Intros

Natalie Brunell: Let’s start with what we all have in common. We are sound money advocates. We all like to warn people about this destruction that comes from fiat debasement, but we’ve taken different sides when it comes to Bitcoin. 

Natalie: First, I would love to get both of your takes because you have seen the sound money movement evolve over the decades. Trace, you embraced Bitcoin as it emerged. Peter, you rejected it forcefully. Let’s start with you, Trace. Why did you decide to embrace this new technology?

Trace Mayer: I came with a worldview of monetary sovereignty. My blog was called Run to Gold, launched in January of 2008. When I came across Bitcoin, I could see that this limited-in-amountness that it had, along with its ability to be portable over communication channels, could be very disruptive. That’s one of the main reasons I started talking about it.

Natalie: And Peter, why did you decide to reject it? You’ve known about it since it was a dollar! 

Peter Schiff: Well, first of all, some of us are advocating for sound money, and some of us just think they’re advocating for sound money. Actually, before I answer your question, a lot of people are even saying, “Why is Peter Schiff even at a Bitcoin conference?” I’ve got to tell you something because I learned this from personal experience at this event. This is not something I’m proud of, but this is a fact.

Peter: Based on what I’ve been told by countless people who have asked me to pose for selfies with them, I am probably responsible for more people owning Bitcoin than any other person at this conference. And every time I tell you guys not to buy Bitcoin, you buy more. So you can thank me, or you can blame me. 

Peter: If you want to know the reason I didn’t buy Bitcoin when I first learned about it. It wasn’t Max Kaiser. He likes to credit himself. It wasn’t Max Kaiser who told me about it. It was people at my Senate campaign in 2010 who were working with me because some people were donating Bitcoin in 2010. I don’t know what the hell happened to that Bitcoin because I’ve tried to find it.

Peter: So people in my campaign said, “Why don’t you buy some of this Bitcoin?” What the hell’s that? And they explained it to me, and I actually thought about buying it. I don’t know if it was a dollar or less than a dollar or more. I can’t remember exactly. 

Peter: But the main reason I didn’t just take a punt on it, and I thought about throwing 10 grand in or 50 grand. I was going to buy some, and I remember asking the guy, “Well, what’s to stop somebody else from coming up with another one. Can you have another cryptocurrency, or is it just Bitcoin?”

Peter: They said no. You could just make another and have another name, and have the same properties, so in other words, there’s an unlimited number of cryptos that could be created. It’s not really that unique. It’s just the first one. They can make more, and they said, “Yeah, they can make more.” And I said, “Well, then why buy it?” 

Peter: Obviously, it went way up, and the next time I thought about buying it was after it went up to a thousand, and it came down to $300/$400. It was there for a couple of years. Some people I knew, smart people, investors, were buying it. I was like what are you buying this crap for? I thought you knew, but if they’re buying it, maybe more fools will buy it. Maybe I should just buy some for the hell of it.

Peter: My biggest mental problem was that I couldn’t pay $400 for something that I didn’t want to buy at $4. I just never could have imagined today all of these people right, because I was telling people not to buy Bitcoin before most of you even knew what it was. I never could have imagined that so many people would find so much value in nothing.

How Bitcoin is Unique

Natalie: Trace, why don’t you educate Peter in the eloquent way that you speak about why Bitcoin is so special, even though we have so many other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is unique and stands out, and has value even though it’s digital. 

Trace: Well, when we look at value, it’s all subjective value theory, so things have value because individuals value them, and it’s not on us to put on someone else why they value something. I ran into a lot of these similar issues because when I first started talking about Bitcoin, I targeted the gold bugs and the libertarians.

Trace: The gold bugs because they should know what sound money is, and the libertarians because they’re just kind of crazy. It would be great if Bitcoin were successful. It would be great for these two particular demographics to have a lot of wealth. 

Trace: I had emails with Lou Rockwell about having lourockwell.com accept Bitcoin, and encountered resistance in 2012 to that. One of the chief gold bugs, James Turk, who founded Gold Money, and I was actually an investor in Gold Money before I got involved in Bitcoin about 2007. James Turk, one of his main hang-ups, was that Bitcoin was not tangible. That’s, I suppose, a difficult issue to attack, right? So what I did is I went into … because ideas can only be overcome by other ideas.

Trace: You have to be able to lay out your argument and persuade somebody if they’re going to freely value something. We have to really understand these things in order to be a true hodler. You’ve got to have conviction, and that conviction comes because of the understanding that you have in your mind about it and what you desire in your heart to do with it. 

Trace: I wrote this article about why Bitcoin is tangible, and the reason it’s tangible is because the word tangible comes from tangent which is a math term (meaning to kiss). Further down in the etymology, it has to do with reality. I distinguished between tangibility and corporeality, corporeality being the physicality, but tangibility being something that’s based in reality, not a hallucination.

Mathematics, for example, is tangible but not corporeal. In Bitcoin’s case, we have special numbers which act as these private keys to move and transfer the bitcoins, just like we have special atoms that act with gold. We have very similar analogies between the two. 

Trace: We have to have a little bit more abstract thinking on these ideas of Austrian economics, with subjective value theory and then number theory and monetary theory to get to where we’re going with Bitcoin. It’s sound. Why? Because it’s limited in its internal characteristics, just like gold with atoms, it’s limited by math, numbers, and thermodynamics. Therefore, it’s not limited in amount by extrinsic characteristics like counterfeiting laws.

Peter Schiff has some doubts about Bitcoin

Natalie: So, Peter, Bitcoin is math. Do you not believe in math? 

Peter: No, I believe in math. I just don’t believe that Bitcoin has any value. Because you solve a mathematical equation to create one, just like I don’t think Bitcoin is energy, just because you waste energy to make one. I disagree with what Trace said about Bitcoin not being intangible. It’s intangible, but that’s not why it doesn’t have value. Intangible assets can be very valuable, and my problem with Bitcoin isn’t the fact that it’s not a tangible asset; it’s because you can’t really do anything with it. It doesn’t have any real use. 

Peter: The only thing I can do with my Bitcoin is I can give it to somebody else. I mean, I can sell it to somebody. I can gift it to somebody, but what are they going to do with it? They can turn around and give it to somebody else or sell it to somebody else. Why does somebody want Bitcoin? Because they think that they’re going to be able to turn around and sell it to somebody else at a higher price. And why does that person want it? Because he has the same expectation that he’ll be able to sell it at a higher price. 

Peter: So everybody buys Bitcoin simply because they think that someone else will pay more, and so it’s just a giant, literally a blockchain letter. It’s built on the same foundation as a pyramid scheme. Now you’ve got all these Bitcoin treasury companies that are basically pyramiding the Ponzi, and everybody is buying this with the expectation that they’re going to get rich.

Peter: A lot of people have gotten rich if they bought it early enough. JD Vance was here this morning talking about all the wealth that has been created by Bitcoin and crypto. No wealth has been created. I don’t care how many of these coins are in existence. They’re not wealth. They’re not value. 

Peter: But a lot of wealth has been transferred to a lot of people who bought or created these tokens and who sold them, and got wealthy because the wealth of the buyer was transferred to the seller. We’re in Vegas. This is a gigantic casino, and the casinos have winners and losers, but then you have the house that rakes everything but some people make money because other people lose money. 

Peter: That’s how crypto works: people are going to make money who get in early, but those gains are going to be offset by the losses of all the people who get in late. Now the question is, and you can look around this room and see all the people here and all the money that’s been spent on all these booths, and ask yourself, am I early or am I late? Because if you’re late, you’re the bagholder. If you really think that you’re going to come to this conference and have 300,000 people here one day, I mean, I’ve never been to a conference this big. The biggest gold conference I go to has 600-700 people. 

Natalie: Exactly.

Peter: After this conference is over, when you go home, go on YouTube and look up Peter Schiff Mortgage Bankers because I came to the Western Regional Mortgage Bankers Convention at the Mirage when that used to be a big hotel back then in 2006. I came there right under the same dynamic I’m coming here.

Peter: I came there to tell a bunch of people whose livelihood depended on mortgage finance that the housing bubble was going to pop and that mortgages were going to collapse. That they were all going to be out of work. I remember telling them that in a couple of years, they’ll have the whole conference in just one hotel room because I knew it was a bubble. 

Peter: I came there and I made a deal with the company. I said, “I will come to your conference for one reason. You’ve got to give me a room to tell people about the hedge fund that I just started to short the subprime market. I think that people who are in the mortgage market should put a little bit of the money on the don’t pass side because I think they should hedge their careers and because I have a great investment for them to bet that subprime collapses.” 

Natalie: Okay, you called out the housing bubble; we know that. We’re calling out the sovereign debt bubble, the fiat bubble. Nothing has destroyed – no hold on – nothing has destroyed wealth for the majority more than fiat. And I personally believe that the reason we have fiat is because of gold’s fatal flaw, because it is physical, because it requires papering over and creating liabilities. So, how do you answer that flaw in a digital economy?

Peter: Gold doesn’t have a flaw; humans have flaws. What gives fiat currency value is belief. Fiat currency ultimately has value not necessarily because the sovereign issues it and demands that taxes be paid in it, but ultimately, what gives a fiat currency value as opposed to a real currency is a legitimate currency that derives its value from the money that backs it up. 

Peter: The money would be gold, and then you would have currency that’s redeemable in gold. Fiat currency has value because people believe in it, because people have faith in it, and that is the only reason that Bitcoin has value. Bitcoin is a fiat digital currency. Just because it’s not issued by a government doesn’t change the nature of what it is, but if you like blockchain, there is nothing that stops you from tokenizing gold, putting it on a blockchain, and using it as a medium of exchange and as a unit of account. 

Peter: It is a great store of value which Bitcoin can never be because you can’t store what you don’t have but if you want to use tokenized gold it is faster and cheaper than Bitcoin so I can pay and get paid I can send and receive money instantly around the world with tokenized gold you don’t have to move the gold you just have to move the ownership of the gold. 

A history of money

Natalie: Trace, you believe in both gold and Bitcoin. Can you talk to me a little bit about this, because there is a reason why we ended up with fiat. You have been a student of the Constitution, which is supposed to define what money is. It’s not supposed to be these pieces of paper that represent fake promises. So, tell us how we even got here and why you actually believe in both gold and Bitcoin. 

Trace: As we talked about with the precious numbers and the precious atoms, the result is a monetary good that is equity-based and nobody’s liability. Bitcoin and gold are identical in that sense, Peter. There’s no issuing authority, there’s no Bitcoin company that issued a Bitcoin. It’s a product of nature now because of the pure proof-of-work nature of the blockchain. I don’t understand that part of the argument. 

Trace: When we go back and look at our history, you know we had fractional reserve banking going on, it crashed, and they put Isaac Newton in as Master of the Mint to fix it in 1696, and he came up with the gold standard. We had the gold being left with the goldsmiths. They’d leave gold certificates. Those would circulate.

Trace: Now we had money, being the gold. Then we had money substitutes, such as the gold certificates. Now it was Roosevelt with Executive Order 6102, and then Nixon with closing the gold window that moved us away from these gold certificates to just fiat currency illusions that are like I owe you nothing. 

Trace: I mean, there’s no realness to them at all, or even pretended realness, and so that’s how we’ve kind of evolved in our monetary system to where we are today, where we are using this unconstitutional fiat currency. The federal government has no expressed power to make anything legal tender. The state governments can make things legal tender, but they’re restricted by the US Constitution under Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1, which states that they can only make gold and silver coin a tender and payment of debts.

So we have an unconstitutional monetary system, and you know it’s based on this illusion that’s just a colored piece of paper that’s printed, and even more so, just digits in a database that are not limited in amount by any intrinsic characteristics like Bitcoin and gold are.

Natalie: But doesn’t Bitcoin fix for exactly what caused the issue in the first place, the fact that you can’t send or verify gold very easily, especially when you’re talking about a global interconnected world?

Trace: Yeah, so I did an interview with Saifedean years ago, and we talked about – I brought up this issue of the cost to run a gold full node. You have to have a refinery; you’ve got to melt down the gold; you’ve got to recast it. That’s a very costly process. The Bitcoin network does all of that for 15 cents. 

Trace: Because of the nature of the Bitcoin network and the triple-entry bookkeeping that we have with Bitcoin, it’s acting as both the asset and the rails that we transfer it with at the same time. We look back over our history. They developed the telegraph, and then we started sending money over the wires. That’s where wire transfer came from. 

Trace: Money’s always kind of had this dual purpose of transferring value through time, but also transferring through the distance vector. Usually, you’ve had two different instruments that do that. Gold and silver, salt and cows. Humanity has come up with all different types of things, and Nick Szabo has a lot of writing on this topic. We’re now living with a new innovation, and that innovation is what Satoshi solved. He solved the double-spending problem. What do we get to do with that? We’re experimenting with that now.

Intrinsic Value and choosing to adopt bitcoin

Natalie: Comments, Peter?

Peter: Well, first of all, you said that both gold and Bitcoin have intrinsic value, and that’s not the case. Bitcoin doesn’t have any intrinsic value; that’s always been my problem with it. All you can do is send it to somebody else, whereas gold is money because it’s the most liquid commodity.

Peter: Gold was a valuable commodity before we discovered that we could use it as money. Gold is used in industry, not just jewelry. That’s probably 50% of the use, but gold is used in aerospace. It’s used in the computer business. It’s used in medicine. It’s used in dentistry. It’s the most valuable, the most useful metal that we have. 

Peter: What’s special about it is that it doesn’t lose those properties over time. In a thousand years, the gold that you have today will be just as useful as it is now. It doesn’t rot it. It doesn’t decay, and so it’s real. And yes, constitutionally, you’re correct. Gold is supposed to be money. It’s the only thing that the states can make legal tender. The federal government has no constitutional authority to make anything legal tender.

Peter: All the government can do, the federal government, is coin gold and silver. That’s all it can do, so we have an unconstitutional system. We went off the gold standard. The dollar used to be defined, but it wasn’t that the dollar was backed by gold. The dollar was defined as a weight in gold, and before we had even the Federal Reserve, we had private banks that issued currency backed by gold, by real money, dollars on demand. 

Peter: I’ve got no problem if the people in this room want to waste their money buying Bitcoin. Fine. It’s a free country. But where I do have a problem is when you bribe the politicians to buy Bitcoin with my money, because I don’t want to buy Bitcoin, and I don’t think the US government should be buying Bitcoin. I don’t think any of the state governments should be buying Bitcoin. It’s kind of ironic that something that was created, you know, to be anti-government is now completely dependent on government.

Peter: I don’t think we’d have Bitcoin over 100,000 right now if it wasn’t for the election of Donald Trump and what’s going on with the government to try to misdirect resources into Bitcoin, into crypto, and now all these companies like Strategy and other copycat companies that are levering up and issuing stock and borrowing money to accumulate Bitcoin. 

Peter: To the exclusion of other more valuable things, I mean resources that are wasted on crypto are resources we can’t use to build factories. We can’t use those resources to create things that we actually need, and so now we have to run larger trade deficits to import more stuff that they’re making in China. We’re wasting our time coming up with Fartcoin, and we’re not creating things that people really need now.

Natalie: Peter, the free market is telling you something. There are 30,000 people here. The White House has embraced Bitcoin. You have your own strategic Bitcoin reserve. Which, by the way, who is sending Peter Bitcoin? Please stop. I mean, when are you going to say, “Okay, the market may be right, this is an emergent phenomenon, and it should be the market that decides, and maybe you’re on the wrong side of that.” 

Peter: Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t mean that I’m going to give in to the peer pressure to believe it too. You think that the whole world is in on Bitcoin. Look, I can tell you that when I walk down the streets of a busy city, maybe one person will recognize me during the day. Pretty much everybody in this room knows who I am. So, most people don’t own Bitcoin because if they did, everybody would recognize me when I’m walking down the street, but they don’t. 

Peter: You get into an echo chamber, and the people who like Bitcoin surround themselves with other people who like Bitcoin. They all reinforce the same delusion, and something like 50% of the people in the world who own Bitcoin live in America, which is a pretty big number. Nothing we should be proud of as Americans, but you get in a group and it reinforces this mass delusion that everybody has. 

Peter: To me, it’s like a giant cult, and you’re worshiping this god. Nakamoto is the Lord, and everybody just believes, and everyone says, “I’m going to buy Bitcoin, and I’m never going to sell it. Never sell your Bitcoin.” Yeah, you know who got you to never sell your Bitcoin? The whales that are selling you their Bitcoin. Where do you think all the Bitcoin is coming from that everybody is buying? It’s the people who bought it a long time ago that are laughing all the way to the bank as they’re selling you their worthless tokens. 

Satoshi Created a Monetary Good

Natalie: Well, actually, Wall Street is buying from us. We got it before them, so that’s pretty great. Trace, I’d love for you to respond to Peter before we wrap up.

