Riding the Bitcoin Bull with Dave Bradley - FFS #110

0:00 Dave, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Welcome Dave. I just posted a thing on Twitter today. the post was, I'm trying to figure out who's, who the, who is the humblest Bitcoiner. There should be an award for the winner to not brag about. And then before the interview, I, I, I stumbled upon your webpage. And I think you're a good candidate for this award. Like, uh, I Bitcoinbrains. com, the strongest and best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada. Yeah, Yeah, you, I guess. yeah, it's a, it's a very important title, um, that I'm very, uh, proud to have achieved.

0:44 And, uh, if you, if you look on there, you scroll down just a little bit, you'll notice, um, some testimonials. And the first one there is from Daniel Smith, um, who is the Premier of Alberta. And this is just, this is just, you know, this topic came up as she was on a panel and the quotes there, she just said, Dave is very handsome. And so now that the government has said it, I think it's official. Absolutely. And we cannot do anything but agree to this. Like, uh, I mean, who would the other candidates even be? I don't know. But, uh, yeah. And it's a fantastic webpage. Elon Musk has said you're definitely the strongest and best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada.

1:29 That's something. And there are pictures of steaks you've eaten here and they're pretty strong and beautiful too, I would say. Yeah, I've achieved, I've achieved a lot in that area. Good to hear. Alberta famously has some of the best, uh, or the best meat in the world, beef specifically. And I, I miss it constantly. I've been, I've been away for a good, uh, almost three years here. And that's the one specific thing that I definitely miss from, uh, from Calgary. Other things too, but, Uh, that in particular, but we, we can, we can return to that. Dave, can you, can you start by giving us a little introduction to yourself for, uh, the benefit of our listeners? Uh, yeah.

2:09 Give us, give us the tldr r on Dave Bradley. Yeah, so other than being the strongest and best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada, I, I got to that point by, uh, getting into Bitcoin in 2010. Yeah. And I, in 2013, started working full time in the space when I opened a store, uh, that was called Bitcoin Brains, which is now my, my personal brand website and my, my handle on Twitter and whatnot. so yeah, I think we were like the first or one of the first, like, physical spaces like that where you could go and it was like an actual little store. You could buy miners and obviously Bitcoin and, you know. You know, there wasn't that much Bitcoin related stuff to sell back then, but we sold all of it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and like, the, the funny thing is, I, I never knew, uh, about.

2:51 Any of this. I mean, I, I completely missed the boat for, from a lot of perspectives. Uh, the, the Bitcoin didn't even seem to really be a, a thing. Uh, I knew a bunch of people who were into Ethereum, uh, and, and that was the only thing going around the, the offices, uh, in downtown Calgary that I was aware of. But, uh, uh, thankfully, I, I pulled around and, uh, unfortunately, somewhat, I, I left Calgary before. Uh, before I properly got into Bitcoin, but uh, as I, as I understand, as I understand it, uh, Calgary has a, has a pretty fantastic, uh, Bitcoin community, right? Like, uh, starting with, uh, as you're saying, Bitcoin brains.

3:34 So, uh, can you, can you tell us a little bit more about that and, and everything you're building over in Calgary? Yeah, we've got an awesome community here. I think that kind of just naturally emerged because in Western Canada, in Calgary in particular, we are very freedom minded. You know, we're very individualistic. And so the, the reasons that people started getting into Bitcoin very quickly became aligned with the natural values of the people here, I think, and so, you know, we started seeing, really right back to when we had that store in 2013, people that were not like the normal Bitcoin demographic, you know, like rural ranchers that were like 60 coming in and buying Bitcoin, and their sole reason for it was It was nothing to do with the technology or the buzzwords or anything like that.

4:23 It was pretty much just like, yeah, I don't trust the government. And that it's a pretty straight line to get from point A to point B on that one. Yeah, the ATIQ bell curve meme comes into mind. But I think there's a lot to that. The most dangerous part of any human population is the middle of the bell curve. The, the, the sheep. I mean, the, The shotgun owners in the pickup truck, and the really brainy ones, they're usually, uh The ones that should be in charge. Well, and the, the interesting thing is like, I know what you're getting at with the, the two sides of the bell curve there, but like, I don't, I don't think it aligns with like rural to urban at all.

5:09 I think the rural people are smarter than the urban people on average. And when you're talking to these people, like, like somebody owns a ranch, Like, they're probably a lot smarter than somebody who works at Deloitte. Absolutely. I think the, the, the meme comes from like, there's some irony to the meme, right? Because it's, uh, it's actually the, the pickup truckers that are the brainy ones. That's where I started my career, by the way, Deloitte. Not started, but, but yeah, yeah, you go, you got better. to see the world is looking up for you. And I, Luke, I think I ran into the bull bitcoin people before you did, because I met them all in Riga in 2019, Francis and all of those, and Sessions was there as well.

5:53 Yeah, we, we, we may have met at that point, I think. Did you come to the dinner No, I in the, okay. We had this amazing bull Bitcoin dinner that year. It was like in the basement and we had this like 66 kilo roast pig and it was awesome. Yeah, I think I saw the dinner from like, I was envious and looking in through a basement window or something or saw some pictures or something, but yeah, I heard about that. If you remember the restaurant, we might have to get a recommendation. We're organizing a little something something in Riga this year, so. Oh yeah, we, we can, I can, I can dig that up. It was like. This like 1, 100 year old castle basically in this restaurant's like in the basement there and like when we walked in and And like and it was like, oh, we're with bull Bitcoin They're like bull Bitcoin right down this tunnel and it was like, I I didn't even know I needed to hear that So, Rabbit Hole in itself, like, um, yeah, but Riga is all about Old basements with food in them.

6:58 So, uh, I'm sure we'll find one. Yeah, Fantastic. So, so, okay, uh, take us through after 2013. What, what, uh, did you all get involved in? I think we've, we've, uh, sort of spoiled the next part of the story with the, the bill, uh, bull bitcoin, but how did that get started? How did you get involved with that? yeah, so, um, I had been doing business with Francis for a while, um, we sold our store in 2015, and then, but we kept the business, which was the brokerage, buying and selling Bitcoin, and, I was just, Francis was doing the same thing with Satoshi Counter at the Montreal Bitcoin Embassy. And so there was, there's probably about five or six of us in Canada that had like the same kind of businesses.

7:42 And the Bitcoin industry was not very liquid back then. So we all had issues with like either having too much Bitcoin or not enough Bitcoin or too much cash or not enough cash. And so we used to buy and sell from each other. And that's how I got to know Francis. And then, uh, yeah, we, started to get to know each other better from some trips that I took out there and we invited Francis to the first, uh, Bitcoin rodeo, which is a conference that I put on here in Calgary. First one was in 2018 and we invited Francis to come and speak and, we ended up, you know, talking quite a bit and that was where sort of like the idea for BullBitcoin was, was formed. That we wanted to merge our two companies and create Bull Bitcoin. We originally wanted to get a bunch of other Canadian companies in to create like a super Bitcoin only company, but there was nobody else that was like quite as ideologically aligned at that point yet.

8:32 And, uh, yeah, that was, that's where the idea came from. We founded BullBitcoin in, uh, 2018 and, yeah, it's probably the most advanced Bitcoin platform in the world, I think, at this point. It's legendary for sure, and it's because it's so based. And, I mean, uh, uh, and it's been, uh, having the right ethos from the start, and I love, like, the old pictures of Francis, uh, from his fiat life when he wears a suit and looks all, all, uh, like, uh, and now he looks like an insurgent, basically. like, I see him as some guerrilla warrior jungle commando type Yeah, yeah, exactly.

9:13 beast mode, like it's fantastic. It's a before and after bitcoin. Yeah, I think, I think Francis is obviously the superpower to BullBitcoin. Because he, he's probably like the most hardcore, like, public Bitcoiner in the world, I think. Like, the guy who would, who would be the last guy going down with the ship. Just, you know, and, and I, I think, uh, that, that comes through in his, like, in his social media and his communications with the world, and people identify with that, I think. Yeah. We got to have Francis on, Luke. Why haven't we had that yet? We need to talk to him. We will, one, one thing at a time.

