E176: Eric Larchevêque: Why Bitcoin Is the Only Money You Actually Own

41:18and you know i'm more like thinking about future and i'm not someone anyways who burns cash to buy stuff i don't have watch i don't have cars i don't right i need nothing i don't care but sometimes i like to go in holidays or you know and and yeah it's fine for me to sell bitcoins for experience you know when you understand bitcoin you understand the low time preference yeah right yeah yeah that's uh sure that's the center of everything you know Time preference is what defines the civilization and Bitcoin is the remedy. Can you explain more? About what, time preference? About Bitcoin and time preference and the key principle that makes you so bullish or believer in Bitcoin.

42:06Yeah, sure. Well, maybe your auditors already know what's time preference, but I'm going to explain again. everything starts with a chamallow you know so there is the chamallow experiment the marshmallow experiment, sorry for English, we say chamallow the marshmallow experiment, it's a Stanford experiment basically you have kids you know, like they are five, six year old four, five and the experience is the following an adult comes and gives to a kid, you know, a marshmallow and they say okay, it's for you and now you have two options I'm going to leave this room leave you alone with this marshmallow and either and if when I come back you didn't eat the marshmallow in like 15 minutes which is quite a long time to be alone then I give you a second one and so it's an illustration of time preference either you know your time preference is long term and then you are not going to satisfy yourself immediately you are going to resist and not eat the chamallow and then because you know because you trust the adult that you are going to have a second one or you cannot resist and you eat now and so you have a low time preference and this experience was quite interesting because basically it shows how you are going to behave in the future in a way, it's not always 100 % working like that but basically you have people who are eating the chamalo immediately and though they're not going to have big studies they're going to have more addictions, they're not going to be good to invest their time, they're going to always take everything now and say okay the future can wait and there are the others who understand the importance of not indulging you immediately and maybe to do long studies to save some money to not have addictions, to think about the future.

44:15And so this is time preference. And it's a behavioral science, but it works also for civilization. A civilization who has a long time preference is going to build cathedrals, infrastructure. A civilization who has a low time preference is basically going to watch Netflix all day and do nothing. and what is going to have an impact on the time preference as a society is money if you have money that doesn't keep its value that disappears then the invitation is to spend it now to do some consumerism to buy shit you don't need because anyway you say I'm going to buy now why to keep it because the value of this money tomorrow is nothing And money that can hold on its value, you know, then invites for keeping the money, you know, to build your assets and to wait and not to buy stuff you don't need.

45:22and so the way money is has a big influence on civilization one of the best time for our modern civilization was basically when we were to the gold standard in the end of 18th, 19th century where we had a big advance in civilization because basically everything was related to gold and so you couldn't have inflation, you couldn't conflate money and now we are in the opposite situation where money is losing a lot of ground where even politics are grounded in low time preference like okay I'm paying now we are spending everything now putting all in the debt to solve issues now so everyone is happy now but in the future we don't care we send all the problems into the future and all that basically creates the situation which is now where the future is coming and knocking on the door and you have to pay at some point, you know.

46:25And so Bitcoin is going back to sound money and money who has a long time preference. And it's healing the civilization, you know, and that's why as a civilization we need Bitcoin because it can realign your needs, you know, with the future. And that's why Bitcoin is so powerful. how do you explain the concept of crazy volatility in this equation of sound money to someone who yeah is struggling today but say hey either i struggle today because wage deflation i don't make enough money the asset prices go crazy because there's crazy money printing all that stuff but if i put my money in this thing i could be down 50 percent in two months yeah sure so um all that is nice in theory but then when you are in the day-to-day life and you're faced with the reality it's not that easy so I think that the best advice that we can give on that is really to see Bitcoin as a long-term asset only and then always zoom out in your view and to not put everything that you have into bitcoin like right now doesn't make any sense you know it's not the right advice don't do like me you know what to say no no and i always say that you know me i i started a long time ago i have all these convictions and everything but with all the volatility it's important the best approach the best advice is to put one slice of what you have every month or every week, put it in Bitcoin and to buy automatically.

48:14This is DCA, dollar cost averaging. It's a very well-known technique. And to forget about your Bitcoins. And the only way to forget about it is to make sure you don't put what you need for day-to-day life in Bitcoins. Because if you put too much, then you are going to watch the price and then you are going to take bad decisions. The only people I know who had success with Bitcoin investment is the one who forgot about it. 100 % of the people who invested into Bitcoin and either put too much, you know, or tried to beat the market, you know, by selling or going to shit coins, you know, they all lost everything.

