Transcript+
All right everyone, welcome to the broadcast. This is where Bitcoin culture meets business and finance. We catch up on news, tweets, videos, charts, trends, and any other Bitcoin and macro related content that stood out to us in the past two weeks. This is episode 27 guys. Welcome. The Big 27 do. You have that memorized or do you have like a script in the front? It's really well done. Now memorized, of course, I'm a professional. I'm a professional now. Yeah. So we have 45 minutes, so we're just going to dive into it. And usually I let you guys take like the first link, but this if we think about like what's the biggest thing in Bitcoin? It's obviously the quantum thing this this week. And obviously I, I do want to touch upon it because there, there were a few things that we're kind of weird with this announcement. I mean, it's coming out of Google. There's this whole research paper, right? Obviously. And Nick Carter is all over this and, and we are waving it away and it's super serious. And Google apparently is basically saying we've got the quantum resources needed to break bitcoins encryption by 20X. We can now break it. We can prove it, but we're just not going to tell you. The strange thing here is that one of the co-authors apparently works at the Ethereum Foundation. And it's interesting because when you look at the Oh yeah, well, here you see him, Justin, Justin Drake. I don't know who didn't know who that was. But then you know, if you look at the paper here, you see like here it says like Ethereum Foundation, etcetera. So the thing I wanted to ask you guys is, you know, I think I, I do think quantum is a is a threat like if this actually eventually works, if it is energy efficient, you know, a quantum attack on Bitcoin is logical because, you know, for example, Satoshi's coins are just a huge honeypot. And you know, from my own to my understanding, like it could be, you know, a big enough honeypot to actually fuel up a quantum computer and spent a lot of resources on trying to hack them. Now the I think there's there's two issues or well, two big issues in Bitcoin, right? It's like, how do we mitigate this? So the move to post quantum addresses, I think it's a big debate. I once listened to a guy Swan podcast where he kind of laid out all the options and I think the best option is the one that also takes up the most space, which doesn't necessarily make it the best option or something like something like that. I'm not super deep into this. So there's like that on one side and on the other side, of course, the question with, you know, what do you do with upgrading, right? Like so for example, Satoshi can obviously not upgrade and move the coins to another address, or at least that's what we think because their debt, but other people can that hold Bitcoin. But will everyone do it right? There will be a kind of point where, yeah, there's just a migration to this post quantum, these post quantum addresses, etcetera. So yeah, I just wanted to, so my idea is I, I think it's OK if Satoshi's coins get taken and then they're dumped on the market or whatever. We might get a dump, but the market buys them. I I don't necessarily care about that if if that is the case. But I just wonder what your guys take is on on all of this? Yeah. So I mean, I'll just make it quick. I don't, I'm not going to go into there's a lot more smarter people and longer form conversation about the implementation, the process etcetera, etcetera. I think the main thing to go into is the incentives. A it doesn't make any sense of whatever that tweet was about. We figured it out, but we're going to like not show it. We've seen this with Claude just this past weekly. Their their source code. I mean, it's, there's people in this organization that know it. They're going to, they're the same thing with the polymarket stuff. They'll extract it if they can break any kind of encryption independent of what Google decides to formally do or not do. The other thing I think is more important to call out is the incentives when capital is at play. We see this. I talked about it on the last trade earlier, whether it's Z cash, Monero, this specifically like bit sensor, whatever the du jour token or just narrative is when capital's behind it, that generally picks up steam. There's a single point a person here that's really kicked up a lot of this and it's Nick harder. Everyone knows he invested in a in a in a company that's working on this. The thought experiment that I was going through was if he cared so much about it and had enough self-awareness, which I think he does. But they call into question how much does he care about Bitcoin Where he could have easily handed the deal to another peer, let them invest, and then objectively stood back and explain why this is an issue and being able to be more objective from the market's perspective. If he truly did care about it. The other thing to call out is, and honestly might be even more innocent than that, he might have been sold a bag of goods from this firm about why Quantum is going to come. I was thinking about that when Brown was talking. It's like nobody really knows. It's all theoretical. So like he could have easily been sold on, like why this is such a big threat now he has to triple down. When your capital's at play, you have to go down the ship and then you end up with this and you start to like kick off a lot of the rocks. He easily knew about. I think he has a great podcast weekly and he was talking about last week referencing, referencing that this was coming out. So he knew he has ties to Ethereum. And so I, I think you can hold 2 lights in your head of 1. Is there a smart individual there? But he's also missed the mark in particular things 1 is like increasing the block size or for inflation because of the security, you know, tail risk or telemission might be needed because the security is an issue, which I think is kind of crazy. And then there was another one that he's had out there that he just, I think, misses the mark in certain respects. Yeah, I mean, just on that, the point around he admitted as much that the person who sort of quantum Peloton was the founder of Project 11, which is the company invested it. So he literally admitted that which I found interesting for me on all this stuff at a high level, I think people struggle to hold multiple thoughts in their head at the same time. You can both believe that there's a non 0 risk of this quantum threat being real at some point in the future, but you can also be cognizant of the fact that it's probably