Samson Mow: BlackRock, MSTR & The Bitcoin Shift Nobody Sees Coming!

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:01]Hello everyone, it's great to be here in DC, my first time.

[00:00:05]And thank you Michael Saylor for warming up the crowd for me.

[00:00:09]So, let's see. I don't have a monitor, so I'm going to have to look back every so often.

[00:00:16]My talk today is Bitcoin is energy money.

[00:00:19]So, I'm largely known for working with governments, nation states, promoting Bitcoin adoption. But I think one of the goals of this conference and Professor Aurelian was that we are here, we're close to the hill, we're close to governments, uh official staffers. So, I wanted to make a presentation not just about Bitcoin adoption around the world, but more about what the transformation is exactly that Bitcoin allows for. And Bitcoin is energy money.

[00:00:49]So, a bit about Jan3, as you know, we do a bit of nation state adoption. We've met with number of heads of state around the world. We pursue that as our top-down approach. But we also have a bottom-up approach, which is developing the Aqua wallet. And that is to bank the unbanked and onboard more people in the world to Bitcoin. Our goal as a company is literally to onboard the next billion people to Bitcoin.

[00:01:12]>> [applause] >> Thank you.

[00:01:16]So, a bit about myself, before I started Jan3, I was at Blockstream working with Dr. Adam Back building core Bitcoin infrastructure, like Lightning, Liquid. But before that, I ran an exchange and mining pool, BTC China. It was one of the biggest in the world after Mount Gox blew up and everyone had to go somewhere else.

[00:01:35]Um Aqua is our non-custodial Bitcoin layer two wallet. So, it's it supports Liquid, Lightning, as well as stable coins. And the bulk of our user base is actually in Latin America. So, people that depend on stable coins to maintain their savings because they don't have a bank account.

[00:01:54]So, first, before we get into it, I think we should do a quick review. Just what is money?

[00:02:00]Money is basically seeking a way to store value. It's durable, divisible, portable, scarce, etc. And we've gone from things like uh shells to beads to rice stones and then eventually to metal like gold. And gold has endured for thousands of years because it because it's very hard. And supply only grows about 1 per- 1.5% annually. And how powerful is the growth? That is actually what the Federal Reserve tries to mirror because they target 2% inflation. Gold inflation is roughly 2%. So, you have a parallel system to gold that tries to mimic gold.

[00:02:41]So, metallic money has been sound money for thousands of years. Gold, silver, coins, bars, etc. And that's because they're very durable, divisible, and trusted. But, they also required mining, which means you need enormous amounts of energy, labor, and cost to produce the coins and to distribute.

[00:03:04]It also has a high stock-to-flow ratio and grows at about 1 to 2% a year.

[00:03:09]And as J.P. Morgan has said, gold is money, everything else is credit. And oh, I've said this too and Michael Saylor, Bitcoin is money, everything else is credit.

[00:03:20]So, what happened was we had a break from work. So, gold and metallic money is all required work to mine, refine, produce.

[00:03:31]But, with fiat money, it's largely an experiment of 50 years.

[00:03:36]And this is a break from work because now you can push a button or print paper and now you have more money.

[00:03:42]But, it began originally as a receipt and it evolved into something much worse and I think the world is largely plagued with problems stemming from this break.

[00:03:53]So, what are the qualities of sound money?

[00:03:55]Well, these are the typical ones that people talk about. And fiat currencies are not really uh that great. I mean, you can even argue, is it is it divisible? Because I tried to buy uh some coffee this morning with $100 bill, and they wouldn't accept it.

[00:04:13]So, you know, it's not really divisible.

[00:04:16]Gold has an improvement, but Bitcoin is the only one that checks all of the boxes across the board. And this is because it is information, and that changes the equation radically.

[00:04:30]So, now we can I think we can say we've established Bitcoin is money.

[00:04:35]And if Bitcoin is money, that means money is now energy and information.

