Ag Tribes Report: Bitcoin Shoot-Out with @JerodMcDaniel

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] The Ag Tribes report is brought to you by Legacy Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are, so the future knows who they really were. Here's Legacy Interviews guest Patricia Showalter. On the fun she had sharing stories for her grandchildren. I really didn't know what to expect. Were you nervous about it before? Or how did you feel about it before? No, I just wondered what the heck was going to happen if somebody was on the fence, what would you tell them? Yeah, I'd tell somebody to do it. Just go and have fun. I've had fun. You're only here for a short time. My grandkids are going to say, oh, when cow can we believe this stuff? Welcome to the Ag Tribes report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host, Vance Crowe. The report begins in 3, 2, 1. Let's begin. Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I bring on a new co-host that represents one of the many ag tribes that make up us and Canadian agriculture. But this week I am with Jared McDaniel, and instead of us discussing the headlines that are important to the culture of agriculture, we are gonna talk about Bitcoin. For over the last year, Jared has been out on social media talking shit, and every once in a while I'll pop in and respond to what he's saying. We do some back and forth and then head our own different ways, but nothing ever seems to get sorted out.

Vance Crowe [00:01:36] So what we decided to do was to run a podcast and have an actual in-depth discussion about our real feelings. We're gonna get to that in just a moment, but first, I should rewe Jared to the podcast. Welcome, Jared.

Guest [00:01:50] Hey, thanks for having me on. Sorry you had the, the little technical difficulties, but hey, it's all right. I can, we can keep going from where we, where we stopped.

Vance Crowe [00:02:00] Well, so I wanna jump in at the very beginning. We'll just get straight to it. I know there are a lot of people that are out there. If you are listening to this, retweet it. This is a lot of people were expecting it, and somehow I technically dropped the ball. But I wanna start off with the premise I started with before, which is I believe that the government is inflating away our life value, the things that we create through our work, and that this is a form of taxation and it is evil, and that Bitcoin is the best tool to fight back against this stealing of our life force. And I started by asking Jared, what's wrong with, with my philosophy here, that Bitcoin is a tool to fight this evil.

Guest [00:02:39] Yeah, no, and I, I do not disagree that inflation is, is one of the evils that's been propagated upon us. You know, going back to 120 years at the advent of the Central Bank in 1913, I don't think that, I don't think that the Bitcoin itself is the, is the end all be all to that. And, and like a, I think that the physical assets that I've delved into with my line of work, you know, farming and ranching, that that's more what I lean to as opposed to just the, the digital side. But I hardly agree that, you know, the fiat currency, the amount of, you know, taxation without representation, you know, all that is very true. And it, and it makes for an alluring story to, to kinda get people on board with Bitcoin. I mean, it's part of what I think is luring people into this.

Vance Crowe [00:03:34] Well, so in the past, you've described this as a Ponzi scheme. Can you describe for me how Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme?

Guest [00:03:42] Not technically, other than just a, it takes more people getting in to keep it going. I mean, but that's, that's everything nowadays, I think more than anything, and I was, we were actually talking about this earlier, is I kind of see it as a, as a, as a digital corral for people. I think that, you know, the, again, the, the founder's name alone, the, you know, Satoshi Nintendo and, and the how it kind of reads like a Marvel character, you know, all this. And, and he's cloaked in mysterious, you know, nobody knows where he is, who he does, you know, it's, which lends itself to this, this kind of aura of, you know, this novelty of here's this thing that came out of nowhere, which typically when these things come out of nowhere, they're created a lot of times by, you know, C-I-A-N-S-A, which I, again, I think that that's probably the precursor to where a lot of this came from. You can go back and you can find papers where they've written about, you know, doing this. When I say digital corral, what I mean is that like they, they're kind of putting people in this box of getting into the cryptocurrencies to eventually morph into a central bank digital currency. And I think that the, the animals in this case are, the humans that are in there are kind of the trial, you know, the trial run to see what, what's, where's the weak points in this? How do we, how do we get these people and corral them? And, you know, it's sold with the advent of liberty, and I think that liberty is found outside of this realm.

Vance Crowe [00:05:10] So I guess maybe just to talk about some of the things that you put forth there. Satoshi Nakamoto, to me, having him invent this, put out the white paper and allow people to mine, and then walking away is one of the things that makes Bitcoin actually way more secure and way more beautiful than any of these other cryptocurrencies that are out there. Because what it means is there is no Steve Jobs or Bill Gates to point at and be like, Hey, guy that founded this, what do you think we should do? What do you think the right decision should be? And instead, what you have is the consensus of all of the people doing mining and the people running nodes. And so, you know, if it was designed by the NSA or the CIA, then they have absolutely let freedom out of the bag because they invented a technology and put it out as open source. And now everyone that is participating, particularly as with nodes, gets to choose what is the software that I'm running? And, and then NSA and CIA can't change it like by, by decree. And they can't do anything to make that work in their favor. So now if they try and come out with a central bank digital currency, everybody that's been using Bitcoin will be like, why would I use that currency when I have this brilliant and, you know, non-controlled currency over here? It, it, I think it will be much, much more difficult to get people in the corral now that they've let Bitcoin loose if it was in fact them to begin with.

Guest [00:06:39] Well, in, in that regard, like, how useful is Bitcoin? Like, like I'm not selling animals and, and getting a check for Bitcoin. There's, I understand that this is like 1.0, you know, it's the beginning of, of whatever people believe is the next thing. I, again, I go back to the, the angle that it's, it is digital, it is, you know, dispersed amongst a lot of the different things. But with, I mean, if you put into context where we're at in, in technology, you quantum computing, it wouldn't take that long to, to hack Bitcoin. I mean, I think that's one of the things that people worry about. And yes, there's the argument that it'll evolve and it will, it will change over time to adapt. But at the end of the day, like, I mean, what do you, what do you feel is, is a tangible use case for Bitcoin other than the store value? I mean, and I don't think it's, it's just not readily available as an exchange medium that I can say,

Vance Crowe [00:07:34] Oh man, I think it is fantastic way to transfer value. So I'll give you an example. I am supposed to go give a talk in Canada in a couple of months. And they first started off by issuing me a check, of course, a Canadian check coming over to the United States. I I can't cash that, so I had to send it back. Then we decided to do a wire. Well, some people were on vacation, they couldn't get down to the bank, they actually had to physically go there. And the whole time I kept saying, Hey, if you guys just converted your money into Bitcoin, you could send that to me. And there's no intermediary in between. There's nobody saying, Hey, I'm gonna take $40 for the effort of transferring money from your bank account in Canada to Vance's bank account in the United States. Instead, it is a much smaller transaction, and there's nobody that can get in there and say, no, you're not allowed to do it. To me, the ability to store value and the ability to send that value anywhere in the world is freaking amazing and is awesome because it gets the middleman out of the way.

Guest [00:08:37] Hmm. Well, maybe you got a point there. I don't know. I just don't, I, again, back to the just everyday use of something other than, you know, transferring of money within, within the realm. Like how do I go buy fertilizer with, you know, staging Bitcoin and, and then again, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of a, an ironic or weird position from my angle whenever I see something that I believe is valued that is, is obviously not valued, and that's commodities, you know, grain, cattle, any, any, the thing that I, you know, maybe you shouldn't listen to me. I'm raising $4 week. So there's, there's, you know, I'm not the financial genius of the, of the, of the realm by any means. But, but I just, I think there's kind of a, the society itself has, has kind of gotten lost in the mystic, you know, view of artificial intelligence, artificial money, artificial, you know, I feel like this is kind of the same vein of, of the artificial, you know, it's, it's not real, it's not tangible in the, in the sense that it's based on a scarcity mindset. I mean, whenever, whenever, whatever is, is going to come along and replace it, you're, that's a bridge you're gonna have to cross when you get there. I mean, how is is the old original system, is that gonna be transferred to, you know, the next, you know, fart coin or whatever, whatever the next thing that comes along. Like how does that evolve over time? Because if it, if it is just this, you know, what, 21 million Bitcoins, that that's all that's gonna be there, then there's never going to be, you know, what, what's the off ramp for that?

