Listen To This Episode:
[00:00:07] CK: Svetski has put out some incredible work, some incredible thinking. The article prior to this one was Bitcoiners are the Remnant. We don't need the masses. I think, I messed that title up. Long story short is you should read that one, as well as ASIC.
I'm going to go and show Bitcoin 2022 really quick before we get into talking about Bitcoin, Bitcoiners and Citadels. Y'all need to go to Bitcoin 2022 in Miami, April 6th through the 9th. You can use the promo code, it is satoshi to save yourself 10% off. Prices will be going up. This is going to be the absolute, ultimate Bitcoin are gathering. Our CEO is calling it the ultimate pilgrimage for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin 2021, 13,000 people. The place where El Salvador announced that it was going to make Bitcoin legal tender, and I believe, pretty much everyone on stage was there. I know, I shook Untap’s hand. I shook Alex's hand. I think, I met Mitch there as well. Lots and lots of Bitcoiners will be there, over 30,000. Four days of Bitcoin culture, information, technology and more. Highly, highly recommend it. Don't sleep on the Bitcoin Conference. I'll shut up now.
Alex, back to you, man. Why don't you talk a little bit –
[00:01:26] AS: I was going to say, we did more than shaking hands at the event, man. Come on. Come on.
[00:01:30] CK: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we don't have to get into the details, though. You got to be there to know it. Bitcoin 2021 is like Vegas. You just got to be there. A lot of it was recorded on YouTube. Alex, I’m going to send it back to you, my man. Talk to us about this series. Talk to us about this essay. We can get into the details. I have a bunch of questions for you. I know we have some great guests on the stage as well.
[00:01:54] AS: For sure. For sure. Yeah, I actually just want to echo, for Bitcoin 2021, it was probably my favorite Bitcoin event that I've been to. I mean, I loved Bitcoin 2019, but that was the first one that I've ever been to and that was over NSF a couple years back and it was a lot smaller. I will credit Bitcoin 2021 as a place of some really good inspiration for me. It's like, I'm writing what I would call my magnum opus to date at the moment. It's called Fire Bitcoin Teleportation. It's going to be my most important piece ever written in the midst to that. That actually came out of a discussion, post those at Bitcoin 2021.
[00:02:31] CK: I like it.
[00:02:32] AS: Yeah. Dude, it's going to be super, super, fucking deep.
[00:02:34] CK: Putting Bitcoin at scale to [inaudible 00:02:36]. Put into perspective.
[00:02:39] AS: Yeah, it's literally like, the thesis is going to really dive into this idea that we use BC and AD to separate timelines. This will be the out of bounds of existence fire on one side, which is what transformed us into homo-sapiens. Bitcoin is the midpoint, so then you have before Bitcoin and after Bitcoin. So AB, and BB, or BB and AB, sorry.
Then, on the other end of the spectrum is Bitcoin’s a step change, which transformed us into homo-Bitcoinicus, and we move into the next level of existence. It's true leveling up. Anyway, I want to chunk it up, and hopefully, I'm going to be speaking about that at Bitcoin 2022. That's the plan at least. Anyway, Bitcoin is in citadels. I guess, maybe where I'll start is –
[00:03:29] CK: Let's start with the – just give the five-minute on the series in general. Maybe talk about Jordan Peterson, why you doing 12 rules and stuff like that?
[00:03:37] AS: For sure. I mean, many people listening here probably has come across, or if not just come across, they're probably quite aligned with, or “fans” of Jordan Peterson's work. I came across his work years and years and years ago. I read Maps of Meaning when I was in my mid-20s. I guess, being a young 20-year-old, I didn't really appreciate it as much, but I've always been a student of all sorts of psychologists.
I've always said, my three or four favorite people who are thinkers in that realm, Alfred Adler, Jordan Peterson, Tony Robbins and Viktor Frankl. In fact, I'm looking at Man's Search for Meaning now. A little book I carried around with me all the time. Anyway, over the last couple years, we've seen, or actually, it's probably over the last year, we've seen Jordan Peterson’s thing rise up. It's funny, I've got a tweet, and I think this is on my old account, so I don't have proof of tweet at the moment. It was on my old account before it got nuked.
I did some predictions for 2021. I said, this year, we'll see some big names get involved in Bitcoin. I predict Jordan Peterson. I think, I said Elon Musk and Tony Robbins. We've had two of those. Let's see, I'm pretty sure Robbins is in there as well. Probably all three have come through.
[00:04:50] CK: I can guarantee you, Robbins has been in longer than – and before your prediction.
[00:04:54] AS: Both of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both of them. Exactly. Exactly. I think, from a more public standpoint, perhaps not. Anyway, I wanted to then, like early this year, I decided, look, I'm going to write about Bitcoin through the lens of Peterson's more digestible work, because Maps of Meaning is really, really heavy. Most people haven't read it. Most people are not even familiar with it. He wrote that, I think, it was almost 20 years ago now.
What I took was the book, 12 Rules for Life. I said, “All right, I'm going to take the principles that are discussed in each of the chapters,” because the chapters are dense. Each chapter is actually quite broad. He does have a title and a name for each chapter, like the first one, stand up straight with your shoulders back, etc. You go in there, and there's all sorts of principles, like the whole lobster meme comes out of that first chapter.
What I've been doing is I've been distilling the essence of each of the chapters and talking about Bitcoin through the lens of those lessons and those ideas and those concepts. For example, the first one I did is called Bitcoin territory and hierarchy. I dig into how Bitcoin actually makes proper functional hierarchies of competence possible. Fiat actually turns us into a world in which we have hierarchies of incompetence, or what I call fiat hierarchies, in which they're top heavy, everything's a fucking disaster. There's no competence involved in order to get to the top. It's about rigging, the game, etc., etc. It's a lot deeper than that. There's all sorts of things.
Yeah, that's where it started. I wrote that one earlier this year. My plan was to get one out a month, but I have too many other things to do with business and all sorts of other shit. Yeah, it was around that time that CK reached out. Then I started moving the blog over to Bitcoin Magazine. Then the second piece I did was Bitcoin Chaos and Order. That was also a really deep piece, where I went into the philosophy around the study of matter, versus the study of what matters, which is basically, science and philosophy, and how the pendulum has completely swung to the study of matter, where we as a species, have attempted to define everything we see, touch, and interact with around us through an empirical lens, where nothing actually has meaning, and we're not interested in why it matters.
We're only interested in some empirical model that we can measure the world through. That's where you get the rise of Keynesian economics. You get the rise of all these stupid epidemiologists, thinking that we're all built the same and that if you build a spreadsheet of viral coefficient, everyone's going to be dead in six weeks thing, right? It goes into that. It goes into the deeper nuances around the meaning of what is chaos? What is order? How do they work together, and how Bitcoin not only enables an interplay between chaos and order, but it lives right at the nexus of both, which is also funnily enough, where life actually lives. Life doesn't live purely in the realm of counsel, purely in the realm of order. It lives at the nexus of both. That was that piece.
Then, the one here that we're going to be discussing today is Bitcoin, Bitcoiners, and Citadels. The basis of this one, I'm just double checking what the rule for Jordan was called. It's called, make friends with people who want the best for you. I started writing this, it's been almost four or five months now. When I read that title, I was like, “Hey, make friends with people who want the best for you.” What the hell does that remind us all of? Bitcoins, of course. It's like, what group of people on the planet actually give a fuck about the world and give a fuck about making things better, fixing the money to fix the world than Bitcoin? It’s like, who is more optimistic in the world than Bitcoiners today?
Everyone else that you can compare it with, whether it's the laboratorians, or the fucking nihilists, or the salty socialists, or the fucking retard, democracy, Maximus. All of these people have either no solution, they're complete nihilist, they've given up, they're cynical, they don't care anymore. Or they're trying to play the games that they can get mine, and just win as much as they can, like the Silicon Valley SOIs and the shitcoiners and everything.
It's like, who are the people who want the best for you? That's what inspired the title of this piece, which is Bitcoin, Bitcoiners, and Citadels. Yeah, it's been quite a while in the making, this piece. Actually, while I was about 70% through writing it, I was writing a section in there, called Bitcoiners are the Remnant. As I started getting into that, I'm like, “Fuck. This is going to end up being way, way, way too long.” I realized that there's an entire piece in Bitcoiners are the Remnant. I was like –
[00:09:42] CK: I'm glad you broke it out.
[00:09:43] AS: - spin it out another piece.
[00:09:44] CK: I'm glad you broke it out, because y'all, Bitcoiners are their – I guess, we don't need mass adoption. Bitcoiners are the Remnant is one of my favorite pieces. I would say, it's strongly influenced how I look at my job, how I look at Bitcoin Magazine. Alex, kudos. I know that that writing is off of a recommendation from Francis and gray, older essay and stuff like that. Really, really great work and highly recommend everyone to check that out and read it. Relatively quick read. I believe that Guy Swann is going to be doing an audible version of that shortly, too. Make sure to check it out.
[00:10:21] AS: Absolutely, man. Thank you. Yeah. I then got around to just getting this piece finished and publishing it. I mean, I don't know how many people in the room have read it, but I guess, we could go through a question-answer component of it, CK. I don't know if you've had a chance to fully read it or not. We can go through the sections and I can dig into what I think are the highlights and the important pieces for this.
[00:10:46] CK: Yeah. No. I think we can go through the sections. I would also love to after hitting on one, letting Untapped, or Rob, or some of these guys on stage react as well. I mean, I don't know if you have it in front of you, you want me to guide that. Yeah, let's go for it.
[00:11:04] UG: Can I chime in something real quick, if that's good?
[00:11:06] AS: Yeah. Go for it, man.
[00:11:08] UG: Before you even get into the Bitcoiners and Citadels part, the Bitcoiners are the Remnant; I think, a really important thing that ties into this topic of the citadels is the fact that not only is Bitcoin the shelling point of money, but Bitcoiners as a culture is the shelling point of what's being built as the revolution itself. I see this so much in what I'm doing, where it's happening in the real world, that it's a gravity, it's like a locus of power, where the people that actually have a real ethic to them are assembling around this culture.
That flows into this intelligent minority that has this power to get close to those who want best for you. That remnant flow, it's not toxicity, where it's driving people away. That's the strong center that actually enables us to coalesce around truth, to flow into what you're talking about now.
[00:12:03] AS: Yeah, I would argue it does both. It either goes right over the head of the “the masses,” or it drives away what I would call the parasites. I'm doing a part two of the Remnant piece called The Remnant, the Parasite and the Masses, just to dig into a little bit more of the nuance around that, because there was a bunch of people who misinterpreted some of what I said in that article. Yeah, to your point, Untapped, is that Bitcoin as a shelling point, and Bitcoiners, as a people that have aligned themselves, or been drawn to that shelling point, we are actually toxic to the status quo, in the same way as a white blood cell is toxic to a sick cell in the body. We are toxic to that, because we are fundamentally subversive, and we're building something that is incompatible with the status quo.
We are also simultaneously a magnet, like you said, a shelling point for others. This is the point of that remnant paste that I did. The message of Albert Knox essay from the 30s was that, to be a prophet of the remnant means that when you speak, if a 100 people listen, one – Sorry, if a 100 people hear it, only one person might listen. It's that one person who listened that matters. That's the person that you want to attract. The other 99, I think, is fuck. Doesn't matter.
Again, CK mentioned that, that shaping, that worldview is really important for us, because this age of Bitcoin, this period that we're in now, and we're probably in for the next 10 years, this is going to be the most significant transformation of the social structure of the world that has ever fucking happened. I don't say that lightly. That's the people you want along your side. We use the analogy of The 300 during the last conversation, which is you don't want the Acadians who are like, one’s a farmer and one’s a fuckin blacksmith and this and that. You want the fucking soldiers alongside you, because this is – make no mistake about it, this will be a battle for the next 10 years.
