Abundance Through Scarcity with Ioni Appelberg - Author Cast 7

I actually forgot what I asked already, but that's good. That's all good. I wanted to dwell a little bit more into you and you mentioned chess and you mentioned jiu-jitsu and those sub-goals. Did you achieve those goals by any chance or did you just pull them, pull other goals that you have currently?

I'm not even close. I'm not even close. I've always wanted to to publish a book. And now that is off my bucket list and I'm obviously going to continue on that journey and write more books. But I'm working consistently now on improving my chess Elo. And that is probably the most significant source of both happiness and anxiety in my life.

I can understand.

Chess is such a struggle. It is I don't know who said it, but chess is the human struggle. It reflects who you are. You learn a lot about yourself, who you are as a person, and you learn a lot about life. There's a lot of life lessons embedded in chess. I could easily devote my life to studying this game. It requires so much more effort than I could ever have imagined to just gain a few Points of yellow. Yeah. And I like those kind of struggles and those kind of journeys. I'm on a different journey right now. I've been working on calisthenics for about a year and have a goal that by 2026, I will be able to do an L-sit, go to the full planche, and then do a full handstand. And that's a journey as well. So I think that you need relationship goals, you need training goals, you need creating goals. So right now I'm working on chess, I'm working on calisthenics, and I'm working on my writing.

That's awesome. I mean, it's clear to me that you're a proof of work guy. So I mean, jiu-jitsu, chess, all these things, they take their time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. Um, how, how would you say that those, those, uh, well, let's say, uh, hobbies or soft goals affected your book writing? And, and, and I bet they made it better, but in which way?

Well, it's, you're using an important word there. You're using the word hobby, and that's exactly what they are in a way. But I think it's important to make a distinction here, and this is just as a tangent. I mean, everybody needs a job, right? We can have jobs, we can have hobbies, we can have vocations. And a job is where we get our money. Everybody needs a job. And having a hobby is also important because that's where you have your creative outlet, where you can evolve as a person. Nobody needs to know about your hobbies. They're for you. I play chess for me. I write for me. I practice martial arts for me, and I explore the nature of consciousness through the use of psychedelics for me. And those are my hobbies. But then there's vocation, and vocation is the thing that nobody can take away from you. That's serving a greater purpose, whether that's a, a god or a belief system or being a parent. Or for some people, Bitcoin. And a hobby can absolutely evolve into a vocation. Most often hobbies evolve into careers rather than vocations. And a career is when a hobby becomes sort of a, not a job exactly, but you sort of get paid for doing your hobby. That's a career. But a vocation is when you can elevate your hobby to the level where It is, it takes on a different kind of meaning where it transcends who you are as a person. Well, that's a, that's just a tangent. You were asking how these, uh, how my hobbies have affected my writing. You know, I, I think that they all just spill into each other in a way. Uh, you, you learn, you have life lessons in chess, you have life lessons in martial arts and so on, and just working on consistency and Realizing the importance of consistency, that is, that has been very helpful. And that's basically all you need. You need commitment and consistency in everything that you want to excel in.

Yeah. See, that's interesting because I don't really like the word hobby that much. Like people tend to say that you shouldn't make your hobby into your profession. That will kill the fun or whatever. But the way I see it, like what happened with you, proper, probably. It's the same thing that happened with me, that we have specific interests that we can call them hobbies or whatever. These are the things that we do for ourselves because we enjoy doing them, right? Yeah. And then we find that vocation at some point, like spreading Bitcoin knowledge or writing books or being a medical doctor like yourself. And then these things that are part of us as an interest, a separate interest group, they become, they start spilling into and also building your vocation. Unless of course, I mean, I guess it's not a vocation if you're just talking about a career or a profession. Like I used to have a career as a construction engineer that was not specifically something that I ever found my vocation. I just did it for money. So that's a different thing, right?

Yeah. When a hobby becomes a job, you've killed your hobby. You've killed the love for your hobby. Then it's no longer a hobby, then it's a job. But your hobby can evolve into a career, and that's a different thing.