Vance Crowe [00:10:16] To me, the 21 million Bitcoin, having a hard cap is actually difficult to understand because since the beginning of time, every money that we have had has always been inflationary. If you make it so you're trading shells, because at first it's really difficult to get shells, and you're using shells to represent work or some other, you know, thing that is valuable, then people go out and they collect as many shells as they can. They're willing to walk all the way from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico and pick up as many shells as they can. 'cause this allows them to go now buy more things by doing far less work. And so bitcoin's cap at 21 million is something that's never happened before. There have been things that we have chosen to be money in the past that has a stiffer limit on it. Things like gold, but gold even inflates over time. Right now it's at, you know, two and a half percent. We go out and mine more Bitcoin or more gold. And as the price goes up, then that means people go buy more steam shovels and trucks and they go grab more out of the ground. And so ultimately, every 60 years or so, we double the supply of gold. And that means that that holding one ounce goes down in value. And so, to me, this scarcity idea is amazing because for the first time in our lives and first time in maybe human history, you can do work and then put that work in a, in a financial asset like Bitcoin. And the value of that work is going to go up if you don't save it.

Vance Crowe [00:11:49] Savings is actually a real thing now, as opposed to, Hey, the way that my savings increases is that I give it to somebody else, they risk it. And as long as they don't lose it, it goes up, which is our current financial system.

Guest [00:12:04] But it's all coming back to the value of what it is in fiat currency. I mean, it still, it's still tied to that system.

Vance Crowe [00:12:12] System. Well, certainly when, when we talk about like, how much is a Bitcoin worth? You and I understand approximately what dollars will buy us, what a hundred dollars will buy us, what a thousand dollars will buy us. And so that is how we exchange to get Bitcoin. But I can tell you, for example, I sell Legacy Interviews and I sell them for the price of Bitcoin, what I'm talking about with another person. I'll say, Hey, this is how much Bitcoin it would cost for you to come into my studio for me to record your loved one telling their stories. And I will take that and pay my bills and pay my employees. But they, the, the exchange that we're making is in Bitcoin, and of course we translate it into dollars. 'cause this has been our whole lives for 40 some years we've been dealing in dollars. So that makes it a good way to understand how much is this worth? But eventually, I think most bitcoiners think one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin, we will start valuing things in Bitcoin. We just aren't there right now.

Guest [00:13:11] Hmm. Well, and that's where I get to, I don't know that again, it's kind of, you know, back to the idea of a, of a, of a digital corral or somewhere that you're, you're placing a lot of faith in a system that is, that is obviously not proven. It's got, it's got its legs underneath it and it's, it's starting out, it's going, but I just, I guess I just don't trust the, the technology or even the, the authoritative figures that have got us to the position we're in now to keep their hands out of it or not find a way to morph it into some kind of, you know, cor control mechanism essentially. And you know, the, what a stat I found fascinating was when Bitcoin went from zero to $1, like par with the, with the, you know, fiat currency, there were only like 70 some, 60 or 70 actual agents doing this. Like it was very, you know, small. And then it, it, however it blossomed, bloomed, and, and again, that's kind of one of those red flags. It's like, hmm. But you know, at the time it was done something, I don't know what like 50% of the Bitcoin is, is mined within that time period. I mean, you know, the numbers probably better than I do, but I don't know. You, you, you where I, I see where you're going with, you know, get to the utopian society where this is, is usable, but again, that ti that ties you back into technology, which isn't infallible or in hackable.

Vance Crowe [00:14:44] Certainly Bitcoin is not perfect, right? And there are things that will need to be updated and changed. But I would say that if we're comparing it to every other option that's out there for us to have a a, a means of exchange, right? Right now, we either use money or you and I have to both want and have the same thing that that concept of, what's it called? Coincidence of wants where you have beef and I need beef, but what happens if you have beef and I want juice. Well, now I've gotta, you know, trade your beef to somebody else that does, you know, have juice. It becomes complicated. So we use money to overcome this, and the current system that we use uses the government on the one hand, and they can, they don't, there is no algorithm, there's no code we can go look at, they get together like a bunch of wizards on a mountain and decide, hey, we're gonna change the interest rate. Hey, we're gonna issue more bonds, we're gonna print more money. And they do that by fiat, by command. And so Bitcoin, and then on top of that, you also have all these businesses that get involved in that. So now you've got, you know, your banks where you make money and you go put your money in the bank, and now you, if you ever want that money back, you, you feel like it's yours. But if you ever want it back, they always have the chance that they just say, no, we're not gonna give that back to you. Or if you wanna send it to somebody that they don't really like, they can say, nah, I don't really like that. So Bitcoin overcomes both the interference of the government and the corporations that are involved in it.

Vance Crowe [00:16:16] And the core of it all is done out in the open in a way that you or I can go read and, and I'll give it to you looking at the code of Bitcoin and, and the, the way that it works is intimidating, but once you begin using it, all of a sudden you're like, oh, I see how this works. And it isn't a foreign concept to me. All of a sudden it makes more sense to me than the wizards coming down the mountain and, and issuing more money on their own.

Guest [00:16:45] Yeah. Different form of wizard. Now, you know, it is interesting the how ubiquitous that it has gotten in some regards. I mean, even outside of our little town, there is a Bitcoin mining station that, you know, they essentially set up, I think it's set up servers and, and run that I I'm, I am genuinely curious like what exactly are they mining? I mean, what, what, explain to me like I'm a five-year-old, what, what are they doing with that computing power?

Vance Crowe [00:17:13] So the mining is what makes Bitcoin secure, and it is a complicated thing to explain. I usually draw something with it whenever I'm gonna explain it. But at its core, the the mining is you, it has, you've heard of the blockchain. The blockchain is a record of every single transaction that has happened since the launch of Bitcoin back in 2008. And so before you can mine, you have to have a complete record of the blockchain. And the way that you get to participate in mining is your blockchain matches everybody else's. That's what, what they call the distributed ledger. That means that, that there's no one central ledger like at Bank of America where they're determining how much money is in each account. This is spread throughout the entire world. And then the miners, what they're doing is if you have a complete record of the blockchain, then you can play this lottery game. And the lottery game is submitting as many guesses as you possibly can to try and guess this number. It's, it's a hash number, and if you get it, then you get all of the Bitcoin that are out in the subsidy. So every 10 minutes there's a little bit of Bitcoin released. This is the inflation rate of Bitcoin. And so they're all going as fast as they can to put as many guesses as they can. They're doing trillions actually more than trillions of guesses, every single second. And every once in a while they stumble upon it and then they get that Bitcoin. Now the reason that this is so powerful is it, is that the only way that you can mine a block or you can control what gets added to the blockchain is if you have enough compute power.

Vance Crowe [00:18:54] And because all these people are competing, they're in their own self-interest to try and guess that number, they are adding computer power, which is making it harder and harder and harder for somebody else to hack it. So the thing you need to make those guesses are really fast computers and electricity. And, and that is as bare bones of an explanation as I can give without probably a dry erase board.

Guest [00:19:17] No, it, it, it reminds me a lot of, whenever I am bringing cattle into a corral and every time the door on the caker opens, a little bit of cake falls out, and they all run towards it, and they all try to gather up and see who can get the first pile of cake and eventually everybody's left in the corral. It that I'm not, I'm not dismissing your, your explanation of it, it just, it, it seems odd, I'm not gonna lie. It just kind of, because you have, okay, from a, from a physical world standpoint, you're, you're utilizing energy resources and stuff that can be done be used for actual production of tangible goods to guess at a number to get into this, to this, the realm of other people to gather up and, and be part of a scarce asset. And that itself is, is what gives it the, the validation of being, you know what I'm saying? Like, it, it, it's kind of a circular loop. Like it's,

Vance Crowe [00:20:17] Are you, are you saying that like, that you have a, a problem with the way they're using electricity, that electricity could be used towards something else?

Guest [00:20:24] Oh, I think, I think we're on the, we're on the cusp of, of that argument that I think that from this point forward in humanity with the, with the advent of data centers being piled in left and right and center and you know, the amount of energy that's going to be, you know, essentially diverted so that people can stare at their screens and see little novel cat videos. I think that is, that is, that is one of the beginning of the, of the massive downfalls of humanity is that we are going to, not that we haven't diverted massive amounts of resources for entertainment and other kind of false, false, you know, golden calves in the sky that, that everybody chases. But at the end of the day, and I, and I can kind of relate this back to the cattle market, like there is a point in time where something becomes so undervalued that, that it actually ceases to exist. And whenever you, you put this pedestal upon, you know, data centers, ai, Bitcoin, I kind of loop it into the all, you know, one, one giant bucket because it is, it's a, it's a consumer of real physical assets or not assets, physical energy that is essentially just going into the ether to make guesses at, at something so that now you have a, you know, a spot on the ledger. Like what, what, I just don't see the benefit or utility in that.