farther out than 2029 like this paper is suggesting. And anyone who's putting a firm date on it is being somewhat disingenuous. Because baked into the claims being made in this paper are a ton of assumptions around scalability of these things and actually applying them at a relevant scale. That would be would be needed actually attack Bitcoin in a in a material way. And so back to the incentives thing that you met mentioned Michael. It's not only around people sounding the alarm on it, but it's also around the companies and themselves, like Google, like the public, the public quantum firms that they need to express and display progress being made in order to continue to fund their their research and development. And so there's clear incentive mismatches here across the board, whether it's people on Twitter or the companies or research outfits themselves. And so everything coming out in a paper like this needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt in the sense that one, there's a ton of assumptions baked in and two, there's incentives in play that that lead people down a certain path in terms of describing the progress being made. So I kind of fall in what I would say is like a middle camp of like, I don't think the risk is zero. I think it's potentially possible that this is a real threat in the future, but I think we have enough time. And I and the other big thing to me is like there are people working on it and we have solutions that are being pushed forward specifically around the, the signatures and wallet types that like we'll figure it out is basically my take. Like there's multiple things in process right now. Even more came out this week around something called Shrimps. Don't really love that name, but nevertheless, the Brahm would you reference? It's like the, the technical hurdle on that side is like getting it small enough, basically the data that would need to be on chain to do these things. And so that's going to be the progress that that the development community makes and we'll get there. And. And so, yeah. I think that I think like, honestly, unless we make a whole hour pod talking about quantum, the the rational and fair thing to do is like anything technical, just site really great places to go because there's very few people that can actually really talk about anything outside of like what would an implementation process look like to protect coins that are potentially unmovable? The the thing that I think is the meta worth looking at is that we should have enough humility to realize that if we figured out finite scarcity and Bitcoin, we'll figure out to Brian's point, the quantum situation. There's enough of a valency. There's enough people working on this that it's obviously been looked at since the genesis of Bitcoin and Satoshi writing about it not coming out of nowhere. So. The only other thing I wanted to mention is there's kind of this thought that, oh, Bitcoins, this natural honeypot for someone to attack. But I've always kind of struggled with that line of thinking because it's similar to the, the notion of a 51% attack in the sense that the thing you're attacking then becomes potentially worth less as you, as it becomes known that you attack the thing. And so I think there's some fallacy built into like, oh, it's so obvious that whoever gets the quantum computing first is going to just steal all this Bitcoin from Satoshi. It's like, well, not necessarily because that would potentially destroy the value of the thing they're stealing. And then and then the other component to that is whoever gets there first is not going to be some guy in their basement. It's going to be a nation state or left to United States or China. And so again, the incentives are not totally aligned at like someone just steals the coin and it coins and attempts to market dump them. Yeah, I, I, I fully agree with the last part before we continue like that, right, because then it would be like, you know, well, you know, in, in the past countries have stolen gold as well, right, And just put it in a vault and later just said, like, you know, this is just part of our gold stack. So I'm I'm not really sure how much frowned upon a country would be right if, if, if they would steal a Satoshi's coins. But but I agree like the the, the trade off with the risk and the reward or like the investment upfront and the reward, I think is very difficult to to define. I did see an interesting comment. I don't know from which podcast, but like like bit bit like the security of Bitcoin is what secures the thing itself, right? And so you could hack, I don't know, Visa, MasterCard or whatever, but there it did the, the bounty would be a totally different thing, if that makes sense, right. So I, I, I do think like the Bitcoin that is blocked from Satoshi's kind of like a hit, a treasure chest in that sense. Like you literally break it open and you have the thing. And with something like Visa or whatever, I think it would be different. But anyway, it's still breaking in, right? So if it's not a nation state that's defending itself. True, whatever means any company that would do this would still also do something criminal, right. So I I don't know, I, I agree with you like the the incentives aren't really there, but let's let's see. Let's move on to the next one. Mike, you said the money of your enemy is your friend. I like that. Yeah. I mean, I think this ties into this kind of got underreported, but Russia is I think this goes in effect that today maybe over 100 grams of gold leaving the country ultimately like creating a a fractured kind of or I guess May 1st it's there and then UAE looking at freezing some of Iran assets. And this is kind of comments I won't or like understood around counterparty risk and where the jurisdiction is. But the thing that hit me, if you Scroll down, there's like a a map that kind of shows some of the conflict regions that it's going to become even more understood how why final settlement really matters. Because when you think about coordination of Fiat and independent of the sovereign Fiat or what you're going like you have interchange, you have SWIFT, you have different counterparties that are sitting between it and regard it, whether they don't like where it's coming from, what the goods are, if they're potentially infiltrated or they don't make it and you want to reverse it. You know, with all these levels of counterparty risk apart from it versus being able to final settled. And then I think there's like second, third order ramifications around. We talked about not