Right.

Look at someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson. And you ask him about taking a vacation, he doesn't, he doesn't even know what you're asking about because there is no such thing as taking a vacation from asking questions about the universe, which is the most important thing to him. So he has made his hobby into a career because that is now where he gets his money. But a career is different from a job. A lot of medical professionals consider their job a career. But I think that it's just, I don't know that that's true. I think most people actually have, most physicians and doctors are actually just, it's their job. It's not a hobby that became a career. It could be if you're a researcher and if you're going down that path, then it could be a career. But honestly, I think that most jobs are just jobs today.

Yeah. It's all about trading your scarce time into non-scarce fun coupons, which is kind of like the big problem that you talk about in your book as well. The fiat slavery, right? Yeah. One of the chapters. And to circle back a little bit about the book, maybe it's a good time to show some art from the book. I would like to show the COVID and maybe a couple pages and then we can talk about that.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, let's do the COVID first.

And Niko, I had to say, I'm so happy with this cover. It tells a story in itself.

Yeah, yeah, me too.

This is the future of humanity. Bitcoin is the future of humanity. Becoming a multi-planetary species is the future of humanity and unlocking execution power is the future of humanity. This is the kind of scale that Bitcoin is on,

right?

Yeah. So it's a fantastic cover.

And yeah, it's, it tells its own, it's like a movie poster type of thing. Like it tells its own story right there and there. And, and that's why I like it so much. Like it's not really obvious and on the nose, of course, since we've read the book already, it's, it's pretty obvious to us what it means.

Yes.

But it beckons, like that's what the co— a good cover does. It beckons the, the, the reader who picks it up, open the first page and, and continue. And that's, I think this, uh, cover accomplishes that great.

I think so too. We've got a lot of great feedback on Twitter as well on this. Uh, this was clearly the way to go.

And this is not the only, only, uh, awesome piece of art that we have in the book, right?

No, it's not. It's not. We, this has some great artwork throughout. And I'm very happy with that. It was a great idea of you to include artwork in the first place. Then I had the opportunity to work a little bit with that and it all just came together perfectly. Yeah. Look at this. This is, this is beautiful.

So this is, this is, uh, like no other book that we've done before. I'm extremely happy with how it looks. I haven't seen it in life. I'm waiting for my proof copy to arrive, but, uh, I hope it's gonna be as awesome as it, as it looks in the screen here.

Yeah.

So we have this like full-page, um, chapter-specific artwork that Jonny has, uh, crafted in Midjourney, uh, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah. Yeah. That has also been a, a lot of fun, uh, learning to operate these, uh, this new tool and really getting the hang of that and to see what kind of a creative process it is to, to create these kind of images. It's not as easy as people think.

No. And that's actually an excellent segue to one of my favorite parts of your book. You talk about 21st century cyborgs, which I believe both of us, according to your definition, qualify for that since we're using eyeglasses.

Yeah.

I thought that was—

We use that technology to improve our biological functions. That's right. Makes us cyborgs.

So it's towards the end, like this book is kind of like a 3-part way. First we outline the problem, uh, and then we, we kind of like go through the struggles and then we, Joni presents sort of a solution and a vision for the future.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's some really beautiful images here throughout, and I think it's a really wise choice of you to also include some images towards the end. So, uh, I don't know how many images I've created, but it's probably been like 50 or 60 images that I've No, more, hundreds of images, uh, come to think of it. And we have selected the ones that we thought were best for the, for the message.

Yeah, I think this will complement the message nicely.

Yeah.

It'll give you a little bit of your brain, a little bit of a breather. Like if you read a lot of, uh, long text, you get fatigued, but then once you break it off with, with some nice art every now and then, you give a, a little bit of a deserved break. And also to ingest the words that were just read because it is, you said in the beginning, like it's, it's, you tried to make it accessible. I think you did a good job in making it as accessible as it could be. But keep in mind that this is not by no means a light read like that. I wouldn't say like I got a lot out of this book. I've read a lot of books, Bitcoin and otherwise, and it's not really a light read in that sense. I would say that it, it, it falls in some, somewhere between maybe, maybe Knut Swanholm's work and a little bit of Saifedean's Bitcoin Standard and, and maybe even some Erik Vosskuil type of thinking. Yes. From crypto economics. Would you say that's fair?

