to that we can't print that doesn't bias anyone. Right? Time and energy is what composes us as humans. And so proof of work was a monumental breakthrough in computer science because it's the only thing you'll see on a digital screen that is physically real. It's physical proof. And so that was invented a very long time ago, but no one can really crack the code of using that to create a digital commodity.

33:49One of the reasons is because, okay, we now have a way to enforce an energy cost on an action. So if we were to create a money digitally, we would say, you know, it's gonna be a giant ledger, which Bitcoin calls a blockchain, updating the state of who has what. A very important question is who gets to write to that ledger, who gets to update that? Because if it's the US government, we're in the same system. The answer becomes whoever solves the proof of work function. Anyone can do it. You just have to... Whoever earns it. Correct. You can only get it through earning it. Yes. And the only way you could earn it is through doing the work.

34:28It's for proving that you did the energy and the work. But then the problem is, well, how much work? This is the part that no one could crack. is well if you set you know 50 push -ups worth of energy or one day's worth of MacBook Pro energy well then people are going to be able to contribute more than that hyper and flat Bitcoin, produce them all or someone's going to have some advantage and really at the end of the day when you think of money as time and energy in an abstracted form proof of work is the energy part but what about the time part. What Satoshi thought of is it, this is mind -blowing is he denominated the amount of energy in time, not in watts, not in CPU processing.

35:18He said the amount of energy required to write to this ledger is ten minutes worth of energy. What does that do? Well, it sticks Bitcoin in time rather than in the ground. Gold, if demand for gold goes up, we can produce more gold. Supply will go up because there is more gold in the ground. So gold is stuck in the ground. The Satoshi inventing using proof of work and what's called the difficulty adjustment. The difficulty adjustment is exactly that. adjusting how difficult it is to solve the proof of work. He targets it to be solved for around every 10 minutes. So what Bitcoin does, this distributed computer, this distributed state machine, is it's measuring how quickly people are solving the proof of work, which is a proxy for how many people are trying to do it and want bitcoins.

36:16And if it starts solving it in nine minutes, eight minutes, seven minutes, it makes the problem harder so that it corrects back to 10. If nobody cares about Bitcoin and people are taking hours to solve it, it makes it easier. And so by that, Bitcoin's are stuck in time, not in the ground. So the reason it's harder to mine a Bitcoin now than it was earlier is because so many more people are doing it and it can only be unlocked every 10 minutes, so the more people who are trying to unlock it, the harder it becomes to be the one to unlock it. Correct. What you'd want in a God -made money is a money that is backed by time and energy because that's the job it has to capture it in the market.

37:05And that's what Satoshi realized is it uses proof of work for the energy piece and it adjusts the difficulty of that work to stick its schedule, denominated in time. And so then what you get is time and energy money, which is clearly engineered for us human beings. But it carries the properties of commodity money, right? Like, it's issuance schedule, very similar to gold. But that was the big unlock, was holy moly. We can impose a physical cost that requires energy, not a physical cost of, you know, if you let me stay at your place for a weekend or if you give me your corporate shares or if you take me to the horse race.

37:43It's an energy cost and then to stick an asset in time where when Bitcoin was invented we knew how many Bitcoins would be issued from now until the day they're all gone. No matter how the future went. How close are we by the way? We are very close. We're about over 19 million I think so there's only 21 million is the total. 21 million is the fixed supply. And based on the 10 minutes do we know when that is? when does it 21? 2140, roundabout, yeah. In 2140. Yep. And how does Bitcoin change when that happens? Does it not change? Doesn't change at all. So it's infinitely divisible. So we don't need any more bitcoins to meet the demand for the world.

38:28We can divide the existing pie, right? It's the equivalent of we don't need to have a very funny joke on the internet is, you know, people are like, you know, one pizza isn't enough for the whole world. You're going to need more pizzas. So you're going to need more 21 million bitcoins and the ideas, well, you know, we can divide infinitely the one pie for the whole world, right? So it's divisible, it's portable, it's sellable, it's liquid, it's verifiable. And to me, this is where living to be like the digital gold rush. Actually another ingenious, unbelievable insight by its creator is how the bitcoins were issued because 2140 is a long ways away, but they're effectively all gone.

39:09Why did they do that? They issued the majority of the coins in the very beginning. There's many interpretations of why that decision was made. In my opinion, one of the most important is Bitcoin is fairly distributed to the people. Very important. When I talk about the story with my grandfather of the hunt brothers trying to corner the silver market, if someone has a material position in a commodity like money, they can and expend a lot of influence. And the fact that this person was able to leak it on a mailing list and build the monetary policy where it was fairly distributed stuck in time to the populace on the web.

39:52By the time now that it's part of a presidential election, we all have it. You know, you're seeing BlackRock and Michael Seller and these big corporations and governments try and now compete in ownership for it. They're barely eclipsing 1 % of the total supply. And so all of the people own this thing, which was again, it goes to show, I think, the intention that this person had. It was a true gift to our species. Their coins have never moved. They didn't monetize it. They didn't get any credibility. They weren't named Time 100 List. I think in many ways, we as a society are only as good as our money.

40:31where only as good as our money is hard.

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42:06So in 2012 when your dad told you about this, how well did he understand it then would you say? My dad's always had this thesis, I referenced it early, short dollar, which is what you realize is the government divorced the dollar from any physical backing. So we're talking about proof of work. proof of work is what ties Bitcoin's digital bites of data to the real world. People are saying, what's Bitcoin backed by? You know, its proof of work is the tunnel between the digital universe and the physical real world, right? The US dollar removed any relationship to the physical world. When it gave up to the gold standard.

42:41When it gave up the gold standard. And then what that says to any rational market participant is the value of this thing is going to go down. because there is no physical prohibitive cost to the US government printing what we now know is time and energy. They're not just printing currency, they're printing time and energy. What they do is they borrow from our future. It's very close to time travel. If I have my own currency that I enforce the population use and I take debt, I'm borrowing time and energy from their future. their time and energy from the future. And then if I can't make whole on that debt, I can just print time and energy, which effectively debases the one that's being dispensed today.

43:27And so what you realize is you're like, the dollar's only gonna go down. Well, what do I do about that? I clearly don't wanna hold dollars. And so my dad's thesis. Do you think he felt that way related to it not being backed by gold? Do you think he would have had the same position if it was backed by gold? No, it was. It has to do with it not being backed. Yeah, yeah. And this is not just him. It's really everyone. It's a widely held opinion in markets. And even in civilization at this point, nobody stores, you'll never find a billionaire with $1 billion US dollars. In fact, they probably have a negative dollar balance.

