#2 Centralization of Power in Future Money

Yeah, I was wondering that. I think it's like a game, you know, like if you would go on in a game where there's a map and there's resources, you have to go on and gather them and build something. If you would know the whole map totally, you would already see it. You could go on and count all the resources, how much you can get every day. how much you want to produce, and which ones you would like to do. And that would, you know, make it more efficient use of resources. And well, I'm not sure if this really answers your question either, but, you know, this is the main thing that I see that is pretty much wrong in these kind of nation-state systems, that we are not really counting on what, how much stuff is here on Earth And we are just, you know, thinking about our nation. We are not counting on, you know, how much really is there of this. So we are just using more and more without even caring. And you could— some resources might just run out.

Precisely. These resources are scarce, right? That means if I have them, someone else cannot. That is the definition of a scarce good. There can only be one individual or groups of individuals who has access to these resources and uses them. For example, if I'm drinking a cup of tea, well, Niko cannot drink the same cup of tea, right? It's mine. I use it. And this means that somehow we have to find a system, a rule set that makes sure that we are not constantly infighting about all that stuff. So again, you know, the, the, the problem here is that there is the potential for conflict over these scarce resources, and we need a rule set of who has control of these scarce resources. And there are different ways of doing that. One, let's say that the basic way would be to say, uh, we, we have one person and this one person decides On who gets what? Well, that's politics, right? We have a king or bureaucrats, and they decide what to do with all these scarce resources. And then on the other hand, we have free individuals who either produce the stuff themselves out of the natural resources that are abundant all around us, or then that they exchange in a voluntary interaction with other people who have already voluntarily produced this And so there's the political mean, allocating the resources to the whim of a dictator, and there's the economic mean, allocating resources according to the homesteading principle and voluntary exchange. Niko, could you please go a bit more into the different types of allocating these resources?

Well, of course, the resource allocation is quite twisted by the aforementioned central planning because the incentive structure is misaligned. So people make a lot of what is called malinvestment, which is essentially a waste of money because we have this game of musical chairs going on and we have money that depreciates in value. And I think— correct me if I'm wrong— but it's called Gresham's Law. I do believe that when the good money drives out the bad. So that will be a case of get rid of your fiat money, your euros and dollars, as quickly as possible. And you would rather buy something rather than nothing, which leads into this misallocation of our resources, namely buying stuff that we don't need, which we go into debt actually to buy these things that we don't need, which is, I feel like, a part of the game. to kind of trap us into this infinite loop of making more money and getting it stolen via inflation and taxation and other means. And then because the prices are out of our control as well, we don't have free market, then we will be doomed to endlessly kind of run into this, in this rat race. And understanding sound money, that understanding that we have this protocol level money that is opt-in and opt-out. You do not have to use it and nobody can force you to use it. Understanding this takes time and this is, I think, one of the important parts that we try to clarify here. And I hope we can get some questions also from the audience because this is not a very easy matter at all. I've just personally started recently looking into it. and learning new things every day. It's certainly fascinating to think about this kind of a world that we would have a free market and we could basically just trust the market instead of trust some central authoritarian party. What do you guys think?

Yeah, I have to point out that honestly, I really Would like to world have a resource-based economy. But well, I know that is that is pretty far-fetched right now with this current system, and it's so different, so I can't even actually hope for it. So I'm also consider myself Bitcoin maximalist and you know liking the sound money idea and system and free markets. But I just have to point out that there is also this third kind of system where we would just. you know, actually go on and count every single thing and resource that we have on Earth, for example, and go on and actually make some calculations. How much can we produce and what and where, you know, without caring about nation-states and who owns what and all that. But like I said, that's far-fetched. But I just think it— the current system where we are just, you know, nations fighting against each other It's like a— there was a woman that said once to me that we are like in a spaceship and living in different sides or different edges of the spaceship. And now we are just, you know, fighting these resources, what we have on the spaceship, who gets what in which side. We are bombing each other on the same ship. You know, it's insane. We are just floating in the space.

Oh, precisely, right? There is a lot of malinvestment— nice term that Niko brought up— in this current economy, and a lot of wasting of resources and killing each other for quite nonsensical reasons. And the question is, you know, is this necessary? Do we need to have that? And I would say fundamentally no, although it is currently absolutely happening, no doubt in mind. I do think that there is the opportunity of living peacefully and harmoniously, not just with each other as sovereign individuals, also with nature, you know, and taking care of Mother Nature and this planet because, well, we only have one. Mars, okay, might be cool to like nuke the ice cap and make sure that Mars is green again, but that is central planning. And I like Earth. It's quite nice here. It's quite cozy. So I'm much in favor of somehow making sure that we don't blow up this planet. So Niko, maybe on the environmental side, how can we make sure that we don't completely fuck up?

Well, I don't know how can we make sure that we don't fuck up. I don't think there's any way, but we can certainly try to minimize the losses, I suppose, using some sort of analysis of what could possibly happen in the future, like in terms of how technology has advanced. For example, if you look at the solar power technology, how it has advanced within the last 20 years or even 10 years. And you can maybe make some plans in the future that that's probably something that is going to be useful because rather than going down, our energy need is and our energy consumption levels are going to go up. And there's really nothing we can do as long as we like the convenience, we like these products that this society produces, we're going to need more and more electricity. And how can we achieve that? And I feel like things like solar power and renewable energy become more and more attractive because they are much more sustainable in the long run. And also they become more sustainable in the short run as well. So we might see actually some kind of like space farming using solar panels, this kind of rafts maybe in space to gather some, or miners that can be sent to orbit, or I don't know. That's certainly something interesting to think, but I do think this kind of— this sound money idea combined with the digital asset, it would seem like it could work actually as the most efficient battery. And I know that Saifedean Ammous, who wrote the book Bitcoin Standard, is also— he has a similar theory. And I do think that that's one great way to kind of like go about the energy crisis that we're going to be facing. You know, maybe produce it where it's cheap to— it's profitable to produce and then move it around using this wonderful protocol, money protocol, sound money protocol we have. And yeah, I think that's something interesting to think for sure.

Yeah, well, I agree with Niko. I mean, like, that's an interesting experimentation that we are having right now with Bitcoin and with sound money. And let's see where it goes. I mean, like, I'm hopeful. I definitely think that it will be much better than the current system with fiat money. And actually, really, I don't even understand that, you know, who would really even like to use— I mean, if we would introduce Money, the fiat money system right now to people, like really how it really is. You know, how would we even accept in this kind of system where some certain peoples would have this and the right to control and print all of the money, produce all of the money, and allocate it pretty much in a certain criteria that they have, but they control it? And you know, that's just a way, weird thing that it's actually profitable for them to keep on holding this certain situation where they are only one in control. We are accepting it all the time. They are profiting from we using them, their money. And the funny thing is that they even have this violence monopoly that is controlling it and forcing us to use this certain money. And our governments are even doing that, you know, forcing us to use these private companies' money. That's just insane. I mean, like, I'm really looking forward to just code producing the money. And yeah, I think that's much more fair.