If we win and survive on the other end, the masses, the rest of the people just will end up on Bitcoin by default. If we don't, the rest of the people will just end up on fucking worldcoin by default, right? Or fucking pin-up the coin, or whatever other horseshit, biometric, fucking facial recognition version of a coin that is –
[00:14:31] CK: Speaking of Silicon Valley not caring about you.
[00:14:34] AS: I know, right? Literally. They like, “Oh, hey. Hello. We've got a worldcoin for you and it's coming, facial recognize yourself if you want to be able to.” I mean, talking about hubris. Jesus Christ.
[00:14:47] CK: Joel, you want to jump in here?
[00:14:49] J: Yeah. Because there's a scripture verse that I really like, that’s about this. It talks about the train of the victory parade, smells to some life and the other’s death. That's what we are as the remnant. We're leaning forward towards the new world and the emergence of truth and justice again. To some it smells like life, because it's hope, and to others, it feels like death, because it's justice.
I saw this even yesterday with the guy you set me up with, where there's another prophecy and scripture about the smoldering whip he won't put out. It's this idea of those who hope has gotten thin. These are people who value truth, they value integrity, they value goodness, and they've gotten so fed up with the brokenness the system like, “The guy you set me up was Svetski. He doesn't even want to come back to the US. He wants to hide out in a third-world country, because by being here, it's like, he feels it grinds against his soul, because it's so evil, what he knows is happening.” It's like, how can you be here and not be at war with it?
This emergent remnant, it's divisive for that reason. Also, it's beautiful, because those people who are the good people, they're flocking to us. I'm seeing it with what I'm building so strongly. It's even the ones who have lost hope. It's those that got a little fragileness to them, because they held on to goodness for so long and never saw it manifest. It's like, it has a compassion to it. It's not toxicity is stubbornness. It's love, it’s realness, but it's divisive, because that love burns with truth.
[00:16:19] AS: Very nicely put. That was beautiful.
[00:16:21] CK: Yo, hey. I want to get into the article, Joel. Thank you for adding all of that. I think, the victory parade prophecy analogy is a very good one. Thank you. Alex, let's get into the first part. Again, talking about you want to surround yourself by people who want the best for you. Again, I would say that I've never been around a more productive, passionate, just incredibly optimistic group of people than Bitcoiners. That's the foundation of Bitcoin Magazine. BTC Inc., is hiring Bitcoiners and building from there.
[00:16:57] AS: Yeah. I mean, I'll open it with the little phrase that I've got in here. It says, Bitcoiners here, like to point, Bitcoiners are the only crowd I have found whose primary interest is not getting rich, but fixing the money, so we can fix the world. When behaving in a manner that some might call toxic, are merely just being intolerant towards skewing the core idea, away from the message, and doing so from a place of deep insight and caring, which I think, literally just echoes what Untapped said and what you're reinforcing there, CK.
When people look at the article, they'll see the meme in there with the soldier, who's getting knives and daggers and grenades thrown in the back of him, covering the newbie in the space. The other piece is like, I say, Bitcoins truly want the best for others in the world and are not willing to compromise on what it will take to get there.
I think, just that very notion of the right people, the right community, and surrounding yourself with individuals who wants the best for you and genuinely want the best for you is quite rare, and is a good thing. To echo Jordan again, he says, that you should spend your time with people who want things to be better for you not worse. He reminds us that it's a good thing to choose people who are good for you and demand the most of you. It's not easy, because the tendency is to choose those who accept your faults, which may not actually be so good for you. This actually relates to his previous rule, which are about Bitcoin Chaos and Order, is like, a true friend – I've banged on about this in different ways over the years, but it's like, a true friend is someone who genuinely be happy for you when something good happens for you. Also, a true friend is the one who will call you out on your fucking bullshit, when you are not living up, or behaving by your standards.
The fake friend is the one who will just say, “Yeah, yeah. It's okay. I accept to kumbaya with friends and everything,” when you are being the worst version of yourself. That is not the fucking definition of a friend. A friend is someone who has the courage to call you up when you are being a dick. That bleeds into this next piece here, which is entitled Friends. There's a quote here from Tony Robbins, which is, “Pick your friends carefully, because who you spend time with is who you become.” Again, who do we want to spend time with?
Jordan, in this chapter, he talks about how in his early days as a teenager, he was in Alberta and everything was cold, withdrawn, nihilistic. Doing anything was seen as uncool. He describes how he's friends were that. He wanted to escape from that to do something with his life. I just find such a strong analogy between that period of what he's describing, as what he's describing there is not true friends. It’s just this community of effectively deadbeats. The people who wanted something better for their lives, they actually got the fuck out of there. They went and worked on the oil rigs, etc.
The analogy for me is the hopelessness and the nihilism we see in much of the world today. It's like, we're surrounded by people who have either literally given up, or have been brainwashed by mainstream madness. People are seeking some form of distraction, or escape, because they can't handle being alone, long enough to face themselves. They literally feel the specter of their own increasingly meaningless existence.
I remember, I think it was Bobby Show or something on Twitter. He did a post saying, “Why is depression so prevalent today?” I just answered it, “I'll tell you why. It's really simple. Is depression is merely the body's signaling mechanism to tell you, you are not performing, or doing, or behaving, or acting in a way that is in alignment with something that you find meaningful.” If you are living a meaningless existence, you will, by definition, be depressed and continue to be depressed.
Why is everyone's fucking depressed today? Because everyone is living this meaningless existence. When they feel a little bit of pain, or feel a little bit of suffering, or feel a little bit of discomfort, which is the nervous system’s way of telling you that something is wrong, that you need to fix it, that you need to change it, they go and dope themselves up with a fucking anti-depressant, or some fucking mindless music, or some mindless Netflix, or some fucking food, or some retard friends, or going out and fucking drinking, getting blasted, or going to parties and all this shit.
It’s always a fucking distraction from fixing the underlying problem, which is the meaninglessness. This is where a powerful community of friends, or a powerful peer group is really one of the most important ways to fix it. You don't fix depression by doping somebody up with fucking anti-depressants, and screwing up all their other systems. You help it by adjusting the environment and putting them around people who want better for themselves and for others. That's where we bleed down into community, which is the next subsection. I don't know if there are any comments there.
[00:22:13] CK: I mean, I guess, this relates to community. I feel like, there are very much connections between let's just call it what Jordan Peterson is talking about, what Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community have emerged into, and then what a lot of religious groups and communities provide for the people who subscribe to those communities.
I feel like, obviously, we're in a world where those religious communities are big time in the decline. I don't know if that's a good thing, or a bad thing. I have a certain strong affiliation, but we're also seeing that coalesce with people not having a purpose, people not having that strong group to lean on, whatever. I feel like, there's definitely some adjacencies there. I see Untapped is raising his hand. I'm curious if that sparked an idea in his mind.
[00:23:05] UG: You guys are going to have to keep quoting scripture verses today, man. There's a verse that says in Proverbs. “Guard your heart above all else, for from it follows your life spring.” It's your source of light. A lot of religious people quote that as a reason to never do anything wrong. It's all about being really careful not to give your heart away. I think, that's all totally wrong. It's meant to say what Svetski is talking about here is, when you lose purpose, when you lose connection to your heart, you lose the essence of your creativity and your impetus for life that enables you to go out and actually change things and build and rule and steward.
It's like, Bitcoiners are the only ones who have done the due diligence to not trust, but verify to have real hopes. Another verse in the the New Testament is, “Don't place your hopes in things that can be corrupted down like and things below that place it above, because where your treasure is, there, your heart will be also.” Is this idea that what you treasure is what you place your hopes in, so don't place them in things that are corruptible, where even rust and moss can destroy.
Bitcoiners have stepped back and really stole the way to the very bare bones of first principles of we're all trusting this external world of fiat and all these things we’re dependent on, and this whole fucking thing is a black swan. It's like, where do we actually want to build our foundations of our life? What do we actually want to place our hopes and trust in? This whole culture of verification is pursuing truth of I want to trust. I want to fill my heart and my life on purpose and on things that are real. It's such a beautiful return to integration of being again, which is why I think Bitcoin is awakening Renaissance, men and women, the way that it is.
[00:24:48] AS: It really is. It really is. I mean, see, I've read little bits and pieces of the Bible maybe when I was a kid. For me, this is, I guess, when I hear things like that, it reminds me that wisdom and principles are timeless. Fads are new opinions that people have on a fucking day-to-day basis, and they change all the time. It's like, tactics are meaningless. Principles are things that are timeless and that emerge over time and that we see consistency around it.
It's like, you've got the same principles that were found back when those verses were written. Here we are discussing the same thing thousands of years later, and nothing's changed. This is a way to behave and a way to act that is consistent with natural order, basically. That ties into Austrian economics and ties into all sorts of stuff. It really ties into the heart of what Bitcoin actually means and represents. I love it. CK, did you want to pull in any other threads there? Or do you want me to continue here?
[00:25:48] CK: I was busy showing the spaces. I'm curious if Rob, Mitch or Alex want to jump in at all? If not, we can go into the next section.
[00:25:58] RH: Yeah. I think, Svetski, I would highly recommend listening to Jordan Peterson's biblical series. He goes through the Old Testament. He just goes to that in Genesis and takes him 30 hours to go through. Or talking about these deeper trends and stories about the evolutionary and biological nature of these stories that are told and passed down through the Bible, and how they have a deeper meaning. It's just one of those things I would just definitely call out as a fun thing to dig in deeper, because I think there's definitely a lot of crossover there from a worldview and perspective about these deeper times, and traditions which erode away in modern technocracy, where we think that we have this newfound truth that we cheat ourselves out of these deeper, longer, multi-millennia old traditions and patterns and faiths and traditions that we follow.
[00:26:43] AS: Couldn't agree more. Actually, my exposure to biblical stories has actually been that. I haven't gone through his whole series, but just anecdotally listened to bits and pieces of his stuff. I mean, I've digested fucking so much YouTube material from Peterson. I used to basically, during the lockdown, that was my gym workout was just clips of that just playing in the background, while I'm lifting weights.
[00:27:07] RH: 2017 was me going down the Peterson rabbit hole, watching all of his lecture series, just as the end of the year is Bitcoin is ripping in price.
[00:27:15] AS: At the gym?
[00:27:16] RH: No, not at the gym. At home –
[00:27:18] AS: Come on.
[00:27:19] RH: Commuting. I know. I'm setting up the home gym now during the whole lockdown, but just setting up a home gym. The punch line though is, I think, listening to his stuff back in 2017 actually gave me a deeper conviction for seeing the longer-term pattern, and what we're all really here for, which I think your article really does a great job talking about. I don't want to jump ahead of the article, but loved it.
[00:27:40] CK: Alex got so excited when he thought that you listen to Jordan Peterson at the gym. He was like, “Oh, my God. One of me.”
[00:27:46] AS: Another one. Another one. My girlfriend always gets fucking annoyed at me, because she’s like, “Can we listen to music?” I'm like, “No. We’ve got YouTube clips to listen to.” She’s like, “Fucking hell.”
[00:28:00] CK: You’re like brother, man. He'll force his wife to listen to these tech videos and stuff like that. I can't do that. I'm too nice.
[00:28:07] AS: Yeah. Well, no comment on my partner. I just –
[00:28:10] CK: Wait, Alex. Alex McShane, do you want to say something?
[00:28:14] AM: Yeah. I just wondered if you could speak more to – it seems to me that the great cardinal sins that you're talking about are one, complacency. The second would be impatience. In my opinion, buying Bitcoin is an act of rebellion against both. This is the act that will break both of those, because you have to fundamentally admit, you didn't know something about money, and you have to begin the process of relearning and re-educating yourself when you start to buy Bitcoin. I was wondering if you had more comments about that.
