Speaker 1: On over one hundred thousand in each in its coin price,
and I get out all the time, how do I
get into this?
Speaker 2: What is this? Explain this to me?
Speaker 1: I had tons of comments on my YouTube videos the
other day as we analyze an entire Michael Saylor lecture,
and so I brought on with me today the author
of this excellent little book, one of the one of
the authors co authors of Thank God for Bitcoin, and
his name is Jordan Bush.
Speaker 2: And we're gonna bring Jordan.
Speaker 1: On because this is an interesting text that's written from
the vantage point of Christian ethics and morals. So could
we apply Biblical principles to the idea of money. I mean,
I think a lot of the people who believe in gold,
and gold's a great thing, they understand that we need
to fix money. We need something that's divisible, some of
this portable, all these different qualities that make money. But
I want to talk about bitcoin, and so Jordan's with
me today. He runs Thank God for Bitcoin, which is
a conference, and looking forward to checking that out. But
before we get into that, but why don't you tell
us a little bit about yourself, how you got into bitcoin,
and then how you got the idea to co write
this book.
Speaker 3: Jay, thanks for having me man.
Speaker 4: No, honestly, this is the last thing that I ever
would have thought i'd be doing. My wife and I
met at Bible College.
Speaker 3: We wanted to be.
Speaker 4: Missionaries, and so I ended up we moved to South
America and helped plant a small church, evangelical church in
the capital city of Montevideo, Uruguay, and it was really well.
I was there that again, to our surprise, half of
our church members were Venezuelan immigrants. We were not expecting that,
and so I just started asking, you know, why are
so many Venezuelan people, you know, piling into Uruguay, and
then just started to find that it was because their
government hyperinflated their currency they had made, you know, with
each new you know, government installation, they basically said, Hey,
we're going to make promises in order to try to
get people to elect us. And a big part of
those promises is free money. And so the way that
they funded those promises that they made was just by
printing more money, and so over time the money became worthless,
driving you know, people out of the country into neighboring
countries and as far away as you know, people in Europe,
people in the United States, whatever it was. And so
really very early on in our time in Uruguay, I
just started to see the effect of currency devaluation and
how it affects very real, normal people. And so then
after about four or five years of being in there
and being there in Uruguay, I got into bitcoin. I
just kind of heard about it, and obviously had heard
it about it in twenty seventeen when the price was
running up, but just really just wanted to understand it.
I was a philosophy major in college, and so much
of my desire and interest in it was just from
a standpoint of, you know, this question of what is money, Like,
what is this thing? I saw the price gyrating violently
and everything like that, but I just wanted to try
to understand what it was. And so really the thing
that kind of stuck out to me was just to
realize that bitcoin is created in two thousand and nine,
in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, to be
a money that a government couldn't hyperinflate.
Speaker 3: And so it was kind of when.
Speaker 4: I had that realization that I just saw, wait a second,
the situation that we're seeing with our friends and loved
ones who are you know, Venezuelans who are now right
here in Uruguay.
Speaker 3: Has happened over and over again all over.
Speaker 4: The world over the course of the last fifty years,
and obviously you know generations before that as well in
different countries, and so again, just this is a real
problem that threatens normal people who are just trying to
work hard and save to provide for their families and
for ministry as well. You know, we were working as
missionaries and seeing the you know that with every year
that goes by, we were having to raise more money,
we were having to raise more support just to be
there and minister to people who are in some of
the hardest situations in the world. So again that was
kind of my my intro into it was through a
very unorthodox way of just trying to minister to people
who are experiencing the consequences of currency devaluation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's we have a lot in common.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize you were also a fan of philosophy.
I got into Big onoin in twenty seventeen as well.
I was interested in Oh really, okay, you know, yeah,
a Bible college as well. So, yeah, we have a
lot in common. Let's talk about first maybe how when
we talk about money, A lot of people think of
it as, oh, that's that dollar over there with the
all seeing eye on it, and it says fed a reserve,
and that's a that's the thing the government prints, uh
to make the economy go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing that really like revolutionized my paradigm when it
came to bitcoin was understanding what money is, what the
properties of money are, and then how the dollar actually
doesn't anymore fit up to those properties and bitcoin actually does.