Absolutely. And this is something that the great early economist Carl Menger who was one of the founders of the Austrian School of Economics, Freedom, and Peace. He wrote a fantastic essay called On the Origins of Money back in 1892. And he clearly economically and logically proves through the application of praxeology, right, the study of human action, that money cannot be dictated by the state. Money cannot be simply created out of nothing by the state. Guess what? States do not produce something. They can only take. They cannot innovate. And he clearly shows that if we are in a barter economy, if we are only exchanging apples for oranges, quite literally, well, then this is a suboptimal state. And it limits the amount of trades that we humans can interact in. And then further, we humans, as free and peaceful individuals, will sooner or later realize that when we all use a good that is quite a good store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account— so a good that is durable, divisible, and all these other attributes— then this good will become really saleable because everyone knows that all the other people would like to have it as well. And this is fundamentally how money arises out of a pure state of barter. It is not by government dictate. It is not by government fiat. It is by free exchange and voluntary interactions of peaceful individuals. And this is something that he proved in this book and quite literally refuted all of these other arguments. But what he did not refute is that once we have left such a barter state economy and we have a money, for example, gold or Bitcoin or whatever else, then this so-called regression theory no longer applies. This means that once we have left the barter economy, then the state can come and co-opt this money. And it might look like the state has created the money, but it can only take it away and try to apply coercion to take over the money supply. So Niko, maybe could you a bit go further into detail on how governments might go and overtake a money economy?

Well, yeah, it's kind of like what I already went into a little bit, like this perpetuate this imagery and commercialism that you need to consume things to make economy work better. This broken window fallacy, like, we need these jobs, that's why we produce crap, this kind of a narrative, of course. But I think the biggest scam of all in central banking is the fiat money creation, and which most people don't understand what it means. that there's a central party that can just on their whim basically print out money out of thin air. And of course the allocation is never going to be fair. And how all these wars, for example, are funded is via inflation. Because what happens is that they print the money, whoever wants to have incentive to go to war, maybe war is good business for construction, for example. And there's all these kinds of incentives. And if these parties have access to printing money to fund those wars, then where does the value for this printed money come from? From the existing circulation, of course. So each and every dollar, each and every euro in our pockets will lose value according to the expenditure, which doesn't need to be there. And if you have sound money, it will become a much bigger task to actually fund wars. And I don't believe that most people would like to go to conflict or fund a conflict if they had a choice about it. If they knew they would be funding wars, I would say most people would say, no, you can't take my money. I will not participate in this Kickstarter to send some missiles to another side of the world to move around some rocks. out of this desert, and it becomes much more difficult endeavor to actually fund these unnecessary expenditures. So definitely up for hard money, and gold is, of course, another option, a viable option. If you think about the gold standard and how people used to prosper before the gold standard was abolished and what kind of positive developments for industry was at that time. And now it's mostly this kind of artificially, how to say, artificially conjured progress that we have, which of course has brought us a lot of things, great many things like internet and the Bitcoin. But now it's perhaps time to bring back the hard money.

Yeah, I agree with Niko, kind of like that the fiat money system is kind of like a, well, maybe one of the biggest scams ever. I mean, I don't think that most of the people even understand where the money comes from, who controls it, who decides how much there is. where to allocate it and all of that. You know, people have been taught to believe that the state controls the money supply or something like that, which is not actually true. I just— it's really weird. It's like we 3 would have a mini economy and I would just go on and announce that I'm gonna just go on or go ahead and print this money. And hope you guys accept it. Maybe in the start it would be like, you know, me trying to get you guys to use it, but it would be me who controls all of the money supply. How will I press— make— print more of it? And where would I allocate it? Would I give it to Niko, or would I keep it to myself, or give it to you, Max? And, you know, it's just a crazy, crazy system. How is that really actually working these days?

Oh, absolutely, yes. And you bring up a great point that Richard Cantillon, a great economist who lived in the 1760s and up to the 1730s, and he wrote a fantastic essay On the Nature of Commerce. And in this essay, he showed what is now known as the Cantillon effect, which is basically that if you have a money, the overall supply doesn't matter. That means if we use a money that has 100 units, and let's say Niko owns 50 and Raphael owns 20 or 30, and I own 20 because I'm a poor bastard, then, for example, Niko has 50% of the money. Now, if we magically double this money supply, this means we have a total money supply of 200. Niko has 100, Raphael has 60, and I have 40. Well, we still have the same percentage of the total money supply. And though this then where he, you know, get where this gets more interesting and where these so-called Cantillon effects really come into play. Is the fact that if Niko has the control over the money supply and he gives this newly inflated money, the newly created money, not to everyone equally and at the same time, but rather to himself first. Let's say again, we increase the money supply from 100 to 200. But Niko gets all of this new money. So he has all of a sudden 150%, while Raphael still has 30% and I only have 20%. So all of a sudden, Niko now has 75% of the total money supply. So he has clearly gained by printing the money and putting it in his own pockets. But the poor bastards Raphael and me, we have lost. Because we have lost percentage-wise the purchasing power in the entire economy. However, now if Niko uses this newly created money and gives it to Raphael to buy a piece of bread, a loaf of bread, well, then now Niko is using this money, which he got for nothing, and he gives it to Raphael. This means that Raphael will sooner or later have more money, let's say 10 additional units, and now he can adjust his prices upwards. So compared to me, who now also has to pay for the higher prices of Raphael, Raphael has won compared to me. He has increased his marginal purchasing power while my purchasing power has stayed the same. And this is fundamentally the Cantillon effect. Those who receive the money first win, and those that receive the money last lose. And that is not just the case for fiat money. That is the case always. This is an economic law. It is irrefutable, and it applies anywhere and everywhere where an increase in the money supply is happening. So Niko, is this a, you know, how can we maybe work around this, or how can we— is it even possible to refute?

Wow, that was really well put. I've actually never heard of the term Cantillon effect, so that's something certainly I learned today. But I am aware of the effect and what actually happens when The money is not fairly distributed. And how we could fix that? Well, for example, we could use something like Bitcoin that is basically— well, of course, in the beginning it was conceived, but it was conceived by a pseudonymous party that we don't know who it was. So it wasn't really— you can't say it was put together by a centralized party or anything like that. Of course, in the beginning the inflation was quite high because it had to be distributed, and it was distributed freely, given away. And then I don't remember when was the actual first trade against like so-called real money or real-life commodities. I think maybe the 2 pizzas was one of the first transactions, but that's basically where it started, and then people started using it, and then that's the way it's been And the key here is that it has a predictable kind of like emission schedule, if you will. So everybody knows by mathematics that can be verified how much money will be set and emitted into the circulation at any given time and what will be the total supply. And this is what really is the game changer, which sets up part, good money and bad money. And if you compare it to gold, for example, well, we don't know how much there is gold exactly, but it's reliably scarce in that we know that it takes a certain amount of effort to mine a certain amount. And to drastically increase the amount of labor, the price of gold would have to go much, much higher, which I personally don't think it will because Bitcoin does almost every single thing better than gold, so I really do think that is the quintessence of future money.

