Jeff Booth: Everything They Told You About Money Is Wrong

0:02They can't see. The moment they're spending right now is the most important thing. An abundance that we can't even imagine because we can't see what's not there. You won't even be able to keep up with the rate of change. You'd expect the centralized system to attack this everywhere. You're going to see supply chain shortages. You're going to see inflation like crazy. Then there's going to be printing into that. Because if there isn't printing into that, there's going to be a deflationary collapse that destroys all money. if what you're saying is right and we're entering this sort of super chaotic period is the only thing to do hold bitcoin if you haven't done the work to understand this and you're trusting somebody else and you don't have agency then you're likely to get annihilated but the point here is you have a choice you've been deceived your entire life you don't want to believe it it gets easier when you face the truth all right jeff my uh my roommate in costa rica you're back on the show um when we were in costa rica we had a few conversations that i think opened my eyes to the way you view the world and the analogy that i've come to is is you know that scene in the matrix where neo sees like the green code for the first time and he's like what you just look at code and the other guy's like, oh no, I don't see code.

1:21It's like blonde, brunette, redhead. That's like how I view your thesis. Like when I see the world, I'm a Bitcoiner. I live on a Bitcoin standard. I totally understand everything you say in your argument, but I struggle to just naturally see the world that way. Whereas you seem to see the world and everything fits into your thesis. Like how do you get to that point? um that's a big question and i think before i go there i would say most people see the world and everything fits under their thesis and it reflects back to them and they're completely convinced that they're right and and they can't see other people's view because their their their their reflection of the world is true to them.

2:14So you've probably heard me say before many times that our reflection of the world is us, right? The world that we observe is literally a reflection of our thoughts, reactions, and we create that too. And so when I say that, some people think that okay that's true for Jeff but it's not true for me but I didn't say it's true for me I said it's true for every single person so your construct of what reality is to you is true for you and you will make it true you will sort information to make it true you will ensure that that view cannot be distorted it um and and and it'd be other people's problem and when you look around the world and you look at everybody else viewing the world on and and how could how could they think the world looks like that and and you think they're like completely crazy if you realize the entire world looks like that then you must be subject to the same thing so then how would you know like so how would i know that my view of reality or what I call reality is true for me.

3:40And I would need an outside objective measure because it's not true-true, it's right. It's a belief system that feeds back on itself. So how would I know my belief system is right for me? is probably that takes us that could take us down a crazy journey and one of the things I constantly think about in my own journey to this and we'll go into Bitcoin but if everyone else believes their truth unconditionally and they'll push back and they'll fight people and they're so sure then and they're only human, then wouldn't that mean that I would be subject to the same thing? And so how would I know? I spend a lot of time in how would I know?

4:40What is actually the sand down to the sand? What is true for sure? And then how do I reconstruct my actions and reality from that truth for sure? And I'm constantly challenging those assumptions as well. So I know that's probably a different answer than you were looking for. And now we can take that into why I wrote the book, what Bitcoin is to me, what that looks like to me. But I think that's the fundamental thing. I wonder, I'm constantly curious, if we live in this matrix of all of these ideas bouncing into each other, and I'm a construct of a whole bunch of ideas of people that touched me in my life that have changed me.

5:39In other words, those people are in me, those ideas are in me, and I believe this a certain version of the world, and then until I don't, and then it changes, and I'm a different, then that means that those intersections of people touching me impact me in a big way. And then you see, you watch other people have the same interactions, but nothing changes in their life. their belief system just carries on in what could be a zero to one moment and have something that totally changed. They're so dealing in their past reality is their reality that they can't see that the moment in front of them, the moment they're spending right now is the most important thing.

6:32So they don't never see the change that could change everything in the future. and they continue to stay in a very narrow path of a belief system. So there's a load in there that I want to dig into. But the first one, you said everyone believes their own truth. And I agree with that, but I don't know if everyone has thought as deeply as you have about this. So for all the people that are still supporting and living within the current system that we have, I don't think they're necessarily viewing that as the right thing to do or the good thing to do. I think they're just seeing it as this is the way it is.

