Bitcoin in the European Union with Niko Jilch - FFS #113

0:00 Niko, welcome to the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for joining us. Hi Luke. Hi Knut. It's good to see you guys. Good to see you too, friend. it's been a while. We, we, we just, we were just talking about Madera, which feels like a lifetime ago, even though it was like day before yesterday or something. It was, it was a great time. I was actually, I, I, like literally two minutes ago, I finished watching, uh, a Michael Saylor interview where he talked about Madeira and, and, I do spend a lot of time listening to Michael Saylor interviews, you know, whenever, whenever I don't know what to do, I just Google Michael Saylor and see what he has to say Oh yeah. And you, you interviewed him once, right? Uh, at some, at the Innsbruck thing.

0:41 Wasn't, wasn't that where you interviewed him? twice, actually. So Innsbruck, which was the, the biggest, the biggest German speaking Bitcoin conference for 2022 and 2023. We had Michael, um, on, on, uh, on a remote interview when I, I had the honor to talk to him. It was fun. that's great. Uh, it's great to talk to Michael. Uh, but of course, it's great to talk to you too. You're a legend in the German speaking Bitcoin world. And for, for those of our listeners who aren't from that world, could you give them the TLDR on Niko Giltsch and your journey from Goldbug Journalism to Epic Bitcoin Maximalism.

1:21 Are you saying that there's Bitcoin outside the German speaking Yeah, a few. They're scattered here and there, but most of them are in the German speaking community, yes. so first of all, hi, thank you for having me. Um, it's, it's a pleasure. Uh, my name is Niko, Niko Jilch. I'm, uh, originally from, from Vienna, Austria, where I'm sitting right now as well. Um, I am one of the very few people who are, uh, Austrian by passport and economics. There isn't, there isn't many anymore, um, but, but, you know, I read my Mises, I read my Hayek. Um, long story short, I am, I'm a journalist. I've been, I've been covering economics, monetary policy, all that stuff, um, for almost 20 years now.

2:02 I've been with a mainstream paper, Die Presse, which is actually very old, very liberal, um, newspaper liberal in the classical liberal sense, whatever, you know, is, is, is, is still there. and I've, I've, I love working there for Almost 10 years I got my chance to write about gold, write about inflation, write about Bitcoin as well. I think I wrote one of the first mainstream articles about Bitcoin in 2013. I'm sure it was total shit. But I can't find it anymore, actually. So I'm just claiming it. But I did, I did write that. So, um, and, and for the last two and a half years, I've been building up my own little media company, which is basically based around my, my podcast in German.

2:47 It's called Das Bitcoin Bringt. It's the only German speaking Bitcoin podcast that's, um, uh, most of my episodes are recorded on site in my studio here in Vienna. Um, like I said, there is something that's, that's maybe not as, as well known outside of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the, the, the Bitcoin scene here is absolutely enormous. I think that there are about 40. Bitcoin maximalist podcasts out there, but I'm the only one who does it in the studio. I do everything on video as well. So I'm stronger on YouTube that I am on, on, on the podcast anyway. and then there is also the, the, the, the little known fact that, um, within Austria, which is a small country, we have 9 million people here.

3:30 Um, it's like a small version of Germany, but we're more, we're more laid back and more fun. I'm actually the only, the only Bitcoin podcast that I'm also. Uh, I'm, I'm claiming the title of a most, uh, uh, important finance podcast period because there isn't any other one that there is no finance channels here. We all watch the German stuff, but the finance stuff that gets produced here is very, very small. So yeah, it's, it's going well and I'm, I'm, I'm loving the work I've been, I'm very busy setting up my corporate structure right now. I'm also stacking a little bit of Bitcoin with my, with my company, which is a lot of fun. Um, and I'm trying to, to, to, to not, what I'm actually trying to do right now is I'm trying to not lose my focus now that the bull market is starting because I started in, February, 2022, which was at the end, like at the beginning of the bear market.

4:20 Right. So, so now that everything is, Everything feels, um, different, you know, there's BlackRock and the price is going up and, and I'm not trying to not lose my focus, but I'm also, so I'm trying to focus on my channel and my content because there's so much awesome content in, in, in, in, in English. There's lots of awesome content in German as well. I could do this in English, but I decided to do it in German because there's just more need, I think, for, for additional stuff. And also I'm trying to not, not to forget that there is like that 95 percent of the people out there haven't even thought about Bitcoin for one second in their life. I think this is important because I see this. I'm very happy to be on the Freedom Footprint show right now here in the Austrian parliament.

5:04 There is a symposium, a conference that's about degrowth and communism. So, um, so this is what I see. Uh, but I, I am very hopeful, very optimistic about the Bitcoin, um, about Bitcoin as a, as a tool for, for freedom. And that's, you know, in, in the spirit of, of Jeff Booth, I'm trying to not concentrate on the stuff that I can't change. I'm trying to concentrate on the, on the positives, um, at the future. fantastic. And you mentioned the word liberal there and how it's, um, and you had to point out that you mean in the classic sense. Because isn't it fascinating how that world, how that word has completely shifted meaning to mean not liberal at all.

5:47 Right now I'm, um, in preparation for Prague where I will be talking about, um, so one, one of my, my pet peeves and one of my hobbies is, you know, the Soviet Union and, and Eastern Europe and, and all that stuff. I've been like reading and working about this for, for years. Like starting in school, right. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I'm sitting here. I wrote my, my, my thesis at the end of, of, of school when I was 18. I wrote it about the red terror and the Lenin and Stalin, um, which basically, you know, um, made me immune to the whole communism thing during university. but yeah, I mean, One of the things that, that, that changes when you go down the road to socialism and, and, and, and communism is that, you know, words lose their meaning.

6:32 You, you, you, you stop defining words in a, in a coherent sense. And, and, and it, it, it all ends in a, in a complete mess where you basically have to read the party newspaper every day to know what words have what meaning. Um, yeah, liberal, liberalism in my, in my opinion. Ice is the idea that every individual is able to decide what they do with their life and in extension with their wealth. That's the Bitcoin thing. But of course, especially in Western Europe, this has been. You know, it's disappearing my, my, my thesis. So what I'm trying to do in Prague is, um, I'm trying to find, or for my, for my keynote that I'm doing in Prague, I'm trying to find, um, um, lessons from the revolutions of 1989 lessons for the, for the Bitcoiners, because there are, there is some stuff in there.

7:27 There was a, they were fighting against an, an, um, you know, nonsensical, Disfunctioning, centrally planned, monetary and economic system. And we are also fighting against the nonsensical, failing, centrally planned, monetary and economic system. So there are some, some, um, um, I'm not finished with my work yet. Um, but yeah, here in Western Europe, um, here in Western Europe, it's, it's interesting. It's, uh, Liberal, especially in the U. S. right, liberal in the U. S. means basically you're a leftist. Um, while the German word liberal still means that you think there is some, you know, something to the idea that the individual can do whatever they want.

8:16 Um, but then we have to put a classic liberal on it because of course there's neoliberal and all that kind of stuff. Right. yeah, I mean, I love the idea. I, I say recently, but it's more like a year ago that I read, uh, Michael Malice's The White Pill. Uh, have you heard about that book or even read it? I'm sorry. No, It's about the Soviet Union and the East Bloc and its history, and it's written as sort of with, you know, villains and heroes and sort of Thatcher and Reagan being the heroes, and written in a, like, in, joyful of a way of Uh, you can when you're writing about something that was basically a giant prison for everyone for 70 years, and, and how, how horrible the Soviet Union really was, and, uh, a lot about how the West sort of, since mass media and academia are filled with people who lean that way, and that was true like 50 years ago too, that they wanted to, um, to hush down the whole thing.

9:21 Whenever they heard bad news from the Soviet Union, they, they wouldn't, they, they deliberately didn't believe it because they wanted, they wanted the Soviet Union to, to be this, uh, socialistic paradise, which it never was. But some people in the West still viewed it that way because they had this dream, uh, since they subscribed to the same ideology. have the same thing today, right? I mean, queers for Palestine, basically, right? It's, it's, it's, when they, if they would go to Palestine, they get killed, but still, you know, um, it's, it's the same story. It's, it's, and we, you, you still have this today with, with other, uh, Um, ideologies, lesser so with communism, but, um, maybe because we have more communism at home today.

10:07 And I, and I say this, when I say this, if I say this in German and people will just, you know, but there is like, there is an EU, uh, election coming up in June. The communists are literally on the ballot, like literally they're calling themselves communists and they're all about, you know, affordable housing now, which of course. It's not affordable because of inflation. I don't have to tell you this, but people do not understand this. And, and I think what's very important about Bitcoin in this, in this context is that, um, we have something to strive for. We have something that we can see that, that, that offers an alternative and offers a different world. When I was, um, in a gold bug, basically, I still like gold. I'm not one of those Bitcoiners who say now that we have something better, gold is going to go away.