9:55 It's very difficult to schedule things with Francis. Yeah, yeah. But we can wing it. Yeah, Yeah, I can imagine. But so, tell us a little bit about how you came to that bitcoin only was the way to go, because that's not necessarily completely obvious to everyone, right? yeah. So, um Um, I got there the hard way, like most people who got in a long time ago, because, you know, there was no Bitcoin standard in 2010. when I got into Bitcoin, most of the talk about like, what Bitcoin was and what it was going to be was like a competitor to PayPal. You know what I mean? It was this like revolutionary payment network, censorship resistant, no chargebacks, and not really a lot of talk about like the hard money aspect.

10:40 You know, there was a little bit that was in there on the Bitcoin talk forums, but like, that wasn't really what motivated everyone. And it was, it was years before I really like got the hard money aspect of Bitcoin. And it was only through like, you know, discussions with other Bitcoiners basically and, getting deep on the forums and reading everything that I could that like I eventually got to that point. And back then it was, I mean, I got in like most Bitcoiners, I was looking for a way to make money. I was looking for more fiat. You know what I mean? And, uh, that was, uh, like, that was like, I guess the start of the journey.

11:21 And so, you know, you say, you know, I, I made a good bet on Bitcoin. Like, I think I'm pretty smart about this stuff, and now, like, I'm gonna just, like, use my big brain and pick the next one, right? And, uh, so, yeah, I mean, I got into all kinds of shitcoins, and, some I got lucky on, some I didn't get lucky on, and I don't know whether I would have done better or worse playing roulette, but, like, it was just a bunch of gambles in retrospect. And when it came down to it, like, you know, I, I used to be very engaged in the early days of like, when ICOs first started coming out, like 2015 kind of area, trying to think of like, you know what, this has like a really good story.

12:07 This is like, I can see the logic behind this and you start talking about the technology and you start talking about the community and all this stuff. And then when it comes down to it at the end of the day, like. None of that stuff is actually adding any value, right? They're, they're just like, it's like investing in a tech company, but you don't get any shares. And like, you just don't get any rights. And part of the, part of the confusion, and this was probably like where it came from for me early on, is like, If you want to invest in Netflix and you wanna log into like your online brokerage account, your E-Trade account, like you're not gonna go read the prospectus.

12:47 You're not gonna go like, oh yeah, there's these mountains of disclosure that have happened so that this is fair and above board allegedly and all this stuff. You're gonna go in there and you're gonna see the ticker and you're gonna see maybe a headline and you're gonna say, okay, Netflix added subscribers, so I'm gonna invest in Netflix. And that's like the extent of the research and. The user experience of logging into your E Trade account and buying some Netflix is materially similar to the user experience of logging into your Binance and buying some Tron. And if you're just reading headlines, it's not much different, right? but at the underlying level, when you buy Netflix shares, you own a part of a company.

13:28 And that was the, that was the disconnect that like the whole early sort of altcoin community didn't see. And like, Yeah, I mean, I think I got there from like dabbling in it myself and like getting burned and like seeing people that I know get burned and it's the hot stove is a very good teacher. Yeah, completely understandable. I mean, this echoes what I was experiencing a little bit later, the 2017 run. But like, as I was saying, the whole thing was guys would buy these Ethereum mining rigs in their garage. And that was the thing going on. And yeah, I really had no idea there was something like that, like a Bitcoin, an actual Bitcoin community in Calgary.

14:17 And I wish I'd known. so, my, my next question is for, for our, our listeners who, who aren't aware. I've told a little bit about my story. I left Canada not entirely because of everything going on with Trudeau and the economic climate, but that was definitely a And I felt better immediately getting out of, uh, industries dominated by oil and gas and therefore regulatory issues that, that created incredible job insecurity for people earlier on in their, their career. But I haven't, I haven't gone into too, too much detail in the background of all that. So can you explain your perspective on everything that's gone on politically over the last couple of years?

14:59 10 years or so. Yeah, I mean, so at the start of 2020, I reread the book Atlas Shrugged. I had read it when I was 18, didn't quite get it, re read it at the start of 2020, and it scared the shit out of me. Like, it's exactly what's going on right now. It is a capture of the entire economy by forces that have nothing to do with What's good for anyone involved. So, the communists, the globalists, whatever you want to call them, are taking a larger and larger percentage of our economy. And in Canada, we're ahead of the curve in that area, in that, you know, we've got a very, a government that is very comfortable being totalitarian.

15:48 And we're in this weird situation where, you know, like, Justin Trudeau was elected with like something like 30 percent of the vote, which was less than his competitors, but the way our system works, he was elected anyway, the election was over, like, importantly, before polls had closed in Western Canada. So we didn't really get a say. And since then, like the, the leadership of this country has been like just an unmitigated disaster, right? Like we're bringing out the most idiotic totalitarian policies from everything from media censorship to, um, an exit tax they're just proposing right now.

16:34 And it like, it's gotten so ridiculous that we're in this scenario where, you know, we know they're lying to us. The majority of Canadians know that we're being lied to, they know that we know that they're lying. But they're looking us in the eyes, continuing to lie to us, and then expecting us to just go along with that. And that, it's just such an absurd scenario that like, we're a very polite culture as Canadians. And I think through the whole COVID madness and that drastic, um, expansion of government powers and globalist powers all over the world, you know, a lot of us were very frustrated.

17:16 We're like, I thought there'd be like mobs in the streets by now. Right. And, uh, they were very good for a long time at knowing how far they could push Canadians, but then they just got it wrong and they pushed too far. And that's when the trucker protests happened, which I would say were still extremely polite. You know, there would have been a very different. A very different scene if those truckers would have showed up with guns, right? And the gap between those two choices is massive. And they didn't do that. They respected our federalism here, even though I don't believe it deserves that respect. And they respected the law and, you know, just made a show of, of solidarity that the government really couldn't ignore anymore.

18:04 And I think Canada is like, almost like the canary in the coal mine. For the globalists to see how far they can push people in a lot of ways, you know, I think they're, they're, they're coming with another push. Like they, this is my, my own, my own homegrown conspiracy theory is that the whole plastic straw thing was like, because obviously, like, you obviously can't make straws out of paper, right? Like everybody could. Everybody knows that, right? And yet somehow this five year old video of a turtle with a straw stuck up its nose surfaces gets extremely viral. And then every restaurant and bar in the world has paper straws within two weeks.

18:48 where was the paper straw manufacturing infrastructure? Why, why did that exist? Yeah, that was so weird, uh, that is, and, uh, like, some people even think it's, you know, gonna change the climate, we're using paper straws, and it's like, a four year old can figure out that that's a lie, like, it's, Yeah, uh, it's so bizarre. it's like, it's like a medal of honor for the virtue signaling class, who like, they want to have the lowest effort level of virtue signaling that they can, where they're just like, you know what, I am willing to suffer through this awful experience of sucking paper in with my drink, Yeah, and therefore I am, I am more virtuous, right?

19:34 And so, but, but that said, like I think, Like, it's suspicious to me that that came out of nowhere and that, like, they were actually able to have that many paper straws ready. And so my, the next step where my brain goes is like, okay, well, why? And I, I, my, my homegrown conspiracy theory is that that was a test. Cause they were like, let's see how much shit people will really eat in the name of virtue signaling. And they're like, okay, yeah, like, no, they're, they're totally like. They're drinking through them, even though they know it doesn't work, so like, let's roll out the virus. Like, they'll believe this shit too. to me, like, the paper straw thing, it's, it's, it feels Californian, like, it feels like it's from San Francisco.

20:15 I, I have this picture in my head of, of, you know, um, uh, some, some 20 year old billionaire woke IT person, uh, It's sipping some frappuccino twist out of a paper straw and there's a junkie dying of a heroin overdose on the sidewalk next to him and it's like telling his friends how SF is more like a European town and all of this and, and you know, Cartman is there with a space suit and trying to survive or something like, it's, it's so bizarre. It's right out of, yeah. Yeah, Monty Python couldn't have written that joke about the paper straws. It's like too bizarre.

20:55 Yeah. I, um, I had this little moment like that at Pacific Bitcoin in like 2022, I want to say. And, uh, so we're, like, staying at this pretty nice hotel in Santa Monica. And, like, it had one of the coolest lobby bars I've ever seen. It's super ridiculous and expensive and has like all these fancy like vintage designer chairs from Denmark and like they've got like a book signed by Louis Vuitton and like all the like just fancy as shit and we're my very good friend and I love it. Thank you. Uh, Madex, whose art you can see right behind me here, are sitting at the bar, and we've got like this weird surreal moment where like, there's a group over to our left, and they're talking about their movie, and the group to our right are talking about their tech exit.

