Bitcoin is still in its early adoption stages, representing only about 0.1% of global money supply, and is fundamentally a cultural evolution tool that addresses human behavioral patterns in monetary systems. While Bitcoin provides digital guardrails against historical monetary corruption (like Roman coin debasement and fiat currency inflation), its success depends on whether it can survive the gauntlet of human behavior that has caused previous monetary systems to collapse. The key insight is that value is subjective and based on shared belief, meaning Bitcoin's long-term success requires not just technological innovation but also human adoption and trust in its underlying principles.
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Bitcoin's Biggest Demand Wave Hasn't Arrived YetAdded:
only 0.1% of Bitcoin adoption and a single company is still worth three times as much as all of the Bitcoin in the world. This shows you how freaking early we are actually are in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
So today I'm talking with AF, one of the deepest thinkers in Bitcoin, how Bitcoin is being adopted, why he thinks the next 10 years could potentially be the most explosive in Bitcoin and what we are about to see. And additionally, we talk about taxes, we talk about AI, we talk about so many more topics. So with that being said, enjoy.
if if you have to put it in a big frame like how how would you say is Bitcoin changing the world order after studying the history of e economics evolutionary biology and all all of those things.
>> So I would say that it is very early stages of what I will call and I'm sure someone else has called it this or more broadly digital Darwinism.
So the thing if if I sort of take a step back there there are two real forms of evolution um that occur within our species. There's the biological evolution which is the our genes evolving through time depending on our environment. That environment creates a stimulus that uh forces our biology to either change or adapt to the situation that we find ourselves in. Now biological evolution is slow um slow in that it takes minimum tens of thousands of years really to see significant changes into it and our biologies evolved over millions of years. And so when you look at it from that time scale, our lives on this planet hopefully being a hundred years or so is like a grain of sand on a nearon infinite beach of um um of time. And when you think think about it in the in the lens of evolutionary biology, like that's going to take forever. We're not going to see that. But what has evolved is cultural evolution. And so where biology has started has been too slow, we've allowed culture to take over. Now when I say culture, I think anything that's created through the human um call it cerebral cortex. uh the cognitive element that we evolved to do that makes us as smart and intelligent of a species that we are um and that encompasses all our technologies that we've created. I I would class that and I think other researchers in this space have classed that as part of a cultural um evolution.
Same with how we come up with our laws.
At the end of the day, the laws that govern our country is stuff that we just made up in our minds that everyone believes is the case and we all vote on it, but ultimately it's a it's a fiction that we create. same uh with our monetary systems. Why do we believe that a piece of gold or a bitcoin which is uh backed by energy that is secured via a decentralized ledger and a protocol uh ultimately um created by an individual or group of individuals? Why do people believe that's value? Again, it's technically a fiction that we've created that we all believe has value that allows us to do the things that we do.
And so I would call this cultural evolution. And so where where bi biological evolution can't keep up, cultural then takes over to keep our species advancing and adapting.
What I see with Bitcoin is um we've seen monetary changes over time. So now let's just zoom in on that cultural evolution down to the monetary layer where we've used precious metals, we've used like shells, yapstones, we've used orchids, we've used um cattle in the early days.
Then we went to coinage. Then we realized, oh my god, Roman Empire, they're clipping the coins, uh, degrading the amount of value there. So they were debasing their currency in a way. That collapsed. Then we went back to a hard standard again. Then we've gone through fiat standards in China in the past. That's collapsed. Then we've tried it again. Um, and so we see these sort of cycles of ups and downs of where we all have a collective shared view that this thing could work ultimately hits the the human condition in a way that causes it to go haywire and then collapse.
Now, let's bring the story to where Bitcoin is.
Bitcoin in itself was an evolution. If you've ever read the book, the Genesis book by Aaron von Weirdom, he and I think I pronounced his name correctly.
He went through the he went through the history of the cipher punks starting from the 70s all the way through the genesis of Bitcoin. The amount of failures that led to the point of Bitcoin solutions that were implemented that ultimately failed that led to Bitcoin was in itself sort of an adaptation. It went through that gauntlet of trying and failing, trying and failing until it landed onto a stable, call it strategy that is Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is the antithesis of understanding both digitally, how to create money for the digital age, which did not exist really before the 70s.
Sure, we had communications, but really the internet was only just being born in the 70s and the 80s through DARPA and then ma mainstream into the 90s. And so it is this evolution of technological advancement in the monetary space through to 2008 when it was deployed.
And we're only now just starting to see does this thing actually work. And if a Bitcoiner says 100% it's going to work, I don't think they've been creative enough to realize all the potential vulnerabilities that it will have. and we're being too bullish, uh, too too blind to what could possibly be that we don't find our blind spots and then correct for them. So, I'm always on the bit more on the pessimistic side and can and try to say, well, where are we at super super super early, but I think that it is the best thing that we've created thus far and thus it needs to go through the gauntlet of adoption to see whether it can actually tackle the root problem. And now the root problem from a historical lens has been that people have corrupted the tools that we've used. Whether it be Roman emperors debasing their coinage that have robbed from their citizens. And what we're seeing now with the fiat monetary system with central banks um printing to allow for deficit spending that benefit the few, not the many. Again, those are individuals that are corrupting it.
Bitcoin is the first application of putting in place digital guardrails against those human behaviors um that have led previous monies to collapse. So if you frame it from that lens, we are now only just starting to see can it survive that gauntlet of human behavior and we are still way too early to know it like what under two trillion as a market cap. Yeah, it's so interesting because we we Yeah, it's like it's like nothing and I think I mean that's a it's a whole whole another topic because like people come into Bitcoin they think like oh 100k 70k 120k whatever the price is when you watch that episode you think that is a lot of money because like sounds so huge as a unit and you compare it to like oh um my Apple stock is just I don't even know what the Apple stock is trading but like probably like $100 or something like that Apple stock just like like $300. So $38 is currently the Apple stock. So you're like you look at that you're like okay one Apple stock is $38.
One Bitcoin stock is uh 70,000 80,000 whatever the price is. That's a lot more money than the Apple stock. But you don't realize that Apple is actually bigger than Bitcoin as a because it's not about it's it's not about the unit.
It's about the whole thing >> because you can >> how much value is that asset class or not asset class, how much is that total asset actually holding in terms of value is what you actually care about and we're at 1 point something trillion.
>> Like I can I can tell you I can you I'll I'll charge you five bucks per pizza piece. Then your question is like how large is that piece like like what like how much of the whole pizza like if the pizza is like and how large is it like is it like a a few inches is like a big is it one meter like a very big pizza.
>> So it's like >> uh it's it's very people are so stupid when it comes to unit bias and and it was myself me myself also and it still is. I have like this this crazy thing of like if I see a stock at like 16 bucks, my head is like, "Wow, that's so cheap."
And I'm like, "Gosh, Robin, like you like why don't you look at the market cap?" It's such a >> like exchanges should be required to not look at the unit, but it should be required to show the market cap as the first thing.
>> Yep. and and and like how much of percentage like how much of that market cap do you want to buy and not like uh like a unit because like unit is so weird there's like reverse stock splits and stock splits and like >> oh it's so so >> it's almost like marketing gimmick to trick your mind into mis um miscalculating what it actually is. And so if you put 100 bucks versus 16 bucks, oh 16 bucks is cheap, let's go and get that, but the hundred bucks is actually the more fundamentally sound company that's actually going to generate returns and thus increase in value over time. And so again, it's a marketing uh not marketing gimmick, but it's sort of playing on the mind um given how we perceive the world on a much smaller scale versus stepping back and looking at the bigger picture and realizing ah okay I needed to take all this other context into account when making this decision.
>> I was a Tesla investor before Bitcoin and there was this huge event coming up that Tesla was stock splitting I think like one to five something like five to one. I think five to one is the thing.
Um [laughter] and I was like why is that an event? Like why why are people looking forward to that? Because it will give more people an incentive to get into the stock even though nothing has changed like like a stock split is really no change whatsoever.