I would say that's fair. Yeah. Also, this is a different genre altogether in the Bitcoin space. I don't think that anybody has written You know, this is, it's not a technical book, it's a philosophical book, but it's written, written in prose. You know, there's this famous book here in Sweden that's been circulating for a while now. I'm not really sure what it's called in English, but it's about eels. It's a technical or academic book about eels, but it's written in prose, which makes it so incredibly beautiful. And now everybody is reading about eels. And that's just a little bit weird. That's what I wanted to make sure. I wanted to make it, as you said, as accessible as possible because it's not a light read, but it's still accessible in the sense that this concerns all of humanity. Because what we have to realize is that, and what I make clear in the book is that money is a fundamental tool. For civilization. We need money to coordinate the workforce and our resources and to cooperate at large scale over generations. That is how we advance as a civilization. But civilizations also undergo cycles of progress and decline, and a period of decline can be ignited by war, by pandemics, lack of resources. And in order to resolve a period of decline, the state often resort to currency devaluation to bolster the economy and the power of the state. But this works terribly because it never actually reverses the decline. It only diminishes the potential to actually create progress. So the only way to truly swing the pendulum from decline to progress is to build more economic goods, to advance technologically and economically. By building more technology, like working on fusion power or becoming a multi-planetary species. That is how we truly advance the economy. We have to actually, we can't artificially expand the economy. The fiat system tries to do that, but that's not possible. We have to actually put in the work to progress as a civilization to expand the economy. And the state tries to circumvent that in periods of periods of decline by printing money. That just doesn't work. Instead, it just breaks the money. And when money breaks, civilizations can no longer coordinate resources and the workforce or cooperate at large scale over generations, meaning that over centuries, institutions begin to fail, populations begin to decline, poverty increases and eventually civilizations collapse. And that is exactly what happened in Rome. Rome, when they experienced very severe periods of decline, war and pandemics and so on, so they devalued the denarius to bolster their economy and the power of the state, and they gained some temporary relief, but they also broke the denarius in the process. So After a few centuries, they tried to introduce new currencies, but none stuck. They all failed. So their decline continued and they couldn't reverse it when the money was broken. You know, there's some heartbreaking stories. I think I mentioned that. I'll mention this in the book as well. There's truly heartbreaking stories from the decline of the Roman Empire. There's stories of families Farmers mostly, and mostly having to go into the cities scavenging food like animals. And some even had to sell their children into slavery to feed them. They didn't sell their children to gain money themselves so that they could eat. They sold their children out of love because they couldn't feed their children. And as slaves, they would at least not starve. And this is just heartbreaking. But Rome is so distant that it's difficult to connect them. We have to remember that they're people just like us. And imagine if we take their stories and apply their stories to our own civilization. Imagine if our civilization in 100 or 200 years, and we were on a perpetual decline toward collapse, and we actually began to consider when it becomes a viable option. where it became a true option that we were actually considering to sell our children into slavery because we cannot feed them. It would just be horrendous. But they actually had to go through that. And I think there's important, there are important lessons in there, but we have, they didn't manage to, they never managed to introduce new currencies. We have Bitcoin, which cannot be debased. Yeah. So now that we have money that protects us from the states, going on this devaluation journey, driving us closer toward collapse. But Bitcoin does more than this. It also promises a cultural and economic transformation on a scale that is comparable to the Enlightenment of the Middle Ages. So, you know, there's just so much to love about Bitcoin. You know, over the course of history, humans have found ways to work together in larger and larger groups. We began as hunter-gatherers working in small bands together, a small band of maybe 6 to 12 people. Then about 12,000 years ago, we began to settle and farm land, and we found ways to work together in even greater numbers. And that is where the Dunbar number comes from. That comes from the agricultural age when we built sites of upwards of 300 people. Or so. But the farming, the agricultural age extended all the way up to the industrial age and had societies of tens of thousands of people after then, at least systems that allow us to coordinate with thousands. And then we industrialized and we developed new systems where we could coordinate as a species in much greater numbers, in millions. And now, Niko, we are in the early stages of the digital age and we now have systems where we can cooperate and coordinate over much, much larger numbers, even billions. And this is basically the story of humanity, finding ways to work together in larger and larger groups. So Bitcoin is a very natural step in our cultural evolution. We have always bonded over the dominant story of the era, whether that's nationalism, fascism, communism, capitalism, or religions. Bitcoin is an entirely new kind of story that binds billions, and it's a simple and beautiful story. It's a story that values communication on fair and equal terms without third parties. That is the Bitcoin story. And I'm not sure that everybody agrees, but I think that the biggest need in the global economy at this point in time is exclusivity. And I mean, just contrast that. We see CBDCs are money with an integrated surveillance system, an integrated surveillance system into the technology. That is, that should scare a lot of people. The CBDC saying now is that taxes and inflation are no longer enough to control the population. We also now need an inbuilt surveillance system into the actual money. They now need, they're saying with CBDCs, they now need high-resolution financial surveillance. They need to know your whereabouts, your financial activities, everything. Bitcoin Signal, on the other hand, is no thanks. I don't need that. We are fine on our own.