7:12And what I've never fully got is like what has to change for that to change? Yeah, and that's why, so this is all of us in every single, 8 billion people on the planet. So if there are 8 billion people on the planet going through a structural change, and most people were fighting that structural change because their own beliefs from past biases, then the expectation would be, this would be really hard. because most of the people, and it would be really noisy, because most of the people were feeding back against the system that they said they hated and using the exact same money that they said they hated to increase the power of the state and the system over them.

8:08And what they would find is they would find always somebody else. They would find Candace Owens. They would find Tucker Carlson. They would find good people yelling at the system, but with no solution to the system. And so they would find themselves in this hate, right, that they didn't know that they were creating because they were using the same money that funded it all. and they would find belonging in that hate. They would find, I know more than those other people, those stupid other people. And it would feel like love. It would feel like belonging. It would feel like I know something that the rest of the people don't do.

9:01And that would expand everywhere while using the exact same money that funds the entire thing. and and and when i look at when i look at that i i totally understand it's natural it's what people do um i but but i wonder why i wonder i wonder if you if you can't solve the problem what are you doing right so what are what are you doing to actually solve the problem And what, because what it's actually saying is in all of those versions of their realities is somebody else will save me instead of I will, I have agency. Every single other version says somebody else is to blame. But by the way, we would easily see in a world that looked like this, we would easily not see our own agency.

10:00And we would easily see that we would be led to believe from that same system that it's not you, it's somebody else. And we would want to believe that because it couldn't be us. The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my Bitcoin cold storage. And this is where Anchor Watch comes in. With Anchor Watch, your Bitcoin is insured with your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy. And all Bitcoin is held in their time-locked multi-sig vaults. So you have the peace of mind knowing your Bitcoin is insured while not giving up custody. So whether you're worried about inheritance planning, wrench attacks, natural disasters, or just your own silly mistakes, you're protected by Anchor Watch.

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12:41That's leden.io forward slash wbd. Because everything is downstream of money, is it possible to have agency without Bitcoin? So that's actually why I don't think so. So you know I've started, and why I continually start with, here's the thing that I feel like even with you right in Costa Rica is talking but in in like we're good friends I you inspire me in this space uh there's so many people who have different views and everything else that same similar to to that make me smarter in this space either or try to clarify what I'm saying to bring it tighter and tighter and something that's so obvious to me that uh but but when I watch this space evolve, right?

13:34And I try to put simple language to something that's really complex. When I start with the natural state of the free market is deflation, right? People laugh at that because I say it over and over and over again, right? And you're smiling now. But if you think of the magnitude of those, what is it, seven words, what they actually mean to every other nonsense that you've ever heard and that you choose. So when I say that, I mean, entrepreneurs have to, whether you're working for an entrepreneur, you're working for a new business, or you're an entrepreneur, in the free market, you have to create more value for somebody else to get paid if you don't the company fails why does a company fail because us as users producer us as purchasers of the product or service demand more value so how could those two things right you have to create more value than what was there before and we use more value how could those two things in a free market not produce more value it's it and why i try to drive into this so carefully is because it has to and people can hear these words and you've heard these words and you smile at these words without thinking about the repercussions of the world the imaginary world that you've always lived in that looks nothing like I just described.

15:21And so if you had one, the natural state of the free market is deflation. You had two, our ideas move exponentially to create more value. Then three, you would expect exponential deflation or prices falling or value increasing for humanity. four you would expect with ai where it's going every single person to be able to contribute to humanity and accelerate that curve and you would expect an abundance that we can't even imagine because we can't see what's not there we can't even measure what's not there we measure from the other system so but if those things are true and they are most certainly true If those things are true, then the entire nonsense, everything we've been taught about economics, every single other thing means we lose our agency to somebody else's agency.

16:22We, everything is, and we trust the economists, we trust Trump, we trust Biden, we trust, somebody else always has to be the person that we trust because we don't live in a free market. And so it's actually really simple. It's really simple. Now, the only question now, the next question, a derivative of that question, can Bitcoin withstand all of our nonsense actions trying to stop it? That was going to be exactly my next question, because there's never been a time in history where Bitcoin has been more ingrained in the old financial system. And can it remain a free market? Right. So then to that degree, what you would have to do, and this is where I've spent a lot of time, a lot of time.

