The Next 10 Years Will Decide Bitcoin’s Future | Brandon Quittem

26:58And that would be a shame. Yeah, that's interesting. Cause it's like in, you can see the comparisons there where it's like Bitcoin or the Apaches have prioritized resilience rather than convenience. And the thing I don't know is like what the golden cow would be for Bitcoin. Like what is the potential subversion that we would fall for? And I'm sure there's probably multiple, but like, what do you think is the most likely? Yeah, I think it comes back to paper Bitcoin being the biggest threat right now. If the supply is so hyper concentrated in a handful of custodians that the US government can lean on, I think that becomes a very serious risk.

27:42And I mean percentage of the supply, I want to make that point very clear. It's not about the number of users. The number of users, the majority of the users will always choose convenience. This is ETFs, this is your Coinbase, this is whatever. But what we really need is an intolerant minority to hold a large chunk of the coins outside of the system. And what that serves is it just makes the cost of that golden cow centralized supply attack really hard to pull off. And so it's essentially having a security sign or like a big scary dog lives here in front of your house, it doesn't, you don't even have to have a security system.

28:22You don't even have to have a big dog. But if you have a sign that says this house is protected with guns, dogs, and security system, the would-be attacker is going to just try and find an easier victim, right? So we need to put up that, hey, good luck. The attack's going to fail energy so that no one actually attempts it. That's how I see it now. so i like i agree in terms of i think custody is a a real issue and i think it's a growing issue do we know how many coins are actually held in self-custody still today is there any sort of good metric on that yeah good question when i started writing this essay the number was over 50 percent um i don't know the number now let's see can i pull this off an llm immediately so one shot it on chat gpt they recommend they're saying 45 to 60 percent of the supply is held in self-custody okay see that's like it's very hard to know what what acceptable is there like i don't there's obviously there's not a precise number where you're like above that is okay below that is not but the the scary thing is the trend like the trend is definitely moving to more and more coins held in custodians um and i don't know how you turn that around like as as we said earlier in the show like the financialization wall street coming to bitcoin that stuff is inevitable and they are not the kind of people that are going to be holding coins in self-custody and they're the kind of people that are going to be at least exposed to a large number of coins so like if i look at the trajectory i can only see coinbase holding more and more coins going forward.

29:58Same with strategy, same with all these companies. I don't know how you buck that trend. Yeah, I think you're hitting on a really important point because if we're going to say that the ideological Bitcoiners are already here, what makes us believe down the road there's going to be ideological Bitcoiners to take the supply into self-custody? Yeah. I don't have a good answer for that one. I agree. The trend is not good. But what I would say is we don't need that many people. If we did a number comparison, I bet it's over 90 % of individuals hold their coins in someone else's custody. Let's say 80%, 90%.

30:41So 80 % or 90 % leave their coins elsewhere, but that's still roughly 50 % of the supply is self-custody. And so really what we're trying to do is hope the ideological OGs stay that way long enough. Shout out to Satoshi for releasing half the coins in the first four years, 75 % of the coins in the first eight years. That really matters because the archetype of the early Bitcoiner is so much more ideological. Obviously, we saw a bunch of those folks selling last fall, according to our friends who run the analysis there online. um but yeah i i can't blame them for selling imagine holding 100 million dollars with a bitcoin that you bought for a dollar a coin or 10 cents a coin yeah i i and i think that that really big one the guy who sold like a billion dollars worth of bitcoin apparently wasn't that just him putting money into like a trust or something like that like it was a bit of a a rebalancing rather than necessarily just selling it but like i i obviously if you're sat on billions of dollars from Bitcoin that you bought for a hundred bucks, like you're going to be selling something at some point.

31:52But the problem, like you say, is the trend. But what I don't know is when, when like enough's enough, like when, when does it become a real problem? Because I, the, the threat is that no one cares enough about self-custody to protect self-custody. Therefore, self-custody is sort of regulated away. You're not allowed to do it legally within the US or the UK or wherever. And that's like one way that Bitcoin gets totally neutered is self-custody becoming illegal. It doesn't mean you can't do it, but it means that very few people do do it. Yeah. I mean, it's very concerning looking around the world.

32:25The US seems to at least have some energy to try and preserve that. I'm not keeping up with the latest in DC, but I see a lot of Cynthia Lummises of the world saying, hey, we got to keep self-custody legal. I think Florida passed a rule that said you have to. On the other side, the rising communism, socialism stuff, They're fighting, and that group is growing very fast. That energy is pushing back against the self-custody narrative. Trump family grifting so hard in the quote crypto industry, that's going to bite us in the ass in the next few years for sure. And so yeah, there's a battle brewing over self-custody.