Wow. There's a lot to unpack there, Yoni. Let me try to see if I remember everything.

But yeah, like, sorry, just in this defense.

No, no, no. That, that was great. That was, that's so good. And I, I agree with, with everything you said. We, we can't expect to fix the system from inside. Like more voting is not going to do anything for us. Like we, we have to keep doing, like you said, produce those goods and services on our own. We have the money to do that now. We kind of already started to build this kind of parallel society, which to some it may seem like a little bit harsh, a little bit sad, myself included. But I, I, I see that that's the only way to do it. Like you have to prove, like you have to have some proof of work behind it. Yeah. Like the market is always wrong. That's what Henry Ford said. That's what Steve Jobs said. Like you, you cannot ask the market like, what should we do? Oh well, I, I want more free lunches. I mean, basically that's, that's what the, the, the average market user would say about money. They do not understand, especially in the, in the so-called first world countries, people don't really understand what is exactly the utility. Why should I be interested in this Bitcoin money? Because I just go to the shop and I flash my card, everything works, I get my food. And, you know, probably inflation is because of the war in Ukraine or whatever they tell you from the TV. Those are big problems and those are parts of the modern slavery. Like you talked about slavery, and that's obviously, well, it's slightly better that the people are in a position to actually be able to feed their children rather than having to sell them into physical slavery so that they get fed. That's a bad situation. However, the modern slavery is also bad because now you are, you are taught that you are actually free when you're not, and you don't even get the free meal that you get in the physical slave, uh, slavery, which is kind of funny. You are, you are expected to provide for your own roof and, and your board. Uh, but of course, yes. Uh, I mean, it's much more comfortable way, way to be in slavery. I'm, I'm sure. Uh, I don't try to talk down on, on like the, the actual slavery. Yeah.

A traditional slavery is harsher in a different way.

It's different. Yes.

That's it.

But that being said, that doesn't mean that we don't have real slavery in the modern information world. And the information age made it much, much worse because now we have a way to propagate propaganda globally within seconds, everywhere at once. So it truly takes a special mind and a special fighting spirit. To see through that and want to unplug from the matrix. That's something that you, you also go into in, in your book.