17:19Why would I believe it does? And I'm going to talk about this in my speech in Vegas. but why I believe it does is because of people like you right and I mean that actually very seriously because of people like you that are bringing this to other people even if you didn't know it all the way to the sand right but um and and not just you but all of the others that I meet every day who are who know this is a protocol emerging in layers and are building on a protocol And if you added up all of those people, it might only be 10 ,000 people. Many of them private for most of the nonsense. But building protocol technology in service of humankind that is the free market and protecting it.

18:13And what would you expect? You'd expect the centralized system to attack this everywhere. But, and so if there were 10 ,000 people, like, let's call it 10 ,000, and it's probably 10 ,000, it might even be more, but you have to assume some of those 10 ,000 people will sell for pieces of paper and go back to the other system, right? So, and they'll be replaced with more and more people that are understanding this and developing in as this changes. then those 10 ,000 people are against not against but are building the future their actions are building the future that 8 billion people don't know yet and so if you looked at the market at any given time the expectation would be the noise of all of these other people with their own observations of what Bitcoin is to them or what money is to them or who should be in charge of money.

19:20All of those people would drown out these people. But they wouldn't drown out these people inside that bubble. And so what I live in every day is circular economies, expansion, a network effect on Bitcoin that is so incredible. What I live in is, and I recognize that for somebody observing the system without living like I do, investing in these companies, investing in these people, seeing who these people were, and they're never going back, no matter what. If I wasn't here, I can imagine what they would think about what this looked like. So now how do I know I'm right? right if they all think they're right inside a system that has to steal their money to be able to to and they stay in it how could i know i'm right and why i know i'm right is is objectively i'm watching more and more people build this i'm watching more and more layers being built on top of bitcoin i'm watching prices relative to bitcoin fall exactly as i would expect them to fall not that all the risks don't exist because if all of these people stopped tomorrow and said, ah, nice experiment, let's go back, then Bitcoin wouldn't be a thing.

20:50This is why, like, one of the things I've said over and over again is Bitcoin without the freedom money aspect isn't interesting to me. And this is exactly why. And to get back to your point a little earlier, you said like the people that aren't going to leave Bitcoin. Like, this is a thing that I say over and over again. It's like people ask you when you're going to sell Bitcoin. And I'm like, sell it for what? like i'm not going to sell it for more dollars that's for sure um but the thing that i will do at some point is sell it to buy my family a nice house and does that reinforce the old system because when i do that i'm going to do it with as big a mortgage as possible to basically short the fiat system with the housing market um and is that not a reinforcement of that system so so why do houses have as much value as they have they have as much value as they have because money's broken right yeah and so when you decide to make that so i've told the story many times right my house five six years ago was 300 bitcoin now it's 15 bitcoin um if i want so pretend i don't have a house and i have 300 bitcoin um then then i can choose when to buy that house and i I can buy it for one Bitcoin if I want to hold off, or I can buy it for 15 Bitcoin, or I can, or I can put a mortgage down and buy it for one Bitcoin and, and, and have a mortgage.

22:17All of these are free choices as this new system imposes discipline around the other, around that. And And each choice has repercussions. So when you buy a house, you're choosing to buy now for your lifestyle of your family, which is totally fine. Which was meaning you're going to distribute your Bitcoin to other people. And other people are going to take them and then buy a house later for less Bitcoin. And it's just part of the evolution of this thing repricing the entire world that has to look like this. And each of our choices in a free market, when we want value, when we decide that this is the right price for us, is part of those choices.

23:07But you are kind of propping up the debt Ponzi for a period of time, though, while this happens. So let's change that subject or tackle this from a different way. In the next little while in the economy, you're going to see supply chain shortages. You're going to see inflation like crazy. You're going to see crazy. And then there's going to be printing into that. Because if there isn't printing into that, there's going to be a deflationary collapse from money that can't allow deflation that destroys all money. And so there is going to be, and it's likely an order of magnitude higher than what COVID was.