>> It's just that the minimum buy price has now dropped significantly. If it's a 5 to1 stock split and it was trading at 300 bucks, you can now buy a share uh at 60 bucks, which means that smaller time investors can get in on the action that didn't have $300 to in one hit buy a singular a single share.
>> But even now, there are so many uh modern exchanges where you can already uh buy a fraction of a share. Um yeah, but even even if this wouldn't be the case, I I [snorts] would even argue against that because how much like >> if a investor does not have enough money to buy a stock at $800, how much does his buy into the stock really matter for the stock? Like you know what I mean? Like like is there like it's Yeah. But yeah, so like the stock splitting it's like I actually like I think Berkshire Hway they never had a stock split like is like I don't know if that's like true but like they have a ridiculous high stock price of like >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It it's huge. But then you could you could liken that to breaking a Bitcoin into 100 million sats. Like do you why do you have to break it up that much? Why not just hold it one bitcoin and then it it changes the buy price? So, it's like a I I could understand it, especially if you're like what Bitcoin does, which is enable banking and monetary um sovereignty to billions of people in underserved areas. We would love them to all have access to it and even put in a singular US dollar to buy some sats because for them that's huge. And if I'm a disgruntled, marginalized youth of today that is on the the back end of this fiat monetary explosion, maybe getting in smaller into some of these companies and starting to invest into the technologies that are going to advance our civilization, which I think Elon is doing with like I'm looking forward to looking at the SpaceX IPO um and seeing where that one lands. But to get a piece of that knowing what it's going to do for civilization as a young person, I'd say that's brilliant. Let's write it up. But if it was outside of my hundred, if I had $500 to put aside and a share was 600 bucks and now I have to keep waiting to even get in, kind of demoralizing.
So I I could see why you would want to reduce it. um especially where the reason why these prices are so high is because of the amount of fiat money that's been printed into the system. And so it wouldn't be this high if it wasn't that. And all the value is centralized to the top. And so actually by stock splitting you're democratizing access to the stock which is going to help you outperform fiat. So, if you don't want to invest into Bitcoin, then I'd rather people have as many options to invest and beat inflation through productive companies like a SpaceX, like a Tesla.
Um, if Bitcoin isn't the thing that you want to do.
>> Yeah, it's a it's a good one because at least you have a lot of options.
Um that's that's what also for me it's also the the freedom part is the thing that Bitcoin is giving us in the meantime because the number go up part you already had before like you could already buy Nvidia and all of those things that the difference is you really have to be on your aame to understand all those different stocks and they have a little bit of a shorter life than than Bitcoin. So uh you have to find like what's your exit strategy out of those stocks with most of the stocks because the top five uh market cap company today look very different from 30 years ago look very different to >> another 30 years ago uh and Bitcoin is like a little bit more stable than that but >> yeah it's a it's a it's a complicated world out there.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, absolutely. And uh yeah, and look look, Bitcoin is complicated, but I think the problem that it's solving is more complicated than people give it credit for. And so because of that, we're sort of underestimating how complicated the problem that we're actually solving will actually become.
And I use the complicated piece because I'm trying to simplify a a complex problem so the masses understand the thing that we're actually trying to battle against that by opting into the Bitcoin network and the Bitcoin what I call ethos. Um you're opting into something bigger than just money and monetary value itself.
Because I still believe that that adage that we hear in Bitcoin being fix the money, fix the world. I I don't agree with that. I think it stops short of what the problem actually is. It's fix the money and then you can fix the world. Because I still see that if you hold Bitcoin and you huddle through and you stop larger entities from hodddling um large stacks of Bitcoin, you're stopping their center of gravity from exerting force on the world around us. the more Bitcoin that you have, the more capital that you have, the more ability that you have to influence the immediate surroundings around you. And so you can think about that from the lens of political. Um, if you've got a lot of capital that you can deploy, you can change political races, who gets elected, and therefore by who gets elected, what laws are enacted, and by what laws are enacted, ultimately giving you potentially upside.
Bitcoin helps fix that to a degree, but it does not actually do the fixing of those systems themselves.
And so the the complex part of the problem that I think that Bitcoiners are looking to solve and I think we've got the fundamental principles in Bitcoin itself that just need to be scaled beyond Bitcoin is that money is just the first step. If you don't then fix how politics is done today and start think tanks that's that look to reimagine the way in which politics in the digital age is being conducted cuz just in the same way that fiat was built for the for the call it the physical world. Bitcoin was built for the digital world and where civilization is moving towards technologically today.
Politics has not caught up to that.
Education has not caught up to that.
healthcare has not caught up to that.
And so there are a lot of structures within our civilization that are yet to go through that transformation that Bitcoin I think is first mover on. But learnings from this adoption journey, how we combat these the few that would look to pervert the system to their benefit, Bitcoin will be the gauntlet that tests whether or not this is a viable solution. And I actually don't know 100% that it will pass that gauntlet. In in many ways where people previously thought that their fiat currencies that their coinage could do it and failed, Bitcoin could potentially go through that and we just maybe haven't imagined a scenario where that could occur just yet. But if it does pass this gauntlet, then we have to take all those learnings and now start to apply in advance everything that surrounds it. Because the problem will be sailor's got almost or probably already has 4% of the supply in micro strategy.
What happens when sailor goes? What happens when Fong Lee goes? Who's in control of that corporate treasury?
It's some sort of individual that we hope that that company is going to appoint that lives up to the values and the ethos that those two individuals have carried that have allowed them to stack 4% of the supply.
Black Rock is probably going to have four or 5% of the supply. Nations are going to have multiple percentage points of the supply.
At that point, it's individuals in control of Bitcoin that'll be able to use it to exert influence where they deem necessary. And if they can apply it to the political political spheres, that then means that all the regulation, the laws that are passed that um determine police, borders, healthcare, education of our youth, the values, the principles and what they what they are taught to believe will be under that level of control. And unlike fiat where they just kept on printing and it just sort of yes it funneled to the top but they kept on printing it. You now got a finite supply. Every sat is worth a hell of a lot more than every printed dollar every printed fiat. And so if they add that control of that supply, they create that sort of um center of gravity around themselves. They'll be able to exert that influence and then they can exert pressure into the into the physical world.
So if we stop at money, we're kind of screwed in my view. We have to extend all of these principles and these learnings to redesigning and rethinking all the other systems for which the people that are already taking advantage of fiat are likely to continue to take advantage of.
Is there a danger that strategy specifically becomes the new Bank of England, the new central bank, the new Fed, the new whatever you want to choose in that in that >> realm?
>> Is that kind of what you're going in?
>> Yeah, absolutely. It's just about what time horizon you're looking at.
>> Do I think that's going to happen in the next 5, 10, 15 years? Probably not.
But Bitcoin, if we choose to think in in that time horizon, that's a very short time horizon. Reality, the last block is what mined out in 2140.
I can't remember the exact date where the last block with block reward is mined. That's 100 something years from now. Like when you think about just what has changed in the last 100 years from 1926 to now, we hadn't even gone through World War II yet. like like we like so we're talking about a time period for where it was pre uh it was post World War I uh the battle between Hayek and Canes had just started effectively um uh for the dominant economic thought we hadn't seen the internet we' barely seen an automobile we hadn't seen the atomic bomb we hadn't launched into space there's a lot that can occur over a hundred years and so it's just a failure of imagination to not think that over a long enough time period and I think it's probably 30 to 40 years that concentration like that within a publicly listed entity under the jurisdiction of the United States of America won't be prone to something because in 40 years I don't think Sale is going to be around unless medical technology catches up. Hopefully is but like he's he's getting to the point where that's a real possibility he's not going to be there and there will be new leadership.
What does that leadership need to do?
There's going to be a new geopolitical environment which they'll be operating in. The US is going to be in a very different place in terms of where its standing is as a global superpower is.
