[0:01] Good afternoon, this is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain. It is here on our lovely day, the 11th of March 2024, 12.30pm.
Just wanted to drop in, talk a little bit about Bitcoin, answer any questions if I can.
That would be most excellent.
[0:21] And I'm happy to hear what you have to say.
I'm also going to talk about what really matters and what's going on because, you know, the money is interesting and that's all well and good.
But what's really going on is something else entirely.
Right now, this is Canadian.
Bitcoin has hit almost $98,000 Canadian, which is up $3,800, a little over $3,800 in the last 24-hour period.
So it had a big bump from last night. It was $92,400.
Now it's $97,000, almost $98,000. and um so that seems important i think it's something worth talking about again if there's anything i can do to help answer your question why is it up now well i mean the giant pac-man known as steve saylor as uh steve saylor no michael saylor the giant pac-man known as michael saylor is is swallowing up more bitcoin uh and so on you can't even believe how much it's gone up since El Salvador sometime back ago, decided to start buying a Bitcoin a day.
Was it a Bitcoin a day? Something like that.
So let's talk a little bit about what's going on.
Yeah, he bought 12,000 Bitcoins at 68 or something like that.
I mean, it's pretty wild, you know, it's pretty wild that.
[1:47] That Saylor has announced some years ago what his entire investment strategy was going to be.
I mean, it's not the most hidden or subterfuge-y types of investment ideas.
He's like, I'm going all in on Bitcoin.
I'm going to buy every Bitcoin. I'm digging at my grandmother, selling her for parts to buy Bitcoin. Just a joke.
And he went ahead and did it and all of that.
[2:15] So, just the usual patter at the beginning. These are all, I'm not a financial advisor.
I'm not an economist. I'm none of these things. I'm a philosopher.
So, don't take anything I say as any advice to buy or sell anything.
Do your own research. Be your own investment advisor.
And nothing I say can be construed as any kind of investment advice.
This is just all complete nonsense opinions. opinions.
So, all right, let's start looking at some of the facts. So I'm going to do a little bit, just a little bit of a patter here.
If you're listening to this later, a little bit of a patter here about what's going on at the moment, and then we're going to get a new deep dive of what's going on foundationally.
All right. So here we go. Here we go.
[3:03] Now the risk of correction in this bull bull cycle. I don't think it's a bull cycle, but whatever, right?
So the average drawdown is minus 5.47%. So over the last, uh, this sort of rise in price has been going on.
The average drawdown is minus 5.47%. Now the maximum has been minus 19.11%.
So the drawdown, which is where people take their profits, right?
The price goes up. There are short-term traders and long-term hodlers, and I have no problem with either.
The price goes up and people take their profits, but the drawdown has been minus 5.47%. What that means is that people are buying the dip.
I mean, what that means to me, I don't know what it means objectively, but to me, what it means is that people are buying the dip and they're booing up the price.
Now, if you look at the past cycles, the all-time average drawdown has been minus 15.18%.
Right so we are a third of the average drawdown of the historical cycles right that's that's really really important so in the past when there was a drawdown or a price quote crash or a dip it was down minus 15.18 the average drawdown although the maximum has been higher of course is five minus 5.47 so that's that's pretty important okay so starting from october october 2023 the volumes of daily transactions show growth.
[4:29] March 5th, March 5th of 2024, there was a volume of daily transactions on the blockchain of $111 billion.
[4:42] Which is like, there are no words for how large that is.
They're island nations with smaller annual GDPs.
And I'll put the sources for this stuff. There's not much point reading them out. I'll put the sources in the show notes.
[5:01] Now, what hasn't happened before is Bitcoin has now reached an all-time high price. Now, whether you count that relative to a couple of years ago and you put in, say, 13% inflation, I think we've gone even past that.
So I think we can say it is a new all-time high, but Bitcoin before has not reached an all-time high before a halving.
So we're less than 50 days away from what can be accurately, I believe, termed a supply shock, where the supply halves.
So a new all-time high before the halving that seems quite quite important so, black rob goldstein blackrock's chief operating officer said in an interview we want a core part of our mission as providing choice and access this is an important topic for our clients you know regarding the whole crypto thing and bitcoin in particular the spot bitcoin Bitcoin ETFs are still buying hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin a day.
[6:06] MicroStrategy, of course, is pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars every few weeks.
And most of the distribution platforms, such as Morgan Stanley, have not been turned on yet.
But rumors are they have been racing to make the asset available to their clients.
[6:24] So, that's very, very important.
[6:32] Now, there are lots of people who seem to spend an inordinate amount of their time and life trying to figure out what is the objective value of X, Y, and Z, A, B, or C, Bitcoin, or, I don't know, Van Gogh's earlobe.
And the difference between price and value, it's all a little abstract and doesn't really fit into the Austrian economics framework, which we'll get to in a second here.
But let's just look at Bitcoin energy value, right?
As Caprioli Fund's Charles Edwards has pointed out, Bitcoin's energy value currently sits at approximately $81,000.
I think that's US, $81,000. So what that means is it takes about $81,000 worth of energy to produce a Bitcoin. Right.
So, uh, or the amount of energy encapsulated in a Bitcoin is about $81,000.
So what does that mean?
Well, it means that if people had taken the energy used to produce a Bitcoin and put it into something else, right, they could have made 81,000 or, you know, give or take something like that.
Right. So that's where people are choosing to place their value, their resources.
[7:51] So, you know, for me, in my head, obviously totally subjective and not non-expert, but in my head, it's pretty hard to see a bearish case.
So yeah, proof of energy, right? Somebody says, I can't decide if I should sell and buy back in later or hold.
There's no correct answer to these things. I mean, I remember when I was younger, and I don't know if this has been superseded.
You can let me know if it has, but I just remember when I was younger, they got a bunch of professional stock pickers and then got a monkey to throw dots at a piece of newspaper with stocks on it.
And the monkey did just as well as the professional stock pickers.
[8:38] So, yeah, that's pretty wild.
Pretty wild.
[8:45] All right, let me just get to your questions and comments. Somebody says, I would like advice again on the topic of greed and profit.
I asked you this last question, the question around last October, November 2021.
Sorry, when the market was at the top, you responded, how much is enough?
Which made me look deep inside and question. My eventual answer was, it's never really enough, as I had a girlfriend who wanted money.
I know, I know, since ended. Plus, I figured the fires of inflation meant money debasement meant I had no option but to invest fiat dollars in Bitcoin, Ether, or stocks.
Now Mr. Bipolar market is high again, and I feel the pull of leverage and gearing, selling other assets, betwixt remorse of not investing slash putting even more in in 2022.
