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Hello, my name is Andy Edstrom and I'm happy to welcome you to the 8th episode of Scarce Assets, a show that examined scarcity, the most fundamental driver of economics and markets, and the scarcest asset of all, which is Bitcoin. I'm delighted to be here with my great friend and Co host Jesse Myers and our guest, the great Samson Moe. Now I'm going to say a few things about Samson. Samson is a Bitcoin OG that I've been following for years, and back in 2019 he organized a conference in New York called the Magical Crypto Conference, which was an important event in my Bitcoin journey. It was a great event and it's where I first met and had conversations with not only Samson, but a number of Bitcoin luminaries including Jimmy Song, Max Keiser, Nick Carter, John Pfeffer, Luke Dasher and others. It was a significant milestone on my personal journey and it really helped me focus my attention on Bitcoin now. Sampson has been building Bitcoin companies for a long time. He was Chief Strategy Officer for Blockstream. He was COO at BTC China before Bitcoin. He built a successful career in game development and has numerous credits to his name in that field. And now he's the founder and CEO of Jan 3, which we're going to learn more about in this conversation. Also, his Twitter X account is super bullish, which I always enjoy, so I'm delighted to welcome Sampson to the show. Sampson, how are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me on, Andy, and good to see you again, Jesse. You too, Sampson. Excellent. Well, let's just get right into it, Sampson. I hear you've been meeting with governments and talking about Bitcoin here and there here in 2024. Do you think that's the most interesting frontier for Bitcoin adoption these days? I think it's one of the most important frontiers for Bitcoin adoption, and not so much as the importance of getting a country to buy Bitcoin or implement a Bitcoin strategy, but just acting as a bulwark against poorly thought out, backwards regulatory frameworks like we're seeing in the EU now. So I think the initiatives that we have at Gen. 3 going out there and engaging with governments and politicians is helping to educate them on what Bitcoin is, maybe on what may or may not be good regulatory policy. And you know, the icing on the cake is really if we can get them to take a liking to Bitcoin, appreciate Bitcoin and adopt some form of Bitcoin strategy for their country. But at the very minimum, I think we are trying to at least, you know, engage to prevent bad things from happening to the people of those countries, not so much to Bitcoin. That's right, Bitcoin. Bitcoin will probably be fine either way, but I'd love to learn a little bit about, you know, what resonates in those meetings with government officials. Is it that Bitcoin is better than gold and therefore the value will rise? Is it the, you know, the censorship resistant? I mean, what are some factors or characteristics that you find resonate with folks and governments? Well, Bitcoin is better than gold, but we don't usually get into that. In fact, we don't get too far into the nuance of Bitcoin and like things that we might find cool, like the 21 million limit, the halving or things like that, We approach it from a very high level and we try to align align the incentives of the governments with what Bitcoin could do for them. So it's very focused on tangible near term things that can be of immediate benefit to those countries. So as an example, we met with the President of Columbia. I don't think they're going to implement a Bitcoin legal tender law anytime soon or adopt Bitcoin as money. They don't see it that way. But he does have emissions targets that he wants to meet. So we talked a lot about how Bitcoin as AESG friendly technology can help them reduce flare gas and methane emissions and he was very keen to start work on that. And it's just a matter of moving along that process because as you know, governments take a long time to do things. So it's it's like a oil tanker. They have to turn around slowly, but these are sort of the angles we approach. What can Bitcoin do for you? If you're a developing country and you have a massive amount of energy reserves, then we might come at it from an angle of you can tap into Bitcoin and mine Bitcoin and and sell it to buy whatever you need. You can buy people to build roads, airports, you know, a real transit system, whatever you need. But it's always focused on what Bitcoin can help them with, what they are concerned about, rather than Bitcoin is the best for money ever, and there is no second best and you need it now or else you're going to have fun staying poor, which is true, but it doesn't come off that well. Yeah, that that's super interesting to hear. It's like of course that makes sense. It's driven by like the the near term problems that are top of mind for these leaders and what they're trying to solve because you know, they're trying to assess, they've made promises to the electorate, they're trying to assess their performance against those promises, they're trying to hit those targets. So that's what's top of mind. What are some? Unfortunately politics is cyclical much like the the having it's a four year cycle, four to five year cycle. So the time frame in which there is political will coupled with understanding of Bitcoin is a very narrow window because when they're nearing the end of the term and if they're getting ready for re election, they're not going to want to rock the boat. And then they they focus on you know core problems or core issues, not so much other things. But it's just hitting that sweet spot of getting them to understand Bitcoin and how Bitcoin can help them aligned with that schedule at which they have the mandate and the will to do something. Yeah, that's an even