Podcast: Jeff Booth on Bitcoin vs. Traditional Banking

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Synopsis:

In this episode of The Sazmining Podcast, Will speaks with Jeff Booth, author of The Price of Tomorrow. The discussion inflation, deflation, what makes Bitcoin so different than the traditional banking system, how Bitcoin mining affects society & energy consumption, and how to discuss Bitcoin mining's energy consumption in an effective way.

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Will Szamosszegi (00:00):

So Jeff, I am so excited to have you as the first guest on the solar series. I think that for anyone out there, um, if you're listening and you've been, uh, living under the rock for the past, uh, couple years, and haven't heard of Jeff Booth somehow, then, uh, you're going to you, you're in for a treat today. Cause you're gonna get to hear from, I think one of the, the most influential thinkers that you can really be listening to at this point in time today, he wrote a book called the price of tomorrow and it not only outlines a lot of the foundations and pillars that I think are very important to understand just about the monetary system, but also the deep understanding of technology and the deflationary nature of technology, which, uh, has outlined so, uh, wonderfully in the book. So in order to kick off this series, uh, the solar and Bitcoin mining series, I think that a great place to start would, uh, just for you Jeff, to explain really what are some of those core fundamental beliefs that underpin your thinking behind Bitcoin, the solar, uh, solar energy and how that will converge with Bitcoin mining.

Will Szamosszegi (01:06):

Some of those being around the central banking system and, uh, the deflationary nature of technology.

Jeff Booth (01:12):

So just that <laugh>, um, and <laugh>, uh, and I think probably this is the pro the, the most important place to start when we are in a system, it is really hard to measure a different system. All of our measurement is from the system that we, that we're in and it's very difficult to see a different system. And that's the same for any business that gets disrupted by technology, um, including blockbuster and Kodak. And what we tend to do is protect the system at all at all costs. So, so what does that look like today? And what's the thesis of the book is that we're colliding in two Sy, two systems, one an inflationary monetary system, where we require prices to always go up and more and more jobs, more to be able to pay for prices to always go up. And that system is largely being manipulated higher today through printing of, uh, money, because it can't grow against a different system that is colliding against it.

Jeff Booth (02:07):

And that different system is technology wanting to give us more for less. So these are diametrically opposed forces with technology and, and technology's gonna win them. And so we can look, uh, we, we can look all around us in your, your phone. How many photos do you take today versus how many photos you took before and all the Jo the difference in job, you could look around that and, and what the apps on your phone, everything is getting you. You're getting more and more for less. In fact, we are all voting with our time to get more for less. That's why Google thrives, because they give us freer and entire industry dies as, as a result. So we all vote for, to get more for less with our time, but we still clinging to a system where we believe it should be done the other way, where we should get less for, or our money needs to be worth less each year to live in a productive society.

Jeff Booth (02:58):

And if you examine what's happening, it's not because of an economy. It's not because of anything else it's because governments are allowed to manipulate currencies. So, so we stay on this rat wheel of, of chasing higher and higher costs, but we measure everything by that system. So we don't ask out of the 200 before COVID out of 250 trillion of global debt to run an 80 trillion global economy. If, and you, you, that takes your breath away with how much debt that is and could it ever be paid back. But when you realize the problem is way worse than when you realize 185 trillion of that global debt came in the last 20 years, you could actually understand why it would, if technology was driving prices down on one way, and you had to try to make prices go up, you could understand at the rate of technology going one way to try to drive prices going up, you had to stimulate economies by that match.

Jeff Booth (03:47):

But then we, then we don't think about the corresponding knock on effects of, we think housing always goes up without asking, would housing go up without $185 trillion of stimulus? If there's not another $185 trillion of stimulus instead of over 10 years or 20 years, instead of over 10 or five years, because technology is accelerating the other way. So most of the deflation in a new system is in front of us. And the only way to mask that is to print money and to make prices go, go up, which keeps us all on a rat wheel and not understanding the true from a first principle is what's happening as it relates to. And maybe I'll stop there. We can level set before we go into some of the other areas.

Will Szamosszegi (04:32):

Yeah, definitely. And, and I'm glad that you laid that out because when you draw those analogies, it, it really makes it clear that, uh, does housing always go up or is it just that what it's denominated in, which is the currency, is that just being devalued over time? And the other piece that of that equation is the technology piece where technology is getting better and better over time and has this deflationary nature to it, energy in particular, uh, and solar energy in particular, what are some of the fundamental forces at play, uh, that you're seeing happen in the solar industry and with solar energy,

Jeff Booth (05:10):

Broadly technology is moving into everywhere. Um, in one of the areas it's moving into is, uh, is solar and solar in a lot of the regions of the world today is the lowest cost. It's getting cheaper by about 11% per year. Uh, and, and it's expanding and it's expanding. So if you think about everything being built on top of energy, every product, every, every job, everything else is built on top of energy and energy is now turning in. It never was before, but now energy is, is exponentially deflationary going forward. And everything else sitting on top of energy mean, meaning prices are coming down. Then the same thing that's driving clean green energy is going to break the system faster. And so when governments say I'm going to print more money, uh, to be able to, to solve the climate crisis, what they're real, what they're really doing is saying we're creating climate crisis from the system.

