openpolitics.com

there but remember this
09:20
in 2006 you could buy default protection
09:24
on lehman brothers
09:25
for nine basis points what that meant
09:28
was
09:29
you could pay nine thousand dollars a
09:32
year
09:33
to protect 10 million dollars
09:36
of lehman brothers debt against default
09:41
so if that 9 000 premium think of it as
09:43
an insurance premium
09:45
two years later it was worth 6
09:48
million dollars okay hey that’s not a
09:52
bad
09:53
purchase of protection and that’s the
09:55
way i think about
09:56
these things with respect to countries
09:58
as well i’m not
09:59
calling for the default of the united
10:01
states although it’s happened
10:04
in the past whether explicitly or
10:06
implicitly like
10:07
the 1971 going off the gold standard
10:10
the end of the day these insurance
10:12
contracts are traded by
10:14
very sophisticated counterparties and
10:17
evaluators of risk
10:18
so i look to that market i sum all the
10:22
exposures up
10:23
and it gives me an intrinsic value of
10:25
bitcoin
10:26
which today i value at over 150
10:30
000 u.s per coin
10:33
and as you know it’s trading i don’t
10:34
know right around 30 000 a little bit
10:36
higher today
10:37
the point is it’s stupid cheap on that
10:39
metric that’s what the intrinsic value
10:42
is to me
10:43
and that value will increase as
10:46
the credit default premiums increase
10:49
when countries go into financial
10:51
distress
10:51
which happens on a regular basis just
10:53
not with g7 nations
10:55
canada is a g7 nation canada will be
10:59
the first g7 nation to default
11:02
if in fact a g7 nation does default and
11:05
that’s unfortunate because i’m a proud
11:07
canadian well why do you think that
11:08
canada is the first one
11:10
firstly our cds rates are wider than any
11:13
other g7 nation
11:15
we do not have the backing of a european
11:17
central bank
11:19
which italy and uh uh
11:23
you know other middle european countries
11:26
have
11:27
now italy is a g7 nation at the end of
11:29
the day
11:30
listen the the most important thing to
11:32
understand is
11:33
canada has the population of california
11:37
canada just printed more money than any
11:40
other
11:41
g7 country by a by long shot
11:44
and canada is extremely dependent on
11:48
things
11:48
that contagion and other countries
11:52
could flow through to canada so i don’t
11:54
want it to happen i’m not predicting
11:57
with a hundred percent certainly it will
11:59
happen in my lifetime but here’s the
12:01
problem in
12:02
the here and now canada currently has a
12:04
triple a
12:05
credit rating by s p
12:08
that happens to be one credit notch
12:11
higher meaning it’s
12:12
in the eyes of s p it’s actually a
12:14
better credit
12:15
quality than the united states of
12:17
america now that’s asinine
12:19
but it’s true s p you can never predict
12:22
you know you can never rely
12:24
on them to properly predict something
12:25
like oh gosh you know the subglos of the
12:27
subprime
12:28
loan crisis for example right at the end
12:30
of the day s p
12:31
still has canada rated as triple a
12:34
that’s one
12:34
notch higher than usa the funny thing is
12:38
credit insurance on the usa trades at
12:41
about 10 basis points
12:43
per annum and canada is more than double
12:46
that
12:48
canada trades like a single a rated
12:51
credit
12:51
in the cds market right now and our
12:54
politicians have
12:55
no clue they’re like oh well canada
12:58
still has this coveted triple a credit
13:00
rating
13:00
garbage do not look at s p credit
13:03
ratings i wouldn’t wrap
13:04
fish in their reports so uh
13:08
if canada or one of the other g7
13:10
countries has potential default risk
13:12
right just
13:12
let’s say put it at a potential your
13:14
argument essentially is
13:16
just like you could have bought an
13:17
insurance premium on uh a defaulting
13:20
corporation
13:21
uh that is what bitcoin is to you your
13:24
bitcoin is that defaulting
13:26
kind of insurance uh and so you’re able
13:28
to kind of back into the pricing of what
13:30
you think the value is based on what you
13:31
think the default risk actually ends up
13:33
being
13:33
for these various countries 100 great
13:36
way of explaining it and don’t forget
13:38
it’s not my opinion it’s the market’s
13:40
opinion
13:40
i’m just using this as the metric that i
13:43
come to evaluation i i start my
13:46
evaluation there and i say well this is
13:48
stupid cheap
13:49
and you’re supposed to close your eyes
13:50
and buy it based on that metric but i
13:52
think bitcoin goes to prices that exceed
13:55
uh you know a couple of million dollars
13:57
u.s per
13:58
coin i could run through the mathematics
14:00
on that very simply bitcoin
14:02
is the best asymmetric trade opportunity
14:06
i have ever seen in 32 years of trading
14:08