So how would you describe to the audience like what
the real traits of money are and why is bitcoin
a superior form of that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean a lot of this comes down to again,
my interest in this was just kind of how do
I again as a Christian, I was a pastor when
I first got into bitcoin, So just trying to think about, you.
Speaker 3: Know, how do I what do I really know and
how do I know it? About what money is?
Speaker 4: And so as I started to you know, go down
like an Austrian economic rabbit hole of just trying to
understand money from their perspective, you find that money has
a number of you know, a number of characteristics, a
number of properties, but money in a number of uses,
and so you can look at something like, you know,
money is a it's a store of value, it's a
unit of account in a medium of exchange. And so
those are the three you know, uses of money. These
are ways in which humans are looking for something to
do the things that historically money has has done. So
store of value, this is just something as simple as
I go and I deny myself to serve my neighbor.
I go take my scarce energy and time and I
devote it to the service of somebody else. I could
be doing anything else with that time, but I devote
it towards helping solve a problem for my neighbor. And
then my neighbor because they, you know, they appreciate, they're
grateful for the work that I've done. They want to
give me something in return that has a lot of
the same characteristics as the work that I've just done
for them. So again, it's scarce, it's you know, it
can't just be created easily. It's gonna last over time.
You know, the work that I've done for them is
going to the results will last. And so again, ideally,
when you're looking for a money you want something that's
gonna have a lot of those same characteristics as as
the labor that you've done. And so again, throughout time,
money has been a free market chosen instrument. This is
something that obviously there's exceptions to this. Obviously there's been
governments who created their own currency, but in terms of
what serves as money, these are free market needs and
desires that people have, and so they look for something
that solved again these three uses, the store value, medium exchange,
Internet of account, and then beyond that there's a number
of characteristics, so just a number of things that you
know able to be to be more durable, to you know,
survive the passage of time, survive entropy, survive you know,
just daily use.
Speaker 3: This is one of the things.
Speaker 4: There's a whole bunch of characteristics of money that you
could talk about, but overall throughout time, one of the
things that served really well is money has been gold
and silver. This is because you can't easily create units
of gold and silver. You have to go out and
actually do real work to try to try to you know,
use gold and silver as money. You have to take
some instruments, some tools, go dig it up out of
the ground, you have to pay people to do that.
You have to refine those those gold or silver minerals
in order to be in a state that's able to
be used, and so there's a real production cost to money.
This has been the case, whether you're using shells, whether
you're using other kinds of stones. There's a production cost
to money. And this is the natural and healthy thing
for about the last one hundred years. In the advent
of the Federal Reserve, and obviously this has happened in
other countries and other situations, but in the US context,
with the creation of the Federal Reserve, and then later
in the aftermath of the Bretton Woods Agreement and then
the disconnection from the gold peg with Nixon the Nixon
Shock in nineteen seventy one, we now have quote unquote
money or currency that is completely disconnected from scarcity. It's
not based in scarce resources, it's not based in proof
of work energy that's been expended to create a scarce good.
It's really this currency that we use now was totally
at the behest of a government and their desire and
willingness to devalue the currency by creating as much monetary
units as possossible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought you guys did a really good job
in the book laying that out. You talked about the divisibility,
the portability, the durability, the recognizability, and the scarcity.
Speaker 2: And of course the scarcity is the most important.
Speaker 1: So let's let's shift into why bitcoin is a really
good asset, Why it's a really good even superior store
of value because of its twenty one million cap Why
does that make it so so scarce? And how do
we know that that's the case? I get this question
all the time. Maybe they'll just decide to make more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again, this totally is. It's in an objection
that makes a lot of sense given how complicated and
a lot of technological things are, especially computers. You know,
it's basically somebody I can't remember who said this offhand,
but it's Bitcoin is everything that you don't know about
money mixed with everything you don't know about computers. And
so anytime you're gonna if you're gonna connect those two things,
it's just got a lot of people it's just going
to go right over their heads. So the reality, though,
is with with bitcoin, there is a programat a programmed
limit of twenty one million, there's only well there will
own ever be twenty one million bitcoin. Now again, for
those math majors at home, you might be sitting there
looking at that, going wait a second, there's eight billion
people on Earth. What does it mean if there's only
twenty one million currency units.
Speaker 3: Well, the reality is that every.