Jeff Booth (06:03):

And there's no way to solve that because anything that we would put money in is deflationary in nature in which requires more printing to offset the, the, the gains to, to humanity. You could actually simplify this and say inflation equals climate change. And that's really hard for people to grasp, but so let's just go a little deeper and we'll, then we'll go deeper into some of what's happening in ener in energy. And how that, what that looks like when prices go down on ener. So what would happen if, if instead of prices going up all the time, the, as energy became one day free or nearly free, what would, what would happen? Would you be able to get more for less? Would you save your time? That's what technology does. It's supposed to save our time, but if you make prices go up against that trend, then people are, are searching for jobs.

Jeff Booth (06:51):

And instead of one person working to feed their family, two people have to work and you need to create, you need to print more money. So oil prices go up. So two people are driving to work and everything else, and you're creating more and more and more things to be able to stop that from ha happening when the, in an, but remember, this is really hard to grasp because we measure a system from the system and what the system would look like in a different world. It's totally different. Your time savings would keep going up and up. As technology did, more of our job, more of the job prices would fall correspondingly. You wouldn't have to work as much to keep up to a system that's being manipulated. And so now if we go into what that means, uh, and, and these are probably pretty deep concepts and everything else, um,

Will Szamosszegi (07:38):

Actually just to step in there and make sure that, that we've got the, the foundation set, what, what you just lay it out was basically that things should be getting cheaper over time because of technology improving and being deflationary in nature. But the central banking inflationary monetary system is masking technology gains and, and efficiency gains that are happening around the world today.

Jeff Booth (08:02):

And, and by do, by doing that, you're concentrating wealth and power in very few hands that have the access to the technology and artificial intelligence and everything else and taking it unless instead of allowing the, the free market to push that into the broadest hands possible, if people haven't heard this before and everything else, it's really important because we believe we, we, we build our foundation of knowledge on top of a foundation of, of, of, of a bad rush. And if you believe inflation is required, which it always we've grew up thinking essentially inflation is required to run a productive society. Money is a requirement that money loses value each year to run a productive society. That's cuz that's what inflation is. And does that make any sense? It does. It doesn't make any logical sense, but we don't typically question it at that level.

Jeff Booth (08:52):

We've been taught something and we build our foundation of, of knowledge. On top of that, what's happening is coming into a new paradigm where technology is moving faster and faster and faster exposing what was always a lie, but we didn't know it. And it's forcing us to, to realize that so economics itself is really, um, uh, it, it isn't, isn't built around value. It's built around scarcity. If it was built around value, the most expensive thing in your life would be the air you breathe, cuz it's the most value. Why is it free? Because it's abundant and, and an abundance creates creates things that are free. Where do you pay for oxygen in space, in a hospital where, where you need it for treatment, but you pay, you don't pay for oxygen where it's abundant, you pay for it where it's scarce. And we could, for the sake of job, have a whole bunch of people running around, giving us oxygen masks everywhere.

Jeff Booth (09:41):

And, and we, you laugh, but that's what we're doing in the rest of the economy. We're trying to create job out of doing something like that. When abundance is all around, where, where technology is creating abundance, we could, we could dig holes with spoons instead of shovels. But when technology technology, the point of technology is to free our time in with the, with what's happening with the rate of technology improvement and everything else and how fast that's moving. Our time should be freed at an exponential scale and stopping that is probably the greatest tragedy to mankind because stopping it to, to, to keep a system running that clearly has to fail is actually climate change. It's, it's social, it's social revolution, it's everything, the entire Ebola wax it's kind of coming into it. Uh, from, from this, it requires a system change and to be able to get humanity from one system to another system.

Will Szamosszegi (10:38):

And with that said energy as a whole in society, how do you view its role within society? And how does that play out within this system that, that you just outlined

Jeff Booth (10:51):

And, and one of the things in energy or artificial intelligence or anything else, I will say one of the things that, uh, that traps us when thinking about technology is how fast it's moving. Um, but what traps us is, and everybody does this including me. So I try not try to, to watch this, but you typically project your current version of technology forward and think everything else is gonna change. Isn't gonna change. Instead, the rate that the trend line, that technology is moving so 15 years ago, if you had asked anybody, they would've said, uh, a requirement of a phone is a, is a, is a Typepad on a phone like that Blackberry hat. And then, and then apple changed the world with a different interface that changed everything. Remember a phone for a long time, was just a phone. Now it's now it's communication device and it's everything else.

Jeff Booth (11:42):

It's not just a phone. And that's only happened in 15 years. So think of all the people that believed a phone was just a phone and projected that forward. And when I say everybody virtually every business, financial, everything else, tens of billions of dollars in value in one company that they didn't see what was going to happen as a result of that, of that change. And so that's what that progressive technology creates creates that, but we don't understand how fast that's happening. And it's really important. We project which project technology J forward with everything else staying the same against the technology today, same as in internet, if you'd asked most people in 1996, what the internet was going to be, they couldn't see what it would look like to today. And, and in very few of the companies, all of the new monopolies or internet companies who saw the change, and most of those monopolies came way later than, than like Google was founded in 2000, right?