Yeah, you know, I think that the next stage for this government-controlled money— well, not government-controlled, but, you know, government Would be that now that people are starting to understand that fiat, what kind of a monetary system fiat actually is, and that this new inflationary money, they are actually allocating who gets the first, you know, freshly printed money. And like Max said, there's these certain advantages about that. And I just think that if people start to understand the situation more and more, I think that governments may want to go on and try to make some kind of a government cryptocurrency. And they even could go that far that they would go on and, if they actually want to have this inflationary system, they could go on and build it like it would distribute these new freshly minted coins for everybody, all the addresses, all the wallets equally, not depending on the amount of how much people have in their wallets, but, you know, distributing the inflation. And that would still not actually go on and change the things that much. Everybody just would go get this true 2% of inflation Per year distributed to every person in that country and in their accounts. So I don't think that would be so much that it would matter, but it would make a little bit fairer system. But it wouldn't actually change the way that it's inflationary. So people would still like to go on and spend and use their money into stupid stuff. But I just think that that could be maybe the next step of their trying to. Keep doing the scam.

Yes, and, and now that we've established who benefits, well, let's, let's go out there and look who prints the money and who receives it first. Well, in the, in the fiat monetary system, money is first and foremost created by central banks, and these central banks are special kind of banks that have the benefit of receiving government monopoly So government, with the threat of violence, coerces entrepreneurs who enter the market and punishes them for trying to enter the market and provide a valid service for their customers. And these central banks then give the money to, well, retail banks, right? And with, of course, interest rates and artificially low interest rates. But it's not only retail banks and the entire financial sector which receives money, but probably even more so governments in the form of debt. Because let's stay in the American system. The United States goes into debt with the Federal Reserve. So the Federal Reserve buys up government debt and they sell newly printed money. And that's when the Cantillon effects hit in. First and foremost, the central banks receive this debt at a rather low purchasing power, so they gain from that. But then further, the governments who now has received this newly inflated money can spend it with a higher purchasing power than later when it has trickled down to the everyday layman like you and me. So here clearly governments and the financial sector in general are at a huge advantage compared to the everyday man. And the thing is that we can think we cannot do anything against that. Why? Because fiat money means that you are being forced to use it, at least to pay taxes, which is theft, and to pay back your debt, which again is inflating the money supply, and you're being forced to. So this is coercion and theft again. And you know, this clearly shows who are the winners and losers. in the fiat economy. And this, of course, divides us into those that gain and those that lose, those who are politicians and those who are citizens of these politicians. Also might call them slaves. So, Niko, maybe could you go a bit into how this exact same Cantillon effect works in a free market system, for example, Bitcoin?

Well, yeah, that's actually an interesting point because Bitcoin is often— I remember to click my face this time— it's often said that, especially in the mainstream media, it is said to be a Ponzi scheme, it's this and that. And yeah, it's actually— there's a lot alike in the way that, of course, whoever invests If you invested in Bitcoin in 2010, the chances are you did pretty well if you held from there. If you held, of course. But, you know, suffice to say, many people made a lot of money on that. And does it mean it's a scam or it's a scheme? No, because there's no schemer. There's nobody to scheme. And that's what's beautiful about Bitcoin, because it's a game that actually benefits everybody. So like, for instance, the 3 of us, we are Bitcoin maximalists. We got in Bitcoin. We get more people in Bitcoin, we win. But guess what? Those people who get in Bitcoin win as well. So while they might not benefit as much as us who got in slightly earlier, they are still early and they will still be yet earlier than most people who will come after them. And thus they have a greater incentive to kind of— it has this when you think about it, it does have this kind of like a network marketing feel to it, except that it actually is fair and that it works and it has a function, it has a product behind it that is usable and it has a use case and people want to use it. So that's very interesting. And there's a lot of— often I like to talk about the Nash equilibrium here, where it's kind of like this game that everybody can win. And as long as Everybody plays their part and don't change the strategy. Everybody can optimize their wins. And this is the game of Bitcoin and the sound money. And the miners are part of it as well. The developers are part of it. Everybody has an incentive to make the value go up and make the network more secure. So that makes the product better. It makes the developers want to work on this protocol to make it even more robust. and to protect their own wealth and also to make it grow. So it really does seem like everybody wins in that scenario. Of course, who does not win and who will pose the most threat is the central banking system that Bitcoin and this digital sound money is about to replace. And that's going to be very interesting to see what kind of conflicts that might lead into.

Yeah, and just to point it out, they could— the central banks could also go on and win with this Bitcoin thing. You know, they would just have to go on and jump in and not fight against it. But yeah, I mean, like, I'm not actually sure how did this— I just read this thing, maybe couple of weeks ago, there was that, if I remember correctly, there was like socialism is the kind of like a system where we would like everybody to have the same stuff and, you know, same situation. Nobody would get more than anybody else. And, you know, that's kind of like respectable, but that's not really realistic. Then there is this another party where, well, like I think Bitcoin belongs. I don't remember that party's name, but it's kind of people that thinks that everybody should have a fair chance for every kind of system. Or, you know, it doesn't mean that socialism in this example would mean that everybody should have been distributed with the same amount of Bitcoins. But in this another system, it's just, you know, it's just about being open to everybody. So anybody can actually go on and participate if they want. It's their bad if they just don't hear about it early enough, or if they just don't believe in it, or go ahead and investigate a little bit more about it. So I think that's realistic and Maybe a little bit of a better system because the socialism way where everything would be divided equally just wouldn't last.

Well, Rafael, you bring up a nice point that is defended by all of these social justice warriors who neither fight for justice and who neither are warriors. And they're pushing this narrative of that we want to have equality, we want everyone to be equal. Really? Do we want to have that? So this would mean we're all 1 meter 60 high, we all weigh 60 kilos, we all have the same skin color, we all have the same type of hair, we all have the same type of beard, we all are same muscular or fat, and we all eat the same thing. We all look alike. And not like— not alike, we look the same. We are the same. Do you really want to have that? No, I don't. That would be horrible. What would we do? And like, does equality mean that we have to be at the same place at the same time always? So like billions of people all look alike, all dress alike, all eat the same, and they all are at the same location at the same time. Really? Equality is something that we should treasure, Niko?