Trace: Well, I’m not selling anybody anything. I’ve honed in on the scarcest asset on the planet that has liquidity with 110 stock to flow. Peter did say that I said that Bitcoin has intrinsic value. That’s not what I said. I said it was limited by its intrinsic characteristics. Nothing has intrinsic value. We as humans ascribe value to things through subjective value theory. That’s an important distinguishment. 

Trace: Then it gets to our next point about entrepreneurship. One of the great things about entrepreneurship is that the entrepreneur is able to take time, labor, and capital, combine them with their vision, and produce a good for the market. The entrepreneurs who are successful have profits. The entrepreneurs who have losses are those who are unsuccessful. 

Trace: What Satoshi did was create a new monetary good as an entrepreneur and introduce it into the market. People, through their own subjective value theory, have honed in on it and decided I want some of that. It’s creating a schelling point, and it’s become the most liquid high stock-to-flow asset on the planet. We’re only 16 years into this.

Trace: I have some gold UTXOs, some gold coins. I’ve had them for 25 years. There are some institutions that have had gold UTXOs for millennia. Where are we going to be in another 16 years and another 16 years after that? And then another 160 years after that. 

Trace: Bitcoin is just going to continue to crank that stock-to-flow higher, it’s going to get scarcer, and humanity is going to be putting their savings and their retained earnings into it because it treats that capital well. Because it has this high stock to flow, a stock to flow that’s now twice gold’s, but it’ll eventually be even higher, so it’s a superior monetary good in many of those ways. 

Natalie: It’s an emergent bottom-up phenomenon. We are out of time, unfortunately, Peter. I’m so sorry, and what I will leave you with, Peter. This is just a lesson from my heart to yours because I do really appreciate your work and your sound money leadership. You can be for something without being against something. You can be for gold without being against Bitcoin. We are all for Bitcoin, I’m not against you, Peter, and I know that someday you will be on stage when Bitcoin’s a million dollars, and maybe you’ll finally get it. Thank you so much.

Peter: Natalie, I do think that a lot of I think Bitcoin is doing a lot of harm, so that’s why I’m against it.

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Also read: Boomers and Bitcoin

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Conference: Africa Bitcoin Conference

YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/sVLXIi2hw98?si=WsmsLH68D3W5mur4

Introduction

In South Sudan my parents were linguists, they were working on taking a language that had only an oral tradition and making it into a written tradition. This is something that takes 10 to 15 years, takes a long time. One of the fascinating parts about growing up there was that the money that was used was actually cattle, okay? So the Toposa had been using this for many years and each of these white beads represents a herd. A herd of cattle so roughly 20.

This is 120 cattle that are accounted for on this one string of beads and you can see people wearing four to six of these at one time. If you need something smaller than that, you use goats. If you need something smaller than that, you break it down to beets. My sister and I, you see there, pumping our water, my parents built this metal house that we lived in. We didn’t have electricity, we didn’t have power. We had paraffin lamps and candles and we made do with that and we were fine but one of the things I think that’s very important for all of us to understand is that, we have a lot of electricity. 

We’re used to our Wi-Fi working. When we go to the hospital we expect it to be open at night. Our water runs out of our faucets, right? and we’re a little bit distanced from what energy actually does today. We see it as something that’s valuable but we don’t actually understand how valuable it is.

The world’s most foundational commodity is energy. Everything depends on energy in one form or another as a production input by virtue of the proof of work model. Bitcoiners understand this. Bitcoin cannot be created or transacted without the expenditure of very large amounts of energy so I did a quick calculation based on a 24J/T  Bitcoin mining machine. It takes 914 kilowatt/hours to make one Bitcoin (1 BTC = 914kWh)

Let’s make that real, what does it mean to you or I? Well, that same amount of energy would power different amounts of energy in different places, in different homes, right? 

So in the US it’s very different than it is in Africa, than it is in Asia. The story of human progress is the story of energy. Energy is the base layer for all of this progress. It doesn’t matter if it’s healthcare or grades, education, it doesn’t matter if it’s security, it doesn’t matter if it’s productivity. Everything is built on this one main source.

There’s this fantastic little video put together, a documentary put together by the BBC called the human power station.  I’m just going to show the beginning of it for you to understand what it looks like.

“Hello, welcome to a very special edition of Bang Goes the Theory. Now we’ve put up this house outside our studio and inside a family of four are fast asleep and they’re here to take part in a massive experiment. The only thing is they’ve absolutely no idea what that experiment is. In fact we’ve genuinely no idea whether or not it’s going to work.

Liz, are we up and running in there? We are indeed Dallas. We are about to do something that no one in the world has ever tried to do before. We’re going to unplug that house from the main supply and try to power us in a completely different way. 

Welcome to the human powerstation. 12 grueling hours, 80 human dynamos but just one question can we really pull this off? Oh my God guys!”

You can still find this on YouTube and I really suggest you watch it because it’s really funny. One of the interesting parts is that it took 24 cyclists to heat the oven and 11 to provide the energy just to make two slices of toast. Why does this matter? It matters because of this slide that we’ve seen many times before, which is, there’s no such thing as a low energy rich country. If you do not have electricity, much of the electricity for your population you will always be behind those that do and to give you real numbers on this, the US, up in the upper right, uses 5.5 times more energy than the whole African continent combined. 

When we look at the continent of Africa we see a major problem of 800 million people in the world who don’t have any electricity, 600 million of them are in Africa and in the most recent IEA report that was done this year in the past 20 years we’ve seen major increases in electrification across Asia and Latin America but Africa has maintained 600 million. We haven’t improved at all. Why is that? Because the model’s broken. 

If we want to actually light our world, we have to think about this model completely differently. Every average African uses about 6.1kWh per month across the continent. That’s not a lot of energy. If you’re trying to build a successful energy company and your customers only use 6kWh it’s really  hard to make returns on that investment. 

Let’s look at it even closer. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a Malawian village or you’re in the United Kingdom. The pockets of wasted energy here are large, you can find it everywhere so everywhere above the line is not being used, that’s stranded power. At gridless our job is to monetize the stranded power. 

We do that by pushing electrification further to the edges in Africa, looking for these off-grid energy sites that aren’t utilizing everything that they have. The other reason we do this is because by pushing the hash rate of these miners to these little areas, we’re also decentralizing the Bitcoin network.

What does it actually look like for ordinary people? I’ve built this energy site on this far left side. I’m only making a small amount of returns when gridless comes along. We fully monetized the stranded power and we share that revenue in bitcoin with the energy partner and they are finally able to be a sustainable company.

I wanted to take a real world example. This is a 700 kilowatt site in Zambia. It was built more than 15 years ago and was grant funded at first, fantastically well built. Really well built. The local community was a part of it, in fact they did it all by hand. There is no machinery used to build this site.  It’s something that we actually haven’t seen much across Africa. That’s how well built It was but over the last 15 years they’ve never used more than 35% of the energy that flows from the river through that turbine.

Dan, the owner of it, we started talking about it with him because he’ heard about what we’ done in Kenya and he said well, could you come here?

 What do we do really?We take containerized Bitcoin mining and we put it wherever it needs to be right so it’s this geographically agnostic buyer of Last Resort realtime demand response system for energy and if you have wasted power you have to think about what my friend Alex said, which is, at night the people sleep but the river never sleeps. There’s energy to be monetized here and that matters. 

What does it look like when you’re making one of these Bitcoin mines? We started off with a Bitcoin mining container designed, engineered and built here in Nairobi because we realized it was about a quarter of the cost of importing one. We then put that on the back of a truck. It could go 2000 km down to Zambia like this one is. We unload it and then we start doing our connectivity with starlink.

We also connect to the mobile network operator, we have a couple different forms of connectivity and we don’t drop any shares then we load what my business partner Philip calls the world’s dumbest computer into these mining containers. They only do one thing ,they don’t do anything else. They only mine Bitcoin. Once they’re loaded in there, we turn them on. This whole process takes about three days and I’m just “kym” while I’m there, kazi ya mkono. 

All I do is plug in things and carry heavy loads. By day three you have a fully functioning Bitcoin mining container set up in this new site and that really means something to the owner of this energy because that next morning he picks up his phone, he makes bitcoin. He sees it in his wallet and he goes we’re having breakfast. There’s nowhere to stay here by the way, we’re camping on the side of the river. He looks at it and he’s like, I just made money. Yeah you get that every day. Every day.

You’re not waiting for somebody to make payments to you. He looks up and he says, I can finally start thinking strategically about my business. I’ve never had enough money to even have my powerline workers paid on time and now I can. This is the power of bitcoin mining in energy.

I was curious.  I wasn’t from the energy sector. I’m from the tech world and bitcoin mining makes sense to me because we built hardware and infrastructure before but I didn’t know anything about energy when we started. I read about 17 research papers on airplane flights, which is the best place to do it and I wrote my own paper to make sense of it which I called Energy and Bitcoin in Africa and the basics of it is this, you don’t have to read it.It’s not important that you read it. What’s important is that you understand the problem.

The national power grids have gone about as far as they will go. The reason why is because, the people who need energy now, live in far-flung places and they don’t have the population density to get a return on investment of major power grids so the answer for this is through mini grids. Small energy sites that can be put wherever they’re needed. They look like this, they’re simple and I broke this down as simple as we can. You see run-of-river hydro. We also operate biomass and geothermal but run-of-river hydro really is the right answer for Africa. 

The water comes into a 4-bay, goes into a powerhouse turbine, powers the bitcoin mining data center, the houses and the businesses. That Zambian site had about a 1000 families households on it when we first came there and just over 200 businesses. That’s maize mills, health care, education, government offices, mobile phone towers, all those types of things. This time I was there a month ago, it was over 1500 households now and they needed more of the energy. What does that mean for us as Bitcoin miners? We turn off miners. That’s the answer. 

We actually turn off miners and move them somewhere else and this is something that you can also do with bitcoin mining that you can’t do with other industrial off-takers.

You can be really really flexible. The World Bank states that Africa needs 140,000 mining grids to meet the demands of the 600 million Africans who don’t have power.

The African Mining Association claims that there’s only 5,000 that have been built. We have a problem. Up until this point, Gridless has been dealing with the symptom which is, how do we make off-grid energy profitable? The disease is that we need more energy built. How do we get more energy built? We need different types of financing because as you saw from that first chart for 20 years, actually about 60 years, we have had the same model for energy financing and we haven’t hardly put a dent in the numbers.

It turns out that the same financial technology that enables us to address the symptoms is the tool that also eradicates the disease which is bitcoin. In this case, we take bitcoin and we make it into a financial reactor. We create a treasury that we borrow against with USD and we can now build tangible assets. Gridless energy creates a financial reactor that produces both more energy and more bitcoin over time which in turn creates more energy again.

If I was to break it down it would look like this. We take fiat investment, create a bitcoin treasury, lock it up with our lender, build energy with it, make more bitcoin and put that back into the top again. It’s a pretty simple model and we often wonder why nobody else has done this yet.

Bitcoin financing unlocks this endless energy and it does it in a couple ways. We use bitcoin to finance new energy development. We use bitcoin mining to make energy profitable already and we use bitcoin as the market maker for the energy price.

This last one deserves a little bit more explanation. How much do bitcoin miners get

paid? If you were to take our usage of kilowatt/hours and break it down into dollar cents we get paid between 7 and 10 cents per kilowatt/hour that we use. 

Anybody who’s willing to spend one or two cents more so 11 cents or 12 cents, they would be paying us more money so we should turn off miners and allow them to get it. You say 11 to 12 cents per kilowatt/hour is that expensive. It’s not that expensive. We know in rural Africa on offgrid energy, people are paying between 30 to over a dollar per kilowatt/hour already today.

If they could get this wholesale energy at 12 cents that’s actually cheaper than any of us here in Nairobi pay. They could actually get cheaper energy than the rest of anybody else on the continent. This way there’s a new model that actually breaks the current paradigm. Gridless energy is going to be doing this. For the last year, we’ve been doing feasibility studies on our first three sites in Malawi and Kenya and the idea is that we will be on the front edge of this as well as the back edge. We can make it profitable for everybody along the way.

One way that I like to say this to make it even more clear is that in today’s model, $20 million would build you 10 megawatts of power and in 30 years you’ll still have 10 megawatt of power unless you go raise more money. In the Gridless model, where we build a treasury $20 million converted to bitcoin builds 1 – 4GW over that same 30 years.

Key benefits of real bitcoin returns.

I don’t care about the bitcoin returns as much as I care about the model being 7x more capital efficient in 10 years and 148 times more capital efficient in 30 and these are 50-year assets just so you understand. Why is this important? The economics are just unequal but for Bitcoin it matters because it decentralizes the bitcoin mining.

We’re moving into small-scale mining happening all over the place. This is already happening but we need to see more of it and instead of having these large 100 megawatt, 200 megawatt bitcoin mining farms, we can have 1 – 3  megawatt bitcoin mining farms spread across 100 countries. What it does for energy is we can finally make it profitable but we can also make it a new future for Africans where we can have more reliable power in the places where people live and for Africa it just means that we can finally put a dent in that $600 million figure. There is a near unlimited supply of energy to be developed in the one place on earth that needs it most in Africa and Bitcoin is what unlocks it. Thank you.

[Applause]

Disclaimer: Transcripts provided on bitlyrics.co represents solely the opinion of the speaker and is not by any means financial/legal advice or an opinion of the website. The content has been transcribed with maximum accuracy. Repetitions and fill words have been amended in order to enhance the reading experience. The full text may not be confirmed by the speaker. Please, refer back to the above-provided source of content for more certainty. If you are a speaker and wish to confirm/amend your speech please contact us.

Conference: Africa Bitcoin Conference 2024

Original Video: https://youtu.be/MI2AzmhwYbw?si=sAnPswbznd7Af_OG

Introduction

Good afternoon everyone, thank you all so much for being here. My name is Ella Hough and I am a junior fellow at the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute and I am also in my final year at Cornell studying the first undergraduate independent major program on bitcoin and unfortunately I am not Professor Sarah Kreps who I’m sure you all were expecting to see. She was very hoping to be with you all, unfortunately the airlines had other plans but I am very fortunate to be able to work with her on this study; the first of its kind looking at the global adoption of Bitcoin across 25 countries as supported by the human rights foundation and the Reynolds foundation and I hope to do her presentation justice today and I very much hope that you all will get to meet her.

To share just a little sliver of her accomplishments, she is a permanent member on the Council of Foreign Relations. She has written seven books and she was also an active officer in the US Air Force, so she’s truly incredible. As many of you may or may not be familiar with for many years, Chainalysis has done a crypto adoption index however no one has ever looked at specifically just Bitcoin and how Bitcoin is or is not being used as a tool for financial freedom around the world and this study aims to serve as a baseline of understanding looking at who uses Bitcoin and why they use it.

Conventional wisdom holds that Bitcoin is a speculative investment but this is a developed world bias as high income countries have greater disposable income available for savings and investment spending 13% versus 56% on necessities such as food however as a study entails, we’ve structured our research to go past assumptions and go layers deep below the surface diving into the nuance.

To begin our research is designed with two parts: a quantitative and qualitative part. The quantitative component is the largest ever of its kind serving 25,000 individuals across 25 countries and the quantitative component aims to provide contextual information to build a story around the data and ensure we are better at capturing the nuance and here’s our team. We have brought 13 students from the Cornell Bitcoin Club to support these efforts and this club is a part of a larger organization called the Bitcoin Students Network which I co-founded with Arsh Molu who also works at the human rights foundation to really support students in learning about Bitcoin across 65 countries and so these 13 students are a part of the Cornell node; Of this network are each assigned five different countries to better see regional insights that might arise and they come from all majors, grades and interests across the school and this is a little bit of how our process looks to best do the quantitative component and perform these interviews so we really try to lean into the peer-to-peer nature of Bitcoin to better reflect the very values of Bitcoin and financial freedom that the study is about and better bring privacy trust and connection to the forefront.

Now you might wonder how did you go about choosing the 25 countries that you’ve chosen which include democracies, non-democracies cover all major continents, religions, sizes and stages of development and the answer is that Professor Kreps, Kriner and Flores scored 178 countries off of 18 factors of Interest covering inflation rates to banking access to prevalence of remittances to legal status, corruption, civil unrest and then when constructing the survey to be used we looked at 15 different categories of individual level attitudes from their awareness of Bitcoin versus cryptocurrencies, perceived riskiness that they might have towards Bitcoin, their motivations for using Bitcoin, their trust in the financial system and Bitcoin and their financial knowledge.