Vance Crowe [00:21:38] Well, I think that if we talk about what you value, you know, about your, your ability to have some level of freedom, that energy is being used to create freedom from government decree and from corporations being able to control your wealth. And what's happening there, and what's happened with Bitcoin is they have gone and unlocked all sorts of trapped energy all over the world. So for, for example, Steve Barber is a guy that started going around to all these oil wells up in Alberta, and they were flaring the natural gas because there wasn't enough natural gas when you're pumping out oil to be able to send to somewhere else. It was too expensive, kind of dangerous. And so instead of using that energy, they used to just burn it. Well, what Steve said was, Hey, hey, hey, don't do that. Instead I'm gonna capture that natural gas, I'm gonna burn it in a generator. And now we can use that, we can put that into productive use for securing Bitcoin. And by securing Bitcoin, we are giving everyone access to this public good. It's probably maybe the only truly public good that is exists in the world, which means you can now have access to your money. No government can interfere with it, and no corporation is gonna stand in between and grab a little fee when I move money from me to you. So to me, that use of energy may be one of the best uses of energy that we have. I mean, freedom from these two controllers is well worth it to me.

Guest [00:23:06] I'd go back to the beginning of your statement when you talk about a productive use of something that's being wasted when in reality there's lots of, I mean, I, we exist, where I live is on top of one of the oldest gas fields in America. You know, they, there's, there's gas wells everywhere. It used to be that people were on house gas, you know, and the, I I understand what you're saying, where they do shale plays and they have to burn it off because it's not feasible, feasible in, in that regard. And yeah, this just happens to be a low hanging fruit that they go and they grab. But in reality, you know, that that energy source, it's like saying, well, we don't, they, I mean they don't value it. So it becomes essentially useless, which therein lies the rub. It's not useless to begin with and therefore it's, should it be garbage that can be consumed by some, you know, frivolous activity such as Bitcoin, in my opinion. I think that you've got, you've got a lot of like base case level anomalies that exist that are then being extorted as reality when, when in all reality the, the reason that the gas is being blown off is because, I mean, it's wildly inefficient to what they're doing to begin with. I mean there, well,

Vance Crowe [00:24:19] I mean there, that's just one example I was using, you know, 50% of the energy used to mine. Bitcoin comes from renewable sources. But I would say even as per somebody that, you know,

Guest [00:24:29] What's, what's a renewable source? This is another rabbit hole. Like what is see you?

Vance Crowe [00:24:34] Well, okay, let me give you one, one would be rivers, right? So you have hydroelectric power, that is, when we say renewable, it's just not running out. And so there are places in Kenya, for example, or Bhutan where they've come and said, it was never valuable enough for us to be able to generate electricity here. The people couldn't pay for electricity, so they didn't have lights, they didn't have, you know, access to being able to plug their cell phone into the wall. But now there were people saying, well, if we build a hydroelectric dam here in Bhutan, now we can use most of that power for electricity generation for our Bitcoin miners, and then we will create more electricity than what we need. And now we can give this to access to other people that otherwise have never had access to electricity. So it is allowing development in places where certainly they had energy, but they were never able to really use it because they couldn't get somebody to develop that infrastructure. And to me, that is a benefit that's going to keep compounding. We're gonna see more and more places where we're turning on the lights for people literally that were never turned on before.

Guest [00:25:43] I, again, back to the, I I understand what you're saying that this is being built out and, and as a means to an end to support like, you know, the, the demand being created by Bitcoin mining. But I guess my, my overall arching my, my, my base case for something against Bitcoin is what, what can you physically do with it? I mean, yes, you're, you're alluding to you can, you can avoid, you know, transaction fees, you can avoid, you know, detection by the government, which, this is a side point, but how exactly do you maintain a ledger with everything on it, and yet keep it anonymous?

Vance Crowe [00:26:26] Well, I've never said that Bitcoin is way out in the open, and so it, it is clear that, you know, when something is moving from one wallet to another wallet, the thing that you don't always know is who owns those wallets. But I'm not putting forward Bitcoin as a way to get around things. I'm, I'm not suggesting it's a way to get around taxation. I was asked this at a talk not that long ago, and I'm always like, Hey, record all your transactions. If it constitutes a capital, you know, you know, exchange, then you should pay your taxes on that. What I'm saying is it allows you to move value digitally. I have a certain amount of value and I wanna give that value to somebody else in exchange for, you know, beef in exchange for a service, in exchange for them producing a podcast that I like. And I can do that without having the government have the ability to say, no, we are not going to let you do that. And that to me is something extremely valuable. The only other way you could do that in the past was if you met face-to-face with a person and that, of course then you could hand them dollar bills, you could hand them pieces of gold or silver. But now we have the ability to live in a digital world and not be stopped by other people. And I think this value, if you re if I really think about it, is one that I feel like, ah, this is freedom. Because I think of things like the trucker rally where people saw other people doing something they wanted to support, they wanted to get them the ability to buy coffee, get a hotel room, you know, do these things.

Vance Crowe [00:28:01] And they tried to donate money to them through, you know, whatever that was, GoFundMe or whatever, and the government tapped on GoFundMe and said, Hey, we don't want them to get that money, so we're just gonna cut that off. Well, with Bitcoin they can't do that. And so now you are returning liberty to your citizens and it in a way that we are not going to get if we stay on the fiat system.

Guest [00:28:24] So you kinda lost me when you said freedom in a digital world. That's, that's, it's an oxymoron because I mean, to your point, like you can meet somebody face to face and there is a physical interaction. The, the idea that moving it into the digital realm is a net benefit for society, I think is, is something I would pretty much disagree with. I think that the more you, you dehumanize the interaction, I think the more longer term effect, is it just for exa, I mean, again, I keep referencing back to agriculture, but so many people have no, no frame of reference for a, you know, animal or livestock or grain production. It's, it's a, it's out in the ethos. It's just a myth mythical figure that it happens somewhere. And, and I get the net benefit of going to the store when that same vein, everybody's like, oh, it's digital, you know, currency. And to your point about like the truckers rally, I think that as opposed to figuring out how we can, you know, slide them money under the table and nobody can stop us. I think the correct analogy is no, you eventually, everybody gets pissed off enough. You take up arms and you destroy the system that has the ability to impose their will with whatever technology. See, I think you, I think that you're, you're simply building a bridge to a different hideout whenever you go down that route. I mean, it's, it's a more of an anarchist view of course, but I think a certain amount of uncomfortability or you know, enough tyranny, people will rise up and the system will revolt against itself and cure the ills that you're trying to avoid with the very said technology.

Vance Crowe [00:30:07] Well, I believe that individuals that are able to send value to other people for whatever their purposes are, if they're trying to mount a campaign against the Venezuelan government, if they're trying to put together a voting situation in Germany, right, the government has proven that they will take any means necessary in order to be able to stop it. And certainly, like there are things that they will try to do to get in the way of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin will allow human beings to coordinate, to push back on tyranny. And I think that I, I actually, I mean if you can find another, I mean the people that are gonna organize to get together to make something happen, they have to purchase things, even if they have to, if you're just saying they have to purchase food, they have to purchase transportation to be able to coordinate their actions, the government has shown that they will shut down the fiat system. And I am proposing that Bitcoin will allow you to coordinate with people and it will give you freedom from that government that you are interested in pushing back on

Guest [00:31:12] Production versus purchase. You, you, you're, you're back to the, the age old argument and like, you know, if you are beholden to someone for, for your needs or, or anything else, yes, you have to use the system of that. But in the, in the grand scheme of things, if you can produce it yourself, if you can, I mean, no, no, everybody can't go out and start a a, you know, machine gun factory. Like, you know, there's, there's a reality there I'm not unaware of, but I think from a philosophical standpoint, it just seems like we're enabling the same system that has got us thus far. And I don't see that that is going to end up being a net positive, even even as seamless as it may be.

Vance Crowe [00:31:56] I mean, I, to me, when I look at the, the technology, it is enabling the very sort of sovereignty that you find important. It's why it's always like bothered me. It's why I jump in on your comments versus other people because I know how much sovereignty matters to you and how much you've been, you've valued independence. And right now there there is the US dollar, there's the US credit system, or we don't even have to say the, you know, us really the credit system and Bitcoin. If you have another system that you think is better than any the those three, I'm, I'm open to hearing it, but I'm trying to use a technology that actually exists to be able to provide sovereignty, which is a, a key part of that sovereignty is the ability to store value and to be able to move value from one place to another. So what system would be better than the ones I'm proposing?