Jeff Booth (12:35):

Facebook two, I think 2008 or something like that. So most of these monopolies came way after kind of the initial wave of the internet and everything else is that as that happened, what does this mean for, for energy? So if, if the trend rate instead of a light switch, right, one day we're, we don't have AI. The next day we have AI one day, uh, we have, we don't have solar energy, right? Or low cost energy. And the next day we have it look at the trend. So if to today, solar says the entire infrastructure of energy, it's a tiny, tiny, and most of the energy needs are from oil, coal, everything else. And there's no way to make a transition from one day to the next day, right? To, to say, solar's gonna take over the entire industry tomorrow. But once the pricing Avan is clear.

Jeff Booth (13:20):

And so what you're getting in solar and battery backup and everything else too, are two trend lines that are getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And they've just passed the point in some regions in the world that it's the lowest cost standard. So what could you expect innovation that was once trying to innovate kind of in oil pipelines, reduce prices here, the innovation in the other area to, to do, to, to start to move that. And what would you expect people to do as a result of now lower cost en energy? And so, and so from there, you can project what will happen. And so as, as a massive shift of money moves over and innovation happens, um, then what was a tiny, tiny little bit of the industry explodes, and it becomes a bigger and bigger part of the industry. And it has crazy implications will go into some of those implications, but I'll give you an example before kind of going there.

Jeff Booth (14:09):

Just, uh, I think last week, a jour, the journal of scientific advisors came out with a publisher, ER, where, uh, where Farrow electric crystals in, in solar, not commercially ready yet, but, but proven technology. Um, it, uh, will give a thousand times increase to solar cells. So a thousand times power increase to solar cells. So everything I'm projecting doesn't include things like this that could totally change everything. And if you had a thousand times increase to solar cell, you literally have free energy. So now now think about a system change. We've always had to centralized power. That centralization is to run peak load in, um, in cities and cities are centralized large. A lot of those things were as a result, trade routes, energy, um, and, and financial hubs around the world. And so we moved to these cities, um, and, and, and it feeds back across self and you need centralized power to kind of manage downtime, multiple sets of power, because if one power fails, you can't have your whole city, so a grid type of system, but where things are moving, you could have decentralized today, today with decentralized energy.

Jeff Booth (15:19):

So you could cord cut similar to cutting the cord from cable companies to, uh, to Netflix. And as that decentralization happen, it becomes a different network. And so don't, you don't even have to pass forward very far from where we are today to, to, uh, to understand this. If cities used to be around trade hub and kind of the communication hubs and everything else through throughout the history of time. And those were around energy trade, um, uh, financial, financial hubs. And today we have energy that you could put anywhere. I, you have satellite internet with Elon Musks, satellite, and, and we're doing this zoom podcast right now where we wouldn't have been able to do this 20 years ago. And if you knew the technology that was coming, if I, because I'm, I've seen some of the technology that is applied to what we're doing right now, if you knew what the technology looked like, what you realize is maybe I don't need to be in a city. Maybe I could be anywhere. Um, and, and these, these have massive changes, massive structural changes to how we've always thought about doing things,

Will Szamosszegi (16:20):

Just hearing you lay it out like that. It really puts it into perspective of quickly this technology moves and how fast that the world moves. It almost makes it difficult to, to predict where it's gonna be when you have timeframes of over 10 years, because then you're dealing with so many different technology trends that it's, it's hard to perfectly predict how that looks, but the piece where you we're talking about the just efficiency in having like a thousand X efficiency on the solar side, I mean, that right there is, is an industry changer and has so many different ramifications that come out of it. Um, but I, I do wanna circle back to what we were talking about on the, uh, financial and central banking aspect of money printing, and really dig deep and see, okay, well, what happens if you remove the inflationary nature of the monetary system and you overlap that with deflationary nature of technology, what type of trends do you see moving forward if that was to come to fruition?

Jeff Booth (17:20):

Okay. So most people that are, are worried about kind of when you hear deflation and it's the bad word. Yeah. What they're really talking, what they're really talking about, deflation on a credit system, especially with too much debt is a really bad word. And, and so the credit based system requires embedded in that obligation of a credit based system is that it grows forever. And so, so again, going back to climate change and everything else, we have a system that is required to grow forever on a finite plant. So you can realize just in itself, that's ridiculous credit based system requires growth throughout because if you allow lower prices against that, let's say to today, and it's way more than $250 trillion of debt. If you let lower prices happen against that, that debt, everything gets re-priced immediately imagine house prices falling to what they should be.

Jeff Booth (18:07):

Imagine in all the depth that again, in sales prices or business value, being priced repriced to what they should be priced at versus, and so the, the, the corresponding collapse takes you into deflationary depression, um, like the thirties, but on steroids, because this would just keep on unwinding. So the system itself can't change the system no matter what political actor left re so here's an interesting thing. Most of the revenue for, for government does not come through taxes. It comes through inflation. And so, but all government. So what's the difference between Republicans and Democrat. If most of the revenue comes through hidden tax on, on people that both are using that. So, so this on top of the system and the divide of society is not talking about what the root cause of it all, all is, and both are it doesn't. So if you can, if you can essentially press a button and take somebody's 40 years of saving down by pressing a kero, is that okay?

