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Erik Cason argues that Bitcoin is the path out of fiat corruption and rising digital authoritarianism.
Erik Cason argues that the core sickness of modern society stems from fiat money, an instrument designed to extract value from citizens and consolidate power within a corrupt political class, and that Bitcoin represents the first real weapon ordinary people have to break that cycle. He and Marty explore how fiat’s incentives have produced a surveillance state, cultural nihilism, and economic stagnation, while accelerating polarization and crushing the working class. They warn that centralized AI systems, Anthropic, OpenAI, Grok, mirror the same authoritarian dynamics as fiat: aggregating everyone’s thoughts, behaviors, and language into proprietary models that can be surveilled, censored, and weaponized. Decentralized, private, self-sovereign AI models, and Bitcoin, offer the only credible escape from a future defined by digital totalitarianism. They discuss how Bitcoin’s ethos is deeply political: a global, censorship-resistant monetary foundation that restores individual sovereignty, enables genuine class consciousness, and provides the economic bedrock for renewal. Cason argues that the only viable path forward is decentralizing power back to states, dismantling the federal apparatus through Article V, ending the Fed, and allowing Bitcoin-backed state currencies or free banking systems to emerge organically. Bitcoin culture, he insists, must reorient back to peer-to-peer freedom money, not just number-go-up speculation, and must become a coordinated political, cultural, and economic movement capable of resisting surveillance, authoritarianism, and elite corruption.
“Fiat money is a thing that's designed explicitly to exploit you and redirect money to this parasitic political class.”
“This is the absolute apex of communism… taking all of our thoughts, dumping them into a single database, and getting a linguistic regurgitation designed to destroy our brains.”
“We live in a period that's equally unnerving and exhilarating, the potential for doom or salvation with very little gray area in between.”
“No is the first legitimate social network that's ever existed.”
“Bitcoin is the real exit for you against a system that wants to abuse and fleece you.”
“We’re stuck in a debt-based fiat monetary system that is not going to work out for anyone. It’s not about if, it’s about when.”
“Having Bitcoin savings gave me the confidence to chase my own dreams.”
“Humility is required, nobody is an expert in Bitcoin. It takes decades of deep study.”
“Corporate civil disobedience is kind of the apex of what we need right now.”
“The only way forward is ending the Fed through Article V and letting states reclaim monetary power.”
“You are being exploited by design, fiat money exists to steal from the working class.”
“Maybe we need our own founding-fathers moment, a week together to decide how to build a new political future.”
This conversation delivers a sweeping diagnosis of modern political decay, cultural fragmentation, and financial oppression, rooted in fiat money, centralized institutions, and the rise of surveillance AI, and presents Bitcoin as the critical lever for reclaiming sovereignty, revitalizing community, and rebuilding a political framework fit for the digital age. Cason calls for courage, organization, and a new ideological movement grounded in decentralization, cryptography, state-level autonomy, and class consciousness, arguing that Bitcoiners must rediscover the mission of freedom money and recognize that no one is coming to save us: the responsibility to build a better future sits with us, right now.
0:00 - Intro
0:31 - AI/robot dystopia & open source
10:16 - Narrative control and brain atrophy
15:42 - SLNT & Unchained
17:31 - Open borders and cultural integration
23:31 - Fixing culture and distributing power
35:16 - A better life is possible
46:25 - SOTE
47:54 - The state of bitcoin
56:22 - E cash
1:00:40 - Free Samourai and organizing bitcoiners
1:07:58 - Lighting the fire, fourth political theory
(00:00) I very much believe that pretty much every single federal representative is corrupt in some way. It turns out that fiat money is a thing that's designed explicitly to exploit you and redirect money to this parasitic political class. If all the things went how I wanted to, we would essentially use article 5 of the constitution and the very first amendment that would get passed would be end the current version of the proprietary frontier models like anthropic, open AI, croc.
(00:24) This is the absolute apex of communism. pretty deep down like the rabbit hole and that like I think most of the media is like a explicit designed thing to try to get cultural a effects that like society wants for controlling people. What's really weird too is we're we're talking about um robot dicks and when they will manifest um it seems like we're on a a a trajectory that will make them inevitable. Yeah. And definitely people are going to isolate from one another and be like, "Why should I have a real human when I
(00:59) have my robot that I can beat and sexually abuse and do all the [ __ ] stuff I want to?" So yeah. Well, like the predictive programming to I think of two movies particularly that really come top of mind quite frequently these days. It's Minority Report and Her. Okay. It's I've I've I've actually had both of those come up in dialogue recently about it because Yeah.
(01:23) like with with where Palunteer is going with pre-rime stuff. Definitely going to try to do Minority Report style pre-rime uh and her also like people are obviously falling in love with like different AI at this point in time and like that's going to be a trend that continues because of particularly like I don't know I don't feel like people are actually healing from all the trauma that they've sort of incurred by this society and so it's it's becoming easier and easier just to retreat inward and refuse to try to actually interact with other humans in a meaningful way. Yeah. Well, Minority Report, it's not
(01:54) only the pre-rime, it's the uh self-driving cars that like that like I'm looking around, we're in San Francisco. It's like all the Whimos, you got robo taxis coming out and people are very excited for this. Like, oh, we're just going to hop in like a number of the people that are at this event that we're currently um participating in have said how much they love the way. It's like, ah, there's no driver. It's quiet. I get to do this.
(02:20) And then in the back of my mind, I'm like, there was some movies that warned of this. So you can get in that car one day and the computer can take you somewhere you don't want to go. Well, it's funny when when cuz I rode in a Whimo for the first time last night. Uh and when me and the other gentlemen were trying to get into the car, like I wouldn't open the door for some reason and I had to like drive around the corner and then stop and do that.
(02:39) like the this whole fantasy that people have, they don't see the darker side of it of that like so what happens when you have your AI girlfriend that you fall in love with and like chat GBT does the update that like fries its [ __ ] brain and doesn't recognize you, you know, and like this happened three to four months ago. Exactly.
(02:58) And like uh these technologies are really cool, but if you're not actually self- sovereign with them, they're very problematic. And then if you are self-s sovereign with them like we actually get something much more like snow crash which like I think is kind of interesting but like that is also problematic in a number of its own ways. Yeah.
(03:16) Well you said people haven't dealt with the trauma that's been built up. How long do you think this trauma has been building up? Uh, I mean, I think 200, like September 11th, I think was like kind of the key moment that the juncture changed cuz like there there was like a pretty great opportunity after the Soviet Union collapsed that like the United States could have made choices throughout the 1990s to really have kind of opened the world up to like true liberalism, but in that like a number of mistakes were made and it became pretty clear that uh like neoliberalism wasn't like an advancement
(03:45) of liberalism, but was like this fundamental and inherent lie that was actually about just like the corrupt of culture on a whole for the profitability of a number of individuals. Um then after September 11th, it became clear that like we were going to take a path where we were going to build a gigantic surveillance apparatus that would proceed to control everybody.
(04:03) And that's sort of been the path that's that's been advanced since then. Yeah. It's not a great path. I believe it was you that we were discussing like the simulacum. Yeah. And another concept that Bitcoin sign guy first introduced me to back in 2018 when he was on this show was uh the hyperreal and like this Yeah. concept that we live in this digital world with a digital facade.
(04:29) Nobody's really connected to reality at the end of the day. Yeah. And that digital facade is more representative of reality to people than reality itself. M uh and then I think also with what co happened and sort of people eating those lies realizing how intense those lies were like that created a new and more intense kind of nihilism that I don't think we've exited from.
(04:53) And so it's interesting being here in the Bay Area that like everybody who's involved with AI that I've talked with particular like large AI companies like they're extremely nihilistic. They're like humanity's dead within like a decade. And then more interesting is even the subtext under that is like that's why we have to make the AI god to like save humanity.
(05:13) And it's like oh [ __ ] Well, yeah, that contradiction that and again I haven't expressed this publicly but and I almost feel uncomfortable because maybe I don't feel confident in my ability to appropriately recognize it but it seem to your point seems like a lot of people on the cutting edge of AI are like hey this is very dangerous but they keep going full bore ahead and not only full borehead but trying to accelerate as quickly as possible.
(05:37) Yeah. And like the well and this is kind of the interesting edge case is that like I actually think like decentralized private homophobically encrypted AI systems that like interoperate and can kind of exchange data in ways where like you're just revealing subsets of it to like work together.
(05:55) I think like that's going to be an extremely powerful thing that has a lot of potential for humanity. But the the current version of the proprietary frontier models like anthropic, open AI, Grock, uh to me like this is like this is the absolute apex of communism cuz like we are taking literally all of our thoughts, dumping them into a single database, combining them, and then getting a linguistic regurgitation that's fundamentally designed to destroy our brains.
