Jordi Visser: Why Bitcoin Sentiment Collapsed, What Brings It Back and Why the AI Warnings are Wrong

0:00I believe that people are underestimating how strong the demand is, and this is not like GoCities in China where they built things hoping that people would show up. The demand for compute is coming from digital agents. This is my big forecast for next year. Met an Apple or two companies to watch for next year because next year I believe is the Earth consumer agents. And if that's the case, crypto as an ecosystem is going to benefit. And what Bitcoin represents for me is the only technology with inside crypto and the Fiat system that I can guarantee will be here 20 years from now. There were very few things that survived the disruption of human beings in technology. Religion, gold, and now Bitcoin. As Michael Saylor talks about, it's the thing that will be here. It's the collateral of the system. It is the stability of the system. What do you think has been Bitcoin's biggest obstacle? And where are we going? Like, are we going to get the masses into Bitcoin? Okay, so... All right, you've been asking for him to return to the show. I finally got him.

1:00Jordi Visar, welcome back. Thank you so much for joining me again. We had a very popular episode that aired. I don't know. It was like months ago. So I'm happy to have you back. So what did I do? Why did it take so long? I know, right? I mean, our schedules are pretty crazy, but I feel like... We tried. We tried. It's a really good time to talk with everything happening right now. The controversies swirling around AI is it going to kill us. So why don't we just start right there? Because that was the most recent news. Dario coming out, saying, Hey, daddy, government, can you help us? Please, we're moving too fast. What do you think about all of it? Okay, so I spent so much time talking about AI that I want to make sure that I I make this clear for everyone on two separate parts. So every year going forward, I want you to think about the fact that AI will be doing more amazing things every year. If you go back to 2024 and everyone should do this, they should go into an LOM. They should bring up Leopold. Who's now

2:02famous? And his situational awareness, not hedge fund, his situational awareness paper. And go just ask it, what did he say would be happening at this time? The reason I want people to to think about that is because to some degree, AI is a math problem, meaning it's accelerating at a pace that human beings were forecasting. And the reason it's important is if you ask Leopold where we'd be, we're pretty much where he thought we'd be, except we're actually a little bit ahead on certain things. And the LLM will be very honest about it. The reason that's important for people to hear about what happened with everyone, 10% chance everyone dies, which is just insane. But also that we need the government to get involved because it's very scary and bad things are going to happen. At some point, AI starts to go too fast and it becomes a societal issue. And that's really what I would take as to where we are. Now the societal issue means governments are worried. People are worried. We know people are worried. We know governments are,

3:07it's a big part of the midterm elections. We know that anthropic has chosen their political side, which is their leaning more towards the Democrat side. Maybe open AI is not leaning that way, but there's an election coming where now we're starting to think about the 2028 election. And do you really want to not be in both parties, pockets to some degree and agreeing that yeah, we're moving fast, but it might be too fast. So I think all of them have that issue. They also have an IPO coming out and maybe they don't want to do the IPO yet for some reason or maybe they're worried that the liability associated with how dangerous it has gotten. I think rather than go through and treat this as a moment that's going to turn into a bigger story, we're all going to die or something's going to happen. I think this is what has to happen for a technology that's this powerful. And at this stage, the reason you go back to Leopold is this is someone who wrote what would happen and the societal problems, the fears of for government. It's really an unknown that even they have the labs have reached a point where they don't know what these things could do

4:10in the hands of someone else. So I think there's a regulatory capture side. I think there's a politics side. I think there's an IPO side. I think there's a whole bunch of issues. It's not one thing and I don't think you can simplify it. I think this has to do with how far the technologies come. Do you think that some of this is a sign up where we heard from that security guy that had no followers and then he was on every single news channel and then suddenly anthrop it comes out. There's the CBS news interview. It seems like everything is planned and coordinated and it's moving us into a certain narrative. All I can do is since I don't know the answer for sure is put all the pieces together. I would say there is very little doubt in my mind that this person was involved in a much bigger plan. I only say that from the basis of how viral his tweet went. Even Elon Musk said that's a lot of numbers. Now maybe there's a chance that he did work with the Democratic Party and they wanted something to come out to make it seem like we're going

5:14too fast because they want to increase regulations. They know the data centers are a big thing. Maybe that's part of it and put some probability that you want to put. I think part of the reason that it probably got to 150 to 170 million is also the fact that it was clearly AI that made it get that big. Well, China might be really happy about all the political problems that are coming on in any delays and scaring the... There's all kinds of things that we may never know. But I think the fact that something was released by someone who didn't have a following, it went to 170 million. I mean, wouldn't you die for your book? They have 170 million tweet on anything and get everyone's there. So for this person to be able to have that much success putting it out, you just kind of read through it and you go, there was a lot more than a person who did it. Now the most confusing part to me was that anthropicon dorsed this. So to have someone who used to work at OpenAI, that then worked at Anthropicon, now it's seen both places like where at some scary place. And then for his boss who only worked for six weeks to agree and send this out ahead of an IPO

6:17where this means from a liability basis, there might be an issue. So I don't know who is involved. I just know a lot of different parties were involved. How similar or different is this from the early internet days when people were very concerned about communications and the dark web and what activity was going to happen online? I mean, it seems kind of similar, right? And we don't want to regulate too early, especially when we have adversaries that are working on faster, potentially cheaper, more efficient models. Well, this is the one thing. I agree with what you just said. And it's probably the most important thing for people to take out of this because people they leap from, oh, that means we're going to regulate everything. No, as we learn with the clarity act, it's really hard to get things done in Washington, DC. So to actually get a law into place, there's a process that has to go on. The regulation of AI, it's going to happen. And maybe this was the point that we'll look back on that starts the conversations between the labs and the government. The one thing people should have in mind, this is a very dangerous technology. There's no doubt about it. We've had a lot of hackings that have been going on. And they're public ones like Boston's scientific, it impacted