What are the likely changes as a result of all the things that we cannot foresee going to be on the policies of the government that largely control the public entities uh and where they are housed. I don't know. But the fact that it's concentrated to that degree is a good chance that it will turn into something that it was never intended to turn into like many things um that we observe. And I've got a very controversial take. Canes came from good intentions, but it was perverted through time in order to become what we now see with modern monetary theory. But back in back in 19 I want to say 1919 or 1920 he wrote a a piece called the economic consequences of the peace and he was battling against uh the amount of sanctions and reparations that were placed post world war I on the losers. Germany was as part of that and Hayek was inspired by that piece because they shared the same view. high concented off as in commonalities against the thing that they were battling solutions slightly different but both were capitalists but if I asked a Bitcoiner today do you think Kanes was capitalist what do you think the average answer would be no matter if you already have self- custody or still have your Bitcoin on exchange your generational wealth that you have in Bitcoin could be completely at risk and that's why I highly recommend commend to you to give the Bitcoin way a 30 minute free consultation call to check how secure your custody setup really is and what you can still improve. So head over to the bitcoinway.com/roin.
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>> Uh I think the average ends of normal people, they have no clue who Kane is.
>> Yeah. Uh well if you talked to a Bitcoiner that had that view on Keynesian economics >> most probably wouldn't guess that and I it's new information for me like like uh like that he is a cup like that he started from that point is is really interesting.
>> So actually hold a second I'll show you a book.
So this was part of my reading list for my research and uh there you go. Oh damn it. There you go. Kane's hayek. I'll I'll I'll shoot you a note and I'll probably put in the comments underneath underneath this. But Nicholas Wapshot wrote a book called Kane's Hayek, the clash that defined modern economics and in it goes through Alcanes in 1919 with the consequences of the peace inspired Hayek and then went diverging paths.
Hayek from Austria obviously the Austrian school of economics studied under von Misus Hayek I mean Kanes out of Cambridge and it wasn't until Hayek was recruited to the London school of economics that their battle really ensued where because of the economic consequences of the peace that is postwar reparations um Kanes had a view that actually governments could step in to soften the blows of downturns that we saw post world wars uh to soften the impact that led to devast station across um uh the world post war people were in depressions and he saw that in order to offset the damage to life governments could intervene with stimulus but the moment that that stimulus had served its purpose is was to pull out and let the free market then take over. So he saw government as acting as like a cushioning on those kind of events.
Hayek disagreed and said, "Actually, you just need to let it play out." But at the time, they didn't know any better.
And it was a battle of ideas. What that's now morphed into was something that was born out of suffering and trying to to heal and minimize suffering in the world, which is what Canes came from, if this book is accurate, which I think it is, and it's been perverted now into actually we'll just print money and stimulate whenever there's even the slightest tiniest shock. One was built out of a wartime effort. One now is perverted into, oh no, we've got a slight downturn in economic growth. We better print money and stimulate the crap out of everything. And so when you actually look at that, they came from very similar foundations. And so now let's let's apply that story to uh Micro Strategy.
It's come from a great place. It's creating stability in our market uh today with Bitcoin. It's absorbing a lot of the shocks more than likely the buying from strategy alone is so stupidly high that it's not tanking the price. It's softening it's create it's maturing this asset class um that's giving it more credibility on the global stage. So on an adoption front I think what strategy doing today is phenomenal but now fast forward similar to Kane's good intentions what could it become and that is anyone's imagination and in a 40 to 50 year time frame if it's true that they don't sell and who knows what changes over time what happens if the kar of bitcoin starts to collapse and it's no longer growing at the 39% to 40% that sailor um is expecting and allowing for is it stretch um what's the 11% perpetual >> that you get uh SDS 11.5 >> yep um that's good for a couple of years but then that'll probably start to reduce will the kar start to reduce what is the economics of it then what are they going to pivot to in terms of an operating business that's then going to support the cash flows for people wanting to invest into them as a stock at whatever multiple it will be into the future and if they become operating what Are those operations will those operations like what would do with with their Bitcoin treasury? Do they become a reserve bank effectively? Are they even allowed to? Will the government step in at that point because they are now exerting forces that should be in the public good, not into a private company under public shareholder interests. So, you've got a whole bunch of things. So, you just don't know what it's going to look like. And so to your to your mate's point that didn't think that Bitcoin might would be a medium of exchange or a money, maybe that's the thing and maybe it just becomes a permanent reserve asset that allows for value to be exchanged, but countries still exert their sovereign rights by um holding the fiat and we'll issue the fiat and then it'll become a battle of whose fiat is better, whose provides enough stability that allows it to remain a functional currency but enough flexibility that maybe Bitcoin won't allow per se for governments to execute against the the public demand on them. And each country is going to be different. You're going to have a collectivist society uh that you see out of China and to a degree India. And you're going to have individualistic societies out of Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada.
And how they will use Bitcoin is going to be very different. But maybe it's always a reserve asset. And so you just don't know what path that's going to take. And so anyone that talks with any level of certainty that says, "Yeah, it's the best thing ever. Uh Sailor is the best." Uh hasn't thought long enough. And until the thing that'll give me confidence will be what is sailor's exit strategy for himself out of that business? What does that look like?
Because is there a succession plan? I know Fong Lee as CEO is in there, but I don't know what the next line of succession is. Who's going to be the next executive chairman? Uh, which Sailor is at the moment. What policies are you going to put in place? Can they be voted out easily? You know, what safeguards are going to be in place in 30, 40, 50 years if you are truly the the bastion of uh of of Bitcoin.
And so, we may be sacrificing the long-term through the propping up of strategy today because of the short-term benefit it's providing us in the Bitcoin community today they accumulate a lot maybe it bolsters all of our bags price go up softens the volatility on the downside great benefit but longterm we may be sacrificing something that we just don't know yet I mean do you think people I mean do you think people buy strategy because of that I feel like people buy strategy because they want to outperform Bitcoin and not because they care about uh Bitcoin. I think they care about themselves and their bags and not about uh the collective Bitcoin community.
>> Oh, 100% I agree. And it's just the free market playing itself out. So, this was probably always going to play out that someone was going to realize they found an arbitrage in the market, which Sailor did. He got he was able to buy Bitcoin at 0% on all of his borrowings. he's now found an arbitrage on creating this perpetual product that allows him to give out effectively a monthly dividend that outperforms a money market fund um while keeping that upside. But he's just managing the fact that some years are down years, some years are up years, but on average over long enough period of time, it's got a keer of 39%. So me paying out 11%, I've got a 20 something% arbitrage. Happy days. That's accretive to his company. So I don't disagree that it would have always happened. But what I'm saying is that free market at play to do this sort of thing under public company structures that are headquartered out of the US and governed by laws.
Um what does that do long term?
I have no idea. And so these are sort of the unknowns that we now need to start not not that we need to start thinking about but we need to be open to to realize that we're not creating our own blind spots. And so multiple companies I actually like that idea and I'd like them all to get to Sailor size or I'd like to see Sailor downplay it become an operating business and diversify and drisk across more. So decentralized treasury companies means that it's not across multiple jurisdictions.
So you'd need to get geographical and legal system diversification across them. Otherwise, you're all centralized.
>> I mean, the USA holds a lot of the gold of the world if I'm not mistaken. I don't know the exact percentage, but did I hear some like somewhere 20 or 25% or something like like I I just heard like >> they're about to um do an audit on Fort Knox if you believe what Trump was saying as well. I I know That seems a long time.
>> Yeah.
>> But again, it it comes down to then the shared fiction of the time. So, uh, Yaval Noah Harrari in his book Sapiens, I think, articulates the statement this um, thesis incredibly well. Gold is holding value is a complete fiction.
It's what we created in our minds to believe that it is value. One of the things that I hate about the way that we talk about value is that we think it's objective.
Value is 100% subjective.
There is no objective value. There are objective or intrinsic properties that things have but it is we who assign value to it. So gold people will say ah it's used in technology. Okay, great.
It's using technology for today, but who knows what technology will be in the future. And will it use gold as a conductor? I don't know. So, in the future, it may not hold that that that value, but still maintains all of its current physical properties. Then they'll say, "Oh, it's used for jewelry." Okay, great. For as long as people wear gold jewelry in India, awesome. Culturally in India, gold jewelry synonymous. People all saw value in it. I don't think they do it in Australia. So again that's a cultural thing which is a collective myth that has been created and believed by the masses that have assigned that value to that particular element um of gold's market cap. So I always say uh when people ask me this it's like stuff has intrinsic properties. So stuff that we can objectively measure from multiple perspectives and all come to the same result that's an intrinsic property. But if you cannot come to the same valuation of what that thing is valued then it is sub it is by nature subjective.