21:43 And we're sitting there in the middle like, what the fuck is this? And like, we walked into this twilight zone, and then, this is like 6pm. And then all of a sudden this like six foot five naked Jesus looking guy is screaming in the middle of the street. And it's like we're in the, it's a ground level bar, there's four ceiling windows. And so this guy's right there screaming naked in the street and like trying to attack cars with a stick. And everybody kind of looks over and they're like, oh, it's just that again. I don't know. And then, like, it goes completely back to normal. And then, like, I went later that night to the 7 Eleven that was across the street there, and the guy who had been naked and screaming is there, and he's like, He's totally reasonable now, he's wearing pants, and he's standing in front of a sign that says, Do not give any money to the panhandlers, it only encourages them, essentially.

22:32 He's literally like, right in front of the sign, like, he's right here, and he's, he's standing there and being like, Oh hey, hey brother, can I have a dollar? it's just, like, just the absurdity of the situation, you know what I mean? And it brings to mind something you said there, where it's kind of like, This feels very Californian. I feel like you can almost use that as an insult. At this point, like, oh, if somebody says something stupid to you, you're like, oh, that, you sound very Californian right now. Yeah, I, I have a similar experience, but it has nothing to do with this, uh, you know, junkies dying on the street or Californian or anything. But this was in my tall ship sailing days where, you know, I used to work on a tall ship that had high school students on board. And at this particular time, we were in Barcelona.

23:15 And so around Um, the 30 or 40 kids, mostly like 16-year-old girls in school uniforms. And we're taking them to see, uh, a concert in some church, a nice little event, um, at just after dinner. And they're walking up, uh, rumble, which is like the big, uh, uh, the big street in, um, walking Street in Barcelona. And all of a sudden there's a naked guy, uh, with, with tattoos all over him. So has blue, what looks like underwear, but it's really just butt naked with, you know, a piercing in his dick and, and, and the, they aren't real underpants.

23:56 They're tattooed on him and they just walk past him, but they're so busy talking about, you know, after dinner, just giggling and talking about their little problems. So that none of them noticed this naked guy just walking a meter. from them because they're all in their own little bubble and there's a yeah there's a something there I, I have to say, it's very cool that you're able to start stories with, in my tall ship sailing days, yeah not many people can do that I might start doing that, and then just leading on to unrelated stories.

24:36 yeah it works you should try it sometimes Sounds like a good plan. So, so maybe for some, uh, some more context on this. So we, by the way, back to the truckers a little bit, we, we had BJ Dichter on and he explained kind of the whole inside story with that. But the, the Alberta, uh, versus Central Canada, Eastern Canada divide thing isn't something that I think too many people know about outside Canada. Can you give a little bit of your perspective on how this has played out over the last 10 years that Ottawa, the Canadian federal government has really had it out for the Western Canada, the oil producing provinces and all that, because it's really something.

25:24 What's your perspective on that? Yeah, I mean, I don't think people really understand how big and diverse Canada is, because when you, if you were to put this into, like, a European context, like, It's, it's more like, if you were to say, you know, you've got somebody living in like, in Lisbon, and then you've got somebody living in Istanbul, and those, like, that, that would all be within Canada. That'd be like within a small part of Canada. And at the same time, we have like one tenth of the population density. And so, we are really geographically and culturally diverse, and there's a huge, huge difference, you know what I mean, the difference between BC, Quebec, Ontario, the Maritimes, and the Prairies, like, those are all very distinct regions, and, you know, some of us get along better than others, and it's, it's interesting because, you know, Quebec is obviously singled out as the, the The most, um, distinct culture in Canada, and I think there, there's some truth to that because of the language, if nothing else, and they obviously had their, um, their separation efforts in the early 90s, and, you know, I can identify with that.

26:39 I can see why they would want to do that. And I can also see why they wanted to stay, because the result of those separation efforts was a change in the way that money is distributed from the provinces to the federal government and then back to the provinces. And the result has essentially been for the last, um, you know, now I guess we're at like, what, 33 years? Since the first referendum, the result is for those 33 years, Alberta has essentially been paying Quebec to stay in Canada. And we have this system where we have what is called have provinces and have not provinces. And for the most part, um, Quebec and the Maritimes have always been in the have not provinces.

27:23 Alberta has always been in the have provinces. The other ones kind of fluctuate back and forth. And the result is that when you're in a have province, you pay more. And when you're in a have not province, you receive more. And the result has been just a massive, incredible, astonishing transfer of wealth from Western Canada to Eastern Canada over the last 30 years and it's, it's hundreds of billions of dollars. It's, it's the majority of the spending that is happening in Eastern Canada. I had, uh, I had this, this dinner, um, with some friends in Montreal who were like very, very politically Like, one of them was an active politician that was well known, and I was talking about this very issue, and they didn't really see it as that big of a problem, and then we decided I was like, look, we'll look it up, I'll show you how big of a problem it is.

28:17 And when we looked it up, 40 percent of the spending for the province of Quebec was paid for by the province of Alberta. And At the same time, we're receiving, you know, we get less money, and in some ways that's a good thing, like if the government's going to do less stuff, that's probably good for everyone, but we're at a point where it's not that they're doing less stuff, they're doing stuff to actively, they're trying to destroy our economy, they're trying to destroy the energy industry, which is really what has paid for this entire 30 years of spending, is the Alberta energy industry has paid for the entire country. And now we've got the Trudeau government who's, you know, blocking pipelines.

28:58 We need three pipelines, like, ten years ago. And it's almost impossible to get one of those built. Not due to, not due to environmental concerns, not due to climate change. Because it doesn't change how much oil gets produced. It doesn't change how much oil gets shipped. It just changes how it gets shipped and how much it costs to get shipped. And so, we're in the spot where You know, the parallels to like, the American Revolution are very real, where like, we have taxation without representation, we have, we're not important in the, in the, um, the political picture for the country as a whole, because we can vote one way entirely, and that party can lose.

29:41 And we can be subjected to, you know, four more years of the federal government in Ottawa just looting our province and sending all of the wealth to the rest of the province. And so we've got this, like, this is obviously a sore spot for some of us in Alberta. And at the same time, we've got this cultural divide. And in a strange way, I actually, like, I've spent a lot of time in Eastern Canada, especially Montreal, and I don't feel a huge, you Cultural divide, actually, between Albertans and Quebecois in a strange way. Even though we're very culturally different, we're actually quite the same in the fact that mostly we have the same values and we want the same things.

30:22 I think Quebec and Alberta would be great neighbors, you know, in different countries. Um, I feel a much bigger disconnect from Ontario, from Toronto in particular, and anytime I'm in Toronto, I feel like it's, like I'm in a, I'm in a, like a twilight zone, it's just a weird place. know, I went into the bank a few years ago, and I was depositing some money, and the teller looks up my account, and she can see that I'm from Calgary, and she's like, oh, I see you're from Calgary, it must be so nice for you to be here. I was like, what? Like, no, it's nice for you for me to be here.

31:03 Yeah, so from an outsider's perspective, let's, let's backtrack here a bit because, we've been, from an outsider's perspective, the, the whole, uh, COVID, um, or the lockdown period, whatever you might call it, was so weird because the, what, what we viewed as some of the most open and, uh, you know, liberal in the classic sense of the word, of the word, um, Places in the world, uh, where, uh, Canada and Australia, we always saw those as like, we, even me with my Swedish eyes, I always thought of those two countries as like, that's where the chill people are from. And like Canada seemed like just a, a more chill version of the US and slightly more sane, you know, and not as guns slinging, but . Um, and, and then, uh, this, this whole woke thing.

31:53 It sort of started, or, or p or started to peak around when, uh, Jordan Peterson came out and then, uh, Brett Weinstein and all of this w or Weinstein or whatever his name is. Uh, and, and this, uh, about the universities in the US and, uh, pronouns and all of that stuff started to, to be a thing. Like I hadn't really heard of it before that. And that's like 10, 15 years ago, right? So, so where, where did Canada go wrong? When, when did Canada go insane? Like, I, I have a very hard time. How come the woke virus, like, infected so much of your country? What, what, what is the main reason? What, what do you think?