that's another interesting layer there like you you really have like a maybe it's six months, maybe it's 18 months where people are are really actually like willing to step out and and and learn about something new and implement something that's that's a bit radical from the perspective of you know traditional approach to solving problems internally and and especially finance. But so besides emissions targets are there are there other use cases or or you know low hanging fruit that people latch onto at that level like because I I can remember when El Salvador was was was getting into Bitcoin one of the main talking points was how such a large percentage of their GDP was international remittances. And that Western Union takes like a like effective like 20% cut of all of that flow coming in And how you know the the lightning network would would turn all of that money captured by Western Union into GDP for El Salvador and it would bump GDP. I think the numbers are crazy like 7% boost to GDP if you can completely converted from Western Union to Bitcoin. In my mind that was like a huge talking point a huge use case for adoption of Bitcoin. I don't know that it has made that much traction and on that front yet at least, but to me that seemed like a a politician's easy win to talk up. What other categories stand out like that? Well, that is a really big category, but the challenge with that one is that they would have to have a very good understanding of money to appreciate bitcoins, ability to bypass that legacy system which is extracting rent effectively. So the fortunate thing for El Salvador is that the President Buchelli was a bitcoiner before he was president. A lot of the heads of state that we are engaging with today are not bitcoiners. So we're kind of going from zero or maybe a little bit further than 0. But we have a ways to go before they can fully grasp what Bitcoin can fix because Bitcoin can fix so many things. The energy and emissions thing seems to be top of mind for a lot of people these days, so that is an easier avenue I think to pursue. It's more straightforward, which is you have a 30 foot flare here, We can get rid of that. It's much more simple to get than saying, well, if you made Bitcoin legal tender, well then you make a wallet, you can provide liquidity for your citizens and they can do remittances over Bitcoin and lightning. And it's a little bit more complex there. But I think there are avenues to engage with some of these countries potentially with stable coins because a lot of the South America, Latin America countries have a large amount of remittances around stable coins. So maybe you could talk to them about that angle. But Bitcoin is a bit further out there and of course the standard push back you get as well. How can it do that because it's so volatile. So you have a, you open up a can of worms I think if you go in too deep to these arguments sometimes. But you're right that it is a huge booster and we've seen double digit GDP growth in El Salvador. I think their fees to these remittance companies alone was in the 10s of millions a year, maybe 30 to 40 million a year. So it's not trivial savings when you really think about it and especially when people's earnings per month is relatively low in those countries. Yeah, 10s of millions goes a long way in a not huge population country like El Salvador for sure. So Speaking of not bitcoiners, you know, being in charge in most countries, is there usually at least one sort of well placed bitcoiner in an administration? I mean, is there someone who's helping set up the conversation, you know, kind of kind of bridge things or is or is that rare? I would say so. I mean, you'd be surprised at how many of us there are and where we are. It's like we're everywhere, but we won't be able to get these meetings as Jan 3 without people on the ground helping us. So there's always somebody, either in the administration or close to the administration that helps us tee things up and opens that door and then we can come in. But yeah, you'd be surprised. Like I I met with the Guatemalan central bank before and it was a committee of some senior people there, and we asked them how many of you have Bitcoin, and I think all but a handful said they didn't. So everyone wants Bitcoin. Everyone's a bitcoiner. They just don't know it yet. Well, that's it, that's it. If Bitcoin reaches its potential and we think that is quite likely, then yes, most of the world will will be using it. Well you mentioned the issue of volatility obviously in purchasing power of Bitcoin. I my sense is that one of the things you're doing Jan 3 in the wallet department, you know helps helps with respect to that, especially what you're doing with respect to Tether. I'd love to understand that that better and sort of why you've designed the wallet that way and what you think it accomplishes. Sure. So in case you don't know, Aqua is a Bitcoin and layer two wallet. It's a wallet that supports Bitcoin main chain and then there's a layer two wallet that supports both liquid and lightning. Liquid is a Bitcoin side chain and it has assets that can be issued in that side chain like USDT and other stable coins. I think now there's a Brazilian real stable coin too, but it's just a a way that Bitcoin can scale using another tech and it lets you issue these assets natively. So Tether issues on Liquid just like it does on all the other altcoin block chains like Tron and Ethereum and Solana etcetera. But the difference is when you're using Tether on Liquid it's it's sort of more pure. You don't have to buy Tron or Ethereum for gas fees, you're just using Bitcoin to transport it. And in the one of the next releases in Aqua will actually let you pay for a network fees in Liquid with USDT. So I think this is a big game changer. But the premise of Aqua is that we want to create