Yeah, yeah, that's actually an excellent point. It's the fallacy of the averages. I don't know if there's a fancy name for that, but it's a fallacy nonetheless. And you could ask the US Air Force from World War II what happened when they tried to make the perfect cockpit for the fighter jets. And they measured, I believe, around 2,000— don't quote me on this, this is just something I read on the internet, so you can do the same and decide for yourself if it's true. But 2,000 pilots and measure the average size and then make one cockpit. And then the result was they didn't fit anybody because the average person simply does not exist. There is no average Joe. So that's the fallacy of averages. And we are all individuals. We are all great. And for some reason, it seems like it's against the incentives of the ruling elite to somehow let us figure it out, figure that— We actually can contribute value. We contribute all of the value in the world, in fact. But for some reason, we are made to believe in many occasions that we are not worthy unless we have a special degree to do something. We need permission constantly from somebody to express ourselves. And this is kind of like passive censorship even to guide us. to become more obedient and less free and less artistic or childlike or whatever comes. We have so much to learn from the kids. Somehow we are taught to grow up, and what growing up means is to stop having fun and become a responsible adult. And what responsible adult means in this context is, of course, paying your taxes and buying You know, unnecessarily expensive motor vehicles and you know vacation trips and big homes that you don't really need any of that stuff. So yeah, being average is not something to celebrate. I would say each and every atrocity of humankind has ridden the backs of law-abiding taxpayers, which is kind of like well. What is the ideal here that these kind of ruling structures, of course, want to push us through? So through individualism and through volunteerism and through sound money and free market, I do think we can reach a world peace equilibrium of sorts where the dickheads will just simply be cut out of the group and they just don't get to have fun with us cool guys.

Niko. Yeah, and I actually think that equality is really a nice thing and it would be nice for everybody to pursue that. But realistically, really, I mean, I think it's just mainly equality of chances. I mean, You know, we shouldn't just even try to be everybody equal, and it just wouldn't work. But, you know, we should try to provide everybody equally a chance to participate or to do something, you know. And that's the thing that I think is the most important. And I had another point also, but I already forgot it. So let's pass it on.

Yes, maybe then now that we've clearly shown that equality really isn't that nice to have, right? We are all sovereign individuals who really do want to live a unique and a happy life. And then the next question that Rafael, you brought up earlier, is the attribute of fairness. And that it is just not fair that all these people have so much wealth, right? And that it would just be fair if all these people give away their wealth and give it to those that do not have it. Well, although this might be admirable, right, to be philanthropic, to give away, to donate— by the way, right, talking about donations, there is the Tenly Klein fundraiser right here. So if you want to be philanthropic, you can right now. You can be fair and give me All your satoshis, if you want to. If not, well, then don't, because that is what is important. Something is only fair, something is only just when and if and only if it is done 100% out of voluntary and free choice. If you are being forced to give away your wealth, then it's not a donation. It is theft. If someone is putting a gun to your head, or if someone is threatening to put a gun to your head, or threatening to throw you in a cage, or threatening to throw your family in a cage, and he says, I will not do it if you give me money, if you give me your wealth, but if you do not, then I will punish you. That is unfair. That is unjust. That is wrong. And you shouldn't do it. And therefore, each and every action has to be voluntary. And as soon and as long as these actions and these donations are voluntary, there's nothing wrong with them. And I actually think that you should rather do some donations and that you rather should provide for your local community and those that have made you prosperous. But I cannot force you to do so, right? Because if I would force you to donate, to give away money to the World Crypto Network or to ConsenSys, right, then this would neither be fair for you, right, but it would also mean that you actually don't want to and that it's not coming from your heart. So if you want to live in a peaceful and prosperous society, Then all these payments have to be voluntary.

I totally agree with you, Max, on that. And it just came to my mind what I was thinking about earlier is that how do we actually want to do this, these things, you know, with equality? I mean, if we really want everything to be fair, yeah, we try to take care of everybody no matter what. and try to save everybody. But, and that's one way that is really respectable, also humane, and, you know, all that. But there is also this way of thinking that maybe we should actually try to evolve ourselves as human beings, as a race, as a, as, you know, maybe we really actually shouldn't try to make everything equal. Maybe we should try to get a system that actually goes on and praises or lifts these people that are actually smart or doing something productive or good. Or, you know, we should get a system that lifts them up a little bit more. And in this kind of system where, like Max said, I think there was Warren Buffett, I think there was some kind of news that he was going to donate Pretty big share of his wealth. I don't know where, and he was trying to get Bill Gates into doing that same thing. And I think it's kind of like cool, but just it keeps slow. You know, does it just adds more time to this fiat bubble? And does it actually just make you know? I'm not saying that the richest people are actually the smartest. No way. I'm not saying that, but we should get this kind of system that, you know, not actually try to save everybody so our species can go on and evolve and become better.

I just wanted to jump in real quick. You know, like, this is a bunch of virtue signaling. I feel like this, you know, celebrity donations and stuff. Okay. For sure, probably they have a little bit of good intention as well. But the main main thing here, main incentive here, I feel I feel like is PR after all. Maybe you can call me a cynic, but I don't I don't believe there is a selfless good deed in this world. You will for the bare minimum make yourself happy by by being philanthropic and supporting some projects. And there's not don't don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong. With that. It's just that it should be voluntary and it shouldn't be— you shouldn't be made feel— I feel like when it comes to donations, oftentimes somebody's trying to make us feel bad. Well, look at those poor people, you know, they have nothing and you have a new iPhone, you know, maybe you should give some to them. And what actually ends up happening is 98% of whatever you give, or maybe even more, maybe 100%, goes into this You know, the structure that is this so-called foundation or whatever virtual signaling hole of money you want to call it. And precisely the projects like Tallycoin that we are also using, and I don't have the code here now, but everybody can, anybody can ask for money. And if somebody thinks that you have a worthy cause, they can give you money. And that's, I think that's much more powerful. There's no coercion, there's no virtue signaling. You don't need, like, virtue signaling is something that politicians often do because we are animals and we think with our emotions, we think with our instincts. And if you throw in some kind of very emotional thing, like, you know, you talk about nationalism, you talk about things that touch people's hearts, and then on that guise you can sell people pretty much anything because people are trustworthy. And most people really genuinely believe that the authorities and the government does have our best interest in mind, which is of course to me terrifying because I can't see how that would be. Because this is not the— this is only what is said in the talks. When these people, these politicians, try to get elected to office, you will hear a very different story. Than you actually see in reality that manifests from those promises. And it's very often very different, and people still somehow don't understand how to change things. And we have these things, elections, and it gives us a false sense of power when we've always had the power. We've always— nobody took the power from us. We gave it away by Submitting to this kind of system that doesn't need to be there, and we we do have nowadays thanks to the internet and other tools like Bitcoin and cryptography. We have tools to take back our sovereignty, and that's what future money is about. And yeah, I would just like to say that also hit the like button because I always forget to shield that. It will be really helpful. We have five people watching over at the consensus network at the moment, and only. 3 likes, so you can give us 2 more likes and that would be great.