32:34 Yeah, so I don't necessarily think that it is just that the woke virus infected a lot of the country. I think it infected the parts of the country that have the voting power is a big thing. So if you look at the way the, the, like our elections work, the, the seats are very concentrated in Eastern Canada. So we have a parliamentary democracy, Every riding has a representative that we send to Ottawa to be our riding representative. But realistically, they're, they're a member of one of like three or four political parties, and the party with the most, uh, seats can form the government. And if a party or coalition of parties has enough seats, they can form a majority government.

33:15 this system in particular kind of leads itself to capture from, um, Like, a well organized minority, and that's what we've seen right now, where we've got this Trudeau government in there that, like, they got a very small minority of the vote when they were popular, and have been able to appease sort of the special interest groups on the left to get them over the hump of how many seats they needed, and the reason for that is because these These pockets of political influence are very concentrated. So there's always a fight over who's going to win in the East, but when the Liberals win in the East, they're going to win everything because that's where the most of the seats are. And so here in Western Canada, like, we kind of vote the same way all the time and it doesn't really matter.

33:59 The Conservatives will be in power if Ontario votes them in and the Liberals will be in power if Ontario votes them in. And so that creates a situation where, you know, it's, it's a perverse incentive. They, the, the. The government has the incentive to pay the voters in the areas of the country that actually decide the election. Alright, so, is gerrymandering a phenomenon in Canada as well as the US? Yeah, it is. Um, it's, it's not as big of a phenomenon, I think, as it is in the U. S. Um, we don't have as many things to vote on. We don't have as many layers of, like, they elect their sheriffs and all kinds of stuff in the U.

34:39 S. our levels of power are a little bit more distinct, and so it's a little bit harder to make a difference in terms of gerrymandering When you're talking about like the scale of the country than it is the local scale, but then I'm sure it's still going on. I know like very few people probably have trust in the election system right now, it'd be a pretty irrational move to believe that they're not cheating in some way. that said, I believe both sides are probably cheating. I don't know that one side is, is much better than the other, but in the spot rate that we're in right now, like all, all of these politicians are, are no better than their incentives, like, like anyone else. Right? And so the, um, the incentives are right now that our liberal government, you know, they, they've lost the middle ground.

35:26 Like they've been so ridiculous and all of those shit that they pulled, they trampled a late, like an old lady with a horse and the trucker protests, like it. It's beyond ridiculous to the point where anybody who has opened their eyes and read something that isn't from the mainstream media in the last four years has probably at least got some doubts going about this government now. And so they don't have much room to win in that area, right? They're trying even more ridiculous stuff. They're trying a hate speech law right now that would be retroactive. So they, they could come after us for things that we said in the past that are now illegal.

36:06 And, you know, it's getting like, it's, it's just dystopian. It's getting so absurd that there's nothing to be gained from these governments by coming to the rational discussion. All that they can do is pander to the lowest level of talking points and, you know, that kind of stuff is starting to run out, I think. That kind of like people's appetite to be sold the most ridiculous bullshit. is lessening, I think. And we're seeing that with a lot of the like, parental rights stuff, with the whole Bud Light marketing campaign that spectacularly failed. We're starting to see, you know, a lot of people who are kind of going along with the whole woke cancer culture because either they wanted to be polite, they wanted to be nice, or they didn't want to get cancelled.

36:54 A lot more people are fed up with that by this point, I think. I never got that, like, people were upset because, uh, they had homosexuals in the Bud Light commercial, right? But everyone knows that Bud Light is a gay beer, right? Like, it's always been a gay beer. Anyway, uh, we're Maybe we'll have to trim this for YouTube, Luke, what do you think? Uh, I doubt it. We're fine. so, like, uh, the exit tax and the, uh, retroactive hate speech law, that, that's just, that, that's just super Orwellian. I know of some other weird laws that came to pass in Canada, like, Uh, mandatory tampons in men's bathrooms, for instance.

37:40 I love that one, because that's just Well, well, here's, here's a very good example. So, a friend of mine, um, By the name of Derek Hildebrand, he's the publisher of the Western Standard, which is the largest, uh, independent news, online news outlet in Canada now, and I was at his office recently, and he showed me a tampon that he got in the men's room at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, and he's like, yeah, I got this tampon for my penis, you know, and, uh, meanwhile, neither the men's room nor the women's room In Calgary International Airport have to have bonds, so it's like, it's, it's a microcosm of what's going on here, right, is like, we're paying for Toronto to have shit that they don't need at the expense of stuff that we do need, and it's all, it's, it's all running down those woke agendas too, so it's, it's absurd.

41:49 Yeah, so, so how far off do you think, uh, uh, you know, Alberta just leaving and becoming its own state, how far off is that? Is that a fantasy, or what is it? Well, um, like I mentioned earlier that I read Atlas Shrugged at the start of 2022. And I was like legitimately depressed when I was done with that because it's like, so I was like, there's no gulch. Like, I mean, Bitcoin is the gulch ultimately, but, um, the next book that I read after that was the Sovereign Individual, which I think is one of the best books out there. Very important for anyone to read if they haven't. and one of the central ideas to that book is that the day of the large scale nation state is over, and there are a lot of details that, that lead into that, but one of the things, and this book is crazy for its predictions, like it basically predicted Bitcoin in, like this is 1994 or something like that, It's so good.

42:43 It's so good. One of the things that it predicted was that Canada would be the first large scale nation state to break apart, and it specifically mentions the cultural divide between Alberta and the rest of the country. And in a lot of ways, like, I think Canada is really ripe for that kind of, like, balkanization, right? And it's funny because, um, so I, when Trudeau was reelected 2019, I started, like, pretty aggressively talking to people that I know well about, like, separation and Alberta independence. And, like, almost exclusively, I got the answer, um, well, that would be nice, but that's unrealistic. And that has shifted.

43:25 But the funny thing is one of the biggest arguments that I don't have, like there's no rational argument against is like, okay, but we have the best hockey team right now. And like, you break up Canada, it's not going to be the best hockey team. But I was, the same is true right now. We've got the Olympics coming up in Paris. There's an interesting case that the best basketball team in the world would be Yugoslavia. If it was a thing right now, and so that's what we have to lose. We have to lose our global hockey dominance and, uh, you know, I don't think it's worth it. Like, I don't know how you can even weigh that against all the crazy shit that they've got coming and, like back to the question, like, I think the more crazy shit they push and the harder Trudeau goes.

44:13 The more likely it is that he's going to push Alberta into a situation where it's untenable for more people, and that makes the separation more likely. Yeah. And the funny thing about, like, I think this, this entire situation is like, I mean, I, I'm in the group that has, has left, but still wants to see the, the best for Canada. Absolutely. But yeah, like before, before I left, 2021, during the pandemic. it was the entire mood in, in Calgary was just, uh, at least in, in, in my circles. And, and I mean, I might've worked for a consulting company, but, but like I did work with oil and gas companies mostly. that was pre Trucker protest, and, uh, I mean, I'm sure I would have donated to that to gotten my bank account frozen, like, the whole thing is crazy, right?

45:01 And I mean, orange pill moment for so many people, I think, and well, maybe that's the Bitcoin of it all. What is your perspective on the role of Bitcoin in the future of Canada? I don't really care, um, but I would love to see Bitcoin have a very important role in the future of Alberta. Awesome answer. So what do you think that's going to look like? I hope it's going to mean that Alberta will be one of the first Uh, jurisdictions in the world openly put Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Um, I wrote an article to that extent a couple of years ago. Um, our premier who has endorsed me from my title as the strongest and best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada has, uh, She was a Bitcoiner and she, a bunch of us, uh, BCC Sessions and Frances and I, um, were all on her show.

45:56 She used to have a radio show and, uh, we went on there talking about Bitcoin and the, uh, we all told her, Get your coins off Quadriga. Quadriga was an exchange that we had here that, uh, that went belly up and, uh, she didn't, she lost her coins in Quadriga. So she's, she's like, I don't know what you call that, but like, it's a, it's a vetted Bitcoiner. Somebody who has lost their coins to an exchange hack is like a real Bitcoiner for sure. And so she, she is a Bitcoiner. sees where, uh, Bitcoin can add value to Alberta. I think we're in kind of a unique spot also because we've got our energy industry here.