selling oil and other, other things. And how does that look like from multi city and escrow? And I just think that this is going to be an interesting dynamic when it comes to Bitcoin adoption around the borderless censorship resistant component of being able to just like final settle when you need goods and services versus doing Fiat, including stablecoins for that. Yeah, for sure, yeah. And now it's time to add just like this, this is at a high level just very indicative of of all the things going on in the world. But just like moving from multi polar or unipolar to multi polar, the the ramifications of that from a settlement perspective, I thought it was interesting that I think Turkey was reported to have sold a ton of gold in the past few weeks and that might have been part of the reason for gold sort of live decline. And now it's been ripping the past week or so. But prior to that it had fallen a decent amount there. There's an interesting component there where it's like gold is money, but if it's not being used effectively as a settlement layer, then Turkey needed to sell their gold in order to basically pay dollar obligations elsewhere. And so that's clunky for a number of reasons. But if you had a digital neutral settlement layer and you wouldn't necessarily need to deal with all those different opposite steps. So I think that's just a sort of nice case study of why Bitcoin is becoming more and more relevant in the context of everything that you just described. Yeah, what I think is so fascinating and I think we talked about this before, right? At one point there were people selling their gold at a discount in Dubai because they wanted to get out. But like the use case for an individual is not necessarily that different from a country, right. And I think to what Brian is saying, the the first country that is just going to add Bitcoin as something they accept for commodity trading or oil or whatever, I think they could really set the standard because the arguments are quite strong, right? Even like what you what you were just saying, like, you know, they're looking into freezing Iran's assets or whatever, like the fact that countries can do that to each other. I mean, for me, this is one of the main arguments, like the whole freezing of Russia's assets, right? If they can do it to a country, they can do it to you, right? So if you think that there will be more chaos in these in this multi polar world, like where, where do you actually store your value? If you also, apparently, you know, people in Dubai were super comfy, even if you're super comfy, you could be forced to get up on your feet and, and, and move right. So if you just paint that future picture, I don't think it's it's crazy to think that that Bitcoin is going to play a a role in that. So yeah, it's actually very interesting to see how Bitcoin is kind of like holding up in this very chaotic time. Yeah, let's move to the the next one. If something happened to you tomorrow, could your family access your Bitcoin? Not, Probably not. They would figure it out with certainty. I thought about this a lot. You may feel confident managing your own keys, but are your loved ones? Billions of Bitcoin have been lost already because someone died without a plan. With on ramp inheritance planning is built in directly into your custody setup. Your Bitcoin stays segregated and in your control, insured through Lloyd's of London and accessible to the people you choose. When they need it. Get started in 15 minutes. Book a free consultation at on rampbitcoin.com On ramp secured by three controlled by me. This is our big friend. I'll play it first. Yeah, Brian. OK, a little bigger. Yep. As they didn't keep rates low for, for too long. I mean, I think that's as they didn't worry about inflation as they said it was going to be transitory. Because I, I, I think even Powell himself said that he might wish he'd turned it sooner. Well, I, I wish they had a 0 inflation target, right? But I mean, once you start saying you're going to tolerate 2%, that compounds pretty dramatically over time. And you're, you're saying to people that you're getting less than 2% on your money, you're going backwards. And actually, if you pay tax, you may pay tax on the 2%. You know, I mean, I, I don't like, I don't like that particular goal. So if keep rates low for students for. Yeah. So this is Warren Buffett, a guy who has benefited tremendously from the Fiat monetary system over the course of his long life. And I find it very interesting that towards the end, you know, he's an old guy. He's going to, he's going to pass away, unfortunately, at some point. But towards the end of his life, I think he's getting a little bit more honest about the situation because I don't think he would have said something like this 10 or 20 years ago because it's going to behoove him. He wasn't incentivized to do so. And now, you know, older in age, sort of hung out the hung up the cleats to some extent, handed off the reins for Berkshire. I think he's just being a little bit more freewheeling and saying what he actually thinks, which is that debasement of the currency and inflation is a bad thing. And he wishes, you know, the inflation rate to 0. And that's a that's a advertisement for sound money of some form. And this is a guy who's also had exposure to coal miners in the past. So I think he understands this stuff. And I find it interesting that he's now willing to talk about it. The other thing to highlight is the the power of compounding that it references there. Most people think about the power of compounding in the sense of you know, S&P goes up 68% a year over a long time period. That does really well for you in nominal terms. It works the other way. It works in reverse as well. So if you're losing 2% a year, that compounds materially over the course of one's life or even 10 or 20 years. And so that's just something that I, I really appreciate in highlighting there because most people don't think about it that way. And, and maybe this is a wake up call for some folks who still respect this guy's voice generally. And there's a lot of people out there that do, waking them up to the realities of monetary debasement and serve the ills of inflation generally. Yeah, so maybe this is where the show is interesting. I'm conflicted. We've had clients reach out and say they appreciate us, appreciate us staying commercial brahm and not cursing. So I'm not going to say anything too too crazy, but you know, like he made his money off of that world for and it was a great podcast, probably one of