Guest: Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast where we interview Saifedean Ammous and talk about Bitcoin. It’s the one money that ends all money. And the reason for that is that it is the one money that’s going to have the lowest supply growth rate ever. And it’s currently at around 2% per year. But it’s going to continue to go down until it eventually it hits 0%. And so the truly astonishing and unique achievement of Bitcoin is that this process was set in motion. Uh the creation of Bitcoin was set in motion and the network continued to grow.
Mindy: Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my dad joke telling co-host Scott Trench.
Scott: I don’t know about dad jokes, Mindy, but I can be a bit coiny.
Mindy: Oh my god, that was awful, Scott. That was the worst one yet.
Scott: Mindy: Scott and I are here to tell terrible jokes and to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.
Scott: That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business or attempt to understand the investment thesis behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.
Scott: Scott, I am excited to bring in Saifedean today. I am on record as saying I don’t particularly care for Bitcoin. Uh I think I’ve been a little bit more harsh in the past with my assessment of Bitcoin, but I thought today was episode was very interesting and I learned a lot about currency in general and the history behind it, the specifics around Bitcoin specifically. I do want to say that today when we are talking about Bitcoin, we are talking about actual Bitcoin, not using Bitcoin as a generic term for cryptocurrency in general. Uh we are specifically discussing the cryptocurrency called Bitcoin.
Scott: Yeah. And and and also a little disclaimer here. This is not an endorsement of Bitcoin. Um, Saifedean is is a an incredible thought leader, philoso philosopher, really has a deep understanding of this and has uh constructed a very compelling case for Bitcoin. But I’ll share with you my personal philosophy um about why I do not invest in Bitcoin uh towards the um end of the episode and in the outro as well.\Mindy: Yeah, I have said many times, I don’t understand Bitcoin, so that’s why I don’t invest. That is the bottom line why I don’t uh put any money into Bitcoin. And I am okay with that statement. I don’t think you have to invest in everything. Um but this episode opened up my eyes to the reason behind Bitcoin, which I think is important.
Mindy: Okay, before we bring in Saifedean, let’s take a quick break.
Speaker 1: You know how the change in seasons hits and suddenly you just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets and get everything all organized? That same feeling hits me with my finances every spring. I used to have accounts scattered everywhere, making it hard to stay on track with my money goals. Let Monarch do your financial spring cleaning for you. One dashboard that gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins, just accounts, investments, property and more all in one place. One thing that really surprised me was pulling up the cash flow view and seeing what percentage of my income was quietly going to lifestyle creep, dining out, and subscriptions I’ve barely noticed. It motivated me to make some quick adjustments. Get your first year of monarch for half off, just 50 bucks with the promo code Pockets. Use the code Pockets at monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. That’s 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code P O C K E T S.
Speaker 1: If you’ve been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, then waiting weeks to find out what you’d pay for. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don’t. Here’s what I believe. Most BP money listeners need term life. And the right move is to build a ladder. A few term policies at different lengths, stacked together so your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer to hitting your financial independence number. The thing that makes that practical now is Ethos, a platform that helps you find life insurance all 100% online. Same day coverage, no medical exam, you just answer a few health questions online. Up to $3 million in coverage, some policies as low as $30 a month. So building a two or three layer ladder that used to take a month of appointments is something you can knock out before your coffee gets cold. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bpmoney. That is E T H o s.com/bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary.
Speaker 1: When I was CEO of Bigger Pockets, Upwork was the number one place that we went to hire freelancers to power our business. One of the biggest growth hacks is realizing that you don’t have to do it all yourself. Upwork made it easy to bring in the right freelancer when we needed them, so that we could stay focused on what we do best. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations and more. It’s free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire flexible, high-quality freelance talent for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That’s Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That’s U P W O R k.com. Upwork.com.
Scott: And we’re back.
Scott: Saifedean Ammous is a renowned Bitcoin economist, investor, and the author of the Bitcoin Standard, the decentralizd alternative to central banking, and one of the the most eye-opening books I’ve read in the last couple of years. Saifedean, we are so excited to welcome you to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.
Guest: Thank you so much for having me, Scott. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Scott: Awesome. Well, I I was I was hoping we could walk through your thesis really, as as the way I would I’ll use to describe it, around Bitcoin um as as a future currency of the world. And I’d love if we could start from the beginning, way back to the history of money uh itself and and how that grounds your thesis for Bitcoin. Could you walk us through um, you know, give us an overview of that?
Guest: Yeah. So, uhm, writing the Bitcoin Standard, um, when I wanted to write it, I uh, I decided, you know, this this needs to be a book that explains Bitcoin from scratch. And uh because it’s a it’s a topic that attracts people from all kinds of walks of life. It’s not just something that’s there for economists or for programmers. So, you you’re going to be getting all kinds of different perspectives on uh different questions and issues. And it’s the best way to tackle it, um is to just start from scratch. And so, I started digging into the history of money and I started digging into uh lessons and metaphors that I’ve learned over the years as an economist to try and explain Bitcoin in modern terms. And I came to the idea that really, the best way of understanding Bitcoin is to try and understand the importance of the hardness of money. And by hardness of money, we mean the difficulty of producing money. So, um, term is very familiar to people who live in uh economies with um bad currencies, where they use the term hard money to refer to dollars or euros, currencies that are very difficult for people in their country to make. Whereas, the term easy money refers for the to the local currency, which the central bank and all of their friends and cousins can produce essentially at will or very easily. And so, um, this, you know, I I uh this was my motivating idea for understanding why Bitcoin matters. And as I started writing the book and researching the history more and more, the more I’d look into it, the more I’d found this was a very powerful uh framework with which to analyze uh monetary history. And so, the overarching theme of the first few chapters of the book is the idea that the hardest money wins, that uh whatever is the hardest thing to produce ends up being used as money in whatever society, um obviously, it needs to be a liquid good, something that is divisible and portable and uh it needs to have other properties, but a lot of things fulfill those properties and among the things that fulfill those properties, what ends up becoming money is the thing that is the hardest to produce. So, we see countless examples. We look at example of island uh of an island in the uh Polynesian where the island did not have limestone, but a nearby island, which wasn’t very near, it required you to get on a boat and um go significant distances. They had limestone. So the island that didn’t have limestone, which was called Yap, they used limestone as money because it was very expensive to get limestone from the other island to this island. So as long as you had some limestone, you knew that it was very scarce and very difficult for people to make. And so it was a good store of value, was a good form of money that people were using. And uhm, you see the example of West Africa where uh glass beads, they did not have the technology for making glass. And so, glass beads were very hard to make. And so therefore, glass beads were made as money. And uhm, historically, we see all kinds of different goods were used as money like seashells, rare seashells in particular, salt, cattle, things that are difficult to make. But as these things become easier and easier to make because technology advances, what ends up being used as money are the things that are harder to make. So we move to the era of metals, which were hard to make. And they were used as money. But then as as metallurgy advanced and we started being able to make more and more metals, it was only the precious metals that were used as money. So still among the metals, only the hardest metals to make were the ones that were used as money. In