Jeff Booth (19:01):

And, and so if you have corruption and money supply, you have corruption everywhere as a result. So if you correction, all money is, is a trade of our time. We don't actually don't want more money. We want more time. And so if you allow corruption of ti, uh, of money, you allow corruption of, of time. And so what you're seeing in society is that play out, but it, but what's worse is it's playing out and it's getting exponentially worse because technology's going one way exponentially. And as a corresponding byproduct, the, the corruption has to go the other way exponentially. And so, but that system cannot allow deflation and, and why, because every institution that we live in, that's why I said, it's really hard to understand when you're live in a system that is doing that, to actually understand what a different system would look like you, because every system, um, and is sitting on top of that.

Jeff Booth (19:48):

So would you vote for a gov that would say, listen, I'm gonna bring sound money and everything is gonna collapse, including schools, pension plans, um, uh, government itself, uh, hospitals, the entire thing would unwind price and all the money that we thought was there. That was really just credit evaporate. And it's gone. You might as well, light, light a fire to it. Cause it was never there. It was there in, in the form of pushing up asset prices and pushing up prices forever and ever with more credit. But we don't, we don't see it that way. So it would just keep on collapsing and, and you would have an, it would, it would look really, really ugly. So realizing that system can change itself. You need a transmission mechanism from one system to another system. And that's what actually, I believe Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is the system that because of the hard cap of 21 million, um, coin, it allows for deflation, um, over time.

Jeff Booth (20:39):

So what people would realize in Bitcoin is it's actually maybe not price going up. It's everything else, relative price going down against Bitcoin. So if your monetary unit is Bitcoin, and what you'll see is everything priced in Bitcoin, maybe forever is gonna come down in price. And, and, and so you'd see the natural to see what what's happening, but you need, so to make one transition to another system, um, you need a whole bunch of people starting to use this other system and in my hope so, and why I talk about it this way is it's really important. If you don't donate any Bitcoin, I would suggest you get off zero. It'd suggest you learn more, not for the money that you could make on it, for what it could produce, what it could help your you, your family, because the system cannot change itself.

Jeff Booth (21:22):

It required. And if you think about, if you think about business, examples, blockbuster doesn't change, right? It, uh, in fact, they, they turned down buying Netflix for 50 million, cuz because at that time Netflix business model download speeds were too slow. It didn't work. Right. And what blockbuster missed is technology Mo at the rate of technology moving and what downloads would speeds would do means we don't need 9,000 stores anymore to watch movie. Um, it changes in an instant on technology and that same thing is happening everywhere. It's happening on all these trends. That solar example is once price drops to a certain level, you don't need your electrical company anymore. If you forecast these trends out and what it means to us individually and what we would do when price drops to a certain level and gives us more for that, we make a, a choice, a rational actor would make, um, and that changes an entire. It doesn't matter what the system wants, changes the system.

Will Szamosszegi (22:14):

So digging into Bitcoin in particular, it sounds like this is the first time where you've seen aary system that can serve a sound money. Can we break down what exactly makes Bitcoin so special and different compared to the traditional, uh, central banking system and, and why and how that transition will take place over time?

Jeff Booth (22:35):

Yeah. And, and I think we, we did a fair bit about what the existing system must do. So the existing system, essentially, by saying, I'm gonna grant small group of people, power over money, which is really my time theft, a theft of worth theft of my time then, then, and that's how society should be run. That's what the existing system looked and why we didn't notice it as, as fast because technology wasn't. So these, these cycles always broke. So you typically have an eight 80 year or so debt cycle that then would be reset with a new currency regime across the world, which was reset through war revolution and war that's the cycle we're in, but it's actually speeding up. So if, if technology frees our time and technology gets cheaper and cheaper and gives us more and more for less, then the only possible way to not concentrate all power in hands of very few is to have urgency that allows for deflation to be able to, to, to make sure the free market is competitive.

Jeff Booth (23:29):

And we vote on the free market of what we, what we determine value. That's the way to broaden, broaden the benefits of technology, the wisest possible audience. And if, if somebody tried to keep margins really high. And so there's one industry with really high margin and a whole bunch of free products, free products, free service, things are getting cheaper and cheaper. AI is coming technology, solar, everything else it's getting cheaper and cheaper. There's one really high, high cost industry. What do you think entrepreneurs that would do that to that industry? They would attack it like crazy. Right. Um, I know I'm an entrepreneur. I look for asymmetries in the market. People don't understand and, and try to solve those with and solve those with technology to give more value. That's the job. And so when you're right and you give more value, you destroy and different industry that didn't give as much value to that point.

