Jeff Booth vs Simon Dixon: Bitcoin's Abundant Future or Total Dystopian Nightmare?

The entire world is transitioning to this ginormous global surveillance state. And I think the vast majority will stay in prison. There's going to be a new elite class of Bitcoiners, and the rest are going to own nothing and be happy. These systems cannot coexist. One has to kill the other.

A monetary system based on inflation, which is theft, that lends money into existence, can't exist with the free market. I don't see hyperbitcoinization as a, as a realistic outcome. It doesn't disrupt power. That's where I think it does. I think it absolutely does. I'm living in the optimism every day, and it's unstoppable. Why is it unstoppable? Because of us. Our agency. The vast majority aren't going to take agency. They aren't going to hold Bitcoin and self-custody. Hope is stronger than fear.

Today's episode is a must-see. Joining me are Bitcoin visionaries Jeff Booth, the deflation-obsessed author of *The Price of Tomorrow*, and Simon Dixon, the investment banker turned geopolitical expert exposing the elites' dark secrets. By following the money, these two brilliant men clash on whether or not Bitcoin leads to a bright, abundant future or simply our escape hatch from an Orwellian nightmare as we transition to a multipolar world. Do we win or just survive? The white pill or the black?

All right, gentlemen, thank you so much for sitting down and having this conversation. Very excited to talk today. To kind of kick things off, I want to start by examining where do you think we currently are? And so even just taking a look at things, we've got Venezuela, Iranian protests, buying Greenland, continued war in Ukraine, Alberta is leaving, precious metals are ripping, UK thought police. Everywhere I look, there's more chaos in the existing system. So Jeff, starting with you, are we witnessing the existing systems collapse? Is this a controlled demolition and restructuring, or something else completely, entirely?

All of the above. Okay. Depending on your framework, all of the, all of the above. It is it. So that's why I continually start with the natural state of the free market is deflation. What, what I'm trying to do is, if you, if you agree with that statement, and people say, why do you keep saying that over and over all the time? Because what I watch, what I observe is people nod their head, yep, that's totally true. And then go back and give their energy to the other system, which must mean it's extracting their energy and time, right? Because we've, it means we've never lived in a global free market. We don't know what it, what it looks like. And that would, that would mean all of these other things are traps to it, to grab our attention. And, and, and we always fall into the trap. Otherwise, we would have lived in a free market. And so, so it, why I keep saying the same thing over and over and over again is because it's not resonating with enough people that they control their time. And, and now you have a one-way check valve into the AI algorithms, which are the control system that are that are literally bots that people are fighting with. These bots inside this thing, believing their time is valuable, and it's just making it stronger. So I chose a long time ago to, to know, yes, that's going to happen because human nature keeps on getting, like 5,000 years of human nature tells me that that's going to happen. But I'm going to spend my time doing something very different, doing and building the future that I want. The, and nobody can tell me I can't. Right. Once you know you have agency and you can move your time, when a whole bunch of people are going to get caught. But, and so the high level of this is, you know, from my book, you know, from everything I've said for a long, long time, that this system that people are measuring from is going to get increasingly and increasingly chaotic, because it has to be an exponential centralization against the force. I just said that is an exponential for a free market. And so, so what would that feel like? It would feel like exactly what you're describing. Wonderful.

Simon, your response, your thoughts?

All right. Maybe I'll just give an overview of where I think we are right now. And then there's some really interesting things to pick up on. And, so, as we currently speak, I've been talking for a long time about this concept of multipolarity. And the West is fully captured by what I call a financial industrial complex that has control over the military industrial complex and the technical industrial complex. Right now, the financial industrial complex is strategically weakening the dollar in order to completely do a strategy of fiscal dominance to pump the stock market as high as they can pump it in a K-shaped economy where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And, in order to manage that transition, they're breaking the Japan-Korea trade. And the Bank of Japan is starting to move the world into multipolarity. By weakening the dollar, they are breaking the pegs to the dollar. And the petrodollar is being slowly eroded into a 50/50 split with the petroyuan. And we are breaking the eurodollar by sucking up all of the, your, the dollars that were created in Europe, by, challenging the relationship between Europe and, America. At the same time, there is a movement to turn, destroy or destroy currencies in Central and South America, and launch currency wars so that you can have full penetration of stablecoins, which are going to be deeply integrated into programmable money and build a mass surveillance state. Those are the trends that we're witnessing right now. This is all because America became energy independent, started competing as an exporter. China rose and China built relationships where it could buy US oil because it needs oil and started investing in renewable energy. And so it predominantly built, you know, bought its oil from everyone it could that it was able to buy oil from. Now it's got the largest oil reserves in the world while building renewable energy in order to bring the price down and get it more independent. And that's propped up the Gulf sovereign wealth funds and, countries like Iran and so and Venezuela to a certain degree. Now we have behind the scenes this new transnational capital flow that comes from China money into Gulf sovereign wealth funds. This partnering with the captured West, which is owned by the financial industrial complex, they're investing in all the deals right now. And behind the scenes, we have all the powers that decided we're not going to World War Three. And that they're going to split the world up into multipolarity. And everybody has determined which regions is going to be controlled by who. And we are witnessing the theater we need to see in order to split that world up into this multipolarity. The bigger vision is that we are changing the entire world into energy, rare earth minerals, semiconductor chips, artificial intelligence, robotics, and the entire world is transitioning to this ginormous global surveillance state that's being built, where technology and centralization is going to be weaponized. And there is a resistance against it, which is decentralized technology. And right now, there is an attempt to centralize as much Bitcoin as possible in treasury companies, in ETFs, in margin loans, and the UN, sadly, Bitcoin is co-opted on the custody side. But in the self-custody side, we get to live in freedom. And sadly, Bitcoin won't take on the financial system because essentially the custody side has been co-opted into the financial system. And, and so all we can do at this stage is do what Jeff Booth said, which is focus on us, our community, our family, and opt out of the system, exit the system. And I think 95% of people aren't going to do that. And there's going to be a new elite class of Bitcoiners, and the rest are going to own nothing and be happy, in kind of where I think.