[00:04:41]And this is kind of the core concept of my talk. So, we'll go into first what about what is the energy part of it?

[00:04:47]What's the change?

[00:04:48]So, energy money or energy currency was first brought up and theorized at least publicly in a big way by Henry Ford in 1921.

[00:05:00]So, he said, you know, you could replace gold with energy currency based on kilowatt hours or something.

[00:05:06]And of course that works, but that's a whole other rabbit hole we can get into.

[00:05:09]But, it was theorized in 1921. So, you could say that Bitcoin is an American concept from the outset.

[00:05:18]So, why do I like to say Bitcoin is energy money? It's because it fuses energy and information into the hardest money that we've ever known.

[00:05:28]Bitcoin is akin to a living organism.

[00:05:32]Just like you or I require food and oxygen to survive, Bitcoin needs energy to survive. And energy is what actually propels Bitcoin through time. If you stop the entire mining process, Bitcoin largely becomes dormant or inert. But energy creates blocks, blocks process transactions, and we progress through the Bitcoin time chain.

[00:05:57]But it's really interesting because this is the key link here that binds energy to to money.

[00:06:05]And in Bitcoin, we talk often about proof of work.

[00:06:09]Proof of work is really proof of computation, and computation is costly and requires energy. So, you can say Bitcoin is kind of proof of energy in a way.

[00:06:19]And energy fuses fuel civilization. It almost always brings about a change in our evolution whenever we have a change in how we can produce energy. So, you go from fire to steam to oil, electricity, and to nuclear.

[00:06:37]And the interesting here is interesting thing here is a few years back, we were kind of locked into this um I guess battle with uh people that want green energy and want less energy consumption.

[00:06:52]And there was talk about Bitcoin boiling the oceans and whatnot. I'm sure everyone remembers that.

[00:06:58]But the change that happened in the last few years is um consumer AI.

[00:07:05]And Bitcoin consumes roughly 0.58% of energy uh of the world. And AI is consuming about 0.28. And next year it's likely to overtake that. So, there'll be more energy used for AI. And I think this is great because now there's no discussion about is energy consumption good or bad. It is a need.

[00:07:27]So, I'm happy to give up Bitcoin if you give up your chat GPT or Grok or whatever, and we can use that argument.

[00:07:34]But it's pretty good.

[00:07:35]Um another interesting thing is that there is no such thing as a major rich country that is energy poor.

[00:07:42]Energy is almost always linked to prosperity.

[00:07:49]And I would like to say that Bitcoin is the ninth wonder of the world.

[00:07:54]I think we often hear the saying that um compound interest is the eighth wonder.

[00:07:59]That's often attributed to Albert Einstein and a few other people, but it's unclear where it was, but it was in a major publication. But I would say Bitcoin is the ninth wonder simply because of the amount of computation done. And this was first brought up by Dr. Adam Back, I think few years ago.

[00:08:16]But the cumulative uh computation of the Bitcoin network far exceeds anything else ever done before in humanity. And that is a log chart. So, if it was linear, everything else would just be a thin line along the bottom. But I think that is something like 60 octillion computations that we've done so far. And if everyone on the world was doing like one giga hash a second, it would be 200 something years before we all caught up.

[00:08:46]Energy dominance is becoming an important part of the equation now because energy and money are linked. You can sell excess energy or monetize stranded energy, and that's exactly what a lot of countries are doing now.

[00:09:00]But this is showing the differential. If you're selling surplus energy, you make that much. And if you monetize it through Bitcoin, you make that much. So, this is a a a big change, I believe, in how the relationship of world governments will be with Bitcoin because most of them have excess energy if they are producing energy. And it becomes one in the same. So, I don't believe in the future 10, 20, 30 years down the road, you'll have a mining company and a energy company. It just becomes the same thing. The mining company will become an energy company, and the energy companies will become mining companies.

[00:09:40]So, there's really a new energy race, and I think again, AI's propelled a lot of this discussion because people have realized compute, training, everything requires energy. And there's talk about building more nuclear reactors.