risk
14:09
okay i’m not 100 certain but i’ll just
14:11
tell you
14:12
anyone who worries about the price of
14:14
bitcoin whether it’s thirty thousand
14:16
forty thousand or sixty thousand dollars
14:18
a coin
14:18
is missing the bigger picture it’s all
14:20
stupid cheap
14:21
and if you’re overthinking this you
14:23
deserve to miss out on the best
14:26
asymmetric trade opportunity of your
14:28
lifetimes as well
14:29
hey guys what’s going on before we
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right let’s get back into this episode i
15:36
hope you’re enjoying this one
15:37
walk us through kind of sequentially how
15:40
that happens right so let’s say that
15:42
uh uh we end up with a couple of million
15:45
dollars per bitcoin
15:47
um being the uh kind of end state if you
15:50
will right so yeah
15:50
much much more valuable than it is today
15:53
do we get institutions to adopt then
15:55
you know kind of developing nations and
15:57
then there’s a default and there’s an
15:58
inflection point like how do you think
16:00
we sequentially get there what does that
16:01
like order of operations almost look
16:03
like
16:03
so great question so firstly i’ll i’ll
16:06
detail how or not detail it’ll be a
16:08
quick explanation of how i get to my two
16:09
thousand dollars
16:10
at two million dollars or greater per
16:12
coin very simply
16:14
today total global financial assets in
16:17
the world
16:18
today are over us
16:21
900 trillion dollars now that includes
16:24
all equities all debt
16:26
all currency all fine art all gold
16:29
900 trillion us dollars all real estate
16:32
sorry i forgot to mention real estate
16:34
globally i think that bitcoin
16:37
has a chance of becoming the global
16:39
reserve
16:40
asset of the world why because i think
16:44
oil and natural gas will shortly
16:47
and when i say shortly within the next
16:49
10 years become
16:50
priced in bitcoin why is that well i’m
16:53
an engineer
16:54
the rule of conservation of energy
16:56
you’ve certainly heard michael saylor
16:57
say that
16:58
oil and natural gas if you’re russia do
17:01
you actually want to sell your valuable
17:02
natural resources
17:04
for this thing called the us dollar
17:05
which is a
17:07
programmed 2d base fiat currency
17:10
or do you want to hold us treasuries
17:13
which is a fiat contract
17:15
that’s also programmed to debase or
17:17
would you like to sell
17:18
your natural resource energy for
17:22
bitcoin which is digital energy i think
17:24
yes
17:25
i think over time there will be enough
17:27
people or nations that want to price
17:29
bitcoin or energy and bitcoin when that
17:31
happens that becomes
17:33
the reserve asset of the world so what
17:35
percentage of the reserve asset does it
17:37
make sense
17:39
that 900 trillion dollars could capture
17:43
would it be 5 i think that’s pretty low
17:45
but let’s assume it’s
17:46
five percent of 900 trillion us dollars
17:50
five percent of 900 trillion is 45
17:53
trillion dollars
17:54
45 trillion divided by 21 million
17:59
bitcoin that’s over two million dollars
18:02
of bitcoin
18:02
okay it’s that simple now could it go
18:05
higher than two million
18:07
abso freaking lutely okay but let’s just
18:09
use two million dollars
18:11
per bitcoin as a base case scenario how
18:13
does it get there
18:14
it gets there something like you know
18:17
you have what happens in
18:18
el salvador a little bit and then it
18:21
gets there because michael saylor the
18:22
genius of wall street
18:24
figures that every single corporation
18:26
should actually issue debt
18:28
in order to capture a certainty of
18:32
debate
18:33
contract in trade for this thing called
18:38
bitcoin at the end of the day you’ll get
18:40
institutions you’ll have a combination
18:42
of countries
18:43
institutions um hedge funds
18:47
all of this will add to a higher price
18:50
we’ve seen it happen before
18:52
the the reality though pump is when
18:55
energy is priced in bitcoin that will
18:58
remove the petrol dollar focus it will
19:01
become the de facto reserve asset of the
19:03
world
19:03
and you will see a gap up in price that
19:06
will blow your socks off in my opinion
19:08
does it have to happen no but run some
19:11
probability analysis
19:12
on what a two million dollar and that’s
19:15
in today’s
19:16
dollars what a two million dollar price
19:19
of bitcoin on an expected value basis
19:21
needs to be
19:22
versus bitcoin potentially going to zero
19:25
which i also
19:26
don’t think is like even a price that
19:29
it’ll ever return to but
19:30
assume that you have only two outcomes a
19:32
binary outcome
19:34
one is a price of bitcoin of zero
19:37
and the other one is a price of bitcoin
19:39
of two million dollars a coin
19:42
i’ll ask you this question would you
19:44
give me a ten percent chance that