33:05I think that that's real. And your point, if only 10 % of the Bitcoiners care about self-custody, where's the energy to fight for it? That is a real concern. And that's where you've got to prop up people like BPI and hope the intolerant minority has enough juice to pull it off, even if the average person doesn't care. If you hold Bitcoin long enough, there's going to come a time when you need some dollars. It might be a tax bill, a business expense, life getting in the way, but whatever it is, it might come at a time when you don't want to sell your Bitcoin. That's where Ledin comes in. Ledin lets you borrow against your Bitcoin instead, with tiered rates that go as low as 9.25%.

33:42So you don't have to sell your stack if you don't want to. Ledin have operated through every market cycle since 2018 and have originated over$11 billion in loans. But the important part for me is the way Ledin handles these loans. Your collateral is held in custody and never lent out to generate interest. And Ledin's more than just loans. Tether Gold is now live alongside your Bitcoin with instant trading across 10 pairs. And later this year, you'll be able to borrow against gold in the same way that you do with Bitcoin. Ledin really is an awesome company. I've used them multiple times. The applications have taken me less than 15 minutes and you have the dollars in your account within hours.

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35:25And all Bitcoins held in their time-locked multi-sig vaults. So you have the peace of mind knowing your Bitcoin's 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 AnchorWatch. Rates for fully insured custody start as low as 0.55 % and are available for individual and commercial customers in the US. You can speak to AnchorWatch for a quote and for more details about your security options and coverage, visit anchorwatch.com today. That's anchorwatch.com. one of my hopes here though is that like the the sort of rise of the multipolar world actually really helps us in on this front i think iran using bitcoin for those insurance payments in the um in the straight is it was a huge signal and i think one that wasn't properly appreciated um like if we are moving to a more multipolar world people are going to need a money that they like it's money for enemies like they're going to need that and as the sooner we have big nation states, the pariah nation states transacting in Bitcoin, the more likely we are to actually retain self-custodial Bitcoin, I think.

36:29If these countries need it to trade between themselves, I don't know, that seems like a pretty good signal to me. So from a Bitcoin lens, I wholeheartedly agree. That's demonstrating the use case. Let's flip it in the, let's say, statist government official point of view. Oh, big scary Iran is doing on-chain transactions and we can't stop it. We like to be able to police the world's financial system. We must force everyone through Swift 2.0, stablecoin Swift, whatever you want to call the new thing they're cooking up. So yes, and also it's good marketing fodder for the status. Sure, but what if the US are needing to use it to transact with, I don't know, Venezuela or China or whoever it might be?

37:14Like they maybe need to use this as well. That would be great, yeah. and yeah if the u.s is trading with enemies settling in bitcoin i think the ship sailed we won the fight um i don't expect the u.s to be first there however the trump administration feels more bullish than we've ever seen so do you think they pull it off in the next two years i mean they're about to get neutered in the midterms i think most likely which so it looks like you talk about the regulation in dc like it doesn't look like clarity is going to go through. Apparently, from what I've heard from people who actually know about this stuff, if it doesn't go through before the midterms, it's probably not going to.

37:53But I mean, Bitcoin doesn't need regulation. You can still use it how you want to use it. Yeah, at least today that's true in the US. You've got the California wealth tax, you got the Illinois 0.2 % if you move Bitcoin from anywhere to anywhere. That's crazy. Yeah, those counter forces are very scary right now. And in my opinion, that The social fight we're about to experience is that, are we going to flirt with communism again? We did this in the 1930s. We did this previous foreturning before that. It just happens. When the social contract is eroded, where young people feel disenfranchised, they seek alternatives.

38:38We're firmly in that now. AI is a big part of that story. People are inherently distrustful of new technology. And then you have this new super scary technology that's going to take everyone's jobs and destroy society, which is coming directly from the leaders of these frontier labs. And so, yeah, you're creating this culture where people feel left out and the future is looking worse and worse every day, not better. And that means they're going to burn the cities down if we don't write the shit. So is it AI companies giving out an AI UBI type thing? honestly I'm really excited about the Trump accounts we should talk about that for a minute so branding aside Trump created a essentially an IRA account individual retirement account which is like a tax advantage US account that most employers sponsor for their employees but today you can't do that if you're under 18 and so they essentially allowed babies to have this investable account with tax advantages.