7:20their earnings. They are stock fell off a power plant in the UK was offline for four days. These are all recent. And they're all part of Fable 5.1 or Astra, these newer models. So we have reached a point where the dangers are rising. So I think everyone has to just accept that we will eventually like we do with cars like with everything. I mean, we've had the ability of having autonomous vehicles now for a while. But because one person could die even though humans kill people every day in them, we decide not to have it. So I think we just have to accept the fact that the regulations are coming. I don't think that's a bad thing. My fear is that the line between these lab companies and the government gets too in bed. And that would be a bad thing in my opinion. I think it would be bad for all of us to have private companies. Their innovation will start slowing down. In my opinion, we won't know the incentives. I think it's bad for the stock market. If that's going to happen, I think it happens. It happens further down the line. But for now, I hope there's we're just talking

8:22about regulation that will take another two years before it actually gets implemented. Today's episode is made possible by our title sponsor, Letten. If you own Bitcoin, but don't want to sell it, Letten gives holders another option, borrowing against it. Letten has operated through multiple market cycles and publishes proof of reserves. So you can verify what they hold. It's Bitcoin back loan rates scale with the size of your loan. So the larger the loan, the lower the rate. Your Bitcoin stays custodyed and is never lent out for interest. Letten now also supports tokenized gold and gold back loans are on the roadmap. Get a quarter percentage point off your first loan at letten.io slash Natalie. Terms apply, visit the site for details. The future of AI and Bitcoin mining depends on access to energy. Bittier Technologies Group publicly traded on NASDAQ under BTDR has secured a three gigawatt global energy portfolio for AI and Bitcoin mining infrastructure. And because Bittier is vertically integrated, it manages everything from equipment manufacturing

9:22and data center construction to proprietary GPU native orchestration software. Learn more at bittier.com. You're already buying Bitcoin, but have you thought about mining it? Reach out to the team at abundant mines. Mining can help you get Bitcoin at a lower cost with major tax advantages. You own the machines, keep 100% of the Bitcoin and they handle operations here in the US. Learn more at abundantminds.com slash Natalie and get one month of free hosting. I feel like the algorithms online try to divide us into these two buckets of left and right Democrats versus Republicans. But when it comes to new technologies, I ultimately think government is just about control. And regardless of who gets in office, they want to be in power. They want to control. There's going to be more surveillance. And they seem to be in bed with these tech companies. Yeah. And again, I think the White House has absolutely made this outreach to the AI community. And they've been at the White House multiple times. And if you go back to before the White House

10:25took over, the current administration took over, there was a lot more animosity between the groups and there was more trying to regulate. At the end of the day, the government is trying to control what's going on for the betterment and there, whatever their viewpoints are of their constituents. And I think people have, I mean, we've been polarized now for quite some time. Your book covered it well in terms of if you go back and you think about it, I know you've had Jeff Booth on. At the end of the day, we live in a world of capitalism where we need inflation. And the government realizes that even though they'll never admit it and they'll never say they're doing what they're doing. And to be honest, I could believe that they actually as a group don't, most of them don't know, but they know they can't go through deflation. So I think, you know, when I wrote a substack and I talked about your book, the point that really connected for us was that period of the early 1900s and what your great-grandmother went through, what my grandmother went through. And the reason that's important for people to understand, since the 1920s and World War

11:25II, it is my belief that the government has tried everything they can to avoid deflation. Now, if you're going to avoid deflation, which is Jeff Booth's, you have to inflate. An innovation by definition is deflationary. So it's not surprising to me that people get worried that their jobs might be lost. That's deflationary. It's not a shock to me that people get worried that the distribution of wealth is being skewed towards very few people who are the ones with the best education born in the right zip code that are making the most money in a capitalist system. But now they've driven up the house prices in all the cities and the governments are very bad at regulating things and the things they regulate like education and medical and housing all go up in price. So I think we're in conflict. I think they want control. I don't think they know how to control it. And this is where I always come back to the same thing. I don't think tech to AI, they can stop the deflationary pressures. I think this is the most powerful force. It's a tsunami of disruption that is ahead of us. So the government can try to regulate it. They can try to

12:26do what they want. But very similar to Bitcoin, this is a decentralized thing that is very hard to control because it's not driven by just America. AI is not driven by just America. One of the reasons that this is accelerating and they can't just stop it is because there's another country that the politicians view as a competitor and someone that they want to, that's also racing ahead at the exact same pace. So you get in this very weird thing that if they take control and the foreigners take over, it becomes they're scared of that. So this is a very complex one. AI fascinates me because I've been using the different models for my day to day work. But yet I run into hurdles all the time. And then I turn on the news and it's like, AI is so advanced. It's going to kill us. We have artificial general intelligence. Meanwhile, I'm typing into one of my models. Hey, can you watch this video for me and summarize some of the points and it goes, I can't watch a video upload the transcript. I'm like, you can't watch a video. You can't watch a video. But apparently it's going to kill us. So I feel like there's a disparity between

13:27what we're being told and then the reality a lot of us are actually experiencing with some of these texts. AI can absolutely watch a video. Okay. Why are all the models telling me they can't? Well, here's the problem. And again, this gets into when everyone gets worried about AI. There's not enough compute for you to be able to do that. Remember when it was a year, it was March of last year. There was a thing that came out called jibbly, which turned a prompt into like a cartoon, not something that would move. But then we had video that came out. Google had an anno banana, all these things. And they allowed you to do an eight second video. The amount of compute that it takes to do that eight second video is enormous. So the problem is if they allow the models to go in and do this, it takes an enormous amount of compute. Oh, interesting. So the text is much easier. So absolutely, there are advanced models that can do this. And if it's not completely can do it, they're getting close. This is the same reason why when Elon Musk talks about tariff app,

14:30when people say we're over building. Okay, he's building a massive structure in Texas. One of the largest structures the world will ever see to make chips because he knows better than the people writing on X that are saying the world is going to end more over building things. He knows that humanoids to be able to do vision and taking everything and makes split decisions, takes a lot more compute. So I would be wary. I don't know how much you pay a month. I mean, I pay a lot of money because my business, I use the top models for everything. So I'm paying well over hundreds of dollars before my compute cost for all of the models. They can already do a lot more than what you're realizing. So don't don't okay. I might have to have an offline conversation. I'm sure I'll get comments to like use this one. So please, I welcome them. Let's talk about the financing side because we were having a conversation offline. Everyone knows actually that listens to this regularly that I follow Luke Gromans analysis. He introduced me to a substat called Groundbreaker,