(06:24) you know, like it's it's robbing people of the ability to think at all in addition to like it's modifying their linguistic capacity so that like they they don't even have the lexicon to be able to speak in a particular way that's unique or interesting anymore. Yeah. How do we change the tides of this? Uh one is is that like I think we need to like like I don't think like you know regulations, limits, none of this [ __ ] works at all.
(06:47) Uh so like we need to radicalize different models and so like seeing all the different open source stuff come out is uh in my opinion like it's pretty awesome. Uh there's still problems with how a lot of these models have been built along with the underlying parameters. So like but I think that this is all sort of a recursive thing that the very way that we got these open source models was off the back of the advancements from sort of these gigantic communist models.
(07:13) So like I think as things advance like we're going to get more and more powerful open source models and we'll be able to use these models to collaborate with each other to create totally new models that can truly be totally open source. Uh we'll know the underlying parameters. there'll be ways to modify that and people will be able to actually like in their garage be able to build out their own full totally custom AIS and then furthermore if we have the appropriate systems to actually like encrypt these and make them uh like private systems that people can own for themselves then we got something that I think uh has like really strong
(07:45) potential but again this is only if we make these things totally private uh no way for anybody else to surveil it and that like this really becomes like a digital assistant, second self or something that like you really own for yourself totally alone and nobody else knows or sort of understands how you work with it.
(08:02) And this is what you're working on a bit. Yeah. Like this is kind of what Bora is. Uh the big thing that we really want is to make sure that like this is going to be like a personal home data server that you have that's totally encrypted, has great recoverability, but also like as you work with it over years to decades that like this becomes more and more customized towards who and how you are.
(08:26) You can feed it all your own personal information, talk to it about the most intimate things, and really treat it in the same way that a lot of people are treating Open AI right now. But again, very similar to the Minority Report thing is they don't get on the back end of that that all of that information can be used against you.
(08:42) Like Sam Alman was very open about like, yeah, our information can be subpoenaed and used against you. Yeah, I've said it a couple times in the last 6 months. It's we live in a period that's equally unnerving and exhilarating. the potential for doom or sal not salvation, but yeah, there's definitely like not much gray area in between. Um, and furthermore stuff like like if we didn't get Bitcoin when we did, uh, like we'd definitely be in doom territory.
(09:15) But with Bitcoin, uh, it really modifies and changes how this can happen because like seeing the the very way that you can use Nostaster now to like go find an anonymous developer to like work on a project that you can pay is really powerful. In the same way like to me no is the first legitimate social network that's ever existed.
(09:33) Like every single social network that has came before it's pretty clear has had ties to different intelligence organizations. Uh, and that's been again with part of that nihilism is like I think that this has been a societal level programming situation where dialogue has been manipulated across the board.
(09:50) Whereas on noster like you can fill it with misinformation but also because the lack of censorship capacity there now becomes way to actually find signal throughout the noise. Yeah. And so like I think as uh we get clamps down onto social media across the board as sort of whatever the [ __ ] going on advances itself, no is going to become sort of a bastion of people that are sane that can go out there and actually speak truth to power where they would be banned everywhere else. They can actually have those conversations there.
(10:17) Yeah, it seems like seems like the the narrative is being prepped particularly around AI and social media. I mean, you were um just telling me that you had a conversation last night with a journalist who is pro social media censorship, but on top of that, I wrote about it earlier this week.
(10:37) Anthropic came out with a postmortem on some cyber espionage uh attack that Claude was used to to wage on some critical services. And if you read the report, it seems like a classic um problem reaction solution setup where it's like, hey, these people are using AI to attack these critical systems. The cost to do this is lower than ever. The ease of waging these attacks is easier than it's ever been.
(11:04) And if you what I was reading between the lines of that postmortem is anthropic saying, "Hey, we only stop this because we have full visibility into everything that's happening within our LLMs and our MCP framework." And wink wink, we need the ability to to do this.
(11:25) So, we should probably get uh regulations that make it so you have to get a license to um release these systems into the wild. That's what I was reading when I read that. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean like to to me, Anthropic's entire business model is misaligned from the beginning because like they're playing this game of of like safe AI, which means that like they want to prove how dangerous nonsafe AI is from the get-go. So like it makes sense that like this is sort of the game that they're going to play.
(11:48) Uh and to me like this is the same iterations of power that we've seen over and over again is like create crisis and problem, present the solution, and clamp down. And it's just a ratcheting back and forth of tightening social controls around people. And like it's really important to understand like this is very very powerful technology.
(12:07) And also it's very powerful technology just like cryptography. And so like we're essentially having the first of the crypto wars all over again but with an AI slant. And so like I think as this advances they are going to try to clamp down with regulations.
(12:23) And that's why it's great that like you know somebody baked in through an inscription like I think it was the O Lama like open source model like onto Bitcoin's blockchain. You can go find it and download it directly. And I think keeping these things free and open source are important cuz I'm much more concerned about how do we manipulate and control people through like these very powerful systems that like you can already see the way it's really atrophied thoughts.
(12:46) You know, like I I was talking to a couple professors yesterday and they were talking about how outraged they are at this point in time that like they're just getting AI slop repeatedly over and over and they can see that their systems that their students don't actually have the systematic thinking to engage in like true thought on their own.
(13:05) Like they're literally just turning to the AI and pinging it every time they have a question. And like that creates a pretty dangerous predication for society. Yeah. No, it makes me feel very fortunate. into the high school that I did cuz you go the freshman year orientation week. They're essentially like, "All right, you're going to be here for four years.
(13:24) Our job as your educator over the next four years is to teach you how to think from first principles and then write. So, you got to be able to read things and then write basically expressing that you understand what you just read and in a coherent way in a consistent flowing way." And I feel like that's being lost. And like to going back to like the simulacum and the hyperreal, like it's already pretty bad.
(13:45) And to think of how much worse it can get if you have AI sort of dictating thought and people abdicating their critical thinking skills to these LLMs, it can get really bad really quick. And it already is getting really bad. I mean, the the whole meme of getting one shot is real for a reason. Yeah. And I think the so like I think classic models are are dead at this point in time.
(14:08) Like I I think the the way that you and I experience school of you go in you read something uh essays are turned in you get correction uh like I think everything's going to invert where like I think in the schools people are going to go in nothing in hand and it's going to become all sort of oretary and about critical thinking and a teacher asking you a question you needing to actually stand up respond meaningfully and they're now becoming a real dialogue between everybody sort of asking people to think. Uh but the other major problem that's kind of occurring
(14:38) right now in that same uh process in society is that uh everybody's so hyper attuned to the opinions of others and so it's like uh the maskearing phenomenon the best example is that a lot of people wear a mask under the oppusion of like I'm doing this to protect you they're not actually thinking about protecting themselves and there becomes this sort of recursive process of where they're much more concerned about how they socially are perceived than actually doing the thing that is correct. act. And so like I think that essentially
(15:08) just needs to be kind of beat out of people. And the only way to do that is to like progressively allow for people to stand up, say embarrassing [ __ ] allow for that process to play out and be like, you shouldn't be embarrassed. Thanks for actually expressing your thought.
(15:26) Let's let's understand why perhaps it might be dangerous to uh think in this way. and really allowing for this process of students and teachers to work together. But that requires a really different approach that's going to require some courage that like I don't think the current public school system is really available to. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Sup freaks. This rep is brought to you by our good friends at Silent.
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(17:20) Bring your questions. This conversation is designed to give you clarity on how to make inheritance seamless with real Bitcoin, not IUS. Go to unchain.com/tc to sign up. don't have much faith in much of the public school system, but it does seem like in the broader public discourse, this overtime window is shifting where people are openly standing up and saying, "Hey, enough enough. Enough is enough.
(17:44) " Whether it's Israel, the immigration situation here in the United States, it it seems like the situation has gotten to such a point where people are like, "Okay, we need to stand up now or things are going to get super crazy." Yeah.
(18:02) Yeah. And I think uh it's interesting because it feels like the pendulum swing has stopped swinging that way and it's sort of a product of why people are standing up. But I do think that you're having uh just as much of the outraged responses from other people going like no everybody everybody deserves dignity. Anybody should be able to come here and get free social services no matter what.
(18:19) And we should all be able to hold hands and sing kumbaya and make peace happen. And like that's that's a really beautiful idea. I I really think it's wonderful and I really wish that's how the world works and it's not. Um and and I'm sorry like that's a that's a difficult reality to come to terms with but like it turns out like if we just have an open border policy as we've seen like there can be a lot of nefarious people that come in here and take advantage of that.
(18:48) It also turns out like here in California like you know I have to pay like $1,800 a month for health care for me and my family. But like if you just walk into a hospital and say like I'm an undocumented migrant, they go great like free free healthcare for you. That costs real money to actual taxpayers who like need to incur the burden of that which frankly like we can't actually accommodate that.