10:51 I don't think that's going to happen, but that's not the point here. The thing with gold is that gold bugs have always been very, you know, frustrated because the best thing they could ever hope for is that the governments that they hated, um, would take the gold and put, go back on a gold standard. And that basically put a huge, um, price control on their own gold, which is, which is a gold standard. and with Bitcoin and I, I honestly, I couldn't. For a long time, I didn't believe in Bitcoin because for these reasons, I thought it would, it was too good to be true. I thought it was, it was too far fetched. and I thought that we are going to go back to a gold standard or not a gold standard, but something, something connected to gold, let's just say. and this is the same when you look, uh, when you look at the, at the history of Eastern Europe, but I'm here in Vienna, so we have lots of influence from Eastern Europe.

11:38 We are, we are in the middle of Europe, right? We have all the, the Eastern bloc countries, right, right around the corner. We have many people. Here from, from, from Eastern Europe and, and when we have discussions on, on, on Bitcoin with communists, which sometimes happens, um, I always can count on, on, on the brothers and sisters from, from the East to shut up the communists. Um, and I hope that this goes on, uh, but, uh, there's no guarantee. and the difference, I think, between, um, between countries like, like, uh, uh, the Czech Republic, um, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, um, who have been countries at least, they knew, East, East Germany is the perfect example. Um, they knew that they are, that they are, um, that there is something, they knew what they wanted.

12:22 They knew what they could strive for. Yes. In the beginning, there was lots of lies about, about, you know, about, you know, about, Capitalism and the fascists on the other side of the wall. But at some, you know, news came through and, and, and, and, uh, with the years, everybody knew, okay, what I want is to go. I want to be like the West. Right. and I think this is important that we have something because with, with gold, we didn't have that with Bitcoin. We do. Um, and, and I think. Without being too harsh with our, with our friends in Russia, I think that that's something that happened in Russia. Like people were so disillusioned and they could never think of really joining the West in the same way as Poland and the Czechs and whatever it did. Um, that, that, that they still don't have this, this perspective today, to be quite honest.

13:08 And so, yeah, Bitcoin can, can help as a, like a lightning rod of freedom, by the way, the whole story with Reagan and Thatcher being heroes is, let's just say it's, it's, it's murky. It's yeah, yeah. Well, they're not literally painted as heroes, but they, they have a Heroic function in the story, in the, um, in the end game of the, uh, the fall of the, the Soviet Empire. Uh, my, my, uh, another German friend of ours, uh, Volker told us about, uh, or told me rather about, when East and West Germany, United and how, how that's like, people always portray that as like the, the east, dropping all the communism and becoming westernized.

13:53 But what they leave out is the opposite effect and how East Germans came to West Germany and asked people questions like, oh, you have to pay for child care? We never had to pay for child care in East Germany. Oh, you have to pay for health care? We never had to pay for health care. And how that influenced German politics after after 89, uh, and how, how West Germany became more, socialistic because of, of these, the influx of these ideas. It's, it's not only that, it's not only that, it's also that, that after the fall of the wall, West Germany did not have to show the East that capitalism works better anymore.

14:35 That's the whole idea of, you know, the end of history, um, this whole, we won, it's over, you know, um, and now we, we know we, we didn't win, that's why I, I, I absolutely love going to Eastern Europe because people there still understand, um, that, that they, they can never go back to this, to the system. They can never, they, they have seen it. And this is why it's so ridiculous when you have like a DeGroff conference here in the Austrian parliament or you have, um, literal communists on the ballot and people, you know, marching the streets talking about, about communism and socialism being the solution, um, because that's only happening in, in, in Western Europe. There was a, there was an amazing story. It's a couple of years ago.

15:15 Um, when, when the Greta Thunberg movement was still going strong, they had a huge, um, a conference of, of, of youths. I think it was in Germany. I'm not sure, but I think it was in Germany because it was, it was close to the public. But there was one reporter from the German Bild Zeitung, the huge tabloid in Germany, um, who was there incognito. And she wrote a report and she said, it's, it was funny because, because, um, all the, the, the young people from West Germany, like France and Germans and whatever, They went on stage and they said, we need to do this and we need to do that in order to stop climate change. And then the East, the East German, um, uh, people at the East, the East Europeans, they said, wait a minute, it sounds a lot like socialism you're talking about.

15:57 Right. Um, and then it was all a big fight, you know, uh, because, because this is literally a red line. You should never cross it. Of course we are very close to crossing it. I mean, we have actually crossed it in, um, Helmut Kohl, the chancellor, who was a German chancellor when the wall fell, he said that um, after, you know, when the state's part of the economy is more than 50 percent, that's where he draws the line. That's where it's socialism. Now it's far more than that. Um, yeah, it's very sad. It's very sad. And I think that's, I've actually thought for a long time, even before Bitcoin, I thought that unfortunately we still have to go through the collapse of our version of socialism before we can, before we can have, a fresh, uh, A fresh look at, at, at, at capitalist, uh, at market economy ideas.

16:49 And when you look at, at, um, at Argentina, that's exactly what's happening, right? Um, so I think that looking at Argentina is, is, is, is a bit of looking into future. Yeah. Uh, I totally agree. And, um, as you say in the East, it's much more common for people to understand that they shouldn't obey that the road to freedom doesn't go, never goes through more obedience. So, so they, the government mandates stuff there too, but they just don't. Give a shit the way everyone here does and, and, um, also, uh, it makes me think of a Reagan quote, actually, about that every generation, freedom is never to be taken for granted.

17:32 It's for every generation to fight for. It's, I'm paraphrasing now, uh, by the way, I saw a communist party trying to, uh, gain political ground in Canada, which, which I find, uh, the, uh, Uh, where, where Luke was born. And I find that so hilarious because like, dude, you're already living in a commie utopia. Like it's all Canada's been communist for a long time. Right. That for at least a couple of years now, I mean, pure communist. That, that's why I'm so thankful for, uh, and that's why it's important to differentiate between when you look at the German speaking world, and it's very important. It's a huge market. It's a huge, um, uh, Bitcoin contingent as well.

18:14 Um, and there's many reasons why Bitcoin is huge in Germany. There are still people there who want to live free. There are still people there who want to, you know, build quality products. You know, I always say that if you're, if If you let the Germans, if you cut the taxes by 70 percent and if you, if you just erase 90 percent of the stupid regulations, the Germans will be, you know, at least the second biggest economy within like two weeks again. Right. Um, you know, just tell them, you know, they can build the cars, they can be, they can go as fast as they want and, and, and, and they don't care about the, the, any, any regulations, but, but. Thanks. When you look at the mentality, this is quite important. Um, the Swiss are, you know, way, have a way better system of governing the Northern EU.

18:59 They have a direct democracy. When you go to Switzerland, you really have the feeling that people there still have this idea, at least this, this, they want to contribute. And they also want to, to, um, have their say and their, their, their voice is heard, right? And you have, you know. You have techs, techs competition between the cantons, the states, Germany is a lot different. Germany is very, um, you know, there's a rule you have to obey to the rule. Everybody obeys to the rule. Why? Because there's a rule, right? That's Germany. I, I saw that in, in Munich, uh, like, uh, I was crossing the street and everybody stood still. I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with these people? And there's a red light. There's no cars.

19:40 But everyone just didn't cross the street. Like, what's wrong with you guys? So that's, so that's, that's, that's Germany. And also you have to be fair. Germany is, is, is consists of like 150 states. they are also very different. Yeah, it sounds like a South, Southern Germany thing to be that obedient. it's as a whole, the Germans, they are like that. Right. Um, and, and, and I, I love them, but, but they are like that. And then here in Austria, it's, it's, it's different again, right? We are more like, um, like the Eastern Europeans, we, there's a, like, there's a rule. It's funny that you have a rule. Interesting. Thank you for the rule.

20:21 It's like, it's more like guidelines. which is of course it's, it's when the rules are good, right? Like, like when the rules make sense, then of course a country like Germany is extremely efficient at what they do. When the rules are stupid, then they are extremely efficient at enforcing stupid rules, which is, which is a horrible situation to be in. Yeah, I'm trying to think of a historical example of Germany being efficient and horrible at the same time. Hmm. Yeah. Hey, maybe, uh, maybe from one thing to another off of that brilliant, uh, brilliant segway or attempted segway by Knut there. Niko, so we were, we last saw each other specifically in the Madeira airport.

21:03 The, the actual moment that, uh, that the new all time high was broken in the, in, in Euro. Not the, not the, for the rest of the world, the U. S. dollar all time high was considered more important generally, and we, we all know as well that the all time high hasn't actually been broken in purchasing power terms, but we'll leave that aside, but everything since then has sort of been this kind of flat waiting, the having sort of happened, but nothing has really happened, uh, uh, At the same time, though, there's all this building going on and, uh, and kind of a, uh, mixed optimism, pessimism, something like that.

