Lead-Lag Live

Jeff Booth on Technology-Driven Deflation, Bitcoin's Role in Global Markets, and Future Financial Systems

July 30, 2024 Michael A. Gayed, CFA
Jeff Booth on Technology-Driven Deflation, Bitcoin's Role in Global Markets, and Future Financial Systems
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Lead-Lag Live
Jeff Booth on Technology-Driven Deflation, Bitcoin's Role in Global Markets, and Future Financial Systems
Jul 30, 2024
Michael A. Gayed, CFA

What if the key to a more prosperous future lies in embracing deflation rather than fearing it? Join us as we sit down with Jeff Booth, technology entrepreneur and acclaimed author of "The Price of Tomorrow," to unravel the deflationary nature of technology and the transformative power of decentralized systems like Bitcoin and Nostr. Jeff provides a compelling argument for viewing Bitcoin as a protocol that offers a secure, decentralized alternative to our traditional, inflationary monetary systems. You'll gain a deeper understanding of how Nostr, a communication layer built on the Bitcoin protocol, ensures freedom of speech by preventing any central authority from controlling or limiting your audience.

We dissect the real estate and stock markets through the lens of Bitcoin, revealing how properties that seem to appreciate in fiat terms are actually losing value against Bitcoin. This eye-opening perspective highlights the inefficiency of traditional investments and underscores why Bitcoin-based companies might yield superior returns. Delve into the potential centralization threats posed by Bitcoin's layer two solutions and grapple with the challenges of setting price targets for this revolutionary asset. Discover how Bitcoin has the potential to reshape market dynamics and human freedom on a global scale, offering more efficient and equitable financial systems.

In our final chapter, we explore the staggering global debt and assets figures, discussing the insolvency of current systems and the potential for Bitcoin to reprice these assets fundamentally. We also touch upon the political ramifications of Bitcoin, noting the increasing engagement of politicians with the Bitcoin community to secure votes. As we wrap up, we entertain the idea of Jeff Booth for president and emphasize the importance of following him on platforms like Nostr and X. Don't miss out on Jeff's insightful book, "The Price of Tomorrow," and join us in expressing our gratitude to the audience for their continued support.

The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.

 Sign up to The Lead-Lag Report on Substack and get 30% off the annual subscription today by visiting http://theleadlag.report/leadlaglive.


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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

What if the key to a more prosperous future lies in embracing deflation rather than fearing it? Join us as we sit down with Jeff Booth, technology entrepreneur and acclaimed author of "The Price of Tomorrow," to unravel the deflationary nature of technology and the transformative power of decentralized systems like Bitcoin and Nostr. Jeff provides a compelling argument for viewing Bitcoin as a protocol that offers a secure, decentralized alternative to our traditional, inflationary monetary systems. You'll gain a deeper understanding of how Nostr, a communication layer built on the Bitcoin protocol, ensures freedom of speech by preventing any central authority from controlling or limiting your audience.

We dissect the real estate and stock markets through the lens of Bitcoin, revealing how properties that seem to appreciate in fiat terms are actually losing value against Bitcoin. This eye-opening perspective highlights the inefficiency of traditional investments and underscores why Bitcoin-based companies might yield superior returns. Delve into the potential centralization threats posed by Bitcoin's layer two solutions and grapple with the challenges of setting price targets for this revolutionary asset. Discover how Bitcoin has the potential to reshape market dynamics and human freedom on a global scale, offering more efficient and equitable financial systems.

In our final chapter, we explore the staggering global debt and assets figures, discussing the insolvency of current systems and the potential for Bitcoin to reprice these assets fundamentally. We also touch upon the political ramifications of Bitcoin, noting the increasing engagement of politicians with the Bitcoin community to secure votes. As we wrap up, we entertain the idea of Jeff Booth for president and emphasize the importance of following him on platforms like Nostr and X. Don't miss out on Jeff's insightful book, "The Price of Tomorrow," and join us in expressing our gratitude to the audience for their continued support.

The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.