Jeff Booth (24:17):

That whole thing means that it's congruent with where technology is going. And, and what that means is that the value gain from, from destroying, uh, from breaking those kind of monopolies that didn't give as much value is transitioned to the most people in the world where, where we're moving, then you, you must have a currency that allows for deflation that is not controlled by any one person or any small group of people that is digital. And, and out of everything I've seen there, isn't something like that. It's the only, it's the only thing that looks like that, or won't be co-opted by by governments or, or something else. And, and why, why is that important if governments actually understood what Bitcoin was 10 years ago, they could have killed it by misunderstanding kind of how the, how they, how game theory works, how this network works and how it's decentralized in, in, in nature and where it is now, you kind of call it a trillion dollar value and the network effect that's happening in layer two and the layer lightning network that's happening on top of that, it's exploding.

Jeff Booth (25:18):

And it looks a lot like the inter net did in 1996. And the difference in Bitcoin specifically is instead of just being able to invest in the companies on top of the internet, a T C P I P protocol layer. And then we invested in the companies on top of the internet and they changed, changed our life a whole bunch of different ways. Bitcoin is like investing in the protocol layer. So like investing in the internet itself, TCP I, and then there's a whole bunch of other value that's being built on top of that through lightning network and everything else where, where you'll actually pay in Bitcoin, you'll be able to transaction and, and trade in this that is like building on top of Bitcoin itself is like investing in the protocol

Will Szamosszegi (25:58):

Layer. One of the main, uh, narratives going around right now is the energy usage of end. One of the main talking points of that is it's already using more energy than countries today. And it's going to continue to consume more and more energy. And granted, many of the people who go and are pushing this narrative, don't understand a lot of the, uh, underlying values and problems the Bitcoin solve, but on the pure energy consumption, BA how do you look at Bitcoin's energy consumption in through the lens of technology and innovation that's happening, particularly the deflationary nature of technology.

Jeff Booth (26:32):

So, so again, let's go back from inflation equals climate change. There is no way for, there is no government on the planet that will stop printing money to be able to create inflation. It requires a system change. And the only way to get that system changed is through security of a network that keeps it decentralized. So that that gain is in your hands. My hands, everyone else's hands instead of one, person's the only possible way. So energy is the security of the network. It's actually, it it's the best thing that you could hope because it resets the entire system onto a, onto a system that actually could save the plant, um, to, to, and save humanity from being on a most wheel forever and ever, and ever, and consolidating power. It is the only so, so when I look at energy use, I celebrate energy at the highest level.

Jeff Booth (27:18):

It is the security of the system that ensures governments, can't consolidate power and drive inflation for that's. So we have to start at that level, the next level down where most people talk about, because, because, and finishing on that level for humanity to survive for this earth to survive, we must transition from an inflationary system to a deflationary one, and this congruent of where it's that important. Otherwise, the earth burns, and we probably blow up our world or war at war war with nuclear weapons, um, on a, on a system, divides people and divides people and divides people to. So there must be a transition only path I've seen that actually allows that, that transition without kind of repeating everything else into going back to an inflationary model is Bitcoin that changes our world. So foundation, but again, we can't measure it. We it's really hard to measure because we're measuring everything from a, from a system that's actually making climate change worse and worse and worse by trying to grow forever.

Jeff Booth (28:14):

We can't even see what this system would look like. That's foundational. It's a requirement of where we're, we're going at the highest level. And that important proof of work is the only thing securitized that network to allow that, to have everything else, take everything else. They will be corrupted by governments trying to be able to control citizens through money. Proof of work is the thing that energy is the best thing you could hope because it's doing the work. Be able to keep it decentralized underneath that where a lot of people are talking about on both sides of, so some people are saying how much energy it uses. And I celebrate that because of what we just talked about underneath that is it actually incentivizes low cost green and abundant energy. It gives you a way to incentivize faster rate to, to trans. If I set up a solar cell on my roof, on my roof, and I have abundant energy, I can Bitcoin mine, uh, with the extra en with the extra energy.

Jeff Booth (29:05):

Um, if you think about P flow, um, in Canada, we, we give away a bunch of energy because our, our, our grids can't take the energy, a us in some cases to take that extra energy where you could optimize energy, lower cost, energy, the green energy, putting that energy into something that has way better value. And so when you look at E load times or, and everything out as tied to all of this, energy's abundant, it's the cost of getting that and transmitting it to a centralized. So to be able to, to deal with the city's peak load power, the distribution of that, that takes takes time. So with energy being an abundant, you could mine Bitcoin on a waterfall in the Amazon, right? You could that nobody's in, you could, you could create energy as happening in El Salvador from, uh, from volcanoes underground, uh, volcanoes. You could do it in Iceland. You could do with energy's abundance, it's this trans transmission of that into cities and everything else that, uh, that, uh, that, that we perceive energy as

Will Szamosszegi (30:04):

Abundance. Yeah. And one of the things that just talking through technology trends, you mentioned one earlier and just star link, so universal internet, uh, then you talk about the abundance of energy and how there's energy and all these places where you need energy to mind Bitcoin, and that secures a network it's decentralized. And it, it sounds like you've, you've really drawn the, the connection that through Bitcoin, you have the ability to tie real world energy, to sound money and keep the inflationary nature that government corruption would bring in. You can keep that, that inflationary nature out of the current, based on Bitcoin's current protocol,

Jeff Booth (30:43):