44:01They're borrowing against their assets, right? They hold equity and companies. They hold real estate, right? They hold harder assets that are harder for people to make more of and dilute their share. And so his thesis was hard assets like real estate and he also thought exchange stock, exchange equity would go up because if you debase the population's currency, you turn everyone into a speculator. It's not enough to just be a good bartender or just be a good artist or just be a good corporate CEO. You have to do your job and then be a money manager and then understand Japanese, Central Bank policy, real estate markets, futures contracts, because you have to earn your living and then find a way to save your living because the money isn't doing the job that it's supposed to do in the market.

44:59And so exchange stocks should go up because everyone is a speculator, whether they know it or not. And so that was his position forever and he called it short dollar, right? He's monetizing this idea. And then when Bitcoin came, you know, him and I often talk about Bitcoin's the best expression of currency debasement. It is the antithesis of Fiat. And so it is the crem de la crem of short dollar. And I think that for him clicked, I'll tell you exactly when it clicked. That clicked when all the Silk Road stuff happened actually. I don't know about that. Tell me about that. The Silk Road was an online drug marketplace which used privacy technology called Tor with Bitcoin to create a truly free market on the web where people were able to sell everything between marijuana and heroin.

45:57I mean, you can get anything. The thesis was, you know, people should be left their own devices to exchange for goods and services. You don't need any central government or any central interference to tell you what's good or bad for you. People will do things that interest them and if there are consequences then those will be felt. People will learn and eventually we'll all do what's best for our bodies. We don't need both non -elected and elected officials to tell us how to be us. And so it's attempt was to create a marketplace that was truly free. And it was a global marketplace online. It was a global marketplace online.

46:34Founded in website. Yeah. You had to access it through a technology known as Tor. So it wasn't on the worldwide web. They call it the dark web is what it's known as. But again, that connotation is negative. It uses technology where it's untraceable, extremely private. The technology is actually developed by the US government initially in warfare. But it used that and combined with Bitcoins is one of the easiest ways to track us all is by our money. You have a bank account, you swipe your Visa card, you use Apple Pay. These corporations and governments know everything about you, not only where you are in what you're spending, but what you like, how much you're making.

47:12And so by using those two technologies, it created this marketplace where anyone can buy and sell anything. I never used the service, but if you have conversations with those that did, it wasn't about doing drugs and getting super effed up. People were meditating themselves, learning a lot about which drugs were higher quality, which drugs, I mean, it had review systems like Amazon. It was like a phenomenal, peaceful, free market. it also was extremely safe because you weren't going to a back alley under a stadium to get any good or service you needed. It was being shipped to you in the safety of your home.

47:54So it removed your reliance on sketchy dealers in the neighborhood. It was defining. Now, whether it was not good or bad, I'll leave that to speculation, but the point for my father was the government tried to stop it and they couldn't. And a lot of people thought, well, you know, that means that it's gonna change the drug marketplace and you're gonna be able to go to CVS and get heroin. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, to him, they ended up shutting it down, but they shut it down through the privacy technology they found the server. They couldn't shut it down because of the Bitcoin piece. And to him, that was the aha moment.

48:33It was like, hold on. If they can't shut this thing down, the Bitcoin piece to stop heroin sales on the internet, they can't change the monetary policy either. So he knew it was secure. Secure that it wasn't going to be able to be inflated, it wasn't going to be able to be controlled. That was that big aha moment for him. While everyone was focused on this has everything to do with the war on drugs. The illegal use, he wasn't focused on the illegal use. He saw this is proof of concept that this is hard money. Exactly, Rick. That's exactly right. I understand. Exactly. It was rules with no rulers.

49:17Are there any hard currencies around the world government -backed hard currencies? No. You know, what's funny is, for all of the, you know, our currencies are no longer backed by gold. All the central banks around the world surely buy a lot of it. So governments still have a relationship with gold and clearly still value it. And there's newer projects where certain governments have built packs and relationships and are trying to experiment with potential goldback instruments, but the simple answer to that question is no, not today. How did the euro change the countries in Europe? It's really important to understand that money wants to be won, meaning I don't want to have to store and exchange 30 different currencies.

50:09As soon as Europe became an economy in a market that exceeded just a specific country region, you're going to naturally find the tendency to have one money that everyone stores in exchange as time and energy for as opposed to 30. So that's a good thing. So it's not only a good thing, it's almost again, if the money's a technology just like an airplane, If you try and use a banana as an airplane, you're going to get hurt. And not ever do that again. If you try and use 30 currencies as a money, you're going to get hurt and have a serious issue. If you try and use wheat as money, you're going to get hurt and the equivalent of trying to fly an airplane that isn't an airplane.

50:50So it's a technology. And the way this technology ends up trending is one money wins out. For very obvious reasons, you want to hold the thing that everyone else is using as money. that you are secure in being able to exchange at some later date and that you can sell at any point. And so, you know, if I'm doing trade in the lira and all of a sudden I need pounds or something, right? Like you can imagine I do today's work. Okay, what am I exchanging that work for? 30 different currencies, 50 different currencies, the market wants one. And that's what's also particularly interesting about something like the coin is, you know, But today we live in a world where we're all connected.

51:34We've never been in a more interconnected world in an economy this size of 8 billion people. And so even having pound -euro dollar is often too many. The world tries to solve this problem today by having the dollar that you've heard this world reserve currency, right? So anyway, money tends to be one. and money's compete typically over monetary policy, over their hardness. The reason people prefer to hold dollars over Nigerian Naira is because the dollars harder, the US government prints far less dollars than the Nigerian central bank prints in Naira. So, money's are good. Yeah, their, money's are very competitive.

52:15And they tend to be one, there's one crown winner. That's why, you know, when people are like, we're gonna have all these coins and all these tokens. No, we're not. Like if I walk into a subway, I say, I have 47 tokens and they're like, oh, but you're missing the 48, you can't shop here. No, money wants to be won. And that's how they compete over monetary policy over their hardness. We've talked about Bitcoin thus far in terms of how to hold value. Yes, store value into the future. Storage of value. In terms of using it, like now, in most places you can use a dollar or you can use a credit card that represents a dollar.

52:59How does that work with Bitcoin? So there are places that accept Bitcoin and I think that that'll increase with time. But the most important piece is as long as Bitcoin is liquid in the major currencies that we all use. If I have a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin, I can move a billion dollars worth of value anywhere in the world, anytime, for a couple pennies worth of fee. And it'll get there depending on how you do it. Seconds minutes hours. That's insane. And that billion dollars is liquid in US dollars. So if I then wanted to sell that and buy, I don't know, a major league baseball team, I could do that transaction all in 10 -20 minutes if I wanted to.