Oh, absolutely. And same goes out to the World Crypto Network, guys. 32 watching live, that's good. Then 17 likes, so we double that, 2x. Although we are strongly for no 2x, but not for the likes. You can always 2x the likes. Niko, you bring up a great point regarding the regarding Bitcoin there at the end. And the question is that, you know, there is— and we talked about that in the chat a bit— there is a small number of hodlers, whales, that own a lot, a lot, a lot of Bitcoin, right? Trace Mayer, Roger Ver— well, Roger no longer, but he owns a lot of Dcash. Well, holds some bags, one or two. But, you know, fundamentally, there is inequality in Bitcoin, right? There are those that are really wealthy who own a lot of Satoshis, and those that are no-miners that do not own any of it. And this is, of course, very unequal. And now the question is, is this good or bad? Well, first and foremost, we have to ask, was everything voluntary? Yeah, it was. Period. Quite simple. They didn't take it away from anyone, right? Rather, they took on immense risk in allocating their resources, that is buying Bitcoin with their fiat money, right? That is allocating their resources of other money, but also their time and their effort in evangelizing Bitcoin and making sure that this is actually worth something after all, that actually this message of Bitcoin spreads. And they might have even allocated some computing power and some energy, some electricity to mining Bitcoin, which again is the allocation of resources in an uncertain future— very uncertain— with the hope that this end product, Bitcoin, is useful and that the consumers actually like to have it. So in my opinion, clearly it was voluntary, so there's inherently nothing immoral about that. But Niko, do you think that there are other arguments that can be made against Against it?

I don't, I don't see how. It is what it is. Like, like you said, it's— we have, we have a choice, we have an option to participate or not. And of course we're not born equal. It's silly to pretend otherwise. You know, some, some people have rich parents, some people don't have parents at all. How could we possibly Equal playing field is another thing entirely. It's not equality. Yeah, I clicked my face again. So yeah, equality is certainly not something to strive for. Like we mentioned earlier, there's no average person. So a level playing field, on the other hand, is precisely what we have. And sure, some people have more leverage than others, but we can all participate. And I think it's very important, it's crucial that everybody who is watching this— and we're not giving, of course, any financial advice whatsoever, but we may give you, I may give you some life advice. And I would, if you're a young person, you might want to take the risk now because you can always make more money, you can always learn new skills. And you know, I'm not scared of Bitcoin or any other crypto asset going to zero because I can always make some more, whatever the asset is. The important part is, however, to start learning and start taking risks. Because if you want to achieve something, nothing comes out without any risks. And I guess people are afraid of failure. We are made to be afraid of failure, which is understandable. Understandable, of course. It doesn't feel—it's not the best feeling when you fail on something. You put a lot of hard effort and your heart and soul in there, and then maybe you feel like crying. But then once you're done with that and you move on, and you realize that you know no matter what happened, it didn't stop you, and nothing can stop you. So then once you reach that point, and you start failing multiple times, and you only need to succeed. You can succeed once or twice or even multiple times, but you will always have to understand that it takes more failures than that. So I think level playing field is there. What is not there is the correct incentivization of people. And to that end, I think education is the key here, grassroots education, to just let people know about the current system, which is key to understand what is fundamentally wrong with that. And then to be able to transition to the new system as early as possible. As we discussed previously, there's immense benefits in doing so, getting in early, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, you know, you have a choice to take this chance. If you're willing to lose it all, then why not gamble a little bit? I'm sure there's worse ways to invest your money.

Yeah, and I agree with Niko. And, you know, I think the point is that it's— there's a fair chance for everybody to participate. And from day one, that has been the truth on Bitcoin. Anyone can go on and participate. It's just, you know, that's actually a big difference. And yeah, there will be many people that are going to say that no, there would be no, let's say, African kids that would have been— that would have the possibility to go on and mine Bitcoins in 2010 or something like that. But you know, there's these different kinds of situations that might happen and where, for example, let's say that these countries like Zimbabwe and And whatever Venezuela, if they go on, they have the most, the greatest incentive right now to go on and adopt a sound money like Bitcoin. And I think that if they go on and do that, they are the first ones actually going and adopting this currency. They are going to be the ones that win, wins the most, probably. I mean, like, it's a little joke, but, you know, Zimbabwe might become the next great country and rule the earth after United States and the fiat system collapses if they go on and adopt Bitcoin as first countries. And another thing is that people are saying about there being big whales in Bitcoin. I mean, like, For what I know, the biggest one could be, maybe Satoshi, if he even has the private keys of these coins or even access to these coins anymore, or if he's even alive, or she. And he probably would have these 700,000 Bitcoins, which would still mean that he has about 3 or 4% of the total amount of the Currency, which is really, really small compared to fiat money. So I just don't think that that's really a big issue. And all of the next people are having much less than Satoshi. And even if he would have all these, he probably would have deserved it. I mean, that is a little bit of scary thought, but I'm not really worried about it. He or she or they haven't moved their coins in almost soon to be in, oh well, well in many years anyway.

Very true, you both, and you bring up a great point. And I'd like to just give a shout out to Pierre Rochard, co-founder of Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, nakamotoinstitute.org. Great website. You can read the complete Satoshi, all the writings from Satoshi. And Pierre Rochard has written in 2014 a great piece on the speculative attack, and he outlines it precisely what we are talking about right here. The difference, or, you know, how this entire event of people using more and more Bitcoin will play out. Because fundamentally, you know, fiat is flawed. You and fiat will his historically speaking, at least, tend towards zero. Fiat currencies, paper currencies, never survive longer than a couple years, and at least a couple hundred years, or at most. And as you know, when fiat currencies devalue, when they hyper— when they lose in purchasing power, then people are incentivized to go into debt because they have to repay the debt with a lower purchasing power. And of course, when they go into debt in a fiat paper money system, this will increase the money supply. We have— and when we have more of something, it becomes less valuable. So this means that then they further decrease the value of fiat currencies by going into debt, which further incentivizes going further into debt and paying back at a lower purchasing power. The question now is, seeing that fiat currencies always go to shit. What happens if all these people who go into debt in fiat buy Bitcoin? By the way, you should buy some Satoshis. Well, what happens is that the value of Bitcoin goes up because the network, the amount of people owning Bitcoin and using it in their everyday transactions, increases. And Metcalfe's Law says that the, the value of a network is the number of nodes squared. And the more people use Bitcoin, the higher its value is going to be. And then miners are incentivized to produce additional amounts of— or to increase the hashing power so that they can get their hands on some precious satoshis that they freshly mine. However, as more miners come into this network, the value or the money supply of Bitcoin does not change because of the difficulty adjustment, but rather the network security will increase. And this additional security provides additional value for the network, which further incentivizes more people to buy and use Bitcoin, further increasing the utility and therefore the value of Bitcoin. So we have here both a rapid displacement Of all those that hold on to fiat money the longest as it is being inflated to shit. And all this purchasing power, all this wealth will move towards those people that hold the sound money, that hold the true and hard currency that is unchangeable and inflexible in the money supply. And that is fundamentally a speculative attack buy Bitcoin on fiat money. And those who will be left behind, those who do not, or those who are on the losing side of this trade, they will lose quite a lot, quite greatly.