the last non dat that people at Bitcoin. There's a few Lynn Alden had a great podcast that came out this morning with Peter. I think it was this morning. And it was a real good just like quick hit of how we got here. But she referenced that Coca Cola's best product or it's bonds and that anybody that makes money here is effectively shorting the dollar by taking out low debt. And obviously Warren Buffett be one of the largest shareholders and making his money in the system. So I just find a little curious. That and the end of his life, after he sits on his hundreds of billions of dollars, he feels good about talking about the ills of it. He played the game, he played damn, and he's out of a game. Now and and so yeah, it's just it's it's it's just fascinating because I don't know where I don't think deeply and hopefully after here, don't ever think about it again. But it's just like, you know what you think about Musk and he talks out of both sides of his mouth and like talk about freedom and Twitter while they set up like this Orwellian state. And you talked about this guy and he's referencing 2 percents of problem where he effectively he played the game. But like there's a level of playing the game and there's and, and, and you can make the same case that you play the game with like Spax and Chamoth or crypto currencies. It's like that's the game because somebody else is getting robbed. So you made the money on one side and then you you killed everyone with diabetes on the sugar. So like, am I supposed to hold him in a pause light? But the problem is, and I'll I'll speak out of the other side of my mouth and brain is that he does have timeless wisdom of like rational thought. So I don't actually know what it means. I actually don't even care what it means. I just like calling out because I can't help but see the contradictory nature of like this statement of this. And it's not 2% for what it's worth, it's closer to 12%. So he's still fed speaking the the mole, the polls already moved and he's just going a little bit closer to 0 from. Two, it's really. 12 now, so maybe he's like, you know, off by the same 5% that he's been talking about so anyway. I mean, it's funny, like on 50% I fully agree with with Mike, right, But it also I. Don't even know what you agree with. I don't even know what I agree with. I just calling out the paradox. You know, it's he's playing the game, yes, but the the fact that, you know, and this what Brian is saying, I think like at this old age, he's he's kind of yeah. And yeah, I mean, I also agree. Like, what is it worth? You know, I think the fun, the, the, the interesting part for me is here, you know, like Bitcoin is honest money, right? Like this, this, this, you know, he said like, well, it should be closer to 0%. You know, if, if your goal is 2%, then you're basically loose, right? Because you can hover around the 2%. Like even in Europe they talk about, well, it is 2 point 9%, which is kind of close to 2%. Yeah, but it's almost 50% higher than the stated stated goal, right. And that's how no one ever really talks about it. So it I feel with what he's saying, he's kind of showing whether it's his intention or not, I have no clue that it is perverse to have an arbitrary number goal. Like how how you know? Well, it's asinine to fill your point out. We talked about this again. I didn't hit the main point, which you are, is nobody would in the right mind would say we should fix the cost of any good or service, but we fix the cost of money. Like that's how insane it is. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So I, I mean, I agree it's super insane. But I also agree with Brian that, like at this old age, it's also interesting that he's sharing it, you know, whether he's trying to, you know, get OK with God before he dies with all the God, I don't know, but, you know. Repenting for. His it cannot be the case that he's not aware of the effects of of infinite inflation. Like he's the guy, he's the compounding guy, right? So yeah, well, somebody. Just loses the point. That's the. That's the. Thing that is true. That is very it's a 0 sum game. Very true. Very true. Yeah. So yeah, maybe he's trying to to to get to to to square himself or like, I don't even know how to say that, but yeah, make make good or whatever. But you know, with just 147,000 views, I don't know if it's going to reach everyone that we can actually educate. Let's get this one is still Brian. Yeah, I love this. I love this. Oh yeah, this is safety and our buddy safety and pointing out that periodic reminder that diamonds are shit coins. And then if you go to the the second link. So I guess there was a material price decline in in diamonds recently. But his second link was actually just he retweeted it. It was himself from 2021 and I'll just read it. Diamonds really are the original shit coin. They became popular as a gold replacement after gold was confiscated by governments. They are not scarce, fungible or hard to produce and would never be a store value in a free market. Bitcoin will demonetize them. I just thought this was it's interesting. I mean, like it's somewhat of a potential foreshadowing on a long enough time horizon for gold. I know we've talked about this a lot on this show. I I still think gold's going to be money for a long time and has a much more legitimate track record as such relative to something like diamonds. And and that's exactly to save point is that diamonds sort of emerged as a basically an alt coined goal. And now they're, you know, falling even in greater in price in a shorter time frame, just given some technological investments in terms of like fake diamonds that are pretty indistinguish, indistinguishable from real. And so it's just a reminder that I guess Bitcoin is very unique. Like there are there have been different forms of money over time. It's mostly been gold if we're just looking at sort of the entire continuum of monetary history. But there's objective reasons for that and any references, some of the mayor that even relative to gold, diamonds fall short in terms of those objective properties. And what we know about Bitcoin is that again, over a long enough time frame, those those objective properties are what matter most, not any particular narrative than any particular time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's very clear that there's this, this, what's it called, the beers, you know, it's a Belgium family there. There's like a cartel behind go behind diamonds, right? But, you know, there's fake diamonds, there's blood diamonds, you