a wallet that is very useful for people. It's not just a Bitcoin wallet for Bitcoiners, but for people that want to protect their savings. I think that's a bigger cohort than just Bitcoiners. And you see a lot of people in Latin that want to protect their savings from inflation and hyperinflation. And what they're doing is they're seeking out the dollar or dollar denominated value. They may not be able to get dollars in their bank account because they may not have a bank account. So they they try to either get physical cash or they try to get a stable coin like Tether. And it's hard to get physical cash is there's just not that much of it around the, the bulk of the money that's printed is not physical but digital. So what they end up doing is gravitating towards like Tron, Tether on Tron or Tether on Ethereum etcetera. And we think that by creating a Bitcoin wallet that also puts stable coins up at the forefront like it's right in your face when you download the wallet. We can bring these people into the Bitcoin ecosystem into on chain Bitcoin as a savings mechanism, but potentially layer two and they can receive lightning payments and then convert that to Tether. And that's just a way to meet them where they are at in their level of understanding. So they understand my currency is the peso and it's dying. I want the dollar. They don't yet understand that the dollar is dying and they they want Bitcoin. But with Aqua, we think we can get them across that hurdle and understanding a little bit more about sound money. Yeah, I love that angle. Meeting people where they are, that you've lived it before. The history of Bitcoin is riddled with the overzealous bitcoiners who are providing solutions that either aren't in demand. Well, at least they aren't in demand just yet. And and this being the scarce assets show, you know, we, we like to think about scarcity. You mentioned how scarce US physical dollars are in foreign jurisdictions. We sometimes forget how scarcity is is not necessarily global and absolute except in the case of Bitcoin. But the different commodities and different assets had different scarcity levels in in different locations. Yeah, that's fascinating. Do you find that you know, with your adoption of the wallet so far, do you find that people are already focusing on the the dollar and the tether and the stable coin element, or are they you know, does the activity suggest that they're getting interested in Bitcoin, or is it just too early to know? I think it's too early. We haven't really started pushing Aqua yet. So, so far the user base is just people that like it and are probably bitcoiners. We haven't done much marketing in Latam yet. We're waiting until we finish our Charlie release, which is when we can pay network fees in tether and at that point we'll start adding more local Fiat on and off ramp integrations. And once we've got a handful of those, I think we should have one for Brazil relatively soon and hopefully one in Argentina. That's the point at which we really start pushing it aggressively. But we've just done some fun stuff like we put up a few billboards here and there. We had some on the ground initiatives where we had, you know, two people going around getting them to uninstall the wallet and sending them Sats over lightning. So fun stuff to test the waters, but nothing really serious yet. But I I think once we really have the integrations in place and we really push it, we should start to see more and more traction of Tether in Liquid and in Aqua, simply because it's superior to all the other options out there. You have confidential transactions, you have more reliability. So when you send a Tron or Ethereum payment, first of all it's more expensive, but it's like a dollar for Tron. Usually the wallets just set a set fixed fee, but for Ethereum it can go up to like $1314.00. But these chains, they're not UTXO based like Bitcoin with a mem pool. Their account based systems where I don't know how to explain it but their transactions can fail and just disappear. So it's not like you get your money back if if you low ball a Bitcoin transaction and it goes out there and it doesn't confirm ever, you actually get it back in your wallet eventually like maybe after a few weeks. But for these other chains, it just disappears and you lost the fee that you paid to send it to. So I think with Liquid you can actually get a far superior user experience and cheaper too. Yeah, no, it sounds like a much better, much better experience. One of always the problems with the Bitcoin and crypto overall has been, yeah, a lot lost transactions things it's final settlement. But if it doesn't go through, either it took longer than you thought, you get you got worried and you started sweating bullets or yeah, God forbid it just never, never goes through. Well, I've got, you know, I've downloaded the wallet on my iPhone. I think this is it. It's got, I gotta say, it's got a pretty clean interface and it's it's as you've stated, it's got savings account, it says Bitcoin spending accounts, layer two, Bitcoin, liquid and lightning. And then tether USD and it's all you know, it's all right up there. Yeah, I I do love how you guys categorize savings account and spending account. That's nomenclature that we should all be using of of of on chain. Bitcoin is your savings account and then these other versions and and currencies that are intended to be transacted with are your spending account and that that's a great, a great leadership that you guys have taken in terms of nomenclature there. Yeah, thank you. The one thing I want to point out is even though it looks really simple, there's a ton of complexity under the hood to make it work. So if you're using the Android version, there's a swap button on the main screen, but on iOS it's on the marketplace page. Hopefully Apple will let us move