21:44 So what's your feeling about the state of Bitcoin right now and maybe short term outlook on how things look? I think it's important what you said about the purchasing power. Um, when you look at Bitcoin price in, in gold, we haven't reached an all time high yet. Um, and it really, honestly, that time, It shocked me a little because it wasn't just about Bitcoin. It was, we had ultimizing the, in the stock markets, we had ultimizing gold and ultimizing Bitcoins all at the same time, which for me, it just means one thing that the basement is going stronger than ever. Um, and that really, really, you know, this combined with about two hours of Michael Saylor really gets you, gets you thinking.

22:29 Um, and, and, and, I really like for me, this has been a process of about almost 15 years, not even starting with Bitcoin. And I have arrived at a point where I don't consider my paper money to be worth a lot anymore. You know, I still hold too much of it and I get nervous all the time, but you know, it's a process. and I think that this is the most important trend right now when you look at, when you look at, um, we've, I, I'm talking about Argentina so much because in 2008, I actually lived in Argentina and I, and I saw, um, the beginning of the inflation that just now, uh, escalated 10 years later, even more than 10 years later, right?

23:12 When I, when I was there, I could buy, I could buy four pesos with one euro. Now it's, I don't know, it's, I hundreds, I, I don't even know how much it is, but it's, it's, it's enormous and still then efficient was super high there, you know? Um, and when you would, would order pizza, you would get a new menu every two weeks with, with, with the prices rising. And this is something that I can see now here in, in, in the heart of Europe and in Vienna and in Germany. Um, and it's, it's really, it's really something that, that I worry about a lot. So when you ask me about Bitcoin, honestly, this is the, this is, this is what Bitcoin is. Been, um, built for this is, this is literally, I mean, I, I, I have to like, that's why I'm so happy to talk to you guys because, because I really have to moderate myself when I'm, you know, I, I get interviewed and on, on, on television and, and stuff like that, and I have to, like, they ask me like, to, what are I gonna do now?

24:07 And I'm like, and my head is like, bit, bit, bit, bit quiet, but you can't be, you know, you, you, you can't go this fast. You have to be, you have to be, you have to know your audience, right? And, and, worry about our audience. You can go Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin as much as you like here. um, and, and it has, it has been, you know, built for this. And now when you ask me about the state of Bitcoin, um, you know, I might, I, there is, this is not just Michael, um, I do have a series going on with, with, with a guy called Peter Kotosek, who is an Austrian, um, um, entrepreneur, and he's also an artist. Uh, the thing is he's 84 years old.

24:51 And he has been a Bitcoiner since 2012. He made all his money as an entrepreneur, um, in the, in the, in the boom phases of the, of the computer, not the internet, the computer. So he's the guy who built basically with his company, he built all the computers in the governments and in the banks here that are still running basically. So running on old IBM computers with like two, two, two, uh, megabytes of, of, of storage. The whole financial system is basically based on that stuff. Right. The Fiat financial So he's trying to redeem himself, in other words. No, I mean, and he has this, and he is so interesting and I'm, I've been doing, I think about, um, 12, like I've been doing, I've been 18, 18 episodes with him already.

25:34 Um, so basically dumping his brain and he, he has this perception of Bitcoin as capital just like Michael Saylor does. And I think this is extremely important. Um, I think that this is the next, the next step in a, in a, in a very, very broad sense. I think we are basically for the next 10 years, we're going to still be in the store of value phase by meaning that we just first, we do have to find a price. Right. I get, I get asked, I did two interviews. One called me up, said there is a German, um, um, uh, sporting goods brand. They want to sell their stuff for Bitcoin.

26:14 And then the other guy is like, should we put Bitcoin into hotels and use it as a currency in hotels? And I'm like, yeah, all these ideas are possible, but I still like, like, I, I still don't believe that this is going to be the next 10 years. I don't think that, because the question always comes up, why should people pay in Bitcoin if they believe that it goes up forever, basically. And this is true. Um, so I do pay Bitcoin because I like to do that, but, um, it's, it's more like a hobby. Um, and I, I don't want to parrot Michael Saylor, but, but I think what he's saying is basically true that we have entered the gold rush phase, the Bitcoin rush phase of Bitcoin. Um, and, and it's very important for us to, that's why I said in the beginning, it's very, for me, it's almost when you go outside 90, 99 percent of people, 99 I haven't seen it yet.

27:05 So we think it's, it's all so obvious and it is obvious once you have, you know, um, you know, put your mind to it, but we're still so early, which is also a meme, right? Um, but we are early in this, in this phase, but we are now, and I think this is important and this is also the reason why we saw the price go up. Um, we have officially entered. Let's just say the official age of Bitcoin, right? It's now an official asset class recognized by the most important capital markets and regulators in the world. That's new. When I started doing my podcast, there was still a risk that this would never happen.

27:46 And now it happened, but it also teaches you that just because that just happened, it's not like everybody out there will, you know, switch on their heads and say, ah, I should buy some Bitcoin. And now it's real. You know, it just, it takes time. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned store of value there, and I have a slightly nerdy question to ask you as a fellow Austrian economics nerd. Because I had this thought about store of value and what's wrong with the term. Because the term rubs me the wrong way, since value is subjective, right? So you can't store value. It's inherently subjective. Wrong in a sense. Uh, so here we are out there.

28:27 Uh, and Mises in human action describes money as a first and foremost, a medium of exchange with sort of like, uh, so if you're a Mises fan, you might Misinterpret Bitcoin and hop onto the Bitcoin cash crap or like, so, so the way I like to sort of debunk that to myself is describing, it's, it's just the insight that, uh, medium exchange. Uh, can be through four dimensions and not only three. So store of value is actually just medium of exchange through time. Uh, and you are trading, saving is just the act of trading of exchanging something with your future self.

29:12 So you're exchanging stuff with what is practically another person. If you wait 15 years, all the cells in your body have been renewed and you're, you're another person and that's the person you're trading with. So store of value is an inferior term to medium of exchange over time in my head. What do you think? So, so I, I always, as a, as a media person, I always think about can we use this? Will people understand it? And then the question that you had had, I think that it's, it's a very interesting perspective. Let's just put it this way. I think if I, if I would have to sit in a, in a, in a talk show and explain to people that, no, no, it's not a store failure.

29:57 It's a medium of exchange over time. I'm exchanging, um, with my future self. Don't you get it? Um, then it's, it's, it's going to be very hard. On the other hand, people understand that. Why do they save? right? Maybe store of value. You're right. Probably store of value might be, might be the wrong term, but saving, I think people do get saving and saving does not. use the word value, right? Um, I think from a Misesian perspective, when you look at the regression theorem, he did say that it needs to find, um, um, a value at some point, right? That would be the idea of, um, the pizza day. Yes, and it proves the regression theorem.

30:39 It doesn't, doesn't like this discarded. It proves it. exactly, and, and it's like, and the funny thing about the pizza day, it's, it's, it's that we, we celebrate the pizza day, but 90 percent of the people don't know the regressive theorem, but we still do it. Actually, by the way, did you know that the first, that the first transaction that has ever taken place on the internet proper? was also for ordering a pizza. Oh, really? So the human race has an obsession with ordering pizza online. Yeah, yeah. And pineapple top. Niko, do you want a Mises regression theorem? We covered this with Kansa as well, but for anyone who didn't see that one. So basically, basically, and I hope that I'm doing this justice.

31:23 The idea is that you can only use something as a medium of exchange or as money if it had value yesterday. So you have to find something that you, that you can, that you can reference to. And this is something that has been, um, has been discussed a lot in Bitcoin circles, um, because it's not, so basically when you look at a traditional currency, it all starts with gold. And why does it start with gold? Because at some point, you know, gold was, was valued for its non monetary purpose, but it was store of value in that gold. And at some point you've figured out that we can exchange the gold and then, and then you can, you can, you can regress the value of, of, of fiat currency.

32:03 You can still regress it back to gold. And, and that also applies to Bitcoin. If you can exchange it for that fiat currency or gold, then the value basically You know, transacted in the, in the, in the regression theorem. Um, I hope this did it justice. I I would put it slightly differently and say that there has to be, logically, has to be a first point where the thing was used as money. Where the thing was used as a medium of exchange. There has to be, someone would have had to want the thing from the other guy and accepted it as a medium of exchange at some point. If you just Do that, had to have value yesterday, if you backtrack back to the starting point.