15:30which recently wrote an article about just some concerns around AI financing, the debt, made some comparison to the housing bubble in 0809, which my family, you know, was very affected by. And talking about how it wasn't it wasn't that all of a sudden there was no more demand for housing. It was that demand started to slow down and that started a domino effect and everything sort of came crumbling. But you say no, that's actually not happening in the in the AI space. There's no imminent debt crisis or collapse that's coming. So can you kind of explain your take on it? Yeah, and I guess first, let's just when people write things, and I do this with everyone who writes things, I don't care who it is. And you can do it with my stuff. I'm a public person. Take everything that I've written, just like the transcripts. You can go take them if you go to my website, you can create a knowledge brain on all my stuff. You can have everything that I've ever written from you to talk about

16:31YouTube. My sub stack is completely open. And find out if I've ever not been positive on some, or if I've ever been always bearish or whatever it is. And find out if I'm just responding to data, my thing is all data driven. A lot of people that write papers, when you do a comparison of prior times, first of all, I don't think that's fair. I think that immediately is you trying to sell clicks. That's me. If you're comparing it to a prior time, how is it the same thing when you only have, how many instances do we have? So I've heard about railroads. I've heard about the .com bubble. I've heard, I traveled to China for one month a year. When I first time I went to China, there were these eight lane highways, no cars on them. Within two years, walled wall traffic. They built the highways ahead of the demand. Okay. In the housing situation, which I think is one

17:32of the worst comparisons. That's me. Groundbreaker obviously sells things. They're doing stuff. They have a different opinion than me. This is my opinion. And I'll just take the other side. The housing market was levered, meaning people to buy a house needed to go borrow lots of money. The demand was coming from individuals all over the country. The demand for compute is coming from digital agents. Let me say that again. These digital agents, which consume things like you wanting to do a video, that is compute that we need. We don't have enough for that. Humanoids that are coming. We don't have enough. So you can build ahead of it, but you know, it's preventing the compute from being built ahead. We don't have enough memory. We don't have enough data centers. We don't have enough electricity on the grid. We don't have Taiwan semi agreeing to have enough capacity. So we don't have an overbuilt. It's as simple as that. The demand keeps going. So let's go to the facts. The facts are when the

18:33groundbreaking article came out, which was like the first or second week of July, that was before Sarah Fryer went on and said that the latest numbers for open AI or that their enterprise revenue month to month was up 32%. Their AR jumped 20%. So the factual side of things is if they're going to be right, okay, well, then let's just see if their AR stops growing because anthropic and open AI are for better or worse. They're the ones driving most of the compute. And if you believe the numbers that have been published, it's very easy to guess that of the model companies, they could own most of the world's compute or be using most of the data, the hyperscalers compute within the next few years because of how much demand they have for their businesses. I mean, there's estimates that that anthropic will be somewhere between 300 and 500 billion dollars of revenues at the end of next year. So until we see a change in that, we have the fastest growing companies. Anthropic

19:33who's disclosing numbers for an IPO is being valued at close to $2 trillion right now open AI over a trillion and a half. I believe that people are underestimating how strong the demand is. And this is not like Go Cities in China where they built things hoping that people would show up. We actually have too much demand for the compute. And your video example is just another way to say that I would love to do that. The way that I have to kind of go through this now is this horrible thing. So I just think people that are writing things about the debt, number one, they're trying to sell articles. And I'm not saying groundbreakers doing this, but I do know for a fact that there are lots of people making tens of millions of dollars on sub-stack that are selling bear porn all the time. And I just think that when people get into these things of the debt's going to take us down, they might be leaving the facts off the side of how fast things are growing in all the indications. And I'll just add one thing and I hate to answer something with a lot. Use the GPU prices that are in the

20:36marketplace. And the problem is, and recently, if you look at the H100s, things from three years ago's chips, chips decline in value. The best analogy I can give you is if you bought a car 30 years ago and it only got up to 40 miles an hour. And today's cars are able to go 120. But that car is more expensive than it was 30 years ago. That would indicate that we have a shortage of cars. And that's where we are in the compute right now. Can you break down simply why there have been concerns about circular financing and companies like Nvidia coming in saying, oh, we'll guarantee it because we know that you're going to buy our chips, right? So we want this project to happen, we want this build out. Can you maybe break down what that is? Is that true or not? Is there a concern with circular financing and debt? Well, it is circular financing. I mean, I don't care what Jensen Yuan says or all of them. They're literally lending money to people that are a small group of people. Now, instead of treating it as like this isolated story, I think 1% of the population

21:42owns about 50% of the wealth. It's called concentration as well. So circular financing just means that the only companies with the money capable of doing the lending are the companies that are the biggest. At the same time, what do open an open AI and an in-frappyc have? So if someone says to me, what's the value of open AI? I think they're worthless. And I go, let's see, they just solved a math problem that had been in existence for 150 years that human beings have been trying to solve. What's China's bid for open AI? Just on the IP, the intelligence. Trillions? I don't think people are valuing and thinking about this thing logically. And this is one of the reasons why I believe the merge between AI and crypto is so important. Because when people ask me, how do you value Ethereum? I go with different direction. I'm like, well, if you're trying to do it based on the current fiat system of valuing things on cash flows, I think that's wrong. I'm a Kate Lemong disciple. I believe that it's about velocity and the flow that's going to happen. I don't believe

22:46in this being the industrial revolution where GDP was a statistic created. And then since that point, it's all been about human beings consuming things. Most of the consumption is going to be high paced. It's going to be moving and it's going to be digital agents which need different guardrails. They're not settling a check in five days or doing thing waiting for mail to make it wherever. They are literally going to be moving actively. So for me, and like going through all the things, I just don't think that only people have fully come to the terms that the circular financing thing and all the concentration that's happened is just a representation of how bad the system got getting to this point where it became very concentrated from the same thing that not only Jeff Booth talked about, which is really more on the deflation side, but Joseph Shumper talked about creative destruction. And what happens at the end of creative destruction, if you go back and read his works, is socialism. And the reason we get more towards socialism is because of circular finance or the fact that very few people own most of the ability to do the transactions and make more money. Well, we're seeing that right now play out. I think that the midterms are going to be very