know, and, and, and and so Bitcoin is also just different, I would say, because it's just ultimately transparent. Like you don't even have to guess with regard to like what, what is Bitcoin, which Bitcoin do I have, etcetera. How does it come into the world and so on. And I, I think just based on that, right, people should be paying attention. We know, we know, we know they are not. But I, and, and I, maybe I said this before, but I really want to make a YouTube video that is like that, that of which the title is a gold. Gold is a meme coin. And because it's all narrative, eventually it's all narrative, whether it's diamonds or it's it's gold. It's currently all all narrative like function. It's not I disagree, but it's. It's generally not. I mean this, this is ties into there's a, there's a, an action we'll take. This is why. This is why I added the link. Because I knew this. I knew this would. Happen no, so like take a little not even offense, but like whatever to to saying like gold and and diamonds, But that's a different conversation. It's more of yes, to Brahms point, there are narratives associated with all these financial instruments specifically like private credit, private public equities are all the shit, right? And it doesn't have objective properties that make it a good form of money. The easy example good friend Parker Lewis likes to say like if you split a house in half, it's not functional and so you kind of lose the value there, right? And so the point being is that gold, I'm sorry, diamonds are narrative driven. Gold is not a narrative. It has objective properties that we've coalesced around as a society that make it the best form of money that we had in Bitcoin. Is that next evolution? But that is not a narrative. Those are job properties that we've agreed on. I, I, I agree. I just want to say now that Bitcoin has entered this stage and it has objectively better characteristics than gold. If you look at, you know, comparisons of gold to Bitcoin, the only thing that gold has is a longer. OK. But quantum quantum comes about tomorrow. If it does and Nick Carter's right now, what? What happens? OK, I'm talking about today, but you. See what I'm saying? But that's still hamming like independent of the liquidity profile, the fact that if the Internet and there is some crazy shortage of energy and then there's all these other issues that people don't have access, they can't transact to that there is a still objective reality that gold is 30 trillated. It's a better form of money today for global settlement because if you're going to ship an oil tanker or whatever is people know how to do it. It's not. It's not. It's still subjective that Bitcoin for a large percentage of people are a better form of of money is a better form of money. That's why it's my opinion. Well, I, I mean, that's, that's, that's fair. I'm just saying like gold is not a narrative. Like that's the thing that you hear a lot. I don't think you're saying about a lot of people say that money is a narrative and money's not a narrative. Like money has objective properties to settle subjective value, like different what people want. And so that's why gold has been money, and then bitcoins a better form of money. I love that and I, I, I agree conceptually, but practically you're seeing that that is just not true. People. People think Fiat money with A5 or A10 or A50 or 100 on it has different value. I mean, the whole Fiat money system is a bamboozlement, an enchantment, whatever. What do you mean has different value? Most I mean. More you you say money has objective but like. Fiat, golden Bitcoin. I'm saying like actual money, like commodity monies, not monies that we determine or we issue like Fiat by decree. I'm saying that monies that emerge have objective properties that make it a good form of money that the external party has no no like ability to manipulate. Like dollars are not money, their credit. I mean, but I'm saying people think it think it's money, but but with gold, you know, for for me, it's more about when something enters the stage that is objectively better. You know, obviously not everyone realizes this or think it's interesting or thinks it's it's also true. But that's why I'm sharing like this is more my opinion. Like you cannot ignore the fact that now you know if you're a gold person or you think something like this is important or you think gold is money or whatever. If when Bitcoin exists and you put it next to each other when you compare them. The only thing I'm saying is that the only plus on the gold side is. OK, I have a question. I have a question. So let's say. You're what if the entire Internet? Goes let's, let's say you're right and we obviously know there's talent here and there's a bunch of intelligence agencies and a sovereign decides to allocate all their sovereign wealth or a large percentage because they come to the conclusion that what you're coming to. And they obviously wouldn't park it at Coinbase. So they would set up their own private keys and it would be however set up and Intellij Agency found out and they use some of these drones that cost very little and blew up the facilities. No, seriously. And because it was worse. So now the private keys are done. If they hit a gold mine or where it is, the gold's still there because you still have to send boots on the ground to go. So the gold still fundamentally sits there. So what's the response to that being objectively better? I mean, that's an interesting use case. And in in. But it's a real use case. It's happening right now, like they're hitting water plants and they're hitting. Well, they're all, well, I mean, Iran. Iran also had a message that they send out where they said like if you live within 200 meters from these, these, these or these banks, you better get your money out or something, something like that, so. But it's just a wiser. You see where I'm going with it though, right? It's not as no. I, I, yeah, I, I mean, but yeah, I, I would you store the keys of your country in like 1 place that can be blown up, I mean. But it was if it was in three places or five, whatever the number is. The point is that the logic of violence still would be like you don't have to go and bomb it and then go take the the. Bitcoin out, so you say with gold, you should actually go there and then you can take the. Gold. No, I'm saying you'd have to. Like you could blow it up but nothing happens. Like the gold still sits there, it's not being destroyed, and then you're still have your sovereign boots on the ground. You'd have to go and