Speaker 4: Bitcoin can be divisible up into one hundred million fragments
that are called Satoshi's and so with that being the case,
there's far more more than enough currency units for everyone
on Earth to use bitcoin. If and when we reach
the situation where everybody had Internet, everybody had you know,
some of these kind of things, they would be able
theoretically to use bitcoin, yes, and.
Speaker 1: So that scarcity, that heart that makes it the hardest
asset in the world. And that's why we're beginning now,
I think, to see nation states are starting to figure
this out. We've had the ETFs and the corporate world
January last year, you know, basically deciding okay, it's time
to get into this, and that that also might be
a place to make some criticisms in the sense of
do we really want blackrock and these things involved in it?
But the problem is that you can't really stopped that.
So the reality is that we could never stop the
existing system from getting into this because the nature of
Big One itself, as Max Sizer always says, is it's
like a black hole that's going to eat everything else.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you agree with that assessment.
Speaker 1: Do you think that it's going to eventually kind of
be the superior store of value even over luxury items.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so, And the reason is just because
of a lot of the characteristics as the properties of it.
So I can't send a Ferrari across the world at
the speed of light, you know, I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't do that.
Speaker 4: I also can't send a bar of gold, you know,
through through the air at the speed of light.
Speaker 3: I can't do that either.
Speaker 4: And then in terms of other luxury goods like art
and these kind of things, they make great money laundering tools.
You know, they have subjective value, very you know, just
dubious value. That can you know, somebody like Hunter Biden
can create a painting and then sell it for billions
of dollars or millions of dollars and nobody bats an
eye because you know, we just have been so gasolate
to believe that, you know, you know, value is completely.
Speaker 3: Subjective and all these kind of things.
Speaker 4: So there's there's lots of things, lots of ways in
which bitcoin. If you're an honest person who just wants
to work hard and be able to store your value
in something that can't be devalued away by a government
or central bank or anything like those, you know, bitcoin
is a great option for you. Again, one of my
favorite things about bitcoin is that I can buy it
and I don't have to think about it. I can
store it properly, I can custody it in such a
way that I don't need third parties to help me
with it, and then I can just go about my life.
I can go back to work, I can go back
to you know, spend time focusing on things you know
that are more worthy of attention. And then again Bitcoin
because of its adoption rate, because of the fact that
it's scarce to give you an idea, there are more
than sixty million millionaires in the world right now, so
there are there's not enough bitcoin.
Speaker 3: For even every millionaire to own one.
Speaker 4: So I think these these are the type of things
that you know, as somebody who again just wants to
work hard and go home and spend time with my
kids and my family. You know, Bitcoin is is something
that's very appetizing to me.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, remember, know youavoll Harari when he was pushing
a few months ago the idea of the return to
central fiat bank currency models.
Speaker 2: And we need this CBDC.
Speaker 1: We need this trackable, traceabile control, controllable Fiat model with
the electronic banking system. He said, quote I'm going to
paraphrase it, but he said, we don't want the removal
of third party trust that bitcoin promotes. We want you
to trust these institutions which have been scamming you forever
and ever and ever, and all of the the fiat
currencies all go to zero. So I want to get
your explanation when we come back from this break, we
are talking to Jordan's Bush and we're talking about the
removal of third party risk of other people that we
have to trust in terms of our must cream or whatever.
It was a dime and now it's ten twenty thirty dollars.
Is everything just constantly for no inexplicable reason going up?
Or is it that the value of the currency goes
down through debasement, dilution and inflation and in the in
the ancient medieval world, there was a very well known
practice of money dilution or counterfeiting, and you would have coins,
for example, would be mixed with other metals and alloys
to debase the amount of gold or silver in the coin,
or you might have other forms of counterfeiting. And even
in Isaiah and Isaiah one twenty two you have kind
of a rebuke of Israel who had given into this
practice through their silver becoming draws. Micah six ten to
twelve talks about wicked scales and deceptive measurements.
Speaker 2: You have a similar statement in Proverbs.
Speaker 1: So the way that we operate in terms of economics
should be done in an ethical way. And we've never
been in a point in history where there was a
way to actually remove counter party third party risk, but
now we're at that point and that's precisely one of
the components that bitcoin is a designed to do. And
we're talking with our guest Jordan Bush today, why is
it that we want to avoid these risks?
Speaker 2: Jordan? I mean, it doesn't it seem like we want
to have.