(19:13) So I think now all these pressures are starting to add up and people are going huh like it turns out like the kumbaya version of the world is very very expensive and difficult to implement and furthermore we actually just teach people that like hey like you should go to America cuz all the stuff we have to pay for here you can get there for free and uh again like I want to welcome people from all walks of life and cultures to come here and contribute to society but the key word there is contribute and I think this has been one of the things that we've seen repeatedly is that like there are people that want to take advantage of these social safety nets and that's
(19:46) incurred a very real cost to the American public. I was reading an article this morning about um some of the Somalians in Minnesota sort of weaponizing Medicaid, claiming autistic children uh to get Medicaid benefits and then cycling that money back to Somalia. Um well and it and it turns out that like there are real cultural differences of why America is a leading developed country in the world and Somalia is not.
(20:17) And I think like this is one of the the great cultural neglects that a lot of people don't see is that like the melding pot of American culture is really about not just taking other cultures and just plopping them into America, but really actually integrating that with greater American values that have come to define, you know, like I think you said earlier you had like an Irish Italian background, you know, like I have a a Germanic Irish background. I'm pure Irish.
(20:41) Pure Irish. I'm Phy is split. Uh it's like Irish Irish uh Catholic, Italian Catholic, Polish Catholic, and obviously mixed in. Okay. Strong Jewish community. And uh now um that's that's what it was like when I was born.
(21:01) Now that's well like the these were like when our ancestors came here like they they were true immigrants as Irish. They were probably discriminated against quite heavily and not allowed to work in various capacities. Not uh not very well known. The Irish were a lot of the Irish were slaves when they came to this country too. Yeah. Absolutely. and they came to this country particularly on the back of like the Irish potato famine where like one in four people in Ireland died.
(21:18) And so like there was there was very real consequences of why and how people got here. And yet your identity today is one of being uh like AmericanIrish as opposed to just Irish. And like this to me is one of the the great problems today is like we don't seem to be getting cultural integration in addition to like there's a very negative dialogue about like what being American is sort of on a whole and that like we should be ashamed of being American or that that America doesn't have a particular culture on its own. And one I just don't believe that's true but also like I think that's a massive disservice to
(21:51) everybody because it says well you as being somebody who's you know lived here as an American for most of your life you should be ashamed of that culture. And I think that I I I don't really understand it. Why should one be proud of being any other culture or nationality but not American? And like I think it's very difficult to have dialogues with people about what why we should really be proud to be American.
(22:14) And that doesn't mean that like I love my government and they're great. Like [ __ ] those people. They they [ __ ] suck and they represent everything that I don't like. And that's why we explicitly have a constitution. That's like a document about limiting the government, not one empowering it. So yeah. Well, let's have a discussion.
(22:33) What is in your mind an American? What is America's culture? Uh, so I think one is is that like it's a highly integrative culture. Like we want people from all walks of life and different communities from around the world to be able to come here to this country. But then we're going to work on a meocratic and egalitarian culture where like if you work hard, if you're smart, if you apply yourself, if you build community with other people, like you should not only integrate and be able to find and create a life for yourself, but like you should also be able to celebrate the various cultures that come and are part of that, but part of that is is truly respecting other
(23:03) people and also recognizing that like uh all of these sort of race plays or cultural plays are secondary the fact of that like we all live here. We all love the idea of limiting the power of our government of being able to live and let live that you should be able to have a business and make money from it.
(23:22) You shouldn't be taxed out the wazoo and with that we should be able to build community and culture together. Yeah, we've gotten far far far away from that. Now, how do we get back? And I guess this ties into Bitcoin and bringing back to like simulacum and the hyperreal.
(23:44) Do you think Bitcoin helps tether us back to reality and gets us back to a sound foundation from which we can begin to affect these these values you just described? Yeah. I mean, I think uh first and foremost is that like we need to understand uh the deep and uh frankly like the core rottness of our political culture at this point in time and the way that it's tried to pit us against one another as being either red or blue. Uh it doesn't make any real difference.
(24:08) And that's one of the reasons that as Bitcoiners, we've concluded that like the money is the real problem. Because when you actually look at the development of society and the way that fiat money printing has augmented the entirety of it, this is where a lot of that rot comes from. And furthermore, when you see this political culture that has gified everything and made everything into a right-left issue as opposed to going, hey, hang on, like we actually share a ton of values and we need to find a great middle ground to
(24:32) work together. Like I'm of the opinion the only way back at this point in time is and I don't even want to call it a third party movement. Like we need a full cultural uh I don't know I for for very strong reasons that should be obvious. I don't like the the word cultural revolution. Yeah. I could see it coming.
(24:54) I was like hey uh but like we need to have a strong movement to try to return to like this uh radical modernism if you will. And I think part of a radical moderat I actually think we should landlast them and just make them an enemy class. And that whatever new political culture established itself is it's a based on the very fact of anyone who's been involved with those two parties like they're not allowed to be part of the new political culture.
(25:27) in addition to turning towards the future and saying, "Hey, like our children's future and making them better than ours matters." Because I think our generation more than any other generation is sort of the first American generation to truly have it worse than our parents. Uh, and I think that the boomer class and the way that they have chosen to hollow out America for their own benefit is a very real problem that has to be dealt with. And we need to figure out how are we going to actually make things better for our children. And I think it's through a
(25:54) radical modernism that says, "Hey, we're going to get back to a middle ground. We're going to work together. We're going to find policies that work best for Americans who live here and who have contributed to our culture." And also I've talked about this is like I think we need to do it through a states rights movement to essentially radicalize states against the federal government, strip the federal government of power and really push power back into the various states and allow for sort of the experiment of the 50 states and the different ways that they want to organize themselves become kind of the primary method of how we're going to
(26:25) figure that out. Yeah. And we had a glimpse of that during COVID. You some states asserting their autonomy and saying, "Hey, we're open for business. We're not doing this." And that was beautiful to see, but that momentum died pretty quickly. Yeah. And I and I think like that's part of a a greater movement that sort of needs to encourage that.
(26:43) But there also needs to be essentially like again, I don't know what you'd call it, but like a sort of political collective that's trying to get the states to work together and have dialogues about this. And I've talked about it before is that like I think trying to figure out how to use the ratification of the constitution through article 5 needs to become this primary tactic to start trying to bludgeon the federal government and really empower states in new and various ways. Yeah. Because to your point about the
(27:07) federal government and the mirage of red verse blue it's really just a uni party. I think there was an incredible example of this on the hill yesterday. I saw a clip. I believe it was the CEO of Autopilot, which if you're not aware is this um basically this finance app that allows you to follow the trades of individual senators and congressmen. And so like the Pelosi tracker. Yeah.
(27:34) Like you can put money in and trade with Nancy Pelosi. And this guy was on the hill saying like, "Hey, we started this to highlight the overt corruption that exists in terms of insider training that's happening with our politicians." And I thought it was a beautiful representation of the uni party because he called out Republicans and Democrats like they're basically leveraging the federal government to pillage the American people. Yeah.
(27:59) And I and I think this has been going on for a long time. Uh like I I I truly believe this is treason. It's treason to the highest degree. And that's part of why, you know, like 80% of military hardware in the United States has Chinese components. It's part of why we've developed these uh deep ties with the Chinese Communist Party.
(28:21) Uh and it's why we have American politicians that are actually selling us out to that. And this is one of the reasons that I think we need to use Article 5 to radicalize states against the federal government is cuz like I very much believe that pretty much every single federal representative is corrupt in some way. And I would love to see an article 5 amendment to the Constitution saying that every single member of the United States Senate and Congress will be put on trial for treason. We're going to open the books, make it very clear to everybody, and at the end you're found
(28:47) guilty of treason. You will be punished as such. Cuz like the fact that Nancy Pelosi has been a career politician who now is worth what $180 million, more than 200 now. Yeah. Like that this is despicable, deplorable, and disgusting.
(29:06) And the very fact that she's allowed to exist in our society, not be called out by that daily andounded, but she's actually put on a pedestal and celebrated as some champion of civil liberties. Like it it's deplorable, disgusting, despicable, uh, and just an insult to anybody's average of intelligence to be able to look at the situation and not go this she's made money through explicit corruption that in any other field would be considered insider trading and those people would go to jail for that crime.
(29:30) And so I think the only way to do this is because these these people that are federal representatives, they believe they're above the law. Like I was reading this morning that there's a a congressional representative out of Florida who she was caught laundering like more than $5 million of COVID money to herself.
(29:47) She's like still a standing member of Congress right now. And it's like well until until found guilty, you know, which like there's something to be said for that, but like it just goes to show the endemic nature of the corruption at this point in time. And I think that like as American citizens, we should be outraged.
(30:03) It's very clear this part of government is broken and we're not going to be able to address this through the federal legislature. So we need to go through states and use that as the most powerful meth mechanism to essentially stand against them. Yeah. And we were talking about this with Danny in Huddle the other week on what Bitcoin did.
(30:22) But I think people in the federal government should push for this because should recognize like, hey, game's up. we've paged enough like the the plebs, if you will, are getting angry because it seems pretty clear that there's two paths that are being framed for how to get through this to the masses. It's find my Franco, bring him in, or overt democratic socialism that leads to communism.