Currently we have the preliminary results back from the United States which I will share a bit with you today. To begin Bitcoin awareness is considerable at 84% which notably is 8 points greater than that of crypto, however, ownership is still fairly limited and as you can see from the middle chart there is still considerable room for education given a low knowledge of about 21% versus 23% for cryptocurrencies and about a third believe that Bitcoin will be the main form of payment within the next 50 years. Next, we see that ownership is highest among men that have a high income and are in the millennial age range and notably this aligns well with results from Professor Troy Cross which he found earlier this year in the Nakamoto progress project report understanding Bitcoin adoption in the United States. 

Finally in terms of risk from this chart you can see that Bitcoin is perceived as not terribly riskier than foreign currencies, corporate bonds and stocks but much riskier than the US dollar, gold or real estate. So now this is a two-year study and over the course of this year and next year we will continue to receive data from the other 24 countries which Kenya is one of the countries which will allow greater country level and regional level comparisons and next year we hope that our work will be beneficial for increasing shared understanding especially amongst policy makers of the factors driving Bitcoin adoption, usage patterns and the broader implications for financial inclusion and technological innovation and we very much look forward to sharing that information with you all and if I may give you all one next step please do look up Sarah Kreps and the work that she does. She’s also a fellow at the Bitcoin policy Institute and has written some great reports. Thank you all very much for your time and enjoy the rest of the conference.

[Applause]

Disclaimer: Transcripts provided on bitlyrics.co represents solely the opinion of the speaker and is not by any means financial/legal advice or an opinion of the website. The content has been transcribed with maximum accuracy. Repetitions and fill words have been amended in order to enhance the reading experience. The full text may not be confirmed by the speaker. Please, refer back to the above-provided source of content for more certainty. If you are a speaker and wish to confirm/amend your speech please contact us.

Conference: Africa Bitcoin Conference 2024

Video: https://youtu.be/7LsIK40NcK0?si=ZVTJa9Viug1D142Y

I am Marcel Lorraine, I’m the founder of Bitcoin Dada. Bitcoin Dada is, it’s a non-profit organization that helps to empower the African female through financial education, and we leverage on bitcoin to do that. I’m going to go into that a bit later, but let’s start by acknowledging that the majority of us in this room are Africans and you’d agree with me when I say being an African is hard, right? Is it? But then I’m going to continue and say being an African female is even harder.

There are certain challenges that we face as African females and I’m here to share with you these challenges and have in mind that these challenges come actually in different forms, shapes, and levels. This stems from social economic hurdles as well as gender based discrimination. The first thing that I want to talk to you about is for example in Kenya currently we have seen the rise of femicide. It has been on the rise since 2017. Last year we had about 152 killings, this year for the last three months a female has been killed every single day. So every day we have news that this particular woman was killed at this particular point and you know what’s surprising about it, only 15% of these female die in the hands of the stranger, meaning 75% are killed by people they actually trust and loved. This was a report made by one of the largest media platforms in Kenya which is Nation Media so like I said I’m going to talk about the challenges and just help you understand what we go through as women. I want you to imagine with me these certain scenarios.

Imagine being in a position where you cannot afford sanitary towels that by forcing you as a female, as a young female to actually engage yourself with older men risking early pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies or infections. Imagine yourself being in a scenario where you’re paid 77% less or 45% if you’re lucky and you’re in the urban centers. Imagine a case where you’re in the same economy you have the same responsibilities, but you have a lack of substantial collateral. Imagine yourself being or seeing your male siblings go off to get higher education while you get to get married off at an early age. Now of course for the ones who are in the urban areas this might not be the narrative and for the majority of you, you might not necessarily have had to experience this but in one way or another when you go outside the urban cities in Kenya or even in Africa, in other African countries this is the case.

So how does Bitcoin come in? For me before, Bitcoin there was not really like a chance for actually for us females to get true financial freedom or independence or even a voice. Through Bitcoin Dada we are trying to change that narrative and telling our communities not just as the females that there is a way that we as African females can also contribute by building Africa with this new technology. How do we do this? At Bitcoin Dada we have training every Tuesday and Thursday. We meet every Tuesdays and Thursdays just to learn about financial education which is the most important thing because for you to understand Bitcoin you need to understand the flaws of your current financial fiat system. Every Thursdays and Tuesdays we accommodate mothers, wives, working professionals, businesses, just to help them understand where the world is going and what’s wrong with the current leadership or the government or you know the control system that we are currently in.

We’ve been doing this since 2022. We’ve done seven cohorts and we came up with Dada Devs. Dada Devs is a new product. We just recently graduated our first set of developers and like Femi said and he keeps on stressing this, that we need to build solutions for Africans by Africans, right? The African population, this is something that I should have mentioned when I started this speech, but the African population is composed of half if not more of the African females. That means we make most of the transactions. We’re paying the bills, we’re taking care of the children, we’re doing most of the transactions that are happening at home. It’s us the women who are doing and I believe you will agree with me when we say that the majority of our mothers are actually the pillars of our homes. True or true?

When we are building solutions we want to have input that is coming from somebody who actually understands the challenges, right? So that is where Dada Devs comes in. We’ve been building applications that actually cater to our needs not just as women but also as Africans. Last but not least is the mentorship program which I feel there’s a big gap when it comes to educators. We normally just teach people bitcoin is freedom, you know, bitcoin is the next thing hodl, for the next 10 years, don’t sell your bitcoin, right? But then what happens after they’ve learned this? We introduced a mentorship program where they will refine the skills that they already have.

Remember everybody that comes into this space has a different skill set so for example we have writers, we have developers, we have entrepreneurs, we have investors as well. So we get bitcoiners and we’re very lucky to have support from bitcoiners. We have Okin in the house, Okin who’s been in space, thank you so much for being one of our mentors. Of course we have Femi Longe who’s also joined us several times, we’ve had Jeff Booth, we’ve had Jessi, we’ve had Vlad. I think I saw Vlad somewhere and several others. We have had Renata from Fedi and so many others who’ve actually helped us fill in that gap. By doing this we’ve seen that there is a change. So the beauty about the mentorship program is that our ladies can go into the bitcoin’s ecosystem, the tech space or even the larger community and get employment and that is very important. You just don’t teach people what Bitcoin is and at the end of the day they go back, they’re still poor, they’re still struggling and they’re still dependent on their fiat. I want to share a couple of stories that really stand out within our community and these are not the only ones but they are representative of what we have been able to do. 

For us at Bitcoin Dada is not just about the African female, it’s about making the community around us better. We try to include everybody and especially the underprivileged. We’ve been able to work with this school from Kibera slums. For those who don’t know, Kibera is one of the largest slums in Africa where we actually donate basic hygienic products as well as educational materials. Every bitcoin donation that we get during this fundraising period, it helps to keep these girls in school to avoid them getting taken advantage of and every time you donate to Bitcoin Dada you’re essentially helping the young ladies stay in school. I’ve seen her, she was really smiling at me. Like I said the mentorship program helped these ladies refine their skills and be able to actually get employment into their space. I would like to highlight one of the brilliant minds that we have or we’ve had in the Bitcoin Dada space, she’s called Sharon. She’s right there. She works for Btrust. I believe her bosses are here, Abubakar. She works for Btrust and when she joined Bitcoin Dada she really didn’t know where to put her skills into so through the mentorship program she got a job at Btrust where she gets paid in bitcoin and now she thrives and also tries to help other ladies along. We’ve had a lot of females also getting employment in the tech space which is a plus for us.

I would like to highlight a new project. We have so many projects that are coming up with the Bitcoin Dada ladies. I would like to highlight BitBiashara by Roslyn. Basically what BitBiashara is, she onboards merchants so if you’re here this is your first time in Kenya or even if you’re Kenya and you’re wondering where can I go to spend this bitcoin of mine or how do I or how do these people who actually accept bitcoin find it. The best person to approach would be Roslyn from BitBiashara. She’s been doing an amazing job. They recently had their first merchant meeting and you can follow them on Twitter as well. So we are basically creating bitcoin circular economies.

Last but not least is the African solutions that I’ve been talking about we’ve come up with a few products that we are currently building and I’ve highlighted SatsFlow, reason being is because we are launching it today and we are launching it today we have a workshop at 2 p.m. at the TBD, I would encourage you to come and see not just SatsFlow but other products that we’ve been working on. We have a very controversial t-shirt and I would like one of the ladies to just run really fast here cause I want everybody to see this. 3 2 1 not fast enough but yeah so this is not our logo but I felt like Maxis do anything for attention and I was like, we are also women we can do worse and this is it. So if this does not make you get to a workshop, there’s something wrong with you. Thank you Edith. Edith is our community lead from Uganda.

On the Africa Solutions, we have had a couple of projects coming up. So we have the SatsFlow, we’ve had pay with Sats, we’ve had edu Bitcoin, we have Tando, we have Impact donate so like I said if you want to learn about more these projects please show up at our event later on at 2 p.m. In the past two years since we started we’ve had a huge impact and the reason why we’ve been able to scale is because the challenges are so many and for Bitcoin Dada we do not victimize Ourselves, right? We know the problem is there but we try and come up with solutions that can actually help us instead of sticking to victimization level. 

We’ve expanded to 11 different African countries. We’ve had job placements for the ladies, we’ve trained over 500 female and 200 youths, we have collaborated with universities to bring them financial education and just to introduce bitcoin into the universities. Wealth accumulation which is a very strong point because if you’re African you know African females have no right to inherit property unless they really work their ass off and actually buy their property for themselves. With bitcoin this is really important for us because with bitcoin you can start accumulating your wealth with even just $1, right? 

We have had solutions built for Africans by Africans which I just talked about. Creating Bitcoin circular economies, which is very important, like Femi said, sitting on Twitter and just saying hodl hodl, I don’t think we’ll ever get to that hyperbitcoinization level by just doing that. We need to go out into the community and reach out to the people in a more relatable way. We’ve had mental health awareness so we work with a professional so it’s not just about our financial well-being but the overall well-being of these women.

We have collaborated with universities and I must add here that we have had support from a product such as Bitnob, I don’t know if the Bitnob guys are here, we’ve worked with them. Thank you so much. We’ve worked with Bitnob to do activations in universities. We’ve also worked with Machankura as well and then lastly a community approach. I just want to stress on this when I say Bitcoin for us is not just a digital currency it’s a tool that will liberate us as Africans from the financial constraints or the financial chains that have been long imposed on us. Please let’s use Bitcoin as it is, as it suits us as Africans and not just copy pasting everything that we see from the west.

As I leave the stage I want to leave with a quote that really resonates with me and it says, “I am not free while any woman is unfree even when her shackles are very different from my own.” The reason why I chose this quote is because a lot of people come to me and ask me why do you do what you do? What do you gain from helping these women? I believe whether you’re female, male, white, black, Muslim, Christian, if any of us at some level, we are caged, at some point that will also affect us. It really doesn’t matter oh I’m living a good life these people having problems, those problems will definitely trickle to you at some point so it’s very important to understand that we need to do something as a community, as the Bitcoin community at whatever level that you can and as I leave for my African sisters who are in this space whether you are a dada or not I would like to say that I might still be learning but I’m definitely taking you along with me.

Thank you.

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Disclaimer: Transcripts provided on bitlyrics.co represents solely the opinion of the speaker and is not by any means financial/legal advice or an opinion of the website. The content has been transcribed with maximum accuracy. Repetitions and fill words have been amended in order to enhance the reading experience. The full text may not be confirmed by the speaker. Please, refer back to the above-provided source of content for more certainty. If you are a speaker and wish to confirm/amend your speech please contact us.

Speaker: Magatte Wade

Conference: Africa Bitcoin Conference 2024

INTRODUCTION

Guys I just want to tell you quickly about my story so it takes you to why Bitcoin and why am I talking to you. I’m senegalese and I was born back home and then my family moved to Germany very early on. My parents were economic migrants so they had to leave me behind when I was age two to migrate to Europe and they left me behind to be with my grandma. Some five years later when they figured that the immigration journey had worked, they came back for me and that meant the second time for me being separated from my family. 

So the first time my parents left me behind, the second time I had to leave my grandma behind. Needless to tell you how traumatizing the whole experience has been for me. I remember that arriving in Germany I was around age seven and I looked around and I’m thinking to myself, wait how come they have this and we don’t and at that point, what I was primarily speaking of was, how come back home when grandma says, Magatte it’s time for your shower, it would literally take between 45 minutes to an hour between the moment she made that decision and the moment that water touches my skin and then back in Germany I look at my mom who says, Magatte time for your shower. 

For those of you here who are not Africans and didn’t live under these circumstances, the reason why it took so long, is because grandma had to get a stove of coal going and once it’s really going on, she puts a pot of water on it, waits for it to boil then we put it into a bucket, mix some cold water, drag it to the shower area and there at last I could take my shower. So for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s what it is all about. And here in Germany mom says, Magatte it’s time for your shower and I’m like where is a bucket of hot water? I’m not getting butt naked in this cold weather and she said, come on you silly just jump in the shower. Jump in, turn the knobs around, the water is coming down, the temperature I want, the pressure I want and I’m thinking this is not real. 

It was like that about everything. It was like that about the paved roads compared to the non-paved roads back home. The grocery stores where they had more apples than my little brain could count. It was just amazing. The whole thing was like that and then my question was, how come they have this and we don’t and it became literally the defining question of my life because eventually that question became how come some countries like mine and so many others in Africa are poor while others like the US, Australia, New Zealand all of them are rich. 

POVERTY IN AFRICA

What is going on? and across the journey of trying to find out I’ve heard it all. To this day with a very straight face, you have people looking at you and saying, oh darling it’s not your fault, it’s just the IQ theory. You know the theory according  to which us blacks and browns are simply not as smart as others. The low IQ theory and they say, oh well because you’re so dumb and it shows in the state of your nations. Okay whatever I continue. Some people say, oh it’s malnutrition. Others it’s colonialism, it’s the stealing of your natural resources and then I’m thinking to myself the problem is, none of these makes sense to me.

Let’s just take for example the colonialism which many people like to use and I’m sure I’ll have some haters in this room because I’m one of those people who stick out there and say, Africa is not poor today because of colonialism and I’ll explain why. Will explain that in a second but on the colonialism thing, I’m thinking to myself, Ethiopia has never been colonized yet for the longest time, Ethiopia was a posterpresser child for poverty in Africa. Conversely, Botswana being colonized before and Botswana has been one of the top performers on the continent forever. 

Botswana along with my country of Senegal are the two only nations in Africa that never had a coup. Never had a civil war. So even on the colonialism part it doesn’t add up and then over all of these other reasons, talk about my low IQ, my laziness, the fact that we just fight all the time, makes no sense because the same people, the minute they cross over to another place, all of a sudden their circumstances change. So I’m thinking to myself now, wow, well the only theory interesting in this equation is the place that these people happen to be in or not. So now I’m thinking it must be with a place. What is it about these places that if you’re there, you get to self-actualize and if you’re not, and some of the places where you’re there, you don’t self-actualize. 

ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY

Continue on my journey. Family moved from Germany to France and then after business school in France, I decided to move to the US. Land of opportunity and there long story short, because I’ve only got 10 minutes, there at some point when you connect the dots, I finally get into the entrepreneurial journey. 

I was living in Silicon Valley. In the heyday of the dotcom boom so I was starting to see this magic of entrepreneurship, this magic of doing out of nothing and it was rather amazing and eventually I built my first company and then my second and then my third. What all of these companies have in common is I manufacture in Africa, consumer brands, and my market place is the United States. So we manufacture in Africa, sell in the US but the first time I did this, you would be shocked at the shock that I had because when you were to compare what we would call the doing business environment it was shocking.

I walk you back. This was in 2003, boarding in 2004 when I built my first company. You look back in Senegal where the sister company was, it took almost two years to formally legalize the business. In the US, less than half a day. On one side you had employment at will. On the other hand, the government has to give you approval to hire or fire anybody and so on and so forth.

It was like about everything and so when I saw that, I thought to myself, oh I guess it’s because we’re poor and that’s why everything is so hard and then conversely is because they’re rich and that everything is so easy. Just come to think the minute you say that, you realize to yourself, well wait you’re poor because you don’t have enough money, at least not enough money to take care of your basic needs, you don’t have enough money because you don’t have access, you don’t have a source of income. 

BUSINESSES NEEDING AN ENABLING BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

A source of income for most of us is a job. Where do jobs come from? From the private sector, the businesses, isn’t it? Now do you really believe that business happens in a vacuum? Do you really believe that? No it doesn’t. Businesses need an enabling business environment. But wait you just told me that these African nations of ours are the hardest ones in the world to do business in.

What it means is, Africa as a region has the suckiest business environments in the world. This is the environment in the world where business people are the least free to enterprise. These are the nations that have the least economic freedom and in this regard I dare to speak of Africa as a village because when it comes to this issue it is sadly a trait that we all share and then what does it show for? Africa is the poorest region in the world today so there I had my answer. Why are we poor and others are not? 