19:46
bitcoin can go to two million dollars a
19:48
coin if i gave you the 90
19:51
chance it goes to zero and most people
19:53
would say yeah
19:54
you know that sounds about fair and the
19:56
reality is well on an expected value
19:58
basis for that
20:00
one calculation ninety times zero is
20:02
zero and
20:04
ten percent times two million bucks a
20:06
coin is
20:07
two hundred thousand dollars a coin hey
20:09
there’s another example of why you
20:11
should be buying bitcoin today with your
20:13
eyes closed
20:14
don’t overthink this okay it’s a game of
20:17
probabilities it always
20:19
is a game of probabilities no one is
20:21
ever a hundred percent
20:23
certain about anything in investing
20:25
except this
20:26
i am a hundred percent certain that
20:29
fiats will continue to debase
20:31
because they cannot possibly stop
20:33
printing money
20:34
due to the debt debt spiral
20:38
that all fiat countries are in today it
20:41
is a hundred percent
20:42
certain mathematically that fiat
20:45
currencies will continue to debase and
20:47
will continue
20:48
to debase on it on an accelerated basis
20:52
pure math pure simple mathematics
20:55
grade 11 type of math is what i like to
20:57
say
20:58
grade 11 you’re you’re doing higher math
21:00
than i can do so i think it’s actually
21:02
more like grade four or five uh one of
21:04
the things that
21:05
um you’re talking about is uh kind of a
21:08
very
21:09
macro view of the world uh nation state
21:11
defaults etc and i think that that is
21:13
uh ultimately like a tailwind um and it
21:17
really will drive global adoption but
21:19
we’ve also seen adoption
21:21
on the micro scale or in smaller
21:23
communities i know that
21:24
you spend a lot of time kind of paying
21:25
attention to what’s happening in el
21:26
salvador
21:27
and you’ve got some friends in guatemala
21:29
maybe tell us a little bit about what’s
21:30
happening in more of the
21:31
microeconomics standpoint uh on a local
21:34
scale versus just the macro side
21:36
sure so thanks for bringing that up so
21:38
yes when i was down in bitcoin miami
21:40
um i happened to i was lucky enough to
21:42
be on stage with three uh
21:44
uh you know legends including your and
21:46
i’m not even sure how you you and mark
21:48
uh use go you know that relationship
21:51
anymore but i was on stage with him i
21:53
was on stage with jeff
21:54
booth and i was on stage with preston
21:56
fish all right so we gave a
21:58
uh uh a uh talk on that but
22:01
when i was in uh miami i did meet these
22:03
kids from guatemala who had
22:05
seeked me out and said foss you know we
22:07
got to talk to you we like your stuff
22:08
but most importantly this is what we’re
22:10
doing
22:10
boots on the ground in guatemala and i
22:13
gave them a shout out on stage
22:15
without knowing that about six hours
22:17
later jack mahlers was going to make the
22:19
announcement of
22:20
the uh conference as far as i’m
22:22
concerned so i
22:24
shouted out these guys guatemala they
22:25
have this exchange going
22:27
uh called ibex ibex
22:30
exchange or ibex mercado to be more
22:33
exact and they’re on boarding
22:36
guatemalans hand over fist
22:38
and i gave them a shout out because they
22:40
wanted to start something in guatemala
22:42
called bitcoin lake based on a lake in
22:45
guatemala called lake atatia
22:47
which would be based on the same uh
22:50
concept that
22:50
bitcoin beach was based on in el
22:53
salvador lo and behold two
22:55
six hours later jack mullers on boards
22:57
an entire country which
22:59
blew my mind well hold on i said
23:01
corporations are now being leapfrogged
23:03
by
23:04
countries six million people onboarding
23:06
under decree i’m like this is
23:09
unbelievable now the guys in guatemala
23:11
live
23:12
three hours away from el salvador and
23:14
they’ve been on the phone with me foss
23:15
and zoom calls
23:16
foss you wouldn’t believe what’s
23:17
happening we’re getting calls from
23:19
merchants in el salvador they’re begging
23:21
for our
23:22
services and these guys in guatemala
23:25
have five of the top 100 because i think
23:29
there’s only 100 ish
23:31
in total according to them excuse me
23:34
lightning coders
23:36
in the world they have five of them
23:37
working at the same spot
23:39
and they’re being uh engaged by the
23:42
merchant community in el salvador to
23:44
help them
23:45
on board the merchant uh the merchants
23:49
who have been uh
23:50
told to accept within 60 days right the
23:53
uh the bitcoin so that’s a real life use
23:55
case we know the mathematics why it’s
23:57
great
23:58
because el salvador will increase their
24:00
gdp
24:01
by 4 annually just because they’re
24:05
getting rid of the remittances
24:07
and the fees on excuse me they’re not
24:08
getting rid of the remittances they’re