it over there soon, but you know, they're just keeping people safe. But like that simple experience, being able to swap between your layer two Bitcoin and tether and send over Lightning and all that, it's actually a lot of complexity under the hood to deal with it, and it's getting better and better with every release. So we'll handle refunds better too. So it's right now you have to claim it. If if a swap fails, you have to hit a button or you have to push, you have to wait for it to come back. But we're implementing Taproot swaps in the new Bolts SDK, so API, so once that is done, it'll be automatic. So all this complexity we try to offload it from the user and we try to handle all of it in the background and keep the UI really simple and straightforward. Yeah, that's good. The best products in the best UI reduce the complexity on the back end to simplicity on the front end. So love to love to see that. I look forward to using it. So I don't know if the answer will be simplicity or complexity here, but can you tell us more about just the overall general mission of Jan 3? Well, the mission is to accelerate hyper bitcoinization, so accelerating Bitcoin adoption, getting us to the point where you don't have to go back to Fiat. And that comes with a number of things. One is you have to push it forward and get people to understand Bitcoin. The second part is helping countries to implement systems at which they can transition into this new financial system. So if you think about it, if you have a country of you know 30 million people and they all needed to on board into Bitcoin, suddenly that would be a very chaotic and disruptive event. So we're trying to get countries to have something today where people can gradually off board into this new system. So potentially it's two systems in parallel. Maybe you are using the dollar still and you have Bitcoin accessible to large swath of the population and infrastructure in place to facilitate that. So it's a multi faceted, multi pronged mission that we have to get more Bitcoin adoption and help get the world ready for that hyper bitcoinized state. Yeah, that's a worthy, that's a worthy goal. Those of us on the in the conversation here think that's most likely coming and so any work done now to help ease that transition will be good I think for for everyone. On that point, Samson, do you have any thoughts about like what are the things that could prevent that from occurring, like or or do you view it as inevitable? I would say it's inevitable. So, Andy said earlier. If Bitcoin reaches its potential, I don't think it's a if, it's a when, and if you think about it, it's probably not going to be at a leisurely time frame. All these things, the legacy financial system is built on a House of Cards, and these things tend to collapse very rapidly. So it's not likely that we're going to have a few decades to gradually transition. I have a feeling it's going to be a very sudden, rapid change that is going to end up being chaotic, even though we have the goal of making it an orderly transition. But yeah, I would say it's inevitable. If you look at all of the macro factors in the world economy, it's all pointing towards not good and people are looking for an escape hatch. This a few weeks ago it was Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year and people were in China buying massive amounts of gold. Again, it's people seeking out the scarce valuable asset that they know of and that's gold in some cases. In some cases it's the dollar, but people are looking for an escape route and it's getting more and more evident. I mean, you could also look at the ETF inflows as an indicator of people seeking escape hatch, right? It's just the the smarter early money on Wall Street that was too lazy to buy physical Bitcoin is now buying the ETF. And even though they're later than, let's say, us, they're still relatively early in legacy finance. So I would say that's a strong indicator that things are starting to move towards that Fiat failure. Yeah, clearly you're you're gradually then suddenly adherent. And I I sometimes think about this like if I guess I sort of characterize it in my own head of of gradually but exponentially rather than the suddenly like like I think it's a smooth exponential curve rather than like a point in time where suddenly it becomes clear to everybody that they should buy some Bitcoin, you know yesterday. But I guess from like from a bitcoiner perspective, it it's kind of all the same like it it's going to be eternal September at some point. Yeah, it's going to be pretty nasty. It's going to be a lot of scams. I can foresee a ton of people getting scammed on their Bitcoin. I mean, who is it? Robert Kiyosaki said yesterday. You know when the having comes your Bitcoin will double the the Bitcoin you have not the bitcoins value double S the number of Bitcoin you have will will increase. So it's we're really early, We're really, really. Robert, if you're listening, you're welcome to come on scarce assets podcast. We can, we can, we can have a conversation about this stuff. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. We're very early. Thanks for tuning in. If you're interested in exploring any of these topics further, or want to learn more about how we can help you secure a new or existing Bitcoin allocation, get in touch with our team at on rampbitcoin.com. We look forward to supporting you on your Bitcoin journey. Speaking of being early, you mentioned, I do actually want to go back to your recent comment here about you know gold buying in China. You have some experience with the Chinese market with respect to Bitcoin. I guess I'm curious one you know are you still following it generally speaking and obviously you know billion plus people it's hard to characterize it generally, but but any comments you have on Bitcoin adoption in China over the last few years and and today? Well, I think a lot of people in China bought Bitcoin and still buy Bitcoin and definitely hold Bitcoin. So just as I gave you an example, in the Guatemala and central bank, you have people that have Bitcoin. A lot of people in China have Bitcoin and the government as well. People just want a scarce asset. The question is, do they understand that this is a scarce asset? If they do, then they probably have Bitcoin. But I would say the outlook for China is very positive because you have Hong Kong pushing forward spot ETFs now and they seem to be on the verge of approval and this is a tacit green light from Beijing that Bitcoin is OK now. So what's likely going to happen is a lot of the mainland capital will go to Hong Kong and buy the spot ETFs along with the money in Hong Kong already and they're trying to differentiate themselves. So I think I said this in Twitter spaces a couple weeks ago, but the Hong Kong ETFs are going to try to differentiate by offering in kind creation and redemption. Good. And I think Bitcoin Mag this morning posted it too. So it's it's definitely happened and what we're seeing is a global competition to be the best vehicle and potentially the lowest fees down the road. So it's just a a race to get Bitcoin for all these different areas, territories and funds. Yeah, that's it, right? The global, the global competition. Different governments resist at different points in time, and yet they they all seem to bend ultimately to the will of Bitcoin in the long run. Yeah. Do you think that's, do you think the Hong Kong ETFs is is very clearly a response to Wall Street ETFs and and Hong Kong as a, you know, with influence from China saying we don't want to miss out, we're going to compete, we want to participate in this too. And so there's the game theory of Bitcoin playing out. Definitely. I think a lot of the ETFs around the world have been waiting and watching the USI mean, I don't know why, but people seem to think the US is a leader, so they're going to watch and see. But with the approval of the ETFs in the US, it sort of signifies that this is not going away. This is a new asset class and it's here to stay. You have the largest asset manager on the planet, BlackRock, that is filing and accumulating Bitcoin on the behalf of their customers. You can't really say that, you know, Bitcoin is used by criminals anymore. And actually, I'm really a big fan of ETS because it makes my job far easier engaging with nation states. Because the moment someone says well, criminals use it, I say, well, no, BlackRock does. Whether you think? BlackRock are bad or good. That's your problem. But it's the largest asset manager on the planet. Period. End of discussion. So it simplifies that whole discourse about Bitcoin and is it OK or not OK? I also have to wonder, I also have to wonder about, you know, my sense, having no first hand information, was that historically Bitcoin mining was a valve for capital flight out of China. In prior years, I would have to imagine that certain members of the of the ruling party there have realized that Oh well, if the demand's going to be there, you know, we might as well siphon some of it off into a vehicle that if push came to shove, you know, maybe we could take the keys and or exert some control. Oh, and by the way, we probably have some more visibility, better know your customer info on the inflows into an ETF product as opposed to, you know, coins sold for cash out of mining operations. You you think that's true? Probably I would say they should like the ETFs because it's a nice regulated, controllable vehicle for whoever wants to control it. And you know, people might invest in it for whatever reasons. But as long as you know what The thing is, if you understand the the nature of the beast, it's OK, right? But yeah, I would say it it is that competition factor and it is a way to right some wrongs. They probably shouldn't have cracked down on mining so hard and this is a way to say we were wrong without saying we were wrong. Maybe, I don't know, that's my intuition. But definitely they don't want to miss the boat. And if you look at the macro situation in China, a lot of, a lot of problems are emerging like the stock market is down massively, no one wants to invest in that and real estate market is being trashed heavily and it's down massively too. So what can you really invest in? You need some hard assets. So that leaves gold and Bitcoin. And given that the US is apparently going all in to Bitcoin, I mean, if you look at total inflows, it's what, 6 billion something. Now I think someone just woke up and realized you can't miss this train. So that's why they're going to start pushing it. Yeah, I think that. I think that's right. So Speaking of of not missing the train, I enjoyed a post you put out I think pretty recently which said many people think they'll always be able to buy Bitcoin. This is not true. And you have an image which is a graph I think X axis's time and Y axis's price. And it's divided into two sections and the first section is buying Bitcoin and the 2nd is earning Bitcoin. Can you tell us a little bit more about that framing? Yeah, so the the idea there is once Bitcoin is just simply money, you won't be able to buy it. You might be able to trade gold for it or some other scarce asset, but you won't be able to convert dollars into it, just like you don't really convert seashells into dollars these days. You kind of do, but it's not the norm. So if you're getting a a salary paid out in Bitcoin and potentially denominated in Bitcoin, you don't get to buy Bitcoin anymore. That's just called working, right? So it's you're you're buying Bitcoin with your time, which by definition is working. So that's really the meaning behind it, that you you will come a day where you just