53:47And that's the most important part is if I can sell the Bitcoin for dollars. So the fact that it's liquid, we're not thinking of it as replacing the dollar or we're not thinking of it replacing the dollar yet. Yeah, I think really what Bitcoin competes with is central banks is that some private group sets the value of our money, which again then sets the value of us, our time and energy of who we are. Explain that, setting the value. So the Federal Reserve, a lot of their job effectively, you know, they have two mandates, but effectively their job is assigning the cost of money. They do this in various ways, but the most popular is their interest rates.

54:35And so by defining the interest rate, you are subscribing, you know, how much it costs to access more dollars. When interest rates are zero, like we saw in COVID, you get highly inflationary times that follow because it costs me nothing to go print more dollars, to go get infinite loans. I don't owe anything on the creation of new money. When they raise interest rates tremendously, you see banks fail, you see real estate markets fail, you see recessionary tendencies because they're increasing the cost of access to money. So they try to hit certain mandates like employment and growth of the economy.

55:16But at the end of the day, what they're doing is they're able to manipulate the value of where we're all storing our labor.

55:26Let's talk about the growth of the economy for a minute. We often hear GDP as the how you calculate how the country is doing. Yeah. But often it seems like the GDP can go up, but regular people's lives don't seem related to that number. Yeah. I think, you know, one could maybe say you can look at the metric of new friends for a human to see how well they're connecting with the world and expanding their world view and building relationship. but a really important thing to understand is how much money are they spending to acquire those two friends. Anyone can get a lot of friends if they are spending billions of dollars to acquire them.

56:16So the metric isn't just GDP, it's debt to GDP. How much money is the US government borrowing to produce the growth? And the ratio you're interested in is that exactly. So if the US is almost 130 % that's a GDP, global debt to GDP is 350%. These are numbers that have never been worse, which is how much money are we borrowing versus how much growth are we producing to pay it back? So yes. So if you're borrowing more than the GDP, the GDP doesn't matter at all. Yeah, so the US is growing, but not in a healthy way. It's borrowing more than it's growing, is that correct? Yes, yes, exactly. I never knew that.

57:00I never heard it. I never heard it explain so simply. Exactly. So that's why when you see the deficits are going up, the US debt is growing. Yes, we are producing growth, but we're spending too much to produce that growth. And the growth is not very natural. So yeah, I think, you know, I talk about this often, if you're in debt to someone, theoretically you have two options. You can pay it back like an honest man or you can say, I'm really sorry. I took out a loan. I can't pay back. I hope you forgive me. But I'm not going to be able to make you whole and we call that a default. Pay it back default.

57:42Now the US government conveniently has a third option. All governments with their own currencies, which is you can devalue what you owe. If I owed you 100 US homes, I'd be like shoot. I don't want to default and I'm gonna have a tough time paying that back, that's expensive. But what if I could devalue the price of a US home and make each US home worth a penny? Now I only owe you, I can pay that back. That's the same thing with the US government is by printing currency, they can devalue their debt. It's very obvious what's happening is we are in so much debt, we're not producing enough growth.

58:26The US government cannot default. They also, quite literally, the math we just walked through, can't pay it back. So what's the only thing they can do is print currency. And so when everyone's surprised about inflation or surprised about these numbers, it's very obvious. It's the only way out for them, which goes back to my dad and I's thesis on short dollar and Bitcoin. Bitcoin's the best performing asset in the last 15 years. And by the way, it's not particularly close. The last decade alone, Bitcoin's average annual return is 63%. Wow. Insane. Insane. And I think what that says, you could say that says a lot about Bitcoin and the invention, which is true.

59:07You could also say that says a lot about the dollar. and the level of debatement that we're living through. So yeah, all of this stuff is very obvious, but it does crack me up when the US is like, look at our GDP, we're growing. And it's the equivalent of like, look at all these people that wanna hang out with me. It's like, well, what's the context? How much money are you spending for people to be around? How much debt are you accruing to grow? Yeah. How are other crypto coins different from Bitcoin? I think the main one is that they do have a central group or a founder or a lead that did print in issue tokens for themselves or with some bias.

59:52Other crypto tokens are much more like a central bank than Bitcoin in that way. I think of them as their less legally accountable ways to be a central bank, not more interesting ways to be like Bitcoin. So for example, Ethereum, there was a foundation that created, I think 70 % of the initial supply gave it to themselves and then pre -sold these tokens on a private market, gave certain access to find their own price. And so that, to me, is much more like, I run a company, I created the company and I own 100 % of the shares and then I've divvied those up. I've given them to certain employees I like better than others.

1:00:38I've sold them to some investors at a certain price that I agreed on. That doesn't sound like money, an equitable fair money, that the world can use trusslessly to exchange. So... How many about centralized, versity centralized in general? Yeah. There's a phrase by Nick Zabo that goes, You know, central third parties are, you know, security holes. You don't want, you know, trusted parties. If you need to trust a government or a corporation or a CEO, those are security holes. So these people can be co -opted. They can change their mind. They can bias people. They can bias themselves. And so you want to build a system that's resilient to any one central party of trust.

1:01:21That's the whole point. I think decentralized has gotten like co -opted almost. It's this voodoo thing that carries no definition. We're in a decentralized dentistry. We're going to decentralized medical. What the fuck you guys talking about? Really what you want is you want to relieve any of those. Well, there's no authority that can turn against you. Is that be right? Yeah, there's no trust required And trust is really a proxy to control right? Like so there's no entity party individual that has any outsized control. There's no admins in the system. And so therefore it's a system that can operate without the need for trust.

1:02:12So Bitcoin is it doesn't have a controller, it doesn't have a boss. It's its own system. Yeah and again this is the commodity -like properties that Satoshi wanted, which is who's the boss of gold? Who's the boss of corn? And so I think people get really confused themselves because they think Bitcoin is similar technology to Google and Facebook, right? It's digital and we're living in the internet age, so I don't understand that part. And it's like, yeah, but there's no boss to aluminum either. It is commodities. I'm not a profit. That's another thing that's important. There's no profit motive built into Bitcoin.

1:02:55Correct. You can use it as a currency and you can make a profit, but the system itself is not profit seeking. Yeah. It's like a public park, you know. It's for those to go and use as they need, but it's, you know, technically it's a protocol, but yes, exactly right. It's a public utility for humanity to use as perfect money, but it has no ruler, controller, biased corporation, rules without any rulers was the goal, 100%. And it's even harder than gold because it is finite. Yeah. Gold is finite, but you can still find more. Correct. If you look at the history of gold with more demand comes more supply.