24:10
getting
24:10
rid of the fees on the remittances that
24:13
western
24:14
union charges when an uh
24:18
worker uh from el salvador who’s working
24:21
let’s say in the usa
24:22
sends money back home not to mention the
24:25
danger of doing that but also
24:27
the 20 fee essentially door-to-door that
24:30
is charged
24:31
that increases el salvador’s gdp by
24:35
four percent annually like it’s just so
24:37
simple to do it with a beautiful
24:39
beautiful
24:40
uh well in my opinion the most beautiful
24:43
technology i’ve ever seen
24:44
um and that’s a really life use case so
24:47
yeah shout out to these guys in
24:49
guatemala pump they are
24:51
boots on the ground in el salvador real
24:54
life solutions to
24:56
uh all the problems that bitcoin solves
24:59
and
25:00
uh and the beauty of the network itself
25:03
yeah it’s awesome to kind of see people
25:04
doing this uh before that my brothers
25:05
asked a couple of questions
25:06
um help us understand just the
25:09
institutional investors
25:10
uh folks who trade credit on a
25:12
day-to-day basis kind of your old
25:13
colleagues people
25:14
that you used to work with um and that
25:16
entire kind of highly sophisticated wall
25:17
street driven world
25:19
what’s their take on bitcoin what are
25:20
you hearing what are they uh missing
25:22
uh are they excited about it how are
25:24
they entering the market just kind of
25:25
give us an update
25:26
so like everything there’s there’s uh
25:28
there’s a uh a distribution of
25:30
understanding i’ll admit to you when i
25:32
was introduced to bitcoin in 2016 my
25:35
first thought was
25:35
okay well i’ve read it’s a ponzi so it’s
25:37
got to be a ponzi
25:38
and so i did the work and uh and i’m
25:41
like
25:42
holy and and and showed it to a guy that
25:44
you’ve interviewed before his name was
25:46
fred pie
25:47
all right and now fred i i fred
25:50
grew up in montreal i grew up in
25:52
montreal i happened to own a pub in
25:53
montreal and
25:54
he met me at my pub and goes fast you
25:56
gotta look at this thing
25:58
and i go okay i’m intrigued but he
25:59
showed me one thing he showed me the
26:01
blockchain in action on tradeblock.com
26:04
and i’m an engineer i’m visual and i go
26:06
what the heck this is not a ponzi this
26:09
is a thing of
26:10
absolute beauty and i said
26:13
yes first of all i said fred i love
26:15
bitcoin it is the solution to the fiat
26:17
ponzi that i’ve been looking for at that
26:19
time
26:20
of you know over 25 years um
26:23
and i said well thank you for for
26:25
introducing me to this
26:26
i did invest in in helping him fund a
26:28
company that
26:29
uh uh launched canada’s first exchange
26:33
traded closed in bitcoin fund okay so
26:35
very proud to be part of that but here’s
26:37
here’s
26:38
what happens like everything there is a
26:40
curve or a distribution of understanding
26:42
and
26:42
in the hedge fund community you’ll have
26:44
really smart people like ross stevens
26:46
you know he came from goldman sachs uh
26:49
you have novogratz who worked at hedge
26:51
funds you you’ll have that
26:53
tail part and then you’ll have a
26:55
distribution of people who are
26:56
knuckleheads who are like
26:58
it’s a ponzi and i was a knucklehead for
27:00
a long time it’s a ponzi until you
27:01
actually have to do some work
27:03
and anyone who outright rejects bitcoin
27:06
because they’ve done
27:07
two hours of work on bitcoin they’ll
27:10
never get it
27:10
and you should never have them manage
27:12
your money because they are stupid
27:14
okay first of all you need to do
27:16
hundreds and perhaps even more hours of
27:19
work
27:19
even to grasp the beauty of bitcoin but
27:23
it’s more like anything if you don’t
27:25
learn about this in school you don’t
27:27
learn that it is a certainty because of
27:29
total global debt
27:31
being four times total global gdp
27:35
it is a 100 percent certain that they
27:38
have to continue to print
27:39
money to solve that debt overload
27:43
the numerator which is your total global
27:45
debt
27:46
is growing organically just because of
27:48
the coupon on
27:49
that debt at about a 12
27:53
rate and your denominator which is your
27:56
global gdp is it going to grow at 12
27:58
not in a month of sundays yet people
28:01
don’t do that math
28:03
and they don’t know that they have to
28:04
solve the fact that the debasing of the
28:06
currency is a certainty
28:07
so they’ll say like peter schiff well
28:09
you’ve got to go towards gold you’ve got
28:10
to go
28:11
and peter schiff was right about 2 000
28:14
years ago but he’s been wrong ever since
28:16
okay because bitcoin is so much better
28:20
than digital or than gold we all know
28:22
the reasons why
28:24
but it’s the same principle you need
28:27
store of value so who gets it well you