 Sign up to The Lead-Lag Report on Substack and get 30% off the annual subscription today by visiting http://theleadlag.report/leadlaglive.


Support the show

Speaker 1:

My name is Michael Dyett, publisher of the Lead Lag Report. Joining me for the roughly 40-minute time period is Mr Jeff Booth, who I know a lot of people are familiar with and who a lot of people may not be aware is now on Nostr, which I don't know all that much about. I have some rough idea. But, Jeff, for those who don't know about you and have no idea what Nostr is, introduce yourself and why in the world you decided to just pivot to that platform.

Speaker 2:

First, I'm a technology entrepreneur that saw the transition of systems between. First, I'd say, technology was deflationary. The natural state of the free market is deflationary and that meant everything that was working against that was not a free market, it was a control system. I wrote extensively about that in my book the Price of Tomorrow. I wrote extensively about that in my book the Price of Tomorrow and then found and through that process, really investigated Bitcoin at first principles to understand that it was a transition.

Speaker 2:

It was solving that incongruency through a different system change and most people couldn't see it but became quite active in Bitcoin and then started to see Bitcoin as protocol and Nostr is just an extension, another layer of that protocol of communications on top of the decentralized and secure network. And what that means, and Nostr specifically, is nobody can turn you off. You own your audience forever because it's at the protocol level. If you want to get, clients are competing for you instead of capturing your attention. So you're building audiences on their platforms. They're competing for you. And that means if you want to move to a different client let's say, if X was on Nostr, if you wanted to move to X and X started limiting your views on Nostr, you could just switch to be able to say what you want in a free market, in somebody that doesn't have centralized control over you.

Speaker 2:

Better to trust decentralization than Elon Musk is what I'm hearing from you, yeah, and whether you like Elon Musk, dislike Elon Musk, you just have a different leader that tells you what to do, and all of the algorithms are reinforced, and it's amazing to me watching how many people are convinced that their guy or their girl is the one that's going to save them. And it's just a different flavor of a different leader, which is a natural function of a distorted market, centralizing through manipulated money.

Speaker 1:

So, speaking about centralization, I put a piece out on the lead lag, where we're talking about CrowdStrike. Crowdstrike took place because it was a reminder of the power of decentralization and the vulnerabilities to the system when you have a bug that brings down entire airplanes in terms of even being able to fly. I'm curious, just to get your reaction or thoughts to that moment in time, if that was sort of maybe a catalyst or light bulb moment for those that have been on the sidelines when it comes to bitcoin, saying you know what, there's something to decentralization and this distributed ledger after all you know, and, and I I don't know, everybody's journey into bitcoin is different.

Speaker 2:

Um, and, and I would I tend to look at it as layers of understanding and a lot of through those layers, you some people see it as a cryptocurrency rather than a protocol, and then, if you saw it as a cryptocurrency or a new technology rather than a protocol, it would make perfect sense to be able to oh, which other, which new technology to that is going to beat that? And you'd invest in solana and ethereum, and you'd be, and you'd be oh, can you be talking cryptocurrency? When you see it as a protocol that's bounded by energy and is uncompromising, and it's decentralizing in security, then all of the people measuring the world through a piece of paper that's being manipulated, so prices go up. That makes sense too, and so I would say, if you really understand this, you don't measure Bitcoin in price of fiat, because that's just an abstract concept, so your prices don't go. Bitcoin price isn't going up. It's the free market and it's in a form that we've never seen as humans before. It's decentralized and secure, and that means all things are falling in price against Bitcoin and they will forever, as long as it stays decentralized and secure and I have nobody debate me or truly debate me on.

Speaker 2:

Is the free market deflationary? Because it is. We create value for each other and the output of that value because we're competing against things that came before. We use the things that give us more value. In fact, why you're using Restream right now and can touch millions of people where you couldn't before is because it gives you more value than what came before, and so we're part of the equation that the output is to more deflation. And when you have technology that's exploding and giving us more tools to create more automation and more efficiency, then that productivity is faster deflation.