1:03:48If the gold price 10x is, then the supply of gold will surely 10x as well. We can go find more. The problem is the reward for finding more gold today isn't enough. But if you increase the reward to find more gold, you can find more gold. What's fascinating about Bitcoin is it's the only money where more demand can't find more supply. But what does that mean? More demand has to find a higher price. You can find more supply. But the supply comes from the existing holders, not from the ground. The only way to find more supply, not from existing holders, is again, to solve time travel. If you're able to travel into the future, you can hack Satoshi's stock in 10 minutes worth of intervals.

1:04:31But as far as I'm concerned, no one can time travel. So Bitcoin is stuck in time. And if it's stuck in time, then you want more Bitcoins? Okay. 10x the price. You'll find some sellers. And when you get to the 21, then it's purely will be dividing and trading and it becomes more valuable as people want it. Yep, exactly. Yeah, I mean, so you can say, Bitcoins are acquired through proof of work in Bitcoin mining, which is computationally trying to get this random number. You can also say Bitcoins are acquired via proof of work of people doing their jobs, like working in the real world, providing value to society and exchanging that value for bitcoins.

1:05:17You know? So when some rich mega trillionaire, it's like, I love Bitcoin now and I want a bunch of them, they're exchanging the work they've done in their life to acquire the amount of wealth that they have into Bitcoin, right? And if they want more bitcoins, then they can increase the price, you know? Let's say Bitcoin's 60 ,000 today. I want 100 ,000 of them. There are a hundred thousand for sale at 60 ,000 and there's none in the ground and you can't time travel. So try again at 61 ,000, try again at 62 ,000. As soon as you start buying them, the price goes up. Right. It's very simply supply demand.

1:05:53If demand increases and the supply can't. That's what you see. When the leading figures in Bitcoin, I understand nobody owns it. I mean, everybody owns it. Yeah. But who would you say are the leading voices who are the most instrumental figures in the Bitcoin world? I think Bitcoin's truly an ecosystem in the way that, you know, developers, those that are technically competent enough to work on the technology have an important voice. I think corporations that are building products for people to utilize this technology by its store and send it receive it, important voice, those that mine bitcoins do the proof of work to secure the network, have an important voice.

1:06:40So I don't think that there's such a big hierarchy in that way. It is really, you know, in the eye of the beholder type of thing in the network. I know people that value Bitcoin because of its privacy characteristics, I know people that value Bitcoin because of its ability to transport. There's people I know that do cross -border payments with Bitcoin. And I know people that like Bitcoin because we're living through a highly inflationary time and they need to store their wealth. And so, I don't know. I think it depends on the context. Tell me the story of El Salvador.

1:07:17I had just founded the business I run today. And part of my thesis is, well, hold on a second, if Bitcoin acts as a physical commodity. We call it a bearer instrument. It's not a line of credit. It's not an abstracted form that points to real money. It's digital but physical, which is like, wow! And it can move instantly and at no cost anywhere in the world. Well, surely we can improve global payments, cross currency payments, unlock new forms of payment. And so I bought a ticket at the time to El Salvador one way to prove out that concept. There was a community in El Salvador that was really into Bitcoin.

1:08:02And so I knew that they wouldn't think I was crazy. And so I bought a one -way ticket to prove out cross -border payments from America to El Salvador. There's a big cross -border payment corridor, Remittance corridor there. Because at least at the time, people would leave El Salvador to America, find work in America, and remit money home. And so it was a proof of concept, but it was a proof of cost for someone doing that. So when Moose from El Salvador to the US, they earn money in the US. They send money home to their family. What happens in that transaction in the old version? Well, it's very expensive and very slow.

1:08:39Arguably the most fascinating point though is that a lot of the costs are fixed. Meaning it's not one percent of any value. You know, one percent of $10 and also one percent of $100 and also one percent of a million dollars. It's just a number. A lot of the costs are fixed. So the smaller the amount that you're sending, the bigger percentage of that money that's being taken. Exactly. Exactly. So it really disadvantages. People who are sending small amounts of money. Exactly. And so that was a lot of my unlock was not only can we make it cheaper and faster for everyone, but can we unlock newer markets?

1:09:17What if I wanted to bust tables in South Florida as a young Salvadoran that's trying to help his or her family, and I could send $10 home instantly at no cost at any point. You're not only improving on what's existing, but you're enabling new, because the fixed cost of the legacy system prohibits certain participants in use cases. So you're almost, we talk about GDP, that's GDP growth. You can make the argument that the velocity of money has a correlation to GDP, which is economic activity and opportunity. And so that was the idea I went to prove out was exactly that. And yeah, I went in the product, worked really well.

1:10:03And people were using it so much so that the government DMed me on Twitter. Really? That's how they reached you. Yeah. I'll never forget. I was sitting in a sushi restaurant in the first floor of my hotel and I got a DM from the president's brother. It was incredible actually. It wasn't, hey, heard you're in town or what are you doing here. It was the longest Twitter DM I've ever received and it was about their vision for culture, for money, for architecture, music, art, talked about who they wanted to become. I mean, it was a very thorough, in -depth DM and somehow me being in the country and what I was working on, like inspired that message.

1:11:03And I read it and you know I respond and then it was a we want to meet and The we want to meet was as like well give me a week is what I asked for seven days Because I was terrified. I mean at the time You know El Salvador is the most dangerous country in the world supposedly you know I felt safe when I was there but supposedly and A government in a country that had gone through a civil war lost their own currency Central America history of authoritarians at the time And so I was terrified, very young, felt I was in way over my head, and I wanted a week, call my dad, call my investors, and they said, you have 24 hours.

1:11:43Give me latitude and longitude. And I remember calling my dad, and just telling him I loved him. And we'd been in this together, and the way he had raised me was, do what's right, no matter how difficult. Did you know anything about the president at that time? Nothing. I also, it's important for people to know, I'm not into politics generally, even American politics. You know, I've always felt in my heart that the best way for me to affect change is to build stuff and to do things. And so... Politics is not about that. Exactly. I didn't know anything about anything, but I knew enough to be like, oh, this could go good or bad.

1:12:28Both were an option. And I called my dad and told him I loved him and said, hey, if this is how I go out, I'm not mad at that. And obviously it ended up being amazing. And again, it was so fascinating. Bitcoin was a small piece. The attraction for hard money. They wanted hard money for their society. They wanted technology. They wanted to be forward thinking.