28:29
got the guys to get it you get
28:31
you got the me the the uh the the middle
28:34
of the distribution the bell curve
28:36
they will get it those people will get
28:38
it and then you got the stupid part of
28:39
the curve which is the peter shifts of
28:41
the world
28:41
that he probably gets it he’ll never
28:43
admit he gets it
28:45
and therefore won’t get into it unless
28:47
he gets his son into it which
28:48
you know we could argue is a different
28:50
uh
28:52
bowl of potatoes anyway so there is a
28:55
an adoption that occurs like in any
28:57
market the network effect
28:59
you’ve heard them all um and it it’s
29:02
like anything it’s like
29:03
what happens on the institutional side
29:05
is a
29:06
reflection what happens on the small
29:09
retail investor site as well
29:11
right it’s it’s an adoption and 71
29:15
of fidelity’s clients just recently i
29:18
read
29:18
71 of his institutional investors plan
29:21
to allocate money to crypto
29:24
i prefer to focus on bitcoin only just
29:27
because of the things it solves which
29:29
is the fiat conundrum or the fiat ponzi
29:32
if you will
29:33
um no other coin does that in my opinion
29:36
and it’s all because of the beauty of
29:38
bitcoin being decentralized
29:40
math encode 21 million fixed supply for
29:44
ever and ever
29:44
the most pure store of value ever
29:47
created by man
29:48
and i want some of that so do other
29:50
institutions and it’ll just be a process
29:53
i want some of that too i you can never
29:55
have enough of that joe john what
29:56
questions you guys got
29:58
greg thanks for doing this first off
29:59
really appreciate it um
30:01
so my question is we have a kind of a
30:03
wide range of people that watch this
30:04
show i think some are probably in their
30:06
20s and have little to no
30:08
financial investments and some are in
30:09
their 30s and 40s and have a diverse
30:11
portfolio but when it comes to kind of
30:13
financial investments in general and
30:15
more specifically bitcoin
30:16
how do you think about personal
30:18
allocation right how has that changed
30:19
over time as you’ve gotten older and how
30:21
do you think about it for kind of
30:22
younger people who are just starting to
30:23
invest
30:24
outstanding questions so it’s all about
30:28
your risk tolerance
30:30
um let’s start with uh someone who’s a
30:33
boomer like me so i’m 58 years old
30:35
obviously i’ve traded credit my whole
30:38
life but i
30:39
been exposed to the traditional asset
30:41
classes and let’s say that traditional
30:42
asset class
30:43
is 60 equities or weighting rather 60
30:47
equities 40 bonds all right um
30:51
according to yale university which has
30:53
done a study on
30:54
reducing risk and increasing returns on
30:57
a diversified portfolio
30:59
you should have six to eight percent of
31:02
that type of portfolio allocated to
31:04
bitcoin
31:05
in order to increase portfolio returns
31:08
as well as decreasing the volatility or
31:11
risk
31:12
of that portfolio it’s a beautiful thing
31:14
so six to eight percent is what
31:16
yale university says is the proper
31:18
waiting for
31:20
uh you know anybody with a 60 40 uh
31:23
weighting in uh equities versus fixed
31:26
income now i’ve traded fixed income my
31:28
entire life
31:29
and this is the first time in my entire
31:31
life i own zero
31:33
in fixed income fixed income right now
31:36
is for absolute morons
31:38
okay and they’re going to say well i’m
31:40
going to make all this money by trading
31:41
the tenure and it’s going to go up and
31:42
down in
31:43
50 basis point increments and duration
31:45
times convexity i’m going to make this
31:46
much you might
31:47
stop it you fn tools okay
31:51
this is about mathematics and it’s no
31:54
longer about
31:56
interest rate risk in bonds it’s about
31:58
credit risk and
32:00
no one has no substantial institutions
32:03
have made that leap of faith except who
32:06
rey dalio okay
32:10
read between the lines probably the
32:12
smartest risk
32:14
manager in the history of the last 40
32:17
years has made that leap of faith
32:19
he isn’t buying it for his funds because
32:20
it’s probably not big enough yet
32:22
bitcoin under a trillion dollar market
32:24
cap ray dalio
32:26
needs you know big big markets but he
32:29
said it himself
32:30
i’d rather own bitcoin than a bond so if
32:32
you’re not 60 40
32:34
what is the right weighting for me i’m
32:36
higher than
32:38
six to eight percent but i don’t have a
32:39
hundred percent in there because you’re
32:41
never
32:42
certain guys i’m not saying to people go
32:44
out there
32:45
and own a hundred percent bitcoin what
32:47
i’m saying is get your ass
32:49
off zero i think that was your line pomp
32:52
get off zero
32:53
get up to let’s say a five percent
32:56
portfolio weight
32:57