So I mean, let's, let's, because and there's actually, funny enough, inside that thing about, but I guess where we differ is, is this. And I think we're the same. It has to look like this because it's always looked like this. If you said the City of London and er and say, all of the control structure originating from a central bank that says I'm going to lend money, is going to be lent into existence and, and, and productivity is moving the other way, then, and productivity is deflationary. If money is lent into existence, it has to be kept on lending into existence forever, exponentially. And that would accrue a staggering amount of power at the top, essentially pulling strings at the top. And everybody would want to be at the top. If you watch Chamath interview, right, 150 people that run the world, I want it, not I want to fix it. I want to be one of them. Right, from the same, from the same system. So, so I agree with you 100%. It would always look like that. And then you have a new global elite that is the owners of technology. Right. The stuff we use that is now the entire power spectrum. And there actually is some of those people, and I include Peter Thiel, you know, and Musk and everything else. It's just a trade of these old people at the banking cartel at the top for the new technologists at the top. And that's the fight that's in. And, and all of these other things are some, some things of this all made stronger by our actions within it, believing that there's some other enemy other than us. Right. And the only thing I take issue with on what you said, and it's actually not really an issue, it's because different people will be attracted or motivated to different messages, and all messages need to be heard. So, so in one, in one thing, I'm celebrating your message to, to, to hopefully shock people out of it. For me, in a message where everybody's in fear all the time, fear, fear does stand out, right? And it captures a whole bunch of views and locks them in it. But when, and when I, what I worry so much about it from that message is it locks them in it. They believe they want to see, and it's not them. They want to believe it's somebody else. They want to believe it's Trump. They want to believe it's Biden. They want to believe it's Elon saving them. They want to believe the banking cartel is going to save them. They look at these and they celebrated tons of video, tons of views, all of those things capturing more of their attention. Right, from that fear that their parent being paralyzed in him. And you and I both already know. Right? They're 5,000 years of human history. If we've never had a free market, then the odds of us having a free market are, you would expect to be very low, right? Because it's always been us and we've always been captured. Gold gets repriced. There's always the same people at the top. It constantly goes back because of our actions within it. And, and, and so I ask myself in this, and is part of, and I want to go really deep on this topic, very deep on this topic. Because because this topic lends into everything else and so on. So push back on if different areas. But I knew for sure that if Bitcoin was just the open protocol at the bottom, where open to decentralized protocol on the bottom, and if people remained in self-custody, that it would fail, right, in time. And why would it fail? Because the surveillance state and the capture, the move to were for Bitcoin, which most people would be measuring in the broken money, and they would be selling their Bitcoin and centralizing it and trusting that BlackRock and others had their back. I'm not saying these are bad people, I'm just saying that that move, if you couldn't kill Bitcoin, you'd have to co-opt it through stablecoins, through everything else, through the regulatory complex. You would have to. And I knew if it was just that, that the version of Bitcoin that we talk, talk about would fail, right, at some point. That system would, with all its energy and its surveillance over us, it wouldn't try right now to cause a chain fork. It would do it at a later date when it's centralized enough and it had enough, it had enough power to cause a chain fork and many people that were formerly no way this is being centralized would be caught into the co-option. And do that and you'd have a different control system. And this is why this partly why we created EcoDeath, right? This is partly why I tuned my energy into, okay, you have to have privacy on top of Bitcoin. You have to have transactions on top of Bitcoin. The infrastructure layer has to exist on top of Bitcoin. And, and this is like four years ago that the, the free market and capital started moving into. And probably before that. Right. So what did the Cypherpunk Manifesto say? It had privacy in it 21 times in that manifesto. And if you think, think, and I'm going to borrow something that Obi says from Fetty, if Satoshi was walking among us today, you could have, you could have power through control or privacy. And why the Cypherpunks understood what what that means is he could walk around us today and we wouldn't know because he has total privacy. And for us to, to escape this digital matrix, we require, we require privacy on top of that. That privacy, because of incredible people fighting for this now, it doesn't appear to be needed because most people are still measuring Bitcoin price go up. But this is already unstoppable on a layer, layer three. The people right now could go and create privacy on top of Bitcoin for their communications and privacy. And all they need to do is move. And with every move, more people will move in. And so the, the yin and yang, the creation of the creation comes from the pain of people getting stuck in this. And that's why how the free market has always worked. People believed it was always going to look something like this. What the, what the opportunity to solve that problem for people is what we, what we demand in the free market. And those people are always way in front of where everybody else is. So that's, so why can we know exactly where it's going? Right. And no, most people will get caught in that, but be totally optimistic. Is because I'm living in the optimism every day and it's unstoppable. Why is it unstoppable? Because of us. Our agency.

Simon, your thoughts on that? I'm curious if you agree with the sentiment that it's unstoppable.

Yeah. And so, you know, this kind of comes from. So I left investment bank in 2006. So for 19 years, I've split this, probably split in the middle into. So when I first left, I discovered how the financial system really works. And I went into advocacy mode. And advocacy mode was, I want everyone to understand what a scam the scheme. And people, when people say they're, go through the whole journey, they hate you, they love you, it costs you money. You go through that whole journey. And then I reached the point where I realized there's no political solution, there's no changing banking. I ain't going to change the bankers, like there's. And so I went to, how do I build the future? And I went through that transition. And so I went and tried to build a non-fractional reserve bank. And I've shared my story, but essentially the Bank of England chased me out of the country. I had to leave the country. It wasn't possible. And then they said, you're got to put 60 million in the Bank of England, and then you're going to build it on top of Barclays, and then you get to frack. They get to create the fractions and you get to be, you know, the reserves. And you know, so I went through that and that bankrupted me just going through that process. I was very wealthy in a career and I was bankrupt. And it was at that moment that I discovered Bitcoin. And so now with 2011, spoke at the first Bitcoin conference. Bitcoin was $3. And throughout that whole career, I was investing in every company I could find that would help Bitcoin get out to as many people, whether as exchanges in Africa, three bit paisa or, you know, coin in India or Venezuela or Argentina or Kraken or Bitstamp and in Europe, in Bitso in Mexico, you know, and all I wanted to do was Bitcoin was treating me well. And we pivoted the bank into helping startups raise finance in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Now we're at the stage where, the VCs came in, you know, and I got that reality. Okay, we built the industry. Now the VCs have taken over. Now, essentially, they're all banks, they're all co-opted. They're all launching shitcoins. They're all leveraging. They're all doing Bitcoin back loans. They're all public companies. They've all got a bunch of VCs. They're all controlled by the financial industrial complex and,

Here, can I pause you there? And I think, and I think it requires that because when, and when we say all right, it's easy to, because of in-group out-group bias, it's easy to put that. I can tell you flat out, we think differently. And I own a VC. I'm a part of a founder of a VC, and it looks very different. We play against exactly what you just described. But now if you think about your path through this and, and some of the. We all make mistakes too, right? And if you look at both funding Celsius and getting and understanding what that looked like from a bad actor, and then what you did to try to allow people to, to see the bad actor and help people through through a, through the, through this. And a lot of people still blame you for that or whatever when it's not you, you're, you invested in a bad actor and what it, what it really is saying is our own, not yours in this case, but not bad actor. Right? Motivation. Most people will take the money right over and over and over again. And the money is such a thing in the financial industrial complex that you're explaining has always been the money. And people sell out over and over and over again. But what I can tell you for sure is not everybody sells out. And if enough people don't sell out and are creating, this parallel ecosystem that is that is imposing the free market, that is, that is adding privacy, is adding payments, everything else. That is a totally different reality. Now, I understand in, in what you just said, how hard it would be to believe that from a world that everyone sells out. Right. But, but I can, I can guarantee you. Right? I can guarantee you this is happening and it will not be stopped. Right. And why? Why, I can guarantee you that from this night that the challenge, and we can go through some of the risks. Let's go deep into the risks. But my agency in the, in this thing, as well as most of my, the people I know and spend time with are moving this forward. And if you didn't measure in price, if you didn't measure in, how much is being acquired by by centralized, if you, if you measured in what happened last year into adoption, what happened in actual things that actually broke with it, that that can't be stopped already. You go, it'd take your breath away. But most people aren't. They're measuring price of U.S. dollar, so they're getting centralized.

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Yeah. And so I think we're at the same place because, what I was going to say is I've been through that cycle of advocacy when it was needed, then it's no longer needed and it becomes just analysis. It's like nothing stops this train. Yeah. Know, whatever I say, does it make a difference? Yeah. Time in Dixon, I feel good. Yeah, yeah. I can say that changes, changes anything. Because we've hit a critical mass. And so then you move to analysis and once you're in analysis, it's like, well, I'm irrelevant. But what is actually happening? And so what I try to do is help people understand what actually happening. And then it comes down to the same message, exactly what you're saying, Jeff. Which is the vast majority aren't going to take agency. They aren't going to hold Bitcoin and self-custody. And there's only going to be a few people that experience the freedom that Bitcoin has given. And that is how it has always been and all. And always will be. And it never, it never changes in that sense. And so all of my advocacy, you know, has switched to look, here's the analysis. This is what the industry is right now. And now your job is to just focus on your Bitcoin and self-custody. You're investing in more decentralized technology that makes things better. You're running your own labs, you know, you're doing self-custody, you're running nodes. You're figuring out how to make payments with Lightning Network, you're figuring out how to support privacy systems. You're creating circular economies with your own communities and figuring out how to be independent. You're supporting your local farmers, yeah, from these big companies. You're buying from a smaller to, to whatever degree you, you're moving your time to Nostr instead of Twitter, or you're moving the, like, more and more. Your, your part, your part. Both the map and the territory of the emergent system being created. And you are, and you matter. Your time matters. If you want to get your. Yeah, yeah. Key thing. And I think we're seeing the same thing here. The my whole job now is to help people understand what's happening in the system, because it really scares me that there is a massive majority of Americans that believe Trump's going to make America great again. And he's not actually supporting this mass surveillance state. And all his money is being made in the Middle East. And he's short the dollar with Bitcoin. And the West is on decline significantly. And everything he says is to give people hope, that if they actually followed listen to what he said versus what he's doing, they would realize that, that they're being led down a path of, of destruction, of real destruction. And so people need to protect themselves. Yeah. So I would, and again, we get to the same place through different lenses. It's just a matter of how do you take actionable steps to.