Many other have talked about throughout time, what would be the perfect, what would be the perfect currency? What would it be built around? And it would be built around energy. If you look at actually what the us did with after the gold reserve, what they did is, um, and, and Jason Lowry, the great piece on, on this, but what they did is roof of war to secure energy. So, so what you do is you go coop, Saudi Arabia and others into pricing, global energy oil in us dollar. And then everybody uses us dollars and you can change the monetary unit. Essentially you get energy for free, and the rest of the world has to pay for it. And anybody that's not on that system, if you, if you're Iraq and you decide I'm gonna price my oil in euros, then you get invaded. If you're Venezuela and you decide to try to price your oil in something else, I would've an economic system. And, and it provided a lot of benefit for the us, but that negative externalities of that are all over the world. And it's actually, and, and proof of war, essentially, I, I have enough military. My crush is what securitize that energy and proof of war it's, it's a non-violent transition. And it's, it's a market incentive that incentivizes a and there's, there's nothing that can, I don't think there's anything that can stop them because you're because you're incentivizing, in fact, you're incentivizing clean green energy faster and faster and faster as a result of this

Will Szamosszegi (32:07):

Protocol. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I, I really wanted to speak with you about and figure out how, how would you, of you're designing, uh, the narrative to really a lot of the people just, just to set the stage who are going and writing these articles, they don't have the background the time, um, and the, the knowhow to really talk about the true impact that Bitcoin mining's energy use has on society. Explain simply what that narrative is and how it's beneficial for the environment. How would you go about explaining it?

Jeff Booth (32:36):

I think that's actually why you have to go to first Princip. And I think, and that's actually why simply I would say, explain to me how inflation is is consistent with, uh, with climate change is consistent with saving the planet. Explain that to me, explain to me growth forever and empowering a certain number of people to, to destroy currency artificial growth forever. Tell me how that is consistent with saving. And that's why I say measuring a system from the system is really hard. The goldfish doesn't know it lives in a big world. It only knows a goldfish. And so if you're asking a whole bunch of people that live in an inflationary world to say, tell me how it would be in a different world, they're explaining goldfish. And so what you have to do is you have to ask question first, explain to me how, how possible this is congruent with your goals of saving climate or anything else.

Jeff Booth (33:22):

If you believe that a small number of people should be put in, in charge of corrupting money, explain that first. And then when there's no answer, because there is no answer, <laugh> they look for a solution. It is outside of the goldfish. I think the hard, what ends up happening is people are fighting at the wrong level. They're fighting on the level of Bitcoin incentivizes, clean green energy, which is true. And then, then others would say, it doesn't fast enough. We want, uh, we want something else. And that's the level of the debate. The debate should be at a way higher level. The debate should burst. Somebody should somebody that's printing money should be able to, should be able to, to make prices go up great to save a system, should be able to tell you how that's consistent technology, driving prices down and, and in a world where, where we would get more for less, our time would be saved. Everything would fall in price, but we would, we wouldn't notice the fall in price. The best way I find is by asking questions and, and asking somebody a logical question to explain why they believe this is true. And once they, once they realize that as they chase that to the ground and they realize it's not true, and they're more open to, to, to looking at a system provides better benefit.

Will Szamosszegi (34:29):

Wow. That that narrative definitely needs to be pushed forward. Cause that's the first time I've heard it in that regard, especially the way that the narrative is going right now. It seems just so narrow in scope. So narrow minded, and it's not the same type of questions that you ask about energy consumption from every other industry. I mean, do we know the type of energy that was used to produce this shirt, this mic, this water bottle. We're not asking, oh, well that the facility where this water bottle was built was 40% coal let's let's ban water bottles or whatever. It may be no producing water bottles in China, for example, I mean, that's

Jeff Booth (35:06):

How much coal, how much coal electricity goes into your Tesla, right? Nobody, nobody asks those questions because they're looking at, from a system inside a system. And so, and they can't put together that this is a different system. So that's why, that's why you just really have to go back to ask them, instead of get caught in the minutia, ask them how it is that, uh, climate change could be solved from a, from a system that requires growth forever and not just growth forever and will manipulate money to achieve growth. And then, then ask them, well, who gets to decide, who gets to manipulate money and what is their benefit?

Will Szamosszegi (35:39):

I mean, everything that, that you've been talking through are really tectonic shift from the mainstream narrative. What are the, what are the, let's say the go to, uh, explanations that, that you try and communicate people who might be following more of the mainstream narrative on these, is it just really let's think about things from first principles and go and apply that to all these different industries, or are there other types of ways that you'll go and try and really get people thinking on this type of level where they're not just buying into some narrative that might be thrown about from people who aren't really thinking critically about these, these items.

Jeff Booth (36:17):

Um, funny enough that you, you mentioned about the book and what it's done, because kind of once an idea forms it in your head that you realize that something, then you want to investigate you, it's, you, you're more curious and you'll look at it. Reason I'm on this podcast is as a result of this, and this is gonna take more, uh, a us to more of an Audi and your podcast, and you will do the same thing. I'm gonna get philosophical or tie this to quantum theory or anything else. Every single thing in our life is an idea. First, the system we live in, the objects we use, every single thing came from an idea somebody's had that created our way of life. Your view of reality is different from my view of reality, largely informed from my belief self. If I believe I'm a victim, my way to get love belonging is through being a Vic.