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1:14:19What was their situation before what has happened now? Bukheli, the president that everyone's now probably aware of, he was new. They were coming off a civil war, I believe in the 90s, which decimated the country. Awful, terrible, terrible, so much so that they lost their own currency. So they're operating on the US dollar. Very violent country. Everyone felt unsafe. Everyone was the US involved in the Civil War for it to end up being on the US dollar. Not on beliefs though. I think that what you see in a lot of countries with failed currencies is that they adopt the US dollar. I see. Yeah, in these countries also have a really awful relationship with the IMF and the World Bank, where these are institutions that finance loans to these countries that maybe get back up on their feet, need a little helping hand.

1:15:19But the structure of these deals is really disadvantageous. You know, what you want your kids to avoid is like cyclical spiraling debt, you know, when your credit card bill is, and you can never climb out of it. So the IMF poses as something that's helping these countries when really they're presenting them with onerous. Yes, victim behavior, taking advantage of someone that's in a vulnerable position. Wow, that's really crazy. Yeah, I didn't know that. Messed up. And so that was the position they're in. And when talking to them, the most fascinating part, I remember the first meeting, I had a few buddies that both grew up with me and one that worked for me at the time.

1:15:59I mean, the company was tiny at this time, like a few folks. But they came with me on this trip, and I got back. Everyone was ecstatic that I like made it out. I didn't go to jail or something. And they're like, what happened? As the first hour, we must have listened to music. It was fascinating. And it was like about art and philosophy and vision. And we talked about the Bitcoin stuff, but it was more this energy that there was a country where they felt they could rebuild and inspire and not only inspire themselves but inspire the world, talked often about if they were able to achieve what they wanted to achieve here, what it would do for other countries in Central America, in Latin America, throughout the planet.

1:16:50And I then spent like consecutive meetings over and over and we would go to different restaurants and cuisines, we would go to the studio where they would listen to music. And it was a very fascinating experience where, you know, I think people in the media now think it was headquartered in some computer room where we were just working on Bitcoin. And that's far from the truth. Their vision for Bitcoin was interwoven in where they think the country should go in society at large. They think society should be tough on crime, time, clean, hard money. Government shouldn't operate very big. The less government owns the better for the people.

1:17:35These type of philosophy. We've got all things that they learned watching Singapore. I often call El Salvador's ambition at the very least, yeah, the Latin American Singapore. At the time, Singapore didn't come up much. It came up, but so did everything. I mean, even we would talk about some of the destruction in popular US cities, right? So everything came up. I mean, it was fascinating. Like, they were drawing the future that they wanted to see. Which I'd never seen. I've done Silicon Valley investor meetings. I've been on mainstream media and such. I'd never sat down and someone taken out their iPad and showed me a sketch of what they wanted to be a part of where they drew it.

1:18:16And I was like, wow. And there was definitely, I would say Singapore influence, but it certainly wasn't We saw what Singapore did and we're going to try and do the same. It was their own vision. Yeah, and they're proud of that What happened from those meetings? Yeah, so one of the concepts we thought of was making Bitcoin legal tender in the country both legal tender and and the government acquiring BIC coins for their own. Does that mean instead of the US dollar? It was and the US dollar. It was not to attack or disrupt what already existed, but that BIC coin can be extremely additive, is that attract tourism, give favorable laws and regulations for those that want to use it and build on it.

1:19:12So it's a new business and also just support the people owning not only a hard money and arguably the best money, but a money that the government doesn't have a direct relationship with. It is a money for them. Bitcoin is the highest form of property rights. It's a physical instrument that I can store in my brain. How insane is that, right? And so by supporting and enabling the people to hold something that you can't confiscate from them was a really like defining idea for any government in the world. Even like the US government, I couldn't imagine them making Bitcoin legal tender in that way.

1:20:06Was that the first country in the world to do that? Yeah. At the time, all of this was novel. In many ways it felt like artistic. I mean, we were creating. And it was all new and ambitious. I mean, it was incredible. And how has the adoption worked out thus far? You know, you can google this and build the opinion that you want. And in my opinion, phenomenally, tourism is up hundreds of percent. New business up, revenue up, GDP up, Reminds cost down. So like the thing we did set out to solve, working initially. And so I think for one of the poorest and devastated countries in the world, it is a resounding success.

1:21:08One of the other things they understood really well is that Bitcoin is an open network. Anyone can participate and join, and you all effectively act as the same team in that But the government knew that when adopting it, they'd also be on the same team as Jack Dorsey, as Michael Sailor, as Aaron Rogers. You know, you've athletes, entrepreneurs, businessmen, hedge funds, and you're plugging into that. And it gave them a tremendous rebrand as well. where this was a tech -forward, innovative, curious, progressive, a lot of energy in this move, and it connected them with a lot of the world that you can only dream of having that type of relationship as an emerging market in Central America.

1:22:03So I think an unbelievable, resounding success and the amount of investment they've got. I mean, Kathy Wood is one of the most popular American investors. And she's visiting this country that she probably couldn't point out on a map four or five years ago and saying that she is going to invest and predicts the GDP to 10X in the next five years. And these are, I mean, I can confidently say at the time I was there, and nobody maybe outside of myself and the government thought those things were possible. So in my opinion, resounding success. Are they doing an annual Bitcoin conference there as well?

1:22:42There is an annual Bitcoin conference. It's not hosted by the government. You know, one of the things that we did disagree on and that I still stand firmly with is, you know, you have to let it go. And you know, the government built it. But they can support it. They don't have to control it, but they can support it. And I think the best way for them to do that is actually to support others to build. So, you know, one of the things we did disagree on is they wanted to build a wallet, a government built Bitcoin wallet. Their intentions were good. They wanted people to be able to trust the fact that this wasn't a move where a bunch of Americans are going to sell you technology and monetize you and is that you know you can be confident that we're in this with you and we're going to support you and we're going to have your back and build something for you guys because you know I'm a millennial white male from Chicago.

1:23:44They wanted to make sure that the people knew that this wasn't my thing, that it was the country's thing. But I thought it was a terrible idea because you don't want the government to build anything. It feels centralized. Even if it's not, it feels like it is. Yes. You want the government to be so supportive to everyone else where I'm not the only person building there. And so the government could give you incentives to build there. Yeah. But that would be the extent of their involvement. Yeah, exactly. And they went through that journey. And you know, you can ask them, it's far from perfect, it was never supposed to be.