Guest [00:32:50] I think you, you go back to basically a barter system where you can, you can establish value and, and yes, I guess in a long roundabout, wait, you're, you're talking about a digital barter system is what essentially, you know, from what I'm hearing Bitcoin is, is attempting to be, I don't know, let's open it ups up

Vance Crowe [00:33:08] The question like, let's open it up to the, the people online. We got hundreds of people that were excited and interested. If you have questions, you can just comment right on here and we can throw your question up here. And I, one question we got from Eli front, what do you suggest will or should happen to USD? Well, I, do you mind if I take this one? I, no,

Guest [00:33:30] Go ahead. I've got one. I can answer that too. You, you get the first go round,

Vance Crowe [00:33:34] I mean the USD is what we call the cleanest dirty shirt out there, right there. Like when you're in the United States and you're using the US dollar, it is the hardest to see that inflation is running wild. Although now we can't, I remember when I was talking about this back in 2014, people back inflation, that's not a big deal, that's just the way it is. But now people feel and understand inflation, but if you've been living in another country, Canada would be a great example. You can tell that inflation is getting really, really bad. I don't think governments are going to give up the ability to print money. So I think it will be a very, very long time before the US dollar is somehow supplanted. But I do think a lot of other countries are going to utilize Bitcoin as a way to stabilize their currencies as a way to hold a reserve for themselves. And I, I'm not in, I want this fight between Bitcoin and whatever the government's sovereign currency to be as far in the future as possible. I want as many people to be able to get access to Bitcoin to be able to understand how to use it. I want the technology to be built out, so I am not in a hurry for, for that fight to occur. And maybe, hopefully one day it'll, it'll just be a seamless transition.

Guest [00:34:47] I, I tend to lean more towards anarchy in this realm. I think that basically you'll have a runaway hyperinflation event that will take the, the dollar somewhere near like y mar currency in Germany. I think the, the end game of it, it, there's only with fractional reserve banking, there, there is no other outcome other than, I mean, with the national debt setting where it is the only solution you have is to raise interest rates and tax people into oblivion or hyper inflate your debt away, make, make the, the 30 or 40 trillion, whatever that is essentially insignificant because now there's so much out there, you can pay it back with ease. And that's a, that's been the playbook that has been going forward. Now, I think the, to counter that, you know, the Brix nations where they are actually produc, you know, they're probably, I'm probably more aligned with that thought process of using a commodity backed currency where you have, you know, physical, tangible assets. So again, tied to reality, not tied to, you know, old, you know, mystery man's, you know, code. I think I, I'm not, I'm not debating the scarcity or even the validity of what those networks are doing currently, but I think whenever it comes down to it, you're, you're back to the argument of like, you know, the bricks currency. Whenever, whenever people say, what is this backed by? I mean the goodwill and faith of the US government, like Lord help you. If you think there's goodwill and faith of the US corrupt government, it's the most corrupt entity on earth. I mean, I mean Israel probably gives it a good run for, for number one and two for the, for the most corrupt places on earth.

Guest [00:36:21] And so by default, I don't think there's anything to do, but for, to have the dollar default at some point, and when it does, you know, all hell's gonna break loose. And then, and then you're talking about, you know, if you get into the, the weeds of this, what's gonna keep grids and networks up and stable running during an apocalyptic event, you're back to the, what's, what's physically tangible.

Vance Crowe [00:36:45] Well, I, I am not advocating that people should not have physical, tangible backup plans, whether that means physical dollars because that is the cleanest, sturdy shirt, maybe having physical gold or having something that has utility bullets, right? I'm not saying you shouldn't have those things. I am saying that if you want to be able to ride up on the wave of, of the fact that the government is going to inflate away the, the debt. And so what that means is they're gonna print as many dollars as they have to, to be able to get the money to pay down the debt that they owe. That one way to get around this and, and a key way is to buy Bitcoin because it is like land, it is a scarce asset. There are very, very few things in there. In fact, I think the best analogy, which is why I always say that farmers are the most likely to be able to understand Bitcoin is there's a finite amount of land. And that is why people go dump money into farmland when they have no intention of farming or ranching it. It's because they wanna be able to store their purchasing power to be able to hand on to future generations. Well, Bitcoin is going to allow you to do this, but it's also going to come with a whole bunch of other benefits. You get to have a scarce asset like land, but you don't have to pay property taxes, you don't have to work the land. You have, you get the opportunity to be able to store that value. And you don't have these, the trade-offs that come with farming land, which in my opinion gives land the opportunity to come back down to its utility cost or, and people being able to pay for land, what the land can produce.

Vance Crowe [00:38:19] And that will make it so more people can be involved in farming.

Guest [00:38:23] I don't think you'll see get more people involved in farming because the, the, the true wealth that's been generated in agriculture and whether anybody likes this or not, it's just the reality, the true wealth that's been generated has been by the appreciation of land. And yes, they do run on a parallel track to what you're, you're saying about Bitcoin. But I don't know, man. I think that during, during the, the, the point where you need something physical, bitcoin's gonna be essentially worthless. But that brings me to a question for you. If you, if hypothetically speaking, you just had to, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm guessing you own Bitcoin. If you don't, it's, it'd be hysterically funny. But

Vance Crowe [00:39:01] If you, if you,

Guest [00:39:02] If you do own Bitcoin and you were, you know, hypothetically somebody said, you gotta sell it today. Like what would you purchase with that? Or would you, like where, where would you park your money if you couldn't put it in Bitcoin?

Vance Crowe [00:39:14] If it wasn't in Bitcoin, it would be in land. Like absolutely, but like I don't want to own land right now. I have too many other responsibilities. I am not a farmer. And so if I were buying land and I wanted it to be able to produce something so it could cover the property taxes that go on it, I would have to then have somebody farm it and I would have to take care of it and I would be vulnerable to property tax. And so I don't want that. And so that's why I'm saying this is a very good option for people that don't wanna farm. It's a, it's a good, very good place to store long-term value.

Guest [00:39:48] See, you gave the wrong answer. The right answer was I'm not selling my Bitcoin. I'm, I'm not, I'm not, or I I would buy more Bitcoin. That's the correct answer.

Vance Crowe [00:39:59] Well, I mean, I absolutely would do, right? I I believe in Bitcoin. I know you, I wanted to throw, I'm

Guest [00:40:05] Just as, shit,

Vance Crowe [00:40:06] Adam throws out the question, what about all the talk of stable coins and the effect they will have on prolonging the US dollar?

Guest [00:40:14] Well, I mean, again, back to the why, why wouldn't the, you know, the people with, you know, at the every echelon of, of monetary society try to find something, you know, to bandaid and limp this thing along is because like you said, they're not going to go, you know, quietly into the night with, with their, you know, with their source of power and, and control. I mean that that's, that's essentially, if you want to go back and look at why United States goes and fights all these wars, it's to, it's to, well one, generate money for the, for the, you know, the warlord bureaucrats, but then also it's to, to kind of a flex on the world. Like, hey, we'll do what we want when we want because we're the United States and then therefore our money holds value. And we, the United States has done some absolutely atrocious, horrible things in the name of keeping the, the dollar, the reserve currency. I mean, you can't blame other countries if you, if you honestly take a step back and look at what the United States does to keep a handle on that, it's pretty bad. It's, it's real bad.

Vance Crowe [00:41:19] Absolutely. Which is why I love Bitcoin as freedom money to, to my opinion for Adam about stable coins is stable coins is a way for the United States to go steal what little value people have in their financial systems in other countries and bring it back to the United States. So what they're doing is they're issuing stable coins and making it possible for people to say, well, I don't want to have Egyptian lira, I'd rather have access to US dollars. Now they know that the US dollar is going down in its value over time, but it's going down a hell of a lot less fast than the Egyptian lira. So they're, they're buying stable coins to try and preserve that dollar. The US is going to use all that liquidity, they're gonna hand it to banks and they're gonna say, banks go loan this out as fast as you possibly can and try and create more money through that fractional reserve system that Jared's talking about. And they want them to do this because they would rather have them buy stable coins and bring liquidity into the US dollar than they would be to find Bitcoin. But what's funny is the biggest stable coin producer out there right now is tether. Every time they take profits, they take those profits and they dump it into Bitcoin because they know that the most stable, secure, long-term store of value is Bitcoin, not any of these currencies.