32:46 And the thing about Pizzaday is that for the first time in human history, we have an actual first transaction that we can point to that proves Mises Regression Theorem, that there was a first use case. and you have to, and in order to do that, you have to, you have to, you know, put some value, somebody needs to put some value on that thing, right. In order to, to exchange it, even if you, if you do it for a joke, even if you do it for a joke for pizza, right. If you, and, and what you said, Knut, I want to go back there because it's important because it made me extremely bullish on Bitcoin. Which is not news, but the idea of being able to plan into the future with at least certainty on the money side.

33:30 You never have the certainty. You know, I don't have the certainty that I can, I'm alive in 15 years. Um, but, but I, today I don't have the certainty that I'm alive and I also don't have the certainty that the money will be there. And, and I think this is what makes Bitcoin so powerful because, because people don't understand that they don't have the certainty yet. So we grow up thinking we have the certainty. We grew up thinking when you save the money it will be there in the future. And once you've been living through failing fiat currency regimes, you know that this is a lie. People in Argentina know that this is a lie, people in Turkey know that this is a lie, but people in Western Europe were For the same reason, you know, socialism and communism are now, uh, still going strong.

34:20 They still don't know that this is alive. Um, and, and it started to dawn on people. It started to dawn on people. And once you have reached a point where you lost faith in the currency, then you start Basically questioning everything. You can see this, you can see this in, um, in, in Bitcoin circles as well, right? There's a phase for, for many Bitcoiners where they first, they work a thousand hours on Bitcoin at the currency system. And then they say, Oh shit. Okay. I got it now. I got it. I have something that's absolutely scarce. I'm going to save in Bitcoin. And now I have time to look at the food and the weather and whatever.

35:03 And then they start to be experts for a while. and, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's a start and I think that Bitcoin is so powerful because it shows you an alternative and the idea of saving or transacting with your future self is basically saving, right? Um, and this is something that always motivated me because I think that people are savers. I don't think people need to be investors. Uh, I think that, you know, investing in the stock market, investing in real estate only for the purpose of saving is basically stupid. That's why I started with gold. but people who are very, very, very, very well.

35:46 It took me a while to understand like the whole fiat money investing scheme. There are so many interests there because there's so much money to be made by talking and managing and, and. if I may interrupt, like, the way I see it is that people only invest into the stock market and property because the money is broken. That's why we're forced to invest in stocks and real estate, right? but we've been doing it for so long that there is a whole industry that's built around in this, this need for investing your broken money. And this industry is opposed to Bitcoin every level.

36:26 It's not just the government. It's not just the central banks. It's everybody who's been talking about ETFs and, um, dollar cost averaging into stocks and real estate and, and, uh, the, the, the finance. people, right? They, they think they've figured it out. And now Bitcoin basically solves the problem that they're solving very complicated. Bitcoin solves it in a, in a simple and easy way, but they don't want that because they're the whole edifice, the whole building of, of, of, of thoughts and ideas is built on the whole fiat on failing fiat. It

40:17 Yeah, so, uh, another more philosophical question, if you will, um, in your mind, in a hyperbitcoinized world, is there even room for a financial sector at all, or does that just disappear? is a very, very good question. It's, it's a lot smaller. It's a lot smaller. Um, when you look at, when you look at the history of the so called financial sector, it hasn't been this big for a long time. Um, uh, so this is a very, very fiat phenomenon that 70 years ago, banks were not the biggest buildings in every city. Um, when you look at, when you, when you watch, when you watch Wall Street, the first movie right from the eighties.

41:01 Gordon Gekko. Gordon Gekko, the first scene is an old guy stomping into the office and saying the whole country has gone to hell since Nixon went off the gold standard. Right. That's the first scene. That's basically setting the whole movie up. They got it. Maybe on a subconscious, uh, um, but they got it in the eighties. They knew that this was basically that the peak, uh, of the fiat money experiment. so do we need a financial sector? Absolutely not in that, in that, in that size. And when you look at, when you look at Europe, I mean, when you look at, uh, Germany and Austria who had very, very hard currencies and the people in Germany and Austria are still money savers, right?

41:48 I don't know how, I think in Finland is actually lots of stocks now, but in, in, in, uh, uh, in Germany and Austria, 77 percent of the people even own stocks. So the financial. The financial industry in Germany is always complaining about the fact that Germans don't even want to partake in the financial industry, right? So it's actually very, very small. Um, and there is no real capital markets in Europe at any level compared to, to the U. S. because people still don't want to do that. They just want to put their money in the bank and send it to the future self, right? That's exactly what you talked about, Knut. Yeah. And, uh, the, like, it used to be that the entrepreneur employed, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Uh, hired an economist to do the numbers for him and now it's the other way around.

42:38 The entrepreneur has to go to a fucking TV show like the Dragon's Den and beg for money basically, or beg VC investors to like, so you have to beg the people who should actually be the servants for money. And by the way, do you know what country in the world has the world record of number of economists, uh, uh, employed by the state ever? Of course, the Soviet Union. Yes. That's a good, you have won tonight's star prize. Um, I know this from Rahim Dagestan again, who told me, told me, but it makes sense. It makes a lot of sense, you know, because, you know, because economists are basically completely useless.

43:23 Yeah, but it's the same thing. Like, as you say, the bankers, uh, banks are the, uh, taking over the city centers of the world and it is communism. It's, it is, it is communism. A, a very, at least a very similar phenomena when, when economists all of a sudden became, become a, uh, uh, an elite class of people. So it makes more sense. It makes more sense when you, when you don't think about communism and socialism, but you think about the managerial classes, basically. So you have people in offices who think that they can design stuff. It may be politicians, it may be economists, it may be bankers. Um, but the problem with the fiat money system that is that it gives the bankers enormous power.

44:07 And, and of course, they don't want to give that power away. And, and I don't know enough about, you know, the real high levels of finance to think about, like, to, to come to a conclusion here. It's, it's, but, but there is something I can tell you that from my, from my own, um, encounters with, like high level bankers that, that they, like with. Other people, um, I think they instinctively know that they don't need, that they don't want Bitcoin because Bitcoin is bad for their business and bad for their power. So they just, they, they want like shit coins. They can, they can use them to, to build products, you know? But they started out as banks, right?

44:48 That's why I said, I mean, in the end, I do think that there is going to be banks who custody Bitcoin. I know that's a, it's a touchy subject, but I mean, we already have those honestly. So, so, so classical banks, traditional banks will, will do that too. But I think it's still a long way off. Um, you know, It's, it's, it's, I don't know. I really, I mean, but yeah, the idea, the idea of a, of a, of no financial sector, a very, very small financial sector. Of course it makes sense. I mean, when you look at, when you look at the idea of having, having hundreds of thousands of people just pushing around paper to trade money around, it makes absolutely no, there's no point. no. There's nothing productive being done.

45:29 Like there's nothing being built. There's no. There's no overarching, you know, boon to humanity because people are doing this. Exactly. And you know who gets that, funnily enough, the leftists. Yeah, they get it, it's just that they have the wrong, they draw the wrong conclusions about it. So they, they, their conclusions, and this is why, why, um, why the, the, the capitalists and the banks and the governments, they don't have a problem with, with leftist protest and vokism and stuff is because whatever they do, it doesn't really matter that the topic, it always leads to more government. Of course, the solution, the solution is always communism.

46:10 The problems differ, but the solution is always more, more state control, for some odd reason. for more state control. And then the people who have the control, they say, okay, no problem. We'll take more control. You want to give me more power? No problem. Give me more power. And then they do some token policies to keep the people busy, but the stuff that they really do, we probably never, you know, figure out. there's, there's, here's a point that Jeff Booth points out often. That, uh, like regardless of the protest, even if it's the yellow vests in France, or, or, you know, just stop oil, or, no matter what the protest is, if it's a quote unquote left wing or right wing protest, uh, the destruction that follows when people move.

46:52 are upset and and there's civil unrest and they break things is that the the system that is causing the problem is is being reinforced because they are all of these reparations will have to be paid for by someone and the politicians aren't gonna they have only one way to extract money to pay for stuff and that's to take it from the people either via inflation or taxes so so it just reinforces the the problems the problems that are they they believe they're fighting I think, I think Jeff is brilliant. I learned a lot from him. I think that the, and this is interesting for Bitcoin perspective too, right? That's what I said. It's like the more energy you put into fighting something, you make it bigger, right?

47:36 It's like the idea, the idea of, um, somebody who is depressed, who has a problem to go to therapy, to just talk about this one problem just makes it bigger. Um, and this is interesting. This is why I try to, um, I don't know, even on a very small scale, when I, like, I go on Twitter, I don't go on Twitter a lot anymore because it just triggers me too much, but I go on Twitter and I think, ah, somebody on the internet is wrong. I have to, I have to say something and then I just delete it and I don't never send it because, because it's, it's, it's, and, and, and now this is interesting because the, the, the system, whatever the system, like, The governments, the bank, they give Bitcoin a lot of attention.