Speaker 2:

So, remember, most people are measuring the world through an inflationary monetary system, thinking prices are going up, whereas if you're on a protocol that's bounded by energy that cannot be centralized, then all prices are falling relative to that protocol. And it doesn't care. It doesn't care If you want to measure. It doesn't care about Trump, it doesn't care about Biden, it doesn't care about Harris, it doesn't care about Trump, it doesn't care about Biden, it doesn't care about Harris, it doesn't care about how many pieces of paper the central bank prints tomorrow. It just doesn't care. It's measuring the truth in the world because it's bounded by energy and it's decentralized.

Speaker 1:

All right, so let's play with that, because I think the I'm with you. Tech because deflationary. The complication is that certain types of tech look like they're going to be extraordinarily energy intensive. I'm speaking more towards AI. We can debate the Bitcoin, electricity, energy usage for tomorrow, but how do you think about sort of the link between technology and demand for energy to actually run that? Because energy is directly tied to inflation expectations.

Speaker 2:

So let's connect it all together, right? So, before you just leave me on the screen because I want to talk this through. It's so critical we have an abundant. We have abundance of energy on the planet to today. Um, we have the capital cost to get energy, and the centralization of energy is what caught, what creates the cost of energy. And so if you just simply said, do we have? So we use more energy and we and entrepreneurs find more creative ways to extract more energy, right, that's the process of energy and energy equals life. So we use more energy and entrepreneurs find more creative ways to extract more energy. That's the process of energy and energy equals life. So we have an abundance of energy hitting this planet every day that we don't harness very well and through all human growth, we've always been kind of short energy and we find more energy uses. Human world. We've always been kind of short energy and we find more energy uses.

Speaker 2:

Now let's take Bitcoin for an example, as an example of what most people would say about Bitcoin is from the system and they would say Bitcoin consumes energy and that's bad for the planet. That's insane from a system that has to grow forever on a finite planet by creating more pieces of paper. So, in other words, we're all mice on wheels going faster and faster because somebody can distort our time by printing more pieces of paper to artificially grow forever, and the output of that growth is actually centralization, because you're stealing the productivity from billions of people that should flow to them to centralize it up. Now, let's say look at Bitcoin as a free market actor solving that problem, instead of saying energy, because alone this new system is so complicated and people don't understand energy very well either.

Speaker 2:

Let's say bread and Michael, you own a bakery and tomorrow I come into the bakery and every day you throw out what you can't use at the end of the day throw it, don't sell at the end of the day. And tomorrow I come in and I say isn't, michael, I'm going to, uh, I'm going to buy everything that you can't uh, uh, can't sell. I just want a discount for it. So I'll buy your excess bread and I show up and I buy it the next day. You produce two times, I show up and I buy it the next day. You produce 10 times, I show up and I buy it the next day. You buy a whole bunch more equipment and ovens and bread makers and you hire more people to make 100 times more bread. I show up and I buy it.

Speaker 2:

Now insert, and so you create an abundance of bread. Now insert energy for uh, for, for bread, and you create energy abundance by having a buyer all of the time, 24, seven, that's. That is unencumbered by what are the all the centralization, abundant energy. And you're creating abundant energy through Bitcoin. By the way, I'm on the board of Core Scientific and what they're doing is then they're taking that energy, that they create abundant energy, and then they're selling it to higher bidders in AI and compute and even, if you forget, higher bidders in AI and compute, and even higher bidders and AI and compute if you just said Bitcoin couldn't operate, couldn't pay as much as you would use for turning on your and then they're selling it to higher forms of energy or other people who need more energy and they're taking those Bitcoin miners and they're doing it again and again. So it's decentralizing energy as well.