earn Bitcoin. It's not buying Bitcoin anymore. Yeah, that makes sense. And your view I think is that that day could be pretty close, might not be too far away. So let's, let's get a little bullish here. You've said recently that you expect $1,000,000 per Bitcoin price I think by the end of next year 2025. You know Mike I guess my question about that is what might be the facts and circumstances surrounding that kind of an event? I mean are you just assuming kind of a normal bull market with a blow off top or are you assuming some some other kind of event including you know the the gradually to suddenly type of scenario? I'm leaning more towards that suddenly and as Jesse said, maybe exponentially. So we'll see. But I think my prediction was this year. I actually thought it would have happened already, but perhaps it was muted by this grayscale sell off and it depressed it. But the we know that the demand was there because we see the $6 billion net inflows of cash coming into these ETFs. And we know that even when there's a net outflow, weak price can still go up. So the buying is not constrained simply to the ETFs. There is more buying. There's spot buying. Surprise, surprise. But yeah, I think this year we should hit 1,000,000 at the latest next year. And it's going to come as a shock, I think, to a lot of people because they think that we have, you know, a decade or maybe a few more halvings before we reach that. But if you look at the state of the current system, every 100 days, the US is $1 trillion further in debt. That's a lot of Bitcoin. So you know, $1,000,000 Bitcoin is still just a drop in the bucket when you compare it to how fast money is being printed. Yeah, the way you framed it there every trillion dollars worth of of debt. I mean that's the current market cap roughly of or network value of of Bitcoin today. It's it's pretty sobering. Yeah. I I agree with you that like if the if the world understood Bitcoin, Bitcoin would already be worth more than $1,000,000 per coin, I guess. I guess I I always fall back to like it has taken so much longer. You know, for people to wake up to Bitcoin and it goes so much slower just because of that. Not to say that, you know, the inevitable isn't isn't happening, but that humans are so slow to realize that they're wrong and and then act accordingly to, you know, fix their mistakes. And for that reason, I like I, I, I I hope that you're right and I hope that I am pleasantly surprised this year or next year. But I'm prepared to be disappointed on that front, you know? Well, disappointment would be better because that means we're going to see a slow gradual increase. Yeah, I also put there my concept of Max Payne theory, which is the most painful situation for the most number of people is the most likely outcome. So that massive rapid increase in Bitcoin to a million would price out a lot of the developing world in a meaningful change. Also, the government's too. They wouldn't be able to pull in El Salvador and get, you know, a couple dollars in Bitcoin, right? They might be getting two Bitcoin. So then the disparity in the world would maintain itself. The rich would still be rich, and then the poor would still be poor. So the best case scenario for the world is a gradual, steady tick up to 1,000,000 where everyone can learn and realize that they're wrong about about Bitcoin and get into it before it's too late. But you know, my Max Payne theory says they're not going to have that chance. Yeah, but maybe that, maybe that's where like, I don't know some sort of cosmic karma comes in here and and the hubris of the last 50 years maybe call it few, 100 years of of Western finance causes people who have benefited from the system to be the slowest to adopt this new currency and people in developing countries who have a more immediate need for it benefit by adopting earlier on on the whole. Yeah. So we'll we'll we'll have to start a new podcast. We'll call it Cosmic Karma and. We'll talk to. We'll talk to early adopters in developing countries and hopefully we'll find more of the than than we actually think exist. But here's another metric to think about. So during COVID I I guess it started in 19, right? COVID-19, we're about five years post COVID pandemic and we shut down the world. We printed trillions of dollars. And this year, I don't know if you know this or maybe the tail end of last year, people started feeling that pain of inflation and not being able to pay their bills and rent, being astronomical and basically their way of living is no longer sustainable, right. So it takes about five years for these changes to really get out there, maybe three to five years. So I would say we're getting close to the the time at which it's been five years since the massive amount of money was printed because the the pandemic first happened, then lockdowns ramped up. So maybe this year to next year is when we see the five year mark after that massive amount of money printing first began. So you know, the world adjusts roughly on this time frame and we should see something happen. But I want to ask you guys, what is your prediction? You shouldn't leave me out here with my bold prediction. Very fair, very fair. So before the ETFs I was saying I was predicting you know kind of kind of what everybody has been predicting of like 120 to 160 and then we'll just repeat the cycles. But with the ETFs and the scale of demand and the fact that you know ETFs alone as a demand source has been averaging like 8 to 10 X our daily supply issuance from mining in terms of demand. If that sustains this goes way higher, maybe it's 250, maybe 350. That's that's sort of what I'm like. I'm shifting from my expectation of like you know mid hundreds towards OK maybe it's much higher and I've gotten to the point where I'm comfortable with like OK 250 maybe even more than that. I