23:47interesting and the next general election we might see socialism rising in America because people are very frustrated. They don't know why they're working harder and essentially able to purchase less. And I think they are scared by some of the narratives out there, including about data centers and where AI technology is going. Does that concern you at all in terms of just like the social fabric and the pressure that's put on everyone? And just, I mean, look at history, right? People are not going to all of a sudden all read Bitcoin is for everyone or the Austrian economists and a dot hard money that's going to rescue us. I feel like we're going to enter a very tumultuous time. And that's something that I personally am a little bit worried about. Okay, so now you get to learn more about me. So my favorite phrase in the way that when I probably got to about, actually it was right after 9-11. So right after 9-11, I was doing a lot of reflection. I lost someone very important my life. And I thought a lot about I was working at Morgan Stanley

24:52and I made the decision that I was going to quit. And part of the reason was that as much as I enjoyed, let's say, making money at a firm that was stimulating my intelligence, they gave me all these opportunities and I'd risen to a very high level and could have stayed there for the rest of my life. I didn't like the way I felt. I didn't like firing people for a living. When you rise to a certain level, it becomes this weird thing. And the reason I bring this up is at that point, that's not who I am. And so I created a phrase to help me get through life, which was feel the breeze. And that was really a way for me to stay in the moment of what was happening at that time. All human beings should have their own views. Groundbreakers should have their view and they should write what they're doing. They have jobs to do and they've created a paper. Luke Gromin should have his views on what's going on. And Jordy Visser can have his views as well. And we're all in a world that the people listening to your show can listen to me. They can listen to Luke.

25:53They can listen to Groundbreaker and they come up with their own decisions. I don't have a problem because I think the political beliefs of some of my children are very different than mine. And the building I live in in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, my political beliefs are not the same as those people. But they should have their views. They should have the same reason that I left Morgan Stanley. People told me I was crazy leaving a job at the level that I was. So I'm a big believer in feeling the breeze, which is I just wake up. And if I feel the breeze, that means I'm present. Because a lot of times when we're walking around in the winds blowing, we're not paying attention. We're too worried about socialism and this. And I don't get caught up in it the way everyone does. And I think technology has made that a very difficult thing. That's why I hide in Maine for three, four months of the year, which is why you can't find me. Okay, Farron F. Well, let's talk a little bit about Bitcoin. When will you see the technology of Bitcoin converge more with AI? Because we hear it talked about a lot, but I don't use any models that are asking me to send them Satoshi's or pay

26:57each other yet. So when will these industries actually converge in a meaningful way? So I think this is where, and again, I'm speaking for you now, which is not fair, but you can give your opinion on this. I'm Bitcoin focused in a very different way than everyone I know with inside the crypto world. I don't know one person that views it the same way that I do. And that includes Michael Seller includes everyone. I actually think you need the ecosystem to be working for Bitcoin to do well. Now, the first phases of Bitcoin on the liquidity thing. Great. Everyone can have their fun. The world's going to end. The government's going to have to keep printing. That's not what's going to drive Bitcoin higher. That's not what's been driven technology higher. Technology, the S&P 500's gone higher because we've innovated. We've created better technology every single year. And so the S&P 500 to me as a macro person is representation of innovation, productivity, growth. Since the great financial crisis, the reason the stock market's up so much is because

28:01we have these magic phones that have all these apps on them that have replaced everything that was in the physical world that needed debt to make. And these companies didn't have to take debt. Now they're taking debt. Everyone's like, the world's going to end. They're taking debt. No. These companies have pristine balance sheets, pristine balance sheets loaded with equity. Part of the report in the ground breaker to bring it back to it is just wrong is just when people make this thing of like corporate debts exploding. Okay. Do you know how many companies are going out of business because of AI? Like bankruptcies are going up. There's companies like Ford, all these companies that restructured their debt after COVID, the cash on the balance sheets of corporates. Is it all time highs? The equity value of those is it all time highs? So my belief on Bitcoin has to do with the innovation side of it. That's why the clarity act to me is an accelerant liquidity and bests in stepping in to do buyback changes and all that's all great. That gets the sentiment of let's say the people that believe Bitcoin is about liquidity,

29:03what I care about what Jordy cares about is innovation. The AI agents are coming and that's the merge. Now Bitcoin does not benefit from that. There's not going to be Bitcoin to your point exchange with AI agents, but it will be done with stablecoins. Stablecoins will have L2, layer 2s that are built on Ethereum and Salana for faster movement. And so I view the ecosystem, the growth in the developers, the need that'll come from agents, which will be enormous. And once they start, as we saw with tokens, it's parabolic. So when they start transacting, which is going to start now, we had the first kind of personal AI assistant come from Meta. Apple will be coming out with stuff. Meta and Apple are two companies to watch for next year because next year I believe is the ear of consumer agents. This is my big forecast for next year. And if that's the case, crypto as an ecosystem is going to benefit. And what Bitcoin represents for me is the only technology with inside crypto and the fiat system that I can guarantee will be here 20 years from now. Everything else to me is going

30:06to speed up and the creative destruction is going to go at such a fast pace that every innovation that people come up with will be out-innovated. That's why when you go through and you read the details of the Navier Stokes math problem, two human beings complained that they were close to the end and all open AI did was go and solve the problem using what they not only had publicly disclosed, but what they were actually using in the AI models to get there. At the same time, it's been revealed that the reason open AI picked this one is because they heard Anthropic was getting close to the end. The main point of that is we're out innovating innovators constantly now. And if AI gets to that point that we're solving problems so fast, I just believe that the only thing that will be there is, hey, I don't have cash flows, but I'm not going to be disrupted. And that's where Bitcoin as Michael Seller talks about, it's the thing that will be here. It's the collateral of the system. It is the stability of the system. All the other things are about the flow of innovation. Coin Stories is powered by Bicco, the leading digital asset infrastructure company. Bicco now