Guest [00:42:34] See, and when you talk about the United States using stablecoin to go raid the coffers of other countries, like I can't think of a more end of empire type thinking than that itself. I mean, if, if in in essence it's like, well, we're gonna win all, take all, I mean that's what got us to this point to begin with. I mean, the inflation that is baked into everyday life had had to exist to, to keep the current system afloat. But in, in kind of a, you know, and Rand type mentality, the producers, again, I'll hark back to the cattle market. Like there's a, there was a point that people who raised cattle just said, fuck it, we're not doing this anymore. And then the herd becomes decimated and now all of a sudden people are like, well, why is my hamburger $7 a pound? It's like, well this is a cause and effect relationship. So again, back to the, you know, the inflation that happens and it goes around and we're not solving anything it by, by stealing other countries. You know, we're bringing it home to put in our banks. Like I don't, it just, it's more of the same. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:43:39] And the thing that is different is a currency not issued by a government, which is Bitcoin. It is the ability to have a store of your, of your, your life's work and put it into something that's not going away. And that you control, you know, something that was said. Yeah. And that's where

Guest [00:43:56] I have a conflict of interest in that. And it is not going away. 'cause you have way more faith in, in the system than I do. I, I think I view it as that is a, a fragile, you know, anything that is dependent upon, you know, guessing lottery numbers with electricity in order to maintain its, its relevance. Like it'll, it'll go the way the do vert that's inevitable. Like it just a physical nature. Natural law will not allow something unpredicted unproductive to exist for an infinite amount of time.

Vance Crowe [00:44:27] Well, I don't know about infinite, but I can say for a very long time, I mean, if you were looking at the early descriptions of email, for example, now it's hard to remember what people thought about, you know, oh, you're gonna type into a screen and send it over and what are the, you know, these at signs and how is this gonna work and how am I gonna know if it's secure? Of course that seemed like it was going away, but digital communication is not going away. I mean, unless we have an apocalyptic experience on which we could like talk about that. But if the world were to continue in any semblance of it, of what it's doing right now, we are going to have messages sent through a protocol that allow us to communicate with one another, not being in each other's presence. And I would say Bitcoin is in that same realm.

Guest [00:45:11] Yeah, I think that's a, that's a net negative realm. Like whenever you, you move away, you know, interact, interpersonal interaction. I mean, I live in a very sparsely populated area and happy to do so. I'm fine with like not having a lot of people around. But I think that also the scarcity of that brings the, the to center. There's, there's a real value in actually interacting with humans. I think that interaction, I mean if I lived in a city packed with hundreds of thousands or millions of people, I'd probably be like, I don't want to talk to anybody. There's people everywhere. I

Vance Crowe [00:45:42] Mean, but I don't know that, I mean, how does Bitcoin prevent people from interacting with one another? I mean, actually one of the transactions I make almost on a weekly basis happens in person and it's somebody brings me some eggs and I pull out my phone and I send them a, a, a few satoshis in order to be able to pay for those eggs. And we have a great conversation and then they go where their way, and I go my way we've interacted using Bitcoin and I've exchanged a physical good for it.

Guest [00:46:10] Well that, that is the, the, the first best case scenario I've heard you make about Bitcoin. I think that the, you know, buying eggs with your Nintendo money is, is good things, but, so, okay, so that, that has to be the evolution if you if, if it's going to be viable, that, that to me is, is a more long-term solution. Is is is integration in that, in that scale. But

Vance Crowe [00:46:33] I don't see it there yet. I mean, this is who I say all the time. The, the people that will get the most value out of this is there are bitcoiners out there that have, that have stored value and they're thinking about the long term. And then there's farmers out there that are trying to produce a high quality product that is somehow differentiated from the commodity grocery store world. Those two groups of people have such aligned interest that when you introduce, Hey, I've got milk for sale. Hey, I've got a a quarter of beef for sale, the Bitcoiners will be the first to become long-term purchasers. And you're purchasing those items in a, in a currency that the, that the farmer can either put right back into their own operation or they can try and store it. But what you can't do in the, in the US system is keep your dollars in a checking account because, you know, a month from now it's gonna be worth less a year from now, it's gonna be worth even less. So Bitcoiners and producers have a lot in common and I think that they're, this is why I'm going to farm bureaus and I'm pushing this inside of agriculture because the more we can support people that are producing products that are outside of the commodity system, the better products we'll produce the, we will get access to.

Guest [00:47:42] What do you think the 95% of the population that operates in the middleman mode is gonna think about the two point a half percent getting with the two point a half percent and, and just cutting them out?

Vance Crowe [00:47:52] Well, I don't know, but I think they're gonna be pretty happy when they're able to cut out that 3% or 2.9% that the credit card companies add onto every single thing we buy. You know, one of the people in your comments when you were kind of, Hey, tell me about the problems you or the flaws you see Bitcoin, Bitcoin, somebody posted a photo of, hey, we will give you 3% off if you pay in cash than if you pay with a credit card. Well, they're doing that because the credit card company itself is charging you 2.9% on that drink with Bitcoin and, and steak and Shake has already shown this. You can use Bitcoin to purchase your meal and you don't have a 2.9% tacked onto that price or taken away from the producer. Instead it's a, you know, a fractions of a penny that is gonna go to that transaction in the form of a fee and it's going to be way less. And so the producer steak and shake the guy producing eggs, the guy selling drinks, they're getting more because they're not using the credit card system. And I think we can all agree, fuck the credit cards, let's do anything we can to cut them out.

Guest [00:48:57] Yes, usy is, is is a biblical sin in in a lot of ways. I mean that's, that's been going around since the beginning of, of of man, the, the idea that, you know, fees, transactions, I think we can all agree that's not in the best interest of any, it, it's, it's, it's from, from a producer standpoint, I guess we're just so used to, there's so many add-ons, middleman's fees on every, on every level. And now on, on the consumer side, it's not any different. Like you said, credit card fees, there's all those things that are essentially just built into the system to take advantage of it. But that is the system. That is the, that is what currently, that's the operating system for all of the world right now.

Vance Crowe [00:49:39] You know, one of the the things, so somebody was describing on your, on your list, which I thought was a great list. Those are, are I know questions. I did my work for me.

Guest [00:49:46] I didn't even, I didn't even write any of it down. I should have, it'd been much better.

Vance Crowe [00:49:49] But people say things like, well it's, it's not tangible. I can't touch it. Right. And I, I understand this really deeply 'cause it took me more than six months of like me asking my buddy, tell me again just one more time how this thing works. 'cause I can't go touch it, I can't feel it. Bitcoin like it is a bearer asset, meaning it exists everywhere on the, on the blockchain and nowhere you can't go touch it. But what proves that you own a Bitcoin is that you have a secret key, a a a private key that allows you to

Guest [00:50:22] A Marvel comic, but keep going. But

Vance Crowe [00:50:26] If we say, hey, that Bitcoin right here in a wallet and I say, I own that. Well how do you prove it? Well, I can move a tiny amount of it from me to you and that will prove that I own it. And if you can do that, you own that Bitcoin and this is the, it's certainly, it's not touching it in the way that you can physically touch it, but I would guess that most of the money that you use for your operation, you never physically touch, you never actually see it's just ones and zeros being handled by a bank and by a middleman and by a, you know, whoever it is that you're buying or selling from. And this way Bitcoin jumps over all of those and it allows you to own it completely. And, and, and it's, it's so much faster. You know, like people talk about Bitcoin takes so long, it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to occur. What most people don't realize is when you spend money with your credit card, it takes 90 days for that thing to clear. Bitcoin is, Hey, I've, I've received some good, I'm gonna send you money, it's gonna clear. Which means you don't have all these metal men that are holding onto your money for as long as they can so they can earn interest on it and they make even more money off of you.

Guest [00:51:37] Somebody needs to explain you float, float on an operating note. Maybe you don't want that money going out right then. I mean, it works both ways.

Vance Crowe [00:51:46] Fair enough.