49:01Because you start to lose and then you went, ah, you know, because when you win something, you forget very easily. But when you lose, it's in your mind for a long time. And so you want to make over. You want to take revenge on that. And you take more and more risk. And 100 % at the end, you have nothing. And the only one is the one who forgot. And so a lot of people are telling themselves, if I could go back to 2010, 2011, then I would buy Bitcoin. You know, what's one sense? Of course. But the reality is the people who did that, when Bitcoin did 10 times, you know, 10x, 15x, and they sold everything, you know, and that's life.

49:47And the only one who didn't sold are the crazies, you know, the one say, okay, Bitcoin is like the future or the one who forgot the existence of their Bitcoins. You said you need to have this, I mean, forgetting is the best, obviously. you need to have this very long term view yeah it's a long term view that's the only way that's what people really underestimate because I have some people reaching out because I try to explain people I mean I never tell them to invest because with what happened in 2022 FTX all that stuff I'm not going to tell people to invest anymore but I'm still going to do it but when you explain this long term view you will have people who will tell you I bought Bitcoin in 2021.

50:35We're in 2026. I'm down on my investment. I could be down on my investment. I could be barely up. Right now you are not down. I mean... Well, depending on when you bought, you could be more or less down. And then they compare to an S &P 500. Yeah. And so on and so forth, which Bitcoin is supposed to have this higher... Compounded value. Absolutely. Well, and that's the big... if you don't have this crazy conviction or deep commission that you built over time, you can look and say, and there's many people like that who say, yeah, in five years, like zero, in five years, I lost, I basically, the opportunity cost is massive because I could just have bought S &P 500 on as that can make much more money.

51:18No, it's true from a purely like mathematical perspective. Yeah. It's true that you can have bought into 2021 and now you say, okay, I'm plus 5 % in five years. what kind of bad stuff is it and yeah but you need to build yourself a Bitcoin strategy and to have it and to use it as a clockwork and not defy it, accept it and again you do not put everything that you have in Bitcoins and it's true that if you look at precise dates dates you can either have you know it's like zero or lost or i'm 100x you know so it really depends of how you look at the data but the only way the only right way to not lose your mind is to invest regularly a part of what you have and if you also want to do that stocks and everything and the same 500 you do whatever you want but you need to have a Bitcoin strategy because the opportunity cost of not doing it is probably worse you know than doing it and say oh maybe I did not win enough because in 10 years it will not be the same discussions because maybe right now it's the case but in 10 years it could save your life, you know, change your life completely.

52:51And that's the bet of having a Bitcoin strategy. That's really what makes the difference. But you need to stay on your strategy to not change your mind, you know, and always be very clear about what you do. Where do you think Bitcoin goes in 10 years? I'm... What's the bet? My bet and my conviction, and it's not investment advice, is that Bitcoin for sure in my mind is going to beat a million dollars. For instance, if you look at the value in fiat,

53:31I shared you talked about Michael Saylor, I shared the same vision that Michael Saylor that Bitcoin is the best assets possible globally, historically and that it's going to to be a very good bet in the future. Is it five years? Is it 10 years? Is it 20 years? It's very hard to tell because sometimes it goes faster. Sometimes I still don't understand why the fiat didn't collapse because I thought it would collapse 10 years ago. It's still there. We still have like debts which are completely stupid and still the world is going around. I don't understand how it's possible. and we will have the election next year in France 2027 and most of the candidates are about how to spend more so for me it's completely crazy and I don't understand so that's why I say okay maybe I'm wrong because it doesn't make any sense but I still have this conviction that at some point the fiat money is going to collapse and that bitcoin is going in value fiat money is going to the infinite.

54:46What does that word look like for normal people? Because on one side, we might say, I mean, Bitcoin is a million dollars or five or 10, but like, what's the price of things in a world where Bitcoin is$10 million or$1 million? Yeah, sure. It means that that's exactly the right question to ask. What will you buy with$1 million? That's exactly the right question, you know? and what will the world look like in a world where one bitcoin is 1 million or 10 million dollars I think it's a world with a lot of suffering a lot of bad things are going to happen and it's because bitcoin is very resilient and a lot of people do not have any interest for bitcoin or love at bitcoin because they don't understand the problem itself they say why use bitcoin to buy my bread I have a visa card yeah sure don't use bitcoin to buy your bread or to go to why no one accepts bitcoin in supermarkets yeah sure no one cares about accepting bitcoin in supermarkets because that doesn't solve any problem bitcoin solves the problem of owning your money, of having final assets, of protecting its value etc etc and when everything's going well but no one cares in the world, in the perfect world Bitcoin doesn't have any value you know, who cares about Bitcoin but in a world where you have wars, where you have potential revolutions, where the money potentially is going to fail because the debts are too big in a world where the people in charge, politicians are making wrong decisions and are selling short the future, you know, for a few years of re-election.