Obviously not financial advice here, but more to the philosophy of greed versus fear, regret versus market, sheeple focus.
Thanks in advance, Steph. Monthly donor since 2015. Thank you very much.
I really appreciate that. He says, along with the subscription on Locals, and I urge everyone to chip in to not only support the show, but to get it out into the world, imagine if everyone knew free domain as much as the Kardashians, the Lord Ascians.
That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny.
That's pretty funny. Well, let me ask you guys this. Let me ask you this.
[9:56] What is your relationship to excess, right? What is your relationship?
I mean, I remember when I was a kid, my brother and I used to play this game, which we didn't really understand too much of, but it was basically like, what if we had a million pounds?
And of course we thought, oh, we buy jet airplanes and, you know, islands.
I don't think you could buy jet airplanes for that even back in the day, but what is your relationship to excess? What is your relationship to having.
[10:20] More than you need, right? So obviously you have to live, you have to pay some bills, you have to have a roof over your head, you have to have food, access to electricity and clean water and basic amenities, the fridge and so on. So you have to have that kind of stuff.
Now I've lived real lean and down and close to the bone.
I grew up very poor and for my graduate school I was living on five to six hundred dollars.
[10:46] A month. I paid $275 a month in rent and utilities because I just had one room in a house with four other guys and some woman.
And I just spent very little on anything else. I was living on sort of five, $600 a month. And it was okay.
I mean, it's not what you want to raise a family on and all that, but it was, it was fine. I wasn't like, oh my gosh, this is a terrible life. I'm so hungry.
It wasn't like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment in this Garrett being fed bad soup by by the maid so it was what's your relationship to all right somebody says i want to have savings for security otherwise i don't care about excess right you want to have savings for security look there are certainly some people to whom more is never enough like this an infinite thing right it's it's like a greed or a hunger for material wealth that the more you feed it the more it it grows. Again, I'm not saying good or bad.
I think it's a pretty uneasy life myself.
And I think it's a pretty unsatisfying life, but you know, somebody needs to build the giant corporations and so on. Right.
[11:51] So let's see here.
[11:55] I only want just enough, no more. Well, but that's the question.
What is just enough, right? What is just enough?
That's the that's the big question excess love is my goal yeah that's right yeah that's right so.
[12:15] I'll tell you the way that i work with these things is, i try to be satisfied with less rather than be hungry for more I mean, the only thing I can't get enough of is philosophy and your wonderful audience.
I know that sounds like a cheesy lounge thing. Thank you guys for coming out tonight. Here's my rendition of Girl from Ipanema.
But is it easier to raise your income or to lower your requirements?
Well, one you have immediate control over, which is lowering your requirements.
[12:53] So, I mean, I've never in my life bought a really expensive car.
My car I'm driving right now is secondhand.
I think, you know, just make do with less. I milk my tech until it literally falls apart, which is probably not the right idea.
This computer, I don't know, is four years old or whatever.
My tablet is a couple of years old and, you know, my cell phone is five years old or something like if I don't need to, because then it's also time, right?
The time to upgrade and all of that sort of stuff. So I've spent money on the show for sure, but you can control your immediate requirements a lot more than you can control your income, right?
[13:35] So Jared says, I've been through these cycles too many times to claim I'm never going to sell any at all.
I'll take some profit at what I think are peaks and buy back in at dips.
Somebody says i think both have merit having a salary you are fine with knowing what you will pretty much have sounds nice to me because i own a business we have ups and downs and are always working towards growth right so james says i have a 10 year old car bought it new but keep it maintained i was 12 years old right right you've got a tween car tween car it's almost a teenager major.
So yeah, I hate buying new stuff like that.
I, I hate buying new stuff that depreciates unless it's for the show, right?
Then I'll buy technology for the show and some of the technology you can see.
And some of the technology is more hidden like infrastructure and so on.
So I hate spending money on stuff that depreciates.
So, uh, as far as if you're not enough for someone to love more money will only draw a bad actress, right?
If you are not enough, you know, you, I don't know, living under a bridge or something like that.
If you are not enough to be loved for who you are, more money will only attract bad actresses.
[14:52] I mean, I remember when I was, oh gosh, I first started investing a little bit when I was in my twenties.
And I remember sitting in a coffee shop. There was some just really good looking woman next to me.
And I remember holding the, I was holding the newspapers back in the day, right? Physical newspaper, holding the newspaper open.
And I was looking at the investment page.
Why was I doing that? So that the really pretty woman would look over and say, Hey, hey, this young guy is looking at the investment pages.
I bet he's looking at stock prices. I'm literally running my fingers up and down the stock prices. It's a sort of mating display.
That was funny. That was funny. So anyway, I eventually gave up on that and just said hi because that was just a pretty sad sort of thing.
Nothing like driving a brand new car.
[15:46] Yeah, I just feel like I'm driving over money. and so on.
If it ain't broke, don't replace it. Yeah, for sure, because there's time to it. Time for it as well, right?
Got to go and test drive a bunch of cars. Like, it's dozens of hours sometimes to buy a particular new car or something like that.
I've purchased two cars total in my life. I keep them for a long time. Yeah.
[16:09] I couldn't imagine cycling through cars every few years like some do.
Well, but it depends, right? It depends because sometimes in the business world, you can't be showing up at an important client meeting in a 12-year-old car. Like, you can't do it.
[16:24] I remember when I was an entrepreneur, I got a car allowance.
When a corporation bought my company, a bigger company bought my company, they gave me a car allowance.
And my first impulse was to buy some old beater, and I mentioned this, and the CEO was like, nope, that's not what we're giving you the car allowance for.
We're giving you the car allowance so you don't look like a rube when you go and pick up X, Y, and Z senior executive from some Fortune 100 company.
[16:51] I don't buy new phones until the batteries won't hold the charge or the apps quit working. Yes, that's right.
You should only buy used, never buy new, only an ego stroke. No, that's not the case.
You know, there's never this, this, or was that. I mean, sure, there are some people who buy new, and it's a vanity ego thing.
Yeah, for sure. I get that.
I get that. But then there are other people who purposefully drive rust buckets because they don't feel like they're worth more.
The two extremes, there's not one answer in life.
This is one philosophy. I mean, yeah, don't kill people. Yeah, yeah, I get that.
But there's not one answer in life. Like just, well, everybody who buys a new car is a vanity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, oh, I mean, some people really like, I've never been a car guy.
Never been a car guy. I mean, I didn't grow up with cars. I didn't own a car until I was in my thirties.
So I'm just not a car guy. Some people are car guys, men and women, right? Mostly men, right?