Guest [00:51:47] The, the lag that's in the system isn't necessarily from, from a, from the standpoint of if you're consuming and, and paying that out. I mean, hey again, because of the way the game is stacked and the way it is, like it influences decisions on a mass scale. I mean if you look back to the original point of what you were saying about fiat currency and you know, the wizards on the mountain with waving their interest rate wand. I mean, it is almost comical when you really stop, when you step back in a big enough picture frame. And you look at it like that, we as society have allowed the dictators to essentially, you know, monetize our attention and, and patterns. I mean, that, that's, that's, they, they control us by, oh, we're gonna raise interest rates or we're gonna cut them. Like, Hey, give the plebs a little more free money so that they'll go spend it. You know, it's, it's like lowering the cost of a video game gallery. Like, Hey, the games are only 10 cents instead of a quarter, so everybody come in and play Now. I mean it, but again, it's just, it's, I don't know. I think at the end of the day, it's just kind of a sad, sad reality we all live in,

Vance Crowe [00:52:56] But that's what I'm saying. We don't have to live in that reality. That is the beauty of Bitcoin. It is that for the first time in human history, these wizards have their power sucked out from underneath them. And I don't really understand how, how it's going to play out, right? Like it's, there's, you know, at first they were laughing and then they rejected it and they were saying no. And now they're saying kind of, but I think the reason that they're saying kind of is because they have come to the full realization that the governments themselves need to have Bitcoin because it will become the standard protocol of storing value and sending it all over the world. And the benefit of this is even if they have millions upon millions of Bitcoin, they still don't control it. It's controlled by plebs like you and me who run nodes and have the software and choose what, what kind of Bitcoin do we run? What kind of rules do we have? And because of that, nobody can hijack it.

Guest [00:53:56] I guess we'll find out. I, I think my

Vance Crowe [00:54:00] Point, and I, I've kept you longer than five, but we started late. That's if you're okay.

Guest [00:54:04] No, I'm, I'm good. I'm, I'm good. Go

Vance Crowe [00:54:06] Ahead. I am, I, the reason that I come out and, and poke on you about this, and it's okay if you don't end up going out and buying Bitcoin is because a lot of people listen to you. And I believe that you have a tremendous amount of influence on people to, to dismiss Bitcoin. And the most important thing is if you wanna dismiss it, you first have to understand it and,

Guest [00:54:29] And being able to Yeah, I agree. I think, I think that's a fair statement. I think that it's, it is, it, it's something that I stand back and watch from afar, but it, it's, it's more of a, as an outsider looking in, I'm interested in the human interaction and the, and the, the evolution of something like this. Because at my core, I don't see the inherent value in, in further dig digitalization. I'm gonna butcher that word, you know, like further pushing ourselves into the realm of that. And I'm not saying everybody has to go be Amish,

Vance Crowe [00:55:04] But what is the al what is the alternative, right? Like, like bartering, like I understand, yeah, you can do that in no man's land, but yes.

Guest [00:55:12] Yes. I think, I think fine. A bartering system, I mean, in its purest form. You, you discover what, what, what a value of something is. I mean, yes, money is the money is the exchange that's used as the current, you know, method or means to, to transact. And, but,

Vance Crowe [00:55:34] But here's the problem, right? Right now we're using a service called Streamy Yard, right? And I have to pay Streamy Yard to be able to use their service. What am I going to offer them that, that meets their needs, right? Is it, do they need beef right now? Or do they need new culligan water filter? Do they need gasoline in their car? Like bartering in this economy? Unless we go back to tribal societies, it, it just, it can't work. It's, it's not functional.

Guest [00:56:02] And that, that in that, in in its in and of itself is the problem. It, because I think that, I think that the, the evolution of society into this digital age of ease has done nothing but kind of remove humanity from itself. I mean, I, and again, this, that's kind of where, at my core belief, I think that, you know, finding a more efficient way to, to dehumanize everything isn't, isn't in our best interest. And I'm not saying that it's not going to happen by any, I mean, obviously the, the pattern in history will say that that's, that is the path of, of evolution. That is a path of progress. I mean, it is completely in that direction. I mean, there's a lot of times, I mean, as a farmer rancher, it feels a little bit like Jedi and the Star Wars. It's just like an old religion that, that people, you know, we hang onto and, and the, you know, the sacred ways and knowledge that, that isn't useful until it might actually be needed. I mean, it, that's, that's what it feels like. And, and as I stand there and watch it, the rest of the world evolve into this, you know, hyper, hyper digitalized, hyper connected place. You know, it's, it's odd from my standpoint, I guess is what I'm proud to say.

Vance Crowe [00:57:20] I have known you for a long time and know how much you value, you know, in person shaking hands, being with your family. Like, I, I understand that this becomes, you know, something that takes you further away from that. And so it doesn't feel good. My my point is, I, I am involved in the banking system, right? I've gotten to see it from both the farm credit system, but also community banking. And I think that there are a lot of young people that are being told that the way that they should pursue their dream is by taking on debt. And that debt happens because of the way that our financial system is set up right there. The system is set up that we are gonna continue to print money so that the government can keep paying their bills. And they don't have to tax people directly. They're just gonna steal it from their

Guest [00:58:11] Money. Bank accounts money, money is, money is debt. The only way to create new money is to create new debt, which again, that's a fractional reserve. I mean, that's, that's, I mean, we're standing on the shoreline watching the Titanic take on water and everybody's like, Hmm, well it looks like it's not gonna end well.

Vance Crowe [00:58:25] And the life raft for people, I believe is Bitcoin, but they shouldn't take my word for it. What they should do is go to an exchange and buy a small amount, and then take that money that they've bought on an exchange and move it to a wallet. And once you've done that, now all of a sudden you will have a tangible, actual understandable experience. And then if you're like, nah, this is stupid, this is tulips, this, there's nothing here, then fine. But I sense that everyone that I've ever worked with that's ever done that has been like, whoa, this was not what I thought it was one and two, it's not as scary as I thought it was. And I remember, I, I think everyone that gets into Bitcoin, my buddy Jay says this, everyone needs somebody to go with them and be like, Hey, if something goes wrong, I'll sit at the computer or I'll get on a phone call and I will help you. But when you don't have that, then it's like, I don't know, how am I gonna use this computer shit? This just code. What, how don't I understand it?

Guest [00:59:24] So

Vance Crowe [00:59:24] You gotta find somebody that can help you walk through it. And this is the life raft from the Titanic that is our fiat system. And I'm offering to be that buddy for anyone that wants it, because I feel like it is the most important technology of our lifetime. It will free us from onerous governments. It will free us from them stealing from us.

Guest [00:59:46] I, I think you have to, I think your person has to free themselves from themselves being in that system. I, I don't have an a TMI don't have, I don't have a debit card. I don't use Apple Pay. I pretty much am I, I am in the stone ages of the electronic transactions. I still write physical checks to pay bills. I might have a few that go off of like bank drafts or whatever. But to this, to the sense that, I guess the freedom that I hear you alluding to, I don't see as freedom. I see it, I see it a furtherance of, of being within, within the system that, that the system is evolving beyond, you know, mild thoughts, wishes or, or dreams. You know, it's, it's going in the way of, of extinction, of the individual individuality of, you know, in favor of the decentralized nodes. I mean, there's something to be said about like, in, okay, when you talk about somebody might have influence or something like that. I think that part of what, and I have no rhyme or reason why people listen to me or any of that shit, but I think some of it has to do with being an individual. And I think that individual and authenticity, if you wanna know the, the next giant currency, I think that's it in itself is, is just being outside of the system. And you talk about a scarcity mindset. Try to find someone that isn't, you know, in, in the Instagram filter world. I mean, because that, that is the modern society, people that are exist outside of that.

Guest [01:01:20] And again, not, I think there runs parallels into all of this technology. You know, even within that technology you can find individualism. And I think that, you know, I, I, that's just my core beliefs. I don't know that, that any amount of convenience could convince me otherwise. And I'm not even saying I'm right, I just feel that's just, but I'm right.

Vance Crowe [01:01:43] You know, I mean, people listen to you 'cause you have your own compass. And that is really important in this world of people that are always saying something, finding out what people think, and then changing directions. That's not you. Right? Like you have a compass inside of yourself and you use it to guide yourself. And I think you often use X as a way of exploring your own thoughts and

Guest [01:02:08] Know ling people up. That's, you nailed it. What's funny is, is it's basically just a stream of, of thoughts. I've never view, I've never viewed Twitter x or anything as a, Hey, let's see how many followers we can get. I mean, it's just basically like, Hey, this pops in my head. And, and what I find most humorous about it is that society has allowed me to go out there and post my thoughts, and then they absorb them into their head without any, you know, any kind of a guard against that. Because I'm, I'm doing it a lot of times out of, out of mischievous fun. But there is some serious thought there too. But in that same vein, that's how propaganda works. That's how, that's how nefarious people convince everyone to go out and buy this fake, fake cryptocurrency, is they, they can, they convince everyone it's good. And I'm not, well, I'm, I'm not, I'm not saying that in, in a real sense. I'm saying that like the methodology to con to get people on board of something is, it's very similar. There's no filter there.