We are poor because we have the worst economic freedom threshold in the world. There you had it. So the minute I understood that, I’m thinking to myself okay, what do I do? What can I do to make the business environment better? At that point that’s when I got started and became involved in the policy work. I really had to work on trying to find how we can lower the barriers of entry for businesses in African nations and so that took me into doing policy reforms work so we were financing a bunch of free market think tanks around the world including in the US and I’m still in a way wearing that hat. 

We still invest in free market think tanks in Africa to work on these issues but at the same time I’m looking around I’m thinking okay we got to go faster because you know piecemeal legislation takes forever. By the time you’re done destroying one regulation and law over here, 10 more have popped up over there. It took the Americans for Elon Musk to talk about this to finally pay attention to the issue of laws and regulations. We have been talking about it for the past 15- 17 years so here we are doing piecemeal legislation work and I’m thinking it’s all great because we need to do this work but something major radical needs to happen. 

PROSPERA CITIES

Why? because while we’re doing this piecemeal legislation work, every single year I have millions and millions and millions of young people coming to an age of work in this continent with no prospect for work. This is a ticking bomb, this is not sustainable . I got to go faster, I got to find a better way that’s when I eventually started to pay more attention to this thing we call the startup cities. Some of you may have heard about it as the charter cities. I call them the startup cities. By now we brand them prospera cities. These are next generation special economic zones. Everything you know of economic special economic zones, this is a whole nother level above.

In these special economic zones, they have their own law and their own governance when it comes to business and in these places I give you an example why they’re so cutting edge next generation for example you have choice of law. Some zones have it but in our case we are the only ones where you’ll have choice of regulatory, meaning if you’re a biotech company for example you get to choose which regulatory body you are under and if you don’t find it, we’ll custom create one for you. You have all of these elements to these zones. 

What you’ve done is you’ve created one of the most attractive business environments in the world. At scale and when we’re done with these, you’re looking at zones where their own countries, they would be ranked on the top 10 rankings of a doing business index rankings in the world meaning that you have zones that are way up there with Singapore, Denmark, Hong Kong and places like that. That’s the revolution we’re bringing to Africa.

AFRICA REVOLUTION WITH BITCOIN AS LEGAL TENDER 

Last time I spoke to some of you about this. I was talking to eight nations out of eight, four were interested. Now that I’m talking to you we’ve made some progress. I’m speaking to 10 nations and I’m in very advanced negotiations with two countries. One of them is landlocked, one of them is not and guess what guys?

In these jurisdictions we’re also making it that Bitcoin is the legal tender.

What you’re getting to look at is on the continent, you’re going to have jurisdictions where you can just focus on your work. Of being bitcoiners and building all types of companies and services that are related to bitcoin without having to worry about the gray area of what you’re doing and as we’re doing this, this is the reason why I’m so bullish when I tell people that in my lifetime, I will see our continent leap frog from the poverty that it’s known for into prosperity in my lifetime.

We’re going to become global co-creators in innovation and prosperity because that’s what happens when you have the best business environment in the world. You attract prosperity and you attract innovation. The world has no idea what’s coming its way and for those of you in this room who don’t know these numbers, these numbers matter. I will repeat them. By 2050, ¼  of the world’s population will be African. By 2100, it’s one out of two people walking this Earth that will be African. 

This is our time, we have the tools. Bitcoin is one of the biggest tools in the toolkit. We’ve got everything we need. Africa bitcoiners follow Prospera Africa, we are your best allies on this journey and let’s go do it.

I don’t need all 54 Nations to agree on this. All I needed is one and guess what, I’ve got two and I think if I’m lucky I might get three before the end of 2025. So the time is ours and I have never been more excited about our future than I am now. Thank you guys and with that, go build.

Watch original video here: https://youtu.be/kJ9GsF8hvqo?si=5aL6KDERQ-LnEkmL

Disclaimer: Transcripts provided on bitlyrics.co represents solely the opinion of the speaker and is not by any means financial/legal advice or an opinion of the website. The content has been transcribed with maximum accuracy. Repetitions and fill words have been amended in order to enhance the reading experience. The full text may not be confirmed by the speaker. Please, refer back to the above-provided source of content for more certainty. If you are a speaker and wish to confirm/amend your speech please contact us.

1. Frustration with getting friends and family to listen to Bitcoin
2. Overloading with information
3. Spreading knowledge about Bitcoin
4. The importance of Bitcoin education
5. Improving Bitcoin education through better conversations
   1. Have better conversations
   2. Using visuals for Bitcoin education
   3. Effective communication strategies
   4. Finding the angle that resonates
   5. Take one step at a time
6. Tips for having better conversations about Bitcoin

Frustration with getting friends and family to listen to Bitcoin

A lot of Bitcoiners get very frustrated when they find out that it’s actually quite difficult to get their friends and family to listen to them and to do something with Bitcoin, or to even to start reading or learning about it. So they get frustrated, and this especially gets vented a lot around Thanksgiving every year, of course, where you sit around the table with your friends and family and you realize that yet another year has passed and they still haven’t done anything with all those resources you sent them. You’ve had those conversations with them, and they’re just like they’re making fun of you. They’re like, “What is this weird thing? It’s still not really going anywhere.” They repeat the things you hear on the news, that just keeps going on and on.

A lot of Bitcoiners get frustrated about it, and this gets shared online too. Where on the one hand, Bitcoiners talk like this, “Bitcoin’s the hardest money,” and “laser eyes until $100,000.” And Bitcoiners are really dedicated and passionate about the asset that they’ve invested in. And on the other hand, those same people are like this, “My mommy won’t buy Bitcoin no matter what I tell her.” And you’ve got this really strong and interesting dynamic going on there where on the one hand, people are super passionate, but they just can’t seem to get other people to care.

So why does this happen? Well typically, people try to “orange pill” others about Bitcoin. They try to open their eyes about this whole world that’s out there once they start learning about money and about Bitcoin, and we kind of force it onto them. And a lot of people take this approach, and it’s like a metaphor from “The Matrix” to kind of go down the rabbit hole and start learning about Bitcoin. And what do Bitcoiners do then?

Overloading with information

We talk about Bitcoin as early as possible. We’re not really listening to the person, we’re just waiting to speak. We want to tell our story and get them into the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Or we talk about Bitcoin as sound or hard money and digital gold, and it’s going to fundamentally change the way people use money. We refer to it as a hedge against inflation. We talk about how banks and governments can’t be trusted with money printing—how that’s such a big problem. And we refer to the history of money, to the removal of the gold standard, “What the Fuck Happened in 1971? (LINK)” We use terms like “self-custody,” and “decentralization,” “blockchain,” “permissionless.” Like let’s sprinkle a little of that on top. That’ll definitely get them excited. And then, “Read this Bitcoin book! Like I’ve just got a whole stack for you! I’ll even buy it for you. I’ll ship it to your house! Please just read this Bitcoin book.”  

If you’re looking at this list and you don’t understand what is wrong with it, then it’s quite likely that you haven’t been particularly effective at getting people interested in Bitcoin. It’s not that anything in this list is wrong and that you shouldn’t be doing it. It’s that it’s too much information at once, and you’re kind of like overloading the person, and giving them too much in one go.

A lot of Bitcoiners are focused on this metaphor of the “journey versus destination”—on getting people to the destination. I want to have orange pilled this person, and I’m just gonna blast everything out, and hopefully some of it sticks, and they get into it. Looking away from that destination, let’s look a little bit at the journey. What is the journey for the average Bitcoiner? And the audience can tell me here if I’m wrong or not. But on the y-axis, you have perceived Bitcoin knowledge, like how much you know about it, on the x-axis, time.

So when you start your Bitcoin journey, you very quickly realize, “Wow! I know nothing about this thing! It’s so complicated; there’s so much information that I can be learning about, but I just don’t really seem to get it.” Then very soon after you’ve been learning, you’re like, “Wow! I know Game Theory—or at least what the word is! I can explain it to people!” You know economics, you know mining, cryptography. You feel like you’re the smartest person ever. Then you very quickly realize, “Wait! These are all really complicated fields that you can dive into and spend thousands of hours learning about to become an expert!” You suddenly realize, “Holy shit! I know nothing about Bitcoin!”

Spreading knowledge about Bitcoin

The tricky part there is that you’re kind of faced with a choice. “I could become an expert about those things.” But most Bitcoiners realize- you don’t need to be an expert at mining to hold a couple thousand dollars or some bitcoin and benefit from the price increases that that gets. So instead of going down that route of, “I’m gonna become an expert at it,” instead, “I’m going to start spreading the knowledge.”

So we get into this next phase of the Bitcoiner’s journey: knowledge sharing. Initially, when you start your sharing knowledge, you talk to your friends and you realize, “Oh my God! My friends know nothing about Bitcoin!” It’s like, “I thought I was bad, but they’re worse.” And, “They don’t understand money; they understand nothing.” 

Then of course as you start explaining, you naturally get ridiculed, like, “Yeah, but this is a Ponzi scheme. It’s going to zero! What is this thing going to do? You still can’t buy anything with it! You can’t use it to buy your groceries, et cetera.” So that’s just how it goes. 

Then, what does any rational person do at that point? They double down. You start giving them more information. You’re going to bring them the best pitch ever about Bitcoin to get them super pumped and excited about it. And you think you sound like a genius. In practice, however, you pretty much come across like this, “Bro, please buy some Bitcoin, bro! I promise your life is going to get better! Just protect yourself from inflation! And please just read this Bitcoin book, bro!” That’s how they look at you.

The response you’ll typically get to this is something along the lines of, “Man, that’s crazy! Catch the game last night?” It’s pretty frustrating if you’ve just given it your all and they really just don’t seem to get it. Now you basically feel ignored. And what does any rational person do when they’re getting ignored about something they’re really passionate about? You triple down—of course! Any rational person would.

The importance of Bitcoin education

But once you triple down, you very quickly realize the unfortunate truth, that actually, you kind of need new friends. And here we are, Bitcoiners, we all go to meetups and events like this and conferences to hang out with other Bitcoiners, ‘cause we kind of need new friends who also get it. And the problem is, once you go through this journey and you get frustrated with people just not getting it, a lot of Bitcoiners give up on education. We just stop trying because we’re like, “These people, they just don’t seem to get it.”

Then we get into a situation like this, where a lot of Bitcoiners, instead of reflecting on themselves, and being like, “Oh, maybe my Bitcoin explanation was bad, and that’s the problem,” they’re just like, “No, we’re still early! That’s the problem!” Right? Like they just don’t seem to get it, and all they need is just a bit of time. And you know, Bitcoin price will go way up, and all of them will regret their lives and their decisions. And they’ll come back to me, and then they’ll just buy it in higher and start learning about everything.

But in practice, that’s not really how I think it’s going to go. A lot of people wish for it to be that simple, but it doesn’t really work that way. A lot of people just aren’t going to get into Bitcoin. They’re going to be incredibly salty, and they’ll vote for politicians who will happily redistribute your Bitcoin, and that might be a world we end up in. So we shouldn’t give up on Bitcoin education.

Instead of focusing on the destination we’re trying to get to or thinking about what journey are we on here—like can I this person down rabbit hole on their Bitcoin learning journey—you should actually think about the company, as cheesy as this might be, like the company on that journey. Which people are you actually talking to? And what do they think about Bitcoin? What’s their perspective on it? And what’s the delivery of your message to them? That’s so incredibly important when you’re educating people on Bitcoin.

This is not a unique problem to Bitcoin. If you look at TED Talks, which everyone is familiar with, the second biggest TED Talk of all time is by a guy called Julian Treasure, which is about “How To Speak So That People Want To Listen.” And speaking is an art. Education is an art. And a lot of people never really learned how to get very good at it.

Improving Bitcoin education through better conversations

Naturally, if you’re trying to convey technologically complex things, such as Bitcoin, to a lot of people, but you’re not necessarily the greatest educator, then you’re kind of going to fumble and give a watered-down version of what some influencer said about Bitcoin you thought sounded really amazing. And then when you try it out yourself, it just doesn’t really land, and people look at you like, “What are you on about?”

This is a very universal problem: everyone wants to learn how to speak in ways so that others want to listen. That’s what I want to share some tips with you about. Now,

it needs to start with this: You need to acknowledge that if you aren’t necessarily the best educator—that you might not have the skill set and insights today to teach anyone about Bitcoin. If you can acknowledge that, then you can start improving how you do it. But if you always just say, “Yeah, but the other person’s the problem,” like, “My explanations are good. They just don’t seem to get it.” And you know, “If they don’t come to me, then I’m not going to bother any more.” 

So let’s start getting better at Bitcoin education. And I’ve got three tips for you today to dive into that. Just practical stuff:

Have better conversations

First is to have better conversations. It’s incredibly important to think about this as a conversation, in which you want the person to feel good about what you have to say. And a first tip there is to use questions, rather than lectures. So someone could be like, “Oh, Bitcoin, what’s that?” And I spend the next ten minutes talking and explaining to them all of the qualities of money and why they need this and what’s broken about the world. Or I could ask them, just stupid, simple questions, like, “What could be better about the dollar?” or something like, “How are you saving money today?” and, “Is that working out for you?” or, “Do you have any tips for me?” Then you get them invested in the conversation. It’s a very different mindset. You’re not trying to get them invested in Bitcoin, you get them invested in the conversation, so they even want to have it in the first place. And if you do that, you can have much more productive conversations.

Using visuals for Bitcoin education

Second tip I want to give is that Bitcoin’s very abstract. Once you get excited and hyped up, you start waving your hands around, and explaining the blockchain with your hands, and people just look at you like you’re insane. One of the things Bitcoin struggles with, or people struggle with about Bitcoin, is that it’s so abstract, and they can’t hold it in their hands, so you can visualize it while you’re explaining it to them. You can make it much simpler. 

A really practical tip I can give you there, I do this myself, on my phone, I have an album with Bitcoin pictures, or like graphs, visuals, of all kinds, like: price-related, US dollar related, mining and energy related, political related. While you’re having a conversation, if you’re like, “Oh, that question you asked there, let me go and Google that and find a stat for you” or show that graph that I was thinking about a few weeks ago. You lose them. You’re going to spend a minute trying to find the thing, and the conversation just dies out. Instead, I can just go to my folder on my phone, and pick out one of these images to try and make the point that I want to make. If you don’t have anything like that, I’ll share the visuals afterwards. I’ll be sharing them online along with all of the tips I want to give around Bitcoin education. You can just download them there and get started with your own folder that you can build up over time with anything that excites you. 

What you can then do, is you can start combining questions and visuals. Because if you have a conversation with someone, you’re like, “What do you already know about Bitcoin?” They’re like, “Well I heard it wastes a lot of energy.” You can pull up a graph and be like, “Well that’s interesting, because if we look at the top left here, actually the negative reporting about Bitcoin and energy has been decreasing for years now, and it’s actually been turning quite positive. So maybe this information you have about it, it’s not really up to date anymore.” 

You’re not necessarily convincing them from a skeptic to a believer at that point, but at least they’re like, “Oh, maybe I need to take another look at this and this prejudice that I have didn’t actually end up making sense.

Effective communication strategies

Again, you can ask a question, like, “How much renewable energy do you think Bitcoin uses then?” Then use the next image where it’s like, “Oh it’s actually 56%.” Then they might say, “Oh, 56 is just over half. That’s bad.” You might have another graph that shows like, “Well actually, out of all the industries out there, Bitcoin’s pretty green.” So you can make a lot more progress this way. They can start looking at your folder too, like, “What’s this? What’s that?” You get them so invested in a conversation, which is much harder to do if you’re just standing there and waving your hands around, kinda like I’m doing, I suppose. 

This is really important about the conversation part, like people will forget what you said, they’ll forget what you did, but they won’t forget how you made them feel. That’s the point of the conversation. Because if you go too far, you bombard them with information. Next time you talk, try to talk to them about Bitcoin, they’ll be like, “Yeah, but that was a pretty bad experience last time. You were just rambling at me, I never got the chance to ask a question. And it’s just not really something I want to dive into again.” But if you have a really pleasant conversation, they’re like, “This is a cool person. I really love talking to them,” and “I’ll hear them out again.” You make so much more progress, so get the person to like you, it goes so far to educating them about Bitcoin.

Second tip is to find a good angle. People talk about this a lot. When you talk to non-Bitcoiners, you want to find out what makes them tick. For a lot of people that’s just like getting rich. Everyone likes the Bitcoin price. That’s naturally the topic that a lot of people will converge to. But that’s not really specific enough.