[00:28:46] AS: Could I ask you for a favor on this one, Alex? Could we dig into that one on our pod next week? Because it is a little bit off from where I wanted to take the article right now.
[00:28:54] AM: Absolutely.
[00:28:55] AS: Is that cool?
[00:28:56] AM: Yeah, for sure. Thanks.
[00:28:56] AS: Okay. Sweet. Sweet, sweet, sweet. I want to keep that primed for then.
[00:29:00] CK: Write that question down. Aleks, let's dive it back into the article.
[00:29:04] AS: Okay, so next piece, community. We bled into that. Jordan reminds us to find friends, a peer group and a community, and not only want the best few but are also aiming up. That's what we find in Bitcoin at almost every level. When people look at it from the outside, it looks like this fucking shit show of people screaming at each other. It reminds me of that Rexona ad, where you got everyone flying around off the top of cars and falling out of buildings and everything's on fire and shit like that.
That's what it looks like. Ultimately, this is a free market way for us to – and I'm mainly referring to Bitcoin Twitter, but even more broadly as this is our way of keeping each other honest, strengthen each other's resolve, and sharpen each other's wits. It's the classic, iron sharpens iron. For me, again, I've never come across, or never come in contact with another group that's so diverse in background and experience and an age and gender nationality, race, whatever the fuck it is, but we're both simultaneously willing to get people in, new people in and get them on a path. Also, call out in earnest, people who internally are attempting to stray away from the path, or the false prophets that are out there trying to herd people off the fucking side of the cliff and charge a ticket along the way.
That makes for really incredible community, unlike, nothing probably any of us have ever come across in the past. In here, in this section of our community, I've come up with a phrase and feel free everyone to go and use this, but Bitcoin is what I call realistic optimists. To me, I'm trying to define that term as we as Bitcoin as a pessimistic about the short-term, because we're honest enough to both acknowledge the problems we're facing, and call them out, but we're also optimistic about the long-term, because we appreciate the nuance of what has worked in functional free societies. We know we also have the ultimate tool in Bitcoin, whose very fucking existence, corrects behavior, and time preference at the level of the individual. That is so important.
It's like, we're pessimistic and we're a realist, but we're also optimistic, because we know we can fucking win this and we've got the ultimate tool. When you contrast that with the nihilist, and like I said before, the salty socialists and the libertarians, they will give it up. We know that there's challenges ahead. In fact, a lot of people when they’re like, “Oh, yeah. You think it's just going to be some utopia.” I think Bitcoin is, understand the challenges ahead better than just about anybody else out there.
We understand the nuances. We just happen to be the only people with a fucking plan, with a functional goddamn plan. We're not out there waving banners, and like that Chris fucking Sukoshi moron, putting stickers on places and thinking, “Just say, no, he’s going to actually fix anything.” It doesn't do anything. I've broken it down in terms of three things that we do is we as Bitcoiners, we fix the upstream issue. In other words, how human action, natural resources, time and energy are measured. We’re like, we fix the money. We also build tools to ensure that everyone can participate, so that the most powerful tool, which is money is unable to ever again be commandeered by anyone.
Simultaneously, what you have is you have this this shelling point for individuals who have a devotion to the pursuit of truth, from first principles, across all of the dimensions that matter. Those three things are what we do simultaneously. I make a point in here that being a realistic optimist is a very fine line. It really genuinely requires a depth of character, and an ability to grasp nuance, like a few others can. Then, I contrast that with what the world is full of. I’ll read a couple pieces here from the article, which is, you've got the nihilists, and the people in the legacy world, who've given up, or don't believe things can get better. You've got the ignorant sheeple, which is the masses. They're willing to submit to the status quo and literally, turn a blind eye to a constantly diminishing quality of life, and a simultaneously increasing level of centralized tyranny in the world.
They see worldcoiner, “Okay, fine.” We're also dealing on the other end with scammers who want to use narratives, such as decentralization and buzzwords, like fucking blockchain and crypto to basically confuse people and swindle them out of their money. You've got what I would call, the naive optimists, who genuinely don't understand what's going on the world and they put lipstick on a pig, and believe they've made it beautiful. It's like, the modern Silicon Valley, tech entrepreneur, that's building the next pointless financial social app, literally represent that archetype. They're so caught up in this fake innovation, that they have no idea what they're fucking building in the first place. They have no idea that they're building another house of cards. Because the incentives are so skewed, they have no idea that they're actually building their own prison. They're dumb as fuck.
[00:34:05] CK: No, seriously. It is insane. It's like the geniuses at open table who are like, “You know what? We’re going to integrate with face scanning and a vaccine past, so that way, it's as convenient as possible for diners and restaurants to comply.” They build the panopticon, because they're innovating to bring convenience.
[00:34:25] AS: Correct. They're building their own fucking prisons, and they're doing it under the guise of innovation. That's why I call them these naive optimist. They think that things are getting better. They think that that's a good thing, but they’re dumb. Then, the last class – Sorry, go.
[00:34:37] CK: I apologize to keep interrupting, but just to double down that, Bitcoiners are the only ones that are paying attention. I remember when open table actually did make that announcement that they were going to be complying with clear system. If you look in the comments, literally only Bitcoiners were commenting. Only Bitcoiners were dissenting. It was quite unreal that no one else was engaging with this thing. No other community in the entire world. Sending it back to you, Svetski.
[00:35:05] AS: Yeah. A 100%, man. I guess, that really just echoes, again, the difference between what I would say is a shitcoiner and a Bitcoiner is like, Bitcoin is a building tech that is deceptive in nature, or maybe that's not even a fucking word. It's aversive in nature. We completely disregard the old world and we're like, “No, no, no. We need to rebuild this in a way that's incompatible with the old world.” These guys are just literally sitting there with a smile on their fucking face, putting lipstick on a pig and saying, “Hey, look. It's better. Now, let's fuck the pig.” It's like, “No, it's a bad idea. You don't fuck pigs. That's called bestiality.” That's what basically, we should call Silicon Valley people, pig fuckers, because that's what they are.
Moving along. The last two kind of people that the rational, or that the – sorry, what am I calling us? Realistic optimists fighting against is the deranged power brokers. They are the ones who understand the game and know which levers to pull. They are intimately aware of the structural inadequacies and they know where the maximum points of leverage are located. Instead of doing something to make it better, they use these insights and their intellect to gain the system and take advantage of others. That's people like your Ray Dalios and your hedge fund managers and the top end bankers and stuff.
They know it's fucked. They’re like, “Yeah, the world's fucked, but I'm just going to take advantage of it, because I know the game.” Like Keith McCullough, I know, my four cycles, and my quad poor and all that shit. That's those people. We're dealing with those fucking idiots. A lot of the parasites. Maybe there's a another one in here, which is the parasite, which is the Klaus Schwabs of the world, but that's probably – there's a big similarity between those archetypes.
Then lastly, and this one's really important, as we have what I call the bitter, salty, intelligent people who have been right about the state of corruption, and have chosen not to participate in either the scams, or “the game.” Now, they're like, the disillusion from having watched the madness and hysteria continued for decades, despite the gaping holes that they've often eloquently, irrationally pointed out. They've seen so many prior attempts fail, so they no longer even believe that there's hope. Should someone come out with something like, Bitcoin their only response is to just ridicule it, because they either resent and not having come up with it themselves, or lack the humility to appreciate that, that this may be the actual zero to one moment. This last category is your preppers, your NCAPs and your libertarians that may be very accurate –
[00:37:37] CK: Hanky comes to mind.
[00:37:40] AS: Who?
[00:37:40] CK: Steve Hankey comes to mind.
[00:37:42] AS: Hankey is an example. I mean, I think, comic Dave Smith has changed his tone a little bit. I mean, he was a perfect example for me. literally, his fucking podcast was called Part of the Problem. He was literally fucking part of the problem. Just sits there and makes jokes, but doesn't actually fix anything.
When we look at those archetypes against the Bitcoiner archetype, that's the difference between the people we're dealing with. It creates this thing, which is bleeds into the next section, which I call the lonely contrarian. Many Bitcoiners have had to go through this point of the journey is like –
[00:38:16] UG: I'd love to speak to that before you move on that.
[00:38:19] AS: Okay. Okay. Go, go go. Then, let's get into the contrarian.
[00:38:23] UG: I would say, that the difference is that we have faith and they don't. I need to define what that word faith means. Valis and I actually have a couple podcast planned. We're going to dive into that deeper. To steal from Lazar, he says that, we have these elites casting these Malthusian fear spells, to cause you to fall into a posture of self-protection. From that posture of self-protection, they manipulate the masses, they herd you wherever they want.
Then, you've got these salty people. They had the hope of knowing what was possible, but now they've gotten jaded. They don't know if you can ever even get there. They had a dream, but now the dream’s dead. What makes Bitcoiners unique is they have the inner strength to handle the tension between the world that is in the world that could be without lying to themselves. They can handle the tension of truth, and they can handle the exposure and the pain of that tension of looking at them both simultaneously and seeing it with eyes wide open, pursuing truth, but building and suffering in order to create that reality. That capacity to handle tension, the vulnerability of the exposure to truth itself and the way it hurts is what I would term as faith. Faith, rather than fear is what makes Bitcoiners different.
[00:39:38] AS: That's very, very beautifully and eloquently phrased. I would a 100% echo this idea of faith being very poorly defined in general. That being a very accurate definition of what faith actually is. Because for one to have faith, you genuinely need to envision something that is yet to exist. In order to create something that is yet to exist, it requires work, like proof of work. It keeps coming back in everything.
Work, by definition, involves the sacrifice of time and energy. That comes with a dose of pain. When you have faith, the meaning of that pain is not something that is detrimental to you. It is a meaning of earning something. Faith is the ingredient that allows you to continue to pursue that, and to endure the struggle, despite any potential feeling of short-term pain, etc., which the others, like you said, in the absence of a level of faith, they feel the pain, they feel the discomfort, and they just run from it, or they ridicule it.
[00:40:43] UG: They just hide. They hide and protect themselves from it. I mean, the price of that faith, I mean, that's the price of life itself. It's a difference between this Keynesians, who are trying to control everything, or realists who want the volatility of reality. Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it'll bear no fruit. I mean, life always flows from that. That's the nature of reality. Faith is that act of choosing self-death and exposure to create real life through what you do with your choices and life force.
[00:41:15] AS: Absfuckinglutely.
[00:41:17] CK: Skin deep in here, guys. Really, that was incredible. Thank you.
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[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[00:43:23] AS: All right. Lonely contrarian. I'm sure, many, many, many people listening to this have felt like, “Maybe I'm the fucking crazy one.” I make a statement in here just honoring this idea of the lonely contrarian, because to think we can overturn the corrupt behemoth that is the legacy financial system, and to stand strong in the face of a world going categorically mad, can be an incredibly lonely feeling. That's just the excerpt from what I've written here.
It's like, the ability to do that, this is where heroes are made. A contrarian is by definition, a minority and resides with a few others, have the insight, or the courage to do. For me, this generation of Bitcoiner, the archetype of this generations of Bitcoiner is the contrarian. I'm just going to read a piece here. It says, “The blood of the warrior flows through his and her veins. They're the individuals who are willing to be lonely, who are willing to be ridiculed, laughed at and disparaged, but still remain strong, steady and convicted.” This is what is required to transform the world from the bottom up.
Future generations will use Bitcoin, because it's the obvious thing to use, much like to use a cellphone, or Internet today. In fact, the more time that passes, the more they’re using Bitcoin, it will be like breathing air. The future Bitcoiner archetype, the future contrarian archetype will be fighting other battles and contending with other beasts and striving to accomplish different feats. It's our job to make sure humanity survives beyond the event horizon that sits ahead.