46:38 And it's a very fragmented energy industry. So, um, we did the math and the place we're holding the Bitcoin Rodeo, this is last year, this could be different by now, actually probably is, um, the place that we're holding the Bitcoin Rodeo in downtown Calgary, within a 10 block radius of that spot, there are 650 oil companies headquartered. So we have a lot of small oil companies. We have, uh, just a, A really large, but fragmented energy industry. And the result of that is that we have a lot of like really good producing oil wells that are in the middle of nowhere and they can get the oil to market because that's the whole economic basis for the project.

47:22 But these wells also produce natural gas and it's a lot harder to get natural gas to market if you don't have a pipeline nearby. And so what they do now is they flare it off. And in, uh, in Alberta recently, we've got a bunch of companies, uh, It's pretty much spearheaded by a good friend of mine, Steve Barber, upstream data, who is installing, um, like little buildings of all these gas sites that burn the gas, generate power and mine Bitcoin. And so Alberta is like really well positioned to be a leader in that part of the industry. And if you pair that with, you know, as I'm saying that, like, we've got all these mini oil companies, it lines up with our, our culture of like individualism, free markets.

48:05 And uh, And I guess you can extend to like decentralization and, you know, Bitcoin, both as an industry and a payment tool and a form of money, obviously supports all those things. So that's like, we've been working with the province to try to like, talk to them about like, what does this actually look like? If Bitcoin goes on the balance sheet someday, and like, I hope it will, like it, it seems logical and positive. So unless political forces get in the way and squash this, then I think there's a good chance that Alberta will someday have Bitcoin on the balance sheet. let's tie it back to the trucker protests and the frozen bank accounts. And when people actually started to receive bitcoins instead, and it was actually unstoppable.

48:50 Like, how much of a lessons learned was that? Like, how many people did the penny drop for? Uh, is there like, yeah, so people know that there are ways around that they don't have to obey? So I'm, uh, I've been focusing a lot on the sort of like freedom community in Alberta here, where this 20 to 30 percent of Albertans, who've basically been like really woken up by the whole. Pandemic, the trucker protests, and taken from a point of like mild distrust for the government to, realization that this is an enemy organization that is actually trying to rob us and kill us. And that big shift in mindset has created like a whole bunch of grassroots movements around the province.

49:38 how our current premier that I mentioned got in to office was because our previous premier from the same party, um, had very specifically talked about no VaxPass. And then instituted a VaxPass, tried to just call it something else, thought we would be fooled by that. And this grassroots movement sprung up and like unseated him. And he lost his role as the leader of the party, and now we have a new premier who came in very specifically with the mandate of avoiding all of that bullshit. And I think that kind of synergy that we see between like, you know, that freedom movement, These people have already, like what they have in common is they've already identified the problem, right?

50:25 They don't necessarily know what the solution is. And so I've been, I've been actually doing this like kind of fragmented weird speaking tour to like small towns and like a bunch of these freedom events and stuff like that. And yeah, like the, the trucker convoy woke them up to Bitcoin. Right? There's, there's a lot of, there's a lot more people out there that are afraid of a central bank digital currency than that are excited about Bitcoin. And so they've started to see like, that money can be a tool of oppression like that. And the first detail of that is obviously like meddling with transactions, getting into the censorship game, starting to impose morals on spending.

51:07 And that part I think they get. The next part is that, you know, obviously the government is stealing your time. The government is stealing the value that you create with your time by debasing the money and that's kind of what I've been trying to talk to these people about, and I think a lot of these people already get this, like, if you were to talk to, um, this is probably true, like, most, most over the Western world, if you had gone, like, 5, 6 years ago and talked to somebody about inflation, they would be like, know what it is, maybe, they've heard the word. But it was like this like nebulous thing that the government talks to the media about every few years and you, you hear inflation was at 3 percent and you're like, okay, like, that's good, I guess.

51:54 Um, now we've gotten to this point where, you know, we were told in Canada that inflation was at like 6 or 7%, but you don't need to be a genius to tell that that's not true, right? Like if you've gone to the grocery store, you can tell that your stake is triple what it was three years ago, and that's not the same as 6%. So, I think inflation has had like a real bite on people's lives recently in a way that it hasn't until this massive expansion of spending and printing, uh, that they were able to do with COVID. And so now when you talk to somebody about like them losing that value, Like there's tangible examples. Like there are, there, there are, there's a huge class of people that are in the like 65 to 75 range right now that, have a few hundred thousand dollars saved up for their retirement and they thought that was going to be good.

52:51 And then they're now realizing that's like wildly inadequate with the spending power that that money gives them. And so people are staying in the workforce longer. They're, they're, they're taking bigger risks, which is. A crazy symptom that we see. So I'm, uh, I'm on the board of a company called Bitcoin Well here in, uh, Alberta, another exchange that we buy and sell Bitcoin, run a bunch of Bitcoin ATMs, and a big problem for this company lately has been, um, like these, like tax and, uh, inheritance and investment scams. There's this massive phone banks calling people saying you need to pay your taxes or we have an investment opportunity or whatever it is.

53:37 And we do a lot to try to keep people from investing or like, not investing, but like giving their money to these scams. And a lot of the time once we actually catch them and like notice, Hey, this is, this money is going to a scam and we end up talking to the people. A big part of the motivation why people are willing to take these kinds of crazy risks is because that they've gotten to that point where they realize my retirement is inadequate. You know, if you've got, you got 300, 000 left. And you suddenly realize I'm going to need 2 million before I can retire. And my current lifestyle, the incentive to try to catch something is huge.

54:18 And so these pains have like, they've gotten to way more people now. Like the number of people globally, and especially in the Western world, who have actually felt the bite of money printing now is like almost everyone. And it's funny because the people who, you know, The people who work at Deloitte or, uh, the, the middle of the bell curve, the, the mid brains. Um, those people tend to be a little bit more isolated from this stuff because they have those jobs like Deloitte, where it's like, for the most part, they don't really produce anything, right? They're, they're, they're, they're there because they've created a structure. To feed off of the money printing spigot.

55:00 Like how many lawyers and accountants would the world need if not for the government existing? yeah, I mean, this is, this is so true, and like, this is one of the, if I have a, uh, One of my latest thoughts about Bitcoin and what it has pointed out to people, like if you really boil it down, and we're going deep here, so, uh, Bitcoin has made it so obvious that money was never anything but information, or at least that it didn't need to be anything but information, uh, and what does that mean? Well, it means it's a part of us, it's an extension of you.

55:41 And, and your worth to other people, how, how, uh, how useful you can be to other people, how valuable other people find you, that, that is what your money expresses. And you can, through, through that price system mechanism, you can, you can show the world what, what you appreciate. And it's only because the money is malfunctioning and we live in systems that don't, uh, that don't, that hinder the correct people from being rewarded fairly. that people, that assholes can get rich, no asshole would be able to be rich in a world where money worked because you couldn't scam people.

56:25 You couldn't, you couldn't like being an asshole wouldn't pay and being unproductive and being middle of the bell curve and just shoveling money from one account to another wouldn't work. Uh, on a Bitcoin standard. It's only because the money is malfunctioning that assholes are rich. So, yeah. So I've been, uh, like I mentioned, I've been doing this little speaking tour, around Alberta and the tour has mostly, I've had a few people on it with me cause it's been a few different events, but for the most part we've had. Um, a gold guy and a banker. And it's interesting because somebody in the crowd, I think, put this better than I would have been able to.

57:11 And I think it's, it's, it's almost like the short version of what you were saying there that I think resonates really well with, with, with these crowds is that like, what money is supposed to do is create options for you. You, you've performed your task and now you have all these options. And the problem now is that money, when you perform work and create value, it creates options for you. But it also creates a lot of options for a lot of other people who didn't earn the value. And that creep is, is getting bigger. And we're to the point where like. You don't get the majority of the value that you create with your time. You don't get the majority of the options that the value you've provided is supposed to give back to you.

57:54 And that really distorts society in a really weird way because that's one of the most fundamental functions of money is like, the harder you work, the more successful you're supposed to be, right? The more value you provide, the better your life should be. The more value you should get back and that disconnect has created this incentive where it's like the incentive is not to create value at all, right? The incentive, if you want the safest way in our current society here, anyway, and Luke, this is, I'm sure your path here is if you want the safest way to, to receive the most value for yourself, regardless of how much value you've created for others.