do think that I do think that the human nature and human psychology will will precipitate another bubble because there will, there will be a rational exuberance, people will overextend themselves and then when the tide starts to go out, the reflexivity goes in the other direction and we have a crash of some sort. I don't know what that peak is from like do we get to 1,000,000 and then we crash down to 300,000 that that would be incredible, but a little bit alarming because of the rate of change that that would imply about the world. I guess at this point my expectation is 250, maybe 350 and then like a 70% crash and we do it all again. All right. So I'll be the resident bear, I guess not bullish enough. So I actually, Samson, you know, earlier in my journey, 'cause I was Class 2017, I got very bulled up and for me it was like, oh, this is happening now, right? I was very excited, Hyper bitcoinization is paused and then the crash and then a couple cycles in. And now I am actually more optimistic that it's likely to be a gradual transition in the sense that it could be, I don't know, a couple more cycles. So like would not surprise me at all if it if a decade from now you know Fiat money is in a minor role, but I sort of don't expect it this cycle. But my logic is that if we saw a pump to $1,000,000 let's say, I still think that governments have enough levers to pull including just with respect to shutting off Fiat access to the on ramps to the exchanges basically. And so I think if they can restrict, you know, Fiat flow, dollar flow and other fiats onto the exchanges while still allowing sales, then just you, you know, the sales that is of you know Bitcoin into into dollars or other Fiat, then maybe that sort of manipulated supply demand balance could precipitate a crash or a, you know, a a downward move like we've seen in prior cycles. So that's my thoughts. But but you're you've been at this longer and you're much better connected and you understand the system much better than I do. So tell me what's wrong with that hypothesis that the governments could pull a few levers and and dump the price? Well, governments can always pull a few levers, but The thing is that I think there is enough adoption in the world today that it's sort of outside of their control at this point. I mean, the US should be under rule of law, so they can't just, I mean they can always 6102 all the Bitcoin held in Coinbase custody. But I don't know if that is palatable in this day and age and if it's politically endurable for any president these days. I mean, back in the time of, you know, the old dark ages without Internet, it's much easier to do these types of things. But nowadays, with super connectivity and always people, always online and tik toks and the ability to reach the masses directly through Twitter X, whatever Noster, it's much harder, I think, to quietly steal from people. So that leaves some legal way to crash the market. And again, I think it it would be the US 'cause that's one of the largest and people would follow the USI don't think there's a really easy legal way for them to tank this stuff. Once you have an ETF approved, whether it's spot or futures, it's incredibly difficult to unwind because these structures are designed to just last forever. So like if you want to talk about the the Ethereum ETF, like they approve the futures one and if they want to untangle that and because they don't want to approve the spot one, I don't know if they could unwind the futurist ETF. It's not, these are things are not designed to be shut down. So they could at most. Again, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know. The most they could do is probably prevent new inflows and then let people redeem it. But if you people don't redeem it, I don't think there's a way for them to just arbitrarily close it. So I think it's really challenging for the US to shut it down now that it's out and done. And This is why I think they're going to draw the line on additional crypto ETFs because they don't want to be approving Shiba Inu and Baby Floki ETFs which they would have to by by law and precedent if they approved Ethereum spot ETF. I've got a new product idea. It's called ETF with HAT. What do you think? Is that a good idea? I'll buy. I'll buy a few shares. I'll I want to, I want to circle back to make the case for what? Why I see Samsung's $1,000,000 as possible having having presented the other side of it. But you know I think there is it more at this point in time than any time before a case to be made that this bull market will be bigger than the last because of the way that the the bull market last cycle was muted in a couple ways in 2021. First the China mining ban sort of taking the legs out from the parabolic advance and then of course the the pivot from QE to QT at the end of the year which really took the wind out of sales and stopped the you know the bull market at at 69,000. So if we should have had you know without those variables if we were going to have a a a blow off top to $200,000 per per Bitcoin which sounds a little wild but wouldn't have been that out of out of line with the you know prior patterns. I mean 2013 top was was $1000, 2017 top was $20,000. So 20X from top to top and then to go to to 200,000 would be a 10X if we if we would have gotten that all else equal. And now we're in a in an environment where those short term circumstances that caused the, you know the the top to not go as high as it would have been to now not be present or even reversed because we might have a switch from QT to QE then. All the fraud. Yes, right. And and the FTX selling Bitcoin to buy altcoins when customers thought they were holding Bitcoin, all of that, all the paper Bitcoin that FTX and probably others were were doing it. If we don't have that, you know if you. So I guess if you assume that