1:24:19But now I think they've landed in a great spot where the laws, regulation, phenomenal, the tax treatment, phenomenal. If you operate and run a business there, no taxes on any of your Bitcoin stuff, so they're encouraging innovation to be built there. And that's the way. And so, for example, the conference is actually not hosted by them, but they're very supportive been enable those that want to host events and conferences to do so. And so it sounds good. That sounds like a good, a good situation. Yeah. What was it like living there? It was cool. I had mentioned earlier, I didn't go to college.

1:24:58So a lot of my life was kind of spent initially in my room hacking on stuff with my dad. And you go to these boot camps and stuff and no one's my age. You're like learning the code with 50 -year -old men. I'm 18. And so I think that was really like one of the first forms of travel where it wasn't visiting buddies studying abroad or anything. I was immersing myself in a culture that at times made me feel inspired, uncomfortable, very different language barriers. years. And so I really enjoyed that looking back on it for sure. The contrast from America to this country, that was also the first time I'd experienced that where I was like, wow, both felt the privilege of being from America and what it means to be a developed nation and have access.

1:25:52We talk about energy, have access to be able to connect to Wi -Fi whenever I want, television, transportation, something else washing my clothes besides me, some machine. I felt that. It was very poor. Education was sparse, right? Access to energy was not nearly the same. So it was the first emerging market and the first time I was traveling not from Chicago to London. Yeah, cool. What year did you buy the one -way ticket? That was February 2021. one. And have you been back since? Yeah. Recently. As the country changed at all. Oh, totally. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just in three years. Oh, yeah.

1:26:40My favorite story to tell, I was there for the inauguration of the president. He's re -elected. And my favorite story to tell is when I landed in the airport. And hit me all at once. The airport was nicer than Oh, hair. Chicago's airport. Clean, new, beautiful. Just, you know, like the attention to design. Design meaning, you know, how do you want an experience to be felt and perceived when creating it, you know? And in Chicago, there's no art. Things are dirty. Colors are dull. right? Like the black is now gray. The green now looks gross. And the airport was beautiful. And the staff had energy.

1:27:30There's just a lot of hope you can feel by just laying there. Imagine in the US like in the 1960s airports probably felt like that. Exactly. Yeah. It was just cool to be around people that were inspired and hopeful. And then a lot of the buildings and architecture, you can clearly see the new investment into the country and the new capital coming in and the businesses that were supporting. A lot of tourism, but the airport was like the biggest night in day because the first time I was there, it felt like I landed in a place that had bombed itself and was struggling to be a country and recently it was you know it was one of the nicer airports I'd been to in a very long time.

1:28:15That's incredible.

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1:29:43Have any other countries been inspired by El Salvador in terms of taking on Bitcoin as a serious piece of their story? Yes, definitely. I think, you know, the unique part about El Salvador is it was a country that did not have its own currency. There's a huge difference between a country to adopt Bitcoin that's not forgiving its ability to print money, to print time and energy versus one that is. So I think that's the big leap is, you know, is there going to be a country that's brave enough to say we're gonna forgive the ability to print currency, print time and energy to base the populace if we mess up and instead adopt something that we can never control.

1:30:35That has not happened yet, but it's certainly... Well, why would a government want to give up that power? Make sense. The people would have to demand that for that to happen. Exactly. You know, afterwards, the media and everyone's, you know, asking me, who's next? You know, Guatemala, Argentina, you know, is very, what are the neighboring countries that have maybe similar interests and similar energy? And I thought they were kind of missing the bigger picture, which is, to your point, it's not very natural for a government to forgive that. I thought more to the United States to be the next to quote unquote adopt Bitcoin.

1:31:18I don't know about legal tender piece, but to own it because the US is the world reserve currency and how they're going to manage the global debt to GDP, the domestic debt to GDP, the fiscal situation that they're in. And also the fact that to me, Bitcoin is far more American than the dollar. Bitcoin is about equality, right? Like everyone on the network is treated equally. It's about free speech. It's about technology. So had Bitcoin existed at the founding of America, chances are the founders would have used Bitcoin? 100%. I mean, Thomas Jefferson, there's numerous quotes of many that have come before us saying one of the greater dangers is a banking system that controls our money.

1:32:15And so, absolutely, it's funny, you know, I do think often that maybe folks 500 years from now, 1000 years from now will look back and be like, man, I can't believe that there There were humans that lived through the technological revolution of the internet and the radio and all of this crazy but like money kind of lagged. There was like a 50 to 80 year period where they were still using fiat but they were all on the web. Like what do you think that was like? It feels like Bitcoin is the natural extension of monetary technology in this digital age. But it lagged by a couple decades of generation.

1:33:00And it's better in every way than what we use now, but it's not controllable by the people who control the current system. Yep. Yep. You told the story of an El Salvadorian comes to Miami. He works, he sends money back to his family, and in the old model, the cost of doing it would really cut into what that money was. What are other ways that fiat money is biased against poor people? Well, the biggest is by far looking at the wealth gap. You could tell a lot, measuring the health of society, you can look at the middle class. And we have no middle class anymore. You can just look at America even.

1:33:56The wealth gap is so large that less than 10 % of America owns more than 90 % of the assets in the wealth. How that comes to be is very obvious. If you are printing money, you're debasing those that are holding the dollar. You're also conversely increasing the wealth of those that are owning assets. If you did own a home in 1970 in that home was worth $25 ,000 and is now worth $400 ,000 something thousand dollars. Then those that are holding assets are getting increasingly more wealthy. If we take it back to, you know, time and energy in an abstracted form, you're having a class of individuals that are not contributing more time and energy to society, but are being rewarded in new money and wealth creation.

1:34:43It's a story of the haves and the have -nots. Yeah, the halves are benefited by the system. Yes, the have -nots are hurt by the system. 100 % and then you have those that can't yet afford assets that are in dollars paycheck to paycheck trying to build savings that are working backwards. If you think recently the US housing market has been inflating at over 20 % per year, if you're not getting a 21 % raise every single year, which nobody does. Which of course nobody does, because you are literally not making progress towards becoming a homeowner. And so what you get is a massive wealth gap. And you get a population that feels at war with each other.

1:35:25I personally think and subscribe to the Fixed the Money Fixed the World. A lot of the hate in the anger I think is driven by broken money. The current system clearly benefits those that hold assets, the wealthy. What's fascinating about Bitcoin is the fact that we all have access to it. So talking about Salvadorans, one was the last time a Salvadoran had access to own something that's going up 63 % year -over -year on average and getting them out of inflationary pressures. Never. Never. But before Bitcoin, not everyone had access to Miami Beachfront real estate. Not everyone had access to secure tons of gold protected by armed men and women in their basement vault.