31:09offers individuals free, insured, institutional grade custody. Keep full control of your Bitcoin secured by a publicly traded, federally regulated digital asset bank. Sign up for free at Bicco.com. Owning your Bitcoin should feel secure even when life doesn't go as planned. Phones can get lost, devices break, backups go missing, right? Bickey is built for exactly those moments. No seed phrase, a screen that shows you exactly what you're approving and recovery and inheritance built right in. No subscription needed. Download Bickey today and use promo code Stories for 10% off. This episode is sponsored by Bickey. Your browser fingerprints you. Your phone tracks you and your government collects all the data. It's time to ditch big tech and start using better tools from VPNs to privacy phones. My friends at the Bitcoin Way will make sure you're protected. Schedule a free call to learn more at thebiccoinway.com slash Natalie. Don't delay your privacy matters. I remember my first news job I was making like 20 something thousand. I didn't start putting away

32:12in my 401k when I should have. What's your argument for considering even having an IRA if you're a Bitcoiner? Taxes. You're going to solve some Bitcoin and you're going to move it into dirty dollars or whatever currency it survives the dollar and there'll be a taxable event for that liquidation. If you do it in a Roth, you could turn $5,000 into a half million and you're going to take it all out entirely tax-free. Well, what is the innovation and the creative destruction mean for jobs and labor market? So nothing in the short term and that's because of the same thing with the government, with the clarity. Nothing happens fast with human beings. So when you, I have a business. I have no employees. When I was 29, I started managing tens of people. By the time I was in my early 30s, it was hundreds of people and that never changed except for one little period when I set up my own business and I had eight people that I went into another business and not me not wanting to do this. I end up in the exact same situation as Morgan Stanley. Whatever the reason is, I managed

33:14people. I don't like managing people. Now, for businesses, they can't fire all the people. Even if the agents could do things, they can't fire them. Secondly, until humanoid's come, we can't fire anyone that goes into a mine and we can't fire them and that drives a truck and we can't, like, there are jobs that are not replaceable in the next 10 years. Eventually in 15, 20 years, do I think it'll be a choice to work? Yeah, I think there'll be certain fields, but I'm in the Elon Musk school that maybe it takes 50 years. I don't want to give people this thing. If everything gets to the point where we don't have to worry about the deflationary side because the debt doesn't matter anymore because the speed of things is going so rapidly that all of the wealth that's on the planet, when I hear people talk about the debt in the US and the government debt is 40 trillion, I always ask them the same thing. Do you know what the net worth is of the households in the country? Do you know what it is? It's 184 trillion.

34:19Four times at this point, the debt closing in on five. What is that consistent of? Does that include housing, stocks, bonds? Does that include debt itself? That's a net number. So that's net of everything. This is the whole point. So we live in a Ponzi scheme. But again, the Ponzi scheme is called the Fracture Reserve Banking System. You go to the bank, you put a dollar and it turns into 10 magic things. We all know that. We all on houses. We go through it. If everyone tried to sell everything at the same time, it will come crashing down because there's not enough underlying liquidity, real cash to go. That's a levered Ponzi scheme. So when I say Ponzi scheme, everyone freaks out and I'm like, no, that's the system that was put in place. And the reality is because they can magically print money whenever everyone at once tries to sell things like COVID, they stop it. And once they stop it, it's about human beings' expectations of the future. And that's what keeps the Ponzi scheme going because as long as the value of their assets keeps moving higher, they're not selling anything. So we're in this point of like, okay,

35:22how do I think this ends? And I think we're witnessing it. So for me, the S&P 500 this year, earnings are up 33%. But the market year to date is only up 11. So the earnings are growing really fast, but the PES going down. Why is that? Because I think the market is discounting a very important thing, which is the terminal value of all companies outside of five years. We don't know what it's going to be because it is disruption. So if I'm right about the fact that the way this will all play out for people with jobs is, if you want a job right now, you can go get one. Anyone can get a job right now. You can drive an Uber, you can do it. You can get a job. Now, people may not like that hearing that, but we have a shortage of many jobs. We have a shortage of driving jobs. We have a shortage of electricians. We have a shortage of plumbers. We have a shortage of nurses. We have tons of shortages. Where you can go to a trade school for a very short amount of time and they will put you in place very quickly. And I'm sure you know people that have had to do this. It may not be what they want to do. So people are not in the jobs that their education was supposed to give them. They're in that,

36:23that disruption is already happening. But I don't think people won't have jobs. I think what people have to realize is if the cost of things eventually goes lower, which is not the case right now, that'll be the benefit. But again, when I go to restaurants anywhere Manhattan or anywhere around, I just, they're not empty. Like I know that many people don't have that much money to go to a restaurant. I don't go to that many restaurants because I just think it's overpriced. I think it's ridiculous and I cook. So I'm not interested. So I wouldn't worry about the job situation. I wouldn't worry about it. It'll happen slowly. And young people don't seem to want to work in the same manner that people that were older. Just my, I agree with you. We won't pull on that thread. But let's talk about Bitcoin. I don't blame them by the way. I mean, life is short. I think I enjoy it a little bit. Yeah, no, I just think that the times have changed. The jobs have changed a lot. The pay, I mean, I just even think of the technology changes in my former industry, which is news.