So let's, let's go one step deeper. And I'm just, I'm just running a node. I'm Bitcoin. I'm a public figure on Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is an open, decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy. And it's just that it's layer one. And it only stayed layer one. What that would mean by the other actions that we talked about is, is everything would centralize. You would hear a version of Bitcoin is, it's the best asset, right? And, and you would regulate to it and you would tie the control system in and over time it would centralize more and more and more. Right. It would have to. Right. Because you'd essentially have a broken money system that is that is the opposite of what free, free market and technology should be making prices higher. That has to make prices higher or fail high or reset and do it again. Right. And, and so that would have to create more control faster. And if you're part of any part of that, Bitcoin is just an asset. You're part of that without knowledge of it. That's what you're saying. Right. And then that would develop so much surveillance because Patriot Act, all of these things are designed to, to have surveillance into the, into the thing that's being centralized that would have so much surveillance that it would have it be a real risk at some point down the road to run a node. Right. Because you can imagine a surveillance state with, with the likes of Palantir, everything else, it's moving more and more faster and faster because of AI. It should be a productivity driver, that everything's getting cheaper in your life. But it's the opposite. But you're operating through that. That would have to create a risk at some point. And because most people, because because Bitcoin moved ahead and then everybody was running nodes and everybody who understood it. Cypherpunks understanding this a long time ago knew this risk. And they, and they, and they drove this out and you were one of them and they drove this out and they, and there were too many nodes all distributed around the world to try to co-opt, to try to co-opt Bitcoin. But if you knew that and you were playing a different game, what would you do? That's kind of what it, where my, I ask all the time, and all of your control came from stealing from other people that didn't know they were. They were celebrating your control. You would, you do this at this? That would be the risk. So how would you prevent that risk? You would have to create effectively, if Lightning, Liquid, Spark, Ark, you'd have to create a layer that this became a medium of exchange. Now you have a different frame of reference. You have part people in a frame of reference as I just want to make money in the, in the, in, in this system of control. Right. And you have a different frame of reference that this is becoming a new protocol stock of the world, that it's repricing everything and all productivity in. It is essentially you have by owning Bitcoin, you're part, you own a piece of the universe. All of us, all of our productivity floating, flowing to you as, as more ideas flow, data that keeps on happening. But for that to exist, it would have to be money. It would have to be it. And for it to exist as money against this control system, it would have to develop privacy. So now let's look it through what would happen to human beings through this, through this lens and all of the different time periods on how this would go, go by. If you first saw it as only a technology, and, and technologies come along that are winner take most until a new technology creates a new winner take most, you would easily look at Bitcoin and you would say, you be Vitalik, and you couldn't change Bitcoin, they wouldn't let you. So I'm going to create a new technology and essentially defraud everybody and say, my technology is better than Bitcoin. Everything else. And a whole bunch of people would be believe that because they were really chasing money, right? They didn't understand as a protocol stock. And they were, they saw it as a technology and their view of what the new thing was would influence them. Bitcoin would just keep on marching on. Right. You could, and that would happen over and over again as millions of coins and other people did that, but unaware of what Bitcoin really was. There is no second Bitcoin. Now you take an asset and a view of an asset, which would be perfectly relevant of money has always concentrated until we've changed my. And money is always a piece of paper, an instrument on top of that thing that consolidates and from that view, what is an asset, right? You need an asset backing money because you could never store your money in money. Right? That's why. Right. The asset allows you to disrupt the right. And so you, and the world's always looked. But that would be a really strong mental model for most people caught in that same mental model. Right. And so they would naturally, with not good, bad people, just get caught in that mental model and believe that mental model because it would fit with their mental model of what the world would look like, and it would reinforce to them. So now what's the risk to that mental model? And what if Bitcoin wasn't just that it was a protocol developing in layers, and that protocol developing in layers? How did privacy and how did these things to privacy? Then it would destroy that mental model in time because as that mental model gets centralized and people take more risk, the with to their Bitcoin, there won't be less Bitcoin. Here's why. When that comes to do a chain fork to capture. And there's enough people with agency and privacy and a circular economy doc group over here will say, fuck off, right? You do you, and that coin will go to zero in the end time. It might take a long time. And that's why I, I for at least for me, I can't give any of this other stuff any credit. Any. It just is. It's I just, I'm going to go do, I'm going to go do the things I'm going to do in the new world. I'm going to build, build there, spend my time in agency. They're accelerating that ecosystem. And, and, and hopefully more people join. Right. But there's already enough people there. I suspect not that some people won't try to change this and everything else. There's already enough people there that this is all everything I just described will happen in time for sure, because human nature demands it. Yeah. My my confidence in, Bitcoin succeed. It's like, you know, it's 100%. Yeah. It's, it's more the mission has changed to get as many people in, in, in the community that's actually going to defend Bitcoin, the way that it was actually designed. And it doesn't really matter as long as there's enough of us. So I would love for you to, to for yourself, specifically for yourself, go create a federation unfairly. Because, because, because by doing so, you extend privacy into the network. It's almost like a completely private, your communications are completely private. Anybody that you're here, that's in your side of your federation is also completely immune to everything. They have privacy in their communications, they have privacy in their money. And that's another layer on top of Bitcoin. And we could talk, but that's just one aspect of this. But you can now imagine now the reason that Bitcoin stayed decentralized and secure, bounded by energy is the nodes. So now what if you created all of these banks, hundreds of thousands of banks that are all tethered to Bitcoin but all completely private and nobody can hack them? It's impossible to. Every single one is like a node in Bitcoin that extends the nodes into another layer and then another layer. And, and that was that was four years of brutally hard attack to be able to deliver that when it needed to be delivered. And I think most people today don't even understand what, what it's already there, there. But it's impossible. It's open source. It's, it's already literally impossible to stop. I couldn't, I couldn't stop at being on the board if I tried. It's, and so the more people that use it, the more it expands and you create it and you create a network effect and a freedom.

I want to pull apart there for just a second to. Because I want to get some clarity on something. Your guys's view on the future and kind of where we're going seems mostly aligned, but I want to make sure that, I had one point and confirmed Simon in your outlook of things. And, Jeff, correct me if I get this wrong. I'm kind of interpreting Jeff more of yours is that the new system will impose a free market on the existing one. And I'm kind of interpreting that is that, like, essentially the old system will fall and collapse and will basically everyone will be into the new system. And, Simon, from your perspective, I'm viewing it more as, Bitcoin is the escape hatch from the existing system, but does not necessarily take out the existing system. Like they might exist in parallel, or it's your way to kind of survive in that time of tyranny.