Speaker 1: These authorities that can can give us the money and
tell us what things are money, or should it rather
be left up to not a central private bank telling us,
you know, how much currency is available or how much
debt we can have and basically destroying the currency.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Again, this is it's just like outsourcing of authority everywhere,
you know, any any time you give away authority, it
comes with a cost.
Speaker 3: Anytime.
Speaker 4: You know, if you if you're a parent and you
outsource your authority by putting your kids in some again
different situations why people have to do this, But if
you put your kids in a public school, you're outsourcing
your authority to their teachers, and so you're you're at
the behest of those teachers and those you know, the
the government who's funding them, whatever. And so anytime you
outsource authority, you put yourself at risk. You're only as
safe as those people are trustworthy. And so the same
thing is true of money. The same thing is true
of currency throughout history. You know, you have a situation
where again, where did government currencies come from? Well, initially
you had the free market chose something like gold or silver,
and then the government would come and they'd put their
stamp on it to say that this is the you
the amount of gold that says that it is you know,
it just basically was kind of a stamp of approval.
Not It wasn't the government saying we give this currency value.
It was them saying, hey, we certify that it's this
amount of gold, it's worth this much, and so forth.
It was also a way to demonstrate, you know, this
is the currency that we accept and use here. It
was an instrument of of you know, political authority. And
so this is something where if you look at the scriptures,
it's also very interesting that in one of the most
famous passages about money, you have, you know, Jesus holds
up a coin and he says, who's likeness an inscription
is this? And then he proceeds to say, you know,
the coin held an image of Caesar, interestingly, a hell
an image of Caesar on the front that said Caesar,
son of the divine Tiberius or Tiberias, son of the
Divine Augustus, and then on the back it said it
was a high priest. Basically, so you have on this
coin the image who is of a person who's the
son of the divine and in a high priest. And
so Jesus holds us up and he says, render to Caesar.
What belongs to Caesar? And render to God what belongs
to God. And so this is one of these things
where people as being made in the image of God,
we serve a very similar function that human money serves
to governments. And so this is this is a big deal.
What you believe about money will determine and effect every
single thing else that that money touches. And so if
you have a money that's value only comes from the
fact that a government declares it to have value. Functionally,
that is the theocratic system in which those government officials
are central bankers are the gods of the system. So
if they are the gods of the system, then they
make the rules in the same way that in a
world where you know the real God rules, you know
he makes the rules. And so again, government authorities as
long as they've existed have wanted to ward off and
get away from the idea that they have put forth
that they have limits that they're bound by. And so again,
scarce money reigns on the parades of governments all throughout history,
and bitcoin is no exception.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons that governments don't like.
Speaker 4: Bitcoin is that it basically is scarce and they don't
control it, and they don't like things that they can't control,
whether they be people, points of view or whatever it
may be, even if it break down to money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it reminds me of a famous person
who's once said, give me the power to create the money.
Speaker 2: And I don't care who the elected officials are.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a couple of things going on
right now which are good signs. You know, we have
Trump warming up to you know, the idea of a
bitcoin strategy reserve, you know Maxi Chizers talked about that
for a long time. Then inevitably there will be this
sort of game theory playing out that the Nation States
will figure this out and start buying in and that
might be a double edged sword, but it's ultimately it's unavoidable.
But I want to ask you a question about what
was We had a debate today on Twitter that was raging,
and my point was that, you know, we talk a lot,
especially for Republicans and conservatives from many many years, have
talked about cutting spending and cutting government waste, and certainly
there is a lot of government waste.
Speaker 2: But in my view, this kind of misses the point that, yeah, there's.
Speaker 1: Government waste, but the real root of the problem is
that there's a private central bank that has the ability
to print and control the currency. They you know, basically
buy up the bills, the treasury bills, they buy up debt,
and so it's just sort of this circular debt based
system that is a long term theft of the working class,
and through taxation, there's theft there as well. So basically
getting rid of spending, getting rid of virus, getting rid
of taxes, and their federal reserve, all of that needs
to go. But isn't the root of it the power,
as that famous central bankers to create the money?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Again Yeah, if you make the money, you make the rules.
If you set the cost of capital via the interest rate,
then you make the rules. You you can affect both
the present and the future if you do that. And
so what bitcoin does is it takes that power away
from you know, a government or any other centralized authority
who again, let's be real, doesn't have the the the ability,
the uh you know, the intellect, the the information abailble
to actually do a justice to that kind of a job.