Finding the angle that resonates

Let’s dive a little bit deeper in that. Why do people want to get rich? Well some of them, for like, personal, financial reasons, they want to save for a house, they want to provide for others, they want to retire at some point. Then you have people who care a lot about society. They want to build up their local community, and need money for that. Or they care a lot about human rights, or the climate. If people will come at it from a business angle, who are into entrepreneurship or finance, or energy industry. And then you have people who love technology. They care about innovation and data and all of these things. If someone gives you the impression that they’re interested in a specific field within any of these things, you can just provide examples that resonate with them. It doesn’t make sense to talk to someone about Bitcoin’s energy usage, if they’re just primarily interested in saving a house. Then you might want to talk more about, “Okay could you save some wealth in Bitcoin?” and, “How would that work out for you?” Similarly, if someone’s a developer, it doesn’t make sense to talk to them about Bitcoin as a tool for human rights if they’re not necessarily interested in that. If they’re just trying to build some cool Fintech app or something. So, find the angle that resonates with them and guess what, the only way to figure out that angle is to ask them questions. If you’re the only one talking, you’re never going to figure out what they care about. You have to ask questions to get to know the person.

Take one step at a time

The third, and final tip I want to give, is to take it one step at a time. A lot of Bitcoiners get super passionate when you get that chance to give the Bitcoin pitch and to try and convince them that Bitcoin’s amazing. They’re just like, “I’m gonna turn this person from a sceptic into a believer, and they’re going to sign up tomorrow, and I’ll send them all these links and things,” and that’s not quite realistic.

So we developed this model, the Bitcoin adoption funnel, to highlight what that journey throughout Bitcoin looks like for people. It’s kind of a different look at it. But at the top is the discovery phase. Most people have gone through that at this point. They know Bitcoin exists. They might not be able to explain much about it, but they’ve heard the name somewhere. There’s some brand recognition.

Tips for having better conversations about Bitcoin

Then they get into learning, and that learning can be very brief. It can just be like a one minute video, in which some news reporter says that it wastes too much energy and is useless, and for a lot of people that might be where the journey ends. Others are like, “No, I want to read articles and things.” Depending on what the content’s like, that will form their opinion, their perception of Bitcoin.

That’s really the layer I want to focus on here. You’re not in one conversation going to turn someone pessimistic into an optimist or a believer about Bitcoin. If they have those prejudices, at best you can sort of neutralize those, so hopefully you can have another conversation next time if they like the first one. Try to be very cautious about how far you take this.

Those are the three tips I wanted to share: 

1. Having better conversations
2. Finding a good angle to the conversations
3. Taking it one step at a time. 

But they’re just three of seven in total that I have put into writing, and I’ll be releasing probably next week or in the coming weeks by Twitter and LinkedIn. 

So if anyone wants to look into that, and download the pictures that I have in my folder as well to explain Bitcoin to people, then feel free to take a look at that. I won’t be going through the other points too much in depth here as I’m coming up to time. But really, if you want to make friends and family listen to you about Bitcoin, then start with yourself and think about “How can I make this a pleasant experience for them rather than just bombarding them with everything?” If you’ve made that mistake in the past, like you’ve really turned someone off to Bitcoin. Honestly one of the best things you can do is, to go up to them and be like, “Look, I know I was annoying about Bitcoin to you in the past, but I hope you know that I did that because I really care about you, and I want something good for you.” Start with that apology, and maybe they’re like, “Okay, I’ll hear you out for once. It’s great that you’re coming out about that.”

Anyways, if you want the slides, if you want the writing that I’ll do around it, or the pictures, follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn and you’ll be able to find everything there really soon. Thank you very much to the audience and the conference. Hope y’all have a great time. Bye. 

Speaker: Sam Wouters
Conference: Bitcoin Nashville 2024
Presentation Date: July 26, 2024
Click here to watch original presentation

Disclaimer: Transcripts provided on bitlyrics.co represents solely the opinion of the speaker and is not by any means financial/legal advice or an opinion of the website. The content has been transcribed with maximum accuracy. Repetitions and fill words have been amended in order to enhance the reading experience. The full text may not be confirmed by the speaker. Please, refer back to the above-provided source of content for more certainty. If you are a speaker and wish to confirm/amend your speech please contact us.

View the original video here on Youtube

Natalie Brunell:

Max and Stacey, I’m so excited to talk to you because, as a former broadcast journalist, you were the first two people talking on TV, like a decade ago, about Bitcoin. And you’ve orange-pilled more people than anyone else I know. So, first of all, give a round of applause for that, because they’ve gotten a lot of people into Bitcoin. 

Let’s talk a little bit about El Salvador. How’s life there?

Stacy Herbert:

It’s filled with volcano energy, because everybody has coffee from a volcano. If anybody wonders how Max Keiser is able to walk out on stage like that everywhere he goes, it’s because he has coffee from a volcano. 

President Bukele makes his own brand now, it’s Bean of Fire (BeanofFire.com). You could actually go buy some coffee right now from President Bukele. I swear to God, he actually grew it himself, personally. And you could buy it with bitcoin or over Lightning.

Max Keiser:

Smells like freedom!

Stacy: 
Yeah! 

Max:
Smells like economic freedom! 

Stacy:
Yeah! 

Natalie:
So talk to us a little bit about living in El Salvador, what it’s like, what bitcoin adoption has been like over the last couple of years, because a lot of people were at the Bitcoin conference. That was the first one I attended (2021), when the announcement was made that it was going to be legal tender; the first country to do so. How has it been since then? 

Stacy: 
Does everybody want to hear the answer to that, or do you want to hear about Trump? Yeah! You see, they want to hear about what Trump said about President Bukele. 

Well, you know what? What I think about that is that President Bukele is the biggest rockstar on Earth right now, right? 

Last night at two in the morning, I was up. Who posts to President Bukele, but Elon Musk, right?

President Trump, the 45th president of the United States, spends part of his RNC convention speech, to millions and millions of people (an important speech), to mention one leader, one other head of state, and that is President Bukele. So, never in El Salvador’s history was the head of state ever that important?

I think it just shows that good times are ahead, because El Salvador is now an important player on the world map. Also, I think probably many people in this audience have actually been to El Salvador. *audience cheers* 

You see? Don’t trust, verify. Just as they were booing what President Trump had said before about bitcoin being a scam, most of these people in this room have been to El Salvador and they know, they verified for a fact that it’s safe and that things are changing for the better there. 

Natalie: 
Well, I did want to address what happened in that speech. Can we dig into it a little bit more? I think it took a lot of people by surprise. There was the inauguration, I know both of you were there, and we saw a lot of prominent Republican figures there, including Don Trump Jr., right? Matt Goetz was there. So where do you think that came from? 

Max:
Jealousy, because at CPAC, President Bukele gave a speech. Donald Trump gave a speech. Who was everyone talking about? President Bukele. Donald Trump got a little jealous. And he’s like, “Oh, I gotta talk this guy down.” But President Bukele is the most popular leader in the world right now. Bitcoin is legal in El Salvador, and it is the new shining city on a hill. El Salvador is the first country out of the world turning, right?

Stacy:
YEAH!

Max:
El Salvador is a beacon of freedom. El Salvador already put bitcoin on their reserve. All these politicians are up here saying, “We’re gonna put it on our reserve.”

Well, guess what, folks? They’re lying, because they’re held in the pockets of the central bankers and Jamie Dimon. All those folks are not gonna let them do that. If you really want freedom, you want to smell the volcano of freedom, move to El Salvador. Do what Ayn Rand suggested; if you’re not treated well in your country, leave, get the fuck out. Go to a real country, like El Salvador, with a real leader, with real people, and real entrepreneurialism. 

Fuck the US! They’re not giving you what you want. You don’t get freedom of speech. You don’t get freedom of expression. You don’t get freedom– any kind of freedom. Move with your feet. The voting? Not gonna get you nothing! Walk out! Walk!

Natalie:
What did you think of his response? Bukele tweeted back that he’s gonna take the high road. Did you get the inside scoop on how he really feels? 

Stacy:
That’s because he’s a leader, right? He takes the high road, but we’re not leaders. 

Max:
No, no, we’re like the IRA.

Stacy:
We take the low road. 

Max:
I’m like the Bobby Sands of El Salvador.

Natalie: 
So, for people that watch that and maybe don’t know a lot about El Salvador, why is what President Trump said wrong? 

Max:
Because he suggested that the President and El Salvador were dumping criminals over the border into the U.S. Not only is that materially and factually wrong, but it’s highly offensive. The MS-13 gang was birthed in Los Angeles, then the Clintons dumped them in El Salvador, and they went on to kill tens of thousands of Salvadorans. So, it is highly offensive to suggest that the opposite is true. That’s why I got my dander up, because it’s not just being cute. He’s not just trying to be a rival at the sorority cotillion, like, “Oh, he’s got a better dress than I do,” and being a bitch. 

He’s making factual errors. He’s saying the wrong thing, and he’s insulting tens of thousands and millions of Salvadorans, and the Salvadorans made bitcoin legal tender. Salvadorans are the beacon of free speech. The Statue of Liberty is now a volcano in El Salvador. So, get in line, pal.

Let me tell you something, you don’t change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you, Donald. So, you’ve got to come to the Bitcoin side. You’ve got to get in line. You’ve got to bend the knee, which you probably are not going to be able to do. You certainly won’t hear much out of one ear. 

Stacy:
No, that’s too soon! That’s too soon. 

Max:
Too soon? It’s a rough world! Okay, Bitcoin fixes this! It demonetizes violence. Okay? 

Natalie:
Well, you actually said on the first podcast that I did with you that Bitcoin is an explosion of love. Sometimes we need to share a little love with our enemies to get them to understand maybe what they’re wrong about. So show a little, do you have a little love you want to show for Trump? 

Max:
I do. I have a special flower for Donald Trump when I see him. I’d like to present this flower, and express my love and gratitude for at least raising the political game in America to a new standard of forthrightness and truthfulness. 

I am a big Trump supporter, and I am voting for Trump for a third time coming up in this next election. But you know, Trump is from New York, I’m from New York, and so we speak like New Yorkers. This is how we do it in New York, and that’s the way it is. 

Stacy:
Yes, exactly. We did vote for Trump and we will vote for Trump. I believe that he’s the best hope for the United States in terms of Bitcoin policy and the restoration. 

You know what? Bitcoin in El Salvador falls under President Bukele’s policy of economic liberty. And that is very American in the concept. It’s an enlightenment ideals of life, liberty, and property. The security situation in El Salvador also falls under that same sort of thinking of the president. 

So, Trump did misspeak, I’ll say he misspoke. I think he’ll probably correct himself here once he shows up and he speaks in front of this audience here. He’ll see that this is President Bukele land here instead of, you know, somebody who hasn’t yet proven himself in terms of Bitcoin. Bitcoin in El Salvador is economic liberty and so was the security policy. 

Natalie:
Many people expected smaller countries and those furthest away from the money printer to be the first to embrace Bitcoin. But now we’re seeing global superpowers and American presidential candidates talking about Bitcoin. What’s your take on that? Did you see this all along in game theory? 

Stacy:
Max did, I’ll say. But I mean, this seems way sooner than I expected, right? And I didn’t expect the U.S. to be El Salvador’s first follower. Because, the United States will be our first follower, I believe. But, El Salvador is number one. We have the first mover advantage still. 

We listened to RFK Jr.’s speech yesterday, and he was great on Bitcoin. Really, really good policies on Bitcoin. It’s good that RFK is out there, because he was unfairly and undemocratically excluded from the Democratic Party process of debating Joe Biden six or seven months ago. The world could have figured out that, well, the voter could have known then what they know now, instead of having Kamala Harris imposed on you. 

We have two major candidates; we have RFK and we have Trump pushing for bitcoin. I think that’s better. It’s better for El Salvador for sure, because the United States is our most important partner. We have the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency there in El Salvador, the U.S. dollar and Bitcoin. So it’s better if we’re allies across the whole top and down. 

Max:
The analogy that I like is: Bitcoin is gunpowder. If one country adopts gunpowder, then you really have to adopt gunpowder as well, to get into this paradigm of mutual assured destruction or survival. Now, we’re entering into the global hash war, or the global Bitcoin war, which I wrote about five years ago. When everyone was saying that, “Oh, all these countries are going to ban Bitcoin.” I said, “No, in fact, that’s the opposite. They’re all going to embrace Bitcoin.” 

They’re going to competitively mine bitcoin and hoard bitcoin, because it becomes a new global Bitcoin standard. And, we’ll see every fiat money go to its long-term value of zero. It’s demonetizing gold; you see that in the ETF market. People are dumping gold ETFs and buying bitcoin ETFs. It’s demonetizing the stock market. It’s demonetizing the bond market. It’s demonetizing the property market. It’s demonetizing the fine art market. Everything goes to zero against bitcoin. Everything goes to zero against bitcoin. Anything you hold as an asset, the purchasing power relative to bitcoin is going to go down.

This is what I suggest: people who are going to speak English, look up a dictionary for the definitions before they open their mouths and say these words, because they’re incorrectly using them. But, come to me and I’ll help you. And, if in fact you don’t take a suggestion, then I’m happy to get more forceful. 

Natalie:
I’m glad you brought up how Bitcoin will disintermediate and demonetize politicians. I want to better understand your philosophy on politicians, because people are looking at everyone from Trump to President Bukele and saying, “Why are we so supportive of them?” We’re trying to basically shrink the state and shrink their power, why should Bitcoiners be excited that these politicians are talking about bitcoin? Shouldn’t we not care about them? 

Stacy:
Well, because, like I said, in El Salvador, President Bukele puts Bitcoin under his larger policy of economic liberty. If you read the U.S. Constitution, you read about that we have the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and property and pursuit of happiness. So these are the foundational ideas behind Bitcoin as well. I think somebody who basically will be there to defend those rights, that’s the purpose of the state.

If you read (Frederic) Bastiat, if you read The Law, that’s the purpose of the state, is to defend those rights for you, for us, right? And that’s all you want. You don’t want all this other stuff, like Kamala Harris might support, right? You want them to stay away from you, to stay out of your business, and let you just operate your own business and build.

That’s what President Bukele does all the time for El Salvador. He says, “Come build”. Soon we’ll be giving away 5,000 passports to people who want to build, to highly skilled people who are motivated, who want to come build. That’s what we want, builders. 

You want a leader who’s going to be like that, and stay out of your way. Any leader who’s going to adopt Bitcoin is a leader who is easier to trust, because they’ve already made that decision. That’s a powerful decision for a leader to take. It’s like, I’m going to give up power, because I no longer have power over the printing press. 

Natalie:
How do we discern when they’re talking about Bitcoin, if they really understand it, or if they’re just trying to get votes? 

Max:
Bitcoin is a magic mirror. If you are of good character, it makes you a better character. If you’re a bad character, it makes you a worse character. If you look at somebody, like Craig Wright, the Bitcoin magic mirror revealed that he’s a true scumbag. 

Stacy:
Boo! 

Max:
If you’re somebody like Michael Saylor, the Bitcoin mirror exposes somebody with a high degree of integrity and a passion for education and a deep understanding of bitcoin. Same thing in the political class. You have Cynthia Lummis, who I think you can say gets it. She’s been orange-pilled, and she’s working hard in politics to make positive things happen. 

Other people in politics who talk about Bitcoin, we’ll find out soon enough whether or not they’re just being narcissistic, self-serving assholes or whether they are genuinely hardcore Bitcoiner maximalists. 

You know, nobody escapes the guillotine. Bitcoin is the new guillotine of the 21st century. All the toffs who are posing and not really worthy of the power that they get, they’re gone. Goodbye, have a nice day. You’re gonna be disintermediated and you’re going to zero. 

Stacy:
By the way, I want to say there is something that Trump did that is so Bitcoin, and that is to get up and say, “Fight, fight, fight!” That was pretty Bitcoin. Okay, that was honey badger of him. That was wild to see. It seemed like a Bitcoin meme of the era of say, 2015/2016, come to life. It seemed like a honey badger. Everybody’s watched those videos over and over, right? Where you see these things that are insane. What are they doing? Why are they taking on that lion? And it seemed like that to me. That was good. That’s very Bitcoin.

Natalie:
So are you hoping President Trump makes his way down to El Salvador? Maybe pay you guys a visit? See what it’s like down there? 

Stacy:
Yeah, he should pay us. That sounds like a threat. He’s going to pay you a visit. *laughs* Very New York, you know? I’m gonna pay you a little visit. 

No, we have some coffee for him. 

Max:
Yeah, definitely. 

Stacy: 
We’ll give him this one. I have a brand new package to give him, but we’re gonna give him this open one now that he was so rude, right? 

Max:
Yeah, come on down to El Salvador. You’re welcome anytime, Donald Trump. Look and observe how the Bitcoin country operates and works. It’ll be an inspiration. I know Don Jr. has been to El Salvador and he’s buying property in El Salvador. He’s had great meetings with the president. And (Matt) Goetz has been to El Salvador. He’s buying property. All the smart money is going to El Salvador. 

All the smart politicians are going. So it’s only a matter of time before the orange pill drops and “the Donald” makes his way to San Salvador. 

Natalie:
We only got a couple minutes left. I did want to ask you: I saw you paid a visit to Nvidia on behalf of El Salvador, what’s that about? 