48:25 The ECB hates it so much. They're screaming at it all the time. They write stupid articles with stupid arguments. You see them foaming at their mouth, which is absolutely beautiful. If they didn't see Bitcoin as a real thing, or even as a threat, they wouldn't be doing this. Nobody cares one iota about what Ethereum does. No, they're Barbara Streisand ing the shit out of Bitcoin. Like that's what they're doing. And they cannot stop. And even with people who don't, even with people who don't have any like real connection to this thing, especially when the price goes down, you can see them like we have a famous TV anchor here in Austria who hates Bitcoin.

49:11 I've been arguing with him about Bitcoin in 2013. And I remember this because in 2013, I should not have argued with him. I should just have bought Bitcoin, right? But I didn't. I didn't. Instead, instead of buying Bitcoin, I used my time to argue with him and he still doesn't get it. And when it goes down, he's like, Oh, it's going down. It's dead now. See, I was right 10 years ago. Um, and when it goes up, of course he ignores it. And then he comes back out when it goes down. And, and the ECB is perfect. I mean, I, I'm trying to meme the, the idea of the ECB bottom into existence because their last, um, article, it was published in English as Bitcoin's last stand at the end of, um, November.

49:55 Um, but it was actually published in German on the exact day of the bottom. that's fantastic. And Christine Lagarde's famous quote, uh, if there is an escape hatch, people will use it or if the, yeah, the best ad for Bitcoin ever uttered by any human being. It's so good. Imagine, imagine you're Christine Lagarde's adult son, Yes. and she's talking to world media about you fucking up crypto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. Uh, no, and, and this is so true. Like the thing you said about Twitter, I, I identify with that so much, or I can, uh, it's not that my pronouns are Twitter, but, uh, I, I identify, like, I recognize that so much, and we're, we're even writing about that in the new book and everything, how your focus and attention creates reality to a much larger extent than you think, and how you just reinforce stuff by, by, uh, uh, Paying it attention.

50:59 So like instead of fighting the people that are wrong on the internet Just focus on being right on the internet and the good things will follow It's like when you, it's like when you, I don't know, when you have a pimple on your face and you think you're ugly now because there's a pimple on your face and you think the whole world can only see the pimple on your face, but then you figure out that you First of all, they don't look at you that closely. And second, even if they do, they don't even see the pimple, right? No, and the more you fight the pimple the bigger it grows. Exactly. When you start, you know, trying to get rid of the pimple, it just grows and grows. Right. Um, and, and, and this is something that everybody has to learn.

51:39 And, and I think Bitcoin really helps with that. It's, it's, it's It took me, like, you asked me an hour ago about my story, it took me about seven years to, to get Bitcoin. I'm not saying I understand it, I think that that's going to be a lifelong process, but it took me seven years to, to get it. I started in 2013 and it took me until 2020. to take it really seriously. Um, and also because, because, you know, life gets in the way. It's not like we have time to, to now we do now that we decided that this is important after I, after my, my, my, my hardcore Bitcoin phase in 2020, I knew very, very quickly that I need to change jobs.

52:26 I need to change my whole career because I need time to talk to people about Bitcoin. And, and since I've done that, I'm, I'm a lot, um, easier to deal with because when I come home, uh, I don't have to talk about Bitcoin with my wife anymore. And she's very glad about that. She just, she doesn't want to hear about it. Oh, that reminds me of an, uh, when My wife first met Joni Appelberg, you know, the animator that I sometimes collaborate with Yeah, yeah. Hey, Joni, if you're watching and, uh, we were sitting in Riga having dinner together and he starts talking about longevity and microcellular biology and stuff, passionate about the subject and she's sitting there, Curtis, and just, okay, thank you.

53:13 Very interesting. And I just look at her and I'm like, Isn't this wonderful, darling? Like, you're, you're, you're in a situation now where every, there's a, there's 2000 people here and they're all like me. Isn't it wonderful? That's just, yeah. Uh, anyway, I had two questions on my mind and now 10 questions later, I'm going to get to the second question because I think this, uh, ties back to, you know, uh, talking about the state of Bitcoin. Luke's question about the state of Bitcoin right now. So, What's the state of the EU right now? Like, um, uh, how bad is it and how close to the Soviet Union are we in terms of, should the EU flag really have a red background color instead of a blue one?

54:04 Where are we and why? It is absolutely like, I always like get a, when, when there's a China EU summit and you have the red flag with a couple of stars on one side and the blue flag with a couple of stars on the other side, it's really, really horrid to see that. Right. Um, it's like, don't people see it? I don't understand. It's, it's, it's very hard for me, what I, what it's really, what, like what, what the EU is really lacking is any sort of positive coherence. Um, promise, basically, there's many things going wrong. I see the end result of inflation everywhere.

54:51 Um, and that, by that, I mean, um, basically the only way to, to fight the negative consequences of inflation is, A, more inflation and B, more control. That's what Christine Lagarde talked about, right? First of all, we're going to, we're going to inflate your money, but second, we're also going to do financial repression and that goes hand in hand with building up a surveillance state and we control what you can say, um, and, and all that kind of stuff, right? Um, they, they look at China. With the red flag, they look at their form of, uh, uh, of surveillance, of a surveillance state as, as a positive example, not as a negative, uh, thing. They talk about freedom, but I don't really see why they would, you know, have any right to talk about freedom.

55:39 then there is the real and obvious problem that the people in power, and this is true for most countries probably, but especially for the EU, they're idiots. And it took me a very long time. It took me a very long time to be, to like have the, the self confidence to say this, but the older you grow, the older you get, and the more you learn about people in life. And then you, you know, combine the idea of, of where do we stand with the EU? Where do we stand with Fiat, the Fiat system? And then if you look at what, what, what every country is doing, they, they send everybody they want to get rid of to Brussels.

56:23 Right. So, so you really have a toxic combination of incentives and stupidity. That's very, very scary because that's also something you asked me about the Soviet Union. I don't know about the Soviet Union. Like, I don't know how close we are. There is many things that we still have many freedoms. We still have that the Soviets never had. Right. And the people living in the Soviet Union never had. Right. But one thing you really had in the Soviet Union is that after a while and about 600 different purges by Stalin and his friends, only the really shifty idiots survived, right?

57:05 And that is scary because I don't, like, I don't see, when I look at the people doing regulations in Brussels, I don't see any real competence. And this is, that's scary. Maybe that's probably true in the US as well, but the US has more stable institutions. Yeah, do you think that's connected to the, uh, uh, to academia and the school system and the erosion of that, uh, throughout the years through socialists, utopian thoughts of everyone being equal, like ruining the meritocracy of that. So, so that obedience gets you the high grades rather than actually being good at stuff.

57:50 let's just say, let's, let's put it this way. The, the idea of an American entrepreneur, um, you know, if you finish, you finished college, it's a bad thing, right? In the US. As an entrepreneur in Europe, we wouldn't see that, right? I'm a college dropout that, you know, a university dropout that doesn't really work. Um, you see, the problem is this. I don't, I don't, I try to not think in absolutes. Um, what do I mean by that? There are things in Europe that are a lot better than in the U. S. there are, first of all, even within the fiat system, because the U.

58:32 S. has the exorbitant privilege of printing the dollar, um, we do have some sort of, um, game theory and some sort of, reference. What I mean by that is there's a reason that my old, um, diesel Golf that's standing outside like a small Volkswagen is going a thousand kilometers on one tank. And the American truck is going a thousand meters on the same tank. There's a reason, right? The reason is that, that, that there, that we still have to pay for stuff. The Americans don't. They just print the money. is a, there is something to be said about social security systems and, and even like, um, the idea of, uh, uh, a social market economy like we had in Germany and in Austria.

59:17 Um, the problem is that you forget that at some point you forget that the market economy has to, you know, make the money first before you distributed it. Right. Um, and then you go down the road to socialism. Um, there is something to be said about all these things, especially like one of my pet peeps would be food, right? Food that I get here in, in, in Austria, um, and in Italy and in Europe generally is so far superior to the U S that I do, I wouldn't even know how to live there, honestly. Like Americans watching this, they're like, Oh, my beef is grass fed, right? And we don't even, I don't even know what, what else there is. Right. no, that's what cows eat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that's what cows eat.

59:58 Yes. So, so, so there are like advantages and I don't know. Like it's, it's, it's. I'm sure that it's a mistake to, to attribute all the negatives in Europe to the EU and all the positives to what's happening in the nation states. That's definitely bad. Um, the, the, the basic idea of the EU of having France and Germany in one entity, not fighting each other is, is still important. I mean, we're going into a phase with more nationalism, more, more, uh, potential conflict and really don't want, uh, uh, a repeat of world war one or two in Europe.