That's why this period of Bitcoin loops back into what we said earlier and actually, in a way on tap, just fucking read my mind and paraphrased this lonely contrarian piece with his definition of faith just then, which just shows again how we're on the same fucking page here, is that the ability to be lonely, to be ridiculed, to be laughed at and disparage whilst remaining strong, steady and convicted is the definition of faith, as per what Untapped just mentioned. That learning contrarian piece is just, it may feel lonely, but that is the price of being convicted to truth, and being a remnant.
Along the path, we will find other, “lonely contrarian pilgrims” on the way. For me, it's just really, really important. I think, everyone will have experienced the lonely contrarian piece, particularly in the last, Jesus, in the last 18 months. I mean, for fuck’s sake. Some days, I wake up, I'm like, the world cannot have got any dumber. I open Twitter, and I'm like, I've been proven wrong again. Literally.
[00:45:59] CK: Sir, sir, just reset your expectations. It’s going to get dumber and it's not going to stop.
[00:46:05] AS: All right.
[00:46:06] CK: Otherwise, you're lying to yourself. Untapped, back to you, man.
[00:46:10] UG: Svetski. This introduces another circularity that I find beautiful. Is it inevitable, or do we make it inevitable because we believe in it? It's like another scripture. You guys are going to have to quote me this entire call, I guess. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. It's like, do we believe in Bitcoin? Because it's just going to happen? We know it and it's inevitable? Or is our faith and belief in it the substance of what's going to create it and pull it into reality itself and manifest out of the ethos, right?
[00:46:42] AS: I don't think anyone can answer that. I think, they are one in the same. They are two ends of the stick. It’s the top end of the stick, is at the bottom end of the stick. Which side is actually the bottom, or the top end of the stick? I don't know. I think, it is fundamentally both. That would be my way to interpret that.
[00:47:02] RH: Just the observation of these different classes of people, right? A lot of my earlier Bitcoin journey back in 2014, through maybe 2017, before I really started getting more active on Twitter and more directly engaging with Bitcoin as a community, as opposed to trying to orange pill my existing group of friends, you find this interesting development. As a small peek forward into your comment about casting pearls at swine from Peterson, which, when I learned that in 2017, was such a revelatory concept for me, this idea of ultimately, this self-selecting community basically, brings their whole energy.
In a certain spiritual sense, their soul to be forged among the group of everyone else, as we all go through our individual journeys. I think, it's such an interesting lens of you have these different cohorts of people who are ultimately just going to be energy-draining, not productive uses of time, and you find this refuge within this Bitcoin remnant. I just think, this interesting view of the idea that there's all these different people, even the ones who are contrarians and know that things are wrong, but they don't choose to put their whole life and energy forward into a means of being able to challenge themselves and grow. Those would be your, those libertarians, many of the NCAPs. People that are preppers. People that see a problem, but don't want to do anything about it.
I thought, it was a really interesting way of seeing Bitcoin as this purifying forces of community, and that it brings out the best from all of us. That is part of this process, which I think goes into the toxicity, but I don't want to steal too much of your thunder with that.
[00:48:25] AS: No, dude. Perfectly framed. This is why when people try and say like, “Oh, are you a conservative or a democrat, or you a libertarian?” Those are the best definition I can find is on a Bitcoiner, because, NCAP and libertarian would have been how I may have classified myself a year or two ago, more. Well, perhaps longer before that, but it's like, it doesn't suffice anymore, because most of those guys, like you said, they've just – they’ve given up. This is a different realm of being, so it's very special. CK, do you want to move into –
[00:48:58] CK: Yeah. Anyone else want to jump in? Or if not, yeah, let's just keep crushing it. All right, that sounds like people want you to continue.
[00:49:06] AS: All righty. The next major section of this is Bitcoiners versus shitcoiners. This has been banged on for a while. In here, there's a couple parts that I want to pull up in here is, this idea that the Bitcoin community, Bitcoiners are the community that wants the best for you, whilst primarily and fundamentally focused on becoming the best version of themselves, okay. That's a really important thing is like, I want the best for all of you guys, but I'm not doing it in some fake, altruistic, horseshit version of sacrificing myself in the process. I am also trying to make myself the best version of myself.
The next little paragraph here says, there exists a form of altruistic selfishness. I'll say that again, altruistic selfishness, not selflessness. Altruistic selfishness, because they are striving to grow as individuals and become better at their own expense, not at your expense. When you look at that against what shitcoiners do, like the retards in Ethereum, who are trying to sell you ultrasound money out of thin air. You can change the rules on a whim and enrich themselves via pre-mines, so the new narrative every couple of months just to keep you buying it, they're enriching themselves at your expense, not at their own.
I've got a quote in here, which is, “Bitcoiners have nothing to sell you, but your own freedom and sovereignty.” Everyone can go ahead and use that if they want to, but it's like, that's what we're here to sell people. I'm not here to sell you like, when I actually go until people to acquire Bitcoin, I'm actually doing myself a disservice, because there's a fucking limited amount. When everyone is going and acquiring Bitcoin, what's actually happening is if it's making any marginal increase on the price, it is making my cost of freedom and long-term sovereignty higher. That's a very fucking different thing than a shitcoiner printing a bunch of shitcoins out of thin air and selling it to you, so that you're the one holding the fucking bags and they get your actual money. It's such a flip, right?
This piece actually came to me when I was – after Bitcoin 2021, I got interviewed by some Bloomberg guy, who was like, “I liked your toxic panel and you seem to have a very interesting viewpoint on what it means to be a Bitcoiner.” I use this framing for him in one of the questions he asked me about like, oh, yeah, people say that the only reason Bitcoin has, or people in this space shill Bitcoin as an idea is because they get enriched. I'm like, “Well, no. It doesn't actually make sense.” Because I said, “Number one is, any new person who does buy some Bitcoin is actually inconsequential, to be honest. It doesn't really affect me. If any momentum is created by a broader base of people buying and HODLing Bitcoin, it actually drives up its purchasing power.” For the true Bitcoin who's never going to go back into fiat anyway, who is still attempting, like Gigi put a tweet out the other day saying, you know how well somebody understands Bitcoin, if they know that they never have enough, it means it requires more hours and more work each year for me to accumulate a single fucking Bitcoin.
That for me is few really, really understand that, and that nuance is so different. I've got a piece in here is like, shitcoiners, much like the existing bankrupt monetary system, seek to enrich themselves at the expense of another. When some group of nerds backed by Silicon Valley VCs issues their own currency under the banner of decentralization, or the good of everyone. It's funny reading this now after yesterday's launch of worldcoin or whatever. Under the banner of decentralization, or for the good of everyone, they are enriching themselves at your expense. You are funding their lifestyle, and they thank you for it.
What's funny is the frauds, like your Charles Hoskinson, and your Buterins, and your Dan Larimers and all this stuff, they're all cut from the same cloth. They all fucking hate each other, because their respective Ponzi schemes are in direct competition with each other. They’re always at war.
The blockchain is that are selling overpriced enterprise database solutions in Silicon Valley, like VCs, like A16, A16Z and all that shit, pumping and dumping new shiny crypto, they're no different. They don't want the best for you. They just want the best for themselves at your expense. That's to be expected in a world where incentives are skewed and capital allocation is broken and price signals are false. Morality has been thrown out the window, or is like, the meme in here that I've got, and thank you to Gigi is like, morality has been thrown out the window, so have principles. You look at rug pull pal, you’re like, a man with literally no fucking principles. I despise that.
I don't even want to call him a human, like that fucking worm, because he is an example of someone who does not give a fuck about anyone else, and will show them anything, because it doesn't matter. I've tried to also in this thing, in the vein of the rule, and chapter three and finding people who care most about you is separate the modus operandi, I guess, of a Bitcoiner versus a shitcoiner. I think, that's a piece, then that bleeds a little bit into toxicity, which I can dive into, unless anyone has any comments at this point?
[00:54:24] UG: I do. I would say, Svetski that Bitcoiners have the heart of a king and a queen, of kings and queens. Because I mean, if you step out, ultimate glory is not just celebrating itself, but the process of celebrating the revelation of your truth that you've discovered to be real, but also the revelation of somebody else discovering that truth as well. Then the celebration of the revelation of that truth together. Because in that is ultimate joy and that ultimate joy is where true glory of royalty is found. Bitcoiners have that in spades, or one of the few communities that ever found that do, where they are all about that celebration of the revelation of truth.
[00:55:07] AS: Yes.
[00:55:08] RH: Very briefly. Just one interesting thought just talking about your Hutchkinsons and your Vitaliks. I think, it's more than just then as the protocol, like the merchants. You get all of the cheap money coming from Silicon Valley, and venture capital that tries to crowd into those cap tables as well. It's funny, because they basically just with gaps, and just how the current regulatory system works, all of these new coins that launch Solana, when I was talking with Mark Cuban in that Twitter space is a week ago, he was talking about all of these different protocols and the potential of all of them.
What isn't really widely known is that him being able to get in on the seed round of Multicoin Capital, he was able to get Solana tokens at 4 cents a piece. He's talking about this whole future and legend, but he just found a sophisticated way to take him in his interconnected buddies that are very wealthy and have accredited investor status to just dump on retail. They're just taking the masses and throwing them into the fire, so they can enrich themselves even more.
It's more than just the technical vendors who enable this. It's the whole capital structures in the current monetary fiat system that just send everyone to the woodchipper, so they can get more money.
[00:56:11] AS: Totally. Totally. That's what I phrase there is like, what more do we expect in a system in which all the incentives are skewed? The Mark Cuban's of the world represent that archetype that I mentioned earlier, which is the guys who play the game, right? They know the game. Despite him being a fucking banana brain, he didn't become a billionaire entirely by accident. He got in on to the [inaudible 00:56:31]. He got close enough to it and etc. He's just used that to his advantage at the expense of another.
That's that nuance there is like, a Bitcoiner wants to become the best version of himself at his own expense, and wants you to do the same thing. A shitcoiner and the VC and the Mark Cuban of the world and all that stuff, they want to become a more enriched version of themselves at your expense, irrespective of whether the enriched version of themselves is actually consistent with becoming a better version of themselves, which they're actually not interested in. That's the fucking galaxy of difference between those kind of people.
[00:57:06] RH: Yeah. The whole conversation was pivot around like, he didn't understand it. I've come around to. He knows exactly what's going on. He knows exactly what he's doing. It's not like, he doesn't understand Bitcoin and what it promises overall, right? If two years ago, he was saying, it was bananas had more utility. Now he says, it's the best global store of value. There's all this other stuff, too. He had almost make that concession to have the credibility to keep the game going.
[00:57:31] AS: Very true.
[00:57:31] UG: Because it's like a celebration of lies, because you can use the lies to consolidate greater power for yourself, rather than a celebration of truth, because it empowers others to be their best self, so that you can collaborate with them as your best self, too.
[00:57:47] CK: You're really good at really distilling the conversation, Untapped. I want to just throw out there that my position on all coins is that they're part of the hydra of shit, that's DDOSing the legacy system. I would say that one of the benefits of altcoins is that it is extremely exposed venture capital, and how corrupt it is, where it creates this walled garden for rich people to stay rich and pretty much, pre-mined these companies, and then dump it on retail through equity markets.
It wasn't as apparent as it is when you compare it to Bitcoin and these VCs popping up these tokens, attempting to be some money, and they are using their same practices. It really exposes how corrupt the entire system was to begin with.
[00:58:40] AS: Indeed. Indeed. Looking at time, I'm going to punch another couple little sections here, so that we can get into the final section of citadel. Just really quickly, Bitcoin toxicity is the next section. I break it down within the frame of the golden rule and the silver rule. Toxicity is become a term that obviously, just gets thrown around. We've spoken about this, people have written articles, we had this whole fucking shimazel over the last couple of weeks with dumbass really, and everything like that.