39:40You can have your employer contribute it. You can have the parents contribute. You can have your aunts and uncles, your grandparents contribute, whatever. And now all of a sudden you have a one-year-old owning a piece of the S &P 500 and contribute every year, and theoretically it compounds. And so what is that doing? That's inoculating the next generation to have upside in the market. Right now, less than 50 % of Americans own any stocks. And so you're giving theoretically everyone that advantage. So now they get to taste what markets do, what capitalism provides. And at the same time, Social Security is dead.

40:17And that was a fun experiment. This is sort of like a reboot of that same idea, which is that if you start investing from a very young age, theoretically, you'll have retirement savings with not too many contributions because you have so much time. and so combine that with many many many billionaires and individual states saying hey i'm going to donate a lot of money here and seed all these accounts right and so that that's the type of counter force we need to get out of the communism trap that we're we're running down right now yeah i actually think that's really cool because i mean i do that with my daughter i bought her bought bitcoin every week since she was born um which is essentially yeah i mean i think that's probably going to outperform the S &P.

41:01But I think that taste of capitalism is a really important thing because it's the 18 to 25-year-olds that are coming into the world and realizing they're behind in the game. They don't have exposure to the markets. Everyone's getting richer while they're getting poorer. That's a really hard world to come into. And I feel like that sort of K-shaped economy is worse than when we were that age, I think. And I think the despair and the nihilism is understandable like i i do think obviously communism is the wrong solution to that but i understand the frustration that they feel and um especially in europe i don't know how you kind of stop that that rise in communism i think it's really taking hold like you see what's happening with the political parties in the uk and the sort of outright communist groups coming out of the universities there it's kind of scary absolutely i mean i don't live in europe thankfully but everything i see out of the eu is terrifying right now um yeah i mean people in the uk going to jail for liking memes like what are we even talking about here like how how can that be how can that be accepted it's dumbfounding to me yeah and do you know the thing that's even scary like that's obviously stupid should never happen like insane the thing that's scarier is the more subverted like the the it's the the fact that they're trying to control what you can do on the internet that they're trying to do it through like claiming to protect the children which is essentially the uk's version of the patriot act like you know like saving children is the same as saying you're a patriot in america um and then the new um pm coming in andy burnham is trying to ban you like ban any vpn usage so they're essentially just trying to control entire speech And they're also trying to bring in something which will scan pictures that you take on your phone before you send them to anyone so they can prove that it's not harmful, abusive material or whatever.

43:01And the way they're trying to say they're doing this is with local AI models, but that's not how they're going to do it. I don't think that's even possible right now. I just see it's more and more control, more and more Orwellian, dystopian bullshit. and and for the first time ever i i couldn't move back to the uk like if if everything lined up for my me and my family to move back to the uk i don't think i could do it right now and i've never said that before i'd always have moved back that's crazy to hear yeah and when i catch pete's show he's always lamenting you catch him on twitter he's guns blazing like what question for you what what are the more individualistic brits doing right now like is there a counter movement it's just kind of quiet or do people just say put your head down move on i honestly don't know like in terms of my friendship group i don't think most of people are even aware and i think the all of these things coming in these controls coming in under the guise of protecting children i think most people just fall for it like i think and the very the really hard thing about anything like that is if you try and argue against it you're like what you want kids to be exposed to this kind It's like, obviously not.

44:14That's not the point I'm making. It's that the ends don't justify, like the means don't justify the ends or whatever way around it is. And so it becomes really, really hard to battle against. You just sound like a lunatic when really I feel like I'm the only one screaming with anything based on first principles, any first principles thinking in this. So I don't know. I don't know what people are doing. I think the only thing you can do realistically is leave. Although maybe that's not true. Maybe it's not just leave because If you want to live in that country, but not live under those rules, there are ways of doing it.

44:47You can run a phone with Graphene OS and still run a VPN, but it's like you become an outsider in your own society. That's the hard thing. Yeah, and that's essentially like quietly opting out, right? There's voice and exit. That would be on the exit side, even though you don't physically leave. You just exit from the internet stack that the state supports. I don't think that'll move the needle. Maybe you buy yourself a couple of decades and your family keeps their head down, but it feels like this is going to come to a head in society. Because on one side, we have this beautiful redo of American values built on a Bitcoin system and markets matter and take power away from the state and empower individuals.

45:31On the other hand, you have AI communism. right take the UK as our template here KYC the internet backdoor in every phone thought police like pre-crime like they're setting up pre-crime essentially and yeah the only way I see this this not ending up there is with some sort of big fight and I don't think Europe has it in them to right the ship and that means America is the last chance here for everyone and and Can we pull it off again? I don't know. The crazy thing, though, is that like you're clearly furthest behind in this. I think Canada, Australia is going to come to all these countries. And I think it's going to come to the US as well.