particular, silver and gold. And then within silver and gold, we also find that the one that ended up being used as money was gold because it is the hardest. It’s the hardest to increase the supply of gold. And that comes from the fact that gold is very scarce on Earth to an extent, but more important than the fact that gold is scarce on Earth is the fact that gold is indestructible, which means that as long as it is uh being produced, it cannot be consumed. So, there’s no way of consuming gold uh that stops it from being gold. Uh you heat it, it cools down, it’s still gold. You mix it with other things, you can take them out and it’s still gold. So, all of the gold that we’ve been producing for thousands of years have been accumulating. So that even though our technology for gold production continues to improve year on year, it never is able to generate a very large amount of gold to increase the stock pile of the gold that exists. In other words, we continue to add on to this growing pile, and that pile never shrinks because we’re never consuming the gold. And so therefore, if you look historically, you see that annual production always adds up to around 1 and a half to 2% of the global supply per year. So that’s the supply growth rate for gold. Every year, we’re increasing the supply of gold by about 1 to 2%. Which is the hardest naturally occurring substance on Earth. That’s why it’s the hardest money and that’s why I argue in the book, that’s why it ended up being the world’s money by the end of the 19th century. And I think it’s an extremely compelling argument. I’ve heard no coherent counter argument for why the hardest metal to produce the metal whose supply is the hardest to increase, the one with the lowest supply growth rate, why that would become the money other than the fact that this is the most important property in money or at least one of the most important properties in money. So, why not silver? Why not copper? Why not nickel? The answer is that gold is the one that has the lowest supply growth rate. So, um, historically, we see many examples that support this. We see that when a money that is hard is um interacting with a money that is easy in a a certain society, the easy money gets destroyed. The value in stored in the easy money gets destroyed. So we saw this with the seashells in Yap Island. Once um modern technology came to Yap Island and um there’s a story of uh um of an Irish-American captain who gets shipwrecked on that island and then realizes, wow, those people are using limestone as money. I can use modern technology to produce a lot of limestones and come and buy everything on this island, buy all the coconuts that they have and make a good fortune. And so he goes and he produces a lot of the limestone, he comes to the island and he’s able to get um a lot of their coconut and he destroys the value of the money in the island. In fact, there was a movie with Bert Lancaster done about this is called His Majesty O’Keefe, which I also mention in the book. So, we see these examples over and over and over again. We see it in West Africa, when Europeans started coming to West Africa, they saw that they were using glass beads as money. Europeans could make glass beads cheaply and easily in Europe. So they would fill up entire boat hulls with glass beads, go to Africa, West Africa, and use those glass beads to buy all the resources there. And uh because those things were rare in Africa, they were they became money. And so Europeans were able to buy everything in West Africa including eventually slaves. And that’s why um these beads are known as the slave beads because they were effectively money that the people of Europe could print and go to Africa and buy everything that West Africans had. And so, we see these relationships happen over and over and over again. Easy money gets destroyed when it is comes in contact with harder money, simply because people who put their money in the easy money witness the value of that money decline over time because more and more of it is produced, and the people who put their money in the harder money witness the value of their wealth grow over time because nobody has an easy way of making more of it.
Scott: And so just, just for folks that, you know, to hammer at home one more time, this concept of hard money is money that cannot be easily mass produced, right? And gold, again, just to reinforce the points that you you shared here, is the ultimate hard money, um at least from a natural recurring resource standpoint, right? Because it’s hard to mine, it’s it’s rare. Alchemy, you cannot produce it. Alchemy was this whole obsession for countless people throughout the ages and nobody’s ever been able to manufacture gold. It can’t be destroyed. It’s very easy to to manipulate, get in large quantities and small quantities. So it’s a it’s a nearly perfect naturally occurring substance to be used for money, long term, although it has no, you know, real intrinsic value. There’s no there’s no use for it other than um uh money and in a lot of applications. Um, walk us through the, you know, I I think one of the things you you point out in your book is the dangers of easy money for, you know, there, look, you there’s these are horrible outcomes that you just articulated with easy money destroying local currency, allowing outsiders to take advantage of locals. But there’s also dangers you point out in debasing of currency and um making money easy for civilizations. Can you walk us through some of those examples?
Guest: Yeah, absolutely. I and in uh in the fiat standard, my second book, I get into this in a little bit more detail. I think the way that I would understand it is this, human progress is inextricably intertwined with the increased hardness of our money. In that as we advance our technology, we find harder and harder money. And as we find harder and harder money, we’re able to store our future wealth in these harder money for the future more effectively. The harder the money, the more likely we are to get um to to to to to to maintain the value that we store in the money for the future. And so therefore, um when we have uh a process where our money keeps getting harder over time, which is what it’s historically been the case, we’re constantly able to provide for our future at an increasingly efficient rate. And so, this is a huge deal. You know, we start realizing, oh, wow, we can provide for our future. And if we can provide for our future, we start thinking about the future more. We start discounting the present, discounting the future less. And so that’s the concept of time preference. Time preference is the degree to which you discount the future compared to the present. Everybody discounts the future compared to the present because the present is here, it’s real, it’s certain, you’re in it, you need to experience it. Whereas the future is always uncertain, there’s always a risk and a chance that the future might not come about because you could die. And so, everybody discounts the future to an extent, but progress and civilization is our struggle to discount the future less and less and less and less. We’re still going to discount it, but we keep discounting it to a less lesser degree, and therefore that allows us to provide for it more. And so the harder our money, the better we are able to provide for the future, the more we are able to think of the future, the less we discount the future, the more future oriented we are, the more we progress in in in in in civilizational terms. The more we save for the future, the more we accumulate capital, and the more we save and accumulate capital, the more productive we become. And so that’s really what lowers our time preference and expands our uh horizon for economic decision making. Rather than just being animals that focus on satisfying our immediate needs, we curb our animalistic instincts and subjugate them to our reason, subjugate them to our mental ability to think about the consequences and about the future, and we prioritize the future. So you don’t just do what feels right at the moment, you do what is better for you in the long term. And that’s really human progress. So, all throughout history, we’re moving toward harder and harder money and making our money harder, which is allowing us to provide more for the future, allowing us to save more, allowing us to invest more, allowing us to bring interest rates down, because interest rates are determined by the degree to which we save or by the degree of our time preference. And so, human progress is this process of money getting harder, savings going up in value, capital becoming more available, interest rates declining, people becoming more long-term oriented and therefore becoming more peaceful, more cooperative, more civilized. That’s really the process of human civilization. And that’s all of human history up until the early 19th century, early 20th century. and then the early 20th century, we take a an an incredible, inexplicable U-turn and decide to start heading back. And that’s why the subtitle of my second book, the fiat standard, is the debt slavery alternative to human civilization. uh, you know, if Bitcoin is an alternative to central banks, fiat is an alternative to human civilization itself. The process of human civilization is we constantly move toward a harder money and become more future oriented and more capital accumulating and more um civilized, fiat money has reversed that because it’s taken away from us the ability to use a money that is growing at only one or 2% per year, which is gold, and replaced it with money that grow at around an average over the last 60 years of 14% per