37:24And when I was growing up watching appointment television, right? Everyone came home and watched their five o'clock, six o'clock newscast. They knew who their local anchors were. And they were making amazing money. Some of them had pensions from their stations. And one person basically did one job. If you were a photographer, you were the photographer. If you were a reporter, you wrote the story and shared it with the audience. If you were an anchor, you were on the news desk. But by the time I went through college, it was five jobs in one paying a fifth of what the salaries were before. All of a sudden, you were the photo, you were the live operator, you were the reporter, and you were the anchor and the teleproctor operator. And it's like, whoa, what happened here? And again, like you're not making enough to afford the house that the news anchor got on like a $20,000 salary. So it's so wild because I've seen it. But I think that's what's led to some of the disillusionment and kind of nihilism of younger generations. Because it's like even if I work hard, I still won't be able to buy the stuff I might as well enjoy my avocado toast and my vacation. Let me give you a different, let me lead you down a path. Because I read your book and I know

38:30I know enough about what you had to grow up in. So I'm a big student of Sigmund Freud. And I spent a lot of time as a young person because I wanted to know the reason that I thought the way that I did and why I worried, like worrying and anxiety is a very big thing. And I'm sure you're a warrior. That would be my guess. Okay. Good guess. But it's because of the house that you grew up in and what I learned about your parents. Yeah. So by you disclosing in the book, my grandmother had a huge influence on me. I was not a planned baby. So my parents fought a lot. So I was confused about I didn't grow up in like a happy home. My father didn't always have a job. He was a construction worker. And it was like a very weird feeling. My grandmother had a huge impact on my life. But she was a depression baby who talked about never take debt, never do this. And once you start saying never take debt, you're entering a very dangerous path because the people

39:30that make the most money are the people that take risk and take debt. And so if you're told it very if you take that you'll you won't have food, you'll have to leave the house at 16. I got thrown in my grandmother's sweatshop. All these things my grandmother's telling me I'm like, oh my God, you had a horrible first 25 years. And so that shapes you as a person. And so people that know me in the industry from when I got to Morgan Stanley and I was moving up the ladder, I was called a Perma bear. It was always like the world was going to end. Everything was bad. So feel the breeze came after 9 11 because I started to realize that my best friend who died, who lived life like there was no tomorrow. And you know who lives like that? Baby boomers. Baby boomers live way above their means. They don't they can't afford everything. And I think if you're telling a kid, we don't have enough money for everything. But then you're going to Disney world and then you're going to dinner and you're going to this and you're going to that. I think you're getting conflicting messages. And I think younger people have kind of taken on that difference that we kind of went through, which was the world's going to end as opposed to, hey, you need to work hard. And oh,

40:33by the way, yeah, we're going out tonight. We're going to go spend money. We're going to a game. We're going that it was very hard to get we didn't have the money to go to games. So I grew up in a very different world. And I think a lot of the kids because their parents borrowed money to put them through school, I borrowed my own money to put myself through school. It's a different mentality that I think shapes the younger generation. And they also have these aspirations based on photos they see in Instagram and things like that. And I think it shapes their what they deserve and they're entitled to. And then their parents kind of shape you just spend and you take debt and you complain about things and it'll end up happening that way. So I'm more of a belief that we should leave the younger people alone because I think worrying is was not a good thing for me when I was young either. It's true. I do need a worry last but I think this also all circulates back to our conversation about socialism because when you point out sort of this concentration, it does breed a sense of frustration that people didn't earn what they have. And there should be a redistribution and a sense of equality or fairness because no matter again, no matter how hard people work, it's like

41:38they can't get to that next leg up the way that their parents could or the way that their grand parents could. And so there's like a that's the political question. It's like how do we equalize? How do we make the system feel like it's more fair? And there's no easy solution to that because even if you implement these policies, they don't really work. You're just handing over more control to the government. So I hate Texas. I don't know anyone that is like happy to hand their money every year to someone else and then try to justify that the things you're getting are of value. So again, I think you said it best. I don't think there's an easy solution to anything. I think voters vote a certain way and the country moves in a different direction. It's happening. I mean, it's already happened in New York. It's happening in California. And so by listening to the podcast that I listened to, never did I think that the Silicon Valley people would move to Texas.

42:39That was not something on my bingo card of what I expected to go on in the future. But many of them have. And other ones have moved to Florida. We get fights between the mayor of New York and hedge fund people and they moved to Florida. So I think you have a choice at the end of the day. If you don't believe in the country, you can move out of it. If you do believe in the country and you're American and you want to stay here, you can move to a state that has more of the beliefs that you have. And I think people are choosing to do that. I don't go to Maine to avoid the government. I hate paying taxes. But at the end of the day, I feel blessed that I've been able to make the money I've made and still be able to travel the world and go meet with the people I want to meet. And I'm a nice person. I'm a really nice person. And I don't get caught up in worrying about all the things that like socialism might bring or might not bring. As long as I'm safe in a city, my kids are safe. I'm fine. You gone from a permabar to a permabull.

43:42Perm a, perm a happy guy. Which I know the breeze. Feel the breeze. What do you think has been Bitcoin's biggest obstacle in the last year? And what do you think will bring it out? I think crypto ran to a point. And so when we first spoke, we talked to Decent amount about the paper I wrote on silent IPO. And whatever people think about that, I think about things a lot in dark rooms with glasses of wine. And I come up with things that I believe set the table for what represents what's going on. At that time, I still believe that there was a transfer of ownership away from ideologues who believed in Bitcoin in the way that I think the original people and you might be one of them, which is freedom away from government's freedom away from this decentralization. And I don't think tech, I don't think systems end. I think they merge

44:44gradually over time. So socialism is merging right now with another side of government. And they're going to not be one or the other. It's not binary. They kind of, they merge into something else. And so I thought the silent IPO was that merging. The, okay, you guys don't believe the government should be involved in all. Okay, you guys get out. And all of the people that are buying crypto right now are diversifying. And I believe that diversification is necessary. So this is my belief on what Bitcoin represents. It's a hedge to all of the other things you own in your portfolio as far as I'm concerned. Now, that doesn't mean when the market goes down that Bitcoin should go higher. What it means is over the long term, if AI disrupts everything that you want, it disrupts your house. And it will disrupt the value of your house. It will disrupt the value of your stocks. It will disrupt the value, it will disrupt everything. Bonds have not given you a positive return now for eight years. You should know bonds venture capital private equity. I don't think AI isn't going to hurt those. So for me, where we are now with crypto is the most important point. And I was on