1:00:40 I think that that's something we should all agree on. but the combination of socialist tendencies in the nation states and on the EU level is really, really toxic. And I don't know how we're going to get out of this. I really don't, I have no, like, I have no idea. I Yeah, you do. Yes, you do. mean Bitcoin? Yes. Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, if you have, if you have, if you have some sort of, um, of a true cost of stuff, right. Um, if you, yeah, then that would help. I mean, if you look at what's happening in, in, in, um, uh, just right today that, uh, Turkey has now finally figured out that they cannot, that MMT is not working.

1:01:25 And, and they cannot just print the money and they just decided to basically, uh, cut the state in half. Uh, they're not gonna, you know, have new, new, new employees in the state business. They're not even gonna buy new cars. If it's not an ambulance, it's not going to get a bought, they're not going to build any new buildings. They don't have the money anymore. They're fucked. Um, so this is something that, that at some point, if there is, if, if reality clashes with, with, with, um, the costs, with the costs get too high, then maybe we can get back to some sort of, of, but like I said, I, I honestly think that Uh, we need some sort of big crisis and then we'll see what a, what a, what a European, where the EU is standing, if it's still there or not.

1:02:10 Um, it's very hard to say, I Yeah. Let's just all, we can all just hope that hyperbitcoinization precedes hyperinflation because that's, that's the hopeful part, right? Otherwise it's going to be tough. mean, I mean, I, I, I, I'm going to say this we talked about, like I'm talking about, uh, escapes, it's, it's, it's very much part of the same coin, right? Because, because hyperinflation is, is a collapse in the, in the trust, trust, trust, trust It's like a collapse in the demand for money, or a collapse in the demand for currency. So if people demand Only Bitcoin and don't demand a euro anymore. That would lead to hyperinflation, but, uh, but the flip side also, it would also lead to hyperbitcoinization.

1:02:55 yeah, it would. Um, but, but I don't think that we are there yet. I think that, that one of the reasons why, why, uh, the Europeans desperately want the stupid digital euro is because they're, they're not actually scared of Bitcoin. They're scared of the dollar. And they should be. Yeah, should be. They should be very scared. yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, this reminds me, your, your, um, um, description of social democracy, let's say, there, uh, reminds me of another quote from two people we mentioned in the beginning of the show, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and one of my favorite Thatcher quotes is, uh, The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money.

1:03:39 Yes. And, and, and yeah, and we haven't yet. We haven't yet. That's, that's my point. We haven't like Western Europe hasn't run out of other people's money yet. We are not even close. So, so I see, I see, I, this could take 20 more years, yeah. And it's also why, why, uh, people like the Scandinavian model gets credited, uh, by American leftists a lot because like, uh, when, when Americans want an example of well functioning socialist states. They point at Scandinavia. And what they don't realize is that the Scandinavian countries have had stock markets for far, far longer than most other countries in the world.

1:04:22 And also that the biggest companies in Sweden were all started before 1950. So, so What has happened since is basically just the running out of other people's money part. uh, but it gets wrongly credited for everything good, uh, in those countries. One thing, one thing we're absolutely missing in Europe. And one thing that the Americans still have or two things is a respect for personal liberties. And the belief in capitalism, basically, like the market economy, the belief that somebody can build up something from nothing and that that's a good thing, right?

1:05:05 We live in a world where, um, you know, there is this discussion, what has been, you know, what came first, the chicken or the egg? When it comes to companies or employees, I don't think we can discuss this, right? The companies came first. They needed the employees. And of course, I respect anybody who says we are, even you can do a union, whatever, you know. Um. Do whatever, but you have to respect the business people and when you look at the history, what you said about Sweden is very interesting. When you look at the history of Western Europe and the companies that have been built in Western Europe, the giants of industry, when you look at the German car industry, when you look at German, whatever industry, it has been a story out of the ashes of World War II in a world where they were so destroyed.

1:06:00 That, that there wasn't any money there for some sort of thick social, socialist layer. You just had to get to work. And you had Ludwig Erhardt. Uh, which is an unsung hero of, uh, German, uh, economics. It's today. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it has been forgotten. Yeah. Um, that's the idea that you have a, uh, uh, social, what we call it, sociale marktwirtschaft, social market economics, but it only works if the market part is bigger than 50%. Right. If the social part gets bigger, it starts eating the market part. And then you just, you have to pile on debt on debt, and that leads to inflation.

1:06:43 And now we are in this situation. Yeah, and now we're in clown world instead, which is what ensues, and, uh, I mean, the, uh, the problem, as I see it, is that I, I don't think democracies are inherently stable. I think rather the opposite, unfortunately, that they, over time, tend to, all these institutions, as soon as they're erected, they grow like cancers, especially if you have a central bank. Not, not entirely sure if you don't have the central bank, but if you do, I think, uh, Inevitably, you will get above the threshold of 50 percent and after that, uh, you're basically on a, on a downward slope and the, the, the, the, there's only revolutionary ways out of it.

1:07:31 I mean, I don't know if there is any form of, I mean, we've never had a system where the money just is so hard. As Bitcoin is, right? So I mean, when you really want to go on that level, maybe Bitcoin is the first, is our first chance for long term stability. Because the interesting thing is that, that without a central bank, without inflation, without money printing, you can, you can try stupid stuff, but only for a very short amount of time. While, um, with political money, and this is exactly what, like, when you look at MMT, right? Uh, modern monetary theory, they, they have their fans everywhere.

1:08:12 They have the fans in Germany. Why? Because the idea of having a 100 percent political money, uh, that they can print for whatever they want is for, for many people is very, um, appealing, right? If you don't, I mean, and this is literally, it's literally uh, the line between those who want to be productive. And those who don't want to be productive, those who want to be productive, want a money that they can trust. And those, uh, and the only money you can trust is the money that nobody controls. And those don't want to be productive, want to control the money. And this has been, I think, I don't know if it's about democracy. I don't even know if stability is something that's very, very like, it's like the discussion about the volatility in Bitcoin.

1:08:54 I don't know if volatility is bad. Volatility can also be a sign of life. Stability is, I chaos is a ladder sort of thing. mean, if, if, if there is this, it's, it's, it's an article I've read in a newspaper maybe 15 years ago, but it has stuck with me ever since it did. It was a study or some sort of scientific, uh, theory that, that basically a society where that's totally stable, where everybody knows everything and they know, you know, what the future will bring, whatever is, is, is, it's, it's, that's a society that's going to collapse tomorrow. And, and, and especially when you look at the, at the history of Austria, you look at our, at our history, our empire, there was a society like that after 200, 400 years, it was so old.

1:09:42 It's so. set in its ways. Everybody knew everything about their life from the moment they were born, and it just collapsed completely. Never to be, to be seen again. Um, so yeah, I mean, from a market perspective, these things that don't work need to collapse. If we don't want, we don't want them to go on if they don't work. Um, and they're not going to correct themselves. I don't think that that's, you know, Really in the cards, especially not, like you said, with fiat money. So the metaphor here is, uh, planes are not going to stop dropping out to the sky until Boeing runs out of business, right? I don't know. I don't know.

1:10:22 I don't want to talk, say anything about Boeing. That's that they have lawyers. I, I, and I don't, I don't know anything. disclaimer, that was a joke. Yeah, satire. No, I don't, I don't know anything. I, I, uh, I, Well, I think the funny thing about the whole situation in the EU and sort of coming from an outsider's perspective a little bit is that, I mean, the original promise of the EU, right, which, which, as you said, was to, to encourage relations to avoid war, all this stuff, I mean, it's, it's, it's noble goals. And, and even to a certain extent, at least the appearances that it was supposed to make everything easier, uh, freedom of people to move around people for, for freedom to, to trade.

1:11:05 Right. And, and, uh, there's nothing wrong inherently with that goal, but then it's, it's all the over regulation of it. And, uh, uh, yeah, I mean, pros and pros and cons. Uh, I love living here, but, I mean, to be fair, to be fair, when we talk about socialist policies, um, like the welfare state. That's not an EU thing. The EU does this on a, on a European level where the rich countries have to pay for the poor countries, which is something we can talk about, but it's probably something that's not a stupid idea if you want to have a level playing field, right? If you want to, if you, if you want as Germany, if you want for your goods to be To be bought by a market, you have to build up that market.

1:11:51 but, but wait a minute, wait a minute. Is so, there's another way of looking at that, and that is that the, uh, okay. So Germany is making a lot of money selling cars to Southern Europe, but in order to afford the cars from Germany germ, uh, the, the Southern European countries have to receive a lot of EU tax money from Germany to buy the cars. So it's, it's, it's sort of a, it's sort of all, all a char charade. It's, it's, it's circling. Stuff, and, and, there's no clear market signal, it's, it's basically the, uh, state state controlled production of cars.