infiltrate a country to go. OK, I'll, I'll concede. Like it is a physical, it has physical properties and it's it could withstand that, that heat of whatever the fucking fire is. Sorry, I swear. That's all the money is. The point is like there's, you know, global trade and we think about forex and amount of treasury being dumped. People are allocating to gold because they understand it, Everyone understands it. And so I'm just making the case that it's still not true today, that it's just an objective better form of money for everyone. In the future that could be the case, but there'll be a lot of things built out today. The most objective form of money that is is gold because of the properties it has and because of the legacy lendy of people knowing how to manage it, protect it, transfer it all that exists that hasn't actually been like created yet or understood by most sovereigns. Yeah, OK, I'll agree. I'll agree to that. No, let's move. I'm. Glad I added that. Way I thought that would be like AI didn't. Think I was gonna go there. I just thought it was like I thought. I was confident of what? I just thought it was going to be like Goldish. I mean he. Tricked us. He tricked us. Diamonds are shit. I don't know. The main reason I just mentioned anything is about this the narrative let's. Yeah, this is we'll make this one quick. I just thought this was wonderful for Amy and it came out last week by our friend Chris Kiper, Fidelity Digital Assets. I know you'll appreciate it. BRAHM is like the notion of it was you cannot like 0 having zero being on 0 as an institution requires a thesis and I haven't looked at it isn't one. It's this notion of a 0 allocation a is a bet that we understand that from purchasing power, GDP, financial management of financial whereabouts whether it's an individual or sovereign. But the main point was going to institutions and basically saying like, you have to have a thesis, you can't not have one. So if you say you're on zero, what's your explanation or reason why? Because understanding and most people haven't framed it that way, especially at the level of somebody from Fidelity. So I thought that was cool to pull out. I mean, that's that that's I fully agree with. I obviously think that, you know, after 16-17 years, you know, if you fade Bitcoin with the, I haven't looked into it or it's a Ponzi, a Tulip or whatever, and your role is to be someone that should actually understand why they are fading it, then yeah, I I fully agree. Unfortunately it's still the case, but this is a great angle to, to talk about it like this. So yeah, I, I like that. Actually today it came out or yesterday, the biggest pension fund in my country, which has, I want to say 250 billion or more, had a 1.6% negative return in the past year where the general return was like 6.5% or the bench from the benchmark was 6.5% or something like that. Crazy. Like they dropped Tesla, for example, because you know, you know most because you know what we don't like Elon Musk was literally the argument that that's the biggest pension fund. So they're. Backwards. They're negative already 10% in inflation. You're adding an extra 3% for the. Pictures crazy, yeah. So I mean, why I'm adding that it's just, you know, it's just astonishing to see that people that manage so much money still have very indefensible underlying thesis. Like they have that, but their argument is really, really low. And I think similar for for Bitcoin. That's, you know, why it's still an opportunity. For sure not. Not much to have, OK. That that's a good addition. Owning bonds. Owning bonds is a failure of your fiduciary duty at this point, so. For. Sure, you maybe you just black to me bro. I'm saying what you said because that's the status of everyone and everything is just going backwards. And that's while we have the street closed and prices are only going to go up. It's we're we're in a very. Well, well, that's I cannot. Well, maybe wait, I'm going to. I know we don't have a lot of time, but there was a tweet which I really liked. It showed like the movements in the Strait of Hormuz. I hope I can find it dude. There's stuff moving, there's shit and fucking moving the. Whole day we just, we just, we just talked about it on the last trades like it's not even about if they're moving or not. It's the it's the same thing as was COVID real or not, It's the fact that. They're they're telling. You they're telling you and then it's going to be affected in the price of yes, yes. For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. If the Bitcoin price doubled tomorrow, would you feel good about how it's being secured right now? Most people have not really pressure tested that and I get it. I have talked to people who have self custody for over a decade and others who stayed on exchanges because they could never get comfortable managing their own keys. Both camps have real concerns. That is why we built on ramp multi institution custody so no single company can lose it, move it or use it. Lloyd's of London Insurance inheritance planning built in and a team that can walk you through the entire setup. Get started in 15 minutes. Book a free consultation at on rampbitcoin.com On ramp secured by three controlled by me. This was Ryan. So I think, yeah. Ryan loves the public the the Fiat denominator. This is crazy. This is crazy. I mean, it speaks to everything we're talking about. Like these numbers are, are are made-up like $120 billion raise, basically valuing the company at like close to a trillion dollars already still in the private markets. With the shitty. Product with with with a product that's losing to Claude right now. And a product that's making you have like psychotic breakdowns, I saw. Another and a government and a governance structure that looks like FTX. Yep, Yep. Yeah. So it. Is when token? I mean I don't, I don't have like a ton of insights around it. It's just crazy that the second one on this list is also them last year like 1/3 of this amount. So it's super insane. And then if you go to my SEC, I had a second link with this is sort of a tandem. This I actually do think is interesting. Like Apple sort of been maligned in this whole AI race in the sense that they really haven't focused on any proprietary foundational models. Siri sucks as we know has for a long time. But basically their play as it seems now is like they basically bought a license for Gemini and they're just going to insert Gemini into Siri and continue to win on consumer facing hardware. And so I think it's actually super interesting. I mean, I think