Speaker 2:

And a bigger, bigger idea of the whole thing is it forces the free market, forces the free market, prices of energy and everything else on top of that to the marginal cost of production and prices fall. So when people are measuring inflation they should be measuring it from about I would guess about negative 5%. So the theft in money is not from zero, it's from the natural rate of productivity in the market, without the misallocated capital that is being created to be able to make prices go up. The centralization function, so the true rate of productivity is way higher than people realize. That means the higher rate of theft from the, from the system they're measuring from, is true too, and this keeps on going forever. So that as long as Bitcoin stays decentralized and secure, it is repricing the world. If you want to price it from your abstract piece of paper or a control system, you can, but what that means as well is you're giving the system you hate more energy to steal more energy from you the system you hate.

Speaker 1:

More energy to steal more energy from you. Let's continue along. This tech is deflationary theme because the implication there, of course, is uh rates are gonna fall across the board. Uh, and us government can keep on doing its profit spending because technology is basically allowing them to to some extent.

Speaker 2:

Um, wait, keep going on that and you won't notice. Right, okay, correct, that's the more important thing, because you're measuring inflation from zero, so you won't notice how much is being stolen from you In an odd way, doesn't that?

Speaker 1:

Doesn't that keep the policymakers in power? It doesn't change the fiat dynamic then at all, because they can just keep on leveraging and leveraging and leveraging.

Speaker 2:

Yes, that's why most people will be trapped. And most people measuring interest rates and most people thinking that Powell can do anything, they'll measure Bitcoin, they'll think Bitcoin is going up relative to the fiat currency and what they're doing is saying I'm going to trade a protocol, something bounded by energy, for a piece of paper so I can run my life. That's what they're doing, because they'll they'll falsely believe that and most people I say most bitcoiners are still measuring price go up in fiat terms, which is insane, insane, which is absolutely insane, because you're you're saying I want my price to go up in a piece of paper that's going down. You're reinforcing. You're reinforcing the existing paradigm, um, and if all you have to do is say is the natural state of the free market, deflation and yes or no?

Speaker 2:

If yes, then the only and and throughout 5 000 years of human history, all monies have always been centralized and in control, then you know bitcoin will try to be. People will try to centralize and control too, because human nature, you can have so much power by trying to do that, and Bitcoin has withstood that centralization for 15 years and is continuing to, and so you have a paradigm of a whole bunch of people in the system measuring in the US dollars or Canadian dollars or Turkish lira, thinking Bitcoin price is going up when actually all prices against it are falling and they will forever, when actually all prices against it are falling and they will forever.

Speaker 1:

So I know it's clearly not an apples-to-apples comparison, but I think everything you're saying can apply to, let's just say, stocks or other asset classes where, yes, you're not bound by a hard limit in terms of the number of shares outstanding, but there are certainly incentives for buybacks. There are certainly other things that are a threat.

Speaker 2:

So do the actual work on this and actually prove the thesis. So people are asking when is it happening? Well, it's happening. So this house I'm sitting in right now, in fiat dollars, was $1.4 million four years ago and is now $2.1 million. So it looks, it appears, as it's going up. And so what do people do? I need to buy real estate to be able to protect my wealth. And going up. They're doing the same thing with stocks. And look at this house in Bitcoin terms, and this house went from 300 Bitcoin to 22 Bitcoin, and in four years, this house will be worth two Bitcoin, and and so is this house.

Speaker 2:

And so why do people buy houses? They're buying houses as a store of value, because their store of value and their currency is a terrible store of value. So they're putting their energy into a house because they think that it's going up when it's actually reinforcing what I just said. And the same thing for all stocks. They're actually inefficient trades against Bitcoin. They're terrible trades against Bitcoin. So so all of those games just remember what's happening and we're biased to believe that other system right. All of those trades are are. You're losing money against Bitcoin. Why we created a venture capital company only investing in Bitcoin companies is because the only way to beat Bitcoin returns is to have companies that are profitable and growing that ecosystem and denominating their Bitcoin balance sheets in Bitcoin, and so they're growing and you have a venture type returns on top of venture on the top of a venture type of asset by creating the transition of Bitcoin and what we're talking about.

Speaker 1:

The point being made by Andrew on YouTube on a share on a screen here. Bitcoin's layer two could be the attack vector for centralization. You know this a lot better than I do.