then you can talk about managing risk
32:59
but until you get to five percent
33:01
you are taking far more risk by owning
33:04
zero bitcoin
33:06
than if you own a proper portfolio
33:08
allocation
33:09
and that again is just pure probability
33:12
analysis
33:13
okay so you get someone off zero they
33:15
own five percent
33:16
they still have ninety five dollars of
33:19
every hundred dollars
33:20
allocated elsewhere which one do you
33:22
think they look at every single day
33:24
every single take of the market
33:27
their bitcoin allocation stop buy it
33:31
hold it and i’ll talk to you in 20 years
33:34
don’t
33:34
overthink this get off zero get up to
33:37
five percent
33:38
i’m higher other people are way higher
33:42
god bless them they’ve done their
33:44
homework and
33:45
people will say oh they were lucky no no
33:48
people who work hard
33:49
tend to be lucky and there’s been an
33:51
awful lot of bitcoiners who have done a
33:53
tremendous amount of work
33:55
in this area they will be lucky
33:59
in my opinion because bitcoin is a
34:01
rounding error
34:02
at these prices john yeah greg
34:06
thanks for doing this uh you’re clearly
34:07
very knowledgeable about credit bitcoin
34:09
financial systems everything like that
34:11
uh i’m curious what you think about how
34:13
people go about storing their bitcoin
34:14
right so you talk about how it’s going
34:16
to appreciate over time
34:17
where would the average individual go to
34:19
sort like there’s cold walls hot wallets
34:21
you can they have those banks now right
34:23
um where would people in your mind keep
34:26
their bitcoin
34:27
great question too these are these are
34:28
lob balls for me guys um
34:31
the the reality is this uh i own it in
34:34
three
34:35
different ways you gotta own it on your
34:37
wallet
34:38
on your smartphone to experience the
34:40
beauty of being able to send money to
34:42
new zealand which i have i sent money to
34:44
an aboriginal group
34:45
in new zealand and it settled in 10
34:48
minutes if you’ve ever
34:49
tried to send an international wire
34:51
transfer money anywhere
34:53
it is a painful painful process and for
34:56
me to have the ability to send
34:59
store a value over
35:02
uh around the world that will settle in
35:04
10 minutes was a thing of beauty so yeah
35:06
i own some on my phone
35:08
i also own more of it in cold storage
35:11
because i
35:11
don’t want my phone to get hacked and
35:13
lose that so i own it in cold storage
35:15
but in canada and soon to be in the us
35:18
we have bitcoin etfs that can be
35:20
put in or invested in
35:23
tax advantaged savings accounts
35:27
in canada all right those tax advantage
35:30
savings accounts
35:31
allow you basically to buy a dollars
35:34
worth of bitcoin for 50 cents
35:36
because of the tax advantage darn right
35:39
i’m going to take advantage of that even
35:41
if it’s not your keys not your coins
35:44
type of argument
35:45
full stop all right you need to
35:47
understand that not your keys not your
35:49
coins
35:50
works in an arbiganon scenario that i’m
35:52
not sure
35:53
anybody in the world really wants to get
35:55
to okay you’re gonna have two parallel
35:57
systems
35:58
working you’re gonna have fiat which is
36:01
good
36:01
for uh circumventing the use the need
36:06
for barter
36:07
trading three chickens for a cow you
36:09
just do
36:10
currency that’s like your checking
36:12
account as nick zabo says and
36:14
bitcoin is your savings account so we’ll
36:17
have two parallel systems working
36:19
bitcoin being your store of value own it
36:23
outright own it on a wallet own it in a
36:26
gbtc which currently is trading at a 12
36:29
discount to nav
36:31
i own it in various ways why
36:34
well some are financial markets some are
36:36
disaster scenarios and one which is the
36:39
most important way
36:40
of owning it on your wallet you
36:42
experience the beauty
36:44
of what that technology is and i’ll
36:45
share a story with you guys
36:47
frequently i go to restaurants and i ask
36:49
the waiter
36:50
you know what bitcoin is waiter waitress
36:53
and oh yeah i’ve heard a lot about it
36:54
you all have a bitcoin wallet
36:56
no i don’t i tell them and i’ve done
36:58
this over you know
37:00
five times if you can download a bitcoin
37:03
wallet by the end of this dinner i will
37:05
give you
37:06
twice the amount of tip in bitcoin that
37:09
i would have given you in fiat
37:11
and so far five out of five times
37:13
they’ve come back
37:14
in within that meal have downloaded a
37:16
bitcoin wallet
37:18
and sure enough i give them a bitcoin
37:20
and it makes their day
37:22
and sometimes i go back i’ve been back
37:24
to the same restaurants i’ve seen people
37:25
and they’re like
37:26
you know that x amount of bitcoin that
37:28
you gave me well it’s now worth 2x
37:30