46:19Like, I don't I don't think it's going to stop. They're going to try it. Whether they can pull it off there, I think it's going to be the hardest fight. But I think they probably will. Like, it's already starting. There's already some Internet controls in places like Florida and Texas. And they're kind of like right leaning states, which is weird. um during like pornography is that what i think i mean that's where it starts isn't it that's what that's where it started in the uk too and it's it's always sort of the uh the slippery slope but and then the country's like if you want to move great like but i have a family like i it's not just easy to get up and go and it's where do you go i will say the the best chance for the u.s and we're seeing good data here is the federalist system meaning each state has their own set of rules and people move states pretty easily.

47:06Now it's not trivial if you have no money to move. Yeah, there's money involved, like caveat, caveat. But we saw massive intra-country migration during COVID. Like blue states with bad budgets and crazy COVID policies are having massive net migration out. And then you have the Tennessee, Florida, Arizona, Texas slurping up all these people. And so my sincere hope with the rise of socialism, which there is actually communism in disguise, my hope for that is we actually see crazy Mom Donnie policy, crazy California policy, and we just watch the experiments fail at the state level. And we watch the states that lean into the opposite of that succeed.

47:50And hopefully that's enough juice to change the social climate in the US. At the same time, if I'm a government official who believes in strong state power and Palantir is like, hey, we got the whole spyware built, all you got to do is push the button, they're going to push the button. And to your point prior, yeah, it's save the kids, it's start with pornography. We got to put a camera on every corner to keep you safe. It always starts there. And then once the system's built, it's not hard to advance it. And so, yeah, honestly, pretty bleak to think about. And then you have to make a personal decision.

48:29Does that mean I fly to South America and I find a nice mountain town and just ride out my days in relative peace and quiet? Do I stand up and fight? That's the decision for everyone to make here. The thing that would be interesting is in the UK, if Rupert Lowe got in as the next prime minister, I don't agree with everything he says. but he is certainly not part of like the established politician group. That would be a signal. Like if he could do something, or I guess the actual signal is if he can't do something, then it's over. Like, I don't know what you do after that. So that's kind of like what I'm waiting to see.

49:08He's like the nationalist, anti-immigration, pro-Brit politician, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What do people think about him? Does he have a chance? He has a chance for sure. like the tricky part is on on that sort of further right side of the uh the spectrum it's him and farage is splitting the boat at the moment between reform and restore um like i i prefer um i can never call him nigel low i prefer rupert low but i don't know he's the only one that's outside of this political sort of agenda that everyone else is under and and if if he can come in and make a change that would be interesting that's i think that is the only thing that says voting harder bro might work yeah some headlines coming out of the eu member states that were essentially changing immigration policy like with all the stuff all the headlines coming out and the violence from immigrants and whatever i saw states countries that i would be surprised to hear starting to change their tune i don't know if that's real or my twitter is just feeding it to me but i mean no it's definitely the the sentiment the words are real the whether the action will be is is different so andy burnham the guy who's coming in to replace um keir starmer has always been like pretty pro immigration has really changed his tune has become much more anti just because like the social climate needs him to be the question will be again whether it does anything like saying stuff's fine like will he actually do anything campaign promises blowing the wind and then at the end of the day that politician is not beholden to the people yeah which to be fair like the stuff he's saying is just common sense stuff that should always have been in place like it's not like he's going to the extreme of like deportations and things like that it's just this common sense stuff that was for whatever reason has not been followed for the last 10 years or whatever oh he's not even trying to uh deport people oh no no no no he's just being he's just be like we'll be stricter on immigration and that's even considered too right i mean yeah that's crazy no no no no that that's the the left-wing politician that's coming in uh rupert low sorry sorry yeah so he's coming in to replace kia starma now because kia starma stepped down the the right wing opposition rupert low he's he's absolutely he wants to deport everyone like he's got it got it full steam ahead yeah but the takeaway here is the politicians on the left because of the social climate shifting they're even becoming more moderate on immigration yes the good yeah yeah yeah exactly i i feel like there's sort of over and window shifted a little bit there.

51:40But I don't know how we got here, man. How did we get to UK politics? I feel like Pete. A good Petri dish for the whole conversation, honestly. Yeah. And when I wrote the fourth turning essay six years ago or whatever, the takeaway was like the battle is centralized versus decentralized to keep it simple. Is it communism or fascist nationalism, whatever, versus like a Bitcoin reboot at the bottom layer. So I think it's all relevant. We're just zoomed in on the Petri dish for a minute. So remind me, when was the last first turning? It would be 1946 until like the mid 60s. So right at the tail end of World War II, we just got Bretton Woods.