Yeah, it, it's a, it's an awakening. The truth is, you said something interesting here, Niko, that society's changing and we are going to see a lot of people parting with the traditional way of the, well, the ways that we are used to seeing society as it is now. This way of organizing is going to change for several reasons. One is that we are only in the early stages of the digital age. Some people think that we may be pretty advanced into the digital age. We are not. We're definitely not. This is the beginning of the digital age. All of the devices that we have, screens, keyboards, mouses, smartphones, These are going to be ancient technologies sooner rather than later. We are not going to have these kind of technologies. Society is dematerializing. We are going to lose more and more of the physical chores of society as we go on. And this scares a lot of people. Some people are sad because of this. It's the most radical cultural and economic change in the history of our species, and we don't really know what What it's going to mean. We are also going to see the disintegration of the nation state in due time, not necessarily the disintegration of all nation states, but you are going to see a rise of sovereign state projects. We can call them micronations if they arise on their own, sort of organically, or if larger nations split up into smaller nations, balkanization. And I think the better word for this is be pursued at all.

Yeah, that's, that's what the Bitcoiners understand at least. But I, I think I, I like to use the, the term Balkanization into smaller city-states.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I agree with you, but, but it depends on the origin of that new sovereign state, right? If it is a, if it is a bigger nation that, bigger nation that is splitting up into smaller parts, like former Yugoslavia, for example, that's Balkanization. But if we have hot products in Australia or Tristiani in Denmark and so on, that's more the right micronation. And Bitcoin is going to allow these types of, because we can now, we can create companies. Everybody can start a company that was less possible 200 years ago. And now we can even create money. Nobody could do that before, but now we have created our own money. That was not possible just 50 years ago, and it is still not possible to create your own governments, your own states. But Bitcoin is going to allow for that as well. The digital age in combination with Bitcoin is going to allow for that as well. And we are not only going to see the rise of micronations, of balkanization and so on, as Bitcoin makes a micronation independent of traditional financial structures and they can have their own trading partners and so on. And we can really empower these smaller groups. But more than that, Bitcoin could potentially become the first ever network states. And Balaji makes this point in his book, The Network States, that network states are on the rise, but they have to make the connection with Bitcoin because I believe that Bitcoin network could be the very first network states with its own constitution, its own institutions, its own communities. We could have our own flag. We have, we already have our own money and we could be unified by shared values rather than a shared state currency.

Yeah. What I, I, I like to talk about like this global village society, which we already lived in earlier. You were talking about Dunbar number and in the information age, funnily enough, I feel like it's, and, and by the way, Dunbar number means the, the, the maximum amount of contacts that you can maintain some kind of a meaningful connection to, which is, I believe, around 150. Contacts, which everybody can think of their like social media contacts and their phone contact. It's about the 150. After that, people just start to fall off. So keeping that in mind, in the information age, you would think that your circle expands, but my experience is the opposite. My circle has curtailed and helped me curate more signal. Of the things that I care about, which is great. And this is completely in contrast of the kind of like collectivist thought that we are all in this big boat that is the planet. In a way, physically, that is true. However, how we conduct ourselves, how we actually present ourselves and live our lives in the real world and in the cyberspace, it's very different. Like we might not be connected or care about other people at all. And should we? Maybe not. Maybe the only thing that we should not, we should consider with that, we should not use violence and theft against other peaceful individuals unless it's to defend ourselves. Right? So I—

We have to make a distinction between the meaningful connections that we have in our life and the network that we have in our life. And so 2 separate things.

Right.

The Dunbar number says we can only make meaningful connections with about 150 to Maybe maximum 300 people, somebody would say. And well, the number remains, the number remains, but our intimate circles have been diminished as we have gone further into the information age and the digital age. But we're still in the early stages. We're still experimenting with building these global networks and expanding our networks and our communities. And that has taken a toll. I believe on our intimate circles. Before we lived in small societies and we didn't have networks outside of that. We lived in small societies of up to 300 people as farmers. But now we live in much, much smaller intimate circles, but with much, much larger networks, global networks. And seeing that this is, we're still in the early stage of experiment. I believe this, that this is going to have its own evolution. We have no idea what it's going to be like in another few centuries with our networks and our intimate circles. But I absolutely agree with you that our intimate circles have taken a toll, but not necessarily for the worse. For a lot of people, a lot of people are more isolated and alone, and that is clearly not a good thing. Some people have also begun to wake up from the system. They are beginning to find connection with nature, with themselves, with other people, and with the universe in ways that we haven't had for centuries. And that is very valuable. And I think that the trajectory is what is meaningful here. We have to look at where we're going, not necessarily just where we are.