Stacy:
El Salvador is becoming the tech hub of Central America. When we have our website up, you’ll be able to apply for citizenship. If you are willing to come build, we’re looking for 5,000 of you. Part of this is we are planning on being the tech hub. 

Remember, President Bukele just pivoted to the economy for the second term. We have very big plans. Cathie Wood said that El Salvador’s GDP is going to increase by 1,000% in the next five years, because of Bitcoin and AI. She’s the one that told us we have to do this. She made that prediction, we need to make it come true. 

Natalie:
Final thoughts in the last couple seconds here. What do you want people to know about Max and Stacy and El Salvador? 

Stacy:
We would love for you to come join us. The more, the merrier. We’re building amazing things. We’re very excited to have a first follower. I think it’s going to be good for the relationship between the United States and El Salvador when we’re a Bitcoin country here in the United States, as well. 

Max:
Yeah, I would just second that. Come on down and visit for a week or two and get to know the country. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. A lot of people who visit end up living there. The opportunities are fantastic. 

We’re opening up a Bitcoin bank soon. So you’ll be able to borrow against your bitcoin and buy some property. You’ve got both the rise in the property price plus your Bitcoin at the same time. You’ve got a brilliant place to live. 

Plus the building is about $150 per square foot, which is about 90% cheaper than you find anywhere else. So you’ve got the bank for the bank for the bank for your bitcoin. So it’s really the opportunity of a lifetime. 

Natalie:
Well, you said earlier, don’t trust, verify. I had the chance to spend some time with you in El Salvador. I didn’t know what to expect. It was one of the friendliest, most hope-filled places. We got to go to Hope House and talk to some girls. We taught them about Bitcoin. I think that a lot more people will be moving with their feet, maybe not just to El Salvador, but Bitcoin nations around the country. So thank you so much, Max and Stacy, everyone.

Disclaimer: Transcripts provided on bitlyrics.co represents solely the opinion of the speaker and is not by any means financial/legal advice or an opinion of the website. The content has been transcribed with maximum accuracy. Repetitions and fill words have been amended in order to enhance the reading experience. The full text may not be confirmed by the speaker. Please, refer back to the above-provided source of content for more certainty. If you are a speaker and wish to confirm/amend your speech please contact us.

Date: July 27, 2024
View the original video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ou_oxWsCcc&t=324s

Before you all leave, have we got a present for President Donald Trump! Here it is! This is the Bitcoin Reserve Bill! 

I’m reading from the text: In the Senate of the United States, …to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, a network of secure storage vaults, purchase programs and other programs to ensure the transparent management of Bitcoin holdings of the Federal Government.

My name is Cynthia Lummus, and I’m the Bitcoin Senator. When Satoshi Nakamoto, in January of 2009, mined the first Bitcoin, he brought about an asset that will change the world. This is our Louisiana Purchase moment. 

This Bitcoin Reserve that we’re going to create will start with the 210,000 Bitcoin that President Trump just mentioned, and pull it into a reserve stored in geographically diverse vaults, and that’s only the beginning. Over five years, the United States will assemble one million Bitcoin (5% of the world’s supply), and it will be held for a minimum of 20 years, and can be used for one purpose: to reduce our debt.

This Bitcoin is going to be transformative for this country. As President Trump just said, we are printing too much money, we are spending too much money. We printed in 22 months, during covid, the same amount of money that had ever been printed in the history of the United States. 

Well, no more! 

With a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve we will have an asset that in that period of time, before 2045, can cut our debt in half. As Michael Saylor said yesterday, if we put $3.3 million in a Bitcoin Reserve, we will eliminate the United States debt. We will be debt free because of Bitcoin!

This asset is transforming not only our country, but our world. The United States needs to be the global leader, as President Trump just said. You know what, we don’t have to raise taxes to do it. We have the funds now. This bill provides that not only will the asset forfeiture money be transferred into this Reserve, fulfilling President Trump’s promise that he won’t sell any Bitcoin, but we will convert excess reserves at our 12 Federal Reserve banks into Bitcoin over five years. 

We have the money now. But we’ll no longer be holding it in the U.S. dollar, an asset that is designed to debase at least two percent per year. We’ll be holding it in an asset that will grow in value, that throughout its history has grown 55% per year. This is the solution! This is the answer! This is our Louisiana Purchase moment!

Thank you Bitcoin! It’s your love of freedom, your innovation, your thoughtful design, your keeping this asset alive, well, free, and in support of individual sovereignty that is going to save America.

Let’s make America free again Bitcoin! This is our present to the United States of America! Thank you.

Disclaimer: Transcripts provided on bitlyrics.co represents solely the opinion of the speaker and is not by any means financial/legal advice or an opinion of the website. The content has been transcribed with maximum accuracy. Repetitions and fill words have been amended in order to enhance the reading experience. The full text may not be confirmed by the speaker. Please, refer back to the above-provided source of content for more certainty. If you are a speaker and wish to confirm/amend your speech please contact us.

ORIGINAL SPEECH TITLE: Why Open Source Development Matters
SPEAKERS: Mike Schmidt, Christian Keroles, Aaron Daniel & Hong Kim
CONFERENCE: Bitcoin 2024

Introduction

Hong Kim:

Thank you everyone for coming. We will be talking about the importance of funding open source development. I am the CTO and co-founder of Bitwise, one of the ETF providers that launched earlier in January (2024), and in that context I’ve gotten to know Mike and CK and the organizations that fund Bitcoin development. I wanted to bring this topic to the audience. 

Could all of you quickly introduce yourselves?

Mike Schmidt:

I’m Mike Schmidt, the Executive Director at Brink, we’re a 501c3 in the US that takes in donations from the community and routes those to the Bitcoin core developers working on the software underpinning the Bitcoin Network.

CK:

I’m CK, the Director of Financial Freedom at the Human Rights Foundation. We also support open source development as well as Bitcoin education and even translating Bitcoin resources into different languages to make it as accessible as possible for everyone across the globe. 

Aaron Daniel:

I’m Aaron Daniel, the co-Director of the Open Source Justice Foundation, we’re also a 501c3. We’re the newest of the group up here. Our mission is to spread access to justice globally with free open-source software, so we give grants to developers working on open protocols like Bitcoin, Nostr, and Fedimint. Especially those building dispute resolution tools.

The Importance of Open-Source Funding

Hong Kim:

I think maybe a good place to start is around the question of why donations or other kinds of open-source funding are important or necessary? There’s often conversations on Twitter or Nostr these days stating that Bitcoin is supposed to be done, complete. Is it a liability for devs to be tinkering with Bitcoin? Could you make an argument for why we, as a community, should continue to fund open source development of Bitcoin?

Mike Schmidt:

From the Bitcoin software side of things, you have two things; you have a digital asset that is entirely based on code, and number two, all code requires some form of maintenance. Even if we’re not talking about something like a change to the Bitcoin protocol, the fact is that there is Bitcoin software that has codified the Bitcoin protocol in it and we want that to continue to function into the future. 

We need people working on this software, and there’s no foundation or governing entity that is funding it, then it really is up to all of us to decide whether we either donate our time as a developer or somebody who can contribute, or donate money to support somebody who can contribute. That may be a highly philosophical kind of approach, but I think it makes sense. 

Lately, within the Bitcoin project there’s a more tangible reason why this is valuable. 

Recently, the Bitcoin core developers released a bunch of historical vulnerabilities that occurred in the code. If you look at these 10 vulnerabilities that are many years old now, what you’ll see is that the people that discovered these vulnerabilities in the code at the time were actually being funded by certain organizations to do that work. If you extrapolate that into the future, we’ll be glad that we’re funding people because there may be other bugs now that we want these people to be finding and fixing.

CK:

Mike’s organization really focuses on working on Bitcoin Core software, which is the base layer blockchain, and there’s a lot of ideas around ossification in Bitcoin, this idea of not changing Bitcoin. I think personally there are certain elements of Bitcoin that are already ossified, things like the 21 million hard cap and SHA 256 as a hashing algorithm. On the other hand, we’re still very early, and if you talk to any of these developers that are intimately aware of the code, they will be the first to tell you that this code is not good enough to continue to scale to the whole globe. They’ll tell you that this technology needs to continue to get better and it needs to continue to get more well organized and get patched up.

Even beyond the core level of the Bitcoin blockchain, all of us know that the Bitcoin wallets aren’t there yet. All of us know that the levels above Bitcoin, like the applications, are not there yet. A lot of that technology is also open source and very experimental. The technology needs people who have the time and bandwidth to explore how to push the entire ecosystem forward. 

Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is mostly focused on that application layer, on the layer in which people are really engaging and interacting with Bitcoin. However, the entire stack needs to continue to get hardened and continue to get worked on. I think one of the biggest reasons is because we’re just still so darn early in this evolution, when you think of Bitcoin as being a 15 year old project. We need it to be a multi-hundred year project. How can we, at this early stage, dictate what it will be and what the software should look like in the future?

Aaron Daniel:

Bitcoin is core public infrastructure, and as such, it needs to be open-source. We saw what happened recently with CrowdStrike—proprietary software that became core public infrastructure but wasn’t open. When it failed, it shut down all our airports.

Switzerland has recognized that core public infrastructure must be open-source; they recently passed a law mandating that all public software be open-sourced. However, Bitcoin is the purest form of public infrastructure—no federal funding, no government creation—it was built by the people. Because of that, it’s up to the people to fund it. That’s why community engagement and funding are critical—to find and fix bugs and ensure long-term maintenance for generations to come.

The Need for Public Support in Bitcoin’s Ongoing Development

Hong Kim:

That’s a great point. One thing people often miss when discussing open-source funding is that software isn’t static. Even Bitcoin Core, the node that you run, needs to keep up with operating systems like Linux, Mac, and Windows, which update regularly. The same applies to compilers and programming languages and all of those incompatibilities need to be resolved and maintained. Sometimes it’s intuitive to developers, but it’s not intuitive to everyone that — everything evolves. Bitcoin did not have some ICO or pre-mine where you funded a lot of money into an organization, it’s necessarily public work, it’s necessarily open source, and didn’t have any sort of fundraising entity, and Bitcoin must adapt accordingly and it necessitates us to fund it ourselves.

CK:

Unlike other projects, Bitcoin didn’t have an ICO or pre-mine that funded an organization to maintain it. It exists as a public good, meaning it requires public support. Thankfully, we’re now seeing companies that rely on Bitcoin investing in its development. This is an incredibly healthy and bullish sign for the ecosystem.

Ensuring Decentralized Funding for Bitcoin Development

Hong Kim:

When we were launching the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, we asked ourselves: how can we ensure that both the assets and investors of this product contribute to maintaining the network they depend on?

It’s about protecting an investment. It’s not a donation—it’s self-investment, much like the U.S. government’s security budget for national defense. Bitcoiners should think of their funding contributions in the same way. There’s a necessary budget to maintain the security and development of the network.

That brings up an important question—how do we ensure that funding sources don’t introduce bias, influence, or capture Bitcoin development? This is a concern often raised by figures like Michael Saylor, who worry that developers could be influenced by centralized funding sources. For instance, Jack Dorsey is frequently mentioned as a major funder of Bitcoin development. Some argue that a single large contributor could lead to centralization of influence. How do we prevent that?

Mike Schmidt:

At the end of the day, everything Bitcoin is open-source. We should always remain sceptical Bitcoiners regardless of what anybody says because you can look at the code, the proposed changes, and review the code ourselves. If you can’t do that, you can hire someone to audit it. Transparency is our baseline defense; it’s the floor. Beyond that, decentralization exists in funding sources. Today, at least a dozen organizations are funding Bitcoin Core development, and each has its own governance structures. At Brink, for example, our board oversees substantial donations, and a separate grant committee allocates those funds based on developer proposals. Even if a donor wanted to conditionally fund a project, there’s no way their demands could override our governance process. For example, if a donor from an exchange comes to us and says we’re going to conditionally donate to you but we want you to do XYZ, first of all that luckily hasn’t happened in the ecosystem, but if it did happen, if it wasn’t work that we were already going to do, we would not change what we are going to do based on that donor. So our board approves substantial donations that come in, we have a separate grant committee that then allocates those funds to different developers based on certain proposals that they put together and work they are already doing.  So there’s no way that that would be able to trickle down, that the demand from a donor would get past the board, past myself, past the grant committee, then get to a developer, including independent board members and independent grant committee members and developers would not voice some sort of a concern.  There’s the decentralization component and then there’s the governance of the organizations component and then the developers peer-review at the bottom of it.

CK:

Brink’s structure is a great model. At HRF, our grants are also no-strings-attached to us. As we give out those grants, those are also no-strings attached grants. Applicants submit proposals, and if they’re strong, we provide funding with no specific demands. We trust developers to do what they propose, and we reassess during the next grant cycle. This ensures that Bitcoin’s development isn’t dictated by any single entity. Also for HRF specifically, we’re not working at the Bitcoin core level so a lot of the emphasis is on the application level and people don’t like what applications are build they’re not going to use them. There really isn’t a ton of danger there but obviously for our reputation and process we always want things to be successful so we want to fund projects that have product market fit and are actually going to be helpful. That is part of our reflection process on the backend of delivering these grants. I think it’s really important because there’s lots of these organizations now that are trying to fund open source and one of the key principles is this no-strings attached receipt of the money and distribution of the money.

Mike Schmidt:

Some people still suspect hidden motives in Bitcoin funding and don’t believe in the no-strings attached ethos and there must be some hidden motive by donors. What I would say to that is you would be surprised how many individuals and organizations genuinely want to see Bitcoin succeed. They see funding as an investment in Bitcoin’s future rather than a donation and are willing to make them without any strings attached.

Aaron Daniel:

When it comes to centralization, we need to step back and have some perspective and see where we are in the progression of Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s funding landscape is progressing toward decentralization. Five years ago, things looked very different. Now, we have multiple organizations—OpenSats, HRF, Brink—distributing funds. This diversification will only continue to grow and progress towards decentralization.

At the Open Source Justice Foundation, we see two parallel paths for decentralization:

1. Creating more nonprofits that act as funding nodes for various projects. We’re developing a Foundation Formation Kit to help open-source projects establish themselves with minimal overhead. This will create a Cambrian explosion of nonprofits in this space.
2. Supporting the cypherpunk ethos by enabling peer-to-peer funding through platforms like Nostr and Fedimint. This will facilitate getting peer-to-peer payments directly from the supporters to the builders.  We’re also backing a bounty board, FundSolver.com, where anyone can fund the development of specific Bitcoin features.

We need more eyes and support on these initiatives, but it’s an exciting direction and we’ve just got to have the long-term view as Bitcoiners and we’re in this for generations.

No-Strings-Attached Funding for Bitcoin Development

Hong Kim:

That’s an important historical perspective. In Bitcoin’s early days, development was entirely voluntary with people donating their time. Then, exchanges and miners started funding some developers. More recently, organizations like Brink, HRF and OpenSats formed to delegate the task and have the desire to provide evolution into this structured funding. This evolution has made it massively helpful and allowed ETF providers like Bitwise to donate without concerns of undue influence. Our contributions go to reputable organizations that distribute funds in a neutral way, maintaining Bitcoin’s integrity without us having to establish a committee and review and also having to deal with the perception that we are unduly influencing the development in some way when we really don’t want to. With these organizations, we have two degrees of no strings attached; were making a no-strings attached donation to Brink and HRF, and OpenSats, and you guys do that as well. The multitude and the layered no-strings attached makes sure that Bitcoin aligns so that even financial products like ETFs can donate even 10% of profits and credibly claim to the broader community of concerned Bitcoiners that we’re not really dictating neither the distribution or what the developers actually work on because we don’t even have a line of communication with them. Another direction I’d like to dig a little deeper on is if there are developers that actually want to obtain a grant from these funding organizations, how do they actually go about it? Can you describe that process and what it looks like for HRF?

CK:

For developers wondering how to secure a grant, the first step is to apply. At HRF, we encourage open-source developers to make their work public. Apply at hrf.org/bdfapply and engage with key people in the ecosystem. Many developers want to be “discovered,” but in reality, you need to articulate your ideas and reach out. Having an open dialogue and applying it’s going to help your project be successful and for our organizations to be able to get you funds.

Mike Schmidt:

Even if you’re not a developer or wealthy donor, it may be confusing how you can contribute. But, there are other ways to contribute. Testing projects, writing documentation, and designing interfaces all help the ecosystem. There are now foundations dedicated to routing support for these non-technical but crucial contributions.

Aaron Daniel:

At the Open Source Justice Foundation, we welcome grant applications and donations at opensourcejustice.org. We’re honored to be part of this effort, and we encourage everyone to get involved in securing Bitcoin’s future.

Hong Kim:

Thank you all for this insightful discussion!