The people who throw around the word toxicity, are the ones who generally are being subjected to the toxicity for some reason. That should tell you enough about why some people call toxic. What I want to explore here is what a couple of the tenets of toxicity. The golden rule is do unto others as you like them to do unto you. It's a very misunderstood concept, because it has nothing to do with being nice, but everything to do with having the courage to say and do what's right.
What you really want done unto you, if you're really, really honest with yourself, is the thing that keeps you honest and that demands the best of you and the correct your erroneous behavior, so you can evolve and develop into the best version of yourself. If someone is calling you a fuckwit for being a fuckwit, then that's actually good. You might go and label it as toxic and you're offended and whatever the fuck else you want to say. That is really what the golden rule is about.
80% of the time to do what I just mentioned, about correcting erroneous behavior and developing into the best version yourself, 80% of time that requires truth. 80% of that time, that truth will fucking hurt. Bitcoiners believe this viscerally. On the other end, you've got the silver rule, which is something I learned from Tyler, the fucking retard. I mean, I've written in here. I'm sure, his ghostwriter will be happy.
The silver rule states that you should not do unto others as you would not want done unto you. It's like a variation of the golden rule, and in the context of a complex system. It's a little bit more robust. For example, you might like weird shit, like being spanked. Whilst the golden rule would then tell you to go and spank other people, doing so might not be such a good idea.
The silver rule suggests that what you don't, or want to happen to you is something you should not do to others. This passes the basic good person test. I don't want to have my things stolen. I don't want to be micromanaged. I don't want to be scammed. I don't want to be promised the world not having it delivered to. I don't want to be lied to. In that sense, I shouldn't do that to others. The silver globe is a little bit more robust.
Again, Bitcoiners get this. While some might point to it as toxicity, I would counter as you look at Bitcoin as – I've got a piece in the article where it's, Gigi when he was calling up Breedlove and it was fucking hilarious. All the memes came out of breed cloud and breed love and I'm dying on this hill with the triceratops shit. Gigi, my respect level for him went up 1000X. He called out Rob. I don’t know if Rob's repented on that and everything. Rob's a fucking greath guy, great mind, great asset to the space.
What Gigi did at the time was he said, “Look, I hope, if I ever go full retard, that the memes will be as savage.” That is again, the difference between a Bitcoiner who understands the gold and silver rule. Why I respect people like Gigi and Giacomo Zucco and stuff like that more than just about anyone else is like, we are open to being – open is just such a weak word now. It’s like, we want you to point out us and tell us when we're fucking wrong.
This is the community that we've developed. I've got a short clip in there about how Bitcoiners are as toxic to frauds, phonies, and charlatans as Bitcoin is to the existing fraud of a world we live in. We use speech to make it known, like a swarm of cyber hornets. Then, I've got a little clip in there from when I think Jordan was at his fucking peak, about five, six years ago, where he talks about free speech and the right to offend, which I recommend everyone go and watch. It’s two minutes. That bleeds into this next piece that I just really want to touch on before we wrap up this section and move into citadels, which is, this idea of the virtuous monster.
I got this from Peterson's lectures is, to paraphrase Jordan, he says, “There's nothing virtuous about suffering in silence.” Then, my addition to that is, nor is there virtue found in conforming to a lie, just to be polite. I continue with, do not confuse kindness with sincerity, or abrasion, with wickedness. The best thieves will convince you that they're your friend. Often, your truest friends are those who violently confront you when you are transgressing your own morals, virtues, or standards.
This is why I would take an honest asshole over a polite layer any day of the week. For me, that is so fucking important. That is again, another way to frame and describe, or to understand the Bitcoiner archetype, or the “toxicity” in the Bitcoin spaces. We're honest assholes, not polite liars. Each have a cost.
In the honest asshole scenario, to paraphrase, maybe Untapped, is the cost is front loaded, but it's cheaper. It's like going to the gym and training today, has a cost of time me pain. The long-term benefit is you lead a healthier life, you got better bone density, better muscle mass, etc. You're healthier. Not going into the gym today and just relaxing and eating and doing nothing at home might not have a cost today, but it's got a much bigger long-term cost. That's the same difference of an honest asshole telling you to fucking wake up and do the right thing, versus a polite liar who doesn't say anything, so that you continue to transgress your own morals, virtues and standards, until you become the piece of shit that you hate when you look at yourself in the fucking mirror and then you become depressed, because you now are living an existence of meaninglessness.
To wrap this piece up, I've said, modernity is castrated men and battered women into the point where they can no longer stand up for themselves. They've been taught to live a life of quiet compromise and servitude, and that daddy government and mama medicine will take care of you and basically, numb you into oblivion. If you want to know where this leads, you don't even need to study history anymore. You just fucking open your eyes and look around you. Literally sheeple, and battered women and men everywhere. They've forgotten what it means to stand up straight with your shoulders back, to literally tie that into the initial thing.
This is why the cultivation of the monster inside of us has always been, and perhaps, also never been more important than it is now. This ability to stand up and say what the fuck is right, despite the fear of backlash, etc., is just so important. They will call you toxic, but this is what is required. This is again, what this peer group of Bitcoiners brings to the table. Iron sharpens iron, and pressure is the prerequisite for growth. Whether that growth is physical, spiritual, mental or emotional. Doesn't matter.
The monster inside you must be cultivated, and it must be fucking conscious. I've got a little phrase in here that I've written, is the conscious monster confronts the dragon, who in brackets is, [the tyrant]. It also confronts the snake, who is the charlatan, whilst protecting the truth, the tribe and the innocent. That's what it means to be a virtuous monster. That is the archetype of the so called toxic Bitcoiner. Without them, the world around you becomes either a tyranny, or a fraud, or in our case in our timeline, basically, a blend of the both.
I've got a little quote here that I made up. It's called, in the absence of honest assholes, the world devolves into a massive polite liars. I think, that virtuous monster piece is really important. I don't know if anyone's got a piece on that, if you want to add.
[01:06:40] CK: Yeah, really quick. I want to do 10 minutes of comments, and then we can get back to the next section. We got a lot of folks up here. Joel is raising his hand.
[01:06:51] J: Yeah, Svetski. That whole part where the Bitcoiners at a micro-level are willing to call out each other, it's such a beautiful thing. I mean, if you look at Rob, in particular, I think the measure the vehemence that was directed at him was a measure directly of how much the community loves it. Because the willingness to speak the truth to somebody, it's like having faith in them. You're willing to bear the tension to tell them something they don't want to hear.
That faith and believing in them is a form of love. To be a part of a community where the fire of that love is so strong, because just like you said, make friends with people who want you to be the best version of yourself. That is the exact manifestation of that.
[01:07:33] AS: Very true. I love what you said there about, it's totally in relation to how much one cares. I always say this to people I care about. The people I don't care about, if I see them eating shit food, or doing dumb stuff, I’m like, “Yeah, go fuck yourself. I don't give a fuck.” For people I care about, I genuinely say something. Sometimes, people get me wrong. This often happens with my girlfriend. She’s like, “Why are you always on my fucking case?” I'm like, “If I wasn't on your case, you would know that I don't give a fuck.” As I said, be aware of the day that I'm not on your case, because that's the day that I'm not with you anymore. I think that is really, really important.
[01:08:08] RH: Another scripture, a father disciplines those whom he loves.
[01:08:12] AS: Indeed. Fuck, yes.
[01:08:14] CK: Let's go to Mitch.
[01:08:15] MK: Hey. Yeah. You tell me, Svetski, if this resonates with you. I want to tie it back to history a little bit, and Bitcoiners, the signal that they're producing as being “toxic,” or maybe some of them aren't as toxic as others. If you look at the history of America, and classical liberalism, connect that with John Locke, who was born out of the Age of Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, if you're familiar with that. It's philosophical age, where it was literally, don't trust verify. People had reason they had sovereignty and reason their pursuit of happiness.
I think, I just keep coming back to this idea of Bitcoin being a source of classical liberalism, and enlightenment and reason, where people, they're not trusting, they're verifying, and everybody's bouncing that off of other Bitcoiners. I just keep on falling back and going back to the age of reason.
[01:09:13] AS: I mean, there's obviously a major echo there between that period and now. I mean, in this piece that I'm writing about the fire Bitcoin teleportation, I'm going to dig into how these previous versions of what – what you're describing, basically, the Age of Enlightenment and classical liberalism as a precursor to Bitcoin were part of our path to get to Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is not the same as those because Bitcoin is a zero to one at the step change, but it required those previously.
To your point, yes, fundamentally speaking, Bitcoin is the endpoint of the echo of that thinking. We see that thinking, prior to the John Lockes as well. It’s like, you go back to the Aristotle and Socrates, etc. It's like, it's existed throughout humanity and across multiple different cultures, like the Daoists in China were very, very, very similar philosophy around individuality. Unfortunately, the fucking Confucians won, and they burnt all the books. They instilled collectivism into the minds and culture of the East, which is why the east, obviously, fundamentally failed, when you compare it to the West.
It's like, luckily, in the West, the philosophy around the individual and the sovereignty of the individual prevailed, which made it much stronger part of the world. Anyway, I do think there's fundamentally important echoes there.
[01:10:37] CK: Who wants to jump in? All right.
[01:10:40] AS: Come on.
[01:10:41] P: Sorry, I'm just pumping my fist in the air repeatedly. I'm just basking in how much I agree with you and how inspired I feel.
[01:10:49] UG: P, give us something, give us something. I got to go to the bathroom really quickly. Give us something. Please.
[01:10:54] P: Well, just going back to something that was said a little bit ago. I'm still going to forming my, or figuring out how to articulate my thoughts on this. When we're talking about people like, wow, it's like, I think of them as NPCs. They're these incredibly clever, unconscious creatures that are being self-serving in a way that while infuriating, I have a measure of compassion for. I feel like, it's our job as toxic maximalists, as you say, to figure out how to shake people out of this unthinking, unconscious feud state.
I almost think of these types of people as there are many biological organisms, which have incredibly nuanced and extremely effective strategies for surviving and catching prey, and growing and essentially, propagating their own individual bloodlines. They're totally unthinking. They're completely unconscious. I feel like, so many of the people that we interact with on a daily basis, and especially these apex predators, like so many of these shitcoiners and VC incentivized entities.
I think, they're just these unthinking, very elegant predators. It's just about, as I said, figuring out how to shake them out of this unconscious behavior. The thing that is so – Go ahead. Go ahead.
[01:12:24] AS: I was just going to say, I wouldn't call them apex predators. I would call them the hyenas.
[01:12:27] P: Yes, I'm sorry. Hyenas. Yeah. They’re carrying others.
[01:12:29] AS: Yeah. Bitcoiners are the apex predators. Exactly. That's what they have, is that they’re literally just feeding on the carcasses, basically. Because the masses are effectively already fundamentally dead, in some sense. What we're trying to do as lions is carve out a new fucking territory. That is actually, it's funny. Sorry, to digress here and take over, but there's a – I remember reading a study once about how lions have evolved to be majestic over hundreds of thousands of years, and even longer, from mammalian early days.
They have an innate ability to appreciate, biologically appreciate territory, which is their version of private property rights. It's ingrained in them. They don’t overeat. They don’t overkill. They don't do any of that shit. It's they've managed to evolve some level of majesty, whereas, human beings have evolved. We've created constructs of majesty and of royalism as a concept, over a couple thousands years only. We haven't evolved to be majestic enough to deal with that, so we go around and overkill, and all that stuff.