Jeff Booth (37:02):

Then nobody telling me anything different will change that belief self. And I will, I will create that over and over and over again. And that will be my real. And so our beliefs inform everything, um, and inform our opportunities and everything else. And we see those things. And then our collective belief informed the world. We went. So if those collective belief rely on a belief that a small number of people should be able to control money and, and we should all be slaves to a system that looks like that. And if we believe that that's what it'll look like and what, so what you're seeing actually in Bitcoin, what you're seeing outta my book, what you're seeing in everything else is a crack in that belief set. And people are starting to say, wait, that doesn't make any sense. And it's as hard as it is to question your beliefs.

Jeff Booth (37:42):

Once you start down that rabbit hole, you realize, wow. And, and as in system changes, it's really hard because you typically don't move from fear to more fear, fear, paralyzes. What I think is actually happening on Bitcoin is as people really understand what it is and how it actually moves from fear to hope and it, and, and abundance and everything else, and more and more people are having a new belief set. And that belief set is cascading of your society. And I, and I see incredible promise in, in that. And, but that's actually, what's having in each of our own individual minds. And as we've spread that knowledge, if you, if you, if you did a imaging on your brain, what you would see is once you, when something comes from you're unconscious to your conscious, you'd see a P three wave cascading as all your neurons were firing. But most of the things that we see are invisible today, they don't that P three wave never cascades. We just don't see, you know, that you ever seen that, um, count the basketball throws and then the, or then the gorilla walk through. Yeah. Nobody ever sees the gorilla.

Will Szamosszegi (38:40):

I didn't see the

Jeff Booth (38:41):

Gorilla. Nobody sees it because we believe what we can do is multitask. But we can't, what it is, is quickly firing back and forth. And when we're concentrating on one thing, we can't see another. So if you'd, if you'd say, say what's happened in most, most of society is they're living in a fog and this isn't even cascaded what we're talking about. It hasn't even cascaded. It's not even, they wouldn't see the gorilla. So, so they keep on believing the system they're in and they don't, they, they have no idea. So if you've seen it, you can't believe they can't see it. That's how, if you've seen the gorilla, you can't believe, you didn't see it and you can't believe they can't see O other people can't see it. But until you see the gorilla, that's the, the, that's the point around in society today?

Jeff Booth (39:20):

What we're talking about right, is that most people have no idea what we're talking. Can't even see it. But once you see it, once, if you've read my book, if you, somebody goes on this podcast, now it'll be within their consciousness. Will they get it all right away? Probably not, but will they start to investigate more and more and more and realize former beliefs that something that was invisible to them is now visible. And it requires, it requires curiosity. And it requires, uh, looking more and that's, what's happening to society as we transition from one system to another system. And my hope is that's, what's happening to society through Bitcoin because it transition. It's the most peaceful transition from one system to another system.

Will Szamosszegi (39:57):

One of the things that's really hard to obviously project is, are those technology trends. But if we get very granular and look at the technology trends that you're noticing in solar, the technology trends that you're noticing in Bitcoin and laying that under the macro trends that we're seeing in the world today with the money printing, how do you personally believe things will begin to play out and evolve over the coming five to 10 years?

Jeff Booth (40:21):

So I link to an article I wrote called the greatest game, um, in, in this show notes and people should look at that. It's on medium. And, and, and it says what the existing system must do, counteract what is happening on the other side? So you have corruption and money. Uh, then you have corruption everywhere else. And so you could expect more and more division of society as a result that is highly likely, and not just society in, in us. You see Democrats Republicans on both sides, screaming at each other, you see woke. So you, now you're gonna see you see us China and geopolitical risk kind of accelerating Russia and everything else out of the same thing. So what you typically see in, in this, and that's why they typically get reset through revolution war, but we've never had nuclear weapons in the type of technology that we have today, destroy our planet with a reset of currency regime.

Jeff Booth (41:08):

So, so what, but that's what you'd normally see and what you end up doing to be able to gain power is you have to convince enough of a, of a electorate that it's not their fault. It's that other person's fault. That's how you gain enough power in the system. And you can see that playing out and to hold Sy, hold that power. You have to create a bigger enemy outside of your board. And so that that's, what's playing. And one thing I think this is probably important. We've talked about a lot of things, but a lot of these things, characteristics of our mind, our beliefs, um, and were easily manipulated. And so people talk about Hitler and, and atrocities from, I don't think so much about Hitler. I think about the 99% that did nothing that empowered, that, that cause of that belief set, allowed atrocities to other humans to, uh, to happen and did nothing.

Jeff Booth (41:51):

What's different about those human, because we're the same biological creature than us today. And nothing. We're the same, SSAM meat, neurons and everything that, uh, that, that they were, if, if it can happen that fast and people who didn't think they were capable of doing that perfectly capable are people capable of doing that today. And you look around the world, people are capable of that today. And, and you are, I am I probably not, but I, but I'm also one of the people that would get killed first because I would stand up to that. Um, and that, that's why people hide in a system like that because the minority get killed. And so they seek safe, safe. If you have an incentive structure that is allowed to do that, you could see what could happen, really terrible part of humanity. You could see the incentive structure that takes us down that path. So if you said where we're going, unfortunately the trend is that's where we're going and why I advocate so power for a different system that drives the incentives to a broad based audience and everything else is the more people on that system. They don't need to stand up. They have, uh, they, they are on a D monetary system. And if you have tens of millions, hundreds of millions on this monetary system that don't buy this kind of bullshit, that's happening in exist. It's the most peaceful transition because the world can, that's what I care

Will Szamosszegi (42:59):

About. Wow. That's beautiful when you, when you say it like that. And just going back to, yeah, we look at, we look at pieces in the past, you look at that country really, who goes and follows a leader like Hitler, and you realize, wait, I'm not all that different. And, um, I think Jordan Peterson also has really broken that down as well. Just trying to think from a psychological perspective and coming to the conclusion that yes, as humans are very easily manipulated, and then you go and look at how the Nazis did it. And they really controlled the means of communication they had, uh, control of and an understanding of that technology to spread propaganda and, and really control the thoughts that were brewing in the, uh, in the citizen's minds. And so it really comes back to what you said, where, Hey, you want to first put a crack in that armor of, of the buy into the current system that we have today that is broken when you break it down and really let the best ideas come to the surface and, and, uh, come to fruition within each of the people who buys into the system of decentralization, let that go and spread across the world.

Jeff Booth (44:00):

The beautiful, the beautiful thing, just to carry that forward. The beautiful thing about technology as well is it allows those ideas to propagate. So it's hard to stop. So you could in a world moving less slow, you could easily troll media and everything else. And from a small group of people can tear a narrative to a large that's virtually impossible today. Now I'm gonna add anytime. What technology does is it brings way more minds to, because it lowers the cost. It brings way more minds into kind of our collective consciousness and a lot of that misinformation. So let's use, uh, let's use the printing, you know, in way slower. Like what it brought is way more minds contributing, contributing to ideas. And a lot of those minds early were new religious sex Bibles and different Protestant verse Catholic and everything else was just mass printing, be able to gain power and here's idea as the cost kept coming down, way more science, way more individuals contributing to that broad ideas forth.

Jeff Booth (44:58):

It didn't match our, our reality, our perceived reality didn't match what we were reading in, in a book. And of course the same thing. And so what, so what technology does is it reduces costs and way more minds come in and you have a lot of misinformation as well, but it also error corrects that information as more people error, correct. If somebody said this and that comes a bit, now it's scrutiny for everybody else to be able to error. Correct. And so what you're fi what you're finding the same, thing's happening now, but it's a warp speed and, and what's happening today is way more minds, way more misinformation as well. But the best idea is the strongest information and it's actually kind, and, and the best information is win or will win it. I believe in time. A lot of that will be error corrected through artificial intelligence, but again, so creating more Infor information and misinformation, and then error correcting that information. You could look at Bitcoin specific as if, if you look at unity and the people kind of protect it as, as Michael sailor would call it the cyber Hornets, all ideas, all ideas, either critical trying to drive improvement ideas, to broaden that audience, to be able to understand all ideas are great, but it is, it is you do not want to be in this useless ideas. It's just, <laugh>, it pushes those away so fast. And what feels like a toxicity is that it's an immune response to bad ideas.

Will Szamosszegi (46:15):

Yeah. That's one thing that people who get into the space and go and start contributing to the community, they find out very quickly that bad ideas will be attacked right away. And I think that that's important to let those let, let the good ideas and the ones that, um, can withstand the scrutiny and be defended logically, let those ideas rise to the top. And I think that a lot of the things that you've helped lay out in this conversation have, have really been the, I guess, the, the ideas that have stood the test of the scrutiny. And, and that's probably one of the reasons why they're so radically different than the mainstream, uh, consciousness that, that we see today in, in the broader society.

Jeff Booth (46:52):

I, I, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I try not to. And one thing I'd say for Bitcoin community too, is everyone should be able to act in their own way. So I don't. So if somebody wants to be toxic, they should be talked. Why I don't is I don't actually, it's not an ego. I want the best information to win. I don't, I don't really care. I don't need, I don't need to gain more wealth on Bitcoin. I don't need it. Um, I want to, I want it to survive for a reason. I want it to so, but it, but, but again, if somebody has else has a better idea on how to make that happen, all good.

Will Szamosszegi (47:21):

Well, man, Jeff, this has been absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for, uh, coming on and, and talking through all these, uh, all these pieces to this and, and really breaking down these very complex topics, making them easy to digest and really for all your contribution to the space, uh, you alone have made a notable difference to how this entire industry is moving forward. How education of Bitcoin and the importance of decentralization that entire movement moving forward, you've played a large role in that. So I want to thank you so much for all the work that you do and definitely for coming on the podcast today.

Jeff Booth (47:52):

Thanks. I'm looking forward to following the rest of your series too. Sounds gonna be really

Speaker 3 (47:56):

Interesting.

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