there's, I think the counter to that would be like over the medium to long term, you do want to own some of the data infrastructure or the foundational models yourselves for various reasons. But they've always been a consumer company. So this kind of makes sense to me, attracts that this is actually perhaps their plan all along and why did they didn't care about competing on the model itself? Well, would you agree that if eventually there, there will be this consolidation to a degree like if there's, if there's AGI, if like 11 company has achieved AGI? Right. You have to pay them the licensee is it for whatever? I don't know. I think, I don't know how would how would that even work? Would there would there be some sort of consolidation, which would, which is a weird thing to say after 122 billion in funding, but like then they're not able to be caught up in in a sense, right. So, so then you would have to have a very strong, but I mean, the AGI is probably the most. So if you're not the if you don't have the frontier AGI model. Then you need the device you need like the consumer and mode, which they had. I mean, it's been waning, you could argue, but there's still a ton of icons out there and they've been working more so on like wearables. I mean, not for Apple, but like for open AI, right? Let's say, let's say entropic wins. Like what does that even look like? Yeah, all that, all that cat funk is destroyed. Yeah, yeah, maybe. OK, I know, I know. Mike's got a jump he had. I have two more so. Yeah, I want to. I want. To let's let's listen to this clip. We're talking about retard maxing with my my buddy Harry. Let's go. Are you aware? Are you aware at this point of the concept of the meme of retard maxing? I do, you know, if I'm totally honest, I've seen it on my every comment of our thread where I say like, oh, I've got Mark coming on the show and everyone's like ask Mark about retard maxing. Ask Mark about retard maxing. Honestly, it's one. There's more. I'm just like, okay, get back to like my normal research because I presume retard maxing is not politically correct and I shouldn't ask it. But you brought up retard maxing, so no. So first of all, first of all, retard maxing is totally politically correct because retard is no longer, I mean, we now have 18 other, we have 18 other terms that apply to people who are like, you know, developmentally disabled. And so like retard does long since it now means, it now means something completely different. And it turns out what it means specifically in the context of retard maxing. Well, let me explain why. Why? Why I came across? This so the Internet meme machine is just absolutely spectacular. I think like the process of cultural evolution of Internet memes is like absolutely amazing. I think like the whole like the looks the whole like Clavic. Yeah, I don't even hear into this thing looks maxing like that entirely. You know, the the whole, like Clavicular, you know, all the terms now are mainstreaming and obviously there's many Internet meme examples, but you know, one of my favorite websites in life is knowyourmeme.com. Just take the comprehensive catalog of memes. And so like the culture revolution of what's happening online. I just, I just think is incredible and wonderful in in so many ways. And then I got in this this dust up online a couple weeks ago about introspection that you mentioned. And then a friend of mine sent me this thing and he said, Oh, he's like, Oh, here's your answer. He's like, you're you're retard maxing. And I said I'm, I'm what? And he said, oh, watch these videos. And there's this guy we could link to who's on YouTube who has basically, I don't know, 100 videos on retard maxing. And he's like my, he's like my new life coach, you know, I haven't met him, but like from a distance. And it's basically just like, you know, retard, it's just like, OK, like fine, like retard Max, go to work, do a good job, come home, it's fine. Start a company succeeds fails, it's fine have too much to eat one night at dinner, it's fine go to the gym don't count your reps it's fine you know, ask a girl if she wants to go out with you if she says no, it's fine, right And so it's it's the it's the it's the simpler form of the of the extreme ownership right Or it's the form of it that basically said maybe another form of it that says I, I don't need to take all this in on myself I can just let it go and so. Wait, it's 30 more seconds. Sorry, I'll let it run. The thing I love about the Internet, Mark, is there is some guy who is doing these retail maxing videos who now has Marc Andreessen as one of his biggest fans. And you're just like, how great is that? They're incredible. Well, it's like 130 minute videos about retail maxing and you would think that after the first two minutes he kind of covered. Oh no, we got a cab walk. But no. And by the way, they're all hysterical. They're all absolutely fantastic. And it's literally like him on his porch in the middle of nowhere with like a cigar and it's like 1/2 hour. It's just absolutely, absolutely, absolutely spectacular. You're, I mean, you're, I mean like then all I have to say is this is crunch. This is a this is a, a boomer. Maybe he's Gen. XI, don't know if he's actually a boomer. It was just crunch to me. I think he's like the point that he's making is relevant. Like it is true. Like just do things like. It's kind of that theme. But it's kind of crunch to me, yeah. So I hadn't seen it. I thought it was interesting just roundabout way that that guy Harry Stebbins was referencing when he started 10 years ago, he had three people he worshipped and he would always have to have on his pod. And this is the third person. There's a big time to get him on. And then he tells him that he's now following this like he worships this guy that does his videos. Yeah, that's funny. The thing that I, I I think is is really good. He's also self trying to like rock himself to sleep because he got a lot of shit for saying in about the introspection was realizing like so odd, like it doesn't matter. And I do think that there's something really built into this is like a substrate of Fiat that 2%. We talk about compounds in all these weird ways. And I think one of them is the notion of cancel culture and the can't in the in the lack of authenticity and the sanitization of corporates and just a lot of things that we're going to go back to. And we talked about this a few weeks ago with like founder LED companies in the Travis Kalanick that weren't kosher. Just that notion of saying the word retard. It's funny because