58:35 The safest way is to go down this very sort of like rubber stamped approved path where you're going to go to a government approved. University, you're going to get one of these designations that gives you some letters after your name. And then you're going to go work for a company that does actually nothing except protect companies that do do things the government a little. So it's like, it's like, Hey, we're the, we're like, Deloitte is basically a lube company, right? It's like, let us, let us get in between you and the government and make sure it doesn't hurt that bad. You Oh, that's so good. That's the intro right there, Luke. Yeah, and I'll send it to all my, uh, old colleagues and I'll never, I'll never get a job there again, but I don't want one.

59:22 know what? So like, we've got this, uh, we've got the conference going on, and we're always, we're always looking for sponsors for the conference, and we used to, so we did the Bitcoin Rodeo in 2018, and like I was saying with this whole journey, I went down the path of like, blockchain consulting right around that time, where it was like, and I was getting, I was getting paid a lot from like, law firms and stuff to mostly tell companies they shouldn't do this, but, um, I was involved in a, in a blockchain organization here, and we put on some conferences. through this company and like Deloitte was always one of the big sponsors of the blockchain group and then when we went back to a bitcoin only event they're just like no. They, they sponsored Prague, actually, of, of all things last year, and their booth, I think, was the emptiest the entire time.

1:00:08 It was so completely out of place. And of course, it was all this crypto, blockchain, all this sort of thing. And, and the thing is, I mean, there are some, there are some great people. People working there, the individuals, right? Many, right? And, and the thing is, it's, it's not, it's not necessarily the individual's fault that all this is, is happening. And I, I do feel bad for the, the people who kind of get into something like this and have no idea what's going on. Uh, what's happening? Deloitte gets into this stuff because it's just the latest buzzword, right? AI is a big thing there right now, I know that. Uh, for example, and it's just, it's just chasing the, the next thing. And, and as you say, just always wanting to have their hand in, in every little thing.

1:00:49 It's not just Deloitte, of course, there's all these, all these consulting companies, Big Four, uh, What have you. But yeah, I just, I just think it's funny that it was funny to me specifically that, that, that Deloitte was there at BTC Prague, this massive Bitcoin only event. And, uh, yeah, no one was giving them any, any time or attention. Yeah it's interesting you can't you really can't blame the people in those in those roles because like I said previously like no one's better than their incentives and that that is like an actually good path to getting a lot of value back to your life. It doesn't really matter that you're not actually providing value. You're providing value to the entire path, right? You're providing value to the school system that charges you and that gets government grants and all this stuff and indoctrinates people.

1:01:36 And you're charging, you're providing value to the consulting firm that you work for. That uses your work as a way to siphon value out of real companies that either don't know that they don't need Deloitte's help or that need Deloitte's help protecting them from getting fucked quite as badly by the government. And that like, that's not an irrational move to join that team. And, and it's not like, it's not even really like a, an immoral thing. I don't think either. Cause if you're, you know what I mean? Like the lube is an important part of the process. If it'd be much worse if there was no lube. Well, well, it is immoral in the sense that, you know, Not doing anything about the Nazis was immoral too, if you were in Nazi Germany, like, not, not speaking up is, well, maybe not immoral, but it's not the right thing to do either.

1:02:30 Yeah. So it's, it's, uh, it's like a, like a Schindler's list situation where the guy's hiding the Jews, but he's also got like a free workforce from the Nazis. Right. And so it's, uh, like Deloitte does, and. Tax accountants, specifically consultants of regulatory various kinds, do help protect people from the government, for sure, and help interpret the ridiculous rules that the government is going to have, and that's like a net positive, but they're still like, they're only getting that value because the system is so absurd and so broken and set up in such a serious way. And I think that's the biggest detriment to the, the users of the Yeah, Deloitte even rhymes with exploit.

1:03:14 in, um,

1:04:54 Uh, well, I, I, uh Sneakily opened BTC map here on my browser and I'm zooming in on Calgary and I see 13 hits in actual Calgary. That's not super much, like how is the actual Bitcoin adoption on the ground in the brick and mortar world? I want to say like 2014, 2015, when we had this store, there was a Canadian exchange that was doing some kind of merchant processing and they had a little app and we helped them get a whole bunch of businesses in Calgary set up to take Bitcoin. And it was like wildly premature.

1:05:36 Like I think we had like 60 on there at one point. And nobody but me spent any Bitcoin at any of those places, except for the coffee shop that we had our office next to. And so, it was pretty premature. I think we're kind of getting to the point where it's starting to be A little less premature, but it's still not like, it's not that useful as a payment tool when you think about the tools that you could use to spend your Bitcoin anywhere. So like I get paid in Bitcoin, I live most of my life in Bitcoin. I obviously have to have some fiat to, uh, to pay for things that need to be paid for in fiat, but it's really easy for me to just.

1:06:19 Cash in some Bitcoin through BullBitcoin, send a small amount of money to a prepaid MasterCard, and then just use that as a tap on my phone. So, that's functionally the same thing. It's spending Bitcoin, but we're not putting the, we're not putting the, um, the onus for that infrastructure on the merchant. We're putting it on the spender in this case, right? And so, both of those things from like, the standpoint of moving Bitcoin from a store value to a medium of exchange, I think are like, equally good. Whether you're spending through like a debit card that You can load with Bitcoin or you're loading something else with Bitcoin or buying a gift card from like BitRefill or something like that. They're all kind of the same thing and I don't think it's that important that, um, the next stage of Bitcoin adoption be retail.

1:07:11 Um, where the retail comes in, I think, is more from the community side. So when, because it's, it's meaningless to get a coffee shop, like this is what we were doing back then too, was that like these places could take Bitcoin and it would auto convert all of the, everything to fiat. And it just became like a slightly worse parallel version of their existing payment infrastructure. Yeah, not really any point in that, right? Whereas when you can get merchants, which I think is one step away from where we're at right now, starting to want the Bitcoin and, you know, we're seeing that in some places in the world where there's, there is a big groundswell of, of So if you're looking at actual Bitcoiners running these businesses who want the Bitcoin, I think that's where it becomes more valuable as a whole.

1:07:57 And so we've got a little bit of that going here, but it's not really like the brick and mortar type stuff. So we've got like one that's really cool, that I would recommend everyone do is if you're coming to Alberta, we've got a hotel in Banff, which is a, uh, World class, like, one of the most beautiful places in the world, mountain town, um, and there's a hotel there called the Banff High Country Inn, where you actually get 20 percent off if you book in Bitcoin. And that's because the owner of the hotel is a Bitcoiner, he wants the Bitcoin. And they can avoid paying whatever they paid to Expedia, etc. So, we've got a lot of that stuff going on. And then we've got the Saturday markets that BTC Sessions and I have been putting on, which is kind of like a flea market slash farmer's market, where we get a bunch of different vendors to come in.

1:08:43 And those have been really cool, because we've been getting like 30, 40 different vendors. Out selling like everything from like beef to bikes and we had a hypnotist and plumbers and all kinds of people selling services and goods and stuff like that. And part of the owners from that for that came from from Ben where he was like trying to buy Bitcoin or buy beef with Bitcoin and. A bunch of us actually ended up tracking down different ranchers who would take Bitcoin, and we found tons of ranchers who would take Bitcoin in Alberta, and uh, we wanted to have this kind of like circular economy going because of how absurd everything's getting in Canada, and like, the chances that um, like right now Trudeau is very low in the polls.

1:09:28 Seems absolutely absurd that he could win, but the chances that he just like blatantly cheats and looks us in the eye, and we have proof but no one ever does anything about it, and he gets back in for another term are not that low. Like that could very well happen, and if that were to happen, the chances that our ability to buy red meat without either sanction, limit, or taxation beyond The current levels, um, the government very well may try to cut down our ability to buy red meat, and now we have a way to do that without the government's permission. that's wonderful. And this is what I saw with at least half of the places that accepted Bitcoin in Madeira.

1:10:11 I don't know what your experience was, Luke. You weren't there as long as I was, but, uh, uh, but, uh, some of the places were run by real Bitcoiners and actually, uh, people who wanted Bitcoin. To keep the sats, uh, they didn't want the fiat and, uh, that's, that's the only way. I mean, that's the way it's got to go, by the way, there's a, there's another late brain fart here. Uh, the, the, the term store of value, uh, sort of, it's been rubbing me the wrong way, uh, since the praxeology book, because value is subjective, right? So you could view it as a medium of exchange through time rather than a medium of exchange through space. So they're really just two aspects of the same thing.