And when you realize that everything is sub value is all subjective and based on that shared belief. What if we in 50 years we are so technologically advanced. We are now a multilanetary species. Elon's does his thing. He's got a a base on the moon. They've perfected asteroid mining which allows them to mine and literally just hurl it back down to Earth to reduce the the cost. I think they're exploring how do you mine an asteroid and instead of coming in for a soft landing, you literally just fling it into the atmosphere and let it impact and then go and grab everything. That way it's super super cheap and cheaper gold mining on an asteroid than it is terrestrially on Earth. What does that then do to it? You've just jacked up the supply and we all know supply demand economics. So suddenly the value starts to plummet and will we as a species believe that that is valuable when we've got a colony on Mars a base on the moon. I think we look at the we look at the world through the lens which we've been brought up with which makes a lot of sense why education is so important. The first 25 years largely sets in place all of your moral all of your cognitive foundations. your prefrontal cortex goes into full overdrive like fully developed by mid20s and then by that point a lot of it is sort of muscle memory. Um it is drawing subconsciously from all the collective experiences that you've encountered and so we view the world through that and right now we're viewing the world through gold is so important and the US has a lot of the gold. Okay, but for how long is that going to be valuable? How long is that going to be the thing that props them up? China is buying a lot of gold. France has got a lot of gold.
India's got some gold. Okay, great. The next wave is Bitcoin and then Bitcoin will be that thing that gold is today.
And that's what I hope that it becomes that reserve asset for the digital age that allows it to be transferred everywhere, be transferred to the moon, it could be transferred to Mars. It's just a communication and to make sure that um any node running on each of those planets is uh and I I guess that there's obviously time lag and we'll solve for that in the Bitcoin community somehow between interplanetary use of it, but like this is a very fictitious example. Who knows if that's even possible, but you could see that that's going to be a far better solution for value transfer um than gold will be. And so maybe it just usurps it and then all the gold becomes back to its utility value which is can I use that gold in all of my technology. So I'm actually just going to sell it to the to the private sector to use in creating electronics technologies things that we need gold for.
>> It's it shows how how early we are. We we have a asset that is I don't know one$ 1.5 trillion dollars in market cap is like >> baby >> 0.1% of the total uh money in the world if you think about the Jesse Mer model um >> and we are thinking already how we can not only make Bitcoin the dominant form of reserve asset money whatever you want to call it or whatever you believe it will become but we also think about how we can transfer that already to other planets and make it also the most dominant form of there's a uh there's a lot of crown to cover for for Bitcoin for for those who are early and think we are at a top >> but it can happen quickly and I think at the very start I was talking about you know 100 year period 1920 to now what's happened but the trend is it's accelerating inms terms of how rapid the change can occur.
What Elon does with his companies just shows how quickly things can move if they need to if people want them to move that quickly. And so to certain people in in the space that will say, "Yeah, Bitcoin to a million, it's just one God candle away and and we're there to a million bucks. That's what Samson Mau absolutely possible. There could be an event that causes that to occur. It could be slow, but my guess is it'll actually happen faster than what I've been describing it to be will happen.
We're 15 years in. The next 5 to 10 years, I think, are going to be explosive because we're now past on the adoption curve. We're past the early adopters now. It's now going into the early majority. And in that early majority, it's sort of like an S-curve that start, not an S-curve, but a bell curve that starts to rapidly accelerate um to get to a 50% population adoption.
If you look at that um bell curve model of technology adoption and we're we're into that early majority state phase now. Corporations already adopting it.
Nation states have already got some on the balance sheets. So, we're we're in we're in that accelerated phase now.
We're getting clarity on on the regulation front. So I think things will accelerate very very very quickly but the problems that will rear their head will start to come as we start to go into the late majority where more than 50% of the population are using it and now suddenly we start to try to exploit it even more and even more and even more and how that gets done in this combination of both the physical and the digital I have no idea.
How do laws, how do nations interact with it while maintaining their sovereign self-interest as a country when you've got Bitcoin which is apolitical?
And that's the interesting question like because if you think about any technology they are always adapted in different speeds in different ways in different countries like the internet, electricity, everything. Cars, whatever technology you can think of, they have been adopted with different speeds in different jurisdictions and in different in completely different ways. the the uh the phone line era that was popular in Germany, in Austria, I don't know, in America probably also didn't even make it to parts of Africa. They directly switched to cell phones.
>> Yeah.
>> Um there are parts in the world where there is no electricity. And if you don't have electricity like in Melbourne or in Austria or like wherever you are, you freak out after just a few hours.
[laughter] >> Yeah.
>> Uh and so >> it will be really interesting how different nation will adopt Bitcoin.
China versus USA, Europe versus Africa, like like there's so many different we always talk about like oh Bitcoin is going to be adopted like that. And I'm like, yeah, that might be true uh in one specific area in the world, in one specific uh situation, but it might be something like a 18year-old Nigerian in Africa looks very different in Bitcoin than like a 72 Austrian retiree. Like you have like very very different sets of problem, very different set of situations and they're adopting Bitcoin in very different ways.
>> Correct. And you know, we push back against central bank digital currencies in a big way for good reason.
But now picture Bitcoin as a fictitious example. I hope that it doesn't occur and I don't think the likelihood is overly high. But what if Bitcoin has its has its MySpace moment in a similar way that Africa didn't take on fixed connectivity and went straight to mobile. So they just completely bypassed a form of technology and went straight to the next thing.
What if there is a Bitcoin MySpace to the new Facebook moment? Similar to what Instagram was going to do to Facebook, similar to what Tik Tok was going to do to Instagram. We see technology advance and actually the best technology will always win out. right now. Yes, we're early adopters, but we haven't really tested through the gauntlet of Bitcoin through this digital physical um coexistence in in a in a real way cuz right now it is a 1.5.6 trillion asset class to your point.1% of the money.
It's two two- fifths of nothing in com in in relation to the rest of the world.
And so the world is like, okay, yeah, Wall Street's getting involved. They probably think they can make quite a bit of money early adopter. It's their like 1% bet because they're they're banked on the rest of the value that they already got under management to to power the majority of their returns. What happens when it does start to take off? Will there be something else that is able to perfect what Bitcoin is a little better?
like what e-cash was trying to do in the 90s that Bitcoin perfected in early in the mid to late 2000s. Could there be something that we've just not considered on all of these interactions that says that for collectivist countries, for Southeast Asia, for China, for Europe, there could be something better.
>> I mean, I I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. With Micro Seed, you can engrave your 12 or 24word seed phrase, the entire seat phrase onto a 1 in small washer. Yes, just one washer, all 24 words on that one washer. You can hide that thing everywhere. And even better, you don't need to buy a new kit every time you have to get a new wallet. You can make unlimited backups because Micro Seed is not selling the washer. Micro Seedat is selling the device that stamps the washer. You get the full kit with the device, with the washers, with the hammer, with everything you need to get started today and you can make with that unlimited amount of backups. Go now to micro seat.io.
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Tell them you come from Robin and let's mine Bitcoin together because Bitcoiners are like very certain in the way we speak. Bitcoiners like I caught myself in the camp I guess uh very much so. Um I mean of course like the the normal way of how I usually approach like the Facebook MySpace thing is like the difference between the protocol layer and the product layer. It's a bitcoin is not Facebook. Bitcoin is kind of like the TCP protocol more more like that but there can be an upgrade or a difference protocol as well. Um >> but it's an interesting question because like we we could look at all the protocol adoptions in the world in the past whatever years um and how they have been adopted and how they have been abandoned again. For example, I think the English language is a protocol, a very strong one.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Uh a communication protocol. And so it's like this is kind of expanding because in Europe we have the situation where nobody has the native English language.
I mean except UK. Um but we all speak English to each other because we all have our own little language and because German >> it could have been French.