[17:55] And for them, it's a great happiness and they enjoy it. And you know, what's wrong? I mean, I don't know.
[18:02] Buy cheap, buy twice in many things. I'm not sure what that means.
But you don't save a massive amount of money by buying a used car.
I prefer a used car myself.
[18:14] But I'm not under the illusion that I'm saving a massive amount of money.
Because if you buy a new car, like if you buy a car with, I don't know, what do cars have, 15-year lifespans?
So you buy a car seven and a half years in, and you think, look at all this money I saved. Well, but if you buy a new car, you get seven and a half years more use out of it.
So it's not like there's some magic answer. I like a used car myself.
I don't drive that much. I work from home, so it's fine for me.
But eh, a Bay Street investor has picked up at a 20-year-old Corolla.
It may not exactly instill confidence. Yeah, that's right.
So please try not to make your personal money fetishes some universal good, right?
Because some people are like, well, you know, if you show up in some used car, you're just showing you don't even respect yourself.
You have no pride in your blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, well, that's just, well, people who buy new, it's all just ego.
When it's like, try not to make your personal financial fetishes some universal moral good.
It's really, really sad and shows a fair lack of empathy and curiosity about other people's motives.
Yeah. Depreciation. Yeah. In, in the business world in particular, depreciation can be taxed right off. So all kinds of good stuff.
So, so yeah, it's, you know, I try to veer back from the extremes.
I mean, I'm not going to drive around in some rust bucket it where I can see the road through the holes in the floor, Flintstone style, but I'm not going to buy some ridiculous new expensive car.
[19:43] So as far as I know, this only, the only downside is a car depreciates a lot coming right off the lot.
So it's better to buy a new car that's slightly used because it's practically the same, but much cheaper. I don't know if that's actually true.
I think that is mostly a myth that a car loses half its value the moment you drive it off the lot. No, it doesn't. because otherwise there'd be a massive market.
There'd be a massive market of people who bought cars, drove them off the lot, and sold them for three quarters the price. That's making a massive...
So, yeah, I mean, or sold them for three quarters the... Sorry, they would buy a car, say, buy a car at $50,000.
The moment you drive it off the lot, it's only worth $25,000.
I just don't see it. I don't see that that would be true because if everybody saw that, they'd bid the price up, right? They bid the price up until it basically was $50,000 again. All right.
[20:38] Quality is always better in the long run, but don't keep buying.
Buy once, cry once, as they say.
But I'm not buying a Bugatti, right? If it's a really good quality car, you're not going to get it lightly used slash really new. Yeah.
[20:54] Yeah. So, um, if you have a not enough to yourself, if you're like, I'm just not enough, uh, me plus, right? I called it me plus.
It's got to be you. Plus you got to be super funny. It's got to be you plus you've got to be ripped.
It's got to be you plus you got a lot of money. You plus a great car or whatever it is. You plus hair transplants or whatever it is, right?
So, uh, you got to find a way to be enough with yourself.
[21:21] And if you're enough with yourself, then you minimize your losses.
[21:25] So it, I assume it's very stressful to invest.
If you're like, well, if I make a lot of money, I get a great wife and mother for my children or whatever it is, right? Great dates. so I get laid or whatever.
Then if the money goes down, your whole sexual market value is crashing too.
And that's pretty stressful.
So it doesn't seem to be a good solution to try and find, there's no external solution to the problem of insecurity, right?
There's no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
I mean, let's say I said, well, you know, if I'm going to be on camera, I I've got to wear a rug.
I got to wear a toupee. I got to get hair transplants or whatever it is.
Every time I look in the mirror, what did Joe Rogan call it?
The ring of shame, right?
Because I think he tried that at one point. And every time I look in the mirror, I'm saying, well, I wasn't just as I, I just wasn't enough just as myself.
I just don't, it's like makeup and I don't use any of that sort of stuff, although some people do. So, all right.
Now I just want to make sure I'm getting to your questions and comments because I do have something.
[22:25] Somebody says, I want to be completely financially invulnerable and that my nearest are invulnerable too right good evening from russia good evening too much electronics on modern cars yeah yeah.
[22:38] So, let me just get a couple of other comments and then I have something that I want to say about Austrian economics.
Not the country, but the school of economics. All right.
So, this is from British Hodel on Twitter. Good morning.
There are four new things in this Bitcoin cycle, he says. One, we closed the bear cycle with a drop below the previous all-time high. why.
Two, we have new ATH close above 69,000 that are working for a decisive close above 69,500 before the halving ATH all-time high.
The ETFs are driving daily purchasing demand from 30 millions a day prior to 300 million a day after, right?
So this is the exchange training funds.
They're the people who can invest in Bitcoin without exposing their clients to the technical called Challenges of Keys and Security.
So the ETFs are driving daily purchasing demand from $30 million a day prior to $300 million a day after.
Supply and exchange is just going down, not up. Yeah, so some guy resurrected a 14-year-old wallet and sold a bunch all at once.
He said, this cycle is completely and utterly different, and when supply and demand dynamics change, you must forget previous cycle analyses, or at least suspend belief in anything you think you learned.
This is a new beast, and all your old expectations have to be reassessed.
Approach this with fresh energy or get wrecked. And I think now that the institutions are in, I don't think it's anything like it was in the past.
[24:07] All right. The London Stock Exchange is starting... This is from Bitcoin Magazine.
London Stock Exchange to start accepting Bitcoin exchange traded note applications.
So...
[24:27] That's important. It used to be the case that London was like the financial center. Was it Rotterdam or the Netherlands?
London was like the financial center, and it seems to be virtually unstoppable now.
And that's, of course, only going to drive more demand, right?
[24:45] Now, the SEC rejected the first Bitcoin ETF.
[24:54] Exactly, as of yesterday, exactly seven years ago. Right?
So not a March the 10th, 2017, the SEC rejected the Finkelvoss brothers bid to create a Bitcoin ETF.
So the SEC now has protected investors from 5,000% gains. Oh geez.
Good thing they kept all of that risky Bitcoin ETFs away from investors.
Wild.
[25:26] So the Bitcoin, just to give a bit more detail, this is from Token Metrics.
The London Stock Exchange has announced that it will accept Bitcoin and Ethereum crypto ETN applications in the second quarter of 2024.
All right. Bitcoin miners. This is from Danny Marquez.
Must read for all those freaking out on Bitcoin miners. Miners are making more money than ever before for mining.
They have the best operating leverage of any Bitcoin proxy, for me, as they are on the front lines of the network.
Subsidies, aka the block rewards, have gone up as Bitcoin price has gone up, which means their profit margins are also improving dramatically as price goes up. Has this reflected in the stock price? No.