52:24So a new monetary order, rebuilding in Europe, America's king for a while. And we actually had something like a gold standard. And prior to that, right, We had World Bank, NATO, IMF, Social Security, FDIC insurance. Communism was popular amongst the intelligentsia class. Very similar to where we are now. And crazy policies that would be insane 10, 20 years prior all got passed. And we're firmly in that stage now where things that 20 years ago would be insane, they're like, oh, okay, we're doing that now. Yeah. We're late stage, late stage fourth turning. Do you still think that the only way through this is with another major conflict?

53:15Yes, unfortunately. It doesn't need to be like a global hot war. Let's define it. It needs to be something sufficiently dramatic or mobilizing to actually get the people to make significant change. because we don't get out of this with incremental changes. We get out of this with large changes. And large changes historically only come when our backs are against the wall. And we just try to shoot the moon at the last second when the pressure is highest, we find the act. And historically that's been war. Now, could it be like a cold war with China as we sort of like re-carve up the map and it's just like a decade long of cold war, economic war trade war confusion yeah it could be that uh could it be u.s rips each other apart left versus right and we can't come to some sort of consensus yes um could it become a hot war yes is the idea that because like after something like world war ii the country has like a state is in this sense of sort of shared like togetherness to move forward is that what you're looking for for a first turning?

54:27Is it like people coming together again after something that was so divisive? Exactly. I think there's two primary variables. One is you actually get the majority of the people aligned on a certain issue. And war is an easy one to get people aligned on because you can pitch the story. Your way of life is at risk if you don't put your petty differences inside and win the war. Right. And then the other side of the equation is, I'll just call exhaustion. so the people are sick of fighting they're sick of the chaos they want some normalcy they want to just do normal basic boring white picket fence stuff right so the mood shifts to exhaustion and the only way it shifts to exhaustion is if you see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel and we're ready to put down our swords so to speak i mean it feels like this sort of catalyst here could also be ai in the sense that if ai starts really displacing jobs and there's like a huge pushback against ai or or it's just like everyone has to figure out where they fit in the world now like it feels like that could be the catalyst for a change yeah so i think ai has has definitely going to play a role no question it's probably the biggest technology in our lifetimes, maybe ever, right?

55:46If that's true, of course it has a role here. Coming from the philosophy of the fourth turning from the authors, which I diverge on slightly, their perspective on technology is technology is always and forever coming and going and influencing society. It is, of course, a force. But the fourth turning lens says, how do the generational cohorts and which stage of life they're in, how do they respond to technology? What is the mood around technology? Right now, all of our social narratives are technology is bad. Everything's about dystopia, the end of the world, everything's bad. If you go to the 90s, everything's an optimistic tone.

56:31That's a representation of the mood. The mood now is technology bad, technology is scary. but the mood's like that because of the way that people are implementing technology the palantees of the world and and like the data harvesting from open ai and claude and like there's a reason that people think technology is bad right now because like most applications of it are pretty dystopian yeah maybe so i mean pre-ai though um like gbt3 or whatever it was the the resurgence here um we had smartphones we had the internet and when the internet came out it was like, this is the most democratizing force ever.

57:09Everyone gets free knowledge. We're all going to be super geniuses. It's the end of history. A Fukuyama book that said, we solved all our problems. It's now abundance, which obviously didn't happen. But the mood at the time wanted to see it in that way. You can see AI in the lens of ever abundance for everyone. Intelligence is now commodified and everyone benefits. And you can also see AI as they're stealing your data and they're ramming communist AI dystopia down your throats. And I think it just represents the mood today as more people are aligned with dystopian future versus not. And I think they're right to have that point of view.

57:48If you have no economic prospects, you're 25 and you realize that you will never own the house that you grew up in, you couldn't ever afford the house you grew up in. That is a really shitty thing to accept. and that radicalizes people in a very big way we also tell them that the world's going to end from climate change and you shouldn't have kids and like you meet young people today and i try like my server is a younger person we get to chatting i always ask about these questions and a shockingly high percentage of people have like i am diagnosed with climate anxiety you know i mean that's insane end their life right there.

58:28They believe that they're stuck. And yeah, you can't have a young generation that has no hope for the future. What do they do? They burn all the cities down. And so to me, having hope, having something to the future for people to look forward to, maybe it's the Trump accounts because maybe my life sucks, but my kid has a better shot. That goes a long way. UBI from AI or whatever, some version of this where you make it so corporations can't buy houses and we deport people that shouldn't be here and all of a sudden housing's affordable. Those are the type of structural changes we need to change that mood for young people.