So what do you guys think? Classic. You go first.

Yeah, go ahead, Niko. No, well, I was going to ask this question that we were talking about a little bit earlier with Max, and I don't know if you heard it, Niko, but, you know, when I've been trying to explain Austrian economics and a sound money system for different people, they always come down to this certain— the main argument against Austrian economics is what I've heard is that people tend to think that the monetary system, that all of the money would go into certain peoples who control these necessary resources and gain a monopoly them. For example, I'm not really actually even thinking about— I mean, I can't think of any kind of resource right now that would be like that, that we wouldn't be able to go around and use some another thing. But for this example, let's go with, let's say, fresh water, that there will be just this one company that controls all the production of new fresh water and we wouldn't actually have any other way to get it, it would be still necessary. Wouldn't they be able to just go on and lift the price whatever they want and people would just have to go on and pay anyway as long as the company just can, as long as the company is able to protect itself from angry people if they, if the people or the the common fellows are trying to violently go on and take over these water resources or whatever. And how would it actually play out? And, you know, is this kind of a system even actually possible in Austrian economics? I have my own thought about this, but I just want to hear your thoughts, guys.

Go ahead.

Right, so let me try to dissect that thought. People— that's interesting because that's That's not at all what I've heard when I try to explain Austrian economics and the logics of it, rather. Normally I face the argument that it is not mainstream, it is not the recognized mainstream fork of economic theory, and thus it is invalid. And that's by far the most, the argument I've heard most. And yeah, I think that that's actually interesting, the pooling of the resources to certain parties. I think that's going to happen, but is it wrong that it should happen, that people homestead certain parts of the world that has resources? and then use those resources to gain leverage on other people and hire maybe other people to do stuff for them and create this way create free enterprise. I think, I think it's probably a good thing actually that these resources pool to industrious people, entrepreneurs. And most people in the world will never be entrepreneurs. I think we can all agree on that. There's a division that I like to call the 80 and 20 percenters, and I think entrepreneurs usually are in the minority in the industriousness and this kind of like creative thinking and risk-taking, first and foremost, which we discussed briefly earlier. Most people are not willing to risk things, and that goes, for example, with cryptographic assets, the private key management becomes a huge problem for the general population because most people are not willing to embrace the full responsibility that comes with, with being the sovereign of your own finances. So I think maybe the biggest qualm people normally have with Austrian economics is that they would maybe rather shift the blame of things that go awry in their life to somebody else rather than themselves. So this kind of fiat mentality is also escaping personal responsibility, and I do think the society encourages that kind of behavior, and I think that's a far, far bigger problem than resource pooling. I think resource pooling is something that is going to just simply happen, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing because most people won't want to be entrepreneurs. And for example, if you think about like, normally people will say that taxation is needed because we need to take care of roads and stuff like that. What if those were also homesteaded and run by private enterprise with industrious people that are there for profits and they really truly care about their business and they are there to serve because that is their business? And then most people will just keep using the services as they have always been. That's pretty much my thought process on that. And you guys can just jump in now.

Well, I fundamentally agree with you, Niko, that you say that Bitcoin and sound money in general fosters individual responsibility and that fiat money fundamentally fosters the nanny state. Right. And giving away the responsibility and giving up your sovereignty. And I would just like to shill a bit more the amazing book by Murray Rothbard, What Has Government Done to Our Money? Available for free at mises.org. And here in part 2, chapter 9, he talks about the problem, quote unquote, of hoarding. And he talks specifically about money, but a similar thing applies with the economy in general and other goods other than money. The question is, right, we have scarce resources. We have to allocate them accordingly. And if we do not have a price mechanism, then this means that we do not know if we can consume these resources now or if it would be more efficient to save them for an uncertain future. So let's take the example that Raphael brought up with the water pond, right? If there would be no price whatsoever on this water, well, then everyone would go and drink it as fast as possible because it's for free. You can have it. You can consume it. You can overconsume it. But that means that sooner or later, it will be drained completely, and there will be no water left. And therefore, if we have private property, we have prices because we have free exchange. And this means that if too many people consume this water, Then the owner of the water, the one who has homesteaded it or acquired it in free exchange, this person will increase the prices because he wants to make money and he wants to make a profit, not today, but also in the future. So he will increase the prices, which will lead to a decrease in the demand for this money, which means that less people will, of course, drink it today, and more people I can drink it tomorrow. So if we have free exchange and private property, then fundamentally all these resources will be allocated efficiently. If they want to be, if they need to be consumed right now, if there is a great need in the economy, for example, there's a drought, well, then we need to consume more. And that means that the price will fundamentally drop. Sorry, it will increase because the demand of it will go up. However, if there is abundance, right, if there's a lot of it all around us, then we do not really need to allocate it efficiently. For example, air. Air is still a scarce resource. Only I can breathe in the air, and if I have breathed it in, then Niko can no longer breathe it in. So it is a scarce resource. but it is abundant. There's lots and lots and lots and lots of air out there. So in everyday life, air is basically for free because there is just so much around us. But now imagine that you're underwater, right? You're a scuba diver and you realize that you don't have any air left in your tank. Well, then you have both a scarce and a rare resource, and that is quite valuable. And I'm sure that if you run out of water, run out of air a couple hundred meters under the water, well, you will pay quite a hefty price to get some. So this price mechanism is fundamentally important to allocate the resources in both abundance and rare circumstances.

Yeah, interesting points you guys brought up. I was more like thinking, I'm not sure where did I get this idea from, but I just in some way understood that in Austrian economics, these, you know, concentrations of some certain resources are, you know, understandable. They are a possibility, if I understand correctly. But it's, in my opinion, it's a little bit more healthier way than in this current fiat system. I mean, there will be boom and bust cycles for what I understand. For example, just like these, that if someone goes on and controls, let's say, all of the water supply, people will probably not just go on and pay whatever. that person wants, they would go on and, you know, cut his head off actually, or something like that, you know, take over that water distribution system. But that's why there is this game theoretical incentive system that this person who controls a lot of this water supply, he wouldn't dare to actually go on and ask too much money from that water he has because he has to be afraid of people actually getting pissed off of his control and going violently against him. So in a certain way, I just think that it could be in a way like a Bitcoin mining where no miner company or pool or whatever, they can't or don't even want to have a big piece of the cake. They don't want to have 51% because they know that people are going to get pissed off and choose not to use their pool. So probably if we can push out these people that have a lot of stuff to be public and show their stats Like we can see in a Bitcoin blockchain, or how many coins are where. We don't actually know who owns them, but we can in a way also look at the hash power. We can know that no pool has more than 51% right now, and if they go near that, we are gonna bounce off. And I just think that that could be one kind of an option. What do you guys think about that?