Yeah. So I believe that we're witnessing the fall of the West, which is propped up by the dollar. And we're moving to a multipolar world. That doesn't mean the world collapses. It means that capital flows to a new power structure. And so most people would analyze from the perspective of, if America ends, the world ends. That's a very American-centric view of the world. What it means and what is happening right now is there is a capital outflow, and other currencies are being empowered as America is being weakened. Sorry, the dollar's being weakened and people are escaping to escape valves. You know, we've got a short squeeze on the paper contracts on silver. We've got the central banks selling off their US dollars and Treasuries for gold. And then we've got an attempt to centralize Bitcoin in the key moment. And it's interesting because the short squeeze you get in silver, you've realized the financial industrial complex built everything they need to short-term press the price of Bitcoin. Obviously, I have no doubt you, you can't do that long-term. And we have, you know, Bitcoin has its moment. But they built all the contracts to control the short-term price of Bitcoin. Right now, and we're just witnessing a new set of fiat currencies that will all go through that same cycle. And a paper derivative complex built around Bitcoin and the, the financial powers hedging themselves. So it doesn't matter what happens to Bitcoin. They'll be fine. Just like they are. It doesn't matter what happened with gold. They'll be fine. So I don't see hyperbitcoinization as a, as a realistic outcome. I just see it as a way of boycotting the system, exiting the system, and if you hold it in the right way, then you get to stay away from power. But it doesn't disrupt power. I think, and that's where I think it does. Like I think the, I think it absolutely does. It's the, it's the way. But, but that power that's disruptive for us to by us choosing our time with the new system and more people choosing the time. And we're very early in that. And so all of the things you described as people give their energy to those people, not realizing it's their energy, it's them. So how can they complain about somebody else when it's them operating in the system of theft until they realize that and move to the other side, all of these things will happen, right? All of the things you described, they're just going to be chaotic. And I can't tell you where or what, how that looks because it's impossible. They said that many times. How do you measure which snowflake caused the avalanche? Right. It's going to look like this. And it's going to be more chaotic as this new system emerges throughout the world, and more people can just free themselves, but don't know that they can free themselves.

Yeah, I guess I see more of a operate on principle with the, you know, who, what will be the percentage that will free themselves versus who will stay in prison? So let the majority will stay, but let's go there. I think actually at first that's true. But if you think about your journey to get at this understanding, my journey to get this understanding that I was in prison, that I thought I lived in a construct that was a free market, that wasn't my own journey. And me decide. So. So then I'm in that I have to also realize I was once they, they are the same as me, right? We're all. So I'm no better, no worse. Made the same mistakes. It was such a vague idea that I'd never lived in a free market. Right. And all of my construct of the entire. Yeah, it was hard for my own cognitive dissonance to understand and then let go of and then choose. And so if I had to do it and, and, and spent 15,000 hours trying to kill that client and what I would do from all of that power. Right. And what it would look like on the other side. And then I suspect a whole bunch of people have to do the same thing. And that's that's us moving our time to to the new system. So I'm no better, just earlier on that path. The Pareto principle cannot coexist. These systems cannot coexist. One has to kill the other. You. And it has to. That's why privacy is so important. You either live in a world that's a centralized, authoritarian control with AI that extracts everything from you and tells you how to live, essentially. And I had that conversation with somebody very senior in that, that technology complex who was challenging me, and I said, well, what are you going to do? Is all the jobs are gone. We're going to tax the robots. What? And they actually said, we're going to tax the robots. In other words, I'm going to create an infrastructure of control that that locks in the infrastructure of control. And everybody believes they get a little stipend from that UBI, universal basic income, the whole same structure. You hear it nonstop in, insight, inside this. But what I'm getting at, the person I was talking to isn't actually a bad person. He is just so caught up in this, a belief system that a whole bunch of people are caught up, that he can't see the other thing happening. But that system that you just described, it can't be 80/20. It's 100% or 100%. You can. Why a. Yeah. Think why? Be. It without evil. And we're on life, you know, where we're not going to enter into a utopia where everything's. I'm not saying. Yeah. And, yeah. And the first page, my book I wrote, I do not believe in utopia. Right. I also don't believe in dystopia. Human in, in us, in each of us, we have both, right? We have. We. Right now? There is dystopia in utopia. I think it's a matter, I actually truly believe it's a matter of your perspective. Your view is responding back to your view. The world I see right now, every role I see right now, and most of my time is true, truly in love and abundance like. And it's in, it reflects back. It. That's true. And we're seeing Palestinians in Gaza that were literally starved, bombed, and, and they're still have their faith in God and their, but, you know, you know, so, so it is, it is definitely an internal game. And that are living in dystopia. So the, term what I'm saying is that systems cannot coexist and, and why for this system, Bitcoin to thrive, it has to be private as well. So people move. So they're not scared to move into the new system. And, and that new system takes the control and power from the other system. Just like Satoshi, by staying private, did it. It, it, it ultimately kills the other system. But an inflationary system, a monetary system based on inflation, which is theft. You know this, right? That lends money into existence, can't exist with the free market. What is the free market value? It values your service to somebody else. And so that, that, that thing is emerging and it's emerging. And the bigger service, the more value you provide, you can get paid. Right. And the payment and the amount of money that you make in Bitcoin, then somebody else competes with you to provide more value. The margin itself creates the opportunity for people. So, so solving problems in that world becomes solving problems, the biggest problems for other people. But those things can't coexist. The two systems. Get that coexist. When you to 80. When you say 80/20. If I, if I made Jeff, would it be this is real oversimplification, but would one way of saying it why it's necessarily winner take all between the two systems is you can't have a prison control system with an open door. Yeah. Yeah. That's so, so the. And the more that the control system exerts its power. And if you look at, and I'm just using analogs for this because you, there it is no one to Bitcoin. We've never lived in a system like this. But if you look at what happens in, in very authoritarian countries, dictatorships and such, and you look at their money, the people say, here's the exchange rate. There's always a black market rate, right? Still a sub in the overall system. But what that black market rate is, the real rate is telling you what people, the people are doing to try to get around it. So now if you have this totally different independent system that's decentralized and secure and private and, and people, and this is where I need to say what Simon's saying will happen, right? People will get caught, they'll get caught again. They'll get caught. They'll take Bitcoin loans, they'll get caught in this. So give away the Bitcoin. All of these things will happen. I'm, I'm not dissenting that at all. But as they blow up over and over and over again and redistribute them to the people who just moved, more people will move. And in time, more people will move and they will see that they can actually spend their time in an honest network that's growing, and they'll want to be around. And it'll create such polarization between different nation states, power brokers that today it will threaten those, and they'll try harder to lock them in, as they try harder to lock them in through all of this same types of things. Simon saying it will create more value for the people getting out. Right. That's the way the free market works. You will know. So. So, and so the only, the only thing, the caveat is Bitcoin stays decentralized and secure. And so if that's the only thing, that's the caveat, then where would the risks of centralization be? And that's what you have to explore.

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Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is, I, I've never seen a capitalist economy or a communist economy. It's always a hybrid economy and a degree of socialism. Sometimes it's socialism for the poor, other times it's socialism for the rich, you know, and we, we have, these, these different models. But I've never seen a free market. And the, if you, if you look at, if you look at, for example, let's say gold, we know the limitations and Bitcoin addresses those limitations. But you had gold, you then had, you know, the oh shit coin that was created on top of it called the pound. And then they rinsed the pound and then they created a new node in the Federal Reserve. And then they created a new shared coin called the dollar. Totally agree. That's that's city. That's that's really a lemon. But if you look at that gold just centralized into fewer and fewer central banks and nodes, in the end. So, so, so you came to the same thing that I can't came to. If Bitcoin centralizes and this other thing doesn't happen, it will fail. Or, and when you say fear, when say a feel for a bunch of Bitcoiners, they will feel rich inside the new system of control. Until this surveillance state makes them not rich too. So in, in that, you said it just like gold did. But what you also said. And this is where it's so important, we don't have a mental model for the free market. Every ism that you just said, communism, socialism, and everything else is a construct from a control system. And all our books tell us and everything we've ever read in the past tell

us, which side were right on? Well, making the control system stronger. It exploits us over and over and over again. Now, why we go to war or why we believe. Why we believe. It's those people and those people and why we we constantly do this and nothing changes at the top, which you explore really well, is because we've never actually had a, a global free market. We've never had something decentralized and, secure that imposes, not, not might impose, imposes discipline. The decides.

Now, the only caveat isn't how we think about this. The only caveat is it stays decentralized and secure. So now you spend all your time, how do I make sure it stays decentralized and secure? How do I make sure I invest in privacy tech? How do I make sure that I'm helping people get to their agency inside that system? Because it's the only thing that, and then then even though we've never had a mental model to describe what I'm saying, that's that. That is, if you just carried what, what free market would look like, that is a world you live in.

Yeah. I guess, yeah. The, you know, the, the closest to a free market that I've ever lived in is when I was full Bitcoin in self-custody. I moved to an island, I built a castle, I stayed, you know, and and that's the closest. But I still have a degree of social contract that the government is going to keep the island safe. Totally. There's still a certain degree of, you know, I need to make sure that the farmers are working and that the electricity and the energy comes into the island, and there's a bunch of things that can really mess up my, my, my free market.

But, you know, and I guess what, the first thing I think is worth framing for now is, either way, whether I'm right or Jeff is right, Bitcoin still succeeds, right? It's just we're talking about the degree of success it will have. But there is a real thing that we need to be aware of. Either, you know, if I've understood Jeff B's forecast, right, we all end up there, or we don't, you know, but we all need to have a whole community using Bitcoin the way it was designed, and investing in all the things that, you know, keep at what Jeff Price was just, talking about. And, you know, I guess you have a mental model that the superior will win and everyone will end up over there. I'm betting a minority will end up over there, and it will still be fine anyway.

Yeah. So my, my mental model isn't who I'm in time. People will do this because it gives them better benefits in time. But we do what you described as your castle on the island and everything else is. If you're a castle on an island and you know this, it relies on a central control structure that gets worse and worse and worse. You're not safe with the castle on the island, is what you're is what you're saying. And it's true. And the point is, and and you have to look at every through every other model of, of humanity. Right. The, the free market, cannot be exploitative because you choose what gives you more value. And the entrepreneur who solves more value wins you. And then society wins and prices fall. It cannot. It's impossible. There's no way to create monopolies. There's no way to create. Your idea of communism or socialism, which are constructs that aren't the free market. Capitalism is not today capitalism. It's crony capitalism that's an exploitation of that same thing with a belief system of a whole bunch of people that think it's the opposite. Right.

And so, so, so we've always lived in a zero-sum game where you got richer, not by operating in the free market, by exploiting somebody else. Right? Living in the zero-sum game, they had to get poorer for you to get richer. Waste. We took gold. We took, we took Greenland. We took other things. We do. We take countries. We put them in slavery. We put, it we're at the top, we're at the top. And we're so used to that zero-sum game that it seems normal for us and all our history books are inside that zero-sum game. And it looks and it feels like we're the good guys because we're the capitalists, when it's really just a zero-sum game. Right?

And and so. The even the whole thing of capitalism being good. Like, when I look at the history of capitalism, most people think of Adam Smith and a Wealth of Nations. But prior to Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, there was a whole, you know, dark ages in Europe and a golden age of Islam. And massive amounts of study into the importance of, you know, the original, invisible hand was actually God. It was just changed into a concept of the free market. And originally the studies before that, they had the concept of ethics. And, you know, what what products, harmful to society. And if you look at today, you know, whether it's pornography, prostitution through OnlyFans, gambling, degeneracy, you know, things that are harmful to the body world, all these different things, I think, I'm not sure that free market is, is a reality. It's taken out the concept of ethics.

Yeah. So it's, it's so interesting that that and I mean this in a, in a very serious way. And this was why this conversation go deeper and deeper and deeper. Because I see your genius in, in helping people understand this and what it looks like. But then I see then I see what would the world look like if it was exploitative at that level? Right. And you were in it and all the monopolies were controlling what you thought. I wrote in my book. I watch your words. They become your actions. What your actions. They become your, sorry. I watch George. They appear to watch your thoughts. They become your words. Watch your words. They become your actions. Watch your actions. They become your character. Watch your that character become your destiny. But what about what influences your thoughts above that? And so inside what you're describing right now, influencing your thoughts. Are all of these central control. Things that are making the world worse and worse and worse. All of the things you just mentioned, food production, medical pornography, all of these things are controlled by the same structure at the top. And and you just mentioned that that's inside capitalism, and it's not. It's the whole thing is based on theft. And it would look exactly like you think it looks like from that system. It would have to be it would have to it would get worse and worse. Worse.

So somebody as brilliant as you in in this thing, as genius as you still pulls that system into what a different system would operate like. And that's what that's the trap. It's so hard to actually pull ourselves up out of that system, because it's capturing our thoughts and attention. It's capturing our mind from this same thing. And we think we look at everybody else inside the system, and we think they're crazy and they think we're crazy, right? And the question comes, if everybody else believes their reality from that same system, then then it must be infecting me. To where? What does that look like? Where did we where did I actually remove? Where do I step out and stop moving more of my time into that? And what we just described here is why. You just know how crazy early we are. Like crazy early. Now that creates two things. I it's too big to deal with. I just put up a wall and I'm going to just live my life in the same thing and go to sleep at night and haunt and live in the fear porn, or I'm going to do something about it and I'm going to create value. And yeah, I'm going to live in an optimistic world, and each person finds that time in their own time.

Yeah. And, you know, I think it's, it's a really key thing. I think, I think the algorithm has driven people, to a world where they're fully distracted with things that aren't going to help them, and that they can't control. And that's becoming more and more prevalent. And, you know, the more time that people can spend in, Right. It starts with me. Then I influence my family, and then my family needs a community around me. And what location do I need to be in in order to optimize that? And what's the tools that I need around me in order to have the sovereignty where we can defend, against all the things that could be harmful for myself and my community and my family. And if people spend their time there, they're going to be okay. But most people aren't spending their time there. So the key, the message is heard.

If I, if I may, I want to just throw some an idea in there because I'm absolutely loving. You have no idea how much I'm loving this conversation, especially because I came to Bitcoin as an advocate beforehand, not after the fact. And one of the things that I think is really key to the distinction, and why Jeff is putting it as a winner take all and it enforces the rules there. And where it's coming from is that it's kind of this idea. Let's see if I can illustrate it correctly. Here is that if Bitcoin remains decentralized and secure and it's held in self-custody and it's private as well to there, then that means that any interaction, any transfer of Bitcoin between people has to be voluntary. Right. And so the the ethics and morality of voluntary consenting exchange is baked into the bake. The base of the protocol is no longer a choice to act in a, in a moral or ethical way. You have to because you cannot take it from them. And the net consequences of that, which has never existed in human history before, is phenomenal in the sense, because when you have real wealth creation, the reason, like all value is subjective, we all know our Austrian economics are all good. They're all value is subjective. So wealth creation results from when both parties have a perceived increase in value. And the only way that you would ever exchange your Bitcoin with those conditions met is because you saw an increase in value and they saw an increase in value. And so it takes consensual value exchange and wealth creation and bakes it into the base protocol, where it's no longer about whether you choose to act in a good and moral way. It's literally enforcing kind of, cooperative ethics on the population at large. And, Nathan, if you just carry that forward. That's why it's such a risk to the existing control system. No matter where that control system exists. And and what we have to recognize is our time within that system. And what if we're spending in that system and we're doing everything in that system? We are the control system. And so it's that is hard is that it was it is so harsh. But the mental model that you what your what you just described there is also true. Right. And we eat in it now. It only comes down to agency. It literally comes down to agency.

And so I, I watch even in Bitcoin I watch people. But let's say it your, your your amount of time in a day. Right. Let's call it you have 14 hours in your day. And I watch people spend the majority of those 14 hours inside the other system feeding the energy, feeding the beast of the algorithm when and and then I watch other people just do something, move their time and the people that have moved their time and you're one of them, right. And others that are that are that those nodes that have moved their time are providing value to other people. Are you could do it any way. You don't need to wait for me to do something. You could provide value to somebody else. You could start a meetup group in your own region. You can tell your local store, hey, if you accept Bitcoin, I'll start paying. In Bitcoin you can start and then the next or next hour. And I'm watching people do this around the world and they're creating crazy value and their lives are expanding. And then I'm watching most people to Simon's point, gets stuck in the algorithm. And both choices are available to to those people. All that there any single person any at the minute. And so people people often ask me, well, why do you feel so confident? Why do you feel just like Simon? I know this is going to be true because I'm not just influencing it like I'm both being a part of the world. I want to see and influencing the direction of the world. I want to see with my most valuable thing, my time. Why would I spend my time in doing anything opposite?

Simon. Yeah. So I think, I'll push back slightly in that, I'm not sure mass encode fixes everything, because, you can have Bitcoin as it's designed. And somebody, if you put a bunch of Bitcoiners in one environment and another environment, some of them, will use the mass and code, build a community and uphold a social contract. In another environment, they'll put a gun to you, they'll steal your Bitcoin and they'll figure out how to get your private key. And so it can be confiscated, because mass and code doesn't enforce. Why would we do that? And so historically, how that's been solved is the smaller the community, the more accountability to your fellow community. Or you believe you're going to burn and die in hell if you do that. So you don't do that, you know? And so to me, the free market means that you can just steal someone's Bitcoin and murder them.

So can I can I carry on to that? Because I think it's a I think it's a important. I think a lot of people are stuck there. So it's worth describing their, the, and I think you're right to or a bunch of this, but what it does is it imposes a cost to of the attacker that is way higher costs today because the person could just say, fuck off, they could be murdered, right? So they could say, fuck off is the more and more they win privacy preserving, the more and more they want to know. Like try to find Satoshi today, right? So the more power they have in privacy and the more and that's going to expand faster and faster and faster and in in sense and honest network. So all of the things you just described are fear capitalizing on our fear and why we don't want to move there is because the world we've always lived in, inhabited always was a zero-sum game. And that's how you attacked it, right? It always did it. It did exactly what you said. And people stayed stuck because they didn't want to just be attacked or saved, hidden or repressed. But this imposes exactly, exactly. But this is a different protocol. It's not gold in a bank. It's words inside your head. It's in it's private words inside your head. And beyond that, it's privacy. And this that extends that extends that technology stack, that protocol stack to something we've never seen. So because we've never seen it and we're a part of this thing we've never seen, it would be hard to imagine that that new thing imposing that. But that's what it does impose over time. I'm not saying there's not the wrench attacks. I'm not saying that they're anything else. But even those things that will happen on the way through, it doesn't change Bitcoin at all. Still imposes this. And more and more people, more and more people that having that will more moved, more privacy.

Yeah. But but this is what I think the counter force is that while there's an amazing world of self-custody and privacy and all the benefits that come from that, the vast majority of people will say, I'm absolutely petrified of losing my key or being ransomed or hacked. And so therefore, Blackrock, you take care of it for me. Please. So so so and here's the here's the point. And I'd love to dig deeper here and and for you to Simon because I say this because you're so genius in this. Some of the stuff that you're, you're saying scares people into that, right? Because they feel like they have no ability because the power structure is so strong, because they give it power, and it feels like it matches their perspective of reality today and, and, and, and your message that is that is super important isn't allowing them to move. Right. And it might be it might be allowing some to move because they want to yell at the same system like you're essentially, if their level of consciousness is angry, they will find anger. Right. And you'll you'll like activate them. But hope is stronger than fear. And if in if we can and it's hard for any one person to do this. But if more and more people are a path to the abundance or a path to be able to. Here's how you act. Very. I know you say to self-custody and that's critical, but here's other things you can do to be a part of another node in the network and move your time, your anchor, your your whole message, and you'll expand your message to give the path to all of the people that are attracted to it. Yeah. And I think there's an element of team effort here. And Don't. Yeah. You know I have a, an insane obsession and I don't know if you've ever heard my story, but when my father lost his entire wealth in the financial crisis, in the.com boom and bust, he asked me a question when I was, 20 years old. And that question was I. I've got no idea what happened to my money. I worked my entire life like I got to a self-made millionaire, and now I log into my account and there's nothing there, and I don't know who got my money or how it happened. And I set I set my challenge to answer that question. And so I can't stop answering that question. But it's very dark when you get the answer. And Bitcoin. But Bitcoin took me out of the darkness because I said, look, I can't take down the banking system. I can't change the politicians. I can't build on top of this. Here's all the regulations, here's all the things, here's all the barriers. And everyone that I've seen that even created peer-to-peer lending, they ended up just becoming a bank. Yeah. From a bunch of fund managers, and doing the same thing. And, but but then there was that, you know, understanding the technology construct of Bitcoin. And so you're right, you know, you take your hat off, and you recognize that there's a solution. We need to advocate, we need to invest, we need to nurture. And I, you know, I it's a it's about the, the combination that, and, when you, when you're, when you're ready for that, go listen to Jeff Beast that world, and I think it's working for him. But I can't get out of obsessing over, what's going on in this world.

Yeah. So it's interesting your part because, my what my wife said, how can you know how bad this is? But same as you, right? How can you investigate this? And, and then I'm gonna move to another level to pay no attention to it, because you can't do anything in it. I got it, and I said, and when we hear young kids, we plan for, our escape from a house in the fire. Right? Even though we're not expecting the fire, the house to burn down. Right. So I know what it could look like. And I could spend, on my job, and I know what it does. I know that would happen to it. Just like you. Once you chase that down to the sand. And for me to. I went through almost this anger or whatever, and, and a whole bunch of these other like, are you kidding? Like, this is the this is it. And you think about the death and destruction and that and that the what could be versus what is and and the world and and and it wants to keep you there. And I understand it very well because I wanted to keep me there. And I tell the story often that I was on all these boards and the existing financial industrial complex, and that and that and that world talking about Bitcoin as an escape, realizing and it it was like it was like somebody punched me like, like, in my own cognitive dissonance. And everybody's celebrating in me in Bitcoin as I was not congruent in who I was. Right. And, and and I felt like in such a fraud or the, the how could I say this and know this and have a hedge against the system I'm making stronger. All right. And that thing in me created that's why we created the Earth capital. Right. So that and I and we're not perfect. We've invested like we're going to make mistakes, we're going to do things. I'm going to advance and and I'll continue to make my, mistakes. But the change in me that I couldn't see this world from the other viewpoint makes me understand why others can't to, because they're still stuck in the they're they're still stuck in the exhaust of the other system. And it doesn't make me better. It doesn't make me worse. It doesn't make it just it just it's such a such a hard thing to go through. Especially when you're. Because I'm exactly like you. I went I followed that down. I watched what it did to my family, to people in my family. I watched what it did to my parents, watched what it did to other. And. And those were the winners. What about the people in Africa? What about the people and, what about the people, that are the losers of that? And I was a part of it. Right. But the, and you're construct in that. And so now, now, when I said agency, it's our agency. Right. And no, once you know something now, do you activate to do something about it?