23:52as that happens and pushes prices up like crazy at the same time as jobs are leaving the market because the businesses the businesses have to use ai to get you to use their system to remove the job because if they don't um you won't use their system because you won't have the money so you're going to create so you're going to create this inflationary pulse massive inflationary pulse. There's going to be food insecurity. There's going to be uprisings all over the world and everything else because fertilizers are also going up in price. And all of these inputs are going up in price. At the same time, there's going to be massive printing to save the financial system.

24:35At that time, that inflation is going to cause demand destruction, right? Because people won't be able to afford it. Their jobs and what they get paid, especially in the businesses that pay them that, are going to have to shed that. There's going to be massive demand destruction, and it's going to collapse in a deflationary spiral. So now let's say, and so these things, if you look back into Weimar Germany, as it was going through this, you see this chart that goes up and down and up and down, and it flushes people up and down and down. We're used to living in stability. But when it looks like that, and we think we're outsmarting the market, we're going to take massive leverage at the time thinking it's going to be devalued, and then it's going to go into deflation, and we're going to owe the leverage, and we're going to get wiped out.

25:28So a lot of people inside of this system, and it has nothing to do with Bitcoin, zero to do with Bitcoin that this is happening it has to do with money being debased at a crazy rate and physics coming due right and the free market coming due and a realization that we live in a nonsense unsensical world that is more and more controlled and this is going to create psychological breaks everywhere too in people because they're not going to be ready they're thinking they're living in a normal world that's always looked this way. And it's not going to look that way. And they're going to take, and so let's say now you, Danny, take this and take a huge mortgage, Bitcoin at this time, and then mortgage rates go way up at the wrong time.

26:27And what does that do to you when you think you played the game properly? so um so from the other system which is growing in in instability and has to do a certain number of things which have second order consequences to people and third order consequences to people and those people change what they think right from from that you can expect this crazy chaos or you could just hold your bitcoin right just stay in stability yeah well yeah um and and and And no matter what side of it, you're going to win. Now, we look back to fonder times and say, I want a family home. I want it to look like that.

27:12I want a white picket fence with the kids and everything else. In the next little while in where we're going, it's unlikely to look like the past 30 years, past 40 years. It was a construct out of manipulated money that felt right. And that construct is going to break down. And so all of these individual choices, including in Bitcoin, are going to long for those times and make choices. And they're going to sell their Bitcoin. And then many people will sell all their Bitcoin for the pieces of paper. Then it will go to zero. and all they'll do is distribute their bitcoin if you just stay with the natural state of the free market is deflation exponentially exponential technology gains should mean exponential deflation or prices falling or abundance if bitcoin stayed decentralized and secure it is measuring that and just stay there everything else is uh everything else the problem in what you're doing and house the question too what you're doing is an emotional need to what does security look like and family look like to you tied to an old system wanting that wanting that to be true but it's no longer but but it's it's less and less true if what you're saying is right and we're entering this sort of super chaotic period is the only thing to do hold Bitcoin.

28:49So imagine you, so now that's an entirely different vector. You just hold Bitcoin. You don't spend it. If you just hold Bitcoin and just, and didn't spend it, and it looked like that, then Bitcoin would get centralized, just like people held gold. And they used a monetary system that they knew was always broken. And why they needed an asset underpinning the monetary system is because the monetary system was broken. And so Bitcoin is different in that way in that you don't need an asset underneath the monetary system because the money isn't broken. The money itself is the network and you can store your money in money without having to store it in a piece of paper tied to a broken monetary system.

29:42So that change is another huge change in our perspective of what reality looks like. Now, in Bitcoin, you have a whole camp of people talking about digital credit and what that would look like. You have an entire camp of people that believe that this is the strongest asset in the world, but it's not money. It's credit. Well, what is credit? Credit is loaned into existence from nothing. So if you had the strongest asset in the world and you had this credit that was loaned into existence for nothing, then most people would centralize their Bitcoin just like they centralize gold and you would have this nonsense system of broken money on top of gold.