>> It could have been Germany.
>> Yeah.
>> Yep. And it was just one one out over the others and thus it became homogeneous around the world.
to the point that Bitcoin is early, it is absolutely early. We're not at mass global adoption yet. And so there is no reason why when this starts to play out and people realize actually the game is up.
Um which the US will realize with the US dollar. They're trying to do something now with stable coins to in order to what people will pontificate as saying to suck up treasuries to allow them to continue printing money with a buyer there to buy their tea bills and that is the stable coin market for USDT USDC.
Um there could be something similar to that where other countries now start to realize oh this is encroaching on something that we don't want it to. It used to be a great asset. It used to be this little thing that we didn't really care about. We banned it. We did some stuff like China did. But now it's actually a serious problem. We don't need to take it seriously. And now we need to create something or do something about this that acts in our best interest and not against our interests.
So, I I don't know if we've seen the tipping point yet of whether that we've hit that point of pain that causes interested parties to start thinking differently to then create something different.
Or maybe we will hit a black swan event into Bitcoin. Maybe it's not the block size walls, but another black swan type event as a result of the way in which it's being used that we just didn't anticipate.
and we go through a make or break situation and it creates a new thing that has tackled that in the similar way that Facebook realized what MySpace was doing was just all over the place on on the product level if you if we use your analogy and create another product. But maybe the product is the protocol itself and maybe there are fundamental elements of the protocol um that are tackling certain problems that we haven't properly identified. And so if we don't know the problem that we're trying to solve, how can we iterate toward the right outcome?
If we're thinking that it's just purely a monetary thing, and if my thesis holds up and is actually a human behavior thing, have we considered all of the different ways in which human behavior could exert its influence on the protocol or at least exert itself on the use of Bitcoin itself?
But if we haven't diagnosed it and understood it, then how can we actually come with such confidence that it's 100% going to work?
>> I absolutely love our conversations because I don't know if you've noticed, but I've taken notes uh while you were speaking sometimes uh because it gave me inputs for my own uh speeches, for my own book, for my own things that I'm doing. I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] I have to consider that. I haven't considered like I haven't looked at Bitcoin from that perspective." So I I guess I have to look at that. Um, so I guess I and love and hate it because I have to do more research now. But I kind of love doing that research and and figuring things out. But it's a h Yeah, I just wanted to note that because I absolutely love our conversations and and I hope the people listening to that feel the same way.
Well, I use this sometimes as a sounding board. So, when you when you reach down and said to come back on, I was like, "Okay, Na, good time doing some research. I need to sort of start talking it through with someone else um that isn't just in my circle around here to see whether I've landed the ideas in my head well enough." And so, I've still I've still got a bit of work to do. Um but, um and then I'm going to shell this. But for anyone that thinks that this was good conversation, I got a free Substack that I'm going to go back to because I'm going to write a book, but I need to practice my writing. I've realized my writing is really crap and so I need to do some practice runs on some articles on some points and thoughts that I'm having. So if you want to hear more of it, I'll just be publishing a weekly substack article now on various things that are coming out of the research.
>> Do you think that writing gets worse because of AI? Because we're so used to just like you can write a really bad phrase questions and just put a bunch of context and don't care about how you how you written it. But AI gets like what you kind of want to say and still spills out like useful answers and useful text and useful things. And we're using it to write emails, using it to write arguments, we using it to do all those things that humanity kind of loses the ability to write themselves something nice >> maybe. Look, look, my own journey with this book myself, I went hardcore into just AI as a research tool. I got my Gemini subscription. I got a specific um uh AI called consensus and sci-pace. So they can tap into the 250 million academic um research papers and draw from that which the other AIs can't do because they don't have access to those journals. And so I used both of them.
And what I found was um I was so constrained on my thinking because AI is so simplistic and that might change into the future and it might become more complex but right now it was answering the questions as I posed it. And because I didn't understand the subject matter material anywhere near enough I didn't know what questions to ask and AI is only as good as the questions that you ask it. So I actually after three months of trying to do the research that way pivoted and just started reading books. And what you realize is the books and the authors themselves give a much broader perspective and give you a deeper understanding into the subject matter that then allow you to be creative with that subject matter. I was a musician back in the day and I'll tell you now, I wouldn't be a I wouldn't have been able to do the improv, jazz on the sacks had I not understood my scales and my music theory cuz I wouldn't know how to be creative, if I didn't know the fundamentals. And so I think what's going to happen is people are going to go down this AI piece, rely too much on it, realize they're getting too vanilla, getting too robotic. People will see through it and it's just like this is going to be the free market working again. We know what is AI slot. We will start passing through a whole bunch of stuff for credibility checks to see whether it was AI uh produced or whether it was human produced. And I think what will happen is you'll get a a um a premium on human created content, but specifically things that are creative in nature. So not regurgitating what someone else has said, but rather something creative, a leap or something that AI itself could not create because it didn't have that source material to draw from. those unique things that our minds can create that AI can't at the moment that might change but right now that's sort of my view will be what will be the premium and so that will drive people to write because imagine like right now I pass quite a bit through these AI checkers to say has this been written by AI and so eventually people that just do that they're going to lose credibility we're not going to be looking at them what will gain credibility are those that can actually create unique content and by nature of needing to create unique content, we will have to go back to understanding how to write or how to at least express ourselves to create unique things. So whether that's writing a book, whether that's talking a podcast and it being transcribed into book format, it has to be humanled, human created to draw that premium. Otherwise, it becomes a commodity and well, we will not see value in the commodity and by nature of not having as much value because I can get it for a $30 subscription per month right now or maybe into the future it becomes $5 or maybe in the future becomes a premium model where there's ads in in there and it's all for free which a lot of people are saying that could go down. um we will crave and put greater value on unique human generated content because that will be uh the unlock for value.
It's actually it's actually the reason why I stopped using uh I use claude usually but uh why I stopped using claude or any other AI tool for thinking about questions to ask. I realized that I just use AI. If I don't know the guest, I just use AI to figure out who this guest is that I it's amazing at which is like, oh yeah, like he talks usually about it that and that and that. Uh he works at that, he does that, like all of those things. He makes an overview which is amazing within like >> one minute, maybe two minutes. Um but then I think myself about oh what am I interested in hearing from him? What am I interesting like to hear like I have so much data to know what I like and what people like because of the amount of podcast I put out there and amount of feedback I get from every single episode of like hey I love that section. Hey, this was really powerful. Like I just got from real people a lot of feedback to it. And what I found is I have better conversations because first of all I don't have a set of questions that are like I want to go here here. It's not like I'm not an interviewer who's like oh first question done second like I I I don't think this is valuable whatsoever.
And today because I already know you I haven't written down a single question.
I've came completely blank in here and just like was like, let's see where it goes. And I've done that multiple times now. Like actually probably that past 200 episodes uh except the people that I didn't know before. Um because and you have better better um uh conversations because you don't it's less interview and more a conversation. And people like like two minds coming together and expanding wherever. So uh the only thing that I always ask I always ask >> and it's genuine and I think this is it becomes it's already valuable now in this world because we have like this 20 second Tik Tok graded with AI like perfect to hack your attention span >> and this is the exact opposite.
[laughter] >> Yeah. Which is awesome. We we we're not hagging your attention span with our I don't know 1 hour 30 minute conversation. Uh what's >> we're stretching your ability to stay and concentrate throughout the entire thing. [laughter] >> And so I think this already valuable now but I think especially in like um I don't know 10 years five years or something like that I think there will be a point where I switch to live stream only because people will demand it.
people want to see it right now here [snorts] two human beings clashing onto each other and like having a conversation.
Um, I'm kind of thinking that that's what people want. Right now it's like pre-recorded has a lot of benefits that live don't have, but I feel like in five years this podcast will be live stream only. Um, but yeah, it's a it's a crazy world. Um and so having real human interaction, real human connection will be the main advantage that you will have in this world.
>> I completely agree. Otherwise, we will lose our humanity. We are not we are a social species.