1:10:54 And of course, through time has to come before through space, because if there's no medium of exchange through time, there cannot be a medium of exchange over space. But what you're really doing when you're saving is that you're trading with yourself, your future self, and you're sending, you're exchanging with Through time. Any ideas? Yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense. Um, I'm trying to go in the opposite direction with the way that I'm trying to describe Bitcoin for, in a lot of ways, that, like, I, immediately that makes perfect sense to me. But what I mean is, like, I'm trying to, like, remove layers.

1:11:34 Yeah. because, and I, I love those kind of discussions. And like, money is just one thing, really. And we're describing like all the elements of money, and that's very interesting to do. But I've been kind of trying to focus more on like, how can I like, how can I simplify this for people? How can I like, take away the layers of stuff? Interesting abstraction and like that, that's where you know, we did a, we did a, um, at the Bitcoin Rodeo last year, we did a little, uh, contest that was like the Bitcoin elevator pitch competition where it's like, you got 45 seconds alone with a stranger and you have to pitch them Bitcoin, like, what do you say?

1:12:17 And, uh, That, I think, was really interesting because, you know, we've spent so much time in the Bitcoin industry, we have such a great, like, I would call them, like, the intelligentsia of Bitcoin, the, the very many great thinkers that do a lot of, um, great writing and, uh, discussion about, about the topic of money and the topic of, you know, Um, of Bitcoin, how it relates to the topic of money and all these ins and outs, and like, I'm getting to the point where like, you know, I, I feel like I have a good enough understanding of money and what Bitcoin is for myself to be able to be like, yes, I, I get this, I get it at least enough to make my own choices for myself, for sure.

1:13:04 And now I'm hoping to get it enough to explain it to the next person. And I think there's actually like a barrier there, to a certain extent, where, like, if you end up, um, like these people that I, I was speaking to over the last couple of weeks at these Freedom events, if I send those guys straight to a video of like, Breedlove and Sailor, like, down the, down the rabbit hole, like, they're gonna glaze over, right? And, I, I, for me, the most interesting discussion is not necessarily like, how can we find the next best way to describe Bitcoin and come up with a salient point that reaffirms what we all already believe.

1:13:48 Um, for me, I'm more interested in like, How do I describe this to a person who doesn't really give a fuck and make it interesting in a way that relates to their life that they actually care about because it is something that everyone should care about and, you know, we're, we're kind of like ringing the fire alarm at this point. Right? It's like you guys, like the building is on fire. Like, this is the exit. Like, we recommend you join us as we walk up the exit here. And I really, like, I'm more interested nowadays in, like, what is the simplest way to describe Bitcoin?

1:14:35 What do you guys think? What's the simplest? Oh, this is an interesting one. But isn't that what the intellectual masturbatory circle jerk is all about? To come up with an analogy that fits each and every person. Like, I think Greg Sage said a great thing when there were all these analogies, but Bitcoin Bitcoin is that, and he just tweeted Bitcoin is a potato. And, uh, like, without an explanation, and, uh, I guess you can shoehorn something into making it into a potato, but, like, you know, underground and growing and stuff, but, uh, um. But still, at the end of the day, I think why we do the intellectual, the mental gymnastics is the correct term, the mental exercise, it's to be better at communicating with people.

1:15:28 And I think what's more important than communicating Bitcoin is communicating the problem. Especially inflation, because I think most people think that inflation is a natural phenomenon, and they don't know that it's created by some asshole, like, uh, and so they have no clue, like, uh. It's not natural at all. In a natural, like, so asking the simple questions, like, if you practice something, do you get better at it or worse? And yeah, of course you get better. So why are prices increasing? Like, it's that simple.

1:16:11 Like, why do people in the public sector pay taxes? Why? Like, the really simple questions. And like, come up with a good answer. Please answer me, why people in the public sector pay taxes, and why prices go up. Yes, I'm listening. I'm all ears. Like, that's the thing. yeah, I think, I think you're right with the, like, questions are super useful. And like I was saying, these sort of freedom groups are kind of people who have mostly identified the problem, but they don't really, like, they've identified the problem is that they don't trust the government and that they know the government is doing bad stuff to them.

1:16:52 They don't necessarily know all of what the government is doing and how that's affecting them. And I think those kind of questions are pretty important. And the simple ones like that really resonate, I've found too, where it's just like, do you trust the government? Almost everyone in the world is going to say no to that. And like, like a large majority of people worldwide will say, no, I don't trust the government. And then it's like, okay, well, do you think they're going to keep printing money? Of course, like, yeah, everyone's going to say yes, they're going to keep printing money. And, and then it's like, where does the money come from? and why do we even pay taxes if they can print money?

1:17:36 Like, that's another basic question. Why both? Why not one or the other? Yeah. And it, it's really just this, um, like, I, I don't know where this came up recently, but I, I saw a little clip of that famous JFK quote of like, ask not what you can do for your, your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. And like, it's crazy that that's like positioned as this very inspiring thing. Cause it's just like, nobody was like, why? Like, why would I, like, why would I put my, yeah, Like, why, why, why would I, why would I put you above me?

1:18:17 Like, it's, it's, it's one of these things, this is an interesting phenomena that I've noticed actually in the, in the very polarized world that we're in, and you know, I've got a lot of family who are, um, very left leaning, and we have very differing opinions on, um, on COVID, and every, every element of the cultural attack that's going on right now, um, You know, I had to, I had to tell my parents, like, do not take my son to a drag queen story hour, like, literally, like, and then we got into a discussion. I was like, you know what? Just, I don't care about the sexual orientation of the person or what they're doing.

1:19:01 Just like, please don't take my 8 year old son to the strippers for any reason. Like, I don't, I don't care. Yeah. I don't care who it is or what their message is. And so we're, we're very, we're very divided in terms of like the value proposition of where our opinions are coming from. Right. And when COVID was like very obviously starting to get to a point where it was like, there, there are mountains of data that point to the fact that this is not only a lie, but like an insidious conspiracy that is somewhere between Um, you know, on the, on the good side, maybe it was designed to rob us at an absolutely unprecedented scale.

1:19:44 And on the bad side, maybe it was designed to rob us on an unprecedented scale and kill us. So it's, it's a very bad story. And I, I started to gather like mass, mass amounts of evidence for this. Because there are mass amounts of evidence. And I wanted to be like, you know what, these are people that I respect. I want to have an intellectually honest conversation with them, with facts that I've brought along. I want to be prepared to address whatever they're talking about. And it never worked because, you know, these people would say, well, your sources are not good. And, and I would say the same thing. I'd be like, well, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the literal government funded propaganda arm of the federal government is not a good source.

1:20:27 Um. Those two kind, those two things are kind of unreconcilable because you, you have to like debunk every piece of their entire worldview to get to that point. And so I started to try to shift those kind of conversations away from like, let's talk about the facts and what, what those facts logically support to like, let's look at everyone's incentives. Right? And when, when a guy comes to your door and he's trying to sell you volcano insurance, and he's like, I promise there's a volcano nearby, like, that's not who you should check with about volcanoes, right? The guy who's trying to sell you the solution for the problem that he is sure exists has that perverse incentive where even if he's right, you can't necessarily trust him because It's in his best interest to lie to you.

1:21:22 And when you start to look at all these topics from that context of like, okay, which of the people that are telling me opposing things will benefit if I believe them and the guy, the guy selling volcano insurance. Benefits vary directly. Yeah, better buy volcano bonds instead. Anyway, I'd just like to flip that JFK quote, because I think it's true, like with everything else in Bitcoin, it's all of a sudden makes sense if you put it through a Bitcoin lens. So, ask not what your Bitcoin can do for you, but what you can do for Bitcoin. Like, Well, the nice thing about that is that Bitcoin is one of the first systems in the world where it naturally aligns everyone's incentives.

1:22:06 So, we need to, we need to trust each other to be selfish. And that's something that you can actually trust other people to do. well, I wouldn't say it's selfish. I would say, trust people to, to, uh, act in their own interest, like, Selfishness is, uh, is, is portrayed as a negative. Right. But then at the same time, you've got the like, put on your own oxygen mask before you help anyone else type thing. Right. And I think that that's, that is a, um, a phenomenon that is wildly underappreciated in our, in our society that has, you know, You know, right?