Yeah. Um, that's, that's a great point. And, uh, you're talking about opening your eyes and leaving the matrix. And to that, uh, I, I think, uh, your experiments with psychedelics has all helped you a lot opening your own, you know, third eye or whatever you might call it, some kind of a foresight, or even if it's not really a foresight, it is more of an insight. That's, that's my experience with psychedelics anyway. So maybe we could, we could, uh, wrap, wrap this up with going, going a little bit into that. Like, I, I'm, I'm not sure if our listeners are interested in that, but I sure am.

Me too.

So let, let me, let me form it into a question. So,

sure.

So you talk about stuff like Burning Man, exiting matrix, psychedelic revolution, and Bitcoin revolution. What's the connection there?

You know, the, the greatest achievement Humanity is our current era of peace, and Bitcoin is very important in solidifying our current era of peace. And it does this in 3 ways. I will just take this small tangent to answer your question. Bitcoin enables large-scale intergenerational cooperation by being hard money that operates on the rail of the first and only public money monetary system Ever devised. And it also, secondly, it also makes hot wars too costly for states when they cannot confiscate money from the citizens to wage war. And thirdly, this is the important bit, it changes our psychology. It expands our time horizons farther into the future, enabling us to build for the future, for a future that we desire. Bitcoin and psychedelics make us more like NASA and SpaceX and less like Facebook and Twitter as people. So when I talk about Burning Man and the psychedelic revolution and exiting the matrix, it is about how Bitcoin to truly have this transformative effect on us as individuals and as society as a whole. I mean, our realities are merely reflections of our cognitive landscapes. And society is the collective reflection of everybody's cognitive landscapes. And if everybody has a virus or a disease in their cognition or in their emotional or cognitive or spiritual landscape, that is going to be reflected in society. So I often say that there are 4 very, the 4 most important professions in society. Or parents, engineers, scientists, researchers, maybe just those 3 actually, because—

What about entrepreneurs?

Yeah, entrepreneurs. Sure. That's the 4th. Exactly. Cool. Thank you. Entrepreneurs. Those 4 are the most important professions in society because they drive civilization forward. The rest of us are just maintenance. As a doctor, I am a garbage man. I do maintenance. of society. I'm not driving civilization forward, but parents are, teachers are, engineers and entrepreneurs are. And I think teachers and parents are especially interesting from the perspective that what they're actually doing for civilization. If we take the larger perspective on what teachers actually do and parents actually do for civilization, not only do parents create the next generation, teachers and parents also forge the algorithms in the mind, in the brains of children so they can implant the future. They can sort of, they are architects of the future civilization or future society by creating the children, type of children that we think will create the best kind of society. We have the power to architect society by influencing the minds of our children. Our children are literally the future, and we can influence our trajectory not only by letting them inherit what we've already built, but also by shaping their minds. And that is why teachers are so important, not just because they impart wisdom and knowledge. We could have AIs for that, or we could have homeschooling or whatever. We, maybe we don't necessarily even need education. But we need to help children build their minds in a way that is desirable for the future of our civilization. That is the most important task that a teacher has. So, you know, I think that the most important thing that I've learned from the psychedelic state of mind is to zoom out and see the true importance of things, to see what role you Technology and our ways of thinking or our ways of doing things actually, what they actually mean. And Burning Man is a very fascinating example because it's, because it's so permitting. It's a place where people are not confined by traditional thinking and radical things can happen when you're no longer confined by traditional means of thinking. When people actually start to explore new territory in their cognitive landscape. That is that in our everyday societies, that in our everyday lives are not even accessible. And Bitcoin does the same thing for us. It shows us where our stories are flawed. It shows us what we need to correct, and it does this by providing healthy money that cannot be inflated, that cannot be corrupted, that cannot be seized or censored. So it shows us what's wrong with the fiat system. In that very similar sense, a place like Burning Man shows us what's wrong with how we organize as a society. It shows us that we are judgmental. We exclude a lot of people, but not to our own benefit, not to, to nobody's benefit. It shows us that we are ingrained in a certain type of thinking that may not be very good for us. You know, this happened in the '60s. You know, we experimented a lot with psychedelics in the '40s and '50s. as a way to research consciousness and mind and to treat psychiatric conditions. That released into society in the '60s and it became synonymous with the counterculture. And this was a grassroots movement that was gaining a lot of momentum. And it started to worry people because this grassroots movement, the psychedelic revolution of the '60s, they realized that humanity is on the wrong course. We need to course correct. We have embarked on a trajectory that is not benefiting us or the planet or anybody. So they began to organize differently, began to create new kinds of societies, and this was a direct threat against existing power structures. So our existing power structures before the psychedelic movement had gained enough Meant to withstand the states. The states shut them down from one day to the next. All research was discontinued. But now since the '80s, the late '80s, the early '90s, especially now, we have done a lot of research again. We have, we're on track again with the research. And I think we're also waking up. A lot of people are waking up to the ideas, the principles of Burning Man and the principles of Bitcoin and the principles of psychedelics. And I think we're on the verge of cultural revolution as much as we are on an economic revolution and a very significant change in the way that we organize society. If not for the digital age, a lot is about to change.