The problem compounds when you remove the capacity to get the feedback, or experience the consequence from such bad decision-making, or overeating, or whatever, whatever. This is where, for me, it's like, Bitcoin is the piece that we've needed to discover along the way. Or, I shouldn't say along the way. Bitcoin is the endpoint of this stage of humanity, like what we're discussing on the phone, actually, yesterday, is we've gotten to Bitcoin. This path required us to be retard versions of Royal. Retired lions, basically.
Now, we're seeing the emergence of real lions in the form of Bitcoiners. who, I don't know if we need to shake the fucking hyenas out. Or if we need to build the territory in a way that the map is actually the territory and the map can't be changed, so we can't lie to each other. As a result, the hyenas then have two choices. They either become sheep, and that's fine, or they actually transform into lions. it's not us that have to really shake them. It's that we have to bring about a reality, in which they don't have an option, or –
[01:14:44] P: You're exactly right. Actually, I say this all the time, but the thing that I find so compelling about Bitcoin, and everything that it drives us towards is that the incentives are there. Because I truly believe, no one is better than their incentives. Some of us can struggle more valiantly, more majestically against corrupt incentives. Ultimately, the thing that drove lions to be the creatures that they are today is their environment. They are a product of their environment. The beauty of Bitcoin to me is that it creates an environment where all the things that you're talking about can become true, and where you can have the altruistic selfishness, because the incentives align. I think, that's so important for me to acknowledge, and it's something that I really celebrate about Bitcoin.
[01:15:32] AS: Absofuckinglutely. Absolutely. I think, that piece of that environment is – That's what we're creating as Bitcoiners. Do you know what? That ties into the homerun piece here, which is, the environment being the citadel. Shall I go and dig in to that?
[01:15:47] UG: Go for it, man.
[01:15:49] AS: Just really briefly, before I do, the last part here is about this, don't cast pearls before swine. I just want to mention this, because it probably feeds into what you just literally said then. Again, it's an idea that’s derived from the Bible, and it's reminiscent of the message of the remnant and the masses. A true royal respects the scarce resource that they have on this earth. Lion respect that. Those resources come in the form of time, energy, or material, scarce resources.
We need to allocate them accordingly, such that they're not squandered, or wasted. Waste is inevitable. I would argue, and I've come up with a little brain fart here, which is the elimination of waste, may actually be the definition of progress. The less waste, the more effective and efficient we become. That's how we honor ourselves, our lives, and those around us, right?
We live in a world with physical constraints. You can't help everyone. You can't change anyone. The teacher appears only when the student is ready. Lastly, the swine will never respect the pearls. Maybe, it's funny, what you just brought up is literally talks to this last piece here, is maybe we don't genuinely need to cast the pearls before the swines. It’s like, maybe we don't need to shake these fuckers out. It’s like, we fix that environment, we fix everything else.
It's like, the time that you have, we have finite time and energy expended towards outcomes that are valuable, like maximize it by finding those who can deeply impact, give them the pearls, because they will not only appreciate them, but they will also pay them forward. It's like, I've got the thing here is, quality of quantities, the rule of the wives. Anyway, that's the final piece before citadels.
[01:17:25] UG: They'll shake themselves out, Svetski.
[01:17:26] P: Yeah, exactly. Maybe it's not you can't cast pearls before swine and expect them to understand that they’re pearls. We can all celebrate and support systems that empower swine to actually become different creatures. Because they will eventually have to [inaudible 01:17:43].
[01:17:44] AS: Totally. Totally.
[01:17:46] UG: I see it so much more simple than even that, where those who see us celebrating truth, and are not a part of that truth, because there are wires who want to control the world will hate us. Then, through that hate, they'll just avoid us. Or, they'll try to control the uncontrollable and brake themselves. It's really just that simple.
[01:18:04] AS: Yeah. That's the Icarus thing there, is like, they’ll – fuck you, guys. You guys are flying around and you're enjoying. Gravity will – you know what? Fuck you. I'm just going to build my latch wings and jump off the side of the cliff to spite you.
[01:18:15] P: There's this interesting phenomenon that I've discovered, where as the price has gone up, there are people that I care about, who are, they become more and more anchored in this idea that Bitcoin is a scam and blah, blah, blah, blah. Part of it is as you said, it's because they're jealous, and they feel they have already missed the boat. They're conscious experience fixates on self-validation.
One of the most amazing things that I've seen over and over again, is talking to people. As soon as you can make them understand, we are so fucking early. You haven't missed shit. All you have to do is put down those wax wings and join us in this incredible adventure. The second they understand that and they see my conviction in that truth, so many people are just, they immediately flip. They're just like, “Oh, my gosh. I can be part of this as well. I'm in.”
[01:19:06] CK: That you set on SATs. Generational wealth. We're still early. Cas?
[01:19:12] C: Yeah, I just wanted to touch real quick on P’s point from earlier about shaking the people out of the matrix, the NPCs. You can't do that. In The Matrix, their entire worldview is built on the system. One of the best things I heard from BitBlockBoom, was Parker Lewis's talk on selling Bitcoin to people. You can't talk Bitcoin to somebody who is not receptive and open to the idea, that you're just wasting your time.
These people that you can't shake them and say, “Hey, just get Bitcoin.” They're going to be even less receptive in that case. I just wanted to touch on that real quick. I don't know if anybody has any thoughts on that.
[01:19:51] AS: Yeah. I totally think we've nailed that. I think in the spirit of time, Cas, if you don't mind, I wanted to just hit the citadels piece, because I think we've only got half an hour left here, so don't want to have enough time for –
[01:20:02] CK: We can go a little bit longer. I don't know if –
[01:20:04] AS: We can?
[01:20:04] CK: Eli, what's your timeline?
[01:20:07] E: Yeah, we can go longer.
[01:20:07] AS: I can go a little longer, too.
[01:20:09] CK: Okay. Don't feel like we have a hard stop. Yeah, let's definitely try to be time sensitive. People got shit to do.
[01:20:17] AS: Yeah. Too much philosophizing, not enough fucking. That reminds me of a quote by Bruce Lee. It's like, Linda asked him when they first met like, “What are you doing in universities?” He’s like, “I'm studying philosophy.” She's like, “Oh, okay. What are you going to do with that?” “I think deep thoughts about being unemployed.” We should finish up philosophizing soon.
To Cas’s point, it's the remnant piece, it's what park record. It's what we've just nailed here. It's totally like, if someone is willing and wanting to be plugged in and remaining there, and I think I really tried to drive that point home with The Matrix analogies inside the remnant article is like, Morpheus and stuff didn't go out and just unplug fucking anyone. They unplug specifics who are willing to wake up. That's a real part of the nuance that we need to navigate.
Anywho, the citadels. This is the final part of this thing, which is it went from individuals, friends, community, a peer group, defining the different archetypes, the libertarians and the parasites, and the fucking nihilist and the socialists, and all this stuff, versus the realistic optimists, that is the archetype of the Bitcoiner, the lonely contrarian, those who have faith and are willing to go through the trials and tribulations and the struggle that is required to create something that does not exist today, in spite of the fact that everything is against them. In spite of the fact that it may seem hopeless on the surface. In spite of the fact that they need to persevere through the struggle and the pain along the way. That is what represents a Bitcoiner.
In the spirit of changing and transforming the environment, such that new remnants, or new –that the future generations can emerge in a place of strength, or an environment of strength, where we can evolve intelligently as a species, we have this idea of citadels, which has obviously been popularized in the Bitcoin world. It has its roots in every great narrative, where an individual group have found sovereignty in their escape from tyranny, or the collapse of the org. Whether it's the Noah's Ark, or the Romans, or the American independence, or [inaudible 01:22:21], or the fucking Internet, like the idea of cyberspace.
The idea of the Citadel has existed since the dawn of history. It lives on through Bitcoin. It's gained momentum in the hearts and minds of Bitcoiners, because Bitcoin is fundamentally a parallel system that neither needs, nor recognizes the old. It operates on a new standard that is both subjectively enforced and objectively measurable. I've got a little quote in here, which it's a bit of a mouthful, but I say that Bitcoin is a citadel on multiple dimensions. It's a communication citadel. It's a monetary fortress. It's a time and energy superconductor. It's a web of inter-subjective value. It's a human action transmission network. It's a work and labor storage device. It's a high-fidelity representation of natural resources. It's a time chain, and it is an accurate map of reality.
Bitcoin represents a citadel across all of those dimensions. With that, it enables us to start to build citadels across higher dimensions; food, energy, shelter, transport, and education. I would argue that none of the above can be built independent of the old world, without first securing the money. If by chance, and sheer will they are, they cannot be sustained, until we've ripped the money. Or maybe it's not an until, because none of these things are linear in nature. It's not something that happens in series. It's something that has to happen in parallel.
Without the money piece, without that keystone, we're fucked. That's I would say, the base of the pyramid of sovereignty is money. We fix that, we can fix anything else. That's why there's no greater task that lies before us. The citadels must and will prevail.
Then, I go into some stuff about localism, tribalism. I'll go through this section quickly, then we can dig. People these days, they talk about localism, and that is extraordinarily, it's an important idea. I want to take it from the idea of tribalism first, before we move into localism. Today, the word tribal, or tribalist, or tribalism is a pejorative term. It's you used to frame people who think and behave in a certain way as either bigots, or closed-minded, or toxic, or group thinkers, or echo chamber, maximalist, or whatever.
Basically, like most modern definitions, it's fucking stupid. The tribe is a critical component of a community. If the family is the nucleus, the tribes are the cells in a society. Their fundamental building block whose integrity determines the strength and fitness of the broader species. If we start with the individual, we then grow into the family. The families then form tribes, the tribes form a community, and the communities come together to build a citadel. These citadels then form human society and a diverse network of jurisdiction, all with their own flavor styles, norms and cultures.
I've got a really, it’s a strange image, but it basically looks like, cells in the human body, basically. Inspired me to write a new piece. Like, fuck me, I've got so many unfinished drafts, but it's going to be called – hold on. I've got the name somewhere. Goddammit. I think, it's called Corpus Bitcoinicus. Basically, it's going to look at the human body as a representation of an organism, like what Bitcoin will represent in society. Anyway, that'll be probably next year when I have some time.
Yeah, this image of people go in and check out the article, they'll see, individual family, tribes, communities, citadels and humanity. I would argue that tribes and perhaps, communities are about as far as common values can scale and general governance can function. Beyond that, starts to break down, because of the diverse nature of life. Societies simply just can't function at the scale of the modern nation state.
Especially, especially not at the scale of what the fucking moronic globalists believe. The idea that some monolithic superstructure can effectively command and control all decision-making is the dumbest thing on the planet. Unless, all the constituents, the citizenry is made up of are all of the same character values and belief system. That's impossible for large swathes of people, unless it's enforced.
Even if it's enforced, it's crazy. Individuality emerges like a rose in a concrete world, or a ray of light in a dark room. It's like, we're inherently different, and that's what makes humanity beautiful. Who was I talking to yesterday? I can't remember. It could have been Pablo, or something like that. Basically, we're talking about how, or could have been on a spaces yesterday, but about homogeneity inside a jurisdiction, or inside a territory is really important.
Heterogeneity between jurisdictions, or between territories is also just as important. This is why globalism is such a fucking fuss. Is like, across every level of existence, we see diversity. Within a jurisdiction, or within a territory, you have some level of homogeneity. That is the values alignment between individuals. I think, that's what tribes represent. They’re healthy, they're essential, we must protect them. The individual obviously comes first, but he's also nothing without his tribe. This is the genesis.
I really try to take an opportunity to dig into the idea of citadel. It's not just about throwing it around. It's like, what do we mean by citadel, and how does it actually manifest? It really starts with tribalism as a concept first, that then scales outwards radially, into communities, and then citadels. Then the citadel then, I envision a world in which will have hundreds of thousands of cities and citadels and leagues of states, leagues of cities and citadels, versus what we have today, which is this attempt at trying to squeeze everybody into the same fucking box. Anyway, rambled there. Untapped.