year. So we’ve roughly 10x the monetary supply growth rate in the 20th century. And so, 14% per year means that you basically lose half of the money that you have stored in a form in your money. You lose half of the value stored in your money in about 5 years. And so, on average, that’s the average globally. So, some people, obviously, have it better where their money only increases in supply at around 6, 7, 8% per year. And that’s, you know, the economies like the US and uh Switzerland and Sweden and Denmark, the best performing fiat currencies, only increase at around 7% per year. And then of course, the worst performers increase at 100, 200, maybe 500% per year, uh examples like Venezuela and Zimbabwe and Lebanon currently. So, between these uh different modes of operation for the Fiat standard, we see the average is about 14% over the 16 over the past 60 years from 1960 to 2020. And at 14%, that massively compromises your ability to provide for your future. And that destroys your ability to think of the future. The future becomes more and more uncertain because you have no easy way for providing for it. You need to go out and invest, you need to become an investment expert, you need to figure out an investment thesis. You need to become an expert in all kinds of different industries in order to be able to just provide for your future. I mean, this is why I think, you know, perhaps the worst thing about fiat money is that you have to earn it twice. You have to earn it first when you do your work to earn it, and then you have to earn it again by investing it in a way that beats inflation so that you can continue to maintain it. It’s money that you need to work for twice. Even though it’s the same money, you know, you’ve already let’s say you’re a dentist, you went out there, you fixed somebody’s teeth, they paid you. You can’t just save that money for five years from now. You can’t say, all right, well, I want to retire five years from now and I’d like to have this money available for me because in five year times, in five years time, for the average fiat user, half of that money is gone. So now you need another job on top of being a dentist of figuring out, how can I keep this money valuable five years from now? And so that involves studying and understanding stocks, studying and understanding bonds, real estate markets, commodities markets, doing all kinds of different investments, diversifying your portfolio, which is another job. And so it’s very difficult for you to be a dentist and also an investment professional. And that’s why we see everybody loses the ability to save, everybody needs to become an investment expert at the expense of their job.
Mindy: I would like you to define fiat currency for those listening.
Guest: Yeah. So, um and what we what we the term fiat means is um decree. It’s it’s something that is true because of an authorities decree. And so fiat money is money because government says this is money. Government decrees that you need to accept it and government decides the market value that you uh can pay for it. So, this is the distinction, the distinction is between fiat money and sound money. Sound money is money that emerges out of the market’s choice. In other words, people freely choose to use this thing as money and they freely choose to accept whatever price they want to accept for it. That’s sound money. Fiat money, on the other hand, is money that is not about your choice. It does not involve your choice. You do not choose to make it your money. It is enforced upon you by coercion. So, the difference is between peace and coercion, really. And the difference is between money that emerges because of its properties, because of its suitability as money, and then money that is imposed upon you because of its suitability to the people imposing it on you. And that’s the term for government money, basically.
Scott: In the context of fiat uh currency, one of the arguments for fiat is this concept that a little bit of inflation, 2% increase in the money supply, for example, on an annual basis, encourages economic investment and use of proceeds rather than just accumulation and and hoarding for the future, for example. And that there are dangers associated with deflation from a truly hard currency um for the economy. Sounds like you would not agree with that premise. Could you could you share your thoughts?
Guest: No, absolutely not. And I don’t just disagree with it, I think this is one of the most catastrophic and downright criminal uh pieces of propaganda that have been foisted on humanity in the 20th century. It’s absolutely insane that um the idea of people saving for the future is vilified as the cause of economic problems, um when in reality, it is the only reason that we can have any form of economic growth. The only reason we have any kind of economic improvement is because people defer consumption, delay gratification, choose to invest their resources, and therefore these resources become available as capital resources for investment, allowing for increasing productivity. So, the natural um market process is to choose, as I was saying earlier, the thing that is money is the hard, the thing that is the hardest to make. That’s the natural process of the market. We take for whatever is money, the thing that is the hardest thing to make, simply because that ends up becoming money whether we choose it consciously or not, just because it appreciates more over time, so the people who use it as money benefit at the expense of people who don’t. So, it’s natural that money would appreciate in value slightly compared to other goods. All other goods are easier to make. We always make more cars, more homes, more everything every year, more computers every year, and their prices decline compared to money. And that’s how it should be. And that’s what it is in advanced technologically, uh important uh fields. You know, your computer keeps getting cheaper every year, your phone keeps getting cheaper every year, it keeps getting better and faster per dollar that you pay for it. Is that a bad thing? Has this been detrimental to the computer industry, you know, is Apple suffering from the fact that their laptop this year is much cheaper than what it was 10 years ago? No, it absolutely is not. In fact, it’s only getting cheaper because of the increased productivity and Apple is only becoming profitable because of its ability to offer you better and faster and stronger computers every year. So, um it’s simply the process of economic growth. Deflation and a drop in prices is just simply economic growth. We get more things rather than more money, and so therefore the value of the things compared to that money declines. And so for a consumer, for a saver, this is a very good thing. The money that you earn today, you can save it for the future and then it would appreciate more and more and that would cause the value and that would cause you to be able to buy more with it. So that incentivizes people to save more and that in turn allows for more capital to be available, which in turn incentivizes people to produce more. And therefore, with the more with the increased availability of capital, we have, with the increased saving, we have an increased availability of capital, which leads to an increase in economic growth and an increase in economic production. So therefore, um, it’s really the um the the the increase in the value of money is nothing but economic growth and the process of civilization. And the idea that we need to destroy the value of money in order for consumption to happen is astonishingly idiotic. And um you know, people need to consume because they need to survive. People don’t need to consume because they need to keep this magical monster called the economy alive. This notion that we have this God of the economy that we need to sacrifice by destroying our money’s value for is truly idiotic, and it’s it’s it it it’s it’s it’s it’s absolutely insane that it gets taught in universities and it’s um if you were taught this stuff at the university, I’m sorry, you got scammed out of your youth and your money uh to be taught this stuff. But um the notion that a decline in prices is detrimental for an economy is completely absurd. And again, we look at the example of the high-tech industry. Everywhere around us, we see prices continue to drop and we see the industry continue to grow. I mean, I I ran the numbers on this, if you wanted to buy a 10 megabyte hard drive in 1981 or something like that, 10 megabytes of data cost $3,500 today. Today, you can buy uh 16 gigabytes of data for something like $10 on a thumb drive. So, the cost has gone down more than a million fold or so, and yet we witness enormous growth in the high-tech industry, enormous growth in computing power, enormous growth in the productivity of computing, and enormous drop in the prices. So, the process of lowering prices is just the process of economic growth and productivity, and we do not need to be saved from it. In fact, the only reason anybody could possibly believe something so outrageously stupid is that they benefit from it. And that’s why, you know, if you look at all the supposed economists who support this ridiculous idea, you will notice that without exception, every single one of them gets paid their salary from inflation. They are hired by universities that receive their money from government through inflation. The universities are subsidized both by research money from the from government and subsidized loans for students who pay their tuition from government. So, it’s entirely down to self-interest that anybody could possibly believe something so outlandish.