59:08And if we don't, we're going to get all the communism everywhere, which obviously defeats the whole game. How do you bring hope back though? Is this where we need faith in institutions again? We need faith in universities. Why have universities become such breeding grounds for leftist communism? Yeah, I think you're bringing up some good points. So do we need strong institutions? I'm going to start there. The answer is yes. Right now we look around, all the institutions are decayed. You can't trust anything. So you're right to be bearish on society if you look at our institutions. Bitcoiners would say institutions are bad.

59:49It's all about the individual. I lean on that side politically as well. But institutions genuinely keep us on course in society. And it's like this static infrastructure that's all around us that funnels us in a good direction or funnels us in a bad direction. What's going on with education? I think that's a whole podcast that I don't know if I'm qualified to speak on. But my view on education is it was never intended to create independent thinkers. It was created to manufacture human worker drones who can follow the rules, show up on time, do your task in a factory. And so like the modern education system, the ancient universities were like, send the wealthy kids there so they can be enriched culturally.

1:00:37But we'll just take like from the early 1900s on in America, it's all based on the Prussian education system, which is a military turn people into factory worker system. So I think FACE, it started out in a model that was never going to fit to changes in society. If you look specifically at the universities here, their budget on administrators went skyrocketing high. Their teachers are flat. So they become these epically bloated institutions that attract people who care about the latest thing. So the DEI departments and the student whatever departments, I think you just create incentives that lead to bloat, just like in our government.

1:01:21The incentive of a government is to become a bigger government. And so what do they do? That's what they do. That's what all institutions do. And that, I think, is why the fourth turning cycle is healthy for society, is because institutions outgrow their mandate through a little bit of corruption, a little bit of apathy, a little bit of just not being fit for the times. And then we need to have a brush fire in the forest to burn all the dead wood and then redo our institutions, modernize them, make them adaptable to our recent needs. And I don't want to make it sound like we do this and it's always good.

1:01:58We just respond to the most recent crisis. The previous fourth turning, the lesson is we just solved the problems that were directly in front of us, doesn't mean we solved them in a good way. Social security, the model in the US, means you pay into the system and then theoretically you get paid later. But that model only works if every future generation is bigger than the last. And that's not the case anymore. And the money was never invested, so it doesn't actually keep up with the fiat money printer weighing it down. So yeah, I'm under no illusion that the new version of the institutions will be genuinely better, but they will address the problems that are nipping at our heels right now.

1:02:38I have like a hypocritical take on the institutions thing, because I desperately think we need strong institutions. And I also get how institutions can be a centralizing force. You're setting them up to be sort of corruptible in the future. But something I spoke to Fernando about, this idea that when I was growing up, my parents and all their friends would all watch the six o 'clock news and they'd all get their information and whether that information was right or wrong they got the same information so everyone was like singing off the same hymn sheet and i i understand why that's totally flawed because you're basically trusting what this the institution are telling you but it meant that society had like a shared truth and i think society does way better with a shared truth if you could have an institution that was actually like not corrupt and telling you the truth and then everyone had that shared truth like that is how i think society can flourish Otherwise, you just live in your own siloed view of reality.

1:03:33And I don't think there's any form of collectivism. And I think an amount of collectivism is really healthy in society. And I think we're moving... You want to be able to be radically independent, but with a shared cultural value. And I feel like that's what we're missing right now. I think you're 100 % right. Marshall McLuhan has done some cool work looking at media. And one of his famous lines was, the medium is the message. and so what that essentially is saying is that the type of multimedia you consume is it uh television from the three channels that all pretty much say the same thing is it a unique algorithm to every individual where we live in our own little reality bubbles right those create very different uh reality in the world doesn't matter what the content is but the the form that that content takes would be like broadcast versus individual niche, right?

1:04:30Those create different outcomes. And you're a hundred percent right. As humans, one of our superpowers, the reason why we took over the world and not some other group is because of this ability to believe in a shared fiction that's larger than our kin group, right? We talked about evolutionary biology, 99 % of our life is kin group. So you pretty much know everyone, everyone's loosely related. You don't need to have some like America fiction to believe in or Christianity, or you don't need those things because you have a biological reason. As soon as you grow larger than that, you do need a shared fiction.

1:05:05It could be same tribe, same culture, same language, same colors. We live on this side of the river, not that side of the river. Right. And if you look at America, if you don't have the American dream, if you don't have patriotism, if you don't have like, yeah, shared fiction with the broadcast media, all those are doing the same thing. They are creating a unified force and that makes you very strong. If we're fractured, we're weak, we're susceptible to coercion, we're susceptible to destroying ourselves from the inside. And I think it'd be silly not to mention that our competitor nation states, pick your favorite enemy of America, we would be very naive to assume that they're not meddling in our culture.