(30:45) Yeah. And like I I you had to you had to defend fascism. you didn't want to. But like it's just and it's funny like you say this and people get all pissed off, but it's like hey, if we're being objective and just observing the tea leaves of what the younger generations are saying right now, this is what they're saying. Yeah.
(31:04) Like I I and I really appreciated in that podcast like Huttle was the one that really pointed out that we need this sort of radical modernism. Uh and like again like I don't know how we do this. I hope somebody takes up the flag and like makes it their thing. Like I'm old. I'm tired. like I don't I don't have the capacity to try to do something around this.
(31:22) Uh but like whoever chooses to take that up like they have my my fullhearted support but uh it's becoming sadder and sadder to realizing that like we're in a pretty desperate situation and like we and then like nobody's coming to save us.
(31:39) And I think that's the big problem is we keep having this expectation that like another election, some new person, some new way of doing things. And like it's about the actual apparatus of government itself at this point in time. And that that again is why like I think you need to have radical approaches like uh article 5 ratification cuz like we need to change up the structure of the federal government.
(31:57) And so it's like uh the very first amendment to the United States Constitution that was passed but actually never ratified. It's like it's not an amendment to the US Constitution. It's still in a weird quasi state where it could be ratified. It's called Article the First. So, I think it's passed I think like 12 states or something like that.
(32:15) So, if you got like another 25 states to ratify it, like it would actually become law of the land in the United States. And this explicitly stipulates that uh like no congressional member will ever represent more than 50,000 people at one time. So, that would mean that the House of Representatives would now become like 6,000 people or something like that.
(32:33) And that would absolutely [ __ ] up the federal government in a pretty extreme way. Like let's [ __ ] go. Like that's what I want to see is that like this thing is broken. So like let's either break it the rest of the way or figure out a new way to organize ourselves. Yeah. So 6,000 reps would just create gridlock where you can't get anything past or like we we would get like a a very interesting like multi-party thing that's starting to happen because like I think in the UK like the the House of Commons I think it's like 2200 people or something like that. So like I think and the other one is like we need to integrate technology into this you
(33:03) know like trying to get trying to organize 2200 people to have a dialogue uh like in person like it's not going to happen but like we know of plenty of forms where people can have dialogues like that and there there are different technological ways to address all this that like that's the other thing is I think if we create new forms of governance integrating technology in a powerful way that uses cryptographic proofs could do something really powerful and so like I would love to see some sort of platform form that uses noster and voting and cryptographic proofs and other things to actually
(33:34) really create some new mechanism of consensus to really try to figure out what do people want and need and how are we going to go about doing that? Yeah. How does Bitcoin play into this in your mind? Uh like we essentially so if all the things went how I wanted to, we would essentially use article five of the constitution and the very first amendment that would get passed would be end the Fed.
(33:58) So the Federal Reserve would be unilaterally ended through an amendment to the US Constitution. Uh we would just refuse to pay any US debt. We'd cause the dollar go into hyperinflation and every single state would pivot to having Bitcoin not only as their treasury. Some would use as their currencies and others would actually issue their own state-based currency based upon that.
(34:17) These things would float between the various states in order for them to kind of find stability between each other. But like I think through having states issue their own currency and using Bitcoin to backs stop those currencies I think would be a really powerful approach cuz again like unless we actually address how money is being issued and the corruption that's around that we're never going to solve this problem. Yeah.
(34:39) It's what Hal Finny envisioned in uh December 2010 build a free banking system on Bitcoin. Well, and you know it most people don't know the wildcat era of banking in the United States between when uh Andrew Jackson ended the first bank of the United States between I think it was uh 1862 and the second bank of the United States was created that like this was an era where there was like 7,000 different free floating currencies that were issued by private institutions and like that's also the area of the greatest growth that happened in uh like the American
(35:09) economy. So, like while this seems like a wacky idea to us today, like this is actually how it operated throughout most of American history. That's one of the big problems is um it's a bit overplayed and cliche, but it is apt. It's like we're fish and water. Like there any anybody living today has never experienced that environment.
(35:30) And so it's hard for people to um get comfortable with taking the risk to take that leap and experiment with that type of monetary network. Yeah. And I mean like the the other thing is like there's a very different form of life that could be available to us, you know, like most people don't realize that like we don't actually have to live lives where you work at jobs that you hate for 40 hours a week trying to make some tech company slightly more effective.
(35:55) And it's uh like I recently uh read Dave Greyber's essay on [ __ ] jobs and like it just I think he wrote it maybe a decade ago but it was just really resounding today of that like I've met so many people recently who have jobs that they really hate and they don't see any other way outside of it other than committing their lives to working at some corporation that they don't like.
(36:18) uh and trying to give them the empowerment to feel like they could go start a small business and be successful really is kind of impossible for most people because of how destructive the currency has been um how much inflation has affected people and how difficult it really is to start a business.
(36:37) And I think if we were actually on something like a Bitcoin standard, it'd be a very different way for people to choose to live. And I think we could go back to having a number of much smaller businesses and industries that could really allow for us to break up these large corporate oligopies and actually create something new and different for the American public. Yeah.
(36:58) I I was having this conversation yesterday, the story of this podcast and this business, my own personal journey. Like I feel incredibly lucky. We got a bug uh and the lights above us. But I feel incredibly lucky that uh there's something deeply ingrained. I don't know if it's my genes or my soul or my psyche where you can't talk about having good jeans, but uh I could not do the corporate life. Like I had a good hedge.
(37:27) I was working at a good fund trajectory to make good money was in a good position and just literally physically could not stand being in a cube pulling data from Bloomberg splicing it up like following markets. Well, I think I think for a lot of people it's the fish and water thing like they've known that their entire life.
(37:43) They've never had an opportunity to really just be free and allow for themselves that opportunity. And I think if they did have that opportunity, uh, like I've known a number of people that have done their sbatical thing to like go travel the world or whatever and like essentially when they come back they realize they can't ever do that again. Uh, and like that's really a reality I want to provide to more people is like how how do we make this a more creative, open, and free culture for everybody because like at the end of the day like this is the one life that we have to
(38:07) live and the fact that like we're in this culture where uh you know the idea of having a family with eight kids seems absurd to most people because of how expensive it would be. And like what what a crime against humanity to really have created a world where the idea of a child being too expensive is a reality that most people live in. Did you see the stat of the UK? No.
(38:32) This is very morbid. For every 100 births in the UK, I believe it was in 2024, there was 48 abortions. This like Yeah. Yeah. And like it it's it's interesting cuz I think Charlie Kirk kind of pointed out this dialogue that that he really stood around powerfully and like uh I think it's really important like uh a woman's body, a woman's choice.
(39:00) Like that that's something that I think as a truism that trying to overcome would be too difficult. But like I do think the consequences of that really need to be understood. in that uh also like we've created a society that that becomes a very real issue for somebody if they're going to be a single mom having to look at like well how the hell am I going to provide for this child in a meaningful way and that's something that reflects on our culture as well and like it it's it's really important to understand that the change in how like this issue is being dealt with has very much had like a demographic shift like in culture on its entirety that
(39:32) we're not really seeing the consequence of and that like there's a lot fewer people, there's a lot more individuals that have been imported in order to replace those people. Um, and also like it's a really difficult issue and I again like I really appreciated Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated. I watched a number of his videos and like he had a very logical approach.
(39:55) uh in addition to the fact of that like I don't I personally like uh I think children are a beautiful and extraordinary blessing and uh like seeing these cat videos of women celebrating their individualism of getting to like sleep in as late as they want or go to brunch that like this like this is a fulfilling I watched that video this morning too well and it was just like this is a fulfilling life for you and like like people were out there making fun of her and it was just like I feel really sad for her like she she'll never know the beauty of what it is to be woke up
(40:27) in the middle middle of the night by your child who you pick up and they will snuggle into you and fall back asleep into your arms. Like that's that's a beautiful thing. And the fact that this has been contorted in such a way that this is supposed to be something that that you're afraid of that you don't want.
(40:46) Like that's really alarming to me. And like I I don't know how we correct that. And like I don't I don't think there's really easy answers here, but I would really appreciate if we had a society and culture that would really support people if they were going to be single mothers or whatever.
(41:04) But also the entire conversation about where we're at and like how and why these things come about is really important. Well, I think it really it does come back to the money because, excuse me, I um No, no, when I was in Chicago, I uh I volunteered at a inner city lacrosse program opportunity with lacrosse and schools or outreach with lacrosse and schools, excuse me.