and you you know you’ve onboarded
37:32
somebody that way
37:33
i’ve done it not just with waiters and
37:35
waitresses i’ve actually done it because
37:37
i’m involved in a company that
37:39
trades a lot of energy we are one of
37:42
canada’s
37:43
uh foremost experts in energy
37:46
and bitcoin mining i’ve done it with
37:48
ceos
37:49
of a tomato uh greenhouse
37:52
who said what am i going to use your
37:53
turbine for uh
37:55
in the summertime if in the wintertime
37:57
you know because i need it in the winter
37:58
time to heat my greenhouse and we say
38:00
you’re going to mine bitcoin with it and
38:02
they’re like what’s bitcoin
38:04
or or it’s too expensive and i say
38:06
download the wallet
38:08
you’re done by the end of the meeting 45
38:11
minutes later the entire conversation
38:13
had switched from
38:14
heating their greenhouses with natural
38:16
gas
38:17
and the turbines that we sell to hey i
38:20
can do that in the winter and in the
38:22
summer i’m going to be mining bitcoin
38:23
with these same turbines
38:25
and creating a follow-on revenue stream
38:29
okay so our company’s called
38:30
validuspower.com
38:32
pomp i’m going to tell you we are a
38:35
flare gas solution
38:36
that is greening the environment
38:40
using bitcoin mining we are taking out
38:42
pollutants
38:44
and we are mining bitcoin and
38:45
stabilizing the grid
38:47
and it’s like what marty bent does and i
38:50
love
38:50
everything with marty bent in uh great
38:52
american mining we do it with
38:53
35 megawatt jet engines
38:57
okay this is like this can power a small
39:00
data center
39:01
all right and this is a thing of beauty
39:04
as an engineer
39:05
seeing a 35 megawatt jet engine
39:08
wheel up on the back of a trailer truck
39:10
and attached to
39:11
a formerly wasted gas supply
39:14
rock and roll baby you are creating
39:17
bitcoin
39:18
revenue stream using wasted natural gas
39:21
energy the financial incentives
39:23
to do this are off the charts eventually
39:27
people will realize i’m tired of talking
39:29
about it because i’ve been saying it
39:30
over and over and over again
39:32
is the most profitable thing you can do
39:34
as a energy producer
39:36
is to mine bitcoin and the
39:40
best can i say one it is the most
39:43
profitable until the grid
39:44
needs the power more and you just flip
39:47
the switch
39:47
and you’re you’re mining bitcoin for 90
39:50
of the time but then the
39:51
grid needs peaking power so you flip the
39:53
switch and you’re giving it to the p
39:55
to the peakers at a kilowatt hour rate
39:58
it is better than mining bitcoin but the
40:00
combined
40:01
business model is a thing of beauty and
40:04
it stabilizes the electricity grid
40:06
completely agree and i think that what
40:08
people are going to start to realize is
40:10
this is the single greatest contribution
40:12
to society you can make
40:14
is to free billions of people
40:17
from what ends up pushing the most
40:19
amount of people into poverty
40:21
if you’re in a philanthropy you should
40:22
be into bitcoin it’s that simple right
40:24
and the reason why you should be into
40:25
bitcoin is because
40:26
bitcoin as a decentralized
40:29
automated central bank that is
40:32
programmatic monetary policy that’s
40:34
fully transparent can be audited by
40:35
anyone in the world
40:36
is going to completely reverse the
40:39
effects
40:39
of that fiat currency and i think people
40:42
just haven’t woken up to that yet and so
40:44
if you are mining bitcoin and running
40:47
the network and validating transactions
40:49
you are contributing in an immense way
40:52
to the independence and freedom
40:55
and liberty of billions of people around
40:57
the world if you hold bitcoin you’re
40:59
doing the exact same thing
41:00
and so if you are involved in this
41:02
industry whatsoever i
41:03
fundamentally believe bitcoin will do
41:05
more for society than
41:06
all philanthropy combined because the
41:09
greatest
41:10
contributor to wealth inequality in the
41:12
world is central banks devaluing the
41:14
currencies of which
41:15
majority of the world holds their wealth
41:18
in and it’s just
41:19
at some point people are gonna wake up
41:20
to that right i think you you’ve done a
41:22
great job articulating
41:23
uh kind of how that happens but to me uh
41:26
it’s kind of a foregone conclusion at
41:27
this point in terms of
41:29
the problems in the legacy system and
41:31
then here is
41:32
a solution um it’s just how long does it
41:35
take for the rest of the world to kind
41:36
of understand
41:37
and uh and get comfortable and and you
41:39
know really kind of
41:40
uh be in a position to start to allocate
41:43
to it and hold it
41:45
it’ll happen might happen in a year
41:47
might happen in 20 years but
41:49
it’ll happen i agree 100 look us up at
41:53