one of my favorite movies growing up, it's probably a little older than I'm a little too old for Brian, but there was a in the, in the states, there was a movie called 3 Ninjas and my, my kids like 3 1/2 and I put it on still too, too young for but point being is they said retard in there. This is like a move from the 90s for kids and they said retard like it was nothing and that there's a real angle of everyone feels this when they watch movies and shows that has any sense of like the 2000s are fundamentally different than what they were. It's very hard to find like an actual quality thing. And I think there's something to that notion of like you just got to like go for it and you deal with it. But if you just it's, it's always the peoples that notion of like, it's not the brains that we lack as courage. That's like the meme. And then I think that's what he's referencing. It's like we don't lack brains as a society, lack courage because that's what it takes to actually do things. So I kind of like, you know, I thought it was interesting. Yeah, I think it's funny that it's it also relates to that, you know, you can just you can just do things Meme, which some woke people actually called like super far right, which is also weird, but it kind of illustrates what Mike is talking about, I think. But yeah, you can just do things and maybe in 20 seconds, Mike, before you go. I got 5, I got 5. My guys seconds, 5 minutes. My guy said he's running, so let's. Roll because I want to end up with something that I think is super positive and gives me a lot of hope for the for the future. Actually, like we talked about this before and with with like, you know, AI in abundance and everything is going to be copied infinitely and whatnot. There have been several posts, you know, I think it started with the guy who cured his dog's cancer by using AI, right? Last week I listened to a podcast, I don't remember which one, but the guest on the podcast talked about someone he knew, which was like an ultra runner type person who got a crazy rare form of, of cancer, like stage 4 whatnot, totally given up by the doctors. And he was like, you know, I'm going to use AI to figure out, you know, I have all my whole, you know, my whole data set and whatnot. And I'm going to see if I can map any known, you know, known, known medicine or like public medicine stuff that has no, what's it called like? It's homeopathic. It's like, not like academic. Yeah, no, no, But no patterns and whatnot, like everything that's open basically. And he cured his own cancer by using AI. And now this guy started a nonprofit that is going to map 14,001 four 14,000 diseases that are in incurable with all this publicly available, you know, medicine and, and whatnot. And he already helped someone who had something to do with their liver with, with, which was basically like an overdose of paracetamol or something. And they cured whatever this person had. And now yesterday or the day before I saw this post. So here's the founder of GitLab that's also a Dutch, Dutch guy. So he had a rare cancer. Standard care works, but the cancer comes back later. The medical team says there's nothing, nothing else to do. This guy's a billionaire. So he, he has money. But, you know, he starts researching, assembles the medical team, uses AI for deep research. He goes anywhere. Does, you know, these tests anyway, his all cancer is currently in remission, right? And so I really enjoy seeing this stuff happen with, you know, maybe open AI, you know, some models, maybe they are retarded or they make you retarded, right? But there's also really great stuff happening because eventually, you know, these LLMS are just like information synthesis machine. So if you can create a context and you know, you know, you have a clear input and you have a possible, you know, clear output of where you want to go, I think this is just amazing technology and just very cool to see that you could just apply this, right? And, and yeah, maybe you need some money currently to hire, you know, certain physicians or or whatnot. But yeah, I just, I just think it's very positive and very cool to see that this is what people are doing today already and that it's actually working. So that makes me helpful about the future guys. I mean, you're even in trouble on the the cancer stuff. I don't disagree or discount that. There's a lot there. That's definitely true. I mean, there was a thing the other day with the guy, the guy that the dog that was like, I think you saw that, did we? Yeah, yeah, that's what I mentioned. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think it's just interesting that I've had people that have been close that have gotten cancer and there's all these crazy treatments that cost a lot. And you know, we're not doctors. So I've been careful of like how much to say. But the reality is like the diet they put them on is the diet everyone's supposed to be on. Like there's a lot of anecdotes out there, like from actual physicians that if they got cancer, the thing they would do is like stop working and just go on a fast or water and meat. And you've heard a lot of people cure a lot of things. And you mentioned something about parasites and like there's the angle of like ivermectin. The reason I'm bringing any of that up is I'm curious how much the, the, the models I've never like tested this, but how much they talk about like diet relation to cancer or even like vaccines. And what do they say? Because those are just like a lot of data that like, yes, you can use them for good. But I wonder still how much is like being thrown out there that don't have like first principles around just traditional medicine that I think has become consensus that wasn't consensus pre COVID basically. Yeah, it's interesting to me. I'm I'm in Bronx camp that like I'm hopeful that this is, you know, I think with any technological revolution, there's positive and extra negative externalities. I think the public perception of AI is that there's potentially more negative externalities, but this is an example of something super positive of someone just using these tools to do something that larger organizations with all sorts of funding couldn't figure out. And so if someone has the motivation and skill set and just even intent to do something like this, they can more increasingly they can with the tools. So super encouraging. Awesome. Well, that wraps up episode 27 of the broadcast. I hope everyone enjoyed and we'll see you next time. Thanks God. Good stuff guys. Better. Cheers.
Transcript source: fountain