I want to, if I may. So I just want to jump in, and then please, I'll get your response as well too. But on that note of what do we do about it, I'd love to know, because we basically we're looking at decentralization, secure, and privacy. And so Simon, please, I do want your response. But also if you could touch on, what are the threats or risks for decentralization and what should people do to actually help enforce it or improve it? You know, I'll answer that. And then I'd like to ask, move the conversation in a direction I think Jeff's got some experience in as well. Let's do it.

Well, you know, anything that centralizes, so one development team, you know, you should have competing development teams, you know, one implementation or nodes, you should have competing, competing implementations on those. An ETF is just issuing you an IOU. You don't have any Bitcoin, in anything that, a treasury company, a shit coin, an alternative, a crypto car, anything that's not Bitcoin in self-custody is a centralizing force. A minor, that goes if all the miners go into one country, we had, you know, we had everyone in China predominantly. And now, you know, 40% went to America. If they all become public companies, that's another centralizing force. You need private versus public. You need geographical diversity. You need sanctioned countries and non-sanctioned countries mining, you need countries that hate each other. Mining. I believe that if multipolarity and competing fiat currencies creates a better environment for for Bitcoin. And so, you know, at every layer you've got developers, you've got nodes, you've got mining, you've got the companies that become influential, and then you've got the things that are built on top. These are all, a constant open-source boardroom of spectrum that we are either getting more centralized or more decentralized. But, you know, it's as long as they all don't go centralized, we've still got Bitcoin. And and we always need to attack that spectrum.

What one thing I wanted to discuss with you, Jeff, is, something I've went through, I went through and I, I probably you've probably been through this journey in venture capital as well. Is you, go through this phase where you want to invest in things that made Bitcoin better and further the mission of what you're trying to do. And then suddenly you get into the reality of, now I'm dealing with humans that made bad decisions. Now I've got counterparty risk, now I've got someone that needs venture capital funding. Now Silicon Valley can change the mission. Now I've got somebody that wants to go public and now they need finance from the trad five players. Now they need to work with a bank, and then you go through. And then they need licenses, and then you got global licenses, or you got a company that can get hacked and, and, and you end up going through. And this is the journey that I've been through. I look at my portfolio of over 100 different investments that I made, and I look through them all and just say, boy, do I wish that was Bitcoin and self-custody. Every time I have to pick or do something else and, and, and you go through this phase, where do you know what, I can't be bothered to make another investment, but I have to because I really want to support the next phase. But it comes with all these hassles because Bitcoin and self-custody is I don't have to deal with any of those problems.

Yeah. So you were, What what I would say is your version of that. You were earlier in Bitcoin and, than than I was. And your version of that Bitcoin couldn't move and do a payment rail at that time. It couldn't of our privacy. It couldn't be the protocol stack. I'm, describing. So so that meant if you were on top of it that time, you were just either centralizing Bitcoin or or, or part of the financial regulation that would have had to it would have to look like that. I came in at a different time, and, and I knew all of these things would happen and I and I look at Bitcoin, is it my hurdle rate. And I would never invest in anything in Bitcoin unless I could beat my hurdle rate. And the only way to beat my hurdle rate is to acquire more Bitcoin. By by doing doing that. I'm not saying there isn't risk of venture investment or person changing their mind or doing a bad job or execution, but my only way it's functionally is to is to accrue more Bitcoin and, and on on the balance sheet and in the if you said tail risk of a government attacking that remove, remove the tail risk from that is my is as best as you can. And the only way to do that is provide value in Bitcoin terms over, over what's there now. They all won't work. They won't. But I actually cannot believe the growth rate, the how many of the companies are already profitable in Bitcoin terms by extending the product protocol and what that looks like. So so what I think we're seeing is early stages of a new financial economy by acquiring more Bitcoin, by providing value in the free market. And and I can tell you some I'm we're going to blow up some or not. But I'm so far out of 1718 investments in seed and then series A nothing has failed. I think. And a bunch of these companies are already profitable, growing extraordinarily quickly. Some of the numbers would blow your mind and they couldn't be those numbers unless people were paying in Bitcoin and moving and moving this. Now some of it to is in stablecoins. But these companies are Bitcoin companies and some of these are that even if somebody wants to pay here they have the rails to do it to to change over over time. And, and, and this is going to be and I can I'm watching it with most people in the financial complex. Right. Trying to and not just financially. You should see some of the things I see at all different levels. Government, three letter agencies trying to everything come, come, come at this. I have a view that and I'm that is very different than than this. This is a protocol imposing this. This is what I'm doing. Period. I can see the attack vectors. I can see those that are trying to attack, those that are trying to attack, that don't know they're trying to attack. They're just trying to make more money. And and I'm watching it all play out, hope, play out. But it doesn't matter because I know what I'm doing, all right. And and each of these things is building more more adoption and more roads and more and more easier on ramps and everything else. And it's not just us, it's other people. Open source community. 1031 other, Bitcoin companies that are all doing the same same thing, Max and, BTC sessions. Alex glad seem like the amount of people all over the world, they're adding their voices to this network. It's just it's it's exploding. And then you go to the circular economy and you see they're buying local foods and, and, and, and, and it looks so much different than the paradigm of, of the, of the control structure. And it's getting easier and easier and easier. So but but I do totally understand because if you, if you, if I was in your paradigm when you were investing, the protocol wasn't there yet, Yeah. right. The it wasn't. the again, this is where I think it comes back into the more spiritual conversation of, something else other than the free market. Maybe this is encapsulated in the free market. The, when I discovered Bitcoin, it meant so much to me. And I was like, well, I just want people in Africa to be able to use Bitcoin. Who's helping? And so I found Elizabeth Rosella and she was helping that. And so what are you going what are you doing. And she told me about it. So I invested. And then I kept saying well I want that in India. I want that everywhere. And then and that was kind of my original thing. But then, you know, it got a bit more professionalized. We, we had, we, we allowed other investors in and then we had responsibilities and fiduciary duties and, and then it got to the inevitable conversation that, well, I could have invested in Bitcoin. So are you outperforming Bitcoin. And I'm like well yeah. And that's why I kind of want to get back to where I am right now, because I could imagine myself reinvesting in some of these projects that you're talking about. But, it would have to be from the altruistic but actually yeah, that's my that's my point with you. I don't do it because because it's just a gift. I would probably if with my own money I would do that no matter what. Right. Because I want to expand this. I do the same thing you were doing and everything else. And I would be ultra confident coming on this podcast. It's my time, right? I'm doing it to because I want to give back to the, the community. And that time is important, but it is not altruistic. And and all the LPs in our fund know our thesis and we are like resolute in our thesis. We and we are going to outperform Bitcoin by providing value in the free market. Or we're not or you shouldn't invest in our fund in every single thing. I think through that and the same thing. And now where would the opportunity exist. Right. You know how monopolies get broken. They get broken from the bottom up. So now all of these people that are building on to this technology is on a protocol stack. You can now Bitcoin Noster lightning sediment and you can create an entire community without building one piece of code by plugging into other people's, great work and extending it. And so it's going faster and faster and faster, and it's costing less and less and less. And so that why these companies are turning profitable really quickly in Bitcoin terms is because the cost is gone. Right? They're not there. And and I know that didn't exist before. So it would be hard to see you're making it. But but it exists now and it's moving at a crazy rate.