we, we quote UN quote got to 200,000 from like a you know an alternate universe situation and now we're back in that alternate universe because things are normal again. Could we get a 5X from top to top? That would be very reasonable when you when you look about it look at it that way. So there's the case for We get back to where we should have gotten. Let's forget to. Once we get to 0.1 M, it's just 10X. 2,000,000, so I do love that framing. Thanks. But I I think the most important thing that we need to look at is simply the dollar is already dead. It stopped having meaning basically after COVID and maybe the war with Ukraine, because it's no longer a reserve asset for the world. You can't keep dollars that can be taken away. And with geopolitics the way it is, like why would China place value in the dollar when it can be just yanked out from under them like a altcoin rug pole? You wouldn't do that as a a major world power. You need something else. The question is again what we talked about, when do they realize that it's Bitcoin, right? When that realization comes, it changes everything. But money really is already dead. Like, what is a trillion dollars every hundred day? A trillion dollars. A trillion dollars is a massive amount of money. If you were actually to print it out, it's something like the size of football field. That's how much paper volume it would take. It's really big. So if we're printing a trillion every hundred days and recently I think you have another $2.1 trillion bill for spending, I mean, it's really lost all of its meaning there. A dollar is really meaningless. The only reason it's still used is simply because it's a unit of account and medium of exchange, like a chocolate bar and a house is kind of pricing the dollar rapidly increasing, but people are still hanging on by that thread. It's only because it's the unit of account, It's not because of the medium exchange, because you're limited in transfers now and especially in the EU. And it's not a store of value because, I mean, look at the printing involved. So it's just hanging on by a thread. It's dangling on by a tiny thread. So 1,000,000 is not crazy when you look at trillions and trillions. Just printed a snap of a finger. Yeah, that's a good point. And the denominator. Is moving. Yeah, the numerator is moving. Like people are realizing, oh, Bitcoin is scarce and it's valuable. And so the, you know, the purchasing power should be higher. And then as you're pointing out, Oh yeah, also the denominator. And the denominator is getting debased rapidly. Yeah, yeah. And you know, the $1,000,000 is only 2% of global assets. Like that's what that would would make Bitcoin just 2% of the world's assets. And a unit of accounts are really sticky. To get off of that as unit account, it takes a really jarring shock to the system, right? Like at which at which point, as a shopkeeper, would you reprice A Snickers bar in Bitcoin? It's really hard to get over that, right? Even if you understand Bitcoin is money, you kind of need that comfort of that dollar unit of account. So a shock to the system is exactly probably what's going to happen that pushes them over, but it's just hanging on by a thin thread. Yep. And that's, that's one of the things the skeptics I think struggle with, with Bitcoin is they assume that media, that it should have been a medium of exchange by now. If it was successful, you know, we're 15 years into this thing, people would be transacting with it. And occasionally in some places they are. But your point is a good one, which is the later. You know, store value comes first and unit of account and medium of exchange come later. And yeah, but it could, it could be rapid. OK, so we're we're, we're coming up on time here. But I want to switch gears real fast. So you went to school in Canada, I believe. And I've been to several parts of Canada and they're all lovely. And I know a bunch of Canadians who relocated to America, but I don't know that many who went the the other way. Any thoughts on why this is? Because Canada's going downhill for the same reasons the US is. But I mean, we're a smaller economy and things get worse faster here and more easily. So inflation is very painful for a lot of people. You see those Tiktok videos? A lot of them are from Canadians that say they can't afford basic things and paying basic necessities and paying their rent. And it has to do with the fact that we also printed a lot of money too. I think we printed a trillion. And a trillion for Canada is just absolutely bonkers given the size of our economy and our population. So you know, when the US is capable of doing that and absorbing that effect, Canada doesn't really do that. So you see a rise in crime, a degradation in society in general and more desperation. So everything is just in decline right now. New immigrants are leaving Canada because they can't afford to come here. They immigrated thinking we're going to earn some money in Canada and send it back home, but they can't even pay their own bills, so they end up just going. So that's how bad it is here. Wow. OK, Well, that's a that's a sobering perspective. I guess the message is yeah, good idea to good idea to have at least a little Bitcoin heading into ongoing money printing and debt and deficits and all that stuff. Well, Sampson, you've been really generous with your time. I want to give you a chance to, you know, give us a hand off. Tell us where they can learn more about you or your work. Sure. Our website isgen3.com and you can find us on X Twitter at at Gen. 3 com and then my handle is at Excelion EXCELLION. All right. Well, thank you again Samson. This has been a tremendous conversation, really appreciate it. And this has been scarce assets. Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Jesse.
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