And anyone that thinks otherwise is I I think misguided or doesn't understand our biology. And if we're a social species and we are glued to a screen, I think enough I think enough literature and research is coming out to say that what the social media age has done to kids has destroyed their social interactions with people raised anxiety levels and we're seeing that experiment play out. I think it's now incredibly well documented. Uh you see our community >> so so I just wanted to add on there because I think there's something very important in there. Um, not only that this this is happening with social media, those who specifically reach out and and build their social skills, they are benefiting 10x more than they than how they would have benefited from it before social media. And I think the same is true with AI. The same is true like if you live in this world uh of like social media AI and all of those things if you specifically think trying to think hard yourself specifically but still use it like if you don't use AI I think like you're lagging but like thinking harder yourself using the social skills yourself you're 10x more valuable because it's a rare thing to have in in in your world and scarcity is something valuable >> and you need to work towards the 1, two, and 3enters. Now, where we used to develop skill sets that made up 40% of who we are, we're an I'm an engineer.
I'm a mathematician.
AI in those knowledge based industries is just reset the baseline cuz now something that took you 4 years plus a genetic aptitude to be able to do like I did a physics degree um and not many people can do that.
That is now going to go away with AI as the foundation. And so the 1 2 and 3% above and beyond what AI can do will be the old 40 50 60% that your degree used to do. And so I think people will have to readjust to realize actually I only need to be one or two% better and I can get all the value that being um 40% better today would be. I can charge that premium.
And when they realize that they're realizing, okay, yeah, it's these softer skills. It's these peopleto people interactions. It's this I just need to tweak it a little bit with something unique that takes deep thought by self to come up with something unique even though it's small in its contribution um it will be the differentiator um between the new AI baseline which is going to be extremely high in terms of its competence and so yeah focus in on those one twoenters social people type skills is going to be so significantly important.
>> What is one thing that is currently annoying you in the Bitcoin ecosystem that you would like to change?
>> I'll tell I'll tell you now, Bitcoiners probably don't want to be Australian citizens uh at the moment given all the tax changes that are about to occur down here. Uh that's definitely been keeping me up a bit more at night, let me tell you.
>> What what what is coming uh to Australian tax uh uh changes? It's um it is significant and actually it'll there's some great individuals that will talk in a bit more detail to this but at a high level will be the test case for new tax changes that will severely steal wealth from the population. So we're changing our capital gains tax. So in Australia um if you own an asset you're subject to your marginal tax rate on any profits that you gain. So let's just say Bitcoin goes from 10 bucks to 100 bucks.
You made a $90 profit. You would get taxed at your marginal tax rate. And in Australia, the top tax rate is 45% plus 2% for our Medicare levy. So it's close to 47%.
But then in the late '9s, the government introduced a 50% discount, which meant that if you held the asset for longer than 12 months, you could take a 50% discount on that taxable gain event. So instead of paying the 47% you're paying sort of like 22 and a half% was the capital gains. So that's the system we've been operating in since the early late 90s early >> 2000. That's only when you sell right.
>> Only when you sell. So if you choose to sell.
>> So you basically treating capital gains as income like other countries would treat the income tax.
>> Yeah. Correct. So it just gets that capital gain gets added to your income for the year and then your tax rate is then applied across that total balance.
So our top tax rate kicks in I think at about $190,000 and then above anything above $190,000 is taxed at 45%.
Every dollar the government takes 45 above that amount. So the problem is if you're a full-time worker in Australia and earning a six-f figure salary 120 130 140 then effectively any major sale of Bitcoin is going to push you straight into that top marginal tax bracket which gets you taxed at at that 45%.
Now what the government is doing now is actually going to remove that 50% discount and actually just charge you the full tax rate and give you indexation based on inflation. So instead of the discount, they'll say, "Okay, you bought an asset in 2020 at 100 bucks. What's been the CPI? It's been 3%." All right. We will adjust your purchase price for the amount of years that you've held it and the CPI increase. So that if that's 3% over 10 years, just basic math, 30%. So your $100 buy price is now $130. But if you sell it for 10,000 or you sell it for $5,000 or you sell it for $1,000, let's just say you 10x the investment and in Bitcoin over a 10-year period from where it is now, you would a lot of us would say that that that's a that's a more than likely scenario, then you're going to be paying 45% on 870 of that um gain at 45 to 47%.
So now the government's almost taking half of the gains um of you taking the risk of owning Bitcoin here. And so for someone like myself that had an exit path out of Bitcoin, not completely, but to exit myself out of the fiat system, so pay off the home loan so I'm not um slave to the bank anymore, give myself some financial freedom to pursue the things that I want to pursue. Uh that has now been effectively destroyed if this passes through legislation. So this is what the government are saying they're about to do. it goes to the parliament to get voted on, I think, in the next couple of months. And if it does, it takes effect the 1 of July 2027. But if it does, it could add upward of 3 to four years of me having to hold even longer before I reach a sale price that exits me out of the fiat system. And so the government has effectively taxed us time as well as a huge sum of money.
Now when I researched Bitcoin the first time um I came across Sailor saying things like you can't tax Bitcoin because it's the most it's it's the most it's the easiest asset they can flee out of a country. It brought up that example of a small Italian harbor where all the rich people came in. Then they tried to tax the rich people that were in the boats because the people un uh un uh fair. The rich people all left the town, didn't have any money, they went uh broke so they reduce the tax again. Um then we have like many other examples of like you want to tax the real estate because it cannot leave the jurisdiction. It cannot leave Australia, USA, like wherever you are from. Um, but you should not tax something that is easily transportable outside of the country, outside of the jurisdiction because if you do that, it will just fly outside of the country and outside of the jurisdiction. And I feel like you probably also have done the calculation like how much money you potentially could save to build your family just by not participating in that system and just like living somewhere else. and there are other beautiful places in the world. It's not just one country. Um, and you said before we started recording that you're also uh big in history of economics. So I'm curious what is your point of view on taxes and bitcoin and bitcoin and the government kind of like what is kind of that the tension field between an asset that you can't really like you you you can just like not have it like you can just say like what is the tension field kind of for you looking >> so I say bitcoin is in call it cyerspace so yes it gives you that ability to just move wherever you want. It's completely decentralized. We all sort of know that that story. But the problem is we're all physical in the real in in in the physical world and we live. We've got families. We've got friends. We've got homes from which we build emotional connections to. And so you're sort of having to bring the two together. My personal view is I'm happy, funnily enough, to pay tax.
I've got zero issues with that because I think that there's an element of societal cohesion where you should contribute to your broader community um on certain things. So whether it's like a Milton Friedman view of the world or a Rob or a or a Thomas Soul view of the world which is just minimal government, defend the borders, protect property rights, um ensure that there is uh police um um and emergency services.
So that I think is like sort of like a minimum standard and I actually go a bit beyond that for me personally just based on my own value set. Um knowing people and myself being a a director on some on a nonprofit board here in Australia, I know that there are those that are hit with life circumstances that sometimes a safety net is a good thing not just for a helping them out but for social cohesion and to create a country with a set of values that you want to be a part of. So I I I'm quite happy to pay tax if I know that the government is using that tax money effectively to deliver against the promises it makes to the people. So with that out of the way then it comes to are they actually doing that? And the answer is absolutely not. So we can already see fraud, abuse and waste of public funds. There's a scandal every other day and it's so frequent now that it's almost become the norm. Everybody knows politicians rot the system in many ways that money doesn't always go to the areas that it should. So in Australia, we've got a a scheme called the National Disability Insurance Scheme. U full disclosure, I sit on the board of an of an organization um that provides disability support services. So I I get a unique view on that. I know that they do a lot of good, a significant amount of good. there are people that are getting a life that otherwise would not have um and a quality of life I should say that they otherwise would not have would not have received. But I also know that the way in which the government has set up the system that it has allowed for a significant amount of fraud and abuse of the system and so there is millions of dollars going out the door by people that can undermine the system.