Mindy: Well, remember in the early 80s when VCRs first came out, they were like $800 or $1,000. Now you can go to, well, I was going to say Circuit City, they’re not around anymore. Now you can go to Best Buy and get one for like $20. It’s just, as you get better at making them, as you as you have more competition, it like everything goes down in price. Like all of these like technology wise. So that just seems like a silly argument. Oh, Apple’s not going to do well because they’re uh their computers are less expensive. I’m sorry, aren’t they sitting on a giant fat wad of cash, like billions and billions of dollars in just cash sitting there waiting to be deployed?
Guest: Yeah, and and and how, you know, if they Why don’t they move to Venezuela? Like if they want higher prices, ask yourself, why don’t Apple and Google and all these enormous companies that are constantly suffering from a reduction in the prices of their goods, why don’t they go to Venezuela where inflation can keep up with technological improvements and then their laptops will become more expensive every year? Somehow, the high-tech industry in Venezuela has not succeeded in uh using this inflationary advantage to their bene benefit at the expense of the high-tech industry in countries with relatively decent currencies. Interesting, isn’t it?
Mindy: Let’s talk about hard currency and Bitcoin in general. How does Bitcoin solve this hard currency issue?
Guest: Bitcoin is like the end solution to this and it solves it in a way that is just um it it it solves it and it stays solved. It fixes it and it stays fixed. There’s no um we’re we’re not going to suffer from this problem forever. That’s that’s basically the idea with Bitcoin because it’s the it’s the one money that ends all money. And the reason for that is that it is the one money that’s going to have the lowest supply growth rate ever, and it’s currently at around 2% per year. But it’s going to continue to go down until it eventually it hits 0%. And so, the truly astonishing and unique achievement of Bitcoin is that this process was set in motion. Uh the creation of Bitcoin was set in motion and the network continue to grow. But the supply of Bitcoin is fixed and the total amount of Bitcoin that we have available is completely fixed and there is no way of making more and more of it. There is no way of um increasing the supply that is out there. And nobody has found a way to increase the supply in the 14 years that Bitcoin has been around. So this is truly astonishing because we’ve had this piece of software running for 14 years and it had a schedule for Bitcoin production. You know had a schedule that said, every 10 minutes we’re going to be making this many Bitcoins. Initially, it was 50 Bitcoin every 10 minutes for the first four years, and then it was pre-programmed to drop by half from 50 to 25 in the second four years. And then the third period, the third four-year period, we’d have the drop from 12 and a half, from 25 to 12 and a half. And then in the fourth period, which is now the fourth four-year period, which is where we are right now, it dropped from 12 and a half to six and a quarter Bitcoin every 10 minutes. And it continues to drop by half every four years until eventually the new supply goes to zero in about 100 years from now. So, this has been the schedule that was laid out for Bitcoin’s operation from day one. And the network has more or less abided by it and we are at a point right now where more than 90% of all of the Bitcoin that has been that will ever exist has already been mined. So the way that this is skewed is that there’s heavy production at the beginning, very fast production at the beginning and now we’re already we’ve already had the first 90% of production in the first 10 years and then the next 100 years or so are only going to have the last 10% and then the majority of that is in the coming few years as well. So, the supply growth is constantly declining and that in turn means that the monetary asset that is Bitcoin is going to become the hardest money in the world. It’s roughly around the same range of hardness right now as gold. In other words, the supply of gold increases at around 1 and a half to 2% Bitcoin currently increases at around 1.8% per year. But in 2024, it’s going to drop by half so it’s going to be increasing at a little less than 1% per year. So, we’re going to have about 1% per year supply increase, which we’ve never had a form of money that increases this little, that has this little of an increase. So, um because of this, you know, Bitcoin is built to be a living refutation of the idea that we need prices to rise in order for the economy to work. So the Bitcoin economy continues to grow. You know, we have currently more than about $350 billion worth of Bitcoin. The size of the economy and the size of the daily transactions continues to grow in the long term. You know, there’s high volatility and oscillation day-to-day, but if you zoom out, you see that the picture is just continuous growth over time. So the economy continues to grow even though the supply does not grow. So if I were an um mainstream economist who believes that we need an increase in the money supply in order for the economy to grow, I’d be asking myself questions at this point. But of course, you know, if you wouldn’t make it as a mainstream economist if you were honest enough to ask yourself questions, you have to just basically repeat what the Central Bank pays you to say. And so that doesn’t uh include asking honest questions. So, it’s already refuting this and we’re seeing that it continues to grow. And if it continues to grow, there’s no reason uh why it should stop at any point in time. I think the point that I make in the first few chapters of Bitcoin standard is that money is an all-conquering technology. It’s not a technology where you can just decide, you know what, I’m going to use this thing. like if everybody wants to use a Mac and you uh and like 10% of people want to use Linux, um Linux can survive. Um But money is different. If 90% of people end up on a form of money, the other 10% are not going to have their own money. They’re just going to be destitute and their money’s going to be destroyed. So, with money, there’s no um it’s not optional. You need to choose the technology that is the most uh suitable for um the role because if you don’t, then you’re the money will be destroyed. And what we’re seeing is basically, if you if you understand this dynamic and you look at how the world has worked over the last uh century or so, you see that basically, we’re witnessing the process of um the monetization of Bitcoin where more and more people are are using Bitcoin and then more people use Bitcoin, we can’t make more Bitcoin for them. The only way to meet increasing demand is for the value of the Bitcoin to increase and so we’re witnessing a very rapid rise in the value of Bitcoin and a decline in the value of all other money. And I think this is a trend that’s likely to continue into the long term.