Speaker 2:

So that's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's explain that first.

Speaker 2:

Yeah so love this question and and and and stay with me on screen just so I'm talking, uh, with you on on this. So so if you knew that, uh, that bitcoin at layer one couldn't be attacked, it got more and more and you can prove this. You can. You don't very like uh, you don't have to take my words for it. You can look at the evidence of more energy and more decentralization on layer one over the course of the entire, and it keeps on getting more and more decentralized and secure on layer one.

Speaker 2:

So if you were a government state actor any government state actor and you said there's no way we can kill this thing and it removes our ability to usurp power from our individuals, where they're trapped in our system and we're stealing their economic energy and we're stealing from them, calling it a political system when it's really a control system, and it's getting worse and worse, and the only way that that doesn't go, so then we have to convince them to go to war to kind of reset this system. That's the path this craziness is on, and most people inside that system think that there's a leader that's going to change that system, when there isn't. It just makes it's all theater, right and those highly paid actors in that theater are paid from you stealing that money. Because if it was just taxes, I actually have no problem specifically with taxes myself, but if it, because at least that was honest they asked the voters.

Speaker 2:

But if it, because at least that was honest they asked the voters is the dishonesty of the inflation that's from the productivity rate, which, as I said, probably negative 5%. It's that bucket of money, which is way bigger than the taxes, which is stealing people's time and energy and they're so fearful they're voting for other people within that system to to who gets more of the riches that comes from you. So if that's the way the world's always looked and you had this decentralized and secure protocol at layer one, then you would have to expect if you couldn't attack it at layer one, you would have to, and some of those attack vectors were kind of the nonsense around energy usage and everything else you would have to attack it at layer two. And layer two is, if everyone thought US dollar was the currency on top of Bitcoin, bitcoin would just look like gold and then it would be centralized and it wouldn't act as a store of value. So that's happening right now.

Speaker 1:

Speaking of nonsense, that's a good word to transition. I have a. I have this problem where I don't like price targets, and I know everyone loves price targets. I always have an issue when it comes to any discussion around Bitcoin. When people say, well, you know, bitcoin's going to reach a million by year end and that doesn't get there, ah, it's going to be this year, then this year, then this year, and it just seems like it's just extreme talking points to be extreme to say to be extreme. Having said that, you can make an argument for a trajectory, just not necessarily a level. When you think about bitcoin, you're looking from an investment perspective. As I understand it, there are plenty of people that look at it from a trading perspective yeah, I'm actually not looking at an investment perspective either.

Speaker 2:

I'm looking at it as a as a as a new imposition of, of a ledger that gives human freedom and a free market for eight billion people to thrive abundance for eight billion people. That's what I'm like. I'm it is as far as an investment. Sure, it's a fantastic investment, but, but when you think about investment, you're thinking typically you're trying to trade it for something else, right, and then you're trading is just a shorter term window on that investment. So I just wanted to clarify that I'm looking at this as a protocol bounded by energy that changes the course of of human history, the future of humans that we've never been able to see before which that which then brings with the question of how do you properly even think about valuing it?

Speaker 1:

So I understand what you're saying as far as it being relative to fiat and it's a different mindset, sure, but presumably there is some overvaluation range or undervaluation range.

Speaker 2:

And again, stay with me for this, because this is how I never say price targets. That's why I like you, Jeff. This is so. This is how I never say price targets, but I do so. But instead of saying what is, what is the price target of your current environment and your current environment you're living in, and so you're you.

Speaker 2:

If, if this is true, if this truly is decentralized it's the first time humans have ever seen it Um, so that would be really hard to see for everyone, because you don't have the mental lattice in your brain to be able to compare this and all of our history books are on top of the old systems. So you have to think in first principles of what this means, what it imposes to the world we've always looked at and all of our models from that world that come from our understanding of that world. If this is truly new. Now, in what I just said, Michael, it's important. Is this truly new? Is this truly decentralized? Is it secure? But I would say, can it withstand all of the attack factors? This is the part of my work that I went so deep on to understand why it truly was, Because lots of hype men over the histories have said, this is truly new when it turns out to be the same old paradigm. But in my opinion, this is truly new.