Watch the original video: Click here

Disclaimer: Transcripts provided on bitlyrics.co represents solely the opinion of the speaker and is not by any means financial/legal advice or an opinion of the website. The content has been transcribed with maximum accuracy. Repetitions and fill words have been amended in order to enhance the reading experience. The full text may not be confirmed by the speaker. Please, refer back to the above-provided source of content for more certainty. If you are a speaker and wish to confirm/amend your speech please contact us.

Introduction

Hello, Bitcoiners. Thank you very much. Hello. It’s good to be with you. It’s good to be with you. So, Secret Service just told me, “Sir, we’d like a little more time.” I said, “You take all the time you want. You can take two hours, three hours, to hell with the people that have been waiting out here.” And I’m sure they don’t mind either. But it is a great honor.

A lot of things are happening in the world. We just heard, you probably heard, that Israel was just attacked, or is severely attacked. And Hezbollah, it looks like. And this is things that won’t happen. I mean, you just can’t. They have to respect us. They have to respect. They cannot do this. They cannot do this. What they did just now with that attack is terrible. It just happened. And so, to all, God bless everybody. This is so serious.

They have to respect our country. This would never have happened with us. And we just cannot let it continue. So, we just wish them all a lot of luck. This happened to us as I’m walking on the stage. You probably, most of you have heard about it. But it just, it’s a terrible thing.

But I’m thrilled to be here in Nashville to become the first American president ever to address a Bitcoin event anywhere in the world. Anywhere in the world.

I want to thank David Bailey for inviting me. Special guy. You know, this whole love affair sort of started, David, about four months ago, was at Mar-a-Lago. I took a picture with him. I mean, he’s a nice looking guy, he’s okay. He’s out here someplace. But I took a picture, it got published – Trump and David Bailey. All of a sudden, your industry went through the roof. So, David, congratulations, whatever the hell you do, you did a hell of a job. But as well as all of the Bitcoin luminaries and legends here, you have legends in this room. They really are. Congratulations. Would the legends please stand up?

Oh, everyone’s standing anyway. That’s nice. I used to say, “Sit down, everybody, sit down.” But it’s nice when they stand.

Acknowledgements

Including Tyler and Cameron. Do you know who that is? Winklevoss. These are great guys. They look like male models with a brain, you know? They’re male models with a big, beautiful brain. Michael Saylor is here. Cathie Wood. Cathie Wood. Ron Paul and Rand Paul are here.

Vivek is here. Vivek Ramaswamy. Where’s Vivek? Where are you, Vivek? There he is. He’s great. A man that I call Bob, but you probably know him as Kid Rock. Where’s Kid Rock? Where is he? He’s great. He’s a good guy and a talented guy.

And another talented guy, he was so incredible. This one, he went and he played at the funeral of a great fireman who was killed, fire chief, killed a week and a half ago at the rally. And Billy Ray Cyrus went and played music for the family. And it was supposed to be so incredible. I’ve heard so many things about it. And Billy Ray Cyrus is here. Where’s Billy Ray? He’s around here someplace, and he’s great. He’s a conservative guy. I said, “How did you get such a liberal daughter?” How did that happen, Billy Ray? And by the way, Kid Rock was incredible at the convention. You probably saw him. He was great. He was great.

Another one, Jake Paul. You don’t want to fight this guy. You know? You don’t want to fight him. He’s got a big fight coming with Mike Tyson. But he’s glad he didn’t fight Mike when Mike was 19. He told me that today. But he’s a fantastic guy. Very talented guy in a lot of ways.

Governor Joe Lombardo, who’s fantastic, and we’re doing well in his state. And he’s going to make sure that there’s no hanky-panky going on. And if that happens, we’re going to win his great state. But you know who he is and he’s a fantastic governor. Senators Bill Hagerty, Marsha Blackburn, Cynthia Lummis, Tim Scott. And Tim was great. Boy, I’ll tell you, he was such a strong voice for me. He was on so many shows and did such a great job during the primaries. He was incredible. I want to thank him. He’s a special guy.

They’re all special people. They’re warriors. Tommy Tuberville. You know Tommy Tuberville? Senator from Alabama. And you have many members of Congress: Andy Ogles, Thomas Massie, John Rose, Mark Green, and French Hill. And the next U.S. Senator from Ohio, I hear he’s doing very well, Bernie Moreno. Where is Bernie? I hear Bernie’s doing well. The great Laura Loomer. Some of you know Laura, she’s a fantastic person, great woman.

And a tremendous developer from New York and Florida, ne of the best, Steve Witkoff. And he’s got his son Alex with him today. That’s an incredible family, development family. They’ve been supporters from the beginning. Howard Lutnick. Cantor Fitzgerald. Incredible. One of the truly brilliant men of Wall Street. And a whole group of his distinguished guests. And a lot of our distinguished guests. We have a lot of other people here. And I won’t bother anymore.

Make America Great Again

That’s enough. Because we have to talk about crypto. We have to talk about Bitcoin. We have to talk about all these great companies. But our country is blessed to have the extraordinary talent, energy and genius represented in this room. It really is great genius. Not all of you, but most of you. Many of you. But this is the kind of spirit that built America.

And this is the spirit that’s going to help us make America great again. That’s what we’re doing. I stand before you today filled with respect and admiration for what the Bitcoin community has achieved. It’s incredible actually. I sort of say to my sons it’s like incredible because they know so much about it. They’re so aware of it. Much more so than people that are a little bit older.

The Bitcoin Industry

But I say this is the steel industry of a hundred years ago. It really is. I think you’re just in your infancy. I can see it happening. In just 15 years Bitcoin has gone from merely an idea posted anonymously on an internet message board to being the ninth most valuable asset anywhere in the world. Can you believe that? Is that right? That’s a big deal. Think of that.

It’s already bigger than Exxon Mobil. Soon it will be surpassing the entire market cap of silver. Not bad. How about gold? How about gold? Let’s go gold. And one day it probably will overtake gold. But based on the way it’s going now it could very well be a possibility.

There’s never been anything like it. And I don’t think you’ve ever seen anything like it. And most people have no idea what the hell it is. You know that, right?

The Bitcoin Community

So what happens when they figure it out? That’s going to really be something. Bitcoin is not just a marvel of technology. As you know it’s a miracle of cooperation and human achievement in a lot of relationships that are formed. I just did a meeting, a roundtable with a lot of the leaders. And it’s amazing.

There’s a great camaraderie. It’s really interesting. Not only there’s competition but there’s a relationship. There’s a friendship that’s developed with a lot of these people. I noticed it. I don’t usually see that too often.

I see the opposite actually. They want to get each other. They want to kill each other. These guys have a great feeling. Very smart people too. Congratulations on all that you’ve accomplished.

This room is amazing. The people in this room. High IQ individuals. I’m running against a low IQ individual, her. I’m not even talking about him. Her. I got a low IQ individual.

America First

The reason I’ve come to address the Bitcoin community today can be summed up in two very simple words. America first. Because if we don’t do it, China’s going to be doing it. Others are going to be doing it. Let’s do it and do it right. My vision is for an America that dominates the future. We have the best economy. The highest standard of living. The safest and most beautiful cities.

And by the way, when I say safest, our cities are going to hell right now. Our cities are going to hell. We’re going to fix our cities. We’re going to work with Democrats that have destroyed our cities. But we’ll work with them and we’re going to get our cities back. We’re going to bring our country back.

And we really were the freest and the most ambitious, most dynamic nation ever to exist on Earth. And we’re going to get that back again. Because we’re not there now. We’re a nation in decline. You know it. We know it. Doesn’t sound nice. But it’s okay because we’re going to bring it back. We’re going to bring it back fast. Right now, it’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing what’s happened. Even today when you look at what we just said that would never have happened if they respected our country.

If we don’t embrace crypto and Bitcoin technology, China will. Other countries will. They’ll dominate. And we cannot let China dominate. They are making too much progress as it is. And we want them to be successful. I want China to be successful. But we have to be the most successful. That’s what’s going to happen.

I want the United States to be first in technology. First in science. First in manufacturing. First in artificial intelligence. And first in space.

You know at MIT my uncle was a professor there. Dr. John Trump. He would have fit in with this room very nicely actually. That’s why I mention it. And I believe he was the longest serving professor in the history of MIT. He graduated. We have a very intelligent family actually. He graduated tremendously. I think he has three different degrees. But they said would you like to stay on John, and be a professor? Well I’ve got a lot of offers I assume he said. But I’ve got a lot of offers. He was there for I believe 41 years.

When I was in the White House the head of MIT came to see me. And they presented me with a book on my uncle. He was a legendary guy in the academic world and in the world of MIT. So I understand a lot about what you’re doing. And I have great respect for highly intelligent people. And you are highly intelligent.

Energy Demand and Production

America’s destiny is to lead our rivals in everything and to surrender our industries to no one. To no one. You know some of you are involved with AI. But you also have the same thing. You need a thing called electricity. You need a lot of electricity.

You know AI needs to be really dominant. And China can do it much easier. We have environmental impact statements to do. But we’re going to do things that nobody thought were possible.

You need tremendous amounts of electricity. You need double the electricity of the entire electricity that we have right now in the United States to dominate. And we’ll get that done. Who would think we can get that done? But we’re going to get it done.

We’ll be having power plants built at the sites. We’ll be releasing people from certain ridiculous requirements. And we’ll be using fossil fuel to make electricity because we’re going to have to. We’ll be using nuclear. We’ll be doing it in an environmentally friendly way. But we will be creating so much electricity that you’ll be saying, “please, please, President, we don’t want any more electricity, we can’t stand it.” You’ll be begging me, “No more electricity, sir. We have enough. We have enough.”

Electric Cars and Elon Musk

You know, in the Midwest, they just opened, it was very interesting, they just opened up two chargers, you know, a charger for the electric cars. And, you know, I love Elon. He’s great. He endorsed me and great endorsement and everything else. But not everybody has to have an electric car. I told them that. So we’re going to get rid of that mandate if you don’t mind. Some people want gasoline propelled cars. Some people want a hybrid. And some people like an electric car. They’re great.

I think they’re great. I think what he’s done is great. I think he understands it. I guess he probably wouldn’t have endorsed me. He knows who I am in this. But he did. And it’s just like they did these chargers in the Midwest. There are eight of them. They spent $9 billion to build eight chargers to charge up a car.

And at that rate it would cost approximately $12 trillion to put the chargers in. Somehow that’s not working. The country would have to file for Chapter 11. We’ll do a Chapter, you know, it’s called Chapter 7 instead of a Chapter 11, but it’s the equivalent. No, we have to use our brain.

The Party of Common Sense

We are the party of common sense, okay? We have to have common sense. But what we do have to do is we have to produce tremendous electric or AI and for all of the other things, including the things that you’re doing, and we’ll get it produced and we’re going to get it produced fast, or we’re not going to be able to compete with China and other countries.

So we’re going to get it produced fast. This afternoon I’m laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world. And we’ll get it done.

Bitcoin and Crypto in America

If crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted, and made in the USA it’s going to be. It’s not going to be made anywhere else. And if Bitcoin is going to the moon, as we say, it’s going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way.

And that’s what’s going to happen. So you’re going to be very happy with me. You’re going to be so happy. You’re going to say he’s the greatest guy. That’s why I’m proud to be the first major party nominee in American history to accept donations in Bitcoin and crypto. And they’ve made a lot of them, I might tell you. And I appreciate it.

Since we made that announcement on May 21st, we have already raised $25 million, much of it in Bitcoin, crypto, and others. Others that are very, very good also. But as you know, our excitement about the future of Bitcoin and crypto could not be more difficult from the approach of our opponents.

United States Presidential Election

Look, our opponents have gone a difficult route. They’re going old-fashioned stuff. We’re going to take it right down the middle. We are so different from anybody else in terms of a campaign. First of all, we understand it. They don’t understand it. They are blocking your path. They’re blocking your way. But I’ve made it a lot easier for you because the SEC has been very, very tough on you. And now they see that you’ve embraced me. All of a sudden, people that were under investigation, they’re being let go. They say, “oh no, we don’t want to do that. We love crypto.”

Let me tell you, if they win this election, every one of you will be gone. They will be vicious. They will be ruthless. They will do things that you wouldn’t believe. But right now, because of me, they’re leaving you alone. So please say, “thank you, President Trump. Thank you very much.”

Bitcoin and Crypto Voter Base

And the reason they’re doing that is, I’ve heard from some of your great geniuses that talk to me about this subject. I’ve heard from Vivek. 175 million people in some form are involved with this world of crypto and Bitcoin and all of the others. 175 million. So when they heard that, they said, “let’s be nice to them, at least until after the election.” So I’ve taken a lot of pressure off a lot of people. A lot of people are very happy today that about three months ago weren’t so thrilled.

But three and a half years, is that right? Look, he just said that’s right. And you know it’s right. For three and a half years, the current administration has waged a war on crypto and Bitcoin like nobody’s ever seen before.

For those who work in this industry, they target your banks. They choke off your financial services. Have people seen that? Yes. Yeah, they have. Put your hands up. They block ordinary Americans from transferring money to your exchanges. They slander you as criminals.

But that happened to me, too, because I said the election was rigged. “He said the election was rigged. He should spend the rest of his life in jail for making that statement.” Of course, they say it about us, and it’s okay, right? No. And by the way, we’re doing very well on the election.

Covering a Lot of Territory

You know, we lost a candidate recently. Crooked Joe Biden. And I thought, we lost this wonderful person. And he’s actually a terrible human being, if you want to know the truth, so don’t feel sad. And we have another worse. He’s the worst human being.

And I sort of made an analogy last night. Last night, think of this. I was speaking in front of a very powerful and very strong, very religious group, Christian group. Christians, evangelicals, Christians. And then today, I come in front of Bitcoin. And now I’m going to Minnesota to do a rally. You think my life is so great, don’t you, huh? But I cover a lot of territory.

I go from religion to Bitcoin to a rally. And I don’t get it mixed up like other people do. Where they come out and they say, “may God bless everybody involved in the Bitcoin world”. But actually, we mean that, because you need blessing because you’ve got to do something very spectacular.

But we had an incredible time last night talking to Christians, largely Christians, a Christian group. And this is so great. And then we have a very big rally in Minnesota. Hasn’t been one since 1972. Richard Nixon, can you believe it?

And I think, you know, I think we’re leading Minnesota. But there’s some hanky-panky that goes on in Minnesota. But I think we’re doing good. So we’re going to leave here. We’re going to go there for a big rally. But this is such an honor to be with you.

Weaponizing Government

Sadly, when we see the attacks on crypto, it’s a part of a much larger pattern that’s being carried out by left-wing fascists who weaponize government against any threat to their power. They’ve done it to me.

Did you see I just won the big case in Florida? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good. Now, it’s a big case. That was the document case. I have Presidential Records Act on my side. Biden didn’t. By the way, Biden, they said, here’s what they said.

The State of the Current Government

They said, “he’s guilty as hell, but we’re not going to charge him because he’s incompetent.” I won the case the old-fashioned way. It’s called, you win. I wouldn’t have wanted to win the way he won. “Trump won the case because they called him incompetent.” Think of this. So they called him incompetent. So he’s incompetent to run for trial, to stand trial. But he’s not incompetent to run the country.

How does that work? But he’s not doing it anymore because he didn’t do particularly well in the debate. Did anybody watch the debate? Not too many people. Somebody said to me, “you did horribly in the debate.” I said, why? “Because there’s no way he can continue forward.: That’s how bad he was. They said, I understand that. And that’s exactly what happened, actually. We had a great debate. It was a tremendous debate, actually.

You have to open the eyes. You have to see what’s going on. We have a country to run. The problem is that Kamala is worse than Joe, is worse. She’s a radical left lunatic. Defund the police. All of the different things. And so far we’re doing. She’s got a little honeymoon going on right now. But when people hear about her. And she’s against crypto, by the way. And she’s against it very big. So I just want to let you know. You’ve got to get out and vote.

It should be no surprise that these same totalitarians are hell bent on crushing crypto and obliterating. And that’s what they want to do. And that’s what they stated. Well, I mean, they’re there right now. You have the SEC. You know what they’re doing. Obliterating Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Stands for Freedom

The reason could not be more clear. Because Bitcoin stands for freedom, sovereignty and independence from government, coercion and control. The Biden-Harris administration’s repression of crypto and Bitcoin is wrong. And it’s very bad for our country. It’s really quite un-American.

As you know, six days ago, we officially defeated the worst president in the history of the United States. I believe he was the worst president in the history of the United States.

National Security

Think of it. Millions and millions of people have come into our country. They’ve come in from jails. They’ve come in from -think of it. Insane asylums. Mental institutions. They’ve come in as terrorists. We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now.

The same people that you just heard about from Israel. That did that in Israel. They’re coming in and nobody checks them. Nobody knows what’s going on. We have no idea what’s going on. They’ve lost control of our country. And only bad things can happen.