Well, that is a really, really good insight, Rafael, and I haven't thought about it like that. Because in Bitcoin, fundamentally, right, if one mining— or if one miner, like one actor, one coherent actor owns 51% of the mining supply, then we run the risk of a double spend. We run the risk of a reorganization of the chain. At high cost and low probability, but still there is a risk. And we've seen in Bitcoin that once a mining pool, which is not one coherent actor, but still gets close to its 51% number, miners withdraw their hashing power from this one mining pool and put it into another mining pool, precisely out of the reason that you mentioned, that a 51% attack would decrease the value of Bitcoin. And thus, it will decrease the profitability of these miners. And quite interesting that you could say the same thing about all other currencies, right? Because competition is fundamentally good. We want to have competition, and we want to have competing products, at least in the long run, right? That is something that is quite valuable for everyone because it increases the size of the pie. And thus, even if you have a percentage-wise smaller piece of the pie, the total amount is still larger. However, historically speaking, there have been countless individuals who seek to get the complete opposite of competition, which is a government-granted monopoly, right? The right to only produce the specific good and the right to exclude all other entrepreneurs trying to fulfill and satisfy the need of the consumer. And I would say just on a historical point of view, because we have seen so many countless monopolies granted by governments and, you know, utilized by individuals, that there is not necessarily a tendency to give up this power, right? Because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But this is a very interesting point you bring up, Rafael. Could you maybe expand a little bit if Niko's still AFK?

Yeah, I'm just quickly going to add that this goes already also to Bitcoin. I mean, like, I just think that nobody dares to hold any more Bitcoins than, for example, Satoshi allegedly owns, just because, you know, people would just If someone goes on and hoards too much or owns too big of a piece of a pie, people could just go on and, you know, leave this project. If someone goes on and owns for, let's say, 30% of all the Bitcoins, I think there will be so many people that would just drop the Bitcoin already, you know, with whatever price they are getting. If someone wants to go on and buy one-third of all the Bitcoins, it will be probably pretty you know, with a pretty high price. So people could go on and just sell their Bitcoins and start stuff all over again with no that kind of a concentration. And, you know, I just think that that is one certain risk that people that are trying to get these monopolies or hoarding, that's just one risk that they have to be aware of. And like you said, there has been already these monopolies controlled by governments, but that's— I just think that that's because they have the monopoly on violence also. And if they wouldn't have that, I just don't think that these monopolies would actually work. I'm not sure. I mean, for just— sorry, that long speech again, but for example, we have here in Finland, we have this store called Alko. where that is actually the only place, at least it used to be, the only place where you can get alcohol with more than, I think, maybe 5% of alcohol mixed in it. And it's a monopoly here in Finland. Nobody else can go on and sell hard liquor. And if there wouldn't be this violence monopoly used by governments, I think there will be so many people, you know, cooking their own booze, and they maybe are already, even if there is this violence monopoly.

All right, I'm back. I'm ready to jump in. Yeah, that's an interesting point you bring out, Rafael, about the alcohol. which is a system monopoly in Finland for alcohol. And I do not believe for one second that if alcohol or all the drugs would be made legal and anybody could start selling those, I don't think we would descend into utter chaos. Sure, we'll probably have a couple wild weeks or even months, but I think it would definitely even out within the time because people just don't You know, it's not like just because something is illegal, people don't do that. You know, if people want to do that, and those people especially who want to abuse a substance, they will find a way or break the law otherwise. People who are inclined to do so despite of the law, you know, normally the law will just hinder the regular users and regular citizens who are not malicious actors and only want to better or make their own life worse, which everybody should of course have the full right to screw up their own lives in any which way they feel comfortable with. A little bit about the earlier topic about competition. I do think it was Rothbard who said that competition is always a form of cooperation, which is what I liked really a lot. And that's something that is a fresh angle to me, and I encourage people to Look at it that way. Like competition is not not bad. It's good. It's it's great. It's fantastic. Forks are great for Bitcoin, for example, because it will show what you know it will it will give us for instance what what Bitcoin can do and what it could do if we change some rules. For example, it will work. Those forks work as testnet. All the all those shitcoins and all those altcoins also work in a in a way of testnet. I wouldn't call it competition. Not serious one anyway. And even if there was a serious competitor, I would welcome it because that's the way we evolve through constructive disagreement, which is also what we have our show yesterday a little bit about. And we were releasing this kind of like a cross-cultural event in blockchain and cryptocurrencies called the Helsinki Blockchain Summit 2018. So that's gonna be on and it's gonna be interesting event because this is kind kind of like I have— I don't— I haven't heard of it done before that we have under the same roof this blockchain, not Bitcoin people, distributed ledger technologies, and we have Bitcoin maximalists on the other hand, myself. And actually the 3 of us, we are scheduled to appear on that event on day 2. So definitely I look forward to the official coverage, and it's— I do think it's going public this week, early this week. I'm not sure if the website is on Already, so I'm not gonna shill it anymore, but definitely stay tuned. And that's gonna be the biggest event, biggest blockchain event in Finland. So that's gonna be interesting. And this is precisely what we're doing there. We are being— we are disagreeing on many, many topics. For example, what money should be and digital sound money and all these things and these tokens and the reasons of doing those. But we also have a lot of overlap, for example, regulatory overlap. Which brings in things like lobbying and tax, you know, this kind of tax treatment of cryptocurrencies, for example, is a common thing that we can work together on. And I encourage everybody to work constructively and disagree constructively with other people because that's the— let's face it, that's the only reason why we are still not living in caves, because somebody thought it's a better idea to live somewhere else and they disagreed. forked off. And I do think we should keep forking and striving for perfection. And actually, this reminds me of something that Jimmy Song said in an interview we did together with Max as well. And he's an advocate of a lifestyle of simplicity, which I also subscribe to. And what he said— I don't remember exactly what he said, but he said that once you start taking things away from your life while benefiting from it, That way you can start to reach perfection. So if you fork things away from your life and leave unnecessary things out of your life, you will soon feel more fulfilled. And of course, if you take away a thing from your life that doesn't make you feel happier, that it actually makes you miserable, then maybe you should not do that. So yeah, we should probably all focus on ourselves rather than listening to somebody else on how to live. So Yeah, we are just 3 babbling guys online, so don't take any advice from us either. I think I've said enough, so somebody else jump in, please.

Just quickly here about competition. Altcoins made Bitcoin look much better. Yes, competition made good— competition is really good.

Oh yes, Rafael, but please use the professional term of shitcoin.

That's right. That's correct. My bad.