1:12:32 the real, the real problem is that the cars are getting shitty. Of course. and then, and then you pay money to Southern Europe and they turn around and buy cars from, from, from the U S or China. Yeah. That's the real problem from the German Because they don't want the Trabant. Commie They don't want the modern version of the Trabant, they don't want to get ripped off. Um, but, I mean, what I mean is like the idea, it's funny. One of the reasons why the EU, why the ECB might hate Bitcoin so much. is that the idea of Bitcoin is something that at some point was actually the idea behind the euro.

1:13:12 So the, the first idea, like the old idea of the euro was to have a hard money for all of Europe. And if you, if you overspend, You have to cut down on overspending. You have to, um, cut down on the, on the welfare state, on the, on the size of the state. So the idea was to basically turn all of Europe into a hard money Deutschmark zone. That was the, at least that's what they, what, what the architects of the Euro were doing. started out doing. And then of course that failed, that failed.

1:13:56 Um, and now it's, it's the opposite. Now it's the, it's, it's the, the, the European lira. You just, you just print money, whatever. Um, and, and this is not gonna go, not gonna work. It's not gonna go well. Um, but of course, Bitcoin could do that. Bitcoin could, you know, uh, introduce that game theory and, and, and introduce true costs on everything. And yeah, I mean, you're right. Um, I'm not trying to argue that it worked. What I'm trying to argue is that there are some elements of the EU that I don't think are horrible. And like, like Luke said, some of the ideas were worthwhile.

1:14:40 It's just that something that really bothers me is that to this day, Austria has only joined the EU in 1995, which is What? 10, 20, 30 years ago. and to this day, there's no political debate about anything that's going on in Brussels and anything that's going on, on a, on a, on a European level. And this is really, really a big problem because you do have that in the US. I know that the debate is extremely superficial and stupid, but it's still, at least it's existing. Uh, in, in Europe, it's basically. Um, and, and, That's really a problem.

1:15:22 We don't have it. You're basically, you said democracy. We don't have a European democracy. We have some sort of technocratic, pseudo socialist state in Brussels. I mean, even the, the, the, what's the title of the, of the, what's it called? What's it, it's a Kommissar, right? They are, like, literally they're using the same words in the Soviet Union. The Kommissar. in English. I commissioner, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, commissioner. It's commissioner. And the commissioner, and then there's the, there's the, Uh, uh, the Rat, that's the council, or the Soviet. Tsar is like worst of both worlds from old Russia, right?

1:16:05 You're a Commie Tsar. yeah. . Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I don't wanna defend you, but I also don't wanna say like, it's all bad. It's like the traveling is nice. The, the roaming is good. Is that like, I don't have to pay when I go to Sweden. I don't have to pay extraordinary amounts of money. You know this, but that's small stuff, right? You could do that in other ways, but, and the euro as at least on, like having one currency in all countries, of course that's, that's a good thing. But we will have that with bitcoin. Everywhere in the world, basically. So we don't need the Euro for that. But still, like all the good things about Europe, about the EU, like open borders and, uh, you know, being able to phone other European countries without being, uh, having to pay enormous sums.

1:16:53 All of those things are really just tearing down. Old, bad government decisions, like putting the border up there in the first place and not letting people in who could pay for themselves, or, uh, you know, making phone, uh, networks national and making it more expensive to call abroad. So, so there, all the good parts are effectively just, uh, the abandonment of old, bad government decisions. And if the EU could have stayed that way and just been an institution that takes away stupid stuff, uh, that governments did, then, then it would be great.

1:17:35 But it became a bureaucratic Uh, institution in its own right. And now it's like the internet rules are ridiculous with the accept cookies, which costs so much in extra effort and time from, for every internet developer that has, that wants even a chance to operate in Europe and the GDPR and all this stuff that is sold to us, like being for our protection and stuff, it's, it's just bullshit, like that people, uh, take responsibility for their own actions. It's bullshit. No, I, I agree 100 percent and I just remembered it's a long, long time ago, but it was already in my phase of reading Austrian economics. I actually, I went to Brussels.

1:18:15 I went to the EU parliament. I don't know in what capacity it was some sort of, um, journalist press press trip. Right. Um, but I did bring a Mises book on bureaucracy. Um, and I actually read that in the EU parliament. Um, and I think it, it, it explains everything. It's just that, you know, we talked about, we talked about not putting too much energy into the stuff that you, that you, um, don't like. Right. So I don't really know what to do about the EU, honestly. Um, I, I think that certain freedoms need to be, um, um, guarded, especially Traveling, something that during the pandemic was, um, restricted as well.

1:19:02 Uh, so basically when, when, when Lagarde talks about the escape, right? The escapes needs to be open. That's important. If, if, if like the worst case would be, you cannot even leave the EU anymore, right? You have to stay. That's what's happening in Canada. They're enforcing an exit tax now. Like, uh, a ridiculous amount. What was it, like, 250, 000 or something? That's, it's, that's first, uh, that's been debunked apparently, and it was 25, 000, and in Canadian money, that's a lot for Canadians, but that's really like, only like 300, so that's, so that's, it's nothing.

1:19:45 Oh, really? Okay. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for debunking it. Still, uh, Yeah, I, uh, when I went to Brussels, which was my toll ship days and, and with the high school students, the thing that struck me was the luxurious nature of the lobbyists hotels, like the, the, the whole, the whole part of Brussels that was dedicated to lobbyism and how, like the corruption is just, uh, it's just So weird, like, or it makes perfect sense because like, feed off each other, right? We haven't even talked about the fact that. Yes, it's socialist, but it's also corporatist in a way that's like the GDPR, right?

1:20:29 Stupid GDPR is like, like you have an idea for a startup. It could be the next Amazon. Oh shit, but you can't even start it up because you cannot afford this GDPR. But this company, the big company, so that's of course, but that's the same thing that's happening in the US. yeah. Artificial monopolies, uh, through intellectual property laws and other stupid stuff, they just put up these barriers to entry, which is effectively what the lockdowns did as well. You know, just kill the smaller companies and we can, we can grab, we do a big land grab here. And that's, of course, that goes to, that, that leads to some sort of, you know, communist whatever. It's, it's, it's, even with the digital euro, you know, what's the fifth point of the communist manifesto is there's only one bank, right?

1:21:16 And it's the state bank. Well, that's why the bank, that's why the banks are nervous about the digital euro, because with digital euro, you can finally just drop the banks. You don't need the banks anymore. Um, when they fuck up, you can just say, okay. We're not printing any money for you. We're just using the, we're just using the digital euro to safeguard the deposits and the bank can go. And then of course you centralize it even more. So there is centralization. I think centralization, it doesn't matter if it's socialist or capitalist or whatever, it's fiat centralization that we have to fight and that we have to, guard against. And, and Bitcoin is a very important tool and, and the entrepreneurial stuff that's happening in Bitcoin happens in a world that is not so much by, by these, by these, you know, old style governments.

1:22:03 And I do believe in the, still believe in the, did you read, do you guys read the, the sovereign individual? absolutely. Love it. So I do, I do believe in that thesis still. Um, and, and I, I see it playing out in very, in various different ways. And I do see positives and it's not just negatives. There's many things to be hopeful about and many things like there's these things that we talked about now, the, the, the fiat system, the EU, even the, the, the American system to an extent, they're so broken. And they're so far gone. Um, and yeah, I mean, we, we started out talking about the Soviet Union. It doesn't matter if it's communist or they are so bureaucratic and so corrupt and so far gone that the only thing they can do is collapse.

1:22:49 It's not, they're not, they're never going to just reform themselves. It's just gonna, you know, collab. What's the, what's the movie now that that's in theaters? I want to see it. Civil War. Right. They're already having movies in America about, about, about America falling apart. but apparently it's not very, uh, uh, uh, it's not a very likely war they're depicting because in, in that movie, Texas and California are fighting the other states together. And that's not how America works. Like, well, anyway, uh, you just, you have to enlighten me on something.

1:23:30 How did you, how did you make it to Brussels? I was pretty sure that it's inland. yeah, yeah. We took a train, you know. We, we didn't go by, by, uh, with the tall ship to Brussels. That's not what happened. We were in Antwerp, I believe, oh, okay, okay, well, you were it to use, a bus. So yeah, yeah, yeah, that, uh, there, there was a lot of tide that year. tide was high, And one thing, one thing that's really, really horrible about the EU is the whole united and strength from diversity, but we hate diversity.

1:24:12 But there's so much talk about diversity, but it's only a word. It's not like there's no diversity of thought. There's no, and especially if there's diversity in nationality and history, people don't want that. Right. Even though that's like the decentralized nature of Europe would be our biggest strength.