56:45And we are going towards a world where everything goes to shit, you know, that's clearly the end game of your play world, you know, of your name. And then, yeah, Bitcoin has some value. And what is the value for Bitcoin for Oranians or French? You know, it's not the same because, you know, for some people in a situation which is very difficult, it's a life and death situation. For others, they don't even understand the need of having Bitcoin. But I bet, in fact, everything goes back to the fact that I think that the more the time passes, the more time goes on, the more people will see that we are in a bad situation and understand why Bitcoin exists and what it solves.

57:37You know, we are going to this direction. And so more and more people will get an interest into Bitcoin because they will understand why it exists, why it has some value. And then they will say, okay, you know, look, I'm going also to have my little bet on Bitcoin because we never know. And the more people think like that, the more it means that the more we are going into the world where everything goes to catastrophic failure and in a world where Bitcoin is taking all the money, all the value and so that's why I'm pretty convinced that we are moving one, in a world which is not going to be pretty and two, in a world where Bitcoin is going to have a lot of value because the two come together I wanted to say, if you say my bet is Bitcoin is one million dollar or more but that word means it's a word of great suffering therefore the bet is a word of great suffering is inevitable yeah yeah sure yeah this is it's not what I want you know you know because there is different of being a realistic and pragmatic and envision the future where it's going to be difficult it's not the same that wanting a future where everything is difficult but the reality is here and yeah you know we were telling starting by this podcast by telling I'm optimistic so because every day I wake up and I'm happy and everything but in the same time I'm pretty sure that the world in five years is not going to be pretty you know and that's why we need to to be ready that's why we need to think about resilience resilience now Quick shout-outs to our legendary long-term Wenshift Appent partners, without whom none of this would be possible.

59:30Thank you to Cast, my go-to global money app to store, earn, move and spend stablecoins across 170 plus countries directly with Apple Pay or a physical card. On top of that, I can also get paid in USD and Euro with my Cast virtual account. Use my promo code SHIFT and my link below to get 10 % off your membership, earn up to 3 % instant USD cashback on every card spend, and get up to$250 in cash for referring your friends. No banks, no borders, just money that moves with you with stable cash rewards. there is still some people going on big podcasts saying that bitcoin is going to zero which means that these people don't have a bitcoin strategy probably yeah sure and well and it means that these people don't understand bitcoin because there is no way i mean i've never heard someone having a compelling argument about why bitcoin will come to zero it's always you know it's for criminals, it's a Ponzi, it's blah, blah, blah, or energy cost, quantum computing, or, you know, it's that it's not a compelling.

1:00:51Oh, if someone tells me, you know, I think Bitcoin is going to zero because the world is going to be a paradise and the wars will stop and everything is fine. I say, yeah, OK, I understand. And it makes sense, you know, but OK, now let's speak about why we are moving to a very good world. But yeah, I think these people are very dangerous, you know, to tell that. Because I think they think that they have the morally high ground, you know, to say, you know, Bitcoin is going to zero because it's, you know, ecological disaster or because, you know, fiat is the best. and blah, blah, blah. But then it moves away people from Bitcoin, you know, for bad reasons.

1:01:40And these people will think, you know, this guy told me, you know, it was going to zero, so I don't have to think about it. And when the world will go to like a bad situation, who is going to pay for them, you know, who is going to help them? So I think it's a very dangerous position to tell that Bitcoin is going to zero without giving any compelling arguments, which are not like stupid, economical, uneducated guesses. Which means you need to put in the work to understand it. I think it's Saylor again who said, I've never met someone who spent 30 hours studying Bitcoin and doesn't think it's an amazing thing.

1:02:26Sure. I think he's completely right Because in my opinion, all the people who are telling Bitcoin is going to zero do not understand Bitcoin, did not spend more than one hour to try to study Bitcoin. They are just, you know, delivering lines for their old world and their way of understanding economical situation. Well, I think that basically their salary depends on the fact that they don't understand Bitcoin. or we both understand the game they're trying to get engagement clickbait because yeah maybe but i think because i received i received multiple people who send me a specific podcast from a huge podcaster about that hey this guy is saying bitcoin is going to zero and yeah that was recently and so i'm then i'm like oh shit like first you don't really understand the like clickbait game because this podcast obviously got a lot of views.