[01:28:23] UG: Yeah, to give you a really just quick illustration, if you don't have the freedom until we fix the money. With us trying to build our communities around the country, we're getting into more and more of the local politics stuff and realizing just how much your local politics are incentivized by federal money and subsidy. Whether you're talking at the state level, whether you're talking to hospitals, whether you're talking to local federal police forces, or local sheriffs and police forces, there's this essential bribery happening everywhere. What it's trying to do is exactly what you're saying with these tribes. It’s trying to force top-down power of monetary energy to create a pressure that keeps cohesion of this large-scale grouping of people, without any human consent of tribe agreement at the bottom layer.
Because of that, you have this destruction of human freedom and freewill, because they're not allowed to lead. Versus with tribalism, it's like, you're building communities larger than your family around consent of agreeing on something together. That way, you can collaborate and like you said, we're taking care of each other and helping each other be their best self. As the world's getting more chaotic, this is becoming more and more powerful, because in my tribe that we're building with the cattle coop and the citadel network, where the supply chains are freaking broken. You can't get shit. You can't get anything and you can't get tires. You can't get tractors. You can't get parts to fix your tractors.
It's to the point where the only reason I'm able to get stuff is because I have a strong network of my tribe, and I know enough insiders know of industries that when things are broken, I just make a phone call, and I jump into the front of the line and grab something off the truck, or the manufacturing line first, because they want to take care of my tribe. Tribe love of caring for each other is that unit of cohesion that protects society as a whole. Trying to use this authoritarian control to subvert that is just going to lead to chaos and more.
[01:30:19] AS: Totally.
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[01:34:24] AS: Does anyone have anything to add to that? Or, can I move into how Bitcoin and this idea of tribalism actually transforms the relationship between the governed and the governors?
[01:34:35] CK: Let's keep it ripping.
[01:34:37] AS: All righty. The next piece, I call it economic consequences. I say here that the spectrum of economic reality will completely transform how sovereignty functions and force it to either adapt into a customer service provider relationship away from a subject overload relationship with those whom that provides government services, or dissolve into bankruptcy.
I've got another framework, which I would love people to feel free to use it, but I – it's on the left-hand side of the fiat standard, it's like this pyramid overlord on the top, subject on the bottom. On a Bitcoin standard, it's two circles with a small overlap, and it's service provider and customer. The dynamic in the relationship between the governors and the governed, completely transforms in the face of, or against the specter of economic reality and more importantly, economic consequences.
I make a note here, is I believe that will drive sovereign cities smaller, and nimbler, and more local, because it’s the only way to remain economically functional and competitive. We've seen that operating, or governing across the last way that people, with divergent views, norms, ideal and those. It's just not viable. People want different things, and you can't just blanket impose arbitrary fucking rules on everyone. The only reason why it's able to be done today, and why large nation states exist today is that they're able to fraudulently fund themselves via three mechanisms; enforce taxation, monetary inflation, and borrowing from the future. They're all fucking lies.
There's a big difference between someone paying a voluntary membership, and someone enforcing taxation on someone and then providing the fucking service. That is a lie. Monetary inflation is a fucking lie. Borrowing from the future, knowing that you can't repay it is a fucking lie. So long as you perpetuate a lie, you then can create and construct a fraudulent existence in the world. On a Bitcoin standard, you can't do the above. Thus, you cannot grow into a leviathan by perpetuating an economic fraud.
You cannot privatize gains, while socializing losses, because none of the mechanisms above are possible. Then, I really dig into something here, which I think is extraordinarily important, but it's moral hazard is currently built into a system. Moral hazard is systemic on a fiat standard. It's only possible, because consequence doesn't exist. On a Bitcoin standard, the result is a natural ceiling, in the size of either governments, or corporations. The larger you get naturally speaking, the slower you become, the harder it is to adapt, and the most susceptible we are to being beaten by smaller, nimbler, more hungry competitors.
This is how things naturally balance. This is how nature has fundamentally, naturally balanced. Species that have gotten too fucking large, that then can't eat, can’t reproduce properly and everything, they have a natural balance and they die off. In the corporate and government world, when the specter of economic reality is there, like when gravity exists, when we can't lie to ourselves with these fake wax wings, more playing fucking an Icarus game, when that can exist, you end up getting something that is naturally balanced. On a fixed energy money standard, you can't bail out stupid, or corrupt. You cannot eliminate competition by being close to the ultimate monopoly, which is the mainframe.
When those things removed, we start to get this natural bouncing effect in society, which is a beautiful thing. Does anybody have any comments on that? Because we're right up near the end now.
[01:38:15] CK: Anyone? Cas, P, Cory?
[01:38:19] C: Yeah. I can chime in for just a second.
[01:38:20] P: Go ahead, Cory.
[01:38:21] C: Okay. I was just going to say, what Bitcoin is doing, and I think this is the latest generation of people that are living 10 or 15 years into the future and where we're going and charting that path. I consider Alex part of that. Definitely, John Valis, Gigi, and some of these folks that have carved out time in their lives to do the thinking. Tomer, I think is in that group. Lots of people just thinking about where we're going and what this means.
I was trying to boil it down into what I think it is. I think, it's a culture of aspiration that Bitcoin, because you see truth for the first time, unadulterated and unalterable, it makes you want to align with that, and it makes you revile against anything that doesn't look as good. It just causes all of us to want to aspire to being better, and then to seek that out of not being. I like that term, and I thought of it about a half hour. Never found a good time to break in on Svetski, as usual. Yeah, culture of aspiration, I think, is a good label for it.
[01:39:22] AS: Beautiful. Love you, bro.
[01:39:23] UG: I had a buddy back when I was younger. He would say, what you worship you become like. The greatest form of worship is obedience. We have a world that is obeying all these anti-humanity mandates of essentially, divorcing yourself or freewill into this desire to put it into this communist AI system, where it's a race to the bottom of see who can have the least responsibility. With us and Bitcoiners, we worship truth and obey truth, so we're becoming more like truth. I think, that's how I define that aspirational character.
[01:39:59] AS: Nature.
[01:39:59] UG: It's like the balls not to obey the fears fails.
[01:40:03] AS: Yeah. That ties back into what you said earlier about faith, right? It's funny, all of these ideas, all these principles, they're all interlinked. They're not different. They're all cut from the same cloth. Thinking that they're different, it's hubris.
[01:40:16] P: I think that just want to echo what you said about creating these artificial selection pressures. You see this in nature all the time. When you have artificial selection pressures, like a massive surplus of resources, or food, and no natural predators, things evolve like the dodo bird, which are completely useless, and all they're good at is eating and shitting and fucking. Then, when reality reasserts itself, as it always does, they die out immediately. That's what we're looking at in terms of the existing financial system.
When you have these bailouts, it completely corrupts the natural order of things. This is a natural process in the sense that we see this in nature all the time. Eventually, the selection pressures do reset, or reassert themselves. Then, those things just die out. Bitcoin is the inevitable reality reasserting itself.
[01:41:11] AS: Totally, totally. Okay, in the spirit of time, there's two last sections. This last one here is called royalism. I'd be curious to see after I run through it, if anyone's ever heard of Mencius Moldbug. He goes across a couple of names. Curtis Yarvin, I think, is his real name. Mencius Moldbug, has also called himself John Law, and he wrote a piece actually pre-Bitcoin, that I'm sure Satoshi must have read or something like that, but talks about an energy money being released.
Now, he wrote a book years and years ago, which is, it's a must-read for any Bitcoiner that wants to think about citadels. He coined the term called royalism. It describes a world that's a patchwork of city states, all run by corporations, by a CEO with absolute power and accountability. The city state CEO is much like a monarch. He operates his domain like a business, whose motive is profit. Because he's like a monarch, and because it's like a corporation, he’s termed this thing, royalism.
I don't agree with everything in there, but it's a really well-written – I mean, if you like his style, he's a bit of a fucking – his writing is quite brutal. His ideas are a little bit out there. It's really interesting viewpoint, when we start to think about what the future might look like and what a patchwork of city states might look like. My argument is that without Bitcoiner future of a patchwork, society is not possible. Because without Bitcoin, we perpetuate an economic fraud, and should we not discover and have energy money prevail, we actually blow ourselves up, or become one major gulag, and we're all fucked. Where everything falls apart, and we go back to the Stone Age and have to rebuild again and discover energy money again, which would be very unfortunate.
Something like Bitcoin, maybe what makes royalism, or royalism inspired patchwork of citadels possible via a more smooth and functional transition, in which the good of what we actually have in society and has been built up over the last five centuries, doesn't completely go to waste. I remember talking about that theme with, man, it could have been in BitBlockBoom, or could have been in 2021. Or, it could have been with Mark Moss in Salvador.
Basically, my contention was, we win in the end. The only variable that matters at this point is, what does the end look like? Do we win and have a fucking world of rubble around us, where every supply chain is broken? Everyone's fucking dying, and everyone turned into zombies, and everything's completely fucked? At that point, one Bitcoin will buy you all of Canada, but the value of Canada is fucking zero.
It's like, what do we inherit at the end of it? Our job is to attempt at least, to transition society and safeguard things. This is where Untapped is doing incredible work. It’s like, how can we build some parallel shit that takes advantage of a bunch of the good things we have? Because we have a bunch of good things. The fiat drudgery that we're going through at the moment, is part of actually the process and is the end times of fucking evident that the video with Biden sitting there, holding his fucking hands in front of him. I don't even know what that means. If it means anything, it means the end of times, right? That's all I can actually decipher from that shit.
It is like, what our job now at the moment is to salvage as much of the good as possible and hopefully, transition into a patchwork of states with some semblance of structure, and not complete fucking chaos. That's what I hope Bitcoin gives us the opportunity to do. I mean, it all ties into the citadel idea. It all ties into that. I hope, people go in and read this. There's another book I tagged in there by Titus Keeble, called Free Private Cities, which I felt was really, really, really good. It's another vision of that future. If people interested in that idea, I strongly suggest they go and read that.
Before I go into the closing section, has anyone read Mencius Moldbug’s thing, like Patchwork? Has anyone come across his work? I’d be curious to see if anyone on the stage, or anyone else?
[01:45:14] CK: I subscribed to his newsletter, but I haven't done a whole lot of historical reading. He did do a breakdown of Bitcoin in the early days, which was very, very interesting. Almost scorn level analysis very early on. He's definitely on top of things. His writing is very abrasive, and he has some very popular opinions. Just to put some context to – I guess, now he goes by Curtis Yarvin.
[01:45:41] AS: Yeah. I think, if you can get past some of the abrasiveness, but I mean, for me, it's pretty normal, because I'm an abrasive asshole anyway. For me, it's cool. Yeah. Most people might be shocked by some of the shit he says. If you get past that and read between the lines, it’s actually, he really thinks things through. I'd recommend it. Has anyone else come across his stuff? Take that as a no.
[01:46:04] CK: I apologize. On that, the same topic of building these new types of societies and needing to be able to seek to truth, so that way we can lift up to that higher level of existence and Bitcoin being the foundation of that, I've really enjoyed Pete Rizzo’s thinking around how Bitcoin protects the minority. It's the only system out there, fiat or cryptocurrency that allows for true dissent, while without compromising any ownership within the system. I think, that that is something that is very, very revolutionary from a property rights and a rights perspective and a sovereignty perspective, that is still not really greatly appreciated yet.
That's why Bitcoin and money is so necessary to be fixed, in order for this, let's just call it, citadel, decentralized citadel patchwork economy to even emerge and governance structure even emerge.
[01:47:04] AS: Totally.