1:26:07 So, so I, if I recall correctly, the, the lockdowns were really horrible in Austria. Uh, and you had to wear, like, a star to show that you were vaccinated, or something very, very akin to the World War II. So the problem is here. The problem is that, that you shouldn't believe what you read in media, right? If I believe what I read, read in the media about Sweden, it's like, you can't leave your house without getting shot by some gang. Well, there's some truth, a pinch of truth to it. the thing with, with, with. It is something that really, really, uh, has been like, people have been telling me about this all the time, right? The pandemic or the lockdowns in Austria, it's the, like I said at the beginning, yes, they sent out the press release that there will be, uh, mandatory vaccinations, but in the, in the second they did that, nobody, like everybody else just said that they're never going to do it.

1:27:02 You know, nobody believed it. And even if, you know, even if people who didn't want to get vaccinated already had fake vaccination passports anyway. Right. So actually, to be honest, that story, I mean, it was never as, never as bad as, as, as it was in Germany. When I went to, I went to Zitadelle 2021, like the first Bitcoin maximalist Zitadelle in Eastern Germany, we had the Ordnungsamt, which is like the, not, not, not the police, but the people who are like dressed like the police, but they don't have guns, but they look like they are supposed to be looking at, are you all like abiding by the rules? Right. And if you don't, they call the real police.

1:27:43 We don't even have that in Austria. They were there within, within 20 minutes to see if we were wearing our masks, right? So I'm not saying there haven't been gross overreach. I'm not saying there haven't been stupid, um, uh, incidents. I'm not saying that there haven't been stupid police men or women who abused their power during the pandemic, but the story of Austria being, Going down the route of a fascist hellhole is it's, it wasn't like outside of the big cities, the pandemic never happened, basically. Uh, that's good to know, that's very reassuring. It's like, uh, okay, I'm not saying this, I'm not saying that, but I am saying that Germany was far worse. I mean, as far as I know, I haven't seen, like, I haven't been in every, every point, you know what I mean?

1:28:29 Right. Um, but, but, and honestly, I think that the lockdowns For a lack of a better word, I think that they have woken more people up than, than they have, like, succeeded in, in controlling. there is, there is still, like, people who are clearly damaged, and still, like, there's still people running around with masks. Okay. not many. Um, and, and there is a, there is a, there is a story here for Bitcoin as well. It's like, I saw this on, on, on some Austrian newspapers, like, was a question, the comment section is like, so when does the pandemic end?

1:29:10 You know? And the first, the first answer was, well, the pandemic ends when nobody in the bus is wearing masks anymore, regardless of the mandates. You know? And this is exactly what happened. when I stopped, when I stopped wearing the masks, even though officially in Vienna, you still had to wear it. You just sit down, you just sit down with, with, with a couple of other young guys who were not wearing masks and nobody would ever say anything. It's, it's, but yeah, I mean, I wasn't very openly political about any of this because I was, I too, I was scared in the beginning, at least. I don't know. But, but I think that many people learned a lot.

1:29:51 And I think that the whole, we wouldn't be sitting here doing this podcast on some sort of Zoom thing without the whole pandemic thing. Very true. No, and that's a great point, and we talk about that all the time, like the interconnectedness. We do this pod remotely from two different countries. Usually our guest is in a third the whole time, and lots of positives to take from the last years for those of us who have been in there. seen what's been going on. And I just kind of wanted to get your take on on sort of a related point here.

1:30:33 Because we've we've maybe unintentionally spent a lot of time on the doom and gloom of it all for most of this conversation, but it started pretty, pretty upbeat and optimistic and bullish and all this. I'm curious about what's what's going on in your world? Like, what are you optimistic about in Bitcoin in general, but maybe maybe our audience is less familiar with what's going on in the German speaking world. So yeah, what what are you optimistic about these days? So what's really interesting is like, that's what I said at the beginning, right? I've been doing my, my, my YouTube channel, my podcast for about two and a half years now. Right. Um, and I have all like grossing downloads on, on, um, uh, if, if I add audio and video together a month, about a hundred.

1:31:27 20 to 150, 000 downloads each month, right? That puts me after two and a half years, puts me easily into the top 10 podcasts in Austria. I don't know the numbers. I don't know the numbers for Germany, but we have thousands of podcasts. So there's been a podcast award here done by the state radio. There's 1, 300 podcasts nominated for this award only for Austria. So, uh, so there's two. Like, there's two possible reasons for this. Reason one is because I'm just an awesome guy, right?

1:32:07 That's, that's one possibility. And I don't want to, I don't want to count it out, but I think that the second option is more likely that Bitcoin as a topic touches so many people in so many different ways. Inflation, freedom, um, self determination, control over your own life, savings, um, and even down to the energy stuff that, that there's basically some, something in there for anyone. And really think that people come for the number go up probably most of them, but they stay for the optimism.

1:32:51 And this is what I did. When I went to Cittadella. I knew immediately that I want to do this, what I'm doing right now, because I knew that in the German speaking world back then, it was still smaller than it is today. And I knew that I could do it. Like with my background as a journalist, I knew that I could, I could be the, basically, basically I was listening to Peter McCormick all the time. And I said, okay, I can do the same thing in German. That's, that's basically that, that's my business plan. That's, And, and it worked and it worked because, because there is a growing number of people who, for many different reasons, want something different and Bitcoin is, that's what I, what we talked about, um, when we talked about the Soviet Union, Bitcoin is this, this Other thing that this, this, this thing that promises for lack of a better word, a better future.

1:33:45 Like there is some hope there, right? And there's optimism and there is, there is, um, fun to be had. There's so who's having fun anymore, right? It's like, uh, there's, there's, when was the last time you saw a funny TV show? Right. Um, Yeah, there's nothing. what's in like the last, I think the last thing that was funny was Parks and Recreation and only because it had Ron Swanson, right. And that's like 10 years ago. So, so, and then this is something that's really helping. And then you see the power of memes and the power of, of, of, of humor combining with, with real, like, um, real, uh, Um, topics.

1:34:32 And, and one of the reasons why I think that podcasts, about are so successful is that Bitcoin also, it's very attractive to very, very smart people and very different. Like I can have a 26 year old and a 84 year old and do like two episodes from two different, completely different points of view. Um, it's so interesting to meet these people, right? I see Bitcoin very much as a social network as well. Um, and, and, um, and there's so much like positivity because you have a tool now that you can use. And, and many, many people who have been unhappy with the way things have been going have been, you know, conditioned to a world where there's been lots of complaints, but no real solution.

1:35:22 now we have to learn, okay, there is a solution, but we always thought that the solution would be the government does something different, does something differently. No, the solution is we do something different. We have to do it. Um, and that's the only way it can do. So the only way to, to fix the EU and to fix your own, your own country and to fix your, your city is you have to do something. You have to, to, and Bitcoin is the perfect, the perfect, um, basis to start this. Because it's an actual basis and, and, and we, we, we literally like why is Bitcoin so successful as, as, as a, as a social network, because we literally share values.

1:36:03 Not just in a, in a metaphorical sense, because we think this and that, no, we, we, we share the value of Bitcoin. We, we, we agreed that one of the, of the, of the magic internet meme money coins is now, uh, almost 60, 000 euros, right? So we can, we are willing to sell two, like not buy two cars. And instead we buy a number on the screen. It's actually, when you, when you, when you think about it like that, it's totally, totally crazy. Niko, my friend, those are, that's a perfect rant to end this episode on, I think, uh, because like, it's also like the main thesis of the book we're currently writing.

1:36:46 So the mind meld of Bitcoiners is a real thing. I think we're so aligned and that's why we enjoy each other's company so much. And, uh, as you say, the optimism is there because we are the shared value. Like we, we, we are literally the coins we are. The thing it's so, uh, I absolutely love that. Thank you so much for coming on the show and looking forward to seeing you in Prague and, uh, grabbing a beer or two and good luck with everything. Any, anywhere you want to direct our listeners. So I do, I do have, uh, uh, an English language, uh, substack, but I have to say that I don't really, um, um, feel it right now because I don't have the time, but it's, it's fixthemoney.

1:37:30 net. And for anybody who, who, uh, speaks German or wants to just read, uh, um, the, the subtitles provided by, uh, YouTube, um, you can go to, to, to NikoHilch. com and you'll find all my links to all my social media stuff. I actually, I, I, one of the reasons why I did, um, uh, concentrate on doing the German stuff is because I do believe with AI within a year or so, you can just press a button and then you can listen to my stuff in Swedish. Or Brazilian, uh, Portuguese or Spanish. And that's going to be great for content producers and journalists and podcasters. And I'm very much looking forward to that.

1:38:11 Until then, we still do English. Wunderbar. So, uh, yeah, thanks a Thank you. And, uh, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to see you in Prague and I'm very much looking forward to that. Yeah, likewise. So, yeah. Thanks. Thanks again, Niko. This was awesome. And, uh, this has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening. Brush your teeth.