But are you investing in the business or the stock price? He says, for now, publicly traded miners' performance lag, Bitcoin price performance currently at 72K, a key word for now.
This offers a good opportunity to evaluate which are still laggards and which would be the most profitable and lean with highest growth expectations and place some chips on the table.
Historically, this lag always occurs in halving cycles and the discount window can close in the blink of an eye, than ever before.
[26:37] So, I just wanted to mention that. All right, let me go here. Oh, man.
It's a terrible interface. It's just a terrible, Twitter is a terrible interface. All right.
So, Bitcoin has sailed past silver as market cap, as of, when was this?
Three hours ago. So Bitcoin market cap is $1.419 trillion.
Past silver at $1.386 trillion. Do you know what's next?
What's next?
What's next is Google.
[27:22] Google. Now, Bitcoin's got a little bit of a ways to go.
So it sailed past the $1.386. Hey, fine processor back in the 80s.
So bitcoin smoked past silver and it's got a bit of a ways to go because google is 1.716 trillion bitcoin is currently or as of a couple of hours ago 1.419 trillion but it is going up it is going up cory clipston wrote bitcoin is way too volatile i mean good lord plus four percent in the last day plus 9% in the last week plus 49% in the last month plus 249% in the last year plus 1,772% in the last five years. So volatile.
I don't know. Bitcoin has also just as a, yeah, an hour ago, Bitcoin surpassed the Swiss franc to become the 13th largest currency in the world.
[28:24] Um, Eric Balchunas writes first two months officially in the books, it's felt like six and the 10 Bitcoin ETFs now have over $55 billion in assets with exactly double that in volume at 110 billion.
If these were the numbers at the end of the year, I'd call them a success to do it in eight weeks is simply absurd.
So that seems important.
That seems most, most, most important.
All right, let me just cruise on back to you with questions and comments.
Thank you for the tip. I appreciate that. If I've helped you out, I would very much like to get your support.
There are three of us now at FDR.
All right, let's see here.
[29:23] Get to your comments, two days in a row is it my birthday catching you live again yay excellent, somebody says we are at an all time high yet 72k is the bargain of a lifetime at this price unbelievable.
[29:49] So, not bad.
Not bad at all. All right, so I just want to get a sense of the knowledge base here. Sorry, let me just go check on Rumble.
What is your knowledge base of Austrian economics?
Because this is going to be the big case that I want to make here.
What is your knowledge base regarding Austrian economics, the school of economic thought?
Because I think this has been kind of undermentioned.
This has been kind of under-mentioned, but really, really does need to be mentioned.
[30:30] Give me a 1 to 10 of your knowledge of, or 0 to 10 if you know nothing.
What's your 1 to 10 knowledge of Austrian?
So vaguely familiar? Okay. Vaguely familiar.
Yes. Due to you, quite high. Excellent. Okay, good. I'm glad you helped out with that. I had to do an Austrian economics like 17 years ago.
Just the same. Good. Six, seven, two, three.
Okay. All right. So we've got some knowledge because I'm going to make a case here, which to my knowledge, obviously I could be wrong.
Maybe people have made it, but I'm going to make a case here as to what's going on that people aren't seeing as yet. Okay, so I'm going to make a quick tour.
This is from econlive.com. I'm going to make a quick tour through Austrian economics and say how Austrian economics, through the medium of Bitcoin, has absolutely triumphed in the field of economics.
For anybody who cares to look, for anybody who cares to think about it, for anybody who cares to see, Austrian economics has triumphed on the use case of Bitcoin.
[31:46] On the use case of Bitcoin. So a little bit here. So there's a couple of propositions of Austrian economics. Number one, only individuals choose.
[31:55] Right? So man with his purposes and plans is the beginning of all economic analysis.
Only individuals make choices. Collective entities do not choose.
The primary task of economic analysis is to make economic phenomena intelligible by basing it on individual purposes and plans.
The secondary task of economic analysis is to trace out the unintended consequences of individual choices. choices.
Individuals, not institutions, are the only entities who choose.
It's fundamentally individualistic in its nature. It rejects collectivism, hive mind, groupthink, Borg, you name it. Okay.
So what has driven the value of Bitcoin? It has been individuals making the case for the value of Bitcoin and putting their money where their mouth is.
[32:36] There is no collective entity that has approved Bitcoin.
There is no collective entity that has made it happen. There There's no collective entity that regulates it, right?
It is entirely a spider with infinite legs reaching down to the individual consciousness of individuals, right?
So only Austrian economics can explain the success of Bitcoin because only individuals make choices.
[33:02] Bitcoin has grown as a result of individuals making choices and acting upon them, right? Right.
So it's not like the middle class is is is naturally drawn to X, Y and Z or that's the lower classes that drive the Bitcoin, this, that and the other.
I mean, it's just you can't predict this with any collectivist mindset.
So, boom, it explains it.
[33:27] 100%, in my view. Proposition 2, Ada Austrian Economics. The study of the market order is fundamentally about exchange behavior and the institutions within which exchanges take place.
It's a little abstract. It's not the best written article, but whatever, right?
The price system and the market economy are best understood as a catalaxy, and thus the science that studies the market order falls under the domain of catalactics.
These terms derive from the original Greek meanings of the word catalaxy, exchange, and bringing a stranger into friendship through exchange.
[34:08] So, the study of the market order is fundamentally about exchange behavior and the institutions within which exchanges take place.
Now, Bitcoin is an automatic method of exchanging value with no central coercive planning, control, regulation, or labor that is required.
Have you ever tried to send money to a foreign country? It's like 19 hours lining up at the bank and figuring things out and looking things up and paying fees and crossing your fingers and waiting 10 days. And it's crazy, right?
Exchange behavior and the institutions within which exchanges take place.
Well, to automate, to automate and facilitate and de-labor the process of exchanging value.
I mean, what did Jesus first do? Whipped the money changers at the temple, right?
The people who took their cut of the pie from everyone else trying to get by.
Exchange behavior in the institutions within which exchanges take place.
So Austrian economics, again, I'm not an economist, just my amateur opinion, right?
[35:17] But Austrian economics would say that when there's a revolution in exchange mechanism, there's a revolution in economics.
[35:28] When there's a revolution in the exchange mechanism, there's a revolution in economics.
So the last major exchange revolution was when we went from barter to currency, right? So barter is a mess.
If you want a loaf of bread and you have a dozen eggs, you have to find someone who wants exactly what you have. And it's terrible. And you can't store value.
And you spend all of your time running around trying to find people whose needs match your needs and you can exchange with money, right?
You can sell the eggs for five bucks and then you can go and buy a loaf of bread for five bucks.
You can go and apply it towards the price of getting your shoes repaired.
You can stick it under your mattress. You could store it.
So going from barter to money was the last great revolution.
[36:22] And this is as big a revolution.
Bitcoin is as big a revolution as that.
[36:28] So we would assume that austrian economics because it deals so much about exchange behavior and the institutions within which exchanges take place well uh that would be um that would be pretty powerful and i think it's it's got it it's got it down i mean one of the i mean i did a show many years ago prax girl p-r-a-x practical so praxeology is the stuff that is just true almost almost by tautology.
It's true almost by definition.
Like if you expand the money supply, when there's no additional creation of demand for that money, prices will rise, right?
So if there's more money to represent the same amount of goods, then the price of each good has to go up. That's right. Inflation of the money supply is a rise in prices.
[37:16] Now, Austrian economics talks about this very clearly and also talks about how predatory it is for the government to inflate the money supply because prices go up, but not everywhere evenly all at once, right?
The people who are closest to the government who get the new money get to spend it at full value, whereas the people at the bottom of the economic chain, it's regressive taxation ad infinitum. the people at the bottom of the economic chain end up with money that's worth a half or a third or even a quarter of what it used to be.
So it's a, it's just terrible.
So you can think if, if you get a billion dollars, like you, you government prints a billion dollars and you're some big, uh, well connected guy with a big real estate company.
So you're, uh, the government gives you a billion dollars.
You get to buy a whole bunch of property at full value of that money and but then down at the poorest people, their rent doubles, right?
So it's absolutely brutal. And then there's no solution to this. I'll get to that.
There's no solution to this at a democracy at all, where the government controls the income.
[38:18] Because the more you can take human beings out of the equation, the less corrupt a system is.
And Bitcoin takes human beings out of the equation of exchange, right?
Bitcoin takes human beings, human decisions out of the medium of exchange, therefore corruption and skimming is not something that's really possible.
[38:40] So once people understand Austrian economics, they understand that inflation is just a form of predatory theft.
[38:53] And people are aware of this.
And the people who are aware that it's coming will try to get out of fiat into fixed assets, right? and real estate or gold or whatever it is, some fixed assets that are hopefully appreciating in value.
[39:11] And portability plus a fixed asset plus limited supply plus we assume escalating demand is a pretty sweet spot for a lot of people who understand Austrian economics.
So Austrian economics, by focusing on the dangers of inflation, It's sort of like if you've got people, they've got all these windows overlooking these nice views, right?
And you say, you know what? Here's what I'm going to do, man.
I'm going to set up a company that's going to put bars in these windows.
And you'd say, well, no, people didn't buy these windows so that they could look at bars. The bars get in the way. They just want to have these beautiful views.
But if you knew that crime was going to go through the roof, then you would invest in a company that makes bars for the windows.
And you'd say, well, there's going to be a demand for bars in the windows because crime is going to go up.
Let's say you have some knowledge about crime increasing, which is not impossible to have, right? Right?
So there's going to be a big market for people trying to keep thieves out of their house. Right?
So all the other people are like, well, that's ridiculous. I'm never going to invest in a place to put bars in the windows because people want to see their views.
They don't want to see bars. It's like, no, but they want to keep their stuff and they don't want home invasion. So they are going to put bars in their windows. Right?
[40:38] So Austrian economics gets that pretty well. Right?
[40:43] Proposition 3. The, quote, facts of the social sciences are what people believe and think.
Unlike the physical sciences, the human sciences begin with the purposes and plans of individuals.
Where the purging of purposes and plans in the physical sciences led to advances by overcoming the problem of anthropomorphism, in the human sciences, the elimination of purposes and plans results in purging the science of human action of its subject matter. Human action, right? It means it's big work, right?
It means it's this big, big work. In the human sciences, the facts of the world are what the actors think and believe. So I want you to really think about this.
Again, I'm not saying it's the best writing in the world, but what he's saying is that if you don't believe that the gods are planning what happens in the world, that a storm is the sign of the angry sky god, right?
Then you can start to study the weather in some sort of objective fashion, right? I want you to think about this.
What has value is what people believe has value.
Right? So how many times have you heard this at the crypto world?
Well, Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.
[42:01] Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.
Well, value is subjective. There's no such thing as objective value, say the Austrians.
So when people say, well, Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, therefore it's a bubble, therefore it's going to collapse, collapse like the South Sea bubble, like the tulip mania, like the pet stock, calm stocks in the 90s.
Because it has no intrinsic value, it's just a fever dream that's going to collapse.
[42:35] Because somehow people have this bizarre belief.
[42:40] That value is entwined in the thing itself.
[42:49] So this is like essence, right? This is back to Aristotelian versus Platonic essence.
So Plato believed that the essence of a thing was bound into its physical form.
Uh and aristotle said no it's a idea in the mind it doesn't exist in the thing itself it's a category within the mind so a value so value intrinsists believe that value is somehow embedded in the thing itself and if there's no value that they can see embedded in the thing itself then people's perception of value is a fantasy that's going to collapse it's a mania, It's like a manic episode from a manic depressive and it collapses, right?
It's the high, oh, it's going to collapse, right? Because they think that if something doesn't have intrinsic value, it doesn't have value.
Whereas the Austrians say value exists within the mind, not in the thing itself.
If people believe Bitcoin has value, then Bitcoin has value.
Now, it's not an illusion, right? Like if there's a pill that I take to get over some illness and I genuinely believe that pill works, then I'm going to take that pill.
But if the pill doesn't cure my illness, I don't know if you've ever had this where you have some kind of infection, you go to the doctor, they put you on antibiotics, they don't work and they switch antibiotics, right? Because it doesn't clear up your infection or whatever, right?
[44:11] So, the idea that the value of something is entwined into the essence and sweat and atoms of the thing itself, and that people who believe something has value when it doesn't are just involved in some kind of mania. It's going to zero.
It's got no intrinsic value. It's a bubble. It's a delusion. Right?
These are people who believe, I assume, I don't know for sure, but these are people who believe that there's value embedded in the thing itself.
[44:38] Right? I mean, if you buy an iPad and you turn it on and it doesn't work, then your belief in the value of your iPad was false because you got an iPad so you could boot it up and do things with it. But it's bricked, like it doesn't even start.
And therefore you say, before you start it up, you say, what's the value of this iPad?
Oh, a couple of hundred bucks, right? And then it's bricked.
You say, what's the value of this iPad? Well, virtually nothing, right? So you had an illusion of value.
Turns out that that illusion is false.
And if somebody said, you got some new iPad, and somebody says, I'll give you $300 for that iPad, say a $500 iPad, you'll say no.
But if it's bricked, and they'll say, I don't care if it's bricked, I'll still give you $300 for it, you'll sell it, right?
[45:27] So the idea that value is the recognition of something that's objectively entwined into, the thing itself and that Bitcoin doesn't have value entwined into the thing itself, is why people believe that Bitcoin having no intrinsic value is going to go to zero as opposed to gold which has intrinsic value, right?
Because you use it for ornamentation, you use it for electronics, you use it to store wealth and so on, right?
[46:03] So, but you know, every, every plus has a minus and Bitcoin is far easier to transport.
I mean, it's virtually free to transport and you, you can walk across a border with the 12 word phrase in your head and transport basically almost infinite value.
You can't do that with gold. So, the fact that value is subjective and that value is not the recognition of something that is innately bound into the essence of the thing that you value.
And we all have this. I was at a, my daughter loves yard sales, right? I think they're fun.
So, we were at a yard sale not too long ago.
A chilly day. We were at a yard sale, and there was like a box of ornaments, right?
[46:54] And, you know, I picked up one, and it was a little Hawaii girl with a hula, like, you know, one of these little snowflake things, right?
And you shake it and all that, right?
And I said, so here's the funny thing, you know?
So let's say that this ornament, the hula girl, this ornament was bought on the grandparents' honeymoon.
So it has great sentimental value for them. Every time they look at that little ornament, it has great memories of the wonderful time they spent in Tahiti or wherever, Hawaii.
They went for their honeymoon. It was a wonderful time. The foundation of their marriage, where their first child was conceived, whatever it is, they've got this wonderful sentimental attachment to that ornament.
But that's only in the mind. Now the ornament is just showing up at a garage sale for two bucks.
And if you buy it, you're just buying it. There's no memory there.
Whereas if you, some nasty person, stole the ornament from the grandparents' honeymoon while they were still alive, they'd pay probably a couple of hundred bucks to get it back because of all those memories.
Sentimental value is in the mind. It is not in the thing itself.
[48:02] I wrote about this in my novel, almost, where one of the young men is musing about, like, imagine you had a feather and you knew for a fact that this feather was what Shakespeare used to write Hamlet, as opposed to just some feather you found on the beach.
Well, how much would people pay for a feather you found on the beach? Nothing.
How much would they pay for the feather that Shakespeare dipped in ink and used to write Hamlet?
[48:26] A lot, I assume, right?
No. The fact that Bitcoin has gained in value because they believe, people believe it has value, and that it's not a bubble, that there is no other estimation.
So, who's right? Who's right?
[48:48] So, there's a thought experiment that is invoked to convey this reality of, Austrian economics. The classic thought experiment invoked to convey this essential difference between the science of human action and the physical sciences is the Martian observing the quote data at Grand Central Station in New York.
A Martian could observe that when the little hand on the clock points to the eight, there is a bustle of movement as bodies leave these boxes.
And then when the little hand hits five, there's a bustle of movement as bodies reenter the boxes and leave.
The Martian may even develop a prediction about the little hand and the movement of bodies and boxes. but unless the Martian comes to understand the purposes and plans, the commuting to and from work, his, quote, scientific understanding of the data from Grand Central Station would be limited.
The sciences of human nature are different from the natural sciences, and we impoverish the human sciences when we try to force them into the philosophical or scientific mold of the natural sciences.
So one of the things that's really true about economists as a whole, Austrian school to some degree accepted, is it's a, and if you don't understand the elitism and privilege behind the science of economics, it's really hard to understand just how retarded they often are.
Like economists, just how completely ridiculous and retarded they are.
So the labor theory of value.
[50:10] You know that the labor theory of value that the value of something is a combination of all of the labor that was put into creating it the labor theory of value you know is a total lie if you've ever done any physical labor if you've ever done any physical labor then you know that the labor theory of value is just false because what you're doing when you do physical labor is you're doing doing everything humanly possible to minimize the amount of labor that it takes for you to do things.
If you need to dig a hole, you could scratch by finger, right?
You could scratch into the hole by finger, or you could buy a shovel, right?
When I worked as a gold panner and prospector, we used this thing called a peon jar drill.
Now, you could theoretically get the drills because you needed to go and find a core sample.
You needed to bring up a core sample from right above the bedrock, because gold is heavy, and over millions of years, it settles down.
And if you're looking for gold, you're looking for right on the bedrock.
So you've got to drill down and you've got to get a sample right from the bedrock and bring it back up.
Sometimes that can be 10, 20, 30 feet or more.
Now, you could claw down there by hand, which would take you weeks, right?
[51:20] Or you could get the Pyongyang drill and be done in about half an hour, maybe 20 minutes.
Because what you do is you, you, you put, you hammer the, the drill bit in or the core sample, and then you put the beyond your on, you fire it up and pound it down.
Then you put another one on until you hit the bottom and then you pull it back up and you keep the, the sample.
So it's way more labor to dig it by hand than it is to use this drill.
I mean, we've, we've all been there, right?
I mean, if you're a kid, right, like every kid, you used to love pulling rocks out of the ground. It's sort of fundamental Northern European theater of the land kind of thing.
And you do it by hand. You can't lift it. You get a shovel. You lift it out that way and you roll it out of the way. And it just feels hugely satisfying, right?
I mean, I suppose you could use your nails and your fingers tips to cut down a tree if you were willing to be patient. But you get an axe and it's way better.
So the idea that the labor theory of value, that the amount of labor you put into something determines its value, is a purely elitist idea.
Like, Marx never did any manual labor. In fact, it was his mother who said, I wish he'd actually worked to earn some capital rather than just talk about it. Marx never did a shred.
He never worked in a factory. He never did any manual labor.
Neither did Engels. Engels ran a factory, but he didn't work in it.
[52:42] So, that's kind of important. Now, another thing that happens with the elites is, and I mean, I know this, a guy I know who became an economist came from a very privileged background, never had to have a job, and so on, right?
And when you go into academia, or you go into a think tank or whatever, then you usually have your wages indexed to inflation.
So you're not as terrified of inflation as everybody else is, right?
I mean, you have some anxiety about it, of course, if you've just got money in the bank, and so on.
But it's not as terrifying for you. So if you're an economist, you don't really understand how terrifying inflation is for people.
[53:22] Like the people who say, oh, we should defund the police.
They're always people who have gated communities, private neighborhoods, good neighborhoods, private security or whatever it is, right?
So they don't understand. If you've grown up poor, inflation is cancer.
Like inflation is half murder. Inflation is incredibly dangerous.
Like you cannot afford to live. You cannot afford food. How many economists have been in a situation where they have to choose between food and rent.
Not many. So they don't understand the fear that people have.
[54:01] About inflation. They have it in an abstract way.
They've studied Weimar or the French Revolution or whatever, but they don't get it at a visceral level.
Whereas, you know, growing up poor, when your money loses value, that means a lot.
Like when I first came to Canada in 1977, you could get a candy bar for a dime, and it didn't take that long before it turned into a buck.
It was a buck to get a thousand percent inflation.
Or 10x inflation. Percentage is a little tricky that way.
[54:32] So what is the purpose of Bitcoin?
The purpose of Bitcoin is to rescue your money from inflation.
I mean, one of the major purposes is to rescue your money from inflation and corruption. corruption and human corruption.
The corruption of money printing and handing out high value money to your friends and letting the poor eat it in the shorts.
[54:57] So there's no intrinsic value. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
Right? What's the intrinsic value of putting bars in the window? It blocks your view.
Well, it's to keep people from coming into your house and murdering your family and stealing your stuff, right?
So that's something really, really important that Austrian economics gets right. All right.
Proposition four out of Austrian economics. This is in the microeconomic sphere.
Utility and costs are subjective.
All economic phenomena are filtered through the human mind. Since the 1870s, economists have agreed that value is subjective, but following Alfred Marshall, many argued that the cost side of the equation is determined by objective conditions.
Marshall insisted that just as both blades of a scissors cut a piece of paper, so subjective value and objective costs determine price.
But Marshall failed to appreciate that costs are also subjective because they are themselves determined by the value of alternative uses of scarce resources. sources.
Both blades of the scissors do indeed cut the paper, but the blade of supply is determined by individual subjective valuations, right? We were talking about this earlier.
Some people could use energy to power any number of things, but instead, but they choose to have it power their Bitcoin mining rigs, right?
[56:14] So yeah, utility and costs are subjective. So when anyone says to to me, there's no intrinsic value to X, Y, and Z.
It's like saying you can take apart a zebra and you'll never find the word mammal.
It's like, yeah, I get it. It's all in the head, but it doesn't mean it's purely subjective because you are talking about mammals.
You're talking about, you know, warm-blooded, give birth to live young, hair on the body, right? That kind of stuff, right? So, all right.
So, and the reason I'm doing all of this is like all the economists who didn't get Bitcoin should be relentlessly mocked and laughed at. And it's really quite tragic.
Because I think that the Austrians did get Bitcoin pretty well, or should have, according to the philosophy, as far as I understand it.
Again, pure amateur, but all right.
[57:00] Proposition five, the price system economizes on the information that people need to process in making their decisions.
The prices summarize the terms of exchange on the market. The price system signals to market participants the relevant information, helping them realize mutual gains from exchange.
In Hayek's famous example, when people notice that the price of tin has risen, they do not need to know whether the cause was an increase in demand for tin or a decrease in supply.
Either way, the increase in the price of tin leads them to economize on its use.
Market prices change quickly when underlying conditions change, which leads people to adjust quickly. Right.
[57:40] Right. So it's not that the value of Bitcoin is going up that drives the price of Bitcoin up alone. It's not that.
It's not that people find more value in Bitcoin. It's that they find less value in fiat.
And anybody who's looking at the screaming nightmare of national debts these days in the Western world and some of the Eastern countries as well, particularly Japan, Japan, it's like, okay, well, that has no intrinsic value, and it's going to zero.
Historically, right, all currencies go to zero, with the exception of the British pound, over 400 years, still has lost 98% of its value.
[58:19] So, it's sort of like saying, well, why would you have a higher demand for a smaller, uncomfortable boat, rather than a big, comfortable cruise liner?
It's like, because the cruise liner is sinking, so people get on the damn boat.
They get on the lifeboats.
[58:30] But i mean good heavens the the the giant cruise liner was way more expensive to build it's way more comfortable it's got musicians it's got bars it's got comfortable sleeping it's warm like why would you get in some creaky rusty rowboats right well because it's going down, all right um proposition six private property the means of production is a necessary condition for rational economic calculation, right?
So this is the price calculation problem which socialism can't solve.
[59:03] So without private ownership of the means of production, means of reason, there would be no market for the means of production and therefore no money prices for the means of production.
And without money prices reflecting the relative scarcity of the means of production, economic planners would be unable to rationally calculate the alternative uses uses of the means of production, right?
Okay. So, I mean, that's, again, not the most elegantly written stuff, but private control of the means of production is essential for market prices.
Okay. So now, for the first time in history, really, we have, well, you could say gold to some degree, but there's always been trouble with gold as far as government seizing it and setting its price and so on.
So now we have something to compare government control of the means of production called money to, right?
So we all understand if governments take over the oil industry, then they control, the governments control the means of production and that's really bad for prices and it turns political and it's about giving favors to other people and it's not about product production.
It's not about customers anymore, right? Because it's been taken out of the marketplace.
So when you take something out of the marketplace and you put it under government and control, corruption and massive inefficiency, and in the long run social decay and disaster accrues, inevitably, right? Okay.
[1:00:25] So Bitcoin takes money out of the hands of the state, right?
The state can't create currency.
The state can't create currency. The state can't directly control and manage value exchange across the world.
There's no intermediary. There's no third party.
There's no accumulation of power. and there's almost no greater power outside of parent-child.
There's almost no greater power in the universe than the power to control currency.
War is the shadow cast by fiat currency. I made a speech in this many, many years ago called Bitcoin versus War.
You can't have world wars without fiat currency. People run out of money and the war gets stopped and negotiated, right?
So private ownership of the means of production is the only way that rational costs get allocated. it.
The most fundamental means of production is currency, right?
[1:01:25] I mean, we have the modern world because labor moved from the government cartel of slavery into the relative free market of wages and serfs were transformed into laborers, workers. bookers.
[1:01:41] So given that non-coercive, non-corrupt, non-centralized, non-government-owned means of productions are infinitely more valuable and virtuous than the biggest power that governments have, which is the power over currency and interest rates, that is taken out of government hands.
The Austrian model predicts how incredibly valuable that's going to be.
I don't know that other others do.
[1:02:17] So I'll skip one or two here and take a couple of questions.
Macroeconomics, Proposition 8. Money is non-neutral.
So according to astroeconomics, money is defined as the commonly accepted medium of exchange.
If government policy distorts the monetary unit, exchange is distorted as well.
The goal of monetary policy should be to minimize these distortions.
[1:02:43] Minimize the distortions of corrupt human beings manipulating money for their own fun profit and power well bitcoin can't be manipulated money is non-neutral, And democracy cannot solve the problem of inflation, which is why nobody runs for office promising to eliminate even the deficit, let alone the debt.
Right? So, inflation destroys civilizations and costs the lives of hundreds of millions of people over time.
And Bitcoin solves that.
Debt and democracy can't solve it because the benefits are distributed, but the costs of cutting government spending, the costs are concentrated, the benefits are distributed.
And particularly when you get into generational debt, then you're going to have to ask people to live real lean in the moment for the sake of other people's grandchildren long way down the road.
People just won't do that. They won't do that.
[1:04:00] Social institutions this is another proposition from austrian economics social institutions often are the result of human action but not of human design right so a typical example, you've got a snowy campus in a university and rather than take the long way people cut across the quad right and so because someone cuts across the quad someone else sees the footprints and said, oh, I'll go that way.
And then more and more people see the footprints, then the grass gets worn away even in the spring.
And because people have made that choice, now everyone cuts across the quad.
And we've all seen this happen in various times.
I remember being at a, when Toronto won the World Series in baseball back in the day, I went out into the crowd and I started everyone singing, we are the champions.
I started it and everyone ended up belting it out. It was a lot of fun.
So I started it, people sort of followed along.
So the path in the snow story is a simple example of a product of human action but not of human design right nobody said cut this out it just cut across this this um triangle they're just the way that it that it happened right, so yeah spontaneous order so it is really really important to look at the various schools of economic thought and say okay which ones understood and predicted the value of bitcoin.
[1:05:25] If you didn't, I don't even know what to say.
Isn't this completely obvious to this?
I mean, the first time I heard about it, I started doing shows on it back in 2010, 2011, or something like that.
And it's like, yeah, good Lord, right? Good Lord.
Wouldn't that be great? So anyway, I hope this helps. But I think that this use case is the ultimate proof for Austrian economics.
[1:06:03] And Austrianism versus, I don't know, delusion is huge, right?
Okay, let me just get some last questions here.
Let's see here.
Yeah, I can't tell you where to buy Bitcoins. Jesus flipped to their table and chased the money exchanges away from the temple with a whip. Yeah.
Yeah, coincidence of wants is the big problem with barter, for sure.
This is the first time I've heard the term catalactics. Catalactics, sorry. Loving this topic. I think it's really interesting.
[1:06:40] I think it's really, really interesting. Intentional inflation is the exploitation of the financially disciplined. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
It's degeneracy in financial form.
Bitcoin also adds censorship resistance which gold doesn't have absolutely true, thank you for the tips my friends.
[1:07:03] So, let's see here.
The water diamond paradox helps explain subjective value well, in my opinion. I don't know that one.
Shiny bits of metal have value. Shiny rocks have value. When asteroid mining becomes a thing, quadrillions of today's money is out there.
Prices will collapse as supply increases exponentially. Well, yeah, I mean, you know that, what is the intrinsic value that diamonds have?
You know, diamonds as a medium of purchasing a lady's engagement.
It's something that happened because de Boer's had excess diamonds after the Second World War, so they just created a giant marketing campaign and stimulated a huge amount of demand.
It's all made up. It's all made up.
Bitcoin represents far more intrinsic value than any fiat currency by any logic.
Proof of work trumps government decree any day. Right.
Jared says, I've been making the argument for years that it is backed by human action just like fiat.
Fiat is just backed by ignorance vice and coercion right bitcoin and the rest of the crypto in comparison to fiat is backed by wisdom virtue and goodness, ah backed by wisdom virtue and goodness i think that.
[1:08:16] You know so when i was a teenager i worked in a hardware store and i guess i was recognized as just an honest kid because i would be given all the cash to take to the bank to deposit right, I'd be given all the cash to take to the bank to deposit. Now, you could easily just take $10 out. I was making $2.50 an hour.
So I worked four hours. I used to work Tuesdays and Thursday nights, 5.30 to 9.30, and Saturdays, 9 to 5.
So I'd make $40 for the week. For Tuesday, Thursday nights, $2.50 an hour.
So you take $10, that's a whole evening's work, right?
So I had to be honest. But if they could just push a button and have the money go into the bank account, they wouldn't need to rely on my honesty.
They think something needs to be corporeal to have value, to attach to and permeate. Yeah, for sure.
[1:09:18] Bitcoin haters love to say it's a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let me talk about the retirement plans from the government, right?
Almost as bad as the tether argument which is made by people that have no idea what tether is i'm sorry i don't know what that means, So, let's see here.
You are just a piece of Rousseauian aggregate to an economist. Kind of, right?
[1:09:49] Yeah, it's the thing. It's the kind of thing. I don't see the value in it.
Therefore, it doesn't have value. It's kind of bizarre to me.
Like, if all the economists who are like, well, Bitcoin doesn't have any intrinsic value. Why don't you just go to a Bitcoin conference and ask people?
Like, it's weird to me. It's like all of the economists who were fighting like crazy over why are the prices of popcorn so high in movie theaters.
Like, just go to a guy who runs a movie theater and ask him why.
Oh, my gosh. Just ask.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, the robot has air I can breathe. The sunken ship does not.
How about that as a reason? Yeah, yeah.
[1:10:30] What do you think of Bill Ackman's tweet, bitcoin price rise leads to increased mining and greater energy use driving up the cost of energy causing inflation to rise in the dollar to decline driving demand for bitcoin and increased mining driving demand for energy the cycle continues bitcoin goes to infinity energy prices skyrocket and the economy collapse that's hilarious he's not serious is he, uh i wonder if bill has has written about how much energy gets consumed because of the overprinting of money uh and and the massive funding of wars around the world and undermining foreign governments and uh paying for uh subsidizing massive amounts of of births in in places around the world has he calculated that energy consumption that energy use because because Bitcoin fixes all of that.
So I don't understand why anyone would even tweet something like that.
I don't know what. I don't know what that is.
Austrians don't really believe in macroeconomics. Well, but they are evaluating the state, and the macroeconomics exists largely because of the state, right?
[1:11:41] Higher energy prices incentivize more efficient mining and doing so in cheaper location.
Yeah, like dams that have a surplus and there's gas burn-offs and stuff like that.
But, yeah, I wonder.
You know, for the people who are like, well, you know, Bitcoin drives up energy prices, it's like, so would you rather a fluid means of objective transaction exchange be created or another scud missile to blow up, some poor wedding in the Middle East? Because that's your choice, man.
It's just weird. It's just completely weird and cold. I don't understand it at all.
[1:12:16] Anyway, very odd.
How do you counterfeit a digital currency or shave it down or dilute it?
Well, you can't really, right?
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