Speaker 2:

Then how would you look at it? My opinion this is truly new. Then how would you look at it? We live in a world with $900 trillion of kind of asset, $900 trillion balance sheet, but $400 trillion of that is debt globally. That's without unfunded liabilities. So, but $900 trillion, $400 trillion of debt, the $400 trillion of debt is insolvent already and it's only solvent because we allow governments to print more money to pretend it's soft. Um, and just before I go further, just let me clarify with you. Does that sound right to you?

Speaker 1:

that sounds roughly as far as the numbers go, sure, okay okay.

Speaker 2:

So we know 400 trillion is insolvent and $900 trillion is roughly numbers. It's hard to get the exact numbers, but about $400 trillion of debt is insolvent. So what does that mean to how you would operate your life, in that you could take the ledger of $900 trillion and $400 trillion liabilities and you could say my part of that ledger is X right If I have a million dollars, that's how much. My part of that ledger is X right If I have a million dollars, that's how much of ownership of that ledger I have now. Now we know as well in that existing system that it won't be $900 trillion in five years and it won't be $400 trillion of debt in five years. The $900 trillion will probably be closer to $2 quadrillion and the debt might be $1.5 quadrillion of it. Because it has to monetize that debt. It has to drive inflation, which is a centralizing function, again, and it has to monetize that debt. It has to drive inflation, which is a centralizing function again, and it has to get worse and worse.

Speaker 2:

We also know most people are measuring all of their assets within that by that same measure. So if you just did this and took 900 trillion divided by 21 million to get the purchasing power of the relative ledgers. That would be about $43 million per Bitcoin, and the only thing to get there and it might take a long time to get there but the only thing that would invalidate what I just said is if Bitcoin lost its decentralization and security, if somebody co-opted it. But otherwise it will reprice that 900 trillion and today's purchasing power, not value, not price, because you're measuring price from the others. That would be relative to about 43 million dollars of today's purchasing power.

Speaker 2:

But if you fast forward five years and the the balance sheet is two quadrillion and just more pieces of paper and more debt instruments make that go up, then that value of Bitcoin at that time is that much higher and people wouldn't understand the relative value of the purchasing power, just like they don't understand the relative value of a dollar. Isn't the same dollar as it was 50 years ago. It's lost most of its value and so they're going to have a really hard time. And then, tied into that, you could create a whole bunch of views by saying Bitcoin is going to be $43 million tomorrow, and so that's why I hate price targets. But I talk about the ledgers. What do they mean? As long as this is an honest ledger. It is repricing the dishonest one and it doesn't matter what the dishonest one does, and all of your assets within the dishonest one are also subject to that revaluation, just like my house is.

Speaker 1:

Since you mentioned the word dishonest, we should talk about politicians. Given this, there's a lot of headlines around Trump at the Bitcoin conference and then there was that post around Kamala looking to, in quotes, reset relationships with the cryptocurrency community. I'm cynical like you are. All this stuff, I mean this is just playing politics to try to get younger voters? I think largely, but any thoughts on sort of the way that the political side now is starting to more aggressively communicate around Bitcoin and if it has any implications as far as speed of adoption?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so it's. This is game theory. Um, and just the politicians starting to mention that means because there's so many bitcoiners that now know what I know. The key part of the decentralization security is. Once you know what it means, all of your energy starts to go and then defend that and create more technology on top of it too. So so there is a giant group of people globally that is defending this network and innovating on top of it and that's coming in now layers and the. The explosion of this ecosystem, which most people are completely detached from, is unstoppable.

Speaker 2:

That also means that that becomes vote. Those become voting blocks all over the world that you can't get elected unless you. You you move to those people because they don't care about politics, they care about this, and if a politician is going to get those votes, they have to be outside. So you have this game theory accelerating all over the world to try to gain those votes, they have to be outside. So you have this game theory accelerating all over the world to try to gain those votes and try to essentially move to freedom and abundance, because those people and and there's millions strong now all over the world know what's up. No, no, that the control system and what it's doing. So now, how does that look from that control system? Yes, a lot of those people inside that control system are just trying to play games to try to appeal to those voters, and it's more theater.