(41:30) And uh so I would go to the west side and southside in Chicago and got to see the sort of ramifications of the welfare state up close and personal and there's a bunch of kids being raised by their aunts and their grandmothers and um the father wasn't there and I mean Thomas Soul has explained this pretty pretty cogently in my mind like if you replace the family the nuclear family with the state like this is the ramifications of it and I think that's happened and not only in inner city's lower economic runs, but now it's bumping up. To your point, like the cat lady sitting there, like she was told to go be a girl boss. And the
(42:08) conditions of the economy are such that you have to be forced into the workplace cuz you have to you have to make enough money to to assist because inflation and debasement is accelerating um year after year, decade after decade. And going back to my story uh about being able to quit that job, like part of what gave me the comfort to do that is like I knew I had some Bitcoin savings and I quit that job, got another job in New York, similar thing happened, worked there for two years and then hated it,
(42:38) quit, thought I was going to get a job in two weeks, wound up being unemployed for 18 months before I started this newsletter and podcast. And I spent a lot of time that 18 months in Brooklyn. um just like really thinking deeply about what do I want to do? Studying Bitcoin very intensely and almost uh in a monklike faction fashion for like a year, year and a half and going to all the Bitcoin meetups in New York and trying to get jobs but I think subconsciously really knowing like this is what I want to do. And then the
(43:08) timing struck um in June of 2017 was like okay price of Bitcoin's going up. My dad um had a somewhat um serendipitous conversation with me. Like I was down in my dumps, down on the uh on the rocks, probably rock bottom for my life. Though I did have the savings. I was like, "Okay, I just got married. I don't have a job. I feel like a loser.
(43:32) " My dad was like, "You should write about Bitcoin. You wrote at the fund. You know a lot about Bitcoin." And started the newsletter and here we are today. Um, but I would not have been able to really do that, to go through that journey if I did not have this financial back stop that I could pull into to survive during that period and really have the time to think about what I wanted to do. Yeah.
(43:55) And like you this is your story of of the dark night of the soul of you like going into the dark night that is the nihilism of this society and going through your own true angst of like what is it that I actually want to do with my life? is is the time that I sell myself again and and go find some firm that I can prostitute myself to and have them rob me of 60 hours of my life that I can go in before the sun comes up and leave after the sun goes down and maybe get to see my wife for a half hour before I go to bed and do it all over again or is there something different and I think for a lot of people even being able ask
(44:30) the question if there's something different is an impossibility because even if they have money in the bank saved uh like that money is dwindling quicker than ever. Uh and that there's sort of a uh schizophrenic and paranoid world view that happens under a fiat currency regime where all the money can evaporate, the bank can steal it, like any number of things that can happen.
(44:58) Whereas, at least for me, very similar, having my Bitcoin savings as a vehicle that I know, hey, like this is safe and secure. Nobody can take it away from me. uh it should deflate over time if all of the things work correctly. That gave me the confidence too to actually chase my own dreams and actually say, you know, I want to do something different for myself.
(45:17) I don't I don't want to continue to, you know, work at the bank that I'm working at and I'd like to strike out and do something bigger. And so, it's part of a dualism of that like having the confidence and conviction to know and understand what Bitcoin is is one half of the coin. But the other side is is then having the conviction and esteem in yourself to say there's something better out there for me that I could actually make for myself that could be meaningful.
(45:39) And I think like this is part of the mission that we're sort of on that we've been on for a while is trying to get people to understand Bitcoin. And so like I'm very big into the pedagogical approach of Bitcoin is that like you have to be willing to understand that for yourself first and actually take a moment to look around and you know after the one fish swims by and says hey how's the water this morning boys to actually look at your friend and ask the question of like well what's what's water and actually understand that like we are in sort of a fictionalized reality that causes for people to go into this paddle and
(46:10) paranoia of that like you need to work a 40hour job a week and save money in this way, contribute to your 401k when that's not actually true. You could do something different for yourself, but that requires the confidence and conviction for you to actually ask the most meaningful questions to yourself to engage in that.
(46:30) What's up, freaks? Been seeing a lot of YouTube comments, Marty, your skin looks so good. You're looking fit these days. How are you doing it? Well, number one, I'm going to the gym more. Trying to get my swell on. trying to be a good example for my young sons, a fit, healthy dad. But part of that is having a good regimen, particularly staying hydrated, making sure I have the right electrolytes and salts in my body. That is why I use salt of the earth.
(46:55) I drink probably three of these a day with one packet of salt of the earth. I'm like in the pink lemonade right now. It's my flavor of choice. Uh this is their creatine. I've added this to my regimen. They have it in these packets as well. uh makes it extremely convenient if you're traveling.
(47:13) You want to work out while you're traveling, but you don't want to be carrying a white bag of powder and going through TSA. It's very, very uh nerve-wracking at times. You have to explain, "Hey, it's it's not what you think it is. It's creatine. I'm trying to get my swell on." Um, make sure you're staying hydrated. I have become addicted to these. It's made my life a lot better. I can supplement this for coffee in the morning and be energized right away. I can supplement. I can bring the creatine wherever I need to.
(47:37) Just put a couple packets in here before I head to the gym. Bring this to the gym. Drink it out of a glass bottle. Make sure I'm not injecting any microplastics into my body. Go to drinksotay.com. Use the code TFTC and you'll get 15% off anything in the store. That's drinksotay.com. Code TFTC.
(47:57) I mean, we've been talking a lot over the last couple days like the state of Bitcoin itself and people's understanding of Bitcoin. How would you describe it? Uh I think it's atrophied over the last year. Like I think the Bitcoin treasury and number go up thing has been uh pretty detrimental to the dialogue of Bitcoin on a whole and people have been treating it just as a banking apparatus to like make more money. Uh and I think that's sort of dangerous.
(48:21) And particularly here at the conference that we're at, I've talked to a number of people that are like, "No, it's as the Bitcoin white paper says it Bitcoin is peer-to-peer cash. Like we need to make it a payment network for people all around the globe." and that there are people that live in the global south who like just being able to have a payments rail is the most meaningful thing.
(48:40) And again, like I number go up's nice, but like I I don't see it as being either number go up or we get a payments network. Like these things work synergistically together. And I think we need to return to the dialogue of that like Bitcoin is truly independent freedom money.
(48:58) And people need to get on board with that and understand like particularly with zoomers that like you need to empower yourself against a system that has chosen to abuse you and enslave you and Bitcoin is a real exit for you. And furthermore, like people do crazy [ __ ] like take out debt and reneg on it because they can hold Bitcoin and just walk away from all of it.
(49:16) I'm not saying that's right or correct, but like there are ways that you can empower yourself against a system that wants to abuse and fleece you. Sam Hyde most famously, I think. Have you ever seen that video? No. It's like Sam Hiden, I think in like 2016 talking about like, "Here's what I did. I took out 30 grand in credit card debt, bought Bitcoin, negged on it.
(49:34) They called me. They're like, "Hey, you need to pay off this uh this balance." And he's like, "Okay, I don't have enough money. Can I pay you like $2 a month?" They're like, "Yeah." And he's speculative attack the uh the credit system essentially. And look, like do what you want to for yourself and and make the risks that you want to. Not financial advice. Yeah.
(49:54) Not financial advice, but like it's important to understand like once you have that Bitcoin and if you secure it correctly, people cannot take it from you. Like that's something really important. And also like if people are like, well, it's so unethical to reneg on it. Like I'm sorry, but like [ __ ] these people.
(50:14) These are super abusive financial institutions who exist off of fleecing people. And to be clear, like the US government's in the same [ __ ] position right now. 88% of tax receipts are going to like paying this unpayable [ __ ] debt. So like at the end of the day, like we're stuck in a debt-based fiat monetary system that is not going to work out for anyone at the end of the day.
(50:33) And people really need to understand that like this system is going to go away at some point. It's not about if, it's about when. And you should start setting yourself up and preparing for a different life. you know, and same thing like uh like urban cultures are really interesting and innovative, but like they're all based around this particular sort of fantasy that like I I think is pretty disconnected from reality on a whole at this point in time. And I think if we're able to get more and more people onto a Bitcoin standard, like
(51:03) there there's a real way that culture can shift in a powerful and thoughtful way that isn't going to be a giant crash, but is actually going to create for a solution that I don't think anybody can really predict. But this is only if people are really going to start thinking for themselves.
(51:21) Like stop believing that uh all these different authoritative figures out there, including us, like have the solutions for you. like you need to sit down and reflect for yourself about what's the life that you want for yourself and what what can empower you in that. Yeah, I know. Um we were talking about it yesterday and uh my belief is that for the the up return thing is like I'm just it's a conversation like I don't feel there's a lot of value engaging in for myself particularly.
(51:50) to your point like don't believe in us. That's it's been one of the most disconcerting things about this debate within Bitcoin is the number of people that are literally tagging me and hopping in my comments on YouTube and on X being like what do you think about this? Like what should we do? It's like I you should not be asking me. You have to decide for yourself.
(52:09) Like that's what Bitcoin's all about. Well, also people are getting pissed at me because I'm not responding. I'm like you you're missing the point. Like you should not be asking me for this. Well, and and also on that point like people who are doing that to market like [ __ ] you. Like like you're not entitled to a response from him and even in that his response doesn't [ __ ] matter. Like go do the [ __ ] work and figuring out for yourself.