1:36:12It was hard to get an asset to get out and Bitcoin is an exit door available to everyone. But you can clearly see in the wealth gap the destroying the middle class. Like the problem is if you're on the first floor and you need to get to the third floor, so lower class, middle class, upper class, but there is no second floor. It becomes impossible. For both, by the way, not only for those on the first floor to get to the third, but the third floor can't get to the first, which is equally as bad, because you don't have to do any real work for the world to continue to stay up on the third floor. One of the things Bitcoin solves is, again, proof of work not just computationally, but in order to persist wealth.

1:36:58You have to be doing valuable things for people. You don't just get to be rewarded from the spigot. What are other problems that decentralized currency solves? The biggest problem is distributing the monetary policy. That's the biggest thing. It's just making sure that nobody can print it. No one has access to the energy. But I think from there everything else flows. It's naturally global in my opinion. So there's no bias to a country, there's no bias to a populist, there's no bias to a certain part of the world. It's then naturally equitable and fair. What it does for property rights, which we touched on briefly, but property rights is one of the most core tenets to society working, being able to say like this thing is mine and no one can take it from me.

1:37:56The U .S. built a lot of its growth and its standing on supporting property rights. In theory, we protect people from walking into your house with a bunch of guns and saying this is now my house. Like, no, you have a right to your property. But that's legally bound through the judicial court system. So there's a lot of trust there and sometimes people make the claim that it's not always fair. Bitcoin is the purest form of property rights and that it's property that you can store in your brain. Actually, fascinatingly, it's the only property where someone that's trying to steal from you is incentivized not to kill you.

1:38:33If you have a bunch of gold or a bunch of real estate and I murder you, it's now my real estate and my gold. But if you have a bunch of Bitcoin, well, you can't kill me, that's the only way to be sure you won't get it. I wouldn't be threatened by the gun. So that, to me, shows how entrenched and powerful this new form of property rights is. Just such an advancement in money and in property. And these things are directly correlated to human flourishing. Tell me about the security of Bitcoin. Can it be hacked? No. Can it be stolen? Well, you know, I personally believe that growth comes from a more self -ownership.

1:39:20What I mean by that is, you know, I think today a lot of people play victim to, I'm not doing good because my president didn't do good for me. My boss didn't do good for me. My partner didn't do good for me. It's like you own and control your own destiny. And I think we need to get back to a culture and society that values Self -ownership and self -direction and taking control of their own future. I give that context to say it is true. Nobody is there to do Bitcoin well for you. You can Effectively hire a company by becoming a customer to do stuff for you if you'd like But your bitcoins can be hacked and it is a level of financial ownership where you can theoretically secure your bitcoins on your own, and if you make a mistake, there's no one there to bail you out.

1:40:09That's the whole point. So yes, bad things can happen, but that's not to Bitcoin itself. It's to your instance of using it, or your company's instance of using it. So the system itself is deeply secure. It cannot be hacked. The application's above it, sure. Or in the same way that, you know, some bank can be hacked, but it doesn't mean the entire United States. It's just one -off instances. What are the best practices if you have Bitcoin to maintain your security if that's the case? The top tier standard, the gold standard, so to speak, is holding the keys yourself, holding the coins yourself.

1:40:53There are many ways to do that, many products that actually help you do that. That's what's fascinating is there are business products that help you control coins yourself. Pretty cool, usually corporations sell products that enforce and retain the control they have. But it's what we call cold storage, self -custody, where you custody the asset yourself. And there's tons of like a block has a product called Bitkey, ColdCard, Ledger, Trezzler, or for anyone listening and wanting to give these things to Google. These are all hardware devices that have different approaches to allowing you to store your Bitcoins on a device that you can put in a safety deposit box, store under your mattress, putting a vault of your own.

1:41:37And there are different ways to distribute it where I can hold a key is what it's called. My partner can hold a key, my business associate can hold a key and it takes two or three of them to move the coins at once in case someone gets compromised. So it's actually a really cool property of Bitcoin that it is technology and technology is never done being built, right? Like it's an infinite project that theoretically can always get better. And so it's programmable in this way, which is different obviously than gold in real estate. For it to work with the current infrastructure do you need to change Bitcoin into dollars to use them?

1:42:19Depends on what you want to do. Yeah, like in El Salvador for example now a lot of the country accepts Bitcoin natively but yeah, I think people initially get tripped up in their head of if I have my entire net worth in Bitcoin and I need to buy something that doesn't accept Bitcoin and my stock and an alternative universe and the answers now of course not. In fact, I own only Bitcoin. I don't own any dollars. The way I do it is I spend on credit cards. So I borrow the currency that only goes down and I get to spend it without having to own it, which is the US dollar and the banking system gives me this line of credit on a credit card.

1:43:01Then every month, if I need to pay down some expense, I just click a few buttons, sell the Bitcoin, point, psh, done. But in that way, I'm storing my money, my wealth, my labor, my contributions to society, my time and energy, and a money that protects me and is designed to be good. And that sounds like a really easy way. What you're describing is super easy. The best. You are buying procedure is no different than it was. The only thing that changed is how you're paying the credit card bill essentially. Yep, yeah. The US dollar kind of acts as an abstracted payment rail to connect to the life I want to have.

1:43:44But where I'm actually storing and doing the core exchange is in Bitcoin. If you think about it over the last year, Bitcoin's gone up 100%, which is another, it's a fancy way of saying Bitcoin's doubled in price. So for me, everything in my life has gotten half off. So owning the US dollar is inflationary, meaning everything else around you gets more expensive. Owning Bitcoin is deflationary, meaning everything around you gets cheaper. So I live my life very peacefully. Everything around me gets cheaper, more attainable for me. My dream house when I got into Bitcoin was maybe a hundred thousand Bitcoin.

1:44:20My dream house today could be half a dozen Bitcoins. And so I just sleep well knowing that my money is stored in the hardest asset in the history of our species. And then I spend an interface with the world with these dollar things because that's just where society is right now. That's not an issue though, it's pretty convenient. What is Bitcoin for countries? This is actually funny story. We're gonna open source the work we did with the government. And just let everyone have access to how we thought about the legal tender law. sharing the model basically. Sharing the model. There was friction because right after the announcement, I heard from people, the IMF, reached out to me, and I mean, just like straight up, no bullshit, I was scared at the time.

1:45:24And so there was some derailment for that. That's the first time I stayed in a hotel under like a different name. They don't want the information to be spread on how to do this. The IMF has a relationship with Argentina right now that says, we'll give you a new loan. If you promise us, you won't use Bitcoin ever. Tells you a lot. Are they taking that? Do we know? I think they did take that. So I mean, there's some expiry to it. So, expiration, it's not a forever deal. And I don't believe it was under Malay, which is the new president. But yes, the IMF reached out to me. I ended up presenting to the IMF.