Political Opponents

So it’s not going to be that way. We’re not going to let that happen. We’re beating them and we’re beating them badly. And we have to make sure that we do. We need to do it for our country. And you can’t just be a fighter and have your man lose the fight. Or woman. But in this case a man.

He’s losing the fight. He’s down by 15, 16, 17 points. They say that, “you’re not going to win Joe, you’ve got to get out.” He didn’t want to get out. He said, “I’m not getting out.” He said, “you’re getting out.” He said, “I’m not getting out, I have 14 million votes, I’m not getting out.” They said, “if you’re not getting out we’re going to institute the 25th Amendment on your mental competence.” He said, “like I said before I think I’m going to get out.”

Okay. And they got him out. But it’s like, think of this. You fight, you’re in a campaign. You spend a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of effort. And he’s losing. And then they say let’s take him out of the fight. We’ll put a new fighter in there. The new fighter is her. Probably my second choice.

He will always be my first choice but she’d be my second choice. And again, if we don’t win this race and I know you’re not that political but you have to be political because your whole thing, I mean you have a lot of politics involved in what you do. If we don’t win this race this country could be finished as we know it. This country is going to be in bad shape and we have to be in there. We have to fight and we have to win.

I pledge to the Bitcoin community that the day I take the oath of office Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ anti-crypto crusade will be over. It will end. It’ll be done. It’ll be done. The moment I’m sworn in the persecution stops and the weaponization ends against your industry.

And as long as I’m in the Oval Office Elizabeth Warren, Pocahontas. Do you remember? Yes, I’m an Indian. Yes, I’m an Indian. She said, I’m an Indian. Why are you an Indian? You don’t look like an Indian. No, no, my mother told me I have high cheekbones. Oh, that’s why she was an Indian.

So I named her Pocahontas. Elizabeth Warren and her goons and she’s very nasty to you. She hates your people. She hates everything about you. We’ll keep their hands off Bitcoin. They’re going to keep their hands off crypto. They’re going to let it grow. We’re going to let it grow.

SEC Leadership

On day one I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman. I didn’t know he was that unpopular. Well, I didn’t know he was that unpopular. Let me say it again. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler. I will appoint a new SEC chairman who believes America should build the future, not block the future, which is what they’re doing.

And Kamala Harris wants to make him Treasury Secretary. That’s not good. That’s not good. He was Hillary Clinton’s finance person. Did you know that? Crooked Hillary. Remember Crooked Hillary? Do you remember her? Anybody remember? He was the finance chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign against the gentleman known as Donald Trump.

Not a popular person within the… Actually, she came to my wedding. Do you know that? To our great First Lady Melania came to our wedding, and Bill came to our wedding. But it’s amazing things when you run for office, a lot of things change in your life. A lot of things change.

Vision for Bitcoin in America

As president, I will immediately shut down Operation Chokepoint 2.0. They want to choke you. They want to choke you out of business. We’re not going to let that happen. And no longer will your government sit by and watch as Bitcoin jobs and businesses flee to other countries because America’s laws are too unclear and too tough and too angry and too stiff. We will keep each and every Bitcoin job in the United States of America. That’s what we’re going to be doing.

Upon taking office, I will immediately appoint a Bitcoin and Crypto Presidential Advisory Council. Would anybody like to be on that particular council? Please raise your hand. Their task will be to design transparent regulatory guidance for the benefit of the entire industry and they will get it done in 100 days.

We will have regulations but from now on the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry. People that want to make it clear and simple, straightforward and fair. People that want to see your industry thrive, not dive.

Next, I will immediately order the Treasury Department and other federal agencies to cease and desist all steps necessary because, you know, there’s a thing going on in your industry. They want to move the creation of a central bank digital currency. It’s over. Forget it. CBDC.

There will never be a CBDC while I’m President of the United States. And I will always defend the right to self-custody. Self-custody.

You’re going to have a great industry. And we’re going to be fuel for your industry, not demolish your industry. America will once again be a nation that protects property rights, privacy, freedom of transaction, freedom of association and freedom of speech.

We’re going to change our… We’re going to go back to the old days when we were a nation that was building, not a nation that was eating itself alive from within. As part of our effort to provide regulatory clarity, we will create a framework to enable the safe and responsible expansion of stable coins.

Do you know what a stable coin is? Does anybody know? Please raise your hand. Allowing us to extend the dominance of the U.S. dollar to new frontiers all around the world. America will be richer.

The world will be better. And there will be billions and billions of people brought into the crypto economy and storing their savings in Bitcoin. So that’s the way it is. That’s pretty much the way it is.

Threats to the U.S. Economy

Those who say that Bitcoin is a threat to the dollar have the story exactly backwards. I believe it is exactly backwards. Bitcoin is not threatening the dollar. The behavior of the current U.S. government is really threatening the dollar.

The danger to our financial future does not come from crypto. It comes from Washington, D.C. It comes from trillions of dollars in waste, rampant inflation, and open borders while giving welfare and free health care to all of the illegal aliens that are pouring into our country by the millions and millions and millions.

Violence Within the U.S.

It comes from printing hundreds of billions of dollars to fund endless wars overseas while our cities are like combat zones here at home. Two weeks ago in Chicago, 117 people were shot and 17 died. Afghanistan doesn’t have anything like that.

You know, you think about tough places. Look at what’s happening with our cities. What’s happening in the last three years, last three and a half years.

Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. Think of it. 117 over Fourth of July weekend. 117 people were shot and 17 died. This is the United States of America? I don’t think so.

U.S. Military Strength

By the way, when I was president, we had no wars. We had no new wars. We didn’t start any. Remember when Hillary said, “he’ll start wars, look at his personality.” No, I said, “my personality will keep us out of wars.”

But we finished off some of the old ones like ISIS, which they said would take five years to do, maybe more. We did it in four weeks. We beat ISIS in four. Because we have a great military. And it’s not a woke military, by the way. Maybe some of the people on top are woke, but this is not a woke. I got to see that first.

When I looked at what they did and what they did for me, they were unbelievable. They did things that nobody thought were possible. Our real generals and our soldiers, there’s no woke. They’re trying to get them to be woke, but these people are not going to go woke. I can guarantee you that.

Common Sense this Election

With your support this November, we will restore competence and we will restore common sense to our nation’s capital, because ultimately it is about – it’s not are you conservative, are you liberal, are you progressive. They like progressive. It sounds so nice, right? It’ll destroy our country. It’s actually become a terrible word.

It’ll destroy our country, but it’s not about that. It’s about common sense. We want to bring common sense back in. This is all common sense that we’re talking about today. And Bitcoin and crypto will skyrocket like never before, even beyond your expectations. And you are the people that are doing it.

The Economic Impact of this Election

As we stop the war on crypto, we will immediately, and we’ll do this very quickly, begin to build our economy, because when America is prospering, Bitcoin is soaring, and it’ll go up with it.

We had the greatest economy ever, and we will soon have it again. Under the Trump administration, the typical middle class family income rose by $6,000 a year. People don’t like mentioning that. America had more money to save than at any time in many decades. As a result, during my four years in office, now you have to listen to these numbers. These numbers are like beautiful, and I don’t want to repeat myself.

Listen to these numbers. As a result, during my four years in office, Bitcoin surged by 3,900% from $898 the day I took office to $35,900 the day I left. That was the biggest jump, I guess, in just about any industry.

Think of that. Now compare that to just after three and a half years of Biden and Harris adjusted for inflation, Bitcoin is up 50%. Now 50% sounds good, but not when you’re comparing it to almost 4,000% right? 50% – normally you say, oh, that sounds pretty good. Let’s not put that into the speech.

No, 50% is not good. When people can’t afford groceries or rent, they have no savings to store in Bitcoin. This administration caused the biggest inflation in the history of our country, and people are being wiped out.

From the very first day we take back the White House, we will replace the Biden-Harris economic stagnation with a brand-new Trump economic boom. You’re going to have a tremendous boom.

You know, you have a lot of great analysts out there. Scott, I’m talking about you, Scott, one of the greatest of all, and others that say the stock market’s going up because they think Trump is going to be elected. And if Trump isn’t elected, this country’s going to go into a depression the likes of what you had in 1929, and I hope that’s not true, but I can understand it, and I can understand what they’re saying.

The stock market game, they think is because it looks like we’re going to win the election, and I don’t know what’s going to happen with the election, you know? They cheat like hell, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. But if we win it, this country is going to be boomtown. It’s going to be booming like it never boomed before.

Tax Policies

The current administration’s economic plan includes trillions in new spending and $5 trillion tax hikes. They want to increase taxes by $5 trillion. They want the expiration of the Trump tax cuts to take place.

They want a wealth confiscation tax so that when you make all of your money that you’re going to make and all of the people you’re going to employ, they want to take away your money in the form of a first-time-ever tax, and a gigantic capital gains tax that will exceed substantially in many states over 50%.

My plan is the opposite. We will lift the workers, and we will create savers out of so many people, and we will reward success. We will not punish success. They want to punish success. They want to punish genius. Not going to let that happen. I will make the Trump tax cuts permanent and deliver massive tax cuts for families and individuals and businesses that produce jobs. That includes no tax on tips. You know that, right? Going to get rid of the tax on tips.

America for Business

I will cut unnecessary and burdensome regulations, fight every day to make America the best place on earth to build a business, including a crypto business.

It’s going to be the best place. You’re not going to have to go to China. You’re not going to have to learn, gee, how do I learn Chinese? I want to learn it very quickly. I have a little granddaughter that speaks fluent Chinese. Can you believe it? And it’s a wonderful thing, but it’s not easy, but you’re not going to have to do it.

Most importantly for our citizens, we will end the inflation nightmare that this administration has created, and we will end it quickly. It’s got to end. It’s destroying our country.

You know, inflation is a country buster. You can go back many, many years to Germany, and you look at what happened to Germany during their huge period of inflation, destroyed the country. It’s a country buster.

Bitcoin and Inflation

The Bitcoiners, and I say to you that you recognize the dangers of inflation long before most others did. You understood inflation, frankly, better than anybody else. You know that, don’t you?

If only they had listened. They didn’t listen to you. They didn’t listen to you. The trillions of dollars in ridiculous waste approved by our opponents resulted in the very inflation disaster that Bitcoiners had always predicted. Twenty, thirty, and even forty percent of the value of every dollar was wiped out and wiped out quickly.

You understood that, but a lot of other people didn’t. The life savings of millions of Americans was rapidly destroyed. And very simply, uncontrolled inflation is a stealth taxation of the middle class. It really is. It’s a stealth taxation. I call it the Biden tax. Now I’ll call it the Harris tax or the Harris-Biden tax or whatever the hell we’re going to call them.

But it’s a disaster. It’s a tax of 50%. It’s a 50 %tax. Inflation, think of it, it’s a 50% tax on people. Five-O. This is a human tragedy, and it’s destroyed people. It’s a national disgrace. It’s destroyed everything in its way. It must never be allowed to happen again, and it won’t. When I’m president, I guarantee you it won’t happen because we’re going to do things that make sure it doesn’t happen.

They’ve allowed pricing to get totally out of control. We’re going to do energy, bring it down to levels that people have not seen in many, many years. We had it at levels. We were at $1.87 for a gallon of gasoline. You don’t see that right now.

For four straight years, under my leadership, we had effectively no inflation. None. When I left office, it was 1.4 percent. And then it stayed there for almost two years. Remember when Biden said it was nine? “I inherited nine percent.” That was just another lie. Misinformation, disinformation.

We gave them a hot country. We went through the COVID. We did an incredible job. Never got credit for that. Always got credit for the economy, for the military. We rebuilt the military. We created the Space Force. We did so many different things. Never got credit for that.

You know what? We gave them a great country with essentially no inflation. And after two years, they drove this country and they drove inflation through the roof. Two years, cost of living went up, in some cases, by over 50%. They say 22%. They like to say 22, but it could be much higher, and it is much higher depending on what they include. They don’t include things like interest rates that went from 2.5% to 10%, but you can’t get the money.

Foreign Policy

When I return to the White House, I will stop the wild and wasteful spending of this administration. I will end the endless wars. They never stop. Again, we had no wars. We had no new wars under your favorite president, President Trump. We had no new wars. They thought I was going to start a war. Let me tell you something. I’m going to stop World War III because we’re closer to the World War III that we’ve ever been since the end of World War II.

I will seal the border and stop the invasion of millions of people pouring into our country illegally. We will totally defeat, and we will do this quickly. We will defeat inflation, and together, we will bring back the American dream for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.

The American Dream

We will bring it back, the American dream. You don’t even hear the, you don’t even hear the statement American Dream anymore. You don’t hear those words anymore. We used to talk about the American Dream. A lot of you people are in the American Dream, but you’re going to be crushed if you don’t elect me. I hate to tell you.

You don’t elect me, you’re going to be crushed. You’re going to say, Alice, what a mistake it was. We went for a person who has no talent. She’s been a failure at almost everything she’s done instead of Trump. And look at us now. We’re going to move into an extremely small house from our beautiful house.

Energy Policy

But we will end the war on American energy and we will very simply drill, baby, drill. We’re going to drill, baby, drill. We have to.

It’s what we have. We have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation in the world. More than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia. We don’t use it. We don’t use it. They use it. We don’t use it. We go out and buy oil from Venezuela. Amazing.

But we won’t stop there. We will harness American energy in all forms. I have set the ambitious goal that by the end of my term, the United States will be the number one lowest cost of energy and electricity of any nation on Earth.

We can make it so inexpensively. Because of what we have under our feet, we can make it so inexpensively.

Bitcoin Policy

And with low energy costs, America will become the world’s undisputed Bitcoin mining powerhouse. You’ll be a Bitcoin mining powerhouse. You will not have to move your family to China. You will not be moving to China.

As we implement these reforms, Bitcoin and crypto will grow our economy, cement American financial dominance and strengthen our entire country long into the future. Many Americans do not realize that the United States government is among the largest holders of Bitcoin. Does anyone know that?

How about that? The federal government has almost 210,000 Bitcoin or 1% of the total supply that will ever exist. But for too long our government has violated the cardinal rule that every Bitcoiner knows by heart. Never sell your Bitcoin. Right? That’s right, isn’t it? Huh? That’s right. How did I figure that one?

Never sell your Bitcoin. And so, as the final part of my plan today, I am announcing that if I am elected it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future. We’ll keep 100%. I hope you do well, please. This will serve in effect as the core of the strategic national Bitcoin stockpile.

As you know, as you know, most of the Bitcoin currently held by the United States government was obtained through law enforcement action. You know that. They took it from you. “Let’s take that guy’s life. Let’s take his family, his house, his Bitcoin. We’ll turn it into Bitcoin.” It’s been taken away from you because that’s where we’re going now. That’s where this country is going. It’s a fascist regime.

And so as I take steps to transform that vast wealth into a permanent national asset to benefit all Americans, today I repeat my pledge to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to a sentence of time served. It’s enough. It’s enough. It’s enough.

Pro-Bitcoin Presidency

That’s where we are as a country.

Ultimately, my promise to each and every one of you is this. I will be the pro-innovation and pro-Bitcoin president that America needs and our citizens deserve.

This will be one industry, but this will be a thriving industry, a great industry, and I’m going to be doing the same thing for every other industry also. Our nation has never thrived by trying to censor new ideas and shut down the dreams of our people. America always plants our flag on the next frontier and pushes boldly ahead. We have to do that. We haven’t been doing that for a long time, especially the last three and a half years. It’s gone the exact opposite.

American Legacy on the Bleeding Edge

Those of you in this room inherit the legacy of generations of American pioneers and patriots, risk-takers, and renegades who settled this continent, built the modern world and lived on the bleeding edge. You live on a bleeding edge. You do know that, Bitcoiners, don’t you?

You are the modern-day Edisons and Wright Brothers and Carnegies and Henry Fords and what you do in your lifetime stands a chance to outlive us all and inspire humanity for generations to come. This will go down as a very important day in the history of your industry. Together you are building America’s future with your own smarts, your own grit, and your own skin in the game. You have a lot of skin in the game and that’s what you’re doing. It takes courage to do it. Most people don’t have that courage.

Closing Remarks

My job will be to set you free and to let you do what Americans do best and what you are going to do better than anybody: win, win, win. You are going to win, win, win. With energy, passion and in brilliance like we have, rarely seen before, our country cannot fail. We’re in a failing nation right now, but we’re not going to be for long.

Our country cannot fail. With your help, we will save our nation, we will restore our republic, and we will make America and Bitcoin bigger, better, stronger, richer, freer, and greater than ever before. Thank you all. Have a good time with your Bitcoin and your crypto and everything else that you’re playing with, and we are going to make that one of the greatest industries on Earth. Good luck and God bless you all.

Thank you. God bless you. Thank you.

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