(52:34) And also like my first tweet when I got back onto Twitter was about this OP return debate and how much it [ __ ] frustrated me because people aren't reading between the lines. Uh they're not understanding the greater technical debate. Uh, and also like they're not understanding the ideology that's being injected into it.
(52:51) And it just it makes me really [ __ ] angry because like this is a difficult technical issue to understand. And also it's not [ __ ] cut and dry. And people that are behaving as if it is like the the hubris really upsets me. And like at some point can you [ __ ] stop and actually self-reflect enough to go maybe there's something I'm not seeing here.
(53:09) Maybe I shouldn't be nearly as confident as I am about the approach here. And so I'd really encourage you if you don't understand this, great. It means there's more for you to learn about Bitcoin and just like as long as you and I have been in it, I don't think either of us would be able to assert ourselves as being experts in Bitcoin in any way.
(53:31) I mean, I I [ __ ] became friends with and sat next to a core developer here for several months. And even he was hesitant and saying despite the fact that that he's involved deeply in change and like developing Bitcoin core that he didn't feel confident about being an expert in it. And it's because Bitcoin is a huge project that involves a lot of moving pieces and it requires decades of deep and intensive study that even people that would be considered experts by most don't feel that way themselves.
(53:55) So like humble yourself enough to say maybe I'm wrong about this, including the Bitcoin project on a whole. That's super important so you don't fall down the [ __ ] Zcash rabbit hole and go this is the new solution that Bitcoin couldn't do.
(54:12) You know, maybe that's true, but do all the [ __ ] work to figure it out for yourself, and at the end, you'll probably have a conclusion that you don't need to go tag Marty on X to ask his opinion about this [ __ ] Yeah. No, I I think I am not an expert. And that's why I think I've learned enough being in Bitcoin for as long as I have to like know what I don't know. And I'm not going to go out there and pontificate one way or the other in this particular debate because I know that I don't know everything. And I think that's I call it my big wins zen.
(54:41) It's like you just got to it's it's like surfing when you fall off a wave. You just got to go ragd doll and be like okay. Yeah. Yeah. I tried to catch something too big for me. I I got punished for it and that's okay. Yeah. And like this thing plays out bigger too.
(54:57) Same thing with uh anybody who's out there making the confident price calls about whatever it is. Like I'm sorry. Like you don't have a [ __ ] crystal ball. You don't know. The price goes up, the price goes down. And like this is the game theory of Bitcoin that I like is at the end of the day I know the number of units that exist. I know the amount of energy and hashing power that's going in.
(55:15) Those are those are true things that I can know and based off of the rest of the economy when I look at Bitcoin as a savings vehicle and how it operates as a payments rails. I feel way better about that than anything else out there that exists. And so as a value investor, Bitcoin is my chosen savings vehicle and that's what I'm going to keep doing.
(55:34) Yeah, it's funny to watch people really freak out about this price movement. Like, what's happening? Oh my god, $90,000 Bitcoin. It's so horrible. Like, bro, like rewind the tape a little bit. Look at where we were at a few years ago. Like, things are going to work out. It's going to be great.
(55:57) Um, but also like we can't just sit on our hunches and say number go up forever. Like it's important that there's an ongoing pedagogical conversation with people in your lives to actually get them to do their best to understand what Bitcoin is, why it's different from crypto on a whole, why these other currencies aren't a solution, why we can't rely on the government to try to correct these problems for ourselves, and why we really need to have a neutral money that the globe can use for themselves. Yeah.
(56:24) And to your point about obviously I think it's objective the last year year and a half has been really focused on these treasury companies number go up and the sort of freedom money peerto-peer digital cash as a narrative has been sort of pushed to the wayside but I think if you're paying attention to what's actually being built in terms of the infrastructure whether it's second layer um subsystem protocols as Steve Lee was describing to me yesterday or what something like Block just enabled for their Square point of sales systems. Like if you squint and know where to look, there is very exciting truly cipher punk uh digital cash
(57:02) infrastructure being built out. And I think we just need to do a better job of highlighting and pushing that to the floor of the conversation. Absolutely. And and like I these are sort of the ironic cycles that Bitcoin continuously goes through that that I really appreciate is that like despite the fact that things feel kind of stagnant is like actually under the hood there's been huge developments and so seeing what's going on with eCash has been really exciting and all the different applications and ways that people are using that and it's a really
(57:31) powerful mechanism and it has really great privacy protecting features that like and I think this is going to continually happen as me and Jesse talked about this at length once of that Like we think all of the cryptography that Bitcoin needs to become a massively successful project is already baked into the pie. A lot of it's just undiscovered.
(57:53) Very similar to like or or not even undiscovered, but we haven't just taken the various pieces and kind of applied them underutilized. Yeah. And so like ecash is a great thing. It's like this this is a a chamian idea from the 1980s that just got reapplied to Bitcoin in a new and innovative way. And so like there there are various puzzle pieces that people haven't fit together in addition to like uh there's actually like a pretty small cohort of people that are working on these projects because uh very similar to like working on uh a jet engine or something. Very few people are willing to actually lift the hood and look at
(58:25) what's going on underneath it. But once you start tinkering with it and giving yourself permission to mess with it and try things with it like it it you can learn this stuff. And so like I would really encourage anybody who is really interested in Bitcoin like start playing with it under the hood and encouraging yourself to do developmental work or get involved in different ways. Like you can do it and we need other people that are involved with it.
(58:50) And as these discoveries are made, there's going to be more and more opportunities. And so ecash is just one of many new things that are going to sort of change how Bitcoin operates uh on a number of levels. And so I ultimately think that like stuff's still exciting. The mission's still here. We're we're still going to win.
(59:09) Um and just like chill out. Yeah. And like focus like you mentioned Zcash earlier. It's a very frustrating narrative, especially if you've been around long enough to understand the dynamics which brought Zcash to the market and um the the narrative that they're running with how Bitcoin is not private enough. But it's like you just mentioned ecash, you can push privacy to second layers, whether that's lightning, ecash, liquid with confidential transactions, whatever it may be. But then onchain too like to your point about underutilized is I
(59:41) guess there's cryptography involved to a certain extent but like underutilized transaction batching with payjoin like we can we can Bitcoin it will be a transparent ledger and you will know that UTXOs are going from one address to another but you can construct transaction batching in a way where it's really hard to tell who owns what address and Payjoin is something I've been passionate about for years and I think what the work that Dan Gould and others working on the page development kit have been doing over the last three years specifically has been incredible
(1:00:12) and now I think it's time to to make the narrative push for the exchanges in the space the large transaction batchers the largest transaction batchers that exist within the industry to really implement this and just position in a way like hey you you're running a business you want to cut cost and be as efficient as possible um for your shareholders and not only your shareholders but the bit Bitcoin network itself like it's a superior way of batching transactions that you should implement. Yeah. And also like with on that note
(1:00:42) like uh it's very clear that governments are against this kind of technology that they are going to try to spook people out of using them. Uh and seeing what happened to Kenan is really uh sad and we should all be outraged and horrified by it.
(1:01:00) And uh we really need to try to stand behind the samurai devs in the same way that we stand stood behind Ross. Like it's important to understand what what happened to him was horrific wrong and frankly should be yeah you know and like this is this is really unfair across the board and we need to figure out how and why is our government so against us having the freedom to transact and privacy within that cuz like this is what this is really about is a war against privacy and we should be able to as businesses say hey I care about my users privacy enough and about my shareholders ers is making enough profit that I should be
(1:01:34) able to integrate Payjoin that that that we're not violating anybody by doing this and we're protecting people by ensuring them to have privacy. So like where and why is this conversation going wrong? And again, this goes back to like the the political thing is that like we have this class of [ __ ] dinosaurs who don't understand this technology in any meaningful way and they get keyed up on the exact same argument from the first crypto wars of that this is about preventing uh child pornography and terrorism and all the bad [ __ ]
(1:02:05) Meanwhile, like these [ __ ] won't actually release the goddamn Epstein files because they're afraid of the way that it's going to implicate everyone in government who is actually doing these very real crimes. And like this is sort of Yeah, I'm just I'm just really upset and disappointed at our government right now. And I wish there was a real way to push back against these people.
(1:02:27) And there isn't from a political standpoint. And that's one of the reasons why I own Bitcoin is because like this is one of the very few ways that we have to have personal political empowerment against a system that's highly abusive across the board. So yeah, and at what point does corporate civil disobedience need to become a thing? Like so going back to the payjoin thing like in my mind it's like it is literally just a way of batching transactions that is enabled by the protocol and the software kits built on top of it. Like there's literally nothing stopping you from hitting the button that says okay
(1:03:03) here's how we're going to batch transactions now. And to answer that question is that like I I think corporate civil disobedience is kind of the the apex of what we need right now. It's like we need courageous CEOs that are going to integrate these things. And to be clear, the feds are probably going to come after you.