1:03:25But second, as you said, this is dangerous for you and for people to... Yeah, maybe it's a clickbait game, but I think a lot of people, when you have the head of a big bank in France who say that Bitcoin is going to zero, in an interview, it's not for clickbait. It's because he really thinks this way and he's completely out of it. He doesn't understand anything. How do you explain Bitcoin simply to someone who watched this podcast or who listened to this head of bank of France or Switzerland saying that this Bitcoin thing is shit? I think it's not about understanding what it is, but why it exists.

1:04:13I think we need to stop trying to explain Bitcoin in two sentences because it's not easy. you can say it's a decentralized but people are like what what is important and now in fact when all the journalists ask me this question I say okay yeah but in fact the real question is why Bitcoin exists and why and what is the problem it solves you know and we already talked about it but I think this is the start and then the question is how does Bitcoin solve this problem you know what are the characteristics of Bitcoin Bitcoin, which allows it to solve this problem in the right way. And then you can talk about decentralization, about how it can work without the third parties, how the money, sometimes I cannot find my words in English, how the money algorithm, the politique monétaire.

1:05:24Monetary policy. Yeah, thank you. How the monetary policy of Bitcoin works and ensures that there is no inflation. Then you can explain. but I think it's important to start about why it exists and what is the problem it solves can you explain that to my mom so she understands yeah I think so because I in fact the the Vrotei book is literally for like moms because I always have this question of people trying to understand so yeah it's not easy in two sentences because you need really to make a case for it but basically why Bitcoin exists it's because you don't own your money that's the first thing and just think about your bank account the money that you have in fact you don't have anything if your bank tells you you cannot access to it then it doesn't work if you are a Russian citizen Putin invades Crimea, you have done nothing but from then a switch happens and you do not have access to the banking system and you have nothing.

1:06:39Everyone thinks it's granted, you know, and that's why no one thinks like that. But in a world where the situation is going for the worse, you know, you can think about a situation where when you need your money because you need to escape the country, then no, it's closed. sorry there is capital control you have like life insurance try to get your money from your life insurance you know it's like why do you need it take months it's not like that so you need to have something that you own and the best example is gold you know you can own gold you know you can have like gold coins small gold bars everything but gold has a problem it's not easy to transport it's not easy to exchange it's heavy and also are you sure it's gold you know because well you know you can have like half gold half something else so it's a real question so bitcoin creates a solution for that you know and after how it works we don't care you know when you go to the ATM, you put your card in, take 100 bucks, who cares how it works, you know, you just take it for granted, but then Bitcoin you have to accept the same for Bitcoin, it's just monetary system that exists in a different layer that gives you access to money that you really own, after to understand that it takes some time, you know, to and you need to have to explain step by steps what does it mean to own bitcoins?

1:08:22It means that you own some information and that it's in fact very physical. Then you need more time to explain that and that people accept the situation. But basically it's everything about why it exists. You mentioned before you had these gold bars at this bank. Yeah. But it was not your safe deposit. Yeah. and therefore you pretty much I mean you didn't have access to these gold bars anymore yeah it was I think mined by law you know because there are laws but the reality is that I couldn't access it physically so there is a real difference between something you think you own and something you really own and that's the difference between people using crypto exchange like a coinbase or binance yeah and what we call a cold wallet having a cold wallet or owning your own keys you know, not your keys not your coins, something that maybe some people have already heard then it depends of where do you put the line already if you own bitcoins and you have them on exchange then at least it's much better because you have something that doesn't depend on the euro however However, the question then you need to ask yourself is what is the worst case scenario for me?

1:09:49Is it the fact that I get robbed or whatever and at gunpoint I have to give the keys of my Bitcoins? The same thing that I get robbed and I have to give my gold bar that I have in my safe, you know? Is it this risk that is the worst? Or is it the fact that one day, for some reason, I call the exchange or I ask the exchange to give me my bitcoins and they don't answer or they tell me, sorry, you are on a government blacklist or something happened. You know, there is capital control. The government is taking all the crypto assets and sorry, we cannot give them to you. But after it's a question of risk management.

1:10:39But at least it's much better to own Bitcoins in any kind of form. That's why you built Ledger in 2014. Yeah, that's why I built Ledger. Ledger is basically safe to keep crypto assets in a way that makes sure that you cannot get hacked or lose your coins to malice or all the electronical threats. What did building ledger teach you about human nature, not just security? That people are very, how to say that, that it's extremely, that personal responsibility is hard.