Well, and, and you know, the cool thing is that really this is anarchy in money. It is, it is competition to the highest extent. It means that there is no leader, no ruler to force government fiat or to force other individuals to use the money. You have full competition. And that is, of course, what I write my bachelor thesis upon. And there is an entire chapter here where you can contribute at github.com/maxhillebrand/anarchyandmoney. And, you know, fundamentally, these forks and altcoins, as Niko said perfectly, they are kind of a cleansing. They are a way that those people who no longer agree to the initial set of rules, those that feel oppressed by these rules that they initially agreed upon, they can simply change the rules and walk away. It's anarchy, it's agorism. But it also means that those who still agree to these rules voluntarily, they cannot be coerced or forced to change their rules. Fundamentally, if you run a Bitcoin full node, which you should, Nobody is going to fuck with you. You make the rules, you verify them, and you enforce them. And that is why Bitcoin is so special. It is pure anarchy. You are now the sovereign of your money, the king of your money, and nobody can take that away from you. And that might also be the case if you have precious metals like silver or gold, because I own this gold coin, nobody is going to take it away from me. And, well, it's kind of hard to inflate the money supply of silver. That's why it's a sound currency, right? A hard currency. But it's not as hard, as sound as Bitcoin. And these attributes of self-ownership and self-responsibility is something that is treasured in any sound money, and especially in Bitcoin. So we, guys, we've already talked about a lot here regarding the competition in and maybe the inequality of money? And is there something that we have not yet talked about that you would like to mention, Niko?

I think this was pretty good coverage already for the centralization of power in future money. And I think we can safely say that it will be It won't be as centralized as now. That's, that's— I think there won't be— I think it will get better from here. I do not think it will get more centralized before it gets more decentralized. I think the cat is out of the bag and the Bitcoinization has started already in a way. I wouldn't really talk about any massive adoption obviously, but we are still in the pioneer phase, trailblazing phase. As you can see, our Tuesday night stream over ConsenSys Network has 3 viewers at the moment, so this is clearly not the mainstream. But we are working towards it, of course, and we don't want to make these videos too long either. So maybe some feedback would be great if you think that shorter panels, maybe more straight to the point, more structured would be better, or do you— personally, I like this kind of laid-back fireside chat type of conversations because I feel it's organic and it's real. It's not— there's nothing that we can cut away from here. It is what it is, in good and bad. I like that in a way. And if you can— if you use something like speed up 1.5 or 1.25, that can be very helpful in watching stuff like that. But yeah, I think this has been a great talk. Thank you guys, and Yeah, I've enjoyed it immensely. And if you want to find more about me, you can check me over at Twitter @OmniFin, double N at the end. And also you can find me on Telegram and over at ConsenSys Network, which this is streaming right now, as well as on World Crypto Network. So thank you guys. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Yeah, I was just going to add that Yeah, this Consensus channel has all these 3 viewers. Thank you very much. And I have to say that we actually started shilling this program maybe 10 or 15 minutes before we started talking. So maybe the marketing wasn't at the best. But yeah, one thing also that I was going to mention is that How we've been talking in many situations how governments are forcing us to use their fiat money or something like that. And just to be clear for some viewers, we are not actually saying that governments or cops would be pointing guns at you to use fiat money. No, but they just don't want to give you any other option. I mean, like in Bank of Finland over here, we were talking in there with some people that are working over there, and they were first saying that how they want to be actually, you know, open for competition in the monetary systems. But that's actually when I had to go on and correct them that they are putting everybody else to jail or, you know, suing them or, you know, whatever these projects that has been where there has been these leader or company behind them or any kind of a central party that you can go on and censor. Like PayPal tried to do these kind of a like internet money and they were sued and censored pretty roughly. There's a different kind of project also and that's why Bitcoin is so unique that you don't have this central point of failure. you don't have anyone you could go on and threat to shut this system down. It's actually, you know, free and volunteer. But yeah, this has been a really nice talk, guys. Thank you very much. Thank you for all the viewers, and please go on and check out other videos from ConsensusROI also. It's under the name ConsenSys Network that you can find our videos. And yeah, you can find me on Telegram and Twitter with the name CryptoRafe. And yeah, that's pretty much about it. Yeah, thank you very much, guys.

Well, again, Niko and Raphael, thank you very much for joining me here today in this next second episode of the Future Money Show here, which is co-streamed both on the World Crypto Network and the ConsenSys RAI YouTube channel. And I highly encourage you to go back. And even though, you know, these views might not have— or these videos might not have too many views, at least live, they are here forever and ever in the archives. And that is what this is all about, right? This is long-time preference. We think in the long term. These videos are being made for the ages, and they can be watched and rewatched countless times. So that is what this is about, right? We want to bring you the content so that you can fundamentally get educated. And we only provide the information. It's on you to understand it, right? It's on you to go out there and actually— do something with all this information. And I hope that you guys will be doing this and will continue to be kind supporters here of the fundraiser for the Pi laptop, which you can donate to right here. Of course, all voluntarily, right? If you don't, then don't. We already made it 70%, got 0.2 Bitcoin out of 0.3 Bitcoin, which is nice. And the Purism laptop is, of course, a security-focused laptop for everyone. And if you want to see a detailed review of the Librem 15, then you can donate to it right here. And if you like the stuff that the ConsenSys RAI Network is doing, well, then check out their fundraiser right here and donate them to, you know, continue the production, the high-quality production of this content creator network. This money goes directly peer-to-peer to the content creators, and this means it will be used to get more equipment, you know, to pay for all the hours dedicated to this network. So your support is very, very much appreciated. And again, thank you for Tallycoin for being such an amazing platform, for giving you the opportunity— let's go here to the profile— to set up a unique fund with your, with your picture, with all the links, with the About Me page, with all the fundraisers that you can do, and directly donate $1,000 with your extended public key to a unique address. Or even better, if you want to do it securely and anonymously, use Paynim BIP-47 reusable payment codes, and this will generate a unique Bitcoin address on your device in the Samurai Wallet. So this is an amazing website here, Tallycoin, which gives you the opportunity to go and fundraise the projects that you like. And you know, this is anarchy, this is competition. We are independent content creators that go out there and hopefully provide you with some value, hopefully lots of value. And if you like the content, well then reach out to us on Twitter, on Telegram. On YouTube or wherever, right? This the beautiful thing with the internet is that you can go out and go out and interact. I also just a little shill here. The Bitcoin and Markets podcast by Ansel Lindner has here on his webpage or links to his webpage the 24-hour chart of shitcoins versus Bitcoin. This is zero percent, right? This is this was 24 hours ago. Oh, and look at this. Which shitcoin is that? White Ripple has lost 70% compared to Bitcoin in just 24 hours. So this is the speculative attack right there. This is loose money, weak money getting wrecked quite literally compared to sound money, which is Bitcoin. So again, guys, thank you very much for joining here this episode of Future Money. co-hosted on ConsenSys Network and the World Crypto Network. There's a bunch of amazing content on both of these channels, so go out there and support all the countless other amazing content creators on these individual platforms. It's been, as always, a pleasure talking to you, and I hope that we can do more collaboration of these networks. And I'm really looking forward to joining, for example, the Monday Night ConsenSys co-hosted by Niko on the ConsenSys RAI network. That is going to be fantastic. And I'm looking forward to have you guys on WCN hopefully soon again to talk about, well, Bitcoin and sound money and liberty. So guys, it's been a pleasure talking to you again, and see you again on the next episode of Future Money. Until then, bye-bye. Bye.

Bye-bye. Thanks.