1:46:06I recorded it myself and published it on my own. So I really do believe it's important that everyone has access not only to the model in the work, but the conversation. I like all conversation, public and accessible. I like all work that can be public and accessible to be. And so, yeah, we published as much as we could. Yeah, it was interesting, I guess I'll say. And I'd still to this day, if not confident, the IMF loves the idea of emerging markets, adopting this accessible open source money. Well, it goes against their business model. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, El Salvador, now since buys one Bitcoin per day, they own, I believe over 5 ,000 bitcoins at this point and They now have a Treasury asset for the country that's worth I'm trying to do the real math in my brain on current exchange rates $400 million dollars $500 million half a billion dollars Which they didn't have before of course not if Bitcoin continues to compound like it is They can go to the IMF and say it was really nice knowing you guys.

1:47:17We appreciate it, but we got it from here and And how beautiful that is, what did they have to do to do that? Nothing. They just adopted this commodity like big bang of an invention to free themselves of any relationship that has influence over the country that they want to have and the culture that they want to have and the people that they want to develop. And yeah, that, I think, seems to be the fear. Have any other countries reached out to you directly? Yeah, I tried to be really clear. You know one of the difficult things at the time was there was a group of there was people I would say no specific group that thought you know I'm too involved in this project.

1:48:05This can't be my thing and It's is it you were thinking no so then it was just at the time There was like you need to you're promoting an idea correct then there was also at the time people They were like well, why aren't you living there? Why aren't you more involved? Why aren't you risking more? And so I've made a very particular effort to kind of be clear It's not my thing. I'm very proud of the role I played But it's it has to be the country's thing. It has to be Bitcoin this network and and community of people's thing. And so I didn't do anything other than advise and be there and help create.

1:48:51And so people have reached out to me under that. But everything over that, where it's, you know, we need you to perform a certain task. I'd say, that's not what this is about, you know what I mean? So, but that's how it works for everything. I like, even in this presidential race, you know, I've talked to some of the candidates and it's if you want my advice. I love doing that. I love being helpful if I can and working towards a version of the world that I want to see. I love building towards that. And so whether you're government or business or an individual, friend, family. So definitely in that context.

1:49:32What's the relationship between Bitcoin and Web 3? I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of Web 3, Web 5, D5. In the sense that I feel like they are weaponized, I don't even know what these things mean. This is not specific to Web 3, but there's a culture in quote unquote cryptocurrency and blockchain that prays on the fact that people don't totally understand it yet. I call it an arbitrage on the trend. Are you familiar with an arbitrage trade? No. Let's say to my left, I can buy apples for one dollar and to my right on the other side of town, I can sell them for $10. That's an arbitrage where I'm making $9 every single pop.

1:50:22That's monetizing a market inefficiency. In theory, both should be at $5. dollars, but in practice the market is operating inefficiently and I'm able to take advantage of that. I think that other cryptocurrencies and other blockchain concepts, I call it an arbitrage on the trend where there's a regulatory arbitrage where you're doing things that historically have been illegal, but the law has not adopted to the new technology yet. So when I say Ethereum and others like it are acting more like a less legally accountable central bank than they are like a citoshi big bang commodity like invention.

1:51:05So there's a regulatory arbitrage and then an informational arbitrage where I can create money in my basement, pay Justin Bieber to tell a bunch of millennials that it's the next big thing and take advantage of the fact they don't understand the difference between Bitcoin and Justin Bieber coin. So I think that this is a giant arbitrage movement. I think eventually the apples trade at $5 each and the trade is over. And I think eventually these things end up washing away. But Web 3, Web 5, D5, these things don't mean much to me. They sound like abstracted concepts that are more marketing in sales than they are substantive value.

1:51:46What I will say, Web 3 is the one that was from Ethereum in these type of cultures. Web 5 was by Jack. and block, you know, that energy is more about can Bitcoin be the currency of the internet? Now that, I think, is phenomenal and is a lot of like the core energy of the project. So I agree with that, but I like, why can't you say we're working on making Bitcoin the currency of the web? Like why do you have to say, like, we're decentralizing, like, all these abstracted concepts that take you so far away from the work itself that it becomes impossible to understand. What do you think the next steps for Bitcoin are?

1:52:33What do you see in the next year, the next three years, the next five years? How do you imagine things changing? I think Bitcoin is marching itself towards being the world reserve currency. I really do. You know, people I think are ashamed to admit they care about the price. A lot of folks in the space. I mean, for the revolution, right? We're in it for El Salvador, not for the number to go up. I call bullshit because the price is the only metric and insight we have into how much of the world is using it as money, right? If you go back to solving barter with money, it's how much of the world is storing their cash balance, their labor.

1:53:12So if the value goes up, it's more valuable, It's working, it's doing its job. Right. And so I think Bitcoin continues to march in higher price and higher market cap because it's being adopted more as money. I fundamentally believe that money is compete, money is one to be won, money is compete over monetary policy, over their hardness, and Bitcoin is the inevitable victor. So that's where I see the world going. I will say I had this epiphany once this really high level philosophical framework to think about Bitcoin where I Think what death means to life Bitcoin will do for money meaning the only reason I value my life and the way that I do is because I know for certain I'm going to die If I could live forever, I'd go to the gym in 100 ,000 years.

1:54:13I'd look to build relationship and have family in a million years. I'd eat donuts for the next 10 ,000 years and think about a better diet in the 10 ,000 in first year. Time as a resource is infinite, but my time isn't. It's the fact that my life is finite and has a fixed supply that allows me to value today. If there's infinite amounts of dollars or in theory, infinite amounts of gold Elon's talking about, he can get more in Mars. How do you value the paycheck you're getting now? Bitcoin as the only finite money we've ever invented is what death is to life. It allows us to value today. And so it's not just about money is competing and the new kid on the block being the victor.

1:55:15But what does that do to the world? This like fix the money, fix the world. If all of a sudden we can value our time and energy with a finite resource, what is that due to our time preference? What is that due to our ability to transport value into the future? What is that due to our ability to value the future in place of premium on tomorrow versus today? I think, yeah, we reintroduced the middle class. I think the wealth gap closes. I think relationship strengthens. I think we get a lot more peace, human flourishing. I think we enter a chapter of our species that will be looked back upon as pivotal in historic.

1:56:14Longin' core ark to plant that dwarf. Overall Bon Appetit!