Vance Crowe [01:03:05] You're exactly right. There was somebody that just came in here and said, thoughts on Tara Node. I, I don't know what Tara Node is, but there's all these other things out there like Ripple and Ethereum and, and Solana and, and, and Bitcoiners, the people that actually understand how Bitcoin works refer to everything that's not Bitcoin as a shit coin. And that is because there's a CEO and a group of people that got together and they're like, you know what we should do? We should create a new currency. We're gonna give ourselves a bunch of that currency, and then we're gonna issue it to other people, and then we're gonna hire a bunch of beautiful women to go out and pump it up. We're gonna get people on X to talk about it. We're gonna pump it all the way up, and then we're gonna dump it. And they're doing this, and they're convincing people like, well, I can't make money in Bitcoin because it's already gone up so much, so I'm gonna try these other ones. And then those people get rugged and then they think, well, I'm not going to learn anything. Cryptocurrency is garbage. And so the signal in my world is people differentiate. If you say cryptocurrency, you're like very suspicious. Like, what are you trying to pull on me? If you say Bitcoin, you know that guy getting you to know more about Bitcoin or to sell you Bitcoin, the marginal difference that you as an individual are gonna make on the price of that Bitcoin is virtually nothing. He does not benefit from teaching you about that. Bitcoin is substantially and materially different than these other coins. And anytime somebody starts talking to you about those coins, you should look at 'em with the, the stank eye, the the, you know, get, get your shit coin outta here.

Guest [01:04:36] Are you saying that my hop to a coin is not, is not going

Vance Crowe [01:04:39] To play

Guest [01:04:40] Out well in my favor?

Vance Crowe [01:04:42] It might, it might bump real fast, but then it's not gonna stick around for very long.

Guest [01:04:47] No, there, and that is, that's the nature of humanity. Like, okay, if, if, if, you know, Bitcoin is the Jesus Christ of cryptocurrencies, it's the, it's og and everybody, everybody else is just, you know, false prophets. If that's what's happening, that's humanity at its finest. Like, hey, let, let's, let's latch onto this, become a parasite, create fear of missing out. And yeah, I mean, I I, I can't even remember the name of it. I think it was the guy, there's this guy on Twitter, he created a coin called Zap Cat. And it was, he was completely upfront. He's like, Hey, this is, this is completely a joke. I'm just gonna throw this out there. And I just follow along because I think it's hysterical, you know, like, Hey, go buy Zap Cat. And it's, you know, there'll be a picture of a cat biting an electrical cord and, and it's, but it's plain on the, on the, the entire farce itself. It's, I mean, it's, it's like mad magazine. You're, I'm, I, again, I relate to that. 'cause I feel like that's kind of a lot of this, you know, and maybe Bitcoin gets caught, caught in the wash of that, you know? And that is funny. Oh, it definitely, it definitely

Vance Crowe [01:05:52] Is. Like, and there are all these groups out there, like when people see these exchanges go down where this like, Sam Bankman freed is like, oh, he was clearly a thief, right? Yeah.

Guest [01:06:03] And people were like, no, he was, he was a fraud and, and part of the, part of the problem. But so, so you're saying the crypto nerds have their own society and they fling it at each other and, and like there's, there's internal wars amongst the crypto people about all this.

Vance Crowe [01:06:17] Yeah. Oh yeah. Man in, in my tribe of Bitcoin and then the wider circle of cryptocurrency, people are always coming along with being like, well, we could make it go faster, or we could, you know, write these contracts. We could do blah, blah, blah. And all of that is like, Hey, quit fucking around. The only one that matters is Bitcoin, because this mining that we're wasting all this electricity. What that is, is proof of work. You actually have to generate energy, you have to dedicate computers, you have to put in the time and energy in order to be able to get these Bitcoin. All the other

Guest [01:06:50] Ones are to, to produce something.

Vance Crowe [01:06:52] Well, to actually to be there every approximately 10 minutes. When it's there, the, the thing you're producing is security. The, that's the production that you're getting through the action of guessing all the rest of these coins, they have things like proof of stake and, and other nonsense garbage. And there's a CEO sitting there that says, oh, that transaction that went between Jared and Vance, I didn't like it. I'm gonna reverse it. Because they have the ability to change the code. There's a group of people that can change it. There's a group of people deciding who gets what coins and how many do we get? And let's go get a marketing department and advertising group. Bitcoin doesn't have any of that. Bitcoin is a protocol that transcends all of that.

Guest [01:07:33] So what do you, what do you think the re how do I say this? What do you think the probability is that Bitcoin gets taken down by all of its Bitcoin friends? Not, not take, when I say taken down, but disregarded by society. Because guys like myself, I see exactly what you're saying. There's just like, it's, it's gypsies left and right and carnies are just lining up to say, Hey, come over here to my booth. Get my coin.

Vance Crowe [01:07:56] That is 100%. One of the biggest risks to Bitcoin is that people finally say, you know what? I'm finally gonna do this. I've been hearing about crypto for five years and Bitcoin is really expensive. And they think I have, in order to buy Bitcoin, I have to buy a whole Bitcoin, which is 111,000. But really one Bitcoin is a hundred million tiny bits. They call 'em Satoshis, but just tiny bits. So you could buy any amount of it. You could buy $5 a Bitcoin, you buy 25 cents a Bitcoin. But then the, somebody else comes along and be like, you know what you should do? You should buy Ethereum 'cause it's a lot cheaper and it's gonna go way up and we're gonna make a bunch of money. So then people get this like, oh, I wanna make money, I wanna make those big returns. They don't understand the fundamentals. Nobody's ever actually shown them how any of this works. So they get bit by it. And once you get bit by it, then you're gonna go tell everyone, you know, fuck those guys. They stole from me. They, I bought this thing and it went down. And they can't differentiate between crypto, which is the wide circle, and Bitcoin, which is the tiny, you know, center of that bullseye.

Guest [01:08:59] It reminds me a lot of over the counter penny stocks from back in the late nineties, early two thousands. Like, you know, there used to be whole entire market letters. And, and, and it was more my parents' generation. They, they would get, like, they'd be like, no, you get to this website and it would be like bull rush.com, you know, and it was the, they'd got the inside skinny and they'd go buy this penny stock and make 300% and, you know, get washed out after, you know, that was like the, the original rug pull. So the human behavior hasn't changed. We've just found a new, a new, a new method to extract that.

Vance Crowe [01:09:33] Absolutely. And anytime you hear people talking about crypto or even really trying to pump up, like, the reason you should buy this is because it's gonna make a bunch of money. I believe that Bitcoin will go up. I think it's gonna go up a lot because I think that as we print more money, that value is going to go into Bitcoin. But the real thing is, even if it doesn't, even if it just stays right at inflation, you know, let's say 2% or 11% or whatever that is, at least you've stored your value. If you keep that in your savings account, you're not gonna make enough on interest to overcome the inflation rate.

Guest [01:10:09] And

Vance Crowe [01:10:09] So it, it's like giving us the thing that, you know, who tells their kids these days? You should go open a savings account. Nobody, nobody. Because your kids opening a savings account. You're just telling 'em to burn their money.

Guest [01:10:21] We pay our, put it in CDs. 'cause they give you such a great rate.

Vance Crowe [01:10:26] Yeah, right.

Guest [01:10:27] But well, I do share a similar philosophy. You believe that Bitcoin's going up for all those reasons in, in, in the physical realm. I mean, I, that's my entire life. I've, I've raised cattle, I've produced things that society has basically deemed worthless. But I'm holding out, you know, my, my grade deter, look, hyperinflation may crush, 99% of the people you talk about, like an amazing, you know, great windfall for people that produce things or people that hold assets. I mean, I'm the 1% that are gonna be standing there going, yep. You know, look at land. I mean, you're, you're kind of equating Bitcoin to that and you know, fair enough. But I'm of the similar mindset of, you know, know I'm, I'm stationed for battle. Like when all hell goes loose, well, okay, but can't say nobody told you. And you know, you were in

Vance Crowe [01:11:22] The same thing. You mentioned the Weymar Republic in our, in our first one, and I read about the Weymar Republic, I read this book called When Money Dies. And it was like when the government, like they needed, they needed to be able to pay their debt. So they started printing all this money, and it was,

Guest [01:11:36] Which is what I

Vance Crowe [01:11:36] Think is gonna

Guest [01:11:37] Happen. It was so,

Vance Crowe [01:11:38] It was so bloodcurdling, you know, stomach churning to see what happens when people's life, blood, all of the things that they worked for that was stored in, you know, the Deutsche Mark or whatever it was in Germany at the time, and it was just stolen from them. It was totally ripped out of their hands. And then, you know, you had upstanding people turning to prostitution to selling everything. Only fans they had. Yeah, I mean, I, I think that is actually what's going on. And big Bitcoin

Guest [01:12:08] No, I is a

Vance Crowe [01:12:09] Way out of that.