So how government applies and uses those those funds are what I think are in question. And right now I have no real faith that the Australian government for the extra taxes that they may get from my Bitcoin holdings is going to yield any positive results for for where I'm at. And so I'm almost at the point of saying, is this a time to opt out? But that comes with a heavy burden. You know, my wife's family is here, my family is here. Um, I want to raise my kids here, but is that worth how much is that worth to be here? And you sort of have to now weigh it up. Is it multiple six figures of tax in order to stay here or move to another country where we don't have the same sort of support network, social network, and have to start from scratch?
How much is that money actually worth?
And so, we're going through that um debate at the moment. Um, and to be honest with this and with my view on Bitcoin where it's going to land 2030, 2032, which was sort of my time horizon for making my first sale to get out of my fiat um commitments maybe.
I I brought that up uh recently actually in a live stream. There are different tax. I like I like Europe a lot. Um just as a livable place on on planet earth.
It's a very beautiful place. You have the the Nordi Nordic countries. you have the uh uh south countries with the beaches and all like you have a very like if you know Europe is a very beautiful place to live >> and with the European Union and I'm I'm I'm not one that uh saves with things that I don't like about the European Union.
There's a lot of things I really don't like uh on it. But one thing I really like about it, it's very easy if you're a European Union citizen to move within the European Union. So do just travel to another country. Uh it's like you just pack your things and you go there. It's it's it's really not that bureaucratic.
I already um uh tried it out. I lived for one and a half years in Germany. I worked there. It was super easy. you go go to the Austrian bureaucracy and say, "Hey, no longer here. Please give me confirmation." Then you go to uh where where you went. I went to Munich to Germany. I went to the Munich office. I went there said, "Hey, I'm now here.
Please give me confirmation that I'm now here. Uh that's my address." They're like, "Okay, you're now here."
>> That's it. Like it's super super easy to move within your union. uh a little bit uh like it's easy to move within the United States of America. People forget that United States of America, it's not one country, it's like multiple countries into one country. So like >> um and so I really like that setup because you you have the option to like move not that far [laughter] and and still like have that competition also between each other because we have Czech Republic which has a marginal tax rate of 23% Austria goes up to 55% uh Italy 47 uh Great Britain 45 um Ireland 48 but then the corporate tax rate for example in Ireland is like 12%.
Uh Austria 23. So like there's all those different kind of tax rates and they are competing with each other >> and so I like that a lot. Um like the the living standard in a lot of European countries is similar and the tax are different which means there is competition between those countries to be the best place where talent can go.
Um where I wanted to go with that is is do you think that this model of different countries competing for talents competing for uh the best couple the best companies the best heads of the world will continue and actually spread out and get decentralized >> or that kind of China thing like centralization globalization kind of come coming on us >> well I don't know whether the view of China's centralization would be accurate in certain in certain parts right because they are the manufacturing hub and I think they're what 30 40% of global manufacturing and so yes it is you can call it a superpower in that part but the rhetoric when when I'm listening to podcasts and hearing um others talk on this is that we're shifting towards a multipolar world whether that be no longer US homogyny but rather you'll have the European part you'll have China. I think India will be its own as well. You're now starting to see the rise of ASEAN uh countries. So, the Southeast Asian countries now coming together and doing some interesting stuff. So, I'm originally from Malaysia before my parents migrated to Australia. So, that's part of that ASEAN group of Singapore, you know, think Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, you know, sort of that part of Southeast Asia will have its own um appeal. And the reason why I say I don't think it'll necessarily be centralization per se towards China. I think that that's just what's above the surface. Um I'm looking at Malaysia because I've still got a lot of family there. And we're seeing well I'm seeing from afar a significant amount of investment. And if you look at their adoption in in that region of AI for example, it is significantly higher than what we're doing here in Australia.
And you would think that as a western democratic nation that is first world and enjoyed higher standards of living for as long as we have that we would be on the front of that adoption curve. But in actual fact, we are so far behind the curve and we've we've got if anything a hesitance toward AI and that particular type of adoption whereas you don't see that from what I can see again I don't live in those countries but you just don't see that anywhere near as much amongst the Asian countries. So, I think the things that keeping, for example, the European Union together, um, and that ability to move between those countries will start to potentially break down as people realize, okay, I can see the ease of life. It's very similar to what I'm used to. It's comfortable, and yeah, this country is 23% tax. This one's 40% tax, etc. But what if you just went to Malaysia and you go to Labawan and you set up a company with 0% tax and zero capital gains tax and you're in an Asian country that's been advancing their infrastructure so quickly and the standards of living have now increased significantly. You probably say the same thing about Vietnam. You could say the same thing about Thailand uh who are offering better deals. Um I think that the rise of those nations will start to challenge the homogyny of other blocks.
European Union being a block and who knows what's going to happen across the African continent over the next 50 years. And so if you sort of zoom out and you say, well, what is the potential now that information flows so freely and countries are starting to advance much faster post World War II in a way that we haven't seen. I say the competition is going to increase and so you'll find niches of things that might suit you better outside of what we're traditionally used to. And so like as an example, the only reason why I raised that is that I'm considering Malaysia as an example as a potential plan B.
We're so far from making that call, but Malaysia would be that that bet for me.
Not going into Europe, not going to the US and certainly one of those states because values-wise it aligns better to me than anywhere else in the world.
>> And there are many forces that bring us there. If you think about remote work, if you think about the move from huge companies and corporations towards more corporations that are smaller like startups with like 10 15 people now with AI and automization, it's way easier to have a small efficient company with let's say five to 50 people uh that has huge uh economic output than it was previously. Uh previously you needed like hundreds, 200, 500, maybe thousands of people to have the same economic output that you now have 50 to 100 people.
>> And so that is something which makes uh individual life more movable and have your remote work. Bitcoin is a huge factor just like money that doesn't really fit in into jurisdictional thinking because you can just take it with you. Cash is hard to take with you.
a bank account impossible. They will always know that it's literally their property almost. Um, gold very hard with like border controls and all of that. So like like Bitcoin is the only asset that I take serious uh that you can do that those things with. And so that's like we we're moving very fast in that direction. I feel like we're moving very fast. I'm not quite on well and again it comes from the fact that I'm an Australian citizen and so my ability to be portable with my money. I'm not in a jurisdiction where that risk is anywhere near as high as if I was coming out of an African continent or maybe one of the Southeast Asian countries. And so right now I think over the next 5 years my portability is actually quite good even with the Australian dollar as its foundation. Sure I'll pay exit taxes but they're not going to stop me per se.
They'll just say what we call in Australia is deemed disposal. If I stop being a tax resident, uh the government assumes that I've sold everything. I pay the capital gains tax. I say, "Thank you very much. Here are my dues and off you go." And then I can go and do whatever I want um at the moment. But to the point of that may not always be the case. So over the next 5 10 years, I don't see that shifting so substantially that it would become prohibitive.
I think the taxes will make it prohibitive. So, there'll be a commercial cost to doing it. But the problem that I've got here is that because I used fiat to buy the Bitcoin through a registered exchange here in Australia that came from my Australian bank account where my fiat was held, my tax office already knows that I've got it because they knows that it went to the exchange. The exchange has got the records. They are compliant against Australian laws and um and regulations.
And so, they know what I've got. And so if I flee with my Bitcoin to try and not pay the tax, then effectively what I'm saying is I don't intend to return to this country at all and I absolutely want to return to this country if I if I ever made the decision to leave. And so you sort of have to still play within the rules per se. Um but sort of bringing that back to where it started, which was yes, Bitcoin is great. I think absolutely I wouldn't be a Bitcoiner if I wasn't. But I'm not as big of a doomer on in the short term, short to medium term, I'll call it, the next 5 to 10 years. I still think that if you're in a western democratic country, European democratic country, um they will maintain if even if we think it's an illusion, they'll maintain that illusion for for quite a bit longer because the moment they remove that illusion, the whole system breaks down.
How do you what do you mean with like you're not as as much as a doomer? You like you think there like I hear out from that that um you hear from other Bitcoiners that are more catastrophic or like they're more doomers uh when it comes to uh national politics and all of that. What do you mean with that? So mine is more um sometimes the words that we use, we understand them, but how they can be perceived by other people is can be very different. And if I sort of take a step back and I sometimes hear my wife um in my ear when she's listening to to something as not a hardcore Bitcoiner, but obviously by association with me, she is um will hear the rhetoric that you know, Bitcoin, freedom money, fiat, it's like shackles. It's going to lock you down. you know, they can print it to oblivion. They can tax it to oblivion.