Yeah. The, out of everything you said, that really stood out to me. And my mental map was when you said, you know, think about these, these network of nodes that we're building banks, and immediately that just stood out to me. Yeah. You know, people need to understand because I tried to build a bank. So, you know, if we need to build this network of banks and that's what we are essentially this decentralized network of banks. And the word is this stupid words, given what So it literally. sense to people, every node as contributing to this decentralized bank. And let's talk about some of the risks of cashew or sorry of cashew of of sediment or pork or cash generally, let's say what those, say I'm not familiar with these projects? So I know, like, if anyone's watching it like, this is Jeff's thing, I haven't done any due okay. Endorsement, but I'm learning in real time. So. So, so, going back to how Vinnie, he talked about what banks would look like, and I say and he talked about what banks were mints, essentially cash mints would look like on top of Bitcoin. One problem with he, cash at the time it was invented before Bitcoin is crazy. Attack proof for the cypherpunk technology, but it always centralized what Fetterman did is created, a federated cash that that essentially allows, let's say it's three of us or five people. You were able to create nodes, guardians that they call them guardians that would act as, as protection against the next layer. So there would be cash, but you would put in Bitcoin that would be converted to cash, that would give complete privacy. And and now what's that? Where's the risk factor? There's a couple. Right. What if those nodes got found? What if those nodes conspired against you and everybody operating on top of that is completely private? None of the nodes can see the transactions. Fetty as the company or Fetterman as a protocol, can't see the transactions. It's completely private and communications are private on top of it as well. But but the risk is what about those five nodes? Or if you had in a cache, you meant it's one node, right? They could run polio, right? Or the five nodes could get together and play you. Another risk is though, if they're not going to rug pull you, but they're totally, the, they're really great nodes. What who what stops if everything's centralized and there's only one settlement for one for, one, one bank, then all of those people would eventually be found as money transmitters from their surveillance state. Right. And so providers huge risk. So now how do you avoid those risks? How do you create those risks? All of those nodes have to be private, right. And so they can't conspire against you. You can create your own with your friends or family and everything else. And you could if you created a family one, five people, 3 or 5 multisig in this. Anybody on top of your family? They're not in an AI world that you know it's your family, right? There is no no way to and you know, specifically it's Sam if you want to talk to them. You also know anyone they add to it is completely private communications and everything else. And so now now being able to set those up at scale in a privacy preserving way allows every single person to take privacy. Like you could create one literally in five minutes. Right now. Unfairly, if you don't want to use Fetty, you could go to Fetterman and everything else, but you could create as a it's open source. You could create one that it essentially is about. You would not want to tell everybody it's yours or your bank, but you couldn't control it. If you use the, the, the, the ones because how it sets up as a whole bunch of anonymous private users that are also OG guardians and in Bitcoin that don't know each other, that'll put you and four of those together so you couldn't rug pull. And so the more of these there are imagine there's ten. Imagine there's 100. Imagine there's thousands, hundreds of thousands. Every single one that, that is created creates almost another layer of nodes to the Bitcoin ecosystem. But in private operating in complete privacy, these things inside the federation, it's all cash. It doesn't have the fees because it's all a cash gateway to. And that's why I say you can put things together. Gateway to to another Federation moves to lightning, gateway to anything in the physical community. And everything else moves through lightning. And you wouldn't know the difference. It just operates. It's just it's just so it's become it's become my primary wallet and one of my primary communication devices for people that are close to me, because it needs to be in a world that centralizing faster and faster over here, I need to get out and I need to protect, more and more what's happening? If I'm not mistaken, you have to just, for fitting in particular, the chat is powered by matrix in the background, and the idea is powered by Noster as well, too. So you got that layer of protection on top of it. and again, what Simon is hearing for the first time, because he's not he's not inside that right, is it? Is. And I'd love to get you more insight. And that's not just there's a whole bunch of privacy tech and a whole bunch of different paths to be able to what we're talking about. And there's more and more all the time. What is it? What I'm talking about, though, is the resolve to the problem that exists because of what you talked about that had to exist to prevent what you talk about.

Yeah. All right. Well, I think we've given quite a lot. What have you got in this? Unless you wanted to go through. I will yeah, there's one more thing I'll just throw on. And we did. It was nice view at the end on faith, because the last thing I want to end with, of course, is that common, like call to action. What advice do you have for people? How can they protect themselves and particularly we talked a lot about privacy. So Simon, I'll start with you and then Jeff, I'll go to you. If there's basically anything that you want to make sure that you're imparting on the audience that like go do this today or check out this tool or something that you think would be beneficial for all of us themselves. And the Bitcoin network.

Yeah, I think, I, I spend a lot of time on X. And, and, I've got an awesome account, but I still end up where the network effect is. At some point, we are building our social credit score. I'm, I know what I'm. You know, I know this is going to come back to bite me in a big way. So we need to figure out how are we going to manage that transition because it's these centralized Dec is is becoming incredibly, problematic. You know, so, you know, I think the big the big thing for me is that, I wish it I, I wish I could believe that everyone ends up here. But I still believe there's going to be a few, and then we're going to be in a hybrid system. And one of the things that's most painful for me is it's a journey I'm going through. And maybe, you know, to know that I'm going to be fine because I prepared for this. But the vast majority on it gives me a bit of pain. And I know that gives really bad ideologies like communism and all sorts of crazy, stupid things about distribution of wealth and things like that. But it's it's an internal battle that I'm going through. And so, you know, I really, really want as many people to just be owning a bit more Bitcoin in self-custody every single month. Get off zero. And just go further and further out and just continue to, grow that journey. Because wherever I go and I spend a lot of time with the people that have a lot of questions, it's a lack of solutions. That is the big problem that people are experiencing right now. And so Bitcoin is Self-custody has always been like my, my this you know, we have to become more sovereign. And and this is a thing that were for me and it was worth for many other people. And we need more and more people to do it. And so just please, you know, own more Bitcoin this month than the previous month, June out from the price. And, just recognize that the worse the Bitcoin to gold price gets or the bitcoins the dollar price gets, and the more time you're buying yourself to prepare. Now I'm fully prepared and many people I know are fully prepared. But if you're not fully prepared, then the, you know, the longer the timeframe you have to prepare into this, the better off you're going to be.

Jeff. Yeah. And I think Simon does a really good job in exposing that and why you need to be in self-custody. And I think that, so I just add on to that, you can move more of your time when you decide to move more of your time, and when you move more of your time, whether you want to, you start spending in it when you start to see what's happening, in these, as you move more of your time and create value in that more of your time, you'll be amazed at what happens to your time. Beautiful. I do just want to add quickly, Simon, maybe, maybe on a podcast, maybe at a pub, I'd love to have a pint and talk more about the things that are bothering you, because I think I got some, some white pills that my my might be able to list off a little optimism. Okay. All right. Simon. Tell everybody where they can follow you. And then Jeff, the same.

Yeah, I, I spend too much time on X. But that's where I do most of my content. And then every week on YouTube, I do Simon Dixon Live, where I do this week in Bitcoin and tech, this week in macroeconomics and this week in geopolitics. And all I do is, follow monetary flows to show how everything that they're telling you is a lie. And just when I follow the money, it tends to give you about a year ahead of what actually happens.

Jeff. I'm rebuilding the website right now, and partially the reason I'm rebuilding my website, Jeff Boudica, is it's just tighter message here. And, and, and where people can find me. So I've left most of the social media that most people are on, and I'm on. I'm, I'm Noster. Hey, you! Yes, you. Watching the Bitcoin price movements and the latest exciting news. It's awesome to stay informed, but the real power of Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch. Take action. Head over to BTC sessions aka learn for free, step-by-step tutorials that guide you through every major skill that you need to know. Plus full video playlists for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for the ultimate fast track. Scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin mentor.io for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait. Secure your Bitcoin future today. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen. If you enjoyed this episode with Simon and Jeff, please do like and subscribe. It really does help out and check out the previous episodes with either guest by clicking above.