45:51an interview the other day. And there was a very well known macro person on the call. And I gave my bullish take, which is we're finally at the point where we're plugging in the innovation into crypto. And that's what matters the most. The usefulness of it that every day it's being used as opposed to it's being speculated on. So to get back to the ground baker thing, everything that has been built in crypto was for demand of something. Every innovation that happens in crypto. It's not made for humans. I hate to tell people crypto is not made for humans. No one's walking down the street going, you know what I need right now? I need stablecoins. No one's walking down the street going, I need faster people don't care. They don't care that it takes five days for their check to be settled. It doesn't matter that the wire, the only people that care truly are digital agents. That's who cares. So the problem for me is that the demand function for the benefits of crypto didn't exist. And if everyone wants to know how this is absolutely true,

46:52you can go back way before Michael Seller and go to Mark Andreessen and the paper he wrote, why bitcoin matters? Have you read it before? Okay, you should. He wrote a paper. So Mark Andreessen, one of the greatest tech investors, and he literally said, I think, and I'll screw this up, he said the three biggest inventions, the three biggest innovations were the personal computer, the internet, and bitcoin. And what he said was absolutely not about what bitcoin is today. That's why everyone should go read it. Bitcoin was about digital money. Bitcoin is not digital money. What is digital money right now has been chosen as stablecoins. But what he wrote about was that you eventually need money to transact via the internet. And we're not there yet because we haven't been able to get to that point. What the bitcoin white paper did was solidify that. That's why he wrote it. What has happened over time is the most powerful thing with bitcoin is it's been chosen by hundreds of millions of people as a digital store of value. It is the collateral.

47:54It is the chosen one. There were very few things that survived the disruption of human beings and technology, religion, gold, and now bitcoin. People can argue about bitcoin. They can be bearish on it. But it survived multiple bear markets. It's, yes, it's down 40% from the highs or 30 plus percent. But when we make new all-time highs the next time this will be how many times we've had a 50 plus percent correction and then we make it to new all-time highs. If you can't kill it like tulips, there's something there. And I believe we're at the point where the demand function to go back to the groundbreaking thing is finally coming. We overbuilt for humans and now we're going to have digital agents which we don't have enough built for their flow. So what number cycle is this for you with bitcoin? In terms of what? Studying it or being involved in it? Being involved in it, investing in it. First investment I made was in 2020 and 2021. Okay, so this is kind of your second bear market. Yep. You would say. So I've been only really sharing this offline not on the

48:56podcast but I really feel a sense of an identity crisis within bitcoin because the sentiment feels so different this time around. I've been in it since 2017. I saw that bull run and then the 2021 when I went to my first bitcoin conference it just felt like there was this populist driven movement of we need to fix the system. We need the ability to save. We need something that can hold the powerful accountable and this is like our tool. This is our freedom tool. This is our tool to empower generations that are coming after us. And all of that to me feels like it has died down to a level of oh you know bitcoin's going to be this passive thing everyone sort of has in their portfolio but no one really cares about it. The sentiment has changed and everyone seems I don't know distracted by either other investments like AI or politics or I don't know the gamification of markets. And and I worry that we're not going to have another one of these like really big retail driven oh my gosh we're going to really fix the system. This is our tool.

50:00And I've talked to some folks and I won't name them and they're like yeah I don't I don't think that's ever going to happen again. I think it's behind us like the biggest retail bull runs are behind us and from here it's going to be very very gradual. That worries me because I just I feel like bitcoin is not just something you have in your portfolio to hedge everything else like I really I mean you could probably tell from the book I wrote I really believed it was like the thing that could help fix some of these inequalities incentives for corruption. The things that have really pulled us apart as people and made it more difficult for us to coordinate economic activity because our money is at the core corrupted and manipulated. What do you think I would love your take because you see things in a much you know more hopeful way than a lot of people but even me like I feel like I've always had rose colored glasses especially when it came to eventual bitcoin adoption this bear market has made me feel like where are we going like are we going to get the masses into bitcoin and I just I sometimes feel like maybe we won't.

51:04So it is very funny you do this by the way you should bring this up more and I have plenty of questions for you on this because you're also you live in a very tunnel vision world. And what I mean by that is the people you're talking about are crypto people. Sure yeah they're in bitcoin for sure. Yeah see I can tell you that the one thing that could never happen with bitcoin to actually go anywhere is the people that are on the other side they have no money Natalie. At some point the money has to drive the assets. So wealthy people control the world's money we agree on that right so the 184 trillion dollars is owned by the top 10% they don't believe in bitcoin and you know why it's what I wrote in the sub stack thing you don't find bitcoin bitcoin finds you they don't need it so the problem for everyone who's this idea log on bitcoin is

52:07as someone who knows what drives assets the high prices it only comes from people the wealthy people buying it that's it so if you have a distribution wealth problem you actually need that liquidity that's being pumped in the system to come over here those people aren't complaining about system they have more money than they need but what they all human beings have is greed that's the one common thread between all of them so the big issue for bitcoin for the beginning part of this year was the fact that nobody needed to invest in it because it wasn't going higher AI was going higher I have always believed since the day that I got involved in it that it solved the distribution of wealth problem for me maybe it did for you but not in the same way for me it's a democratization of education for me it's a democratization of jobs for me it's a that's happened so in a true sense what needs to happen is the S&P 500 needs to not be the winners anymore the winners have to be entrepreneurs so you know what's happening in the world entrepreneurs are winning I'm building a business growing rapidly and for topic open AI the fastest growing companies

53:12in the history of the world are private they've reached levels greater than almost all of the S&P 500 companies almost all of them from zero the big complainers they don't make money that means that the system is breaking it means entrepreneurs have a chance to compete they don't need employees and they don't need debt to generate this and through our open AI has no debt they don't have debt so when people go well where's the that's at the hyper scalars so the difference between I think the view that you have and the one that I have is I'm seeing on the other side a different thing happening I'm seeing hedge fund people very important ones reach out to me going hey you're talking about this tokenization thing let me let me see that's why I'm telling everyone who's in Bitcoin you're making a mistake if you don't believe in a theory and you don't believe in salana those are the ones that are going to drive all of the wealthy money into it it will all eventually move this way but the only way it happens is when those worlds are bridged and they go how do I make money off