[00:09:54]Nuclear's now green, which is great. And the understanding has broadened a lot.

[00:10:02]So, let's go to the second part of the equation. Money is energy and information.

[00:10:09]This changes a lot because information is very porous. A 12-word seed can secure billions of dollars.

[00:10:15]And it can be moved across borders instantly.

[00:10:19]Um people no longer need permission to transact. You don't need to ask your bank for permission to send money.

[00:10:26]And this is just a good example. It's a 12-word seed phrase.

[00:10:31]And if you loaded these up into a wallet uh of your choice, it could have $10 or could have a billion dollars. And you can memorize this, cross a border, or cut it up into two pieces, give one to your wife, and you carry one, or four pieces, and recompile it elsewhere. But this just shows how porous money is now because it's information.

[00:10:55]Capital controls really don't exist anymore. Countries need to compete on merit and attractiveness.

[00:11:03]But I think this creates a new discussion, which is protection of rights.

[00:11:08]Self-custody must be protected. Many countries around the world are now trying to ban self-custodial wallets, which is kind of an odd word. It's just your wallet, like you have a wallet in your pocket. Calling it a self-custodial wallet is odd for that, and it's odd for Bitcoin. But that is the trend that we're seeing now.

[00:11:26]Seizures without due process are a risk if a policeman stops you and, you know, looks at your phone and goes into your wallet, they can take your money just like that. Or if your phone is seized at the border, they can seize your life savings inadvertently.

[00:11:42]But most importantly, I think the ability to develop software is something that must be protected under the First Amendment and that is under assailment now with lawfare being waged against Bitcoin wallet software developers like Tornado Cash and Samurai. And I think that is a very slippery slope where the two things are coming to a head.

[00:12:07]But anyways, the key message here is that capital can now exit or enter and countries have to be competitive on this front. You can use it to bypass um uh prosecution if you're a reporter. Um protesters in Canada and Nigeria that had their bank accounts frozen were able to use Bitcoin.

[00:12:26]So it forces governments to compete on governance and rule of law.

[00:12:32]So this is really a call to lead.

[00:12:35]I think governments, countries, lawmakers, regulators, they can all affirm that Bitcoin is digital property.

[00:12:41]We can encourage energy in innovation paired with mining and embrace Bitcoin as money. So this means some changes in law, some stronger protections, but I think allowing people to transact uh Bitcoin freely in a way that that is similar to transacting bearer cash is what is needed. You don't want to go to Steak 'n Shake and pay for a burger and fries and have to record that transaction as a sale of Bitcoin.

[00:13:09]And because Bitcoin is an American concept from Henry Ford, the US should lead or must lead in the age of Bitcoin.

[00:13:17]So we are now in the age of energy money. It's arrived and it won't change.

[00:13:23]It's incorruptible, censorship-resistant, permissionless, there are no trusted parties, and it's money designed to be money.

[00:13:31]And I think this is a very substantial change in how we must view the world because this is the really the only way that we can measure monetary value.

[00:13:42]I like to say that Bitcoin is a ruler.

[00:13:43]It's a ruler with 21 million units on it, incorruptible, immutable, unchangeable.

[00:13:50]And this is equivalent to measuring distance in meters, kilometers, miles, or volume in you know, liters and ounces.

[00:14:03]But how do you measure money? Fiat currencies are all relative to one another. With gold, you have no idea how much gold there is. So everything is relative. It's measuring value with a rubber band that stretches over time based on the whims and the perceptions of people. But Bitcoin is a mathematical construct that you can measure everything else. And that is what we're seeing and that's why Bitcoin is a $2 trillion asset today.

[00:14:31]So to recap, Bitcoin is money.

[00:14:34]And money is energy and information. And this is something that everyone needs to consider and factor into how we're making laws, regulations, and how we want to interact with money in this day and age.

[00:14:50]And that's my presentation. Thank you very much.

[00:14:53]>> [applause]