1:05:50Oh, 100%.

1:06:20haven't changed in 100 ,000 years, really. And so we're not fit for the times. And the more powerful technology is, that means it's more powerful for the good, but it also means it's more powerful for the bad. And so that's why I think the knife's edge between AI communism and something more like OG American values is the fight of our lives. And I genuinely don't know where we land. I'm not instilled with confidence when I look at the average person in my daily life. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Depressing stuff, man. So how long do you now think we have until we move into this first turning period?

1:07:05Yeah, I find the question hard. Everyone wants that one. If you look at just historically, how long do the turnings last? They're like 20 to 27 years or so. And we started in 08 in this fourth turning. So, you know, we're getting pretty close. And I would say in the next five years feels about right. But, you know, these things can shift. This isn't like a metronome we can count on. It's more like large structural forces. And the best thing you can do with the fourth turning is realize that, yeah, the world's crazy, but we've been here before. We've gotten through it. Okay. It's not crazy. This is actually rational.

1:07:48These are like collective instincts to seek change when our institutions are failing, right? It's just a defense mechanism in society. That's what I believe. And so we're there. And if you squint, you can try to predict how will people respond to catalysts in the future. And I think growing wealth disparity and the fears of AI is a good example here. Yeah, of course, that's going to scare the shit out of people. And we should do our best to counteract that. And I don't see that right now. It's funny, as like an early 90s kid, we kind of had a shit hand, but with tons of opportunity in it. Like it's, we, you know, starting from as soon as we were like, basically entering the workforce as 9-11.

1:08:32Sorry, that was when I was a kid. And then when they're coming into workforce, there's a financial crisis and there's COVID. Like there's been a lot of stuff that's kind of been adversarial to us having a good run at it. But at the same time, there was tons of opportunity. We got to see Bitcoin. and got to live in the most interesting time of the birth of AI. But the thing that I'm really psyched about is like the world that my daughter has the potential to grow up in. Like that's the cool part. That's why people need kids. Then you have a vested stake in the future. Amen to that. Yeah, I agree.

1:09:01Like I've got a four-year-old, almost four-year-old upstairs who is just chirping in our ears. Maybe you'll make it in the report. But I definitely see a world where our kids have an amazing future. Like we're lamenting the education system, agree. Well, historically the best, like the wealthy king's son, they all had personal tutors that were experts in all these different fields to like individually teach them how to be incredible and whatever they want to learn. Well, now we're going to have AI teachers that know our kids extremely well, and their curiosity is the only constraint to knowing everything about everything.

1:09:40That's pretty exciting to see. Now, there is a world where they don't know anything about privacy digitally or in real life. And so I'm not whole-throated excited about the future. But if I have my optimistic hat on, I can see some things that would make me very optimistic. but we're not out of the woods with AI communism. No, that's for sure. I always talk to my wife about this recently. What do you think you'll do for schooling? Because like AI is going to change that, like you said. Are you thinking about doing the homeschooling thing? It's probably the number one conversation my wife and I have.

1:10:17We've been touring all these schools. So far, Jack's only been at home with mom this whole time. And yeah, a couple like little things here. You go for half a day there and do this thing. but I can't see a world where he's at just a normal elementary school with Mrs. Jones and 30 kids and I don't see that being a thing so we're exploring like the Montessori and all these alternative schools I'm on team homeschool especially when they're young and my philosophy on education is essentially teach agency teach curiosity don't teach like here's the thing you got to learn at a certain time. My view is if you're obsessed with something, you will choose to learn it and you will retain it and you will go hard.

1:11:03But if you're sitting down to force to learn something you don't care about, you're teaching kids to hate education and hate learning and they're not retaining anything anyways. And maybe I'm over biasing to myself. That's how I was. I was going to say this, this was me as well. I did fine in school and I could get all A's if I gave a shit and I wanted to. And like the classes I liked, I would set the curves on the classes. I didn't like, I couldn't be bothered. And I thought my entire life that I didn't like learning until I was like 23, 24, 25, after I paid all the education and did all the things, all I want to do is learn.

1:11:43All I want to do is clear my entire calendar. And to me, that's a tragic story um and i think it came from like you remember the ted talk it's the most popular one ever schools kill creativity i've never even heard that one 10 something super old recommended but his thesis is like you send kids to school and then they they are like you like beat the exciting part of learning out of them and they become compliant task followers essentially So I feel that way and I don't want to put my kid through the same and I see the same tendencies like apple tree not too far away. And so anyways, my point is I want whatever he's obsessed with.