Scott: Can can you walk us through what um why Bitcoin is hard? Give us one one level deeper, maybe five minute explanation on that. And how the blockchain specifically is is a tool that is useful for Bitcoin. your and and to set this up, this is a two-part question. So your thesis um that I found very interesting is that the blockchain is really relevant only to Bitcoin or only to the the, you know, the the true long-term currency that that is the hardest, and it is not useful in other applications. So can you answer can you walk us through your sentiments on that?
Guest: Yeah. So, I mean, the I I I imagine the best form of skepticism here is to ask, well, what guarantees to us that Bitcoin is really 21 million? And this is of course the major issue that I had with Bitcoin when I first heard about it, and it was incidentally the most expensive mistake of my life because it led to me dismissing Bitcoin for the first few years when I heard about it, when it was very cheap. and then, um, you know, just being the kind of smart ass who comes up with objections rather than reads about something is uh it’s a very expensive mistake. It’s very easy to just say, oh, well, it’s just code and if it can be programmed to make 21 million, then it can be programmed to make 21 billion, and then you can change the code to do anything you want. And so, I’m not going to bother read about Bitcoin and learn about how it works because you know, who cares about all this nerd stuff because I’m an economist and I know that if you can change the supply, then the whole thing doesn’t matter. Well, you know, years go by and Bitcoin continues to refuse to die and then you start digging into how it actually works and then you start realizing, oh, I’ve made a huge mistake. I should have studied this thing from the beginning. So, and the answer is really, if you look at how it works, you see that um, Bitcoin is not so much code, it’s also the unique process that this code has taken and the unique path that this code has taken since it was initiated, since it was first released, up until today. This is a series of serendipitous perhaps or maybe by design, uh accidents or developments that have happened in certain ways, which allow us to have Bitcoin in the current shape that we have it today, and which and without which we wouldn’t really uh have it uh functioning in the in this way. And so, the the main and most important thing about Bitcoin is the fact that it is immutable and that it is not an individual’s liability. So it’s not somebody’s um private currency that they can just change the supply for. The most important thing really is that nobody can change it. So, why is that the case? And why has it not applied to any of the other digital currencies is perhaps the crucial point you need to understand about Bitcoin. And this is why, in my opinion, the only digital currency that matters is Bitcoin. I think every single other digital currency, every single one, and I mean that definitively, is a complete waste of time. Every single one of them is completely doomed. Could you share the professional term that you use to describe these other coins?
Scott: Goins. Yes. So, there’s Bitcoin, and then coins.
Guest: Exactly. Digital currencies are divided into two categories, Bitcoin and shitcoin. That’s just basically science.
Scott: Perfect. Uh, what, what, walk us through the mechanism by which Bitcoin prevents supply growth.
Guest: Yes. So, the the reason the way that it happens is that the person who released Bitcoin, you know, they released that software and they allowed anybody online to download it and run it. And then anybody who downloads that software becomes a peer on the network equal to all the other peers. Now, you can do this with any form of software, but the difference is that with Bitcoin, the person who did it kept themselves anonymous and then disappeared a year after he released it. And who knows what has happened to him, you know, maybe he’s with us, maybe he’s dead, maybe he’s gone, maybe he’s uh, changed his name and he’s still somewhere out there. Um, who probably sold all his Bitcoins.
Guest: Maybe, potentially. Who knows? But at this point it doesn’t even matter what has happened to him because the thing has far outgrown him, you know, the Frankenstein has left the lab and it doesn’t matter if the lab owner goes back to the lab anymore. Frankenstein is not in the lab and they can’t control it anymore. They can’t carry out experiments, they can’t hook it up with things. So, um, Bitcoin grew even though the owner disappeared and it grew in a system where it had no admins. It had only users. And so, this is a truly um remarkable when you think about it because we don’t really have anything like this, um, you know, when you think about the major computer networks that you use, Facebook has an admin. Apple has an admin, you know, you could wake up tomorrow and you realize, you know, your phone no longer does this thing because the people in charge of it have um downloaded an update to your software and now your software can’t do this. That app is removed, or your account is closed for whatever infraction that you’ve carried out. So, there’s an admin in the Apple network and you’re just a user. And there’s a very clear distinction between the two of you. It’s the same is true for Amazon, for Facebook, for Google, for all these major um uh digital networks of our age, Bitcoin is the only one that only has users. So it’s a purely peer-to-peer network. And so, this is a software thing, but the unique thing about Bitcoin is that it is the only one that has truly managed to truly make the claim that there is nobody in charge. There’s no string puller out there moving this Frankenstein monster. This Frankenstein monster is really moving alone. And the reason for that is if you look at all the others, it’s absolutely trivial for you to find out who the string pullers are. There are no other Frankensteins, they’re just dolls and they have strings and there’s somebody out there. And that somebody is just out there trying to convince you that if we just uh, you know, if we keep pulling strings hard and long enough, eventually this Frankenstein doll is going to turn into a Frankenstein monster as well, and he’ll be just like Bitcoin. It isn’t. Bitcoin truly became unique because there was nobody in charge and the guy disappeared. Now, after Bitcoin came into existence, anybody who’s looking for a form of money that does not uh isn’t under the control of anybody, anybody who’s looking for a form of money that is free of an admin, anything, anybody who’s looking for a form of money that’s truly neutral, is going to use Bitcoin, and they have no reason to go use something that’s nascent, that doesn’t have the uh track record of Bitcoin, that’s untested, that’s untried, that has a smaller network. So, the only way that another network can compete with Bitcoin is if it has active management, is if it has a small group of people behind it, advertising it, promoting it, working on coding it, protecting it, allowing it to grow and preventing attacks to happen to it. In other words, once Bitcoin was invented, not only is it difficult to have another Frankenstein, it’s practically impossible to make another Frankenstein that just doesn’t get uh completely ignored and drowned in the sea of irrelevance, because we already have a working Einstein uh Frankenstein, and we’re and everybody wants to use the most secure one, nobody has any use for a less secure Frankenstein. uh for a less secure network. So therefore, there’s no natural organic market demand for a less secure Bitcoin. It’s natural that you would only just go to the most secure one. So the only demand can be manufactured by promoting it, by marketing it. and that requires centralization. And the result of this is if you look at all the digital currencies other than Bitcoin, you see that they’ve all got um foundations and important individuals, they all make updates to the network that happen on a very regular uh schedule. And these updates are constantly being pushed forward from the admins to the users. It’s a lot more similar to Apple or Google or all these other networks. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the centralized network of admins and users. That’s perfectly legitimate. You know, I’m not saying that everything that’s centralized is bad. It’s centralization is just the division of labor. But in the case of money, it is bad, because we have an alternative that and you don’t need the central uh manager, all you need is predictable rules. And so with Bitcoin, we’ve managed to create a form of money that doesn’t have any authority, that doesn’t have a master key, that doesn’t have a back door, that is completely transparent, that allows you to know exactly how many coins there are at any point in time, and that allows you to be very, very confident in the fact that nobody’s going to change the total supply of the coins or take away your coins or do changes to your coins that um might affect you negatively. You can be sure of that because you’re sovereign over your own node and over the own code that is in your node. And that um basically is the best thing that you could do with money. You don’t need anything more with money. You don’t need a money supply that’s increasing, on the contrary, you need a money supply that is not increasing, and you need a money supply that can’t be increased. So, all the other digital currencies are betting on the fact that adding an admin to your Frankenstein will make your Frankenstein faster or stronger or better. But the whole point of having this monetary Frankenstein is that you don’t want to have anybody in charge, you don’t want to have anybody string pulling it. So the only reason Bitcoin is valuable is precisely because it isn’t anybody’s liability. It’s because nobody controls it. It’s because it’s a digital commodity, and not a digital security, which is a very, very important distinction if you think of securities law. Bitcoin is not a security because it’s never been offered as an investment contract by anybody. There wasn’t ever anybody who sold Bitcoin um in an ICO or an IPO. Bitcoin, you just somebody put out the the code out there for people to download and then anybody could download it, anybody could make those coins, and then send those coins. And then at some point somebody people decided to start trading those coins for money, that’s when Bitcoin became a commodity, but it was never a security. With all the other digital currencies, they are securities because they were offered for sale initially and there was a premine where the people who produced them got a part of the coins and they sold it for Bitcoin or for other forms of money. And so, there is an investment contract there and so there is somebody in charge. And if there is somebody in charge, then you’re just dealing with credit. You’re effectively dealing with somebody’s personal um security. And so that’s a completely different uh ball game from Bitcoin. And I don’t, you know, I don’t have a problem with securities. I think securities are a good idea and I think there is value for securities. But I definitely have a problem with all these digital currencies pretending to be currencies when they’re in fact securities, and I believe this is just fraud. And I don’t believe that they will ever have any kind of value because they are using an extremely elaborate and extremely expensive and inefficient way of running a security in order to pretend to be a commodity. That’s why they are completely worthless in my opinion.
Scott: So let let’s let’s dive in on that point. The blockchain is an extremely expensive um but also insanely secure way to have a decentralized ledger for for a for for a digital currency like this. And you argue that the only practical application of the blockchain is Bitcoin, and it’s not a useful tool for title, for example, on housing or medical records, or these other things. Could you explain that for a noob, why why why is that the case fundamentally?
Guest: Yeah, absolutely. This is this is I think a very important point which I uh made in my book and it was it it was kind of tangential to the main ideas of the book, but I think it’s uh it was important to make it. Um and initially, you know, it was viewed as being extremely controversial and extremely unreasonable, you know, how could you look at a world of 20,000 digital coins and just decide, nope, only one of them matters and all the rest of them are garbage. But that indeed is the case. All the rest of them are in fact garbage. And the reasoning is um, I I I think ultimately, the only reason that you need this structure that is a blockchain is in order to make it so that you can transfer titles for the coin of the blockchain itself without having to resort to third parties. So it’s a peer-to-peer mechanism of transferring money, but it’s a peer-to-peer mechanism of transferring money that only works for the native token of the um network itself. You can’t transfer other things because there’s no mechanism of enforcing the link between that other thing and the blockchain. So, the only thing that the blockchain can tell you, you know, the only thing that the Bitcoin blockchain can tell you is who of the addresses on the network own which coins? So, it’s just every 10 minutes we produce a ledger of this address has that many coins, that address has that many coins, that address has that many coins. Every 10 minutes we produce a new ledger of these and we get that number of um coins and transactions produced. Um in order to update it. That’s the only thing that it can say. Now, it cannot tell you anything about the real world. So if you wanted to say that each one of these coins represents a an ounce of gold, you’ve not done anything more secure or more efficient, or more um reliable than the then just having a an a database in the hands of the person who has custody of the gold. Ultimately, if there’s actual physical gold backing that blockchain, where is that gold? It’s in somebody’s vault. Who is that somebody? How do we know that he’s not lying about the gold? How do we know that there is in fact a gram of gold for every single one of these coins that you have on the blockchain? You’re completely reliant on them. And so then um, all that you’re doing is just making things much more inefficient than if they just issued a security for those for that gold, you know, issued an investment contract where it said, yeah, you get this digital entry on my uh spreadsheet and that entitles you to redeem it, that entitles you to be redeemed uh that can be redeemed for a specific amount of gold. You’re trusting them. And so, adding a blockchain is not adding anything at all to that operation. It’s not making it more reliable, it’s not making it more transparent, it’s not making it faster. In fact, it’s making it more opaque, more expensive, and less efficient. It’s just an extremely elaborate thing that you’re adding and and it serves no purpose. And the only people think it serves any kind of purpose is just, again, laziness. People don’t really understand what’s going on, and they reasoned by analogy, they reasoned by just, you know, what would be nice, like this sounds like a nice compromise. Ah, well, Bitcoin, hmm, that looks like it’s too extreme and too crazy. But hey, maybe we can just, you know, bargain with this reality wherein we take in, oh, just let’s use the technology behind Bitcoin and then use it with gold or real estate or whatever, and then we’ll have this. It’s like a form of bargaining that’s completely meaningless. It’s like saying, oh, well, all these cars have engines. Yeah, these engine things look iffy. But I think maybe if we got an engine and we put it inside the horse and then that’ll make the horse a little bit faster, then we don’t need to get rid of the horse drawn carriage. We’ll still have a horse drawn carriage, but we’ll have a surgically inserted engine inside the horse that’ll make the engine that’ll make the horse faster. And that will then, you know, we’ll just run the horse on an engine and then the horse won’t poop everywhere and that would give us the benefits of moving to an engine without the inconvenience of saying bye to the horse that we love. So let’s just stuff an engine up the horse and uh see how that works. This is this is the equivalent, this is exactly what it is when people talk about putting gold or real estate on a blockchain. You are always um reliant on whatever mechanisms exist for uh enforcements of contracts on these um assets, whether they’re homes or gold or whatever it is, or commodities. And so therefore adding this kind of uh decentralized circus on top of it is just an excess cost and it’s something that’s been done now for eight years or so. People have been um riding this hobby horse of blockchain technology is going to change this and it’s going to change that and it’s going to change everything. And we’ve not seen a single commercially viable use case. We’ve seen so much money being spent on, oh, you know, JB Morgan are studying using a blockchain for this or that and um Goldman Sachs are studying using blockchain for this and this and that. They spent a lot of money, generated a couple of press releases. None of them has ever gone anywhere and I will bet you none of them will go anywhere. It’s just always going to be the case that the only thing that you can do with a blockchain is just run a trading uh run a run a peer-to-peer transaction mechanism with the native token of the blockchain itself.