validuspower.com
41:54
all right my business partner the ceo is
41:57
100
41:58
indigenous canadian all right not only
42:01
is this going to change lives of all
42:02
canadians this could absolutely reshape
42:06
the destiny of the indigenous population
42:08
in canada
42:09
all right so so many good things
42:11
happening with bitcoin
42:12
do your homework don’t overthink this
42:15
and for god’s sakes don’t listen to
42:17
steve hanke
42:18
professor of idiots at john johns
42:21
hopkins university okay
42:22
that is a conflicted individual that is
42:25
a disgrace
42:26
to mathematics as well as economics greg
42:30
you said peter schiff was right 2 000
42:31
years ago which everyone appreciated
42:34
uh you then said that uh steve hanke is
42:36
the professor of idiots
42:37
i think that you may get the biggest
42:39
round of applause from the audience
42:41
because they are appreciating your
42:42
colorful uh descriptions
42:44
uh but before i let you go um i always
42:46
ask
42:47
people uh a couple of the same questions
42:49
first being what’s the most important
42:50
book you’ve ever read
42:52
oh man uh jeff booth my fellow canadian
42:56
the price of tomorrow and i’m going to
42:57
be giving a i’m going to be driving with
42:59
him from montreal down to
43:01
new hampshire uh bretton woods new
43:03
hampshire
43:04
in a couple of weeks and the guy is uh
43:07
wrote the most
43:08
incredible book in my opinion the best
43:10
book i’ve ever read now i need to
43:12
couch this with the fact i probably
43:14
think it’s so good because
43:16
a lot of the statistics he came up with
43:18
in his book
43:19
i use in my paper as well the difference
43:22
is i wrote my paper before i wrote i
43:24
read his book and it was like
43:26
confirmation that i wasn’t off on a
43:28
tangent
43:29
using the statistics that i used so he
43:31
and i have the same conclusion
43:33
based on mathematics and research that
43:37
we did
43:37
independently so maybe a little biased
43:40
but the price of tomorrow is a great
43:42
book
43:42
uh one that you need to read about how
43:44
stupid our financial system is is
43:46
when genius failed okay the story of
43:49
long-term capital management and two
43:50
nobel
43:51
prize winning uh academics who took
43:55
90 to 1 leveraged bets on volatility
43:58
in the market and they were selling vol
44:01
which is a dumb ass
44:02
strategy but they were selling ball
44:04
based on
44:05
oh a full six years of info of
44:08
uh data uh god lord this was
44:11
1998 10 years after i started uh
44:14
studying or
44:15
trading professionally and uh they
44:18
almost brought the financial systems
44:19
down then
44:20
so read long-term capital management or
44:23
when genius failed just to realize how
44:25
stupid wall street can be sometimes
44:27
and then read price of tomorrow by jeff
44:29
booth which
44:30
forecasts where we are going because of
44:32
technology and
44:33
of course he has one or two pages and
44:35
i’m serious not more than that dedicated
44:37
to bitcoin
44:39
i couldn’t agree more on the on the jeff
44:42
booth uh
44:42
recommendation uh last question most fun
44:45
one aliens believer or non-believer
44:48
it’s only math i believe
44:51
big math guy i appreciate you not a
44:53
professor of idiots professor of math
44:55
that’s what uh that’s what we need more
44:56
around here in this world all right greg
44:57
listen thank you so much for taking the
44:58
time to do this we really appreciate it
45:00
uh everyone uh really enjoyed the
45:02
conversation uh in the comments and
45:03
stuff so
45:04
we’ll have to do it again in the future
45:05
i’m a big fan of what you do and the
45:07
education you put out there pomp and
45:08
we’ll talk offline sometime i have a
45:10
young kid from canada that’s working for
45:12
you that
45:13
used to play hockey with my son so small
45:15
world everything you’re doing is so
45:17
so so important so god bless america
45:20
one final shout out when i did go to
45:22
cornell uh
45:23
my roommate died in 911 okay so i
45:26
appreciate everything you’ve done as
45:28
service for your country
45:30
uh my grandad was uh was a a veteran of
45:33
two world wars
45:34
bitcoin is freedom you guys bitcoin is
45:36
everything
45:37
that makes america great do not fear it
45:40
embrace it and canada has handed this to
45:43
us on a platform
45:44
on a platter and if our government is
45:47
too stupid to realize that
45:49
then get a new government okay because
45:51
this
45:52
is the opportunity of a lifetime to
45:54
define
45:55
the future of money and have it
45:58
native to north america and south
46:00
america okay
46:01
full stop i love you guys thanks for
46:03
having me on
46:04
greg you’re a legend appreciate you
46:07
thank you
46:08
thank you pomp see you bud thank you
46:09
boys thank you thanks rick