They know exactly where you are, what you can do with it. Uh they can withhold your money. You know, if it's a fiat in a bank account, it's not really yours.
Like, when you hear that kind of sentiment, and there are pockets of the Bitcoin community that will talk to that, there is absolute truth to that.
Absolutely. I I don't disagree with that.
But the balance my balance view on it is that may be true but the system only survives because they allow even if it is an illusion that people have control over their money that they believe that it's their money that they can use the money how they wish that they are able to take it across borders even if it does cost money and in in Australia I can transfer my money across borders relatively easily um it may take some time and so Bitcoin solves that I can do it in in a couple of minutes on chain versus a couple of days if I was to use the traditional legacy banking system and it's going to cost me a hell of a lot less to transfer Bitcoin across. So, I'd rather transfer the value as Bitcoin rather than as fiat, but I can still do it with fiat at a cost. And so, I always say it's like, okay, well, if that's the case, then yes, it's a more convenient, it's a more um apt technology for the world that we live in. Bitcoin is just superior in every single way, shape, or form. But I'm not so negative against the the use of fiat in the in the the way the currently world currently works because it is built on that. And to live in this world, I I can't 100% here in Australia live on a Bitcoin standard.
There are certain things in the way that I live my life with a mortgage, um, with bills to pay, going to the supermarket, etc. where I still need the fiat because I still we still live in that world. And so I'm not 100% I'm a bit more balanced, I'll call it.
And I I can I can make both systems work for me as it stands today.
>> I I love that because one of my my best friends in in Bitcoin, uh Daniel with with whom I founded the uh the Micro Seed company. I've talked with him and uh he holds the belief that Bitcoin is not money and Bitcoin can never be money. and he's a hardcore bitcoiner of custody like he already like he he's like as as much a bitcoiner as any I know from anyone else. So that's why it's so confusing and now you saying that kind of thing of like um fear might not go away or like the like it's not as bad as like sometimes we make it sound and I had people in the beginning of the podcast podcast coming up and saying like oh yeah fear has like three years left.
>> Yeah. like this podcast episode is now almost three years like old. So [laughter] >> yeah, >> according to that, we have like a few months left. So I I don't think so. And there's we we always piss very hard on fear and I think there's something very evil on the system what fear is. Um but we also have to remind ourselves that we've built a lot of great things uh while feiat was around. Now we can say was it because of fear or was it despite of fear?
Uh which is like a like an interesting frame like we've built so many amazing things and we've been like our society benefited greatly from technology and advancement the last 10 years the last 100 years to the last hundreds of years.
So now it's the question of like a will bitcoin ever be money and completely replace that fiat thing ever and b which is like I think like a very hard question to answer. I don't know if we we can even do that but like just as to put it in here and the B one is like all the things that we have built is that because of fear despite of feiat or was was feiat even like was there a positive is a maybe other question is there a positive side to fiat >> well I always look and and so I don't get fiat is a tool bitcoin is a tool It is not the be all or and end all that Bitcoin is the thing. Bitcoin is a means to an end. Bitcoin is a tool that allows us to exchange value so that we can do productive things as a species on this planet. We don't own Bitcoin for the sake of Bitcoin. Like I don't care that I've got X number of SATs in my wallet.
I care what that X number of sats in my wallet allows me to do with the most precious resource that we all have, which is our time on this earth. And that is the true limitation. And so again, it's just a tool. Money has been used throughout civilization as a means to speed up commerce, trade, and uh productive human cooperation.
And I think the path that's often missed is humans have to cooperate and have to trust. And without cooperation and trust, we would have not been we would not have become the apex species on this planet because we are not stronger faster than mo a lot of the main predators in the animal kingdom. It's our ability to use our now evolved frontal cortex in order to fashion tools and create communities and colonies that have been able to apply that cognitive intelligence to our environment to shape the environment to better suit us rather than us shaping ourselves to the environment. And so it's this cognitive revolution, but that required trust. And so this is sort of sort of a good segue towards some of the stuff that I do. um and the book that I'm now researching and writing, but it looks at what our species is fundamentally from an evolutionary perspective, what has made us successful through that period of time. And what you realize is that we as humans or homo sapiens create fictions. We create shared realities that allows us to cooperate and trust each other on a scale that no other animal species on this planet has been able to achieve.
And so again, money in this case is just a tool that has helped accelerate our ability to do that cooperation across borders and not within the, you know, couple of hundred people communities that we used to be in, but now to the couple of millions, if not billions of people cooperating globally to get to an outcome. And so Fiat absolutely helped with that to a degree.
And I will always say that a tool is a tool. It's how the tool is used that becomes the issue. And I would say that if you thought that everyone was a good moral actor acting in the in the interest of how the tool was intended, fiat could be an incredible monetary tool. The problem is we don't always act in the best interests of the collective.
We act in our best interests of ourselves. And so there are always going to be the few that ruin it for the many.
And what we see within the fiat system is that playing out. there weren't enough enough controls around the few that could pervert the system um even though the many have acted in good faith within that system in how it was designed uh to be used. So it comes back to to human behavior.
>> I want to be aware of uh your time uh there in Melbourne. I think it's almost it gets to be late. Uh so uh thank you so much for for staying up with me late and and celebrating Bitcoin I guess and talking about uh what is this? Um, we have an end routine as you uh might remember from the previous Oh gosh, you're already the third time on I think um previous times where the a previous guest is asking a question uh for the next guest without knowing who the next guest actually is and the previous guest asks you the question, >> if money is no issue, would you do anything different in your life right now?
>> Uh 100% I would. uh now that I got a kid, I'd spend a hell of a lot more time with him and my wife doing the things that will see joy in his life. So that that's a starting point. Um but I would go beyond that 100% into my research.
Like I would not be working my 9 toive job in order to pay the bills and trying to fit in the the research time morning and afternoon to write the book. I would just be all in on that. I think one of the things that Bitcoin has provided clarity, but also um having a kid is that you get a sense for what brings meaning and fulfillment and purpose to your life because you're now building for the next generation. You want to leave behind a legacy in a way that's more meaningful when you um meaningful now than when I didn't have a child. And I will absolutely say that I would put all my effort into that. And I know in my heart of hearts that the research that I'm doing now into Bitcoin is that thing. Like I wake up in the morning, I want to do it. After work, I want to do it. And I fit my child in and I struggle to get sleep. But because of that drive, I know that that's the thing that I would 100% do. So yeah, to that question, that wasn't the case. I'd be 9 to5 reading a book, doing my research, writing the book, but then applying it into the real world and creating a business around it.
I I hear that from many parents that they don't sleep that much.
>> Only in the early years. I will say that when he was first born, I think it was waking up every hour and a half to two hours and you're barely stringing four to five hours of sleep a night. Now, we get pretty much the entire night. He's 15 months old, so he we can He'll He's already in bed right now. He won't wake up till 7:00. So straight after this, I'm literally going to bed so I can wake up refreshed so I can continue on the on the reading of of of the next novel that on the next book that's going to uh contribute to my book. So >> yeah, >> that's awesome. Then uh I I will let you go go to sleep and maybe some of the listeners also listen to that uh uh in the night. So I I guess good night today. But uh before I let you go uh where where can people find you, ask you questions and reach out to you? Um you can go on to X. U my handle is AR's notes A R V S N O T S. And then the other one is um I'm about to start my writing phase for the book. But as a preview, if you want to join the journey, get a sense of some of the thinking behind the thoughts of evolutionary biology, how technology is interacting with that and how Bitcoin is the solution to it. Uh go to my Substack free of charge. I I won't charge for it, but it's a good outlet for me and you can follow the journey. And that is the Bitcoin curve at Substack.
>> Awesome. Thank you so much, AF. Good night, AF. And also good night to all my listeners out there. Thank you so much for for listening in. As always, I'll be back.
This content is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
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