(1:03:20) And when they do that, you go, I will destroy my [ __ ] business and allow for myself to go to prison about this stuff and really stand against you guys cuz this is wrong. And we need to have like America is supposed to be a country that part of its founding principles is the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
(1:03:38) And being able to have a business and protect your users is meaningful. Like we we shouldn't have to continually cowto to governments over and over based off of their pratt and paranoia that is non-existent. And meanwhile, in the background, like they're the people that are doing these actual crimes and getting away with it.
(1:04:02) You know, like if if we want to talk about currency laundering, like let's go back to [ __ ] Pelosi and the kind of [ __ ] that she's doing. Like this this is really disgusting and upsetting and we need to start talking more about how to to actively resist these people. And again, like I don't know, maybe we need to start organizing Bitcoiners in a more meaningful and thoughtful fashion other than the sort of halfhazard approach that we've taken so far.
(1:04:21) Again, I don't know what that looks like, but maybe we need to have something like that. Why would you describe it as haphazard? uh like there isn't any sort of organizing principle that like has us, you know, outside of sort of all of our unofficial contacts that we have with each other. There isn't like a a larger umbrella organization that has has us all working collaboratively together.
(1:04:44) And like I have really strong hopes that like somebody can develop some protocol on Nostra that we can actually use to start figuring out like who are bitcoiners that are really part of this whole thing that we're participating in and like uh We've all sort of been refugees from, you know, first Bitcoin talk, then Reddit, then to X, and now to Noster.
(1:05:01) And like, at what point do we say like, this is really going to be our home base. This is really the way that we're going to operate and organize with each other and know who's who within the the bunch of people and be able to actually start having real conversations about like how do we create our political power together as a real entity as opposed to again what I would call the half-hazard approach. Yeah.
(1:05:26) And maybe that's a fool's errand and maybe I'm totally mistaken, but well, I feel like the the root of the haphazard approach is probably seeped in this idea that Bitcoin is this money for enemies and like it's this apolitical neutral thing that um we can all sort of anchor into and benefit from, but at the end of the day, uh it's not any individual's thing. You is it's not in the possession of any individual. itself.
(1:05:54) And I think there's this embedded sort of apprehension to trying to do something like you're describing because it's like, oh, it's against the ethos of the protocol itself. And and I think like the the concern and danger of that is real, but also like I I've always been the one of that like I've always objected to the idea of the apoliticalness cuz like there there's an interesting turnabout of that like because Bitcoin is money for everybody, there is a way to see it as being apolitical.
(1:06:20) But the truth is is like we live in a fiat world where the the literal word fiat is by decree. That decree comes from governments that have organized us around national lines. And so the fact that we have a money that is not loyal to any single nation state is the most political of all things. And so being able to actually organize Bitcoiners from around the world around this idea first and foremost cuz while we've been talking from a a very American centric idea like these things are going on in Europe just as much as they're going on in places like Africa and South America and Asia and it's important to understand that like
(1:06:55) Bitcoin truly is a global movement that is based on top of the internet and we're sort of the first culture of people that understand that this apparatus is something that we can use to empower people all around the globe. globe to be more free, more egalitarian, and have greater economic opportunity than ever before.
(1:07:13) And we can totally lose that if we're not willing to actually stand up and say, "Hey, this is an important and powerful political principle that people should rally behind." And it's important to also return to the fact of that like the American Revolution wasn't something that was isolated to America.
(1:07:29) And there was like good reason why Thomas Jefferson was also one of the primary authors of the rights of man is because like this was truly a cultural movement that was about advancing like the political capital T capital P as opposed to just politics.
(1:07:47) And so like to me Bitcoin's about a global political movement for the freedom of money of all people everywhere against their governments and the sort of endemic abuses that they've created through fiat money. Yeah. Yeah. How do we I mean ah and this this returns how do you how do you engender this uh this fire because talking to you like it's very obvious like you have this fire in your belly that really drives you to this and I feel like that fire doesn't exist in most people's bellies anymore.
(1:08:15) I like I don't know how we engender it and maybe it's like we just need to start building but it's like to me that this is a true political principle of that like uh we need people to get that like Bitcoin is a political thing. It's not it's not just an innate uh like a-political thing, if you will, that like it's truly the most political thing.
(1:08:39) And that's why I've always wanted to try to encourage this sort of political line of Bitcoin shining through. And that's why I'd love to see some kind of uh and again I don't want to call it a political party but like this cultural movement that's designed around people understanding and like again like being well read in Marxism I actually think that there's a lot of very powerful ideological approaches that we can pluck out of Marxism and one of the ideas is the idea of class consciousness like having people be able to develop a class consciousness around what Bitcoin is and what fiat money is and how we're that is a system that empowers us against it is very much like
(1:09:10) the idea of class consciousness and Marxism and understanding how people were exploited through the labor theory of value. Well, I'm happy you brought this up because this is what we've intentionally been doing with our AI generated videos. So, I I was very influenced by Michael Goldstein's 2019 pit block boom talk on meme warfare and the art of rhetoric and the fact that you shouldn't view propaganda as a bad thing.
(1:09:33) You're being propagandized in both both ways. So, with these AI videos we've been making, it's u the last one we did specifically, it's um common man, the common man. I I saw it. I really liked it. It was like the two farmers talking. Yeah.
(1:09:51) But like really like leaning into that Marxist idea, plucking that out and being like, "All right, we're going to tell the story of deflation and how money we have all this tech deflation, but we're not reaping the benefits of it because we're printing money." We we should talk more about this because this very much is in line with my book crypto sovereignty and sort of the extension after it through uh Alexander Dugan's fourth political theory and that like in the fourth political theory he makes the argument that uh like fascism, Marxism and liberalism are all sort of the political theories of the 20th century
(1:10:14) and they're all dead. Like they're all murdered by neoliberalism in a very particular way. That now means the whole world operates sort of under this principle of neoliberalism and that these three priopolitical theories are dead.
(1:10:32) However, there's a possibility of a fourth political theory where you can essentially cherrypick from all the prior political theories and take those ideas and then apply them to sort of this new political theory. This is what I think Bitcoin actually is. But I think it's only once we imbue Bitcoin with principles that draw from fascism, that draw from liberalism and draw from communism to essentially educate people around the fact of that we have the internet as a global apparatus that allows for anyone anywhere the freedom and the empowerment to actually create and contribute to a global economy. We now have a money that anybody anywhere
(1:11:04) can use freely with one another to transact with each other to create this global economy. But it's only through the ideological advancement of understanding that fiat money, whether it is from the Japanese government, the Chinese government, the Americans, or the South Africans, it is all designed around the explicit exploitation of the workingclass man against a political culture that is designed to steal from them.
(1:11:28) And it's only through the development of this class consciousness of getting more people on board to use Bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion that allows for them to exchange directly with one another in a private preserving manner allows for number go up that sort of creates this dual union between the first world and the third world to advance one another for the working class in each world.
(1:11:53) And then uh you know like I think Ben Arc and I we've had a number of really great conversations together because he's very well read in Marxism too of that uh I've been meaning to do a deep analysis of Bitcoin from a Marxist standpoint. And again these words Marxism, communism, fascism, they're almost useless at this point in time because of how much they've been abused.
(1:12:12) But there is a way to approach Bitcoin through a Marxist lens that allows for uh these very deep principled recoveries of an ideological approach that that is part of why Marxism was such a powerful movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Like it wasn't all just an insane idea of using the state to create a giant apparatus of exploitation. And that's also part of my line of thinking of being an anarchist.
(1:12:36) Like it's very important to understand that the socialist movement in the late 19th century like communism and anarchism were a single thing up until Marx produced the communist manifesto and that's when when Bon approached Marks and was like hey what's all this [ __ ] about the dictatorship of the proletariat and taking over the state for us and Markx was like yeah yeah like that's how we can actualize communism and back then was like [ __ ] you like the the state's the problem it's not it's not the capitalist expropriation it's the fact of that these things work in tandem with each other. So like [ __ ]
(1:13:06) you, anarchism is going to go become its own movement on its own. And because there was no organizing principle around anarchism, it essentially died in early death during the 20th century, which I think now there's an opportunity to recover with this fourth political theory. Mhm. Wow.
(1:13:26) And and it's funny like you're saying this and even myself just like people hear these words Marxism, communism and the idea of like let's pick good ideas and they'll they'll have it like immediate aversion like immediately shut down uh intellectually like ah this is oh absolutely and and that's part from a multigenerational campaign against both of them.
(1:13:45) One is is that like it's important to understand that like Marxism and the way that it advanced into uh Leninist and Stalinism in the 20th century was like it was [ __ ] horrific and then it's in its last iteration of Mauism was almost the worst and like these are particular maniacal forms that came out of the idea of Marxism in the same way that like fascism died such an early death and it's been so heavily disparaged over time that most people have no idea what the word means other than that it's it's bad. It's really bad and we can't talk
(1:14:19) about it. And I think these things are really important to go well well why is it so bad? What was the things that made it so uh apprehensible and something that we shouldn't look at? Not only that, but like conversely, what were the things that made people really attracted to it? Yeah.