30:37And then what would happen eventually is gold would break, right? You'd reprice gold. And so we can expect, if we look back at history and we know human nature, we can expect these things to happen. We can expect lots of people to be fooled, just like they were in FTX, just like they were in some of these others and like they will be again we can expect tons of people to go into etfs trusting somebody else removing their own agency and and and trusting somebody else to get a higher yield um and and if if bitcoin all look like that if it looked like that it won't um but if it all looked like that it would fail so like you're obviously talking about sailor there so and again i want to be careful this because because i can coexist in a world that i like sailor i think he's good for bitcoin i think he does a lot of great things i actually like the and i'm an investor in the business at least in my rsp investor in the business but but and and think he's brilliant but also disagree with him on a fundamental premise of, and he can be right for a long time.

31:56He can actually be, he can consolidate a lot of Bitcoin by telling the world that it's just an asset. But that is fundamentally different than it is money and it is used as money. And so I can like him. I can think he's really smart. I can see a lot of things that he does that are well for this. And I can disagree with him that I believe it's a protocol. And the protocol is emerging as money and privacy and everything else. It's a new internet protocol. And so I want to be careful of creating an us versus them and everything. because it is really easy to bite and say, yeah, he's terrible and everything else.

32:50He's done a lot of great things for Bitcoin and a whole bunch of people that have understood his actions in Bitcoin will then in turn understand it's a protocol. Do you want to pay less in taxes and stack more Bitcoin? Of course you do. Well, by mining Bitcoin with Blockware, you can. Under section 168K of the US tax code, Bitcoin mining servers qualify for 100 % bonus depreciation. This means every dollar you spend on miners can directly offset your income in a single year. And that's true for both business owners and W2 earners. If you have$100 ,000 in ordinary income, you can purchase$100 ,000 in miners and potentially offset your tax liability entirely.

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34:45It's simple, secure self-custody without the stress. And time named BitKey one of the best inventions of 2024. Get 20 % off at bitkey.world when you use the code WBD. That's B-I-T-K-E-Y dot world and use the code WBD. so i like i agree with that sailor's clearly a genius um i think he's been good for bitcoin but i also would agree with you on the digital credit part but is there a world where that can be a dangerous narrative for bitcoin yes yes so so that digital credit narrative will get wiped out not might get wiped out it's it's binary an inflationary system is opposite from the free market an inflationary system must centralize if you're using digital credit on top of bitcoin and trust somebody else with your keys it is being centralized and at some point that's going to create a chain fork in bitcoin and one of those two it's binary one will win one will not if you were the u.s government and you were saying i need my u.s dollars to be the strongest you would you would um you would try to co-opt Bitcoin, to using Tether and stable coins and everything else to concentrate other people so they don't hold their keys, to concentrate enough Bitcoin.

36:21But the concentrating enough Bitcoin in sheer volume doesn't concentrate the nodes, doesn't concentrate the votes, doesn't concentrate the activity on Bitcoin. And so by doing that, you're taking massive risk by trusting somebody else with your keys that is eventually has to stop because the inflationary system has to stop the deflationary one. Or it's said differently. The system of abuse or centralization that we've always lived in can't allow the free market. But the point here is you have a choice. Your actions determine the choice. and what gives me so much confidence in my choice being the one that's going to resolve and win is it's not alone.

37:13It's with thousands, tens of thousands of other people and most of those people are hardly even known. And that's the number that goes up. Their heart and soul of Bitcoin and they're proving it with their actions every day. And so when I watch what's happening there and the emergence of the protocol, and developing privacy and everything else and money and circular economies against what I would expect to happen with the vast majority of most people getting stuck in the old system. It's just, I expect it. I completely expect it. I expect it to, and then now if you're taking, if you have, if you don't hold your own coins, if you don't hold your own keys, if you haven't done the work to understand this and you're trusting somebody else and you don't have agency, then you're likely to get annihilated.

38:10So when you say that digital credit can't survive, does that mean you don't think strategy as a business model will survive? No, I think that depending on how much... So I think strategy as a business model could actually do extraordinarily well. And because we're so early in this change, but many others will get hurt along the way, and strategy could get hurt if they're over-levered against a deflationary collapse. At some point, they could get really hurt. But I don't think they are over-levered. I think what you're talking about, but I think Saylor is brilliant. I think he understands the game that is being played.