Mindy: What’s the ultimate value of Bitcoin long-term and how do you explain the recent fluctuations like the huge drop in 2022?
Guest: Well, we’ve had a huge drop before, so this isn’t anything unique. Um, we always see this with Bitcoin. Um, so we get this having where the which I mentioned earlier where the daily supply of Bitcoin drops by half. And then a few, after that, we get a big spike in price because there’s a shortage of the new Bitcoin, you know, let’s say there’s usually um a certain amount of money that comes in on average per day, you know, new Bitcoin buying per day. and then uh there’s also the new Bitcoin production per day. So supply demand will meet at a certain point and they settle around the price. and then when you drop the supply by half, the only way to meet the uh demand, the excess demand over the supplies for the price to rise. and so then that causes the price to rise, which then causes people to pay attention to Bitcoin, so people start piling into Bitcoin, so the price keeps going up more and more and more. And then um that in its own then, you know, the price keeps going up but that just makes the new Bitcoin that is being produced become more and more valuable. And then eventually we get the opposite dynamic where the value of the coins become so high, the new production is so high that the new buying can no longer keep up. But then at that point, we’re at the leverage Mania point where everybody’s borrowing in order to buy because everybody believes it’s going to keep going up forever and everybody’s fomoing in. So there’s a lot of money that goes in and the price keeps going up. And a lot of the money is leveraged. But then once the money that is coming in can’t keep growing at the same value as the new production of Bitcoin increases in value, then the price starts to drop. And then that liquidates everybody on leverage, and then that forces the leveraged buyers to turn into forced sellers, and then thatt the drop even further. So you get all these liquidations. So we’ve had this happen three times before, but the interesting thing is that even after it happens, you know, Bitcoin settles down at a level that is much higher than what happened previously. So, in 2018, you know, we dropped from uh late it was about 17, 18,000, 19,000, dropped all the way to 3,000, 4,000 in 2018. And now here we are, you know we’ve dropped from 64 to 18,000. So the low continue to go up and the highs continue to go up. So there’s a lot of oscillation along the way because the supply is changing and the demand changes in unpredictable ways and because of leverage. But the long-term trend is that it continues to go up. So the long-term answer is, you know, where what is the end kind of value for Bitcoin is basically, Bitcoin continues to go up for as long as there are other money with which to measure it, once that uh transitional period is over and there are no other money left, then the value of Bitcoin just goes up compared to goods and services slightly every year, you know, every year we have more apples, more oranges, more computers, and so computers and oranges and apples become slightly more affordable every year compared to Bitcoin, but the value of Bitcoin continues to go up because it’s the hardest thing ever.
Scott: So is it fair to say that the thesis ultimately taking it to a logical extreme is that Bitcoin uh will ultimately be worth 1 22 millionth of the world economy in its end state? And that that would be the long-term ultimate value?
Guest: I wouldn’t say that world economy, it would be worth 1 over 21 million of the world’s cash balances. because the world economy is more than just cash. So, um, you know, think about it, your your portfolio would be let’s say, uh, 15% cash, uh, 30% real estate, 50% uh bonds and stocks or stocks, let’s say. So, it won’t be one over 21 million of your real estate and your stocks, it’ll be one over 21, one Bitcoin will be one over 21 million of your cash balance. And everybody’s cash balances. That’s I think the end state. I I don’t see any money uh surviving in the long run next to Bitcoin. I see Bitcoin basically murdering all other forms of money. And so, everybody’s cash balances are going to end up in Bitcoin. That’s the that’s how I see it in the long run.
Scott: One of one there’s a number of arguments uh that you that that uh I I I love the premise that you have here and I agree that if there if there’s going to be one currency that takes over, it would be Bitcoin. There are a whole bunch of challenges around, hey, can the governments stop that? How long is it going to take? all that kind of stuff. Um, if one of the big challenges with Bitcoin is people lose it, right? Um, and you know, unlike gold, when you lose it, it’s not it’s it’s kind of gone, right? You’re never going to be able to log in, um and and access that again on the blockchain because of how secure it is. Any thoughts on the deflationary effects of Bitcoin in the sense that not only are we going to have a limited supply, but it’s actually going to dwindle over time as people lose their keys.
Guest: Yeah, I think that’s um, it’s also very good for anybody who doesn’t lose their keys. I mean, it’s just going constantly uh appreciating more and more. And um, yeah, I think, you know, for me, the reason that I found Bitcoin so fascinating is that before Bitcoin was invented, um from the perspective of the Austrian School of Economics, which is what I follow and what I write in um in that tradition, uh the Austrians would say that if there was an ideal money, it would be a money whose supply is fixed and we wouldn’t have a way of making more of it. And that really is I, in my opinion, the most important uh litmus test to distinguish a proper economist from a central bank propagandist, which is that the central bank propagandist has an endless number of questions and uh an endless number of reasons, rationalizations for why the money supply needs to keep growing. None of them hold water. None of them, none of them is, none of them is coherent. none of them is justifiable. You don’t need the money supply to increase, you want the money supply to not increase, and the less you can increase it, the better. And all of history is humanity’s struggle to find a money that is harder to increase. And so, um, yeah, over time, you just’re going to, I mean, you’re just going to see the value of Bitcoin continue to increase over time. But having said that, I think over time also we’re going to develop more reliable ways of maintaining Bitcoin, having backups so that in case anything gets destroyed, there’s always a backup that prevents uh things from uh going badly. I think that we’re going to get more um efficient at these things. So likely we’ll see less and less losses uh happen.
Scott: Saifedean, thank you very much for your uh your your incredible philosophy thought process on this, your knowledge of this, making it acccessible to people and helping folks understand the why behind why Bitcoin is a potential future currency um for the world and why it has such inherent advantages over both fiat currencies from governments and um uh coins that exist out there uh in the in the thousands or tens of thousands. So, we really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Guest: Thank you so much for having me.
Scott: Where can people find out more about you?
Guest: Uh my website, Saifedean.com where you can uh get uh chapters from my books as they’re being written. You can read the draft of my fourthcoming book, my third book, Principles of Economics, and you can also find me on Twitter at Saifedean and you can find my books basically on most online and some meatspace uh book sellers.
Mindy: All right, that was Saifedean Ammous. Scott, what did you think of this episode?