And it puts that job back in the free market.
It just puts it out there. Uh, you know, it
sets an interest rate it sets uh, you know, a
supply issuance. It sets all these things and then forces
individual actors and state actors to adapt to that reality
in the same way that God has created things like gravity,
and God has created a whole bunch of other things
that you know, health principles, uh, you know, nutritional principles,
things that govern reality. There is a reality that's there,
and freedom is found in submitting ourselves to it once
we find it. That same thing as true true scarcity
is a gift. It's not something to be resisted. And
so again, governments are going to wake up to this
reality that they cannot change Bitcoin. They're going to have
to adapt their behavior to, you know, to adjust for
the reality that bitcoin exists in the world.
Speaker 2: We hear this term all the time.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is objective, it's based on math, it's based on
a protocol, and it's based on a global decentralized network.
Speaker 2: Is this true? And what does that mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So again we could go each one of those
do there I mean, like, yes, bitcoin is decentralized, meaning
there's people across the world who are running their own
copy of the bitcoin node, a bitcoin the bitcoins software.
A bitcoin node is basically a copy of every single
transaction that's ever taken place on the bitcoin blockchain. You
can run a copy of this, your own copy that
doesn't force you to rely on anybody else's copy, with
about five hundred gigabytes of you know of a hard drive,
so you can go spend fifty bucks on Amazon and
get a you know, a hard drive that's big enough
for you to run your own node that basically confirms
and verifies each transaction that's taking place coming to you,
leaving from you. And so you're not forced to rely
upon a third party ledger that we're accustomed to seeing
through things like a normal banking system. So Wells Fargo
right has a has a copy a ledger, Uh, you know,
a spreadsheet that keeps track of all their debts and credits.
Their ledger unfortunately is not an open ledger. Uh.
Speaker 3: They will not open their books to you if you
go and ask them.
Speaker 4: Uh. And so Bitcoin where's you know, where's you know?
The fiat system works that way. Bitcoin op operates in
a completely open and honest way.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so again, this is something that's desirable if you're
a normal actor who you know, has has reason to
distrust a banking system that, for instance, in the case
of J. P. Morgan and Jamie Diamond, uh, you know,
funded and knew about Epstein for years and funded and
allowed him to operate bank accounts with them until relatively recently.
So again to act like some of the things that
people talk about, Oh, bitcoin is only used by criminals. Uh,
you know, you have Elizabeth Warren who says, insane that
the nice question.
Speaker 1: Was now a minute though, but isn't this the the
currency of the drug dealers and the cartels.
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: And they make a good point because Saddam Hussein when
we rated his palaces, he had lots of bitcoin. Oh wait,
that was dollars, Momar Godafi. You know he also had
lots of bitcoin. Oh no, wait, that was golden and dollars.
So again, if this is just a laughable objection, that's
completely out of touch with reality. Again, and normal people
are waking up to how insane this is and silly
this is, especially when we can follow things like Nancy
Pelosi's trading activity and you know, she's exactly obviously insider
trading and everyone knows this and things that's hilarious that
she thinks to tries to claim moral.
Speaker 3: Uh, while she's doing things like this. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: So that brings me to another question. Because I hear
a lot of objections. I'm sure you've heard all the
same objections. I tend to think that people who make
these objections don't actually know what they're talking about, but
they like to voice these objections because they heard a
talking head, you know, on TWOV or MSNBC say it,
so it makes them sound smart. One of the top
objections that you hear is well, now, wait a minute,
it's not a real tangible thing. It's just uh, you know,
in the internet sphere. It's not it's not anything physical,
so it's not worth anything. What would you say to that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again that that's understandable, Like I get there.
There's something about tangible things that that you know, seems
safe to us. The reality, what I would say to
them is the same thing I've said to a lot
of people, is that you know. For example, in the
case of our our Venezuelan brothers and sisters who are
living in Uruguay, many of them fled across the border
from your sorry, from Venezuela into Colombia on foot, and
so in their case there were people waiting at the border,
knowing that there were refugees fleeing who were ready to
rob people who had tangible goods, and so in the
case of them, in the case of millions of refugees
all over the world, the tangible asset of something like
gold or silver or dollars even is actually it's actually
a negative. It's actually something that is not desirable because
it puts that puts their valuable resources at risk. So
something like bitcoin that allows you to memorize a twelve
word seed phrase and cross any in the world, get
to where you're going, plug it into an app, and
you could have you know, theoretically billions of dollars at
your disposal is very valuable in a world where there
is a decreasing amount of trust between governments and their citizens,
central banks and their citizens, even people who have nothing
to hide.
Speaker 1: You always tell people too, you know, a lot of
older you know, if you're say a baby boomer, you
know that sounds that thinks this sounds kind of crazy
or whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Baby boomers are already for the most part, doing banking
on their phone with their banking app, So they're already
in the e sphere they're not using the physicality on
a day to day basis like they used to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: What would you say to somebody maybe with that kind
of a mindset, who thinks, well, why would I trust
all this Internet stuff?
Speaker 2: Though?
Speaker 1: Maybe the CIA created bitcoin or the NSA. I mean,
there's a conspiracy theory that that the NSA did this
and it's all a big scam to get us away
from you know, physicality and into this e system.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, philosophically speaking, there's something called the genetic
fallacy that just because something originated from someone or someplace
that it's you know, that somehow stains it. The reality
is what matters is how does bitcoin work? And you know,
if we knew the CIA, if we knew conclusively the
CIA had created bitcoin, that fundamentally wouldn't change anything about
how bitcoin actually works. And so you can actually verify
for yourself, you know, you can verify how bitcoin works.
You can verify all of these things that we've been
talking about. The supply cap, what skeeps bitcoin secure against
nation states like China who've tried to ban it seven
times over the last fifteen years. Again, at least openly,
China is willing to do a lot more you know,
draconian things than the United States government is. And so
if they've if they can't crack bitcoin, and they have
incentive to because bitcoin, you know, gets outside of their
capital controls. You know, these are things where again we
have examples for fifteen years. We have fifteen years of
evidence that bitcoin is what it says it is, it
works the way that it says it does, and there's
incentives for people to attack it. There's tons of incentives,
both political monetary. You know, you can name a whole
bunch for people to be able to attack piccoin. None
of them have been able to, and there's again good
reason for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, well then there you go. That's the next objection.
We get a new administration, they end up being fabian
socialist or outright communists. They decide that this is some
scheme and the government bans bitcoin.
Speaker 2: How are you going to stop that. You can't stop
the government from banning bitcoin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question. Well again, China's banned it
seven times in the last fifteen years. So again, I
know there's we're not always the greatest math, you know,
advocates or you know, we're not almost there great at math.
But you know, you can look at that and you
can be like, wait, why have they.
Speaker 3: Had to ban it? You know, seven times? It wouldn't
once be good enough.
Speaker 4: And the reality is they keep having to renig on
that ban because they can't enforce it. And so this
is something similar. Another example of this. I actually I
actually prayed for a situation like this to happen, and
the Lord loves us and wants us to be happy.
So we answered my prayer one time, which was, it
would be great if there's a situation where a government
cut off citizens from their bank accounts to demonstrate the
distinguish bitcoin and what you can do with it from
the existing Fiat monetary system.
Speaker 3: And so then we had the Canadian.
Speaker 2: Trucker Punadian Trucker, where.
Speaker 4: These guys were all declared enemies of the state, cut
off from their bank accounts because they didn't you know,
they objected to, you know, getting a shot in the
arm that you know was untested, and all kinds of
other things. So a lot of these guys I had
the privilege to interview of the spokesperson for the Canadian
Truckers named BJ Dictor, and he talked about the fact
that He's like, no, you know, a lot of us weren't,
you know, radical bitcoin advocates or anything. But once they
cut us off from our bank accounts, the only money
that we were able to receive and distribute to the
other truckers was the over nine hundred thousand dollars worth
of bitcoin that we were that we were you know, donated,
and that was distributed and custodied in such a way
that you know, was done physically. They actually went around
handing physical envelopes with bitcoin private keys in there that
allowed these guys to get access to money and then
and then you know, buy whatever they needed with it.
So again, this is not a hypothetical reality that bitcoin
can withstand government, you know, oppression. This is actually tried
and tested by some of the biggest countries on Earth.
Speaker 1: Well, what if bitcoin is a way to on ramp
us to digital currency and then the government comes in
and says, get over here on the CBDC now.
Speaker 2: That we've lured you in through bitcoin. This is a
new objection I'm hearing all the time. What would you
say to that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So again, I think there's a there's a lot
of there's a lot of truth in that like there's
again there's a lot of incentives for government to move
towards things like central bank digital currencies where they can
put a shot clock on your money. Effectively, they can
basically like that happened with the COVID checks when they
gave everybody they air drop money to everyone. They could
say with a central bank digital currency, hey we're gonna
give you this money, but you have to spend it
on these things within thirty days or it disappears. And
they can also they could say, hey, that crazy guy
Alex Jones, you can't donate to Alex with this money.
You know, you can't give to this church or to
this nonprofit. You know, we don't we don't like them.
We don't like the fact that they're standing up to
us as a government. And so again, these are all
these are all things that a central bank digital currency
would allow you to do. Again, functionally, the reality is
that everyone is using digital currencies right now. The dollar
is a digital currency, it's just not a decentralized digital currency.
And so, you know, functionally, again, there's some things that
a CBDC would allow you to do that the existing
you know, swift system won't allow you to do. And
so again that's why we want to have an alternative.
And so things like bitcoin are are great alternative. Bitcoin
is a great alternative that is decentralized that you know,
isn't controlled by one or you know, a number of
entities or powerful entities or like foundations or boards that
can change the things like the supply or change the
rules that govern them very easily.
Speaker 3: So again, bitcoin is very different from those things.
Speaker 1: That's always in the next objection, you're breathing my mind, Hey,
black rocks buying a lot of bitcoin.
Speaker 2: Michael Saylor bought a lot of bitcoin.
Speaker 1: That means they can now control it and they can
dump it all and destroy it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so again this is another thing that we
don't have to speculate about. In twenty seventeen, there's something
called the block size wars. There were a number of
different economic actors. You had the large bitcoin mining companies.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: These are companies who who buy these specialized computers that
do nothing but mind bitcoin and so very powerful. They
they create tons of bitcoin or they mine it. They
spend real world electricity, turn that into you know, real
world scarce electricity, and turn that into scarce bitcoin and
then sell it onto the market. They basically desired to
raise the block size. They wanted to be able to
include more transactions per block. This would have centralized things,
This would have given them a lot more power. And
so even though that the biggest in you know, most
the strongest economic actors in the space wanted that to happen,
it would have made it very difficult for a much
more difficult for smaller actors, normal people to run their
own copy of a bitcoin node.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so basically you had the little guys went up
against the strongest, richest actors in the space, and the
little guys ended up winning. And so again this just
demonstrates again the decentralization and the power of bitcoin. The
fact that you own more bitcoin doesn't give you a
bigger stake way that some other things do. If like,
if you're a if you're a stakeholder or a shareholder
with a company, that gives you a bigger voice. That's
not true of bitcoin. And we've seen it, you know,
carried out over time.
Speaker 2: And you're referring to be cash and the block size
word correct.
Speaker 4: Sure or yeah, yeah, any of the other the other
forks of bitcoin. Again, there were people who just maasically said, hey,
I have a different vision for what bitcoin is, and
so they chose to fork off and kind of you know,
deviate and go their own way. And so those things
are still in existence. And then beyond that, there's tons
of other cryptocurrencies. If you know what you're doing, anybody
can create a cryptocurrency in about fifteen minutes. So all
these other mean coins, and you know that we've seen
in the last few weeks of President Trump. They're regrettable
and you know, largely ponzi schemes that are gonna result
in lots of people, normal people who don't know what
they're doing, losing, you know, losing their shirts.
Speaker 1: Now I have it on good record that you just
moved one billion dollars into park Coin.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: No, that is not true.
Speaker 4: I would I would fire myself if I had done
that again if with with thank God for Bitcoin. So
we are a media company. We you know, publish books.
Again you mentioned thank God for Bitcoin, and then we
just published last month a book called The Gospel according
to Bitcoin that basically tries to help basically explain why
as Christians we get so you know, it's excited about
bitcoin for reasons that have nothing to do with becoming rich. Again,
it just has to do with the characteristiccepment, what it
says about the way that the world works. You know,
bitcoin is far more in agreement with the way that
God designed the real world to work than the currency is.
So so again we agree with all those things.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember your question. It ran away from me.
Speaker 2: Well, let me rephrase. I was just joking.
Speaker 1: I've said that I think bitcoin is ethical money. Would
you agree with that and how would you characterize it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so again I would agree it's ethical money because again,
God made a world of scarcity, like we live in
a world.
Speaker 3: Every other part of.
Speaker 4: Our lives, we have to acknowledge that we are not
God's We have to acknowledge that they're scarcity. We can
only do this or this. We can't do things at
the same time. We have to make choices. And fiat currency,
which you know, you can take the same piece of
paper and put a you know, a one on it,
and this another piece of paper that's identical and put
a hundred on it, and all of a sudden, for
some reason, this one is worth one hundred times more
like that. That's that's basically a fiat lux you know,
let there be light. That kind of power is restricted
to God alone. People don't have that ability. Uh and
so again, so from that standpoint in terms of to
the effect that humans are are put here on earth
to as stewards of reality, where we take things that
we take the reality that God has given us and
we steward it for His purposes, rather than trying to
create our own reality and create our own whether it's
genders or creator, you know, our own conception of reality. Again,
it's much much more ethical, it's much more aligned with
the type of again thinking and uh, you know scarce
scarcity mindset that that you know, the world has flourished
under for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: So again and build this truth right because fiat is
kind of lying. It's like saying, oh, well, I have
a zillion pay notes and I have a zillion dollars,
I don't have one million, you know dollars million points,
I don't have a zillion yet. So it's fractional reserve
lying really yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: And it also allows it also allows governments and central
banks to steal There's something called the Cantion effect that
basically says that the you know, the when money first
enters the system, it basically has a higher purchasing power
for the first people who the money touches, so large,
people like Elon, God bless them. You know, Elon can
get basically zero percent loans, whereas somebody like me who's
looking to buy a house, I'm looking at like an
eight eight nine percent seven percent loan.
Speaker 3: And so if the larger that you are.
Speaker 4: The larger entity, the more powerful you are, the you know,
the better situation is for you. You can get capital at
a lot cheaper uh, and and again do more with that.
You can get access to it and buy houses and
buy other scarce goods in such a way that will
prevent them from from ever being able to be approachable
for for you know, the poor or you know, lesser uh,
lesser advance people. So again, there's never What I'm not
trying to say is that we can create this perfect,
you know, secular utopia where everybody's equal. I'm not trying
to say that at all. But the rules should operate
the same for everyone. You know, God created a world
where the same rules governed reality. He talks about justice
and the Old Testament that justice ought to be the same,
whether you're rich or you're poor, whether you're powerful or
you're weak. And so again, fiat currency fundamentally, fundamentally basically
acts against that idea and and creates again gods and
gods and and you people who serve them, those two
classes of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, Proverbs talks about just and unjust weights
and measures when it comes to tow currencies.
Speaker 2: And again that's, like you said, a form of stuff.
Speaker 1: So now there's a chapter you guys talked about how
bad money corrupts the church. I'm interested in that in
that as we come to a closer does how does
this affect the church?
Speaker 2: Why does it matter for a religious institution?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So again, this is one of the things where God,
God calls, you know, calls people. He calls his people
to live differently uh than the rest of the world.
He calls them out and says, hey, I've put you
here for a specific purpose.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then he gives us things that ought to govern
how we how we see and live in the world.
Speaker 3: So one of the things.
Speaker 4: That it just astounds me is that you can read
the New read the Old Testament, and it talks all
about the dangers of debt. Uh, it will, it will
everywhere talk about how danger you know, the bar was
a slave to the lender. Again, it's not an outright
prohibition because there's situations that people find them in where
they need to and you know, put themselves in slavery
to provide for their families.
Speaker 3: All this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: But then also when you get into the New Testament,
you find you know, the apostle Paul saying things like, oh,
no man anything.
Speaker 3: He says, oh no man anything.
Speaker 4: And yet when we live in a if we live
in a in a fiat currency world, basically money is debt.
Like the money that we use is debt. It's created,
it's issued as new debt that then gets paid back
over time, and so basically it it begins to subsidize
that type of world.
Speaker 2: You you basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Jordan, we have to go.
Speaker 1: But the book is Thank God for Bitcoin, and it's
you can follow Jordan over on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much,