1:11:34Because even if you explain to people that they should never give their 24 words, so when you own bitcoins, what you really own is 24 words. It's basically your keys. And it's something that's basically all the bitcoins, you know. And the safe, the ledger devices are keeping them 24 words to make sure that when you use your cryptos to make some payments, they cannot be over the internet a hacker cannot never go there and get them but these 24 words you have to put them on a paper and in a safe because if you lose your device you don't want to lose your big cards and the golden rule is do not give your 24 words to anyone whatever the situation and it's written everywhere it's always you have to accept that it's something that is very well explained but unfortunately a lot of people are giving away their 24 words when they get a call, when they get social engineered and it's true that personal responsibility is therefore a tough subject because when you are your own bank, such as having your gold bars at home or your crypto on your ledger or whatever then you have a lot of powers and it means you have a lot of responsibilities and then you need to be careful and I think the biggest takeaway from my ledger adventure is that human nature is very failable because you you have to you explain stuff but people you know have a hard time to really understand and so with the pressure with a lot of things that you can explain sometimes they can make a mistake and even people who were pretty smart or very smart like I have a friend who bought some Bitcoin and ETH many years ago and they understand what's everything held it on a ledger for many years but then they were also caught up in the celsius kind of bankruptcy and so years later then there is some people who are sending emails from celsius saying hey if you want some distribution put your 24 words exactly and then let's say and and that dude like sold the business for 50 million dollars so like he's not dumb right but and he knows he knows but maybe it's late at night he's tired he's a bit stressed out like he's like oh shit i can get like i don't know 30k like from all the money i lost i can get a bit and then the whole wallet is gone yeah yeah sure that's um that's a really tough subject and uh and yeah even people who knows people who are professionals people who should know better in fact sometimes you know when you are tired when you have so So that's why, but of course there are ways of protecting you against that.

1:14:44The best way is not to have access to your 24 worlds at home. I mean, if you do not have, and in fact, I have some recommendations, like very practical recommendations. Your 24 worlds, you put them into envelopes. You have these envelopes you cannot really easily open. it's not a physical security but it requires really to desacralize the envelope, to really destroy it and you put on the envelope do not open under any circumstances and when again you do that and you try to open the envelope it comes back to your own promise to not give the 24 words it's some kind of psychological barrier and after the best is not to have this envelope in your home because if you do not have access to the 24 words then you cannot give them away so there is a lot of strategies that you can put in place to protect yourself against all these threats that's one of the big problems with self-custody as you said you have much more power but you also have much more responsibility and then you have all these hackers and these social engineering scams but there's another thing which is even worse which is happening a lot in France also in Switzerland where I'm from and around which is physical you said before we mentioned like some people have to actually give their 24 words right yeah the constraints what can someone do I mean, you're actually pretty close to a story.

1:16:30I saw a podcast with Anthony Bourbon, who is another French entrepreneur who understands investing and personal branding and who said that you didn't take these things that seriously until something happened to one of your ledger co-founders who got kidnapped. Yeah, well, I don't know why he said that because that's not really true. In fact, physical security is a very real subject. and so in January, February 25th my co-founder David has been kidnapped by criminals with his wife and he has been tortured it has been like a very tough stories so he got tortured, his finger was severed you know, and so some videos were made to put pressure on me because they were asking like for 10 million euros in Bitcoin.

1:17:31So it was like a ransom. They asked that money to you. Yeah, to me. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's why I was close to this story because I was not the victim, but the recipient of the extortion. And so it arrived a few weeks after I made a video. about physical safety, where I was explaining in this video that I didn't have access to my Bitcoins because I knew for sure that it's an issue. If everyone knows I have everything in Bitcoin, I have in the media, I have quite a public exposure because I'm on TV and everything. And so I don't have access myself to my Bitcoins. but this still happened because sometimes the criminals are not very smart they don't know they don't really prepare but in the last two years in France there have been a lot of affairs, of criminal affairs of kidnapping abduction, these kind of things for crypto and France is about 80 % of all the world like criminal cases regarding that so it's to be French and in crypto today is not quite a good combination so first the first thing is the best is not to be known to have crypto you know to stay in anonymity it's a very sad recommendation because I don't believe you should hide, you know, but we are in a situation where it's best not to boast about crypto or anything.

1:19:25And the second is if you have crypto is to not have anything at home, you know, don't buy, well, you can have something for your day to day or whatever. But if you have a lot of crypto that you are not going to use for the next day or for the long term, then you have to separate yourself from the crypto. if you do not have yourself access then you cannot do anything you know that's the the basics of of the security but how can you convince a kidnapper you can't be stubborn that they kidnapped you or your wife or your friend that actually i don't have access to these things so stop doing this thing well in fact you cannot well you can convince them uh but some inexperience like i did because I did a video like a few weeks before the abduction telling that I do not have access to my Bitcoins.