Guest [01:12:10] I think that the American public is tapped. I think people are, I think they're, I think most of the population is tapped. I think they're tapped, they're broke. Yeah, no, there's a rise in, in, in black markets and in only fan, I mean all these things that, that, again, end of empire type stuff. And I can't help but equate, you know, America to Rome breads and circuses, man, just keep that, keep that circus going for as long as we can keep 'em fighting. Because if everybody just took a moment and stopped and, you know, step back from everything they had going on and just just looked at it for what it is, it is an insane asylum that, that America has become. And I'm not saying that any other countries are better. I mean, God help you if you live in Britain right now. Like they, we would be, we would be behind so many bars for saying the shit that we're saying right now. I mean, I hope somebody in Britain gets to watch this so they can at least, you know, realize there's places on this planet that you can still tell the government to go fuck themselves. Because

Vance Crowe [01:13:11] That's like,

Guest [01:13:12] That's, that's the, that is the, the inherent reason for the First Amendment and the second Amendment exists to make sure that anybody fucks with you on the first one. You have a recourse for it. And, and, and, and also to guard against tyranny. And back to my original point of like Bitcoin not being a, a, a harbinger of, of liberty. I do think that that a certain amount of like, you know, letting off steam by, by giving people an outlet to go somewhere other with their currency or with their value, like it kind of takes, you have to be broken as a society. Like before something changes, it has, you know, something has to be sacrificed and I'm afraid to say, but like, people have to get to the point where they just don't give a fuck. And I, I don't think we're far, but I mean, I don't think that's a net positive for society as a whole, but in the end it has to be broken in order to be repaired and fixed, right?

Vance Crowe [01:14:07] So about 11 years ago is when I got into Bitcoin and I remember having like, the realization of where I thought this was going and at the time to tell people this was like being a Cassandra, where everybody would be like, you're totally insane. What's, what's inflation? This is not a problem. You know, your internet money, I mean, people used to draw funny memes. Like I've, I've been laughed at about this for a long time.

Guest [01:14:31] I'm still there,

Vance Crowe [01:14:32] But I actually had a good talk with my buddy and my buddy Rob, and we, we had an in-depth discussion about, you know, someday it's going to be dangerous for people to know that you have Bitcoin. And I had to look at, at that and say, well, do I want to talk about this? Or should I just buy it and, and be quiet about it? And I came to the conclusion that if I actually thought that this was valuable, that if I kept it to myself, then I would be fine. But many, many, many other people would be left behind. And that is not the economy that I want to be in. I I do not want their, you know, to, to sit on the, on the, the pie, you know, sit on the castle of ashes. So what I want is my employees, my friends, everyone in my family, everyone that I'm connected with to get in as like when they can with what they can. And I know I've been taking a risk. Adam Jones used to always gimme shit. Like, what happens if it goes to zero? I recognize I could be telling people something and maybe it doesn't work out. But the reverse is also true. If you don't tell people, Hey, this is a way out and let me help you do it, then they won't be there. When, when things go bad and there's this hyper, hyper, you know, inflation, it will be only the people that had assets, only people that could afford stocks, only people that had land and these physical assets. So to me it was like I'm making a conscious choice to make myself public that I, that I am into Bitcoin and trying to help other people because I think it makes the world better.

Guest [01:16:07] I agree 1000% with your sentiment, I would just replace Bitcoin with agriculture production and independence. I think that very much from the same vein of sentiment. I think that, again, when I talk about the hyper digitalization, the, the, you know, the, the kind of disconnect that's in society from my viewpoint and my life experience is that there is a better way, and I feel very much the same way you do. Like I, I'm, you know, I'm pretty public about my thoughts about things and yeah, that's in, in, and again, within the same context, you know, do I want everybody know that, hey, we raise cattle and you know, in the apocalypse, well we know where this guy is and we know there's probably something running around. We've got an AR 15, let's go, let's go hunt some Angus. I mean, you know, that's a reality too. But I too believe that there is a, a better way of existing in my own opinion. You know, everybody's got, and I be known. I don't

Vance Crowe [01:17:09] Totally agree that you, do you think that the challenge is what we talked about before, if people want to, if they are not already in agriculture, then the only way in is to take on debt in order to get in. And this is, or,

Guest [01:17:20] Or you, you know, nothing comes free risk is with everything. So to your point, maybe some guy that, that stepped out there and, and you know, big balls McGee bought him a hundred Bitcoin, well guess what? He can get into agriculture right now today,

Vance Crowe [01:17:34] You

Guest [01:17:34] Know, there, it, there is no reward in life that you will get risk free. And I do, I do feel like there's a little bit of that sold. I'm not saying you're selling that, but you know, the cryptocurrency is kind of like the, the modern day Powerball lottery of, of existence. Like, man, if I could pick the right crypto then I can get there. Or you know, what

Vance Crowe [01:17:53] You, what you get with Bitcoin is the sacrifice that you're making is you're not spending it today and you're not spending it tomorrow and you're not spending it the next day. You are holding it for as long as you can. So that, that way it's, it, you're not, you're not using, its buying potential today. And I have endured major drawdowns, you know, where pe everyone was laughing at me, my family members, everybody. And you know, if you hang on long enough the, the over the last 15 years it's been showing to go up into the right,

Guest [01:18:24] You basically have just described my entire corn marketing plan. Well, and I wish I was joking, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of truth right in that you, you know, if you believe in something that has, that it has value that isn't seen or is being exploited, you, you, you will hold onto it. So I do, here's the thing. I know that you're coming from, from a genuine place and I, and I feel like, you know, I am too and I don't want anybody to think I'm telling them not to go buy Bitcoin, you know, as much as anything, part of freedom is, is people have the freedom to be wrong. You know, whether or not wrong or right, you know, it doesn't matter what I think it's irrelevant honestly. And, and in, in any individual's lives, it is, it is what personal choices you're going to make, what risk you're going to take on. And the rewards are going to be the rewards and the risk will go hand in hand. Yeah. I mean, if you're not willing to go do something a little bit risky, well you're, you're just fine. Not, not going anywhere with it.

Vance Crowe [01:19:25] Well, Jared, as you and I both know, family is the most important thing and I do not want to give up dinner with my family to talk with some crazy cowboy down in Oklahoma. So I am going to, to sign off, but before I do any last thoughts or comments about Bitcoin or, or where things are heading?

Guest [01:19:46] No, I'm, I'm there with you in spirit guys. I, I think that, you know, your idea and philosophy is, is all there. The, the part of me that just, just doesn't, I just can't get on board with, with the maybe the semantics of it, but, but hey, you know, ho go at it.

Vance Crowe [01:20:05] Well man, I really appreciate this. I know, you know, you, you were willing to come on and, and chat with me about the subject that I'm always ramped up to talk about. I, I have true admiration and respect for you and I am so, so glad you were willing to come on, man.

Guest [01:20:20] Yeah. Well, hey, thanks for having me on and, and have a good evening with your family and I hope everybody enjoyed it. If they didn't, well it's not my fault.

Vance Crowe [01:20:31] Alright, that is gonna do it for our show today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Sorry about the technical difficulties at the beginning. I am going to sign off with two quick notes. At the end of the, of my, our ex post. I'm going to post a referral code to river.com River is where I purchase my Bitcoin. It's a great exchange they have, it's a very simple exchange and that's where you can buy your first Bitcoin. And if you do, then you support the show and that helps me out and, and the ag tribes report. I'm also going to play a video that my team put together about a talk that I've been delivering to conferences, farm bureaus, co-ops, ag groups of all sorts about, about new ideas and about how to explore new ideas. So as we go out, that's gonna be a little bit of a note on that keynote. If you are interested in learning more about me giving a keynote, you can go to vance crow.com Alright. We'll be back next week with a conversation about what's going on in the culture of agriculture. As always, feel free to disagree. The ideas that people resist the most are the ones that make them say, if that's true, I'm gonna have to change. Change arrives as a wave. It can leave you behind or crush you in its wake, but at the edge of every wave is the energy to propel you into the future, the edge of chaos. The people who survive are not those who repeat success, but who transform chaos into innovation.

Vance Crowe [01:22:05] This talk gives audiences ways to test their openness to new ideas, encounter novel concepts, and seize the moment when the future becomes the present.