54:14this so when stand truck amillers 13 F filings come out and he's invested in hyper liquid it's a big deal it's a really big deal that he owns something that is on the bridge when Robinhood has the Robinhood chain and it's a public stock it's a big deal because people are now starting to realize that revenue could happen in this company from crypto you're starting to get people asking me how's valuation go so you're living in a crowd that was hoping something would happen I'm just taking the facts and going guys you need a AI you needed these agents to get crypto going and eventually Bitcoin will be part of it now it's so interesting I mean obviously I operate within like the Bitcoin chamber and everyone there is already they've already been converted they already love Bitcoin when I go outside though I used to be able to get people excited and obviously the price was going up and the previous bull cycles and now people are just like oh scams the FTX thing it president

55:15Trump is super corrupt the meme tokens and so it's a very interesting time but where I want to wrap up is I want to say a big thank you because you wrote this phenomenal sub stack about my book Bitcoin is for everyone it made me tear up I it was so moving and it made it made me feel so great that we have this connection between our families even though we're from different parts of the world and in our families experience something similar that they passed on to us and I just I really want to thank you for that because I'm trying to get this book out to the average person and like you mentioned in the sub stack I don't even talk about Bitcoin until chapter 10 and for me all of the why is what made me so passionate about it learning about how the financial system works and inflation what it really is and why you're purchasing power is not as strong as it used to be but what's interesting is I've recently been a part of some focus groups that ask people you know about Bitcoin their knowledge and what makes them actually convert into a person that buys Bitcoin and those

56:15things those kind of like government inflation all of all of the why that I put in there they say that that's the least interesting thing about Bitcoin and the focus groups actually say they just want to know that you can buy you don't have to buy a whole Bitcoin you can buy Satoshi's is it regulated can I buy it on a brokerage account it's all of these kind of surface level things and not the deeper why why do you think that is well first of all I'm moved by people telling their experience so everyone has their favorite types of movies mine have always been the underdog wins story and yeah and it just it makes me happy like I like crying at a movie not because of being like I death doesn't affect me as much as like a a story of someone accomplishing great things and I don't understand why and I've I've I've been interested in this for me but I really like seeing other people accomplish great things so the book that you wrote takes people on the journey

57:16of your experience the part that I said and again I identified with it as a warrior you know and again with the bautier de rad this is a bautier de rad I stopped worrying and I I didn't become an optimist I became a reality thing that there's a new system coming you have attached Bitcoin to your belief of what that system will be which I don't think is fair because you don't know it will be we don't know what the new system will look like we know the systems are changing and the old one is breaking that we all know and so I believe the old system is breaking in front of our eyes I do believe the new system is being formed I believe it needed AI technology to actually get us there because the reality is for people who don't understand human beings worry about things constantly and I don't know the benefit that comes from that so as someone who meditates who goes to yoga regularly I wanted to feel the breeze and not have to get caught in this everyone should

58:16go by the book because you tell a story of how it led to you finding Bitcoin regardless of how people get there in the end they have to start to understand who they are as people because you write and because you do a good job of explaining how you felt and why you felt the way you did based on your own experiences I think it leads to wanting a new system and that you hope there's a new system coming I believe the new system is coming and it's going to be here a lot sooner than people think and you think Bitcoin will be a part of it I have no doubt in my mind now have you sold any Bitcoin I've done tax loss harvesting okay and I've borrowed against my Bitcoin okay so that's different than not believing anymore so you can talk a good game and say I maybe this isn't going to happen and people are doubting it well I think this comes from my background though and and this is I mean we'll have to explore us on another show because we're running out of time but like I think because of what my family experienced especially with the great financial crisis like I had a scarcity upbringing I'm always scared that there's something around the corner that could that

59:19could change everything the rug could be pulled out from under you and there's something I might not I might not be aware of right now that could send this whole thesis to zero and then where would I be because one thing that I have learned is if you take big risk it can have big payoff and for my generation and people who have found Bitcoin for some of them that's meant going all in because that's sort of like the only way you feel will get you to escape the financial insecurity that maybe you had before but there's that's a scary feeling right because you don't know what's going to happen you can't predict the future things have happened you know no one predicted the great financial crisis my family didn't see it coming and so I think that that's what breeds a sense of worry in a bear market especially when I see sentiment around me and with with the book you know I'm trying to reach people and they're just like inflation you know what let's just call on the government to hand us some more money let's call on the politicians to redistribute things and talk to the rich

1:00:20and I'm like no that's not the answer because you're not addressing the root cause and it seems like people don't even care what the root causes yeah this is a longer show and I'm not I'm not going to go I'm just going to say this to people because it's it's what you asked me I believe every single person who cares about their portfolio should have a certain percent of their money in Bitcoin for a very important reason the system that you know is breaking that system is what drove the assets to the levels that they are I don't believe that can collapse because it means we go back through the Great Depression and we've already proven with the great financial crisis and that's what changed everything we can print money endlessly we did it in COVID if there was ever going to be a time that this was going to collapse it would have been when we shut the economy down intentionally and we just printed money it can't happen so what does happen is when you say something can't happen the system starts to break it is breaking but what's going to end up happening is the

1:01:25agentic world will solve the problems with death in terms of cancer it will create other problems but it will enable people to be entrepreneurs and to compete and to put money and AI agents won't have the scary feeling that you have because if you say hey go trade my portfolio make 10% a year you got it Natalie you go to bed you don't have to worry about anything because human beings worry about what's going to happen and then they sell their Bitcoin and they go out yeah you're not going to have to worry anymore well luckily I've never been worried enough to sell my Bitcoin I truly believe in it and we'll have to do a two hour show next time Jordy thanks so much for coming on the show it's been great having you thanks Natalie always a pleasure and please read a sub-stack about Bitcoin is for everyone and the intersection of macro and Bitcoin the Nexus it's a fantastic read and it's always great having you same here thank you so much for checking out this episode of coin stories if you haven't already make sure to subscribe and hit that notifications button so you never miss new content this show is for entertainment and educational purposes only nothing should constitute as official investment or financial advice and you should

1:02:28always do your own research if you haven't already make sure to grab a copy of my new Bitcoin and money 101 book Bitcoin is for everyone my inbox is open if you want to share feedback or guest suggestions just reach out at info at talkingbiccoing.com I'll see you next time