[01:47:05] UG: That's one of the things I'm seeing, Svetski, build and what I am, is if I had to find the transition that's changing, it's a respect for freewill of how consent matters at the smallest level for everybody and everything. It's how do we build new structures of this emergent society that enable that to blossom and flourish with that healthy creative destruction, but still have long-term, deep collaborative relationships inside of these larger structures that have enough density of power, of humans working together, to go to stand against the Marxist agenda and survivor of the generations is going to take to win this all the way out and re-found a world.
[01:47:46] AS: I don't even want to call it the Marxist gender anymore. I just want to call it the fucking dump agenda, because that's basically what it is. It's literally, anyway.
[01:47:53] P: I have to jump, unfortunately. I just wanted to thank you for doing the space. It's been amazing.
[01:47:59] AS: Thank you, P. I love you, brother.
[01:48:01] CK: Do you want I try to go for about 15 more minutes? We can go 30 more minutes, but let's just try to target for 15 more minutes on this space. Yeah, back to you, Svetski.
[01:48:12] AS: Yeah, sweet. 15 minutes. I have a partly naked girlfriend looking at me. I should finish up soon. In closing, in closing, it is okay to surround yourself with people who are helping you become better, and to shy away from people who are willing to drag you down. Jordan says, you are not obligated to associate with people that are trying to damage the structure of your being. You want to move away from people like that. Or he says, you're not obligated to associate people who are making your life worse.
This is in my mind, what I want to call being selective. I'm pretty sure I say this later in the article. A Bitcoiner is that unique archetype who represents the true zeitgeist of the modern world, he or she have the counterbalance to the madness of crowds, and the destruction by parasites. Because I think, both of those things are plagues on the world. They are the rational optimist who can envision a better world, because they've understood the flow with the current one.
They're not the fucking dumbass, naive optimist who's putting lipstick on a fucking pig and thinking they're making things better, by integrating surveillance systems into fucking Open Table. That is the dumbest shit on the planet, right? Or creating the worldcoin, like this moron. I can see it. What's his name? Alex Blaney. “Today, I'm excited to reveal worldcoin, a new global digital currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible.” Get the fuck out of here, right? That's what we’re competing with. The Bitcoiners are the remnant and oftentimes, the lonely contrarian, who I'm here to remind that you are not alone. That's the purpose of these pieces that I'm trying to write. Your responsibility as a Bitcoiner and a remnant is first and foremost, to strive towards being a better version of yourself, and to do your part and raising the standard with others. Your presence, and your example alone is going to do that.
For me, that's the big takeaway is like, it's the difference between showing and telling. It's important to tell. Like I said, when you get up on the mountaintop, as God said to his heir is like, you get on the mountaintop, and you speak and a 100 people might hear you, but only one will listen. That's the part of the speaking thing. We also can't speak when we're not living it ourselves. We have to be authentic in that.
Quickly, quote Peterson here is like, “You have an ethical responsibility to take care of yourself. You have an ethical responsibility to surround yourself with people who have the courage, faith and wisdom to wish you well, when you've done something good and stop you when you're doing something destructive,” which echoes everything that we've been discussing here. And echoes the classic meme by the Bitcoiners, which is the soldier standing over the bed of the newcoiner.
The final parts in here is a call Bitcoin, a collective protest by the individual. It's a peaceful, but functional protest against that which consciously, or unconsciously chooses to oppress us. This protest is a vital one. I say that a brotherhood and sisterhood along common values is what's missing in the world today. We're different, and that's a beautiful thing. We're diverse in our values, needs and desires. When free to choose, we naturally form groups along commonalities. Yes, whilst these groups are more naturally homogenous internally, the patchwork they form is more heterogenous, because they’re smaller.
That's what I really want people to walk away with, when they think about this idea of citadel. It's like, for too long, we've been forced to assimilate and integrate as if we're some fucking cattle without an identity, and without a culture and without personal preferences. The citadel meme is about honoring the fact that we're all different, and that we can get along with those we want to. We don't have to get along with those we don't want to. If fucking children can form friendships at school of their own volition, why the hell are adults forced to conform and accept each other as some global homogenous blob? All it does is it breeds resentment for one another.
I have no desire to hang around with some people. I guarantee you, whether Raoul Pal was a shitcoiner not, I won't hang around with that fucking loser. Because I just don't like soy losers like him. I can smell it. It's fucking disgusting. I don't want to hang around him, so don't force me to do so. I want to pick my friends carefully, because echoing what I said in the beginning of the thing, Tony Robbin’s quote like, “Who you spend time with is who you become.” Bitcoiners might protest, and it voluntarily aligns me with others who want the same thing.
This is our virtual citadel today, and is the precursor to our physical one tomorrow. I hope I meet you one day there, at a lecture being given by Peterson himself. That's how I close this piece out. That's my conclusion to this piece. It's a long one. I hope people loved it. Let's open this up and talk. Thank you.
[01:52:57] CK: It was a great piece, Aleks. Thanks a lot. I feel like, again, bridging over Jordan Peterson to Bitcoin is something that a lot of Bitcoiners tried to do. I feel like, with this series, you're doing a very good job of connecting the 12 rules of life series to Bitcoin. I want to congratulate you so far, and keep it up. Also, your other stuff is fantastic as well. Again, I feel like, you're one-off stuff. You find a really good way of breaking down very important intrinsic points and making them very digestible.
[01:53:28] AS: Hopefully, controversial.
[01:53:31] CK: That's why we keep you around, man, to be honest.
[01:53:34] AS: Thank you, brother. Love you, man.
[01:53:36] CK: Tomer, welcome to the stage, man.
[01:53:38] T: Hey, guys. Love y'all. It’s great, Aleks. I haven't finished reading the whole piece. I've only listened to the even the last half hour of this call. It's terrific. Again, just to add maybe one or two thoughts to it, without disagreeing with any of it. I remember when I was studying philosophy years ago, one of the teachers was saying something to the effect of, we don't know in the world today. It's been lost on us, but how much brotherly love used to exist amongst another? This is not a gendered comment. It was just [inaudible 01:54:09].
It’s not meant to be about the males of this speaking. Just, there is in a rational society, just really goodwill towards everybody else, because nobody else is your enemy. I mean, they're not taking something from you. They're not voting away something from you. You both exist in the world, and you both produce a surplus for each other. You look upon another human being and you just say, oh, there's goodness, right? In the worst case, it's someone who I'll not put in my life, as you were just saying, Aleks.
I think, that's a big part of where we're headed to. Because right now, our civilization is set up where we're battling over resources through elections and through into things that just prevent other people from being able to really be themselves. We have so much of our wealth seized and redistributed, and so we're in this battle for winning the redistribution game, rather than something that which is not a battle, which is just being productive and trading with other people.
A guy just wrote a short article earlier this week, I think, called Bitcoin as declaration of peace. I think, it shows how much it turns everything around from we're at war with each other, we're in competition with each other. I mean, these are the terms we grew up with. We declare war on everything and competition is our way of life. Really, cooperation, and love and peace are just as natural, and they are under this type of standard. I don't really have a question for you, Aleks. I just want to say, great job. I love all your writing. I want to even to put whipped cream and a cherry on top of it, for those comments.
[01:55:42] AS: Thank you, Tomer. I really appreciate all your work as well, man. I think, we are definitely aligned. I can't wait till we get Bitcoin times edition for publish, man.
[01:55:51] T: Yeah.
[01:55:52] AS: For everyone listening who hasn't seen the previous Bitcoin Times. They're out there, edition one, two, three. This year's edition, Tomer is one of the featured writers. He's one of my fucking favorite writers in the world.
[01:56:01] T: Thank you.
[01:56:02] AS: Absolutely.
[01:56:05] CK: Aleks, what's coming up next? What's the next addition, or the next rule that you're going to cover? Do you have any pieces in between?
[01:56:12] AS: Yes. There’s actually a couple pieces in the works. I know, there's one thing I'm waiting on [inaudible 01:56:20], to get back to me on, to see if I'm going to do a short piece called Bitcoin and the Great Filter, which is a particular special edition for something. Looks like Cory just left. Thank you, bro. Love you. We'll see.
The big ones that I'm working on is the fire Bitcoin teleportation. That'll be my magnum opus for the Bitcoin Times edition four. Then the other pieces, I've got the remnant, the parasite and the masses. That's going to be real fucking fire. It's going to be one of my short pieces. It'll be under 10-minute read, and really just dig into the nuance, because I didn't – in the last one where it was the remnant and the masses, it just focused on those two archetypes. What I realized I missed was the parasite, which I really want people to drop the vernacular of calling the parasites, the elites. All the scum, like Christine Lagarde.
It's funny, every time I think about the parasites, she's the first one that comes to mind. Klaus Schwab and fucking all the rest of them. They're not elites, they're parasites. I really want to change that vernacular. This piece is going to go to the heart of that, really dig into the psyche and the psychology of those archetypes of people. I'm going to use it to also dig into what we discussed in that previous spaces, where we talk about the 20% of the 20% of the 20%. The dormant remnant, the active remnant, and the radical remnant, and I really talk through that.
What Bitcoin will do in regards to, or in relationship to transforming the incentives to becoming a parasite and the incentives to transform me into a remnant. That's going to be really important. Then, I really want to – I've got this piece that I've been working on for two years now that I've never had a chance to finish, but I think it's about time to do it. It’s called Bitcoin is not democratic. I hope that will spark a really good spaces with Gladstein. I think, that'll be a really fucking fire, fire spaces that we should do. That one, I hope to get done before the end of the year.
Then the next rule is Jordan Peterson’s compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not to someone else's today. That obviously is going to – I'm going to spend some time digging into how Bitcoin is a force for enabling us to become better versions of ourselves. It's going to really tie into this meme of three about finding a peer group that you want to be surrounded by that. That puts you in an environment where you become a better version of yourself. Yeah, that'll be – then I forget I’ve done this year, but hey, we will try this. There's a whole lot of pieces there that I need to get rid of in amongst all the fucking business stuff that I got to do. We'll see.
[01:58:44] CK: Awesome. Well, I know that you're doing some really big stuff with Amber as well. Hopefully, we have a partnership in the works between Amber and all the stuff we're doing at BTC Inc. Anything else that you want to close this out with, Aleks? Or should I close this out?
[01:58:59] AS: Look, unless does anyone have any questions, or comments and anything before we wrap this video up? Hands, requests to speak, anything?
[01:59:09] CK: I don't want to let new people up on stage, but if anyone who's already on stage has something, speak now or forever hold your peace. All right.
[01:59:19] AS: I guess, will do it.
[01:59:21] CK: Yeah. Again, follow Aleks. Follow everyone who's still on stage. Follow everyone who was on stage. Go check out Bitcoin Spaces Live. All of these conversations are recorded and posted to Bitcoin Spaces live on podcast, as well as on YouTube. If you missed anything, if you came in halfway, you want to hear it, it should be up in three to five days. Sometimes it takes us a little longer, but we're doing a lot of these conversations.
Outside of that, go check out b.tc/conference for Bitcoin 2022, April 6th through the 9th in Miami, Florida. The best, biggest Bitcoin event in history. Going to one-up or three-up Bitcoin 2021, which is the biggest event ever in Bitcoin history. We're going to try to really portray and show people the best of the Bitcoin counter culture and the and the movement. That's the goal for Bitcoin 2022.
A lot of the people on stage will be there. You should be there, too. Use promo code satoshi to get 10% off. Buy your ticket with Bitcoin and save even more. We're giving discounts for Bitcoin purchases. Yeah. I think, that's it for me. I think, we can close this one out. Thanks again to Svetski. Thanks again for everyone who joined. Thanks, Joel, for tapping in and bringing the wisdom as well. Yeah, have a good one, everyone. Happy Friday.