Scott: I I I really enjoyed learning from him. Um I I’ve I’ve really enjoyed following him for a couple of years and reading his book. Again, the Bitcoin standard. Even if you’re not interested in Bitcoin, it’s a great overview of the history of money, fiat currencies and all that other stuff. And I think that’s what we got out of today’s episode is really a um a masterclass in that Austrian school of economic thinking and and these this this way of viewing the world um from a lens of of having hard money instead of centralized banking. So I I I think it was fantastic. So, I I believe that at least as far as one can one one can learn from Saifedean and his philosophy that I understand what’s going on in this space from from cryptocurrency perspective. And I think that’s important. I think folks dismiss it or invest in it without really understanding what it is they’re doing, right? When you invest in Bitcoin or when you buy Bitcoin, you are purchasing a currency, a currency that is designed to not lose value, right? I I think that’s reasonable from a crypto I like I believe that Bitcoin over a long period of time may retain its value pretty well. I’m less confident that it will become adopted by most of the world as their currency and that the long-term ultimate value of Bitcoin is 1 21 millionth of the global money supply or at least the global cash balances. I think that a lot of things have to come true for that to happen very quickly. Um, you know, and like like the collapse of the United States government, for example, um, which I am not ready to bet on, um as as an individual. And furthermore, because of that, I think that Bitcoin as a is a potential great way to store value. For example, if you wanted to have a five-year cash cushion, I think that would be a great idea to put some of that cash cushion in dollars because you’re want to spend dollars. uh, we’re living in the United States, they’re not going to accept Bitcoin at the the bakery, most of the time. Um I’d put some of it in gold and maybe some of it in Bitcoin. I think that would be a very reasonable way to allocate funds. Um and I I would do that if I ever wanted to build that five-year reserve across a couple of currencies. I think though, however, that I am willing to take on that second job that we have to do in an inflationary society, which I thought was a great framework that he brought together. I want to do the job of CEO of Bigger Pockets and investor and steward of my wealth. And to that end, I believe that real estate, stocks, small businesses, those types of things are better investments than currencies. So, I may miss out if Bitcoin does in fact become the global reserve currency, um worth 1 21 millionth of the global money supply or 1 21 millionth of the world global economy, but um I believe that I’m going to do better overall if I invest in appreciating assets um that become in more in demand in real terms, like real estate.
Mindy: I tend to agree with you in this statement, Scott. Um, I can understand why someone after listening to this episode, feeling like they have a better understanding of Bitcoin, because now I do feel like I have a better understanding of Bitcoin. I’m still not raring to go out and just dump a bunch of money into Bitcoin. If you think that this is something you want to be I I hesitate to use the word invested in. I don’t invest in yen, I don’t invest in euros. I don’t invest in Bitcoin, so I hesitate to use the word investment, but if you want to put some money into Bitcoin, don’t dump it all in. When we had this huge drop in Bitcoin value in 2022, I saw people who put like their life savings into this. This is their only in investment and that’s they watched it tumble. It was at 60 and they’re like, oh, it’s going to go higher. And they watched it now go down to 15 and they’re crushed and I think they’re losing money because they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re investing, they’re putting all of their eggs in one basket, they’re doing the exact wrong thing when it comes to investing and saving for the future and, you know, uh, I I hesitate to recommend, like I wouldn’t put all of my eggs in one stock basket either. I invest heavily in the stock market, but that’s not the only place that I invest my money. I also have my money in real estate. I have my money in a lot of different things. Um, it’s it’s all in the United States. I am heavily uh pro the US. So, you know, I guess in that term I’m I’m all in one basket there, but honestly, if the US collapses, we have way bigger problems. But I I think that if this is something that you want to do, like be cautious when you’re dipping your toe in. If you’ve got $50,000, don’t put all $50,000 of those dollars into one thing. Try it out with $100 or $1,000. I mean, even $1,000 out of $50,000 is a lot of money to put in one thing. But try it out and see what happens and watch the, watch the price and watch the roller coaster and see how you do with that before you throw more money into it. I’m not totally against Bitcoin now with his explanation, but again, I’m not chomping at the bit to go dump some money in there. Looks like I’ll have a conversation with Carl.
Scott: Yeah and so look, I’ll I’ll lead this with the the part, I think Bitcoin is a, you should think of it as digital gold. That’s how I think of it, right? And I think that’s a very compelling take and I think that’s a really powerful thing. And here here’s Warren Buffet on gold, right? If you took all the gold in the world, it would make a cube roughly 60 feet, 67 ft on a side. Now for that same cube of gold at the then current prices, it’d be worth about $7 trillion. That’s about a third of all the value of all the stocks in the United States. And for that same 7 trillion, he could at the time have bought seven Exxon Mobiles, all of the farmland in the United States, and have a trillion dollars of walking around money. And if you offered me the choice between some 67 foot cube of gold that’s still quoting him, and looking at it all day, you know, touching it, fondling it occasionally. Call me crazy, but I Warren Buffett I’ll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobiles. And I think that’s the the essence of my position on Bitcoin specifically and gold specifically is is why would I hoard a bunch of gold or digital gold and sit on it for a very long period of time instead of investing in income producing assets that can appreciate in value like Exxon Mobiles, Googles, Apples and land and real estate that produce income. So, that that that’s my position. There are really good arguments against that. If you believe that’s going to become the world Reserve currency, of course, it could it could appreciate more rapidly than those other investments that I personally make. But that’s that’s how that’s how I’ve backed out into my philosophy from all this.
Scott: So, if you think that Bitcoin’s going to become the world reserve currency and become 121 millionth of the global money supply, then yeah, you’d make a bet on or you’d put more, you’d allocate more to owning Bitcoin than to those investments that I just articulated. But for me, I feel like that’s a higher probability bet and there are still some questions about the speed and whether or not that will ultimately come to pass with wide scale Bitcoin adoption, at least in my lifetime. I couldn’t say it better than you Scott, so I’m not going to.
Mindy: Should we get out of here?
Scott: Let’s do it.
Mindy: Okay, that wraps up this fascinating episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying see you soon Baboon.
Scott: If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.
Mindy: Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kalyn Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.
Speaker 1: There’s a reason most big wealth management firms don’t like talking about flat fee planning. It’s because it puts the power and the profit back in your pocket. I’ve been working with David Jackson at domain money because I wanted a fiduciary who didn’t care about selling me products or making asset under management fees that grew as my portfolio grew. I wanted a partner who would look at my whole financial picture with all of its complexity and give me a personalized step-by-step road map to reach my goals faster. If you want a plan that’s built for your benefit, not your advisors, you need to check out biggerpocketsmoney.com/cfp. This is a promotion for domain money, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Bigger Pockets Money may receive compensation if you choose to work with domain money as a client. I, Scott Trench, am a current client of the domain money and receive non-cash compensation related to this promotional activity. This is not personalized investment advice. For the full disclosures, visit biggerpocketsmoney.com/cfp.
Speaker 1: When you’re ready to start your business, Northwest registered agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one. A business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost. Northwest registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. These are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email and phone number stay private. Don’t pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree.
Mindy: editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.