1:20:18So he believed me because I made him watch the video. But at the end, you know, he said, you know, in fact, I don't care. Just call your friends and, you know, ask them for crypto because they know you are good for it. so what is valuable in all that is that you have a good reason to win time and time is the most valuable commodity in this case of situation because with time you can have the police the special forces you can track the criminals and make a stop to that because there is absolutely no certainty that even if you pay the ransom that they are going to free them maybe they are going to ask for more because usually the people in charge of that are abroad and they are just having some communications with small little criminals that they hire on social networks and they don't really care if they get arrested by the police so in fact even if you pay they will ask okay now give me more it doesn't have any ending and all this situation because there have been a lot in France it either ended with 100 % everyone got arrested because the police always comes, always arrest everyone and never there have been a ransom that have been paid and if anything has been paid it has been seized because it's possible to do that using some crypto assets, you know, just to seize the ransom and make sure that they cannot use it on exchanges to get some real fiat money because they don't care about crypto at the end.

1:22:23They want some fiat. And so that's how it works today. and I really don't understand why they continue because 100 % of the time everyone got arrested and there is no money. So my theory is that maybe from time to time people who got in this situation do not call the police, pay, and maybe, you know, I don't know, they must have been something because it doesn't make any sense. and the only thing I can only advice I can give is always call the police if one day you are in this situation call the police immediately because they are the only one who can get you out of that safely you said before I put all my net worth in Bitcoin in 2013 14 because it helped me sleep at night at night but how can you sleep at night knowing that that kind of stuff could happen to you when you walk in the street?

1:23:25Because, well, me, I don't care. Anyway, it's more about my family, because they're not going to abduct me. I mean, if they take me in a car or anything and torture me, I mean, there is no point, because I don't have access. I mean, maybe they are very stupid, but still I think that they will think about doing something like that. So one, I don't think I'm a target. I think my family is a target, so it's quite different. And yeah, sure. It means that when you have this kind of situation, you put in place solutions. So we have security. We have at home, we have a lot of systems. I have weapons everywhere.

1:24:12And when we move or we have like personal security, especially for my family. So yeah, it has some impact on the way we live and it's not a happy situation. But I think it's, I don't see it as a Bitcoin issue or a crypto issue. I see it more as a society issue, a French issue, you know, because it's very French, all that. Maybe Switzerland's a little bit, some also happened, but in other countries. But it's much more about France, you know, and it's an issue we have in France and it's more about the French society. It's more about decisions that we can take at the government, choices of how we want to live as a society.

1:25:01And it's not really a Bitcoin issue because before it was watches, you know, it was jewels. Tomorrow it's going to be something else. it was cars now it's crypto and bitcoin because everyone thinks that it's easy to pay the ransom because you can do it over the internet and so from a logistical point of view it makes some sense but they also understand that with all the solutions online to track the money and block it then crime doesn't pay so at some point they are going to stop but all that is much more about the fact that in France in our society criminality is rampant that nothing is happening and it's for me that is the issue and it's not Bitcoin issue.

1:25:55Why do you stay in France? Because I'm a patriot yeah I think I love my country I left my country ten years ago I spent almost 10 years expat in other countries but you know to understand that you love something you need sometimes to to leave it and and i know what it is not to be living in france and i want to to live in france i want to stay in my country and today i'm more in a situation where i want to fight for that and to push some messages you know so i'm often talking about this situation these subjects in the French media, in the French press to push for a more responsible justice system, for instance.

1:26:42And because I want to make things better in my country. And maybe one day I would leave because maybe at some point it will be impossible to bear, but it will be a failure. And that's not my objective. I want to stay in France. I made my... I just launched a new project. It's in French. in France. So I really chose to be in France and everything I do is in France. We built Ledger in France and I continue to build value in France. I do not choose to leave. And yeah, because it's a fight and I want to continue the fight. Quick shout out to the legendary team at Jupiter, the DeFi super app. Anything you want to do on-chain, from trading to earning yield, you can just use Jupiter.

1:27:32Personally, I'd recommend getting the Jupyter wallet on either your phone or your laptop. 10 times faster and 10 times cheaper than the competition. You're gonna love it. Thank you to the awesome team at Athena for backing today's conversation. Athena is one of the fastest growing projects in DeFi with over$7 billion in stablecoin supply and an average 11 % APY on SUSDE. And importantly, zero DPEGs since launch, which is exactly what you want from a stablecoin. Go check them out by following the link in the description down below. Tell me more about this new project. We talked about it a bit in the beginning, the Bitcoin Society, that you're launching in France.

1:28:15What is the Bitcoin Society? So the Bitcoin Society, which name is TBSO, like the initials, it's a company which is listed on the stock market on Euronext. So it's a publicly listed company. and it has been built around the value of Bitcoin, hence the name. And we are providing with tools and ideas around resilience. So basically today we have like three products. The first one is a product for entrepreneurs where we help people, we help entrepreneurs become even better entrepreneurs we have a lot of services to help them to scale their companies network with those entrepreneurs etc etc so that's the first activity, the name is scale club we have a second product that we are going to acquire name is invest club so it's about investments and investments into assets that are sovereign that you can own and that are I would say less known by the public so it can be crypto of course but it can be like gold metals can be pokemon cards can be investing into music catalogs very different things like alternative assets and so we provide with a lot of financial education on that and so the objective is to help people to build a more resilient and sovereign capital.

1:29:58And the last activity, the last product, is more like a media. We have a podcast, a name is Fracture, and we are also going to launch a new media soon. And it's about the cultural fight, to push liberal ideas, I mean, economical liberal ideas, not liberal in the American sense, to push the idea that in France, because right now it's mainly in France, if we want to develop the country, we need to have less tax, to have less state management, and to give more space to business entrepreneurs. So we are pushing this kind of ideas because we think it's the right way to help France, the country, And so everything is under the banner of pushing for resilience and personal responsibility.

1:31:01Initially, when we launched this project, we wanted also to build a Bitcoin treasury company. But we have seen that right now with the market, with everything that is going on, it's not the right time to deploy such a strategy. and as we are pragmatics entrepreneurs we just say okay we moved that we moved into this direction initially but now it's not the time so we a little bit postponed this approach we will still have our own treasury in bitcoins and we plan also to have some bitcoins in our treasury but we do not plan anymore to have our stock as some kind of authentic perception of Bitcoin.

1:31:56So we are not going to do like Michael Saylor or Capital Bay, which is a French Bitcoin treasury company. We are more like an operational and having products and developing more like a normal company, which is publicly listed. And we have a lot of ambition for this company. But yeah, it's quite new and it's going to be a very nice journey. You say we because you launched the Bitcoin CETI with partners. Yeah, so we are three co-founders. So there is me, there is also Nathan Benchimol, who comes from the crypto industry and Tony Parker, so the basketballer that everyone knows, who also brings all his network and will help us to bring our product internationally.

1:32:51What does a basketball player or like famous previously NBA player do with Bitcoin today? So, well, there is two things. First, there is a personal interest into Bitcoin that he never spoke about, but it's a reality. So he decided to go out of the closet in a way. So the fact that being basketball or not, Tony is completely aligned with what Bitcoin represents. That's the first point. And the second is more like with his profile and business experience and everything, he has a very large network. and so it's bringing a lot of value to the company. We all grew up being told that we are what we study.

1:33:52Yeah. Or, I mean, I would say like in the US it's very different than in the UK, but in Europe, in Switzerland, in France, in these countries, in these continents that take less risks, when you studied something it usually is supposed to kind of determine your career and life path yeah but me i have always seen that in fact what you do when you are in the university or in the schools you learn to learn and i have always seen my engineering school like that you know in fact I have learned to learn and so every day I'm learning something new and I am probably what I learned but it's a process, it's a lifetime process, it's not something that stops at 21 or 22 or whatever, you know when you stop your studies

1:34:48you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars or euros but you still do but it's more like a professional value of my shares in ledger well theoretically you could chill right or retire yeah yeah sure but instead i mean you launch businesses but one of the things you do is you do some youtube videos explaining bitcoin you do a podcast as you said yeah yeah yeah why do you bother doing some youtube videos when you could either chill either do something more serious than youtube yeah sure um because i I love to explain and I love to, I would say, push messages. So my YouTube channel is a small channel and it's in French.

1:35:41It's really about either Bitcoin or entrepreneurship in the way that entrepreneurs should be at the helm of the country development. you know and so I always pushed about and discussed about some aspect of taxation and everything so it's also have some political libertarian aspects but it's always from an educational point of view because I love to explain. in fact my first business with Bitcoin was La Maison du Bitcoin which means the Bitcoin house and what I was doing is just explaining Bitcoin and I spent a lot of time explaining Bitcoin to a lot of people for many years so that's why I also enjoyed writing a book about Bitcoin because I wanted to explain and so yeah it's this idea to explain, to give education, to help people understand things and so it's really a pleasure for me to do that and so yeah that's why I'm doing it because I think it's invaluable you know to try to explain stuff it's part of I think

1:37:01you know in life you want to find meaning meaning of life etc I think one of the things that counts for me is try to share education and I'm doing it and I'm happy about doing it Is it also part of a social media personal brand strategy? Maybe I think it's always good to be online and I'm social media I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram X, YouTube but in fact honestly I don't see So in a way, yes, it's always nice to have a position. But in the same time, I also have a prominent position on TV in France. Because for the one who knows Shark Tank, which is quite a popular program in the US or in many countries, we have our version in France and I'm one of the French shark in a way.

1:37:58And so I have quite a public exposure. And so I don't need to create a personal branding. and so it's not the main reason why I'm doing it and also if you look at my social posts and everything it's a little bit up and down I don't have like so far a really good strategy for personal branding but I always post when I have something to say and I'm always trying to speak about the messages that are important to me and so it's more about the idea and the mission to share messages, educational messages, you know, and to push ideas rather than just, you know, have followers or so I never do any personal post or you know, look at me or these kind of things I don't really care If you think back about younger Eric who is hustling studying yeah and you think about you now do you feel much happier now that you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars i feel much happier because i'm free and the hundreds of millions have something to do with it but it's not about the millions it's not about the money it's about the fact that this money gives you total freedom and the power to say no to anyone and that's the I think the highest achievement you can do in life probably or one of the highest achievements because there is many many ways of defining success and happiness but it doesn't mean that when I was younger I was not free or not happy but in fact what is important for me to convey is that money is not happiness but money gives you freedom and freedom is happiness and to get there you need to think about investing or building stuff and this comes with lower time preference that we mentioned before yeah and it means to and it also means to sacrifice a lot of things because when you are an entrepreneur and you want to build stuff it comes to the expense of many things I mean, maybe some people manage to do everything well, but I know that for decades I have been extremely focused on my work, but it was a choice because this is what I love to do.

1:40:36And so it means also not going out, not doing some social stuff. So me, every day, I'm always thinking about work, about building, and I think for some people it seems crazy, you know. but for me it's the essence of my life so I think that a lot of people who manage to build stuff and manage to be successful is because they are extremely driven and they have objectives who are sharp and very clear and they don't let anything go on their way so they don't hit a wall or if they find a wall they just destroy it on the way what's the moment where instead of buying that extra bitcoin you spend that money into something that makes you happy or instead of working an extra three hour tonight you go out and enjoy life with some people it's experiences it has to do with experiences i have no problem to sell my bitcoins for experiences you know so it can be many things and in the same way i have no problem not working if i have nice experience because it's not about physical stuff I don't care much about stuff, doesn't mean I don't have stuff but I do but what I value is really moments experiences and this is worth spending all the bitcoins in the world because that's really something that enrich you in the mind but there was probably a moment in your life where you had this shift where you went from, I need to accumulate this extra Bitcoin, do this one more hour to like, okay, now I can like enjoy a bit more experiences or.

1:42:30Yeah, but no, in fact, I've never thought like that, like, okay, I need to accumulate or I have always been driven by my objectives, which was more like building products, building companies rather than money. And so I don't have any obsession of accumulating more Bitcoins. I have this obsession of when I have something to put it in Bitcoin, but I'm not waking up every morning and saying, okay, how many Bitcoins am I going to win today? It's much more about how I can build my company, new projects, etc. And in fact, I could take the time to have all experiences I want, but I choose not to do it because I enjoy more working and building my stuff rather than experiencing stuff and also what is very important is experience is or experiences are meaningful when you do it seldom of course if you do everyday a very nice experience of traveling there traveling this, eating that blah blah at some point you know you doesn't you don't care you don't see it every day so I'm trying also to not indulge myself in all the experiences because one I really like to work and I prefer to work and two I also know that if I will do it then it will devaluate what are really the experiences you're in your early 50s yeah in my early 30s tell me something about your life that I can take with me for the next half of my life?

1:44:17Well, it depends a lot of what you are expecting from life. But I think that if you have the chance to wake up every morning and doing what you love, that's the best thing that you can have. And so I would encourage you to do everything to achieve that. and if it means cutting relationships escaping toxic stuff or to really focus on what you love then do it, life is too difficult, life is too short to endure sometimes all the bad people you can have in your life so I think it's important to focus on yourself to understand your objectives and to try to really find what makes you happy in the morning you know and put all your energy on that thank you so much Eric that was lovely that was awesome thank you for being so open and spending this one hour 45, two hours with us yeah long format thank you as you probably know by now I host some of the biggest names in Bitcoin and crypto on my podcast but a lot of the best stuff never makes it on air The Shift newsletter is where I share that raw behind the scene alpha, the insights, stories, and lessons straight from my guests that you won't hear anywhere else.

1:45:45If you want the real inside take on Bitcoin and crypto, join my newsletter, The Shift, in the description down below.