1:12:24I want to just facilitate him building that out right now. He likes building stuff. He builds entire cities and there's like pipes and water treatment facilities. He got the sanitation crew and he just likes that engineering stuff. It's like, great. We're going to get you engineering stuff with more advanced stuff. Oh, you like video games? Great. You're going to learn programming, make your own video game. Oh, you like nature? Okay, we're going to go camping and do all the nature stuff. That's how I see education fundamentally. How we achieve that? Probably homeschooling. But he's 16 years old and he's like, dad, I want to go chase girls at the school and play basketball and do the high school stuff.

1:13:05Okay, fine. yeah yeah that makes sense and we've been like kind of i guess going to a similar conclusion like the one thing that i have this sort of romantic idea about that might not actually work in reality is like just gonna go and travel for a couple years like be wherever with the kid like homeschool because like i think that's going to be very very easy the next you're a couple years ahead of me but i think that'll be very easy to do and like i think you're probably going to learn a lot more about how the world actually works by being in lots of different places with unique experiences. Like that's the idea I have in my head, but I don't know what'll end up happening.

1:13:37Yeah. There's a lot of people do that. Like unschooling is a brand for that. There's a company called Unbound, I think it's called, and they host these. You can go one, two, three months and it's like homeschool families. I have it all over the world. You can go to the Costa Rica one, you learn Spanish and surfing and whatever. And you co-work, co-live in like a group homeschooling environment um i've heard good things vet friends go on these trips and they love them you pay a healthy premium for them to facilitate everything for you but i think the network of people who choose to go to this would be worth the extra cost the world's changing man the world's changing so fast and uh i don't know i'm excited i think let's get over the next few years and uh we're away to the races what you know let's finish on on bitcoin the at the start we would talk about this idea whether bitcoin would be money for the next you know 30 to 50 years or whether it would be forever money essentially if you had to sort of put your i guess you are putting your money where your mouth is on that you you i'm sure you're all in bitcoin but like which do you think is the most likely outcome yeah if it's 49 or 51 percent we're talking about here i think most likely bitcoin lasts 50 years or less and it gets neutered and we hope we have something else to shift to after that.

1:15:01I think even if it was a 1 % chance, it's worth fighting for. Do I think it's a 1 % chance that it's 500 years or I think it's 49 %? I think it's like maybe 20, 20, 30 % chance if I had to just finger in the air, gut feeling, will Bitcoin be here in 100 years? I think that's worth fighting for. I mean, it's a really big number. I think if you ask that number to the institutions that would not want that to be true, they would consider that number to be terrifying. And so I also think their hubris is our advantage. And so flying by on the radar, every day Bitcoin's around and not neutered is another day closer to that future, even if adoption is slow at different periods.

1:15:56Yeah, I think if we get through this fourth turning, if it's 10 years from now and we have self-custody rights and it just keeps chugging along, I think that number goes from like 20 % to 50%, right? So in my opinion, not just Bitcoin, like the direction of society for our lifetimes and our kids' lifetimes will be decided in the next five to 10 years. Holy shit, time to lock in. 100%, that's what the fourth turning is. Lock in. Consequences here are disproportionately going to affect, decisions now disproportionately affect the future in a way that 80s, 90s, it wasn't like that. I mean, we live in the most interesting time, that's for sure.

1:16:43Brandon, this has been awesome, man. We should do this again more often. I'm going to come up to your way in September, so maybe we could do another one then. Let's go. Yeah, quick shill. There's going to be a small Bitcoin conference in Minneapolis September 19th weekend. And there's going to be some music elements, some get out on the lake elements, kind of like showcasing what Minnesota, Minneapolis is all about. Rather than like the big, huge industry thing, this would be a smaller, curated, more niche, get a little more of the local flavor so the the the i always go to conference people which i feel bad for those people they'll hopefully there's something there for those people i'm excited it's going to be good um and tell everyone about what else you're working on well when's this when's this article going to drop is it going to drop in time for the show no definitely not it's not ready um i essentially have to pick it up dust it off and like resharpen the arguments for the modern time i can publish it but i wouldn't be happy with it now so i can't commit to it maybe before september maybe that'll be my goal i need you to i need you to publish this at some point now because i feel like this could sort of bring life back into that bitcoin think boy stuff again we need it back true that's a good motivation if other people commit to following my lead and putting out more ThinkBoy stuff, that's good motivation.

1:18:08There we go. All right, Brandon. Thanks, man. I will speak to you very soon. Sounds great. Thank you, Danny.

1:18:35Thank you.