(1:14:37) And like it's pretty interesting that most people think that like Germany just went insane like during the 1930s and that there's no real reason that fascism actually became the select approach. And it's really important to understand the historic context of how and why fascism ultimately is what ran Germany in the 1930s and the same reason as like why did fascism become the select thing that worked in Italy at the time.
(1:15:00) And most people don't understand that fascism was explicitly developed as an anti-communist movement. And it's specifically because of the way that communism was becoming so powerful in places like Italy and Germany at this point in time. And so like again like I also think that like these answers from the past won't apply to the future.
(1:15:20) And that's why I like Dugan's fourth political theory so much. Yeah. Well, and you're I'm chuckling right now because we're watching it play out again. Absolutely. Fashion. We were talking about it with Danny. Fascism is rising as this response to overcomunism which is becoming popular and like we saw how that played out and we should all be very scared of it and that's why we need to have a totally new political approach that has the internet bitcoin uh censorship resistant technology and privacy at the core of it because there is a new and very powerful
(1:15:52) way that we could create a global movement that ensures and it's very ironic because like part of what I think the fourth political theory is is take picking and choosing a number of these things in order to create essentially like uh I don't even know what you'd call it alakart political theory well and part of that is is that like this political theory essentially is like the most radical form of anarchism through the most liberal approach that there is because it truly makes the sovereign individual and it collectivizes sovereign individuals sort
(1:16:23) of under this uh like Marxist rubric but because of the way that privacy is preserved uh that like the individual choice is radicalized through the internet in this very particular way. It like actualizes the sovereign individual like as sort of the preeminent political character of the 21st century.
(1:16:43) But again, we only get that if we create this sort of applied political ideology that like sort of the next iteration of my own political work around crypto sovereignty has been working on. but also like uh this is like such a monumental uh political and philosophical task and also like I I don't know what the [ __ ] I'm doing. So it's like trying to figure out how to do that.
(1:17:05) Like I need somebody to deeply collaborate with me and work on something. That was you say that and my next question was going to be like okay we're talking highlevel 30,000 foot view of this fourth political theory that we should really attempt to go after. And my question right before you said that my mind was going to be all right let's get into the blocking and tackling what is the first step like I think the first step is acknowledging that like we need something like this and then sort of trying to figure out like how does it organize itself and
(1:17:34) like I have a whole bunch of desperate threats and ideas that like I've been juggling with over the past I don't know seven years or something but you know uh having dialogues like this encouraged me to look more deeply into it but essentially like it looks something very similar to Uh yeah, essentially I should go back through all of my notes from the fourth political theory and reread it because after that I felt like there's a way and like Bitcoin has a number of these things in it of that like uh Satoshi's choice of 21 million is like a
(1:18:03) total fascist thing but the fact that like one bitcoin is one bitcoin whether it's mine or yours and that's protected by cryptography is like this very Marxist idea and so like the I think picking all these things out and kind of trying to go through it in very deep detail to explain it I think would be really valuable to people and as part of the advancement of that class consciousness to actually have people understand that like no you don't own the money in your bank account that's a debt instrument the bank owns like yes
(1:18:32) you are actually a very particular form of slave that has been enslaved to a fiat monetary system and something like Bitcoin is the real way that you can empower yourself and no is the way that you can really and I think no is kind of one of the components is that like I think That's the thing that the political apparatus of however we like vote or have dialogues with each other or something. There's like a way to build that on top of no sir.
(1:19:01) But like it's not very clear to me at how that's done yet. Yeah. And it hasn't really hit me. Well, it has hit me like I intentionally rebranded TFTC to truth for the come too to really play into that working man thing cuz that that's what like I grew up uh both my grandfathers were union workers. one was a steam fitter, one was an iron worker.
(1:19:22) My parents had me very young and provided a great life for me, but we were never extremely well off and and I think just my life experience is such that like I have a lot of empathy for the working man cuz I grew up in a working man common man family and uh that's who's getting crushed the most and that is get who's also getting misled the most and they're getting driven to these polar ideas to your point which have objectively failed and will fail again if you if you try to implement them And the whole point of this show, of the newsletter, of my work in Bitcoin, is to
(1:19:54) really get through to the common man, like this is the way. Yeah. And I think like through uh like as you were talking about that, that reminds me of like one of the ways that anarchism tried to organize itself in the early 20th century was through an approach called syndicicalism.
(1:20:11) And syndicicalism is essentially like this idea of creating industrial unions that are interoperable together that are like based on those principles. And I think like we essentially as Bitcoiners need to start getting more aggressive with being like, "Hey, if you're a small business owner, you need to be accepting Bitcoin and like you need to be marking up fiat by 10 or 20%.
(1:20:30) " And being very explicit about that, like if you're going to use Bitcoin with my business, you're going to save money and if you're not, I'm going to charge you more and there's a reason why. and then finding other people to create these collaborative relationships with where like maybe they're uh people that that are inventory providers or maybe there are other people that you have relationships with, but it's really from a business front encouraging people to be like, "Hey, we need to be using Bitcoin for our businesses for these reasons and this is how it protects us." And furthermore, by because we've
(1:20:58) collectivized ourselves in a particular way that like if the government comes after you for um you know like you get tax audited or something and that that's taken away from you like we have this sort of support network that's going to help you out.
(1:21:15) But again, all of this like goes back to I don't know the exact methodology of how we need to organize around this. But I am convinced that like organization is something that we need to actually address in a meaningful way. And we also need to address this component of class consciousness as well. Yeah. And it's never been easier with the tech that exists.
(1:21:32) Like if we really wanted to, if we figured out like, okay, here's the sort of way in which we're going to organize the ability to do so. It's never been easier. Well, and and getting into the memeatic warfare, like that's such an important and powerful component because also like if we're doing it right, as this stuff gets promoted, like they're going to start banning it and then we can start promoting it on Nostaster and then we can start being really clear that like, hey, there's this whole other dialogue that if I even try to have it with you here, we both get banned. And so, like, come find us on Nostaster. like this is our censorship resistant network where
(1:22:01) they can't stop us from talking about this and spreading the signal. Cuz the truth is is like you're being exploited in a way that like do you really think that a hundred years ago your grandfather was able to own a farm and have eight kids and that he was somehow like are you not working as hard as him? My grandfather was an iron worker and had eight kids. Yeah.
(1:22:25) Like can you be an iron worker today and have eight kids? No. Why is that? Is is it that iron working did not become more efficient? So like there's clearly a [ __ ] problem here. And why is it that it seems to be that we're working harder than ever and we're getting by less than ever before? And it's because of these reasons.
(1:22:44) It turns out that fiat money is a thing that's designed explicitly to exploit you and redirect money to this parasitic political class and really trying to figure out the way that we create the memeatic warfare around that. uh collectivizing people to educate each other and giving each other the resources and really finding the right ways to organize around that I think is is a very important principle that I really hope that more people are going to get on board with figuring out how we do this together.
(1:23:11) You know what? Maybe uh we need to make like the founding fathers like a a dinner series around the country, around the world even where we get a group of us together. I mean, I think between like our mutual networks along with some other people that we know, like I do think that we should actually probably do something similar to this and like have a you know, like uh being here with the the group that we're with is kind of a great starting point is that figuring out how do we get us all together for a week just to to hang out and really have a dialogue with each other about if we're to build something like this, what
(1:23:42) does it look like, how does it function, and how do we put it together? very similar to what the founding fathers did. Cuz like that was a decision that those men made for themselves to respond to the tyrannical abuses that their government was doing to them at that point in time, which like this seems to rhyme pretty well with what happened, you know, 250 years ago. Yeah.
(1:24:07) And it would be very fitting as we approach the 250th anniversary of this nation if we were able to successfully do something like this. And it would be really fun too, you know, like uh like have you have you ever seen the documents of uh like the bar tab after they like got together and actually see what they drink and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we definitely need to do that part too.
(1:24:27) So all right, let's end it here. All right. Yeah. call to action for for the people who care about this and recognize that at least here in America and I think even more broadly in parts of the west the solutions that are being put in front of you are not going to work.
(1:24:46) They haven't worked and the nature of our reality as it stands in 2025 and 21st century in the digital age is not conducive for the solutions that are being put before you. Yeah. And we need to ask ourselves to stand up and be courageous enough to realize that like this is our time to really shine.
(1:25:05) And if we make the decision together to stand up and create a new political dynasty that could change the future for the next 250 years, maybe there's an opportunity that our children can actually live freer, happier, and flourish better than we could have ever predicted. I'm really happy we did this. Yeah, me too. All right. Peace and love, freaks. Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC.
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