1:22:49 Like when you think about us, not what you can do for your, like what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country, like that's communism. That's just, that's just straight up communism from the single pillar of, of hope from the fight against communism in the world at the time. He's just, he's literally standing up there as the leader of the free world. During the cold war and exposing communism and no one called him on it. So this idea that like selfishness is bad and that we should have the greater good in mind has been pressured into us really over the last, like that whole time. You know, we're going back 70 years, 80 years to the point where, they started to really demonize and vilify the idea of individualism.

1:23:36 And the problem with that is that it ignores the fact that the most. Effective way to maximize the greater good, so to speak, is to generate as much wealth as possible, and the best way to do that is to align everyone's incentives, have everyone working for their own interests, and surprise, surprise, that's when everyone will do the best work, is when their incentives are aligned, and, you know, the, the, um, this is a point from the sovereign individual where, you know, the reason that the West In our, in our, um, approximation of capitalism, won the cold war, so to speak, was because the governments of the West allow the entrepreneurs, the business owners, the value and job creators of the world to have ownership of the capital to grow it before they steal it.

1:24:32 Whereas, whereas the, the communists, the straight up, like the Marxist Leninist socialist version of communism, um, they take the assets and the capital in an upfront, and because they, as individuals, do not have the incentive to grow that capital, it doesn't grow, and so there's actually less value to be spent by the communists in the, uh, other side of the, the Iron Curtain. Then there was To Be Spent by the Communists on our side of the Iron Curtain. yeah, this is, this is so interesting, I wish we could go on longer, because we're, we're, we need to wrap up here soon, but, but what you're seeing right now, it echoes Ludwig von Mises, even before he wrote, uh, Human Action, he wrote, uh, a book called Socialism, where he pointed out that it was not an incentive problem, Because in the Soviet Union, everyone had an incentive to work.

1:25:26 They had a gun to their head, literally. They had the best incentive in the world to work. It was the pricing system. Like, because if you don't let people keep their money and do what they wish with it, you have no way of knowing who needs what and when and where. Because, so when the factory workers in Soviet were instructed to construct a ton of screws, they constructed a one ton screw, like, because they did the simplest thing. Like you say, it's the incentives. Yeah. Luke, will you finish this off, please? Absolutely.

1:26:07 Dave, this has been a fantastic conversation. And yeah, as Knut was saying, we're risking running out of our time slot. So you've mentioned this a couple of times now in passing about the Bitcoin rodeo. So can you tell us all about what that is and what's going on in this year's edition? Yeah, so, uh, the Bitcoin Rodeo is a Bitcoin only conference that we run in Calgary, Alberta here. Um, we're running it this year on July 2nd and 3rd. It's at a place called the Grand Theatre, which is an awesome old theatre. we've got J. P. Sears headlining this year. Um, J. P. Sears is probably, you guys are nodding, but he's probably like, I don't know. The most well known guy who no one knows his name, you know, because like, I've been talking about this for a couple of months now.

1:26:52 And if you say that, that comedian with the long red hair who makes fun of the government, they're like, oh, yeah, that guy. So JP Sears is coming to headline. We've got an amazing lineup of speakers that you can see on BitcoinRodeo. com. Another one of the highlights is we're doing a roast. Uh, just like Comedy Roast like we just saw with Tom Brady of, uh, BTC Sessions. That should be amazing. And, uh, yeah, we've got a pretty big focus on, um, like how Bitcoin is useful and valuable and important to the real world and to normal people rather than, you know, we're trying to stay a little bit away from the macroeconomic topics as well as the technical topics, and we're trying to bring in a lot of that, um, like freedom crowd, so there's going to be a lot of, a lot of stuff that Um, we hope reaches out to those people.

1:27:45 We're not doing like Bitcoin one on one type stuff, which, you know, the, the goal is to be like, I want this to be entertaining and useful to Bitcoiners who show up as well as new people. Cause that's one thing that I find I go to conferences. I never watch the talks. Cause it's just like, I've seen this, like, this is the, I already saw this exact conversation between these exact people on Twitter. And, uh, so we're trying to, we're trying to take it a little bit outside the box in terms of. Like, what Bitcoin will actually mean to people and those, those questions of what it will mean to people are in large part the same for Bitcoiners and non Bitcoiners, you know, we're talking about all these incentive systems and the hope is that fix the money, fix the world, right?

1:28:32 Bitcoin fixes all the incentive systems. And so we want to kind of try to start getting into like, some of what those are like. So like, you know, one, one panel that I'm really excited for, um, like I mentioned, my good friend Madax and Francis Pulea from, uh, my co founder from BullBitcoin, uh, will be speaking on a panel moderated by Flo Montoya, another amazing artist, um, about pretty much how fiat is ruining our culture, how fiat's sapping the value out of our culture. And, you know, you can see. The proof of work in modern art versus classical art or, or, or, or madex art, you know, there's a difference in that kind of proof of work.

1:29:15 And so those are the kind of topics we're going to be talking about is like, what, what is, what does this actually mean to us? Basically, so we've got that going. We've got the, the, uh, next episode of the Saturday market on July 1st as well, just kind of the day before the conference. And yeah, it's going to be an awesome, uh, Uh, awesome event. we can use the promo code, Freedom Footprint, Sounds fantastic. Yes. that I'll, that I'm gonna make, like, at any moment now. And, uh, Could we have code freedom? Or is that taken? you can have code freedom, yes. We try to push that everywhere.

1:29:55 So like code freedom for the win. I'll be sending this to a bunch of Calgarians. I promise you. Yeah. You heard it. Code freedom for 10 percent off or something for some percent off for, for something. Some kind of something. Dave, I absolutely love this conversation. Uh, would love to have you back at some point in the future. And I hope to see you in, um, in, uh, away from keyboard sometime. Uh, Oh, great. Yeah, I'll be in Prague. Yeah, uh, and, uh, yeah, so we'll see you soon, and, uh, uh, we're, we might be going to, um, to Canada next summer, right, Luke? Yeah, I just had my, uh, my first kid over here and so I'm a little stuck on this side of the planet for this next little while here.

1:30:44 And next year we're going to bring him to meet all the family in Canada. So, uh, yeah. Hopefully Bitcoin Rodeo is having an edition next year and we'd love to stop by. Yeah, we'll be doing it next year. It's, it's always, so this is the other detail about the Bitcoin Rodeo for anyone coming from out of town is we do it right before a big event called the Calgary Stampede, which is like, it's, it's the greatest outdoor show on earth, they call it. And it's this absolutely massive event. It's around 2 million people, every year. And it's pretty much the whole city turns into like drunken cowboys for like 10 days. And we have this massive, um, Orgy? it. Well, there's some of that goes on, but uh, but uh, you know, the whole city does turn into like slutty cowgirls and cowboys.

1:31:33 But, uh, yeah, we've got one of the world's largest rodeos going on during that time, and chuckwagons, and like this giant midway event, and crazy fiat food, and it's, it's a, it's an awesome time to come to Calgary. It's, the whole city is a huge party, and we plan the Bitcoin rodeo to be right before that every year. So, it'll be around the same time next year, it'll be like, early july at some point probably like july uh first and second or something like that next year Use code FREEDOM for 10 percent off your tube of lube. code code freedom oh and you know you know what i don't know if this is like stepping on your guys toes but use code bitcoin brains for 10 off of tickets to btc proc Yeah, if you haven't already used the code FREEDOM, yeah.

1:32:23 yeah Alright, fantastic, man. See you soon, and looking forward to grabbing a beer or two in Prague. sounds good Anything else you'd like to mention or any way you'd like to direct our listeners to? yeah i mean we've got uh we've got the bitcoin rodeo at the bitcoin rodeo on twitter i'm bitcoin brains you Uh, Bitcoin rodeo.com is the website for Bitcoin rodeo. Um, my personal brand website is bitcoin brains.com. That's very important. Lots of important reading on there. Um, bull Bitcoin. Anyone in, uh, in Canada should visit Bull Bitcoin or Bitcoin?

1:33:03 Well, anyone in the United States should visit Bitcoin well to buy, to buy Bitcoin and Costa Rica should visit Bitcoin and, uh. Yeah, wherever you are, like, stick to non custodial Bitcoin only exchanges. I think that's everything I have left to shill. And buy art from my good friend Midex, Spacebull on Twitter. Absolutely perfect ending. So Dave, thanks so much. This was, this was fantastic. And as Knut said, looking forward to next time. So Thanks for having has been Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening.