Taking Care of Bitcoin with Gabriel Bloyd

Bitcoin, Debasement, and Self-Custody: A Newcomer Conversation with Gabriel Bloyd

TCB speaks with Bitcoin newcomer Gabriel Bloyd, a married father of four who first heard about crypto in 2014–2015 from a high-school friend. Bloyd asks how Bitcoin’s easy cross-border transfer and fixed supply affect governments, taxation, and a dollar he sees as losing value. The host argues U.S. monetary debasement is inevitable due to compounding debt and deficits, claims the dollar has lost over 99% of its value since 1913, and frames Bitcoin as a jurisdiction-less, uncensorable asset that enables capital to “exit,” forcing governments into competition. They discuss Bitcoin’s volatility versus long-term trends, dollar-cost averaging, and why timing trades fails. The host recommends learning before investing, experimenting with small transactions, and explains custodial exchanges versus self-custody, suggesting Strike and the Muun wallet, plus books like Economics in One Lesson, The Price of Tomorrow, and The Bitcoin Standard.

00:00 Copy of cloudRecording_FullConference_Take_1
00:23 Introduction & Guest Background
02:07 First Impressions of Bitcoin
05:04 Bitcoin Questions Begin
08:15 Dollar Debasement & Monetary Policy
15:43 Bitcoin Volatility & Risk
34:06 How to Get Started with Bitcoin
45:21 Recommended Apps & Wallets
01:04:12 Book Recommendations & Wrap-Up

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www.takingcareofbitcoin.com
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Transcript

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Host 0:23

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to TCB. Today on TCB, we are talking to Gabriel Bloyd. Gabe, what's up, man? Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks. pleasure being here. I'm glad ha- you have me on. just to introduce myself, like he said, my name's Gabriel Bloyd. happily married to my high school sweetheart, have four beautiful children, and I'm here to ask this man what he knows about Bitcoin 'cause I have some questions for him.

Gabriel 0:45

Yeah, fair enough, man. Yeah, that is what this show is all about, man. It's for the Bitcoin newcomer, and, I imagine with, four kids in tow, you're probably got some concerns or thoughts about the future and where this is all going. So hopefully we can hash some of that out. So I- I'll start with you where I start with everybody, man.

Host 1:00

if you can remember, like, where you first just heard about Bitcoin, wherever that was, if you can remember that at all, and then just give us what kind of what your general impression of it is up to this point. Yeah. So I was actually a junior in high school, and I had a buddy named Leo, and he was doing crypto, and I thought he was crazy. And, uh, he started talking to me about Bitcoin. Of course, I wasn't over the age of 18. He was a senior. He was over the age of 18, so he started, like, investing and, and just doing some, doing some, like... Basically taking his money that he was getting from his actual high school job and dumping it all over into the, uh, his portfolio, and he actually grew it and was able to move out- To like California and pursue his dreams and stuff. But basically it was around 2000, 2014, 2015 when I first heard about Bitcoin. Okay. Yeah, so a buddy in high school that was doing kind of crypto stuff. Was it... I assume it was not Bitcoin specific. He was probably doing all kinds of different crypto stuff, or do you recall? Correct. Okay. Um, and, uh, I don't know what you feel about that. I think,

Gabriel 2:07

um, I, I usually get that question a lot from newcomers or did. I th- I would say I did qualify it that way. I get that question a lot from newcomers as far as like, why Bitcoin? What about all these other projects? And I think as we've kind of moved across here, Bitcoin has kind of just naturally distanced itself. A lot of these other projects have just completely gone away. A few of them are still hanging out. Uh, but I think a lot of the kind of, um, maybe degen momentum that was driving some of those things has kind of moved on to other things, whether it's kind of AI speculation or some of these like, uh, prediction markets like Polymarket or Kalshi or something like that. Yeah. But I think, I think people with time are starting to see that it's starting, the signal's starting to distill itself down a little bit where like Bitcoin at least is kind of different than the others or seems to have more staying power than the others. And I think that's, um, generally just because all the other ones are essentially, uh, centralized projects with some kind of founding team that are usually rugging people and like, I don't know, even like the President's Coin was a great example of that where it's lost 99% of its value and everybody kind of lost their butt if they bought it.

Host 3:13

So, um, I think Bitcoin is the innovation here, and we could get into exactly why that is. But, uh, I just find it interesting if you're still talking to that buddy, is he still doing all kinds of crypto stuff, or has he evolved that, or do you talk to him at all? Yeah, so I still talk to him and, uh, he has actually pursued, uh...

Gabriel 3:34

He is a professional basketball dunker now. So that's what he moved out to California to pursue. So I imagine he definitely has investments in Bitcoin. He definitely, definitely, uh, definitely does. Interesting, man. So he's just doing like dunk competitions, like dunks specifically? Yeah, he actually broke the world record for the highest vertical job. Uh, and he has like the most viewed TikTok, uh, dunk on, or not, yeah, maybe it was dunk. But basically there was like a basketball goal on the back of a b- a school bus. Oh. And he jumps up and his head goes, like, over the rim, but that rim was, like, I think it was a little higher than a normal basketball goal, like an NBA size. So he- That's crazy he, he ended up, uh, his head going over. And I think that video got like 121 million views or something like that. Dude, that's wild. I saw a guy that they said was breaking some kind of record. He was just, like, jumping over his girlfriend. Is that him or is that just another one of these dunkers?

Host 4:36

That, I don't... No, that's not him. He's, he's... I don't think he has a girlfriend. Oh, okay. D- another guy. Yeah. So. Definitely not that guy. Okay, okay. It, dude, that is an interesting career path. That is, uh, very, very interesting. It, well, he played basketball in high school, and he was always really good at it, but it definitely, it did definitely catch me off guard.

4:57

Hey man, I guess if you can jump, you can jump, man. I mean, good on him. Good on, good on him. That is true. So yeah. Well, good deal, man. All right. Well let's get into some of your kind of Bitcoin questions, man. I know he might have introduced you to it, but, uh, as far as kind of like Bitcoin, what do you, what do you think about it? Where, where, where do you stand? What do you, uh, what are your kind of main thoughts on it, questions about it? Yeah. I actually, I s- I like it. I, um- My only, my main question is like, it, it's the big one, uh, which is We, we have investments, right? That we get taxed on, and I guess I wanna see, you know, you, you take Bitcoin and it's easily t- transferable between accounts, so, you know, to pay people and stuff like that, and you can pay, like, other people over in other countries and not have to do the whole currency transaction, if I'm, if I'm correct. I'm pretty sure I am. But, um, you don't have to deal with, like, the, "Hey, I've gotta go take the American dollar and, and, you know, convert it to yen to pay you what you need or whatever." So it's kinda like a diversified currency that you can use anywhere, and you can pay people with it. And so my main question to you is from, like, I guess a government standpoint, how does that look for the government when, you know, the dollars are all... the doll- the value of the dollar is nothing. Um- Mm-hmm we all work for free. Um, so the value of the dollar to me is, isn't, isn't anything, and so it's like, but Bitcoin, y- you have that option to say, "Hey, you know, I'm gonna go spend this currency that I've made and invested into. I'm gonna go spend this where I want to," instead of, "Hey, you have to spend this money here in the United States." Yeah, bad, fair question. I think that's, that hits to kinda the core, uh, crux of what we're dealing with here, and, uh, there's a lot to unpack there, but we'll kinda take it piece by piece. So, uh, um, as far as, um, kinda the dollar just becoming worthless, that's kind of mathematically demonstrable. I mean, it's like since the Fed was created in 1913, it's lost over 99% of its value, and it's accelerating. And anyone that goes to the grocery store or pays rent or pays for insurance or pays for anything kind of feels that intuitively. Whether they can put their finger on it mathematically or not, they kind of sense that something's wrong. They feel like everything's kind of getting expensive at a faster rate than they remember, and all of that is true. That's just a compounding math problem because the debt is insolvent. It hit, just hit $40 trillion. We actually added half a trillion dollars of debt just in the past 30 days. It's in a compounding math problem, and a compounding math problem kind of accelerates exponentially. So that's all real, and they don't have any choice. We're running $2 trillion deficits. They don't have any choice but to continue to debase the currency because there's just not enough kind of organic buyers to buy o- buy or borrow, or borrow our money or buy the treasuries that they're trying to, like, lend us. So inevitably, it's gonna result in monetary debasement. Typically, that's ended up being about 7% a year, so if you're not getting a 7% a year raise, you're falling behind, and it's only gonna accelerate from here. So that is true. The dollars are going to be somewhat worthless. Now, um, Bitcoin offers a currency that cannot be debased, cannot be diluted. It's got a known fixed- total supply so it is kind of engineer purpose-built to protect you against that dilution and debasement i think when you get into the idea of governments and jurisdictions and taxation I think, um, I don't know if it was intentional just from Jump Street, but I think with every emergency and every expanded power, we kind of just expanded the abuse a little bit through direct taxation, and through the borrowing, and through the monetary debasement, because I think they came to believe that there was no alternative, and if there's no alternative and there's nowhere for anyone to go, there's no way for anyone to escape, you could kind of get a little hubristic about kind of, uh, leaning on people and taking more and more and more and more, just thinking they can't leave and they have no choice in the matter. Uh, I think what you're pointing to is Bitcoin is a monetary protocol that lives kind of on 10,000 or thousands of computers worldwide that's geo-distributed, so it's not under the thumb of any particular jurisdiction. So, no particular government controls it, no particular jurisdiction controls it, and it's gonna give capital the ability to migrate to where it's treated best.

Gabriel 9:36

So, um, I think every single government in the world, pretty much without exception, has kind of played that same card where they all thought that there was nowhere to go. They all thought that all their people were- weren't able to escape, and suddenly Bitcoin just kind of shows up and gives everyone an exit ramp. So capital can move very easily off of, um, you know, from one country to another or be used in a different jurisdiction, and that also unlocks kind of a game theory amongst these nation states of you kind of have two choices. Like, I think their debt is all blowing out, so their natural tendency's gonna be to kind of clamp down further on their people and try to not allow capital to leave. So, you know, property taxes are gonna have to go up, income taxes are gonna have to go up, payroll taxes are gonna have to go up. But if, if capital has the ability to exit, that creates a problem for them. But in the, say, on the other side, flip side of that token is since it's a jurisdiction-less asset, I can send Bitcoin from here to you in a matter of minutes. I can send Bitcoin from here to Singapore in a matter of minutes. So, and there's no way to, um... There's no middleman in that transaction in the traditional sense. I don't have to ask my bank to do it. I don't have to ask my brokerage to do it. There's nowhere for the government to go lean on to stop that transaction, so it's a completely unconfiscatable, um, unstoppable ac- uh, asset in that respect, so they cannot stop you from sending your capital over a border, whereas before they could, and that's what kind of the idea of, like, exit taxes or if you're trying to take your net worth across a border. Imagine, like, a war-torn place right now. If anyone tried to flee Ukraine or Iran or any of these places, they can't get across their border with all of their money on them because it'll just get taken at the border. Bitcoin allows you to kind of just, through the internet, cyberspace, zap it in a way that can't be stopped. And can't be confiscated, so it doesn't have to go through a middleman. There is no switch where someone could come in and take it from you. So I think what that does, Game, theoretically, is, um, since you cannot stop it, it's kind of like, uh, the old, the very old Benjamin Franklin cartoon or- originally about the American Revolution where he had that join or die- Mm-hmm with like a snake cut into a bunch of pieces. I think what Bitcoin does is, 'cause you cannot stop it, it, you kind of puts all these nation states in kind of a join or die scenario, where the first one that chooses not to lean on it, then it gets an influx of capital. Because it's kind of like the capital's like water.

Host 12:06

It's just gonna kind of w- work its way through the system and just find where it's treated best. So if someone tries to get very heavy-handed with taxation, people will just move it to a different jurisdiction with different rules. And since, and since we're no l- we're, at least not to present, we're not living under a global government, we might be kind of trending that way. But since we do, since we do have, you know, multi jurisdictions to shop as people at present, I think the Bitcoin is able to go, you know, become this borderless payment system that can go where it's treated best. And anyone that tries to lean on their citizenry too heavy-handedly with taxation or monetary debasement, this gives everyone a place to go to escape that, whereas they didn't necessarily have that before. Absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. That's interesting. Uh, you, you said, uh, you said a lot of things that I didn't, and of course I'm not experienced in it. Um, a lot of things that I didn't think about, like one the ability I just totally lost my train of thought. I mean, that was- Yeah. Um, I guess it's like the ability to, to move it around versus like how we do it now. There's security, there's security in it, and I knew, I knew about like the market cap and like, there's only so much supply of it before it runs out. So there's only so much that can be bought, which is why it's easier to keep its value versus the American dollar, where we just go gr- buy a printer from Walmart and go at it. Um- Yeah, yeah. Yeah it's... So it's easier to, um... It's easier to identify that the transactions that are made are I'm trying to figure out what I'm trying to say, dude. It's like in my brain. It's a lot, man. But the- It's a, it's a big thing to break down, so take your time the, the, the part that was interesting that you specifically, uh, brought up and talked about was the fact that you don't have to use a brokerage and the fact that there's... What was the other, what was the other term you said? Oh, you don't have to- Yeah get it from your bank. And it's like- Yeah, there's no intermediary. Yeah. It's like so often I think people forget about that. And like me personally, I'm a s- I'm a skeptic to a degree of Bitcoin just because you see the, the trends. Now granted, I don't ever think it's gonna like crash all the way down, but it was like there for a while. It did go from, I think it was like 80-something thousand to like 23 grand very quickly, and I think that that's what a lot of people get spooked by. Versus where as bad as it sounds, you know, everyone can go get a paycheck next week, but if you're investing that paycheck, and say you are, um, you know, maybe lower middle class or even, even in the lower class, that that money that you're investing, if someone does decide to go pull a huge lump sum of that out in the middle of the night while you're sleeping, like it can change...

15:23

I feel like it can change people's lives, and especially like the, the lower, the lower class classes because- When you have million and billionaires dumping a lot of money into a thing that does have a cap, they can also pull those millions and billions out, which can also manipulate that market. Am I correct on that? Okay. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I mean, you're b- speaking to kind of its general volatility at this point, and, and you're right. If you're looking at something about, uh, you know, well, we could kind of sit here and make the argument. It's like, "Hey, Bitcoin's a better store of value. It's got a, you know, a, a known supply cap. It's not gonna get debased like your dollars are." But it's kind of, um... That doesn't necessarily matter to you if you're like, "Well, I just watched Bitcoin go, cut, get cut in half by 50% over the past six months. Like, how does that help me? And if my money was in that and I needed that money, I would, that would put me in a really tight place." So it is, there is this, um, element where you have to be able to kind of understand conceptually what is happening, that kind of like on a long timeline, our monetary system is slowly failing, and on a long timeline, Bitcoin is slowly building as a replacement. Now, in the short term, it's really volatile, so it's hard to kind of see that. You have to kind of think of it in averages. If you look, uh, like we mentioned, the, the Federal Reserve starting in 1913 to present. If you look up, bring up that chart- Yes of like the dollar's value, it's just a steady decline, just a 45-degree line from, you know, the top left to the bottom right. Just s- just losing value, but it's losing value at least at like a fairly consistent, steady pace. So sometimes that's even more comfortable 'cause, you know, it's only going down, if you believe the government CPI statistics, 3% a year, but those are kind of cooked books to make sure that they can manage Social Security and Medicare payments. But even at the reality of like 7 or 8% a year, it's at least stable. It's not going down 50% in a year. So it's a fair kind of critique, but then if you zoom out on the Bitcoin chart, it's kind of the exact opposite polarity, where it's going from the bottom left to the upper right, and as long as you just look at like a 200-day- Yes moving average, like a four-year moving average of its price, it kind of chops around violently, but it's pretty consistently been accr- it's been consistently accruing value over that time, and that trend has not stopped.

Gabriel 17:41

So it's, it's difficult to come to it with very limited knowledge and in the beginning, and you can get spooked out immediately. And that's kind of like, that's kind of why we do this, to kind of help kind of build conviction to understand what is happening. And I think it's really just because- The reason we're doing this podcast, honestly, is Bitcoin is not very easy to understand.

Host 18:02

It's not something- No, it's not you can Yeah, it's not something you could explain to somebody in, like, five minutes on an elevator ride, you know, or on, in an Uber ride. It's It, it 'Cause it's takes, um, I forget whose quote it was. Somebody said that it's basically everything you don't know about, um, money combined with everything you don't know about computers. It's this very kind of complex thing, and then most people don't really understand the monetary regime they're living under. They don't really understand how the Federal Reserve works. They don't understand how the banking system works. So it's a lot to take on, and it's hard to develop the conviction to with- like, withstand a 30% cut in your money knowing it's going higher later. And I go I completely appreciate that stance of just being like that's a difficult thing to do, and if you're of modest means and you don't, and you need that money, it's probably a non-starter to put that money in Bitcoin if I need to spend it next month. So, um, I think it's just gonna be a matter of because it's difficult to understand and it's priced at the margin, the people that understand Bitcoin very well, they never really move it. They really don't buy and sell it so much. It's really just so the marginal c- the marginal buyer is kind of not as, uh, maybe educated on exactly what they're holding. So the price swings at the margin. It can swing pretty violently, but I think it's always building this, um, kind of constant growing base that's pushing that larger trend of, like, a four-year Nobody that's ever held Bitcoin for more than four years has ever lost money. It's kind of slowly marching up, and you're always resetting the base to people that just understand it better and aren't willing to part with it until this kind of monetization phase of it is complete. So, um, yeah, the volatility is scary. I'm not even trying to downplay the volatility at all. I'm just trying to explain that volatility and risk aren't necessarily the same thing. You can kind of understand the long-term trajectory of something, and then if you understand the long-term trajectory, the violent moves in the short term don't really register as much. You almost become a little bit numb to them, if that makes sense. But, but fair point. Uh, I think the flip side of the point of, like, someone of, like, modest means would be if you look at, like, the investable landscape of assets, if you only have a few dollars to invest, it's pretty difficult to get into all of the other kind of classic, um- inflation hedges that have been available to us, right? It's, if, if I'm of very modest means, it's very difficult for me to get into real estate. It's very difficult for me to save up a 20% down payment on a, a completely crazily inflated housing market at this point. It's pretty difficult for me to go and, you know, buy certain stocks. You know? Like, I might not be able to go buy a share of Tesla at $300 or something like that. Uh, the beauty about Bitcoin is you can put... You don't have to buy a Bitcoin. You can literally put anything you're able to save, any, from week to week, you could put it in there. You could buy as little as 50 cents of Bitcoin if you wanted to, and just accrue that over time. And it kinda democratizes access to, um, kind of a, a asset that can hedge against that inevitable math inflation that's coming. And as long as you can just kinda consistently do that and not really worry about it so much, over time that is almost like, at least to present, the trend has not broke. It's mathematically gonna keep accruing value as oppo- as opposed to diluting value. Right. Yeah. So let me, let me ask you this. If, uh- If you were... So you're saying to use it as essentially like a sa- like a savings account? 100%, yep. Am I... That, okay. What is the, what is the average growth of Bitcoin every 365 days? Every year. I mean, it's been... I could look that up. I mean, historically it's a little skewed, 'cause in the early days it was going from, you know, zero- Right like one penny, um, to, you know, up, up to now what we're at $65,000. But it, it CAGRs, um, a lot higher than, say, the S&P 500. The S&P 500 CAGRs at about, uh, about 8% a year historically. And if you look at that, the interesting part of that is, uh, the monetary debasement rate is about 8% a year. So really what you have here is if you're just index investing into the stock market, the vast majority of all your kinda nominal gains is really just the increasing money supply pushing up the value of the index because there's more money chasing the same amount of stocks. So it seems like, uh, 8% on paper, you're like, "Oh, I'm doing pretty well. Like, I put my money in this, it's doing pretty well." Um, but if you actually realize what's actually going on and you adjust those returns for the M2 money supply, you're really kind of treading water. It's almost like you're putting it in the S&P, you think you're getting ahead, but it's as if you had a savings account where you weren't getting diluted. Um, but yeah, so just to bring this up, so the last 10 years, just if you, I mean, if you pick timeframe, and this obviously gets back into, um, the earliest, you know, since it started from nothing and monetized up now to $65,000 and 125,000 at one point. But, so the average annual CAGR, depending on how far you go back, gets a little, um, gets maybe a little unreasonable. But, but if you, uh, start at 2010, it's CAGR-ed 150% a year on average. Uh, if you bring that more into the present, over the last five years, it's been like 11 to 13%, uh, 'cause that includes like probably two bear market years at this point. And if you look at just the last three years, it's been 25 to 26%. So you're kind of looking, it's even, even at its lowest years, it's outperforming the, the S&P by about 5%, and over kind of like different timeframes, it's double or triple that, that return. So I think, I think people don't pay enough... People that aren't in, in, in the space watching it all the time, all they see is they don't, they don't really kind of like smooth it out and look at it kind of from an average perspective. They see the years where it goes from 15 to, to 100, and they s- they see the years when it goes from 120 to 60. They're not really kind of like smoothing the numbers out and taking the averages. Yeah. So it's, it scares them away. It's either like they either, you know, feel FOMO when it's moving and they jump in, they buy the top, and they get their knees cut out from under 'em, and then... Or they see it, see it drop precipitously. They know they don't understand it. They're just relieved that they didn't buy it. And then exactly at the time they should be buying it is when they're not touching it, 'cause, 'cause they're afraid of it. So, um, yeah, I think, I think understanding the averages and focusing on those kinda longer term CAGRs is important. It's like you, you kinda have to take the longer term view and then just use the time to understand why the price is moving, understand the longer term trend, and then just build the conviction that when it draws down, like when... I, I'm at the point, and then I, I don't know. Nobody knows the future, right? Nobody knows exactly where it's going. But I'm at the point now where Whenever it's, there's a pullback since I believe the long-term trend to be higher and to be true, and I think it's just gonna continue to kind of eat at all the inferior monetary assets where people are pushing their money to try to beat inflation, I think it's the best one, and I think it's gonna be come to be understood as the best one. So when it pulls back for me, um, you almost get excited. You're like, "Oh, this is just an opportunity for me to, you know, like leverage my asymmetric knowledge and put some more, put some more into the... Put some more money into the, the one inflation hedge that nobody understands." Everybody kind of understands gold at this point. It's been around for thousands of years. Everyone understands real estate. They've all watched, you know, their parents buy a house for a few walnuts and a couple raspberries and watch it go to a million dollars over 50 years for some reason, also tied to the monetary debasement. But it's, it's kind of that trade is already out there. Everyone already, everyone already understands the stock market as, as, like not everyone is a stock trader, but they like, they understand that it's, it's supposedly compounding and growing over time. They, they watch the numbers go from, you know, Dow 10,000 to 20,000 to 30,000 to 50,000, and we're gonna watch it go to 100,000, and most of that is gonna be driven by monetary debasement, but it's not taught to us that way. So we think it's just, "Oh, the economy's crushing it. The economy's growing." I think what you're starting to feel now is like people are starting to understand, or at least like I kind of talked about that kind of gut check intuitive feeling. I think now people feel like, "Hey, they keep telling me the economy's great, but when I walk out of the grocery store, it doesn't feel great." And I think, I think we have two economies and it's, that's why they can... It's both things can be true because all the people that are holding assets, those assets are getting nominally price inflated by the debasement that's accelerating. Mm. And all the people that are not holding assets, the only thing they're seeing is the prices accelerating. So- Mm so debasement is good for assets and terrible for consumers at the same time. So the, it can be true where if you're, if you're kind of maybe an older person that's saved and invested and done the right things, um, or at least we were told to do, do the right things, you're watching your portfolio rise, you're watching the price of your house go up.

Gabriel 27:53

Anyone sitting on assets is watching the prices of those things rise, and it feels good for them. If you're on the other side of that economy, you were maybe a young person that doesn't have those assets and is trying to afford those assets, and you're just seeing the assets go out of reach while your bills are drowning you. So it is this kind of weird thing where, yeah, the stock market can be ripping, but the stock market is not the economy, and the stock market isn't necessarily indicative of like- people's lives getting better. So we kinda have two economies, and I think that's, it's mathematically driven by the same problem, and it's why I focus on it so much, is when you print money, you don't increase productivity. So you're d- you can't print steel, you can't print a nurse, you can't print, you know, um, you know, more actual stuff. You can't print oil, you can't print energy. When you print money, you're just creating more claims on the stuff, on all of those things, all of the productive economy. So when you put more money into the system and you don't put more productivity into the system, the price of everything has to go up. So it's just a mathematical... And it has to find its value somewhere. So, um, everyone that works for money or works for dollars, saves in dollars, they take the hit. Their savings get diluted, their wages get diluted, and it gets mathematically redistributed, and it finds its way into assets. So if you're sitting on a house, your house prices go up.

Host 29:24

If you're sitting in the stock market, that goes up. If you're sitting in gold, that goes up. But it's, it's not a, it's very, it's done in this very convoluted way that's very hard to diagnose. Um, even John Maynard Keynes, a famous economist, said the surest way to, like, destroy a nation is to debauch its currency, because you do it in a way that not one in a million can diagnose. Y- they, they knew this. They knew if you kind of like use this third rail of government financing, people will misattribute it. It's not as direct as, "Oh, taxes went up." It's this insidious leak in the system where they, they're more inclined to blame the grocery store, blame the, you know, blame the greedy corporations, blame whoever. Um, instead of understanding that when the aggregate price level of everything is going up all at once, it's not because all corporations and all CEOs met in a room with a cigar and had decided, "Hey, we're all in this together." It's, it's because every single thing that's sold, no matter what vertical it is, the other half of that transaction is money. So if you dilute the money, that's how the aggregate price of absolutely everything goes up. 'Cause if, if you think about it Um, it's very counterintuitive, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. But look at the amount of technology that we're now leveraging. Like, you would expect that all of the efficiency gains and all the technology we're using, and now we're going into this AI world where AI can, you know, create thi- it can create videos, it can create pictures, it can write papers for you, it can write books for you, it can do all these things. It can, it can balance your books. It can do all, all these things. It intuitively, everything should be coming down in price. We're becoming far more efficient than we were before, but they can't allow that because the debt's insolvent, and they have to make sure that that continues to debase. So they're, they're taking all of those efficiency gains. So in a world that everything should be getting cheaper, it's all getting expensive and shittier instead, and it just fe- it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make natural sense that as we get more technological, as we get better human knowledge, as we advance, everything's getting more expensive. Like, that it should be the exact opposite of that. And the reason it's doing that is this insidious process that nobody can really see that's happening in the background Interesting. Let me, uh Let me ask you- I still have the two on. Y- yeah, yeah yeah that's me That was a lot. Uh- One, so it's, it's funny, um, so I'm actually a real estate agent also. It's what I do full time, and then I also own a, a cleaning business with my wife. And I find it funny because I, I get to... I get on, like, these tax kicks where my wife, she don't really understand a whole lot about taxes and how to, like, rightfully avoid them, and I always tell her, like, "Hey, well, you can't... You can only tax income." I'm like, "If you have no income, you can't, it can't be taxed." And so I always tell her, like, "Hey, you know, we should go pull this loan, you know, do that, because you can't tax debt, but if we have the reoccurring revenue to pay that, we're, it's a wash. There's nothing to be taxed." And so here recently, uh, it's actually crazy that you reached out, um, and we, we ended up colliding. You saw my video, 'cause I have been talking about investing in the Bitcoin because I think it's g- I always liked crypto because one, you could get in like early on, and then if you get lucky, you can blow up and, you know, get out. It's that get rich quick scheme, so it, it's intriguing to people. But like you said, you know, without the knowledge it's, it's detrimental to your person and so... And to your finances. And so it's like, let me, let me ask this question. If you were going to... If you were just a new, new person, you know, I have never heard of Bitcoin, this is the first time I've ever heard of it, what are you, what are you going to tell me to do or coach me to do to get knowledge and gain knowledge on reading the market and when to buy in, when to pull out.

33:46

And again, you know, this is all opinion-based. Yeah. You're not giving any financial, financial s- like, advice to me or anyone. But anyone that l- that is listening that doesn't know, what would you tell them on an education standpoint to, to start getting involved, and how would they take those steps? Yeah, 100%, man. I mean, there's a lot of good resources out there. I think, I think the first thing I would say is don't invest in Bitcoin, because you shouldn't invest in something you don't understand, ever. So I think- Good I think we've almost been... I think we've almost c- conditioned to invest in things we don't understand, because- I agree our economic r- our economic reality has forced us to do that. Like, a world where you can just s- whatever your trade is. If you're a b- the world if you're a baker, the world where you can just go bake bread, make a living, come home to your family, put that money that you made into a savings account and be okay, that world does not exist because of this exact same problem. So we're, we're forced to go bake bread, take care of our family, and then try to become some fly-by-night financial expert so we can figure out how not to just lose our ass by the e- economy that, that's been built around us. So you have to go invest in the stock market. But most people aren't reading all the filings of these companies. Most people don't really understand the company balance sheets. It's kind of everyone's just kind of vibe investing for the most part. Yeah. Which, which makes sense 'cause you don't have a lot of time to do it. You're not a financial expert. You're a baker. You're supposed to be baking bread. That's not what you're supposed to be doing. There's other people that are specializing in that. You're specializing in bread. That should work. Um, so I would say the first thing is don't just invest in something you don't necessarily understand. Start trying to understand it first. I think the one thing that's kind of maybe cool to do, I would say in the beginning, is buy a little bit, but not as an investment, but just to like mess with the tech. Be like, "Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy $10 worth of this. I'm gonna realize that I have this on my phone, but I'm the only one that has custody to it. And when I send it to a friend of mine or my wife or who, my brother or sister across the room, and they get it on their phone in their wallet, I'm gonna, like, understand that that didn't have to go through Venmo, didn't have to go through PayPal. I never talked to Charles Schwab. I n- never talked to Bank of America." I n- it was basically cash. It's like future cash, and like even Satoshi, the- Ooh creator of Bitcoin said it was peer-to-peer electronic cash. That's what it was meant to be. So it's, it's giving you a bearer instrument that's digital, and it's kind of hard to... Like, when you, when you hear that, it kind of just sounds like Word salad. It sounds like jargon. But if you do it, you're like, "Oh, that's cool." So like I just sent you that money and you could've been, you could've been in Tokyo and I could've sent you that money and nobody could've stopped it, nobody could've done anything about it. That's pretty cool because like if you try to send a gold bar from here to Tokyo, much more difficult. If I try to send like- Good luck. Hopefully it gets there. Yeah. Yeah, if I try to send a, you know, a piece of my back porch to Tokyo, much more difficult. So like you, you kinda see with your own eyes, and, and you can do this in the real world, at least it's getting easier to. Uh, 'cause before it was always hypothetical, but, um, now s- Jack Dorsey's company Square, like Block, who runs all the Square terminals, they basically made it so anyone using Square can turn on Bitcoin functionality, and I don't think it's well enough understood that a lot of people are doing it yet. Uh, but it, it basically gives them full, as a business, full functionality that I can have somebody pay me in dollars and I can convert some of it to Bit- Bitcoin. I could have someone pay in Bitcoin and I could convert it, get paid in Bitcoin and I could keep Bitcoin. Basically any kind of, any kind of a, you know, rack and stack, you know, optionality of that transaction you can do through Square now, which is pretty cool. Or you can go to a Steak 'n Shake. Steak 'n Shake accepts Bitcoin, so that might be the best advice, is just buy enough Bitcoin to pay for a burger and fries at Steak 'n Shake, go in there, scan the QR code, send Bitcoin, and just see it work and be like, "Oh, they told me this was clunky. They told me this was hard to understand. They told me all this stuff." It's like, I really That wasn't that hard at all. That was no different than using Apple Pay or Google Pay or something like that, besides the fact that nobody's involved and I'm transacting in something that I know is not diluting and stealing from me when I sleep. Other than that, the user experience is pretty much the same. So, um, I would say- Wow just, just, just try it so it's not Just, just like anything, anything that you've never seen or done is kind of intimidating or scary. If you just do it, it's, it's much less so. Like, and that's true about everything in life. Um- Yep so I would say doing it is cool. There's more options to do that than there used to be. And then the other part is just learning about it. It's, I mean, it's... And it's easy for me to say, 'cause for whatever reason, um, I did like a master's in international security. I, I spent most of my research on how our debt was compounding and it was gonna be our biggest national security problem. I've been down this kind of rabbit hole of economics and monetary debasement and debt for a long time. For whatever reason, it's just something I'm interested in, so it's very easy for me to say. I don't think most people when they get home from work, their first inclination is to pick up an economics book. Um, I would love for people to listen to my podcast. Come on my podcast. We can answer your questions directly. I think it's a good way to have it done because it's, it's not as dense as picking up, you know, an Austrian economics, economics book and having to chew through the whole thing. Uh, but I think it's just, you just kind of base level, I think people probably already understand what they need to understand. They just don't know it yet. And I think that I say that because they're like, it's not that you need to know, um Every single element of, like, the technical backbone of Bitcoin to really understand what its use case is. And I say that because if you ask people about the dollar system, most of them cannot explain it to you. They cannot explain to you that the Federal Reserve is kind of this private banking cartel that doesn't really... It's not actually part of the United States government. It has independence from the government, but it's able to manipulate interest rates, and it's able to put different reserve amounts on its balance sheets, and it affects the interest rates that banks lend to each other. Nobody really cares or knows any of that. Yet they go to work, they earn in dollars, they go to the store, they pay in dollars. That's all you really need to know. And I think if you do that same little experiment where you're like, "Oh, hey, I earned dollars. I know the dollars are stealing from me 'cause I, I see the prices of everything rising around me, and now I understand that that's because my money is losing value, not because the prices are going up." Like, it's, it's the other side of the coin that's kind of the unseen. It's like instead of just seeing the price of milk go up at the grocery store, now I understand it's like, oh, there's... The milk hasn't changed. My money is changing. So once you kind of see that and you're like, "Okay, I can, I can earn in dollars, and then I can immediately put them in something that's gonna be, like, more respectful of the time and effort I gave to, to get those dollars."

Gabriel 40:50

And then just so-- And then you just interact with them the same way. You, you're able to go spend them, you're able to save them, you're able to do all the same things. So just like you didn't have to understand every single element of how the dollar system worked, you don't necessarily have to understand every single element of how the Bitcoin system works. You don't have to understand mining or the difficulty adjustment or all these kind of like technical things. You just have to know that it works, it has worked, it hasn't been hacked, it has not gone away, and it's kind of got this anti-fragile, um, element where even if governments want to stop it, they've tried and failed. Like, China's tried to ban it a bunch of times. It doesn't matter. People still hold it over there. People still mine it over there. Um- So once you realize that, it's like, oh, this is, this is actually kind of cool. And when we're living in this system where it seems like we're getting squeezed to death, there's this great book called The Sovereign Individual that talks about how, uh, the government looks at its citizens as cows in the field waiting to be milked. And if you understand that's the relationship you're living under, and then suddenly you found a hole in the fence you can escape, like that is something worth kind of exploring. And it doesn't mean you're gonna, you know, take all of your life savings and put it into this thing overnight. It's just a matter of I'm just- I just did while we've been on this podcast. There, said it. Yeah. Full said, yeah. Um, yeah, but it just means, uh, that sounds more interesting than I thought it was. I'm gonna give that a little more intellectual energy. And then once you get to the point that you're like, "Okay, I do maybe want to, um, get involved," the best advice there is just what they call, like, dollar cost averaging, which just means you don't just throw some lump sum in because then you get that gut check 'cause it drops 50% tomorrow. You just kind of slowly start treating it as like a savings account, and anything you're kind of able to move over, you just kind of slowly do that, and then you're naturally just kind of building this, um... Like e- 'cause even though the trend is up over time, there's definitely better or worse times to buy. But, um, what you don't wanna do is probably get into this habit of like, oh, I'm gonna... 'Cause I guarantee, I've been in this pl- space a long time, everybody thinks they can do this, and everybody's wrong. They all think that they can sell the exact top. They all think they can buy back in at the bottom, ride it back up. And anyone that, um, I mean, they've actually done studies on this. Anyone that tries to deploy that strategy, it's much less successful than they think it is. And the most successful strategy across the board is just to slowly average in a- as if the price, as if you're agnostic to price, and just kind of let the compounding over time do the work. And just understand that no matter what the price is today, if you log back in in 10 years, it's gonna be higher then. So, um, don't, don't worry about it so much. And then the other thing I would say about that is, um, Bitcoin moves kind of like a, like a wild animal. And it's very, um, detrimental to you to the downside, but it's also very beneficial to you to the upside. But they've kind of looked at studies of this. If, if you, um, if you remove like the seven to 10 best days a year of Bitcoin movement, you basically lose all of the gain. So if you're trying to time it, you think you're gonna get cute with it, and you just miss, you know, half of those seven days Might go nowhere. So it's like, it's, it's just being in there when it chooses to move, and it's almost impossible to know when that is going to be. So, um, yeah, that's a really long answer, man. But I would say, uh, it's just a matter of decide, "Oh, I thought this was just some speculative investment gamer nerd stuff. Oh, it might be an actual solution to a lot of these problems I see in my actual life. Maybe that's worth..." Um, I like how Michael Saylor talks about it. He's like, "You spend thousands and thousands of hours earning your money. You might as well spend, you know, 10 to 100 hours trying to keep it." Like, it's just like- Uh, yeah, I've heard that it's worth, it's worth the time as a force multiplier to kinda keep your money. Um, yeah. And then it's just a matter of like, uh, learn about it, experiment with it, and then probably just slowly average into it, would be the very long-winded answer to that question. So let me, let me ask this now. If, uh, if I was to start a portfolio ac- Like, I have a Coinbase account. Um, what would be, what would be, like, the best application that you personally would recommend to just monitor, you know, monitor the graphs, learn, learn, like, what it's doing, look at the numbers daily and stuff like that? What, what apps would you recommend? Uh, I mean, yeah, as far as just kinda like watching the price, there's a, there's a thousand places you can kind of do that. Um, there's a lot of stuff that gets very kind of wonky as far as, um, like Glassnode puts a lot of good analytics out there as far as, like, what's going on, like with the Bitcoin price. Interesting, but if you're not that versed in Bitcoin yet, you're gonna be like, "What is going on?" It's like, it's pretty high level kind of analysis of, like, what's going on versus long-term holders versus short-term holders or all these, all these different things. Um, so I w- I wouldn't necessarily go straight there because it's just kind of like trying to get a PhD in the first week. But, um, I think it's really just, just kinda wa- I, I even will just watch. I don't invest in Robinhood at all, but they got a pretty good, like, uh, user interface as far as just kinda like watching the Bitcoin price move, so I check it on there sometimes. Um, but yeah, I wouldn't really... I guess the point of that is maybe don't, probably don't get so, um, hung up on trying to figure out what the price is doing because, um, the best thing is just try not to trade that price at all. Like, just try to understand the long-term trend of what it offers as a solution, what is happening to our current economic system, and then just kind of... I, I think it's, you're better off trying to, instead of trying to look at Bitcoin graphs and trying to figure out how the Bitcoin price is moving, um, from maybe like a trading view perspective, you're better off kind of understanding the longer term, uh, debt position of the United States, what makes further debasement, uh, inevitable, and then why Bitcoin offers a potential solution to that. And you're going to need a solution to that. It's just gonna be a matter of convincing yourself that Bitcoin is the best solution of, uh, for that. And I think if you, um, if you just compare it to, if you kinda just... And I mean, honestly, AI is probably pretty helpful in this regard. If you, um, like if you just ask your AI of choice, you wanna go into like ChatGPT or Grok or Claude or something and just be like, "Hey, um, I'm worried about monetary debasement. Can you compare Bitcoin for me, its monetary chara- characteristics versus real estate, gold, stocks, equities, bonds?" And just kind of let it break that down for you as a starting point. You'll kind of see the holes that took a lot longer to see when you didn't have those tools available. So, um, that might also be a good starting point. That is- But, um- Yeah, that's big brain. Yeah. Um- Let me, uh, let me ask you- I'll just mute you for a second, man. No, you went, you went black, but I think it might... I don't know if it's just your signal or what. I still hear you though. I don't know why my camera's not on. I just noticed that. There, am I back? I don't see you yet. I see him. I still hear, I still hear you, so we can still work through some questions and see if it comes back. It might just be a signal issue. I see it on mine. That's weird. Okay. Uh, it's probably a signal issue. So, uh, let me ask, let me ask you this. You, um If you were to give somebody the recommendation of opening up a... Like, let's say, you know, you do a little bit of research and you're like, "You know what? I am gonna play with this." Because like I said earlier to you, you know, I'm, I'm an avid believer, and I think that's... I, I do think it's the future. Um, so there's, like, nothing that I've actually disagreed with you on so far, surprisingly. Um- and typically I try to disagree with at least something on, on something like this just so we can have, you know, some content or something. But, uh, my question is, does someone like my, someone like my wife that's skeptical about the Bitcoin. You know, you mentioned, you mentioned opening an account, putting the $10 in there, and going and buying something with it, whether it be a burger or whatever, you know, wherever, uh, Bitcoin's accepted. I think- Uh-huh her, because she, she uses a lot of, you know, you used Apple Pay. My wife pays everything with Apple Pay essentially, or Tap. So it's like with the option to say, "Hey, here Coinbase," ding, and know that she just paid through Bitcoin. But while our money is sitting in Bitcoin per se, it's also accruing that, you know, daily or weekly or monthly interest rate, whether that's high or low. Yeah, it, it has its ups, it has its downs. But it's like with the option there, what, what would be a good starting app that you would put on there and say, "Hey, uh, you know, maybe, maybe try it on this, this application, um, just to play around because it's the easiest." Would Robinhood be that you think? Uh, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think, I think it's helpful. I really like... So, like, not to endorse any one place, I really like Strike as far as just a place to buy. Like, Strike is a great... Jack Mallers is a, is a great CEO. He's built a great product. It's Bitcoin only, so it's not confusing. You don't go on there and see a bunch of, like, dog hat coin and frog stuff and other stuff to confuse you. Well, see- Bitcoin only- that's my problem there. Sorry to cut you off Yeah, yeah is that, that I get, I can get overwhelmed, and she can get overwhelmed more or less with that than I do. But at some point sometimes when you see the Doge and every other meme coin that, that's known to man on there. So I did not know about Strike, so that, I'm gonna look into that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Strike is cool. I mean, it's very straightforward. It's got a great user experience. It's Bitcoin only. It's not gonna, you know, mess with you with all the other kind of stuff- Yeah that I think is kind of just a distraction or, and a waste of time honestly. But, uh, uh, then I like, as far as like a... So Strike is like an exchange, uh, just like Coinbase would be. So if your Bitcoin's on there, you have exposure to it, but they actually hold it. So, like, the next step is kind of like taking custody of it yourself. Uh, a really easy way to do that is, um, I like a app called Muun. It's M-U-U-N. And, uh, I could just show you. So like if you were gonna send me, um, Bitcoin right now, it just gives you like a QR code. You would just scan this, send it over, and then it actually lives like on your phone. So like you have the private keys, um, which we didn't get into the technicalities of this, but like the private keys that allow you to move your value. If you hold it on Coinbase, you hold it on Strike, they have the keys, so they technically have the access to the value. Although you could tell them what to do with it, and as long as you trust them, that could possibly be okay. But if you wanna turn it into kind of like the next self-sovereign step, um, those kind of wallets, and then there's a whole 'nother leather- layer of that that's like cold storage wallets where you put it somewhere that's like not connected to the internet to give you an extra layer of security. Um, but as far as just wanting to mess with the tech, potentially go use it at Steak 'n Shake, something like Mun is great. I've used Mun at Steak 'n Shake. It works great. It works seamless. So, but even if, um, Strike lets you send Bitcoin directly from Strike as well. So if you go into Steak 'n Shake and you wanna send it straight from Strike, it'll allow you to do that, too. So, uh, those are two things maybe as just like as a experiment set up to start kind of messing with stuff and testing stuff, those are two decent places to start. But there's a co- there's a whole litany of solutions out there. And then depending if you have, um, PayPal or Cash App, they've kind of gotten into Bitcoin game at this point because it just hasn't be... It's not nearly as, uh, maybe erudite as it used to be. So, um, if you already have Cash App on your phone, you can go just buy Bitcoin on your phone through Cash App. You can use it through Cash App, and just something that you're already familiar with, that's also probably not a bad starting point. Okay. Quick, um, there was something you said about Strike that I wanna ask a q- question about. You said that y- I just wanna make sure I'm understanding it right. You said that they own the pass keys, but we say what to do with them. Yeah. When- So imagine Strike, if you have Bitcoin on Strike, imagine like it's like money in your bank account. Um, the bank holds the money. You don't, you know, like you're, they have a liability to make whole on your deposit, but you don't actually have the money. The money is in the bank. And if you use something like Strike, it's equivalent to that. Your Bitcoin is at Strike, they're handling the security of it. You're just able to go in there and be like, "Hey, I wanna send some of my Bitcoin that you're holding to Steak 'n Shake," and they could facilitate that transaction. Uh, if you use something like Muun, which is a non-custodial wallet, which means there is not a custodian involved, it's basically just giving you the infrastructure to hold it yourself. That's gonna be like I have cash. So imagine Muun being like cash is on my phone, and I'm not asking for anyone's permission to use it wherever I want to use it. I'm just literally just doing a peer-to-peer transaction directly from my wallet to Steak 'n Shake. If I use Muun at Steak 'n Shake, it's as if I walked in there with a $20 bill and just handed it to them. If I use, um, Strike at Steak 'n Shake, that's kind of more equivalent to, say like an Apple Pay, where you're, Apple's facilitating the transaction, or Google Pay, Google's facilitating the transaction, and they're talking to your bank and they're, they're sending from your bank to them t- to their, the bank that Steak 'n Shake is using. But you're not in charge of that transaction as sovereignly as you would be as if it was cash. So that's kind of the difference, if that makes sense. So Strike would be like a bank, Muun would be like cash in your wallet. So it w- is Gotcha. Nevermind, nevermind. You answered the question. Nevermind. It just literally processed. That, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. Uh, it is, it is a good thing to highlight though, 'cause I have had... I had a buddy that had a Moon Wallet on his phone, and he upgraded his phone. He got the next iPhone. But since he didn't understand that concept correctly, when he upgraded the iPhone, he didn't move, um, the Bitcoin off of his Moon Wallet to a different wallet to then put onto his new phone. So when he handed the phone over, it was as if he handed his phone over with the cash just, like, underneath the case. It was like he could never get it back. Once they wiped the phone, it was just gone. So it is critical to kind of understand the difference between Bitcoin that's held, like, in an ETF or on an exchange or with a, a, any of these, like, kind of a, uh, kind of brokers of any kind. And if you use, like, a cold storage wallet or self, or self-custodial wallet on a phone, that's like having cash. So if you lose your phone, you lose that cash too. And there's, it's, it's kind of this double-edged sword of Bitcoin where the beauty of it is you can be in complete control of it. The downside of that is if something goes wrong, there's no customer service number. Bitcoin is literally just mathematics, so you can't call somebody. They don't have any record of you. They don't know who owns the wallets. They cannot restore them for you. So it does add this extra level of responsibility to the whole game. Um, but the benefit of taking on that responsibility is, um, the government also can't reach in and take that money, and they also can't reach in and triple the supply, and they also can't play those kind of money, money games. So, uh, little give and take there. It's just a ma- it's just a matter of empowering yourself by understanding how it works. Awesome. That's- I'm gonna, I'm gonna look into Strike. I- I'm curious about that. I'm curious about that. I did not know about the whole, the, the, like you explaining the cash versus the bank. That, that makes a lot more sense. I actually never looked at it like that, 'cause I think Coinbase is more kinda like Moon where... 'Cause I have passkey. That's the only way I can get into that thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, Coinbase is the same way. They- they hold the Bitcoin, and if you don't put it onto, like... It, it, it'd be, um, I don't know, to use that same bank analogy, if I go to, if I have, uh, Bitcoin on Coinbase, and I go to Coinbase and say, "Hey, Coinbase, I want to send, uh, from my Coinbase account, I wanna send Bitcoin to my Moon wallet," that would be the equivalent of me walking into Coinbase if it was a bank and saying, "Hey, I would like to take out $200," and they give me $200 cash and I walk out of Coinbase bank with that cash in my hand. That would be the same transaction as what we're talking about here. So- Gotcha as long as Coinbase is holding it, they're holding it, and it doesn't... I mean, people could get really doomsday scenario, and it, and it has happened. Like, when FTX collapsed, a ton of people lost everything with that because, you know, it wasn't, they, they weren't holding the, themselves. They were trusting FTX. And, you know, uh, you could say this about your bank. You could say this about anybody. If there's a third party involved, you're trusting them to do it correctly. If they don't, you could lose everything. But you could go to them, and then once you take it, it's yours. So the beauty about Bitcoin is it's kind of a, it's, you can hold it yourself like cash, but it's digital. So you can do, you can have all the benefits of a digital money that can be sent over the internet, like we talked about, sending it to Tokyo, sending it to Singapore, sending it wherever you want. You can have all the benefits of a digital, um, money that can be moved all over the world. But, uh, you don't, you also have that kind of added responsibility of it being like cash, where you could lose it like cash. And we're not, we're not wired to understand digital things that way, 'cause everything we've dealt with digitally up to this point was not a bearer instrument. It was always involving an intermediary. So, uh, it's just something to keep in mind and something to be aware of, and it's, it's the beauty of the innovation, and it's probably the hardest thing to kind of grok and understand. You've given me a lot to think about. Yeah, a lot to chew on, man. We're, we're at that hour. I told you about an hour is what it would take. So, uh, you got any one big last question, man? Or did we, we, did we do enough damage for one, for one, for one night? Oh, let me see if I can conjure something up. You don't, uh, you don't have to. If we hit it all, we hit it all. I just didn't, I wanted to make sure you didn't walk away with something, some burner in your back pocket that never got touched on. No, no. But I would like to, uh, I would like to maybe pick this up again eventually in the future if your schedule allows it. Um, I wanna, I wanna learn a little bit more about it, and I kinda wanna do some of these experiments with it to better understand it. That way I can come back and we can actually talk about more of like, I guess, the What would you call that? Oh my gosh. Like the technology side of it. There you go. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, like getting into the m- like do you know a lot about mining or anything like that and how that's done? I do. I've never mined myself because, uh, you know, it was... It's, I don't live in a jurisdiction that has like really, really cheap energy. I live in a city, so, uh, without the access to really cheap energy, it's not really that economical. Uh, particularly these days 'cause, uh, there's been a lot of, uh, competition for just kind of compute from kind of all these new AI data centers and things getting built out. Um, but I do understand kind of generally how it all works, so we can talk through it kind of conceptually and, uh, I'm just not gonna necessarily be able to hel- help you plug in a miner and get it online and hook it up to a mining pool and those kind of things. Man, come on. We, we can, we can make that, we can make that happen. No, I, I've actually- But I do, I do run, I do run a node. I do run a node, which is, um, a node is kind of like one step lighter than a miner. It just validates transactions and it keeps the entire blockchain on, on a, on a hard drive. So like I have a copy of the ledger so it can't die. I do, I do think that's important because the more places it exists, the harder it would ever be to destroy. So that's important. But the mining step is just, um, that's kind of the energy intensive part and it's great because it forces people to look for very cheap energy solutions all over the globe. There's people, you know, mining with waterfalls, there's people mining with, uh, the different temperature changes in the ocean. There's people mining with all kinds of like things that would've just gone untapped and unused. And I think there's gonna be some, um, real energy innovation that comes out of people kind of seeking out that stranded energy. That's gonna be a, a net plus for just kind of our energy production needs as a human race moving forward. I think it gives an incentive for people to kind of go pioneer and figure out those solutions. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of technical stuff that we did not get into, man. But, uh, I do do rehash episodes, man. I like to have people come on at like a regular interval just to kind of see how everything evolves and changes and how their thinking changes. So we will absolutely do that, man. We will have you back. Awesome, man. Heck yeah, dude. I'm, uh, I wanna, I wanna dabble in it a little bit and get, get back familiar a little more with it and actually do some transactions and stuff. But I'm, I really want, I'm curious about the mining, but, um- And m- and more details and understanding how that works. Not that I'm gonna go do it, 'cause I'm not, I am not the smartest cookie in the box. Um, but, uh- Hey, man. I, I'm, I'm right there with you. It is a fascinating world, though. 'Cause I would say, um, the other b- like, the last thing, and then I'll, I'll let you go here, but- Oh, you're all right um, another, an- another beautiful, um, kind of externality to kind of starting to look into Bitcoin is, uh, Bitcoin is this incredible, um, it's got this incredible way of touching everything. 'Cause money touches everything, and we're in such a, a rapid, um, changing technological universe, just as the place we find ourselves in kind of humanity's evolution here, is once you start looking into Bitcoin, you will accidentally learn about all kinds of other things. Like, I didn't really know a whole lot about energy transmission and, like, energy markets and, you know, methane capture and all these different things, but just being curious about Bitcoin, it's as if you walk into this brand-new library that's just chock-full of kind of interesting stuff to chew on.

1:03:40

So it's this, the positive externality is you might come, no matter what got you to do it in the first place, um, like I came to it from a debt economics lens. I ended up learning all about energy and all about cryptography and all, all these different things that I had no idea about. But just being curious about Bitcoin kinda led me there, which is just kind of another cool externality of, I think it's probably the best economics education you can give yourself, is just get curious about Bitcoin and then just follow that where it leads. Awesome. All right, last question. If you, if, if you could give me one uh, ba- based off economics, what would you say? Ooh, man, that's a, that's a long list- I- sorry, are you a reader? of potential answers, nerd. No, yeah, I've, I'm a big reader. Um, I would say, let me give you a, let me give you a few. So, um, economics in general, there's a, this book called Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It's an old book, but it, it makes kind of very normal, um, economic concepts pretty accessible, and it'll, like, it'll just explain, uh, say like rent control in three pages. Uh, I find that to be very eye-opening, but it's a little old. It's a little bit dense. Uh, the second one I think would be, uh, probably maybe Jeff Bo- Jeff, there's a guy named Jeff Booth that wrote this book called Pri- The Price of Tomorrow. He really breaks down this idea of the natural state of the free market is deflation. We should be seeing decreasing prices all around us. The reason we're not is because of this dysfunctional monetary system that's pushing prices in the other direction. It's not even really a Bitcoin book at all. He, um, he kind of breaks that problem down, and then he eventually kind of comes to Bitcoin as a potential solution to that problem. So I think that is very valuable. And then, um, there's kind of what, I don't know, I guess people might think about as almost like the Bitcoin Bible. It's called The Bitcoin Standard. It's a book called, uh, by Saifedean Ammous. It kind of goes through monetary history and things like that, and then kind of really breaks down why Bitcoin is kind of a solution to all of the pr- all of the kind of the fallibility of our monetary system, where it failed, and how kind of Bitcoin changes that. So that's three places to start. There's a whole bunch of others, man. Um, Lyn Alden is this macro analyst that, she's brilliant. She wrote this book called Broken Money, but the thing is, uh, it's a brick, dude. It's a great brick- but it's a brick. So- Yeah. uh, that might not be the first place to start, but yeah, I would start with maybe those, those three, and then, yeah, hit me up later. I, the, that list will, could grow, it, probably infinitely. But yeah, there's a lot of good resources out there. I would also say, too, just as accessibility, there's a lot of good podcasts out there, too. Um- I think the only problem with the podcast is maybe, uh, they have kind of evolved, 'cause they've been having this conversation for years. So just like anybody inevitably gets into a subject matter, it starts to get to a pretty high level. So if you try to tap into a lot of Bitcoin podcasts these days, they're gonna start talking about stuff that's gonna go straight over your head about, you know- Yeah quantum computing or this, that, or like, I mean, different, you know, different random number generators that ColdCard failed to have. And like, y- just like it's, it's a lot. So, um, the beauty, like what I try, the, the niche I try to fill here was I always talk to kind of the Bitcoin newcomer to make sure that the conversation goes down to the level that they're at. Because it's pretty hard to get on a fast-moving train. It's a lot easier to get curious and just have your questions answered directly. And I guarantee anyone... I was new to Bitcoin. Most of the questions I ever hear on this podcast are questions that I had myself at one point. And I'm, I never, I always like to remember where you came from kind of person, so like I always want to go back to that level. 'Cause, um, you know, us super Bitcoin nerds can talk to each other till we're blue in the face, but it's a growing network that's hopefully a peaceful revolution to kind of take back this monetary system that's no longer serving us, and that's only gonna happen if more people come to understand it. So, um, I thank you for coming on here now, dude. And if you know anybody- Absolutely or anybody listening knows anybody, uh, that might be willing to do the same, please reach out. I'd love to have anyone on the show, 'cause it's newcomers is the, uh, you know, is the purpose, so. Absolutely. Thank you. And then, uh, where can I, where can I find this podcast at? Uh, you can find it anywhere, dude. It's on any, anywhere you listen to podcasts, you'll find it there. Sweet. So whether it's Apple or Google or Spotify or, um, Fountain, if you're one of these kind of, uh, other kind of Bitcoin nerds. Fountain's like one you can actually pay Bitcoin, stream Bitcoin sats to people when you're listening. But so it's on there. But pretty much if you go somewhere that you listen to podcasts normally, the, uh, TCB podcast should be on there, man, so. Awesome, man. Well, thank you again. It was, uh, it was an honor being on here. I absolutely appreciate it. I wanna, wanna rehash this out and come back for maybe a part two when I'm a little more knowledgeable. Um, and then what, uh, we can do is we can just go from there, man. I'm curious about it. You answered a lot of questions, and my wife's about to have an earful when I go in. Sounds good, Gabe. Well, hey, man, I appreciate you taking some time, dude. I really do. Hey, man. Absolutely. Thank you for reaching out. All right, dude. Well, you take care, man. We'll talk to you soon. You as well. Have a good weekend. Yeah, you too, man. See you, buddy.