Speaker 2:

Or some are how do we control Bitcoin layer two and tie it to the US dollar so we can repeat what we did to gold? We went from gold to the petrodollar system, back to Bitcoin, so we can keep doing this. So there's a bunch of that as well. Well, at the same time, this transition is moving to a currency. It's moving to a currency globally, not just a store of value, but a currency, currency, and all of the technology that's being built on top is accelerating that path. Um, the.

Speaker 2:

So if I said in the us politics, the only person who really understands this right now and who, if I was in the us, I would vote it, was rfk, rfk jr, the. In fact, I was his first bitcoin transaction and he's done the work. He knows how bad the, the kind of the state apparatus is and he's done the work. He understands what this means, whether he gets elected or not, that's, but in time, it doesn't matter who's elected. This is happening anyways. It's not negotiating with those people now, just just like if you were in North Korea and you didn't have the internet. An elected leader could stop this from happening within a country, but they can't stop it from happening globally, so all they can do is hurt their citizens by not adopting it.

Speaker 1:

I got a few minutes left. I want you to hit on the price of tomorrow and explain what it is you covered and talk through if you're going to have another book after that.

Speaker 2:

I wasn't going to have another book, I just started writing another book. Uh, that conundrum, that, that, that, that. How do you move from a system that you served all of our control power and got centralized and got worse, um, and how it had to divide us from each other and make a and, and our division from within that system would drive more views and more power from within that system, and all of those things would make it stronger. How could you move to a system that was that was aligned with a free market, that gave abundance to eight billion people on this planet? How could you move from one system to another? And so I only had bitcoin as as a paragraph in the in uh, at the end of the book, and I and I did that intentionally I wanted to understand the system problem from first principles and then pose it as a question how could you solve it when all of the encumbered interests were inside the existing system, why most people wouldn't see it, um, and why, um? But as I was uh and, to be honest, at that that time, while I held Bitcoin, I didn't want to bias my opinions of it I thought there was at least a 5% probability that Bitcoin would be centralized or controlled in time. And here's the irony, michael it wasn't a 5% probability, michael, I didn't. Uh, it wasn't a five percent probability. It was my misunderstanding of bitcoin, that was, that gave it a five percent probability of essentially failing in in time.

Speaker 2:

As I tried to, as I, as I tried to take a steel man to my argument and tried to argue it from the other perspective and try and what would happen, I became more and more convinced that this is, this is a discovery that can never be discovered again. It is one, one of those things that is so important, and my time on it and and and actually jumping in and spending more of my time in it, helping it become decentralized, helping it move to a currency, um was, uh, was important and through it. So I said, everybody goes through their journey and they see how, uh, where, where that goes, and just um, and. And I understand all the reservations for the system because I had them too and I was looking to.

Speaker 2:

So the book just kind of walks through why a new system is needed to allow the abundance gained from our technology to flow to us, and then, and then, as I went, deeper and deeper and deeper. It means way more than just how people are measuring it through an economic system today and how much money they're going to make in bitcoin. It means so much more. It is literally human abundance and freedom described onto this protocol that's bounded by energy. We're eerily in that process. The next book is going to move deeper into that.

Speaker 1:

I'll leave it with this final comment Jeff Booth for president. I think he's going to be born in the US for that, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment there. Everybody, please make sure you follow Jeff Booth on Noster and, of course, on X. He's still there, but Noster's where he's putting this stuff out. Check out the Price of Tomorrow. Hopefully I'll see you all on another episode of Lead Lag Live. I appreciate those that watched this during the. Thank you.

Discussion on Bitcoin, Technology, and Energy
Bitcoin, Energy, and Valuation Discussion
Bitcoin, Politics, and Global Currency
Jeff Booth for President