Well, yeah, I think so too. And yeah, I gotta say, you comparing yourself to a garbage man as a medical doctor, it must be some kind of unusual Swedish humility high. But I do appreciate the point. Like that's, it is a maintenance job, right? No matter how important it is.

Yes.

That's, that's very interesting. I never thought of it that way.

And I mean, I, like, of course we are paid better than garbage men are, and that sort of gives us more status, I guess. But the thing is, we would collapse faster without garbage men than we would without doctors.

That's interesting. At least you as a doctor would have way more, more work if the garbage men were not there.

Yes, that is also true.

So talking about the psychedelics, I think it was Terence McKenna who said that psychedelics don't work on stupid people. Does Bitcoin work on stupid people?

Wow. That's the best question I've heard in a long time. That's so interesting, Niko, because it is absolutely true that psychedelics, they don't work on everybody. You have to be open to them. They, they are a tool more than anything, and they are an incredible tool for reprogramming your mind and waking up, but not everybody can wake up. If you've reached a certain age or if you, if you have a certain type of mind, you're not going to be able to wake up in the first place. So psychedelics don't work on stupid people. That's a, that's a good way of putting it. It gets the point across. Bitcoin is to the benefit of all of humanity. It is a new economic operating system with capabilities that our current economic system lacks, such as neutrality, the openness, Bitcoin invites the other half. It invites all of humanity. And looking at Metcalfe's Law, it is going to alter our capabilities as a civilization through network effect alone. Having another 4 billion minds connected in the global economy, it is going to be the single greatest economic infusion in human history when we can onboard the other half. So Bitcoin is to the benefit of all humanity and to every individual as an economic system, but as a psycho technology, I'm going to have to think about this like other psycho technologies, like language, which helps us see, perceive the world. The language we have in our minds is an operating system that allows us to perceive the world and grasp ideas and concepts and formulate an infinite number of concepts. And Bitcoin similarly is a psycho technology that helps us expand our time horizons, see the future. And I think that can happen passively as well. Everybody may not wake up in the sense that they start to realize what's wrong with our current system and want to step out of that system, want to step out of the matrix to the real world. That may not happen for everybody, but what will happen for everybody is that when we have hard money in society, people will automatically start to think differently because there are emergent properties of the fiat system, such as hookup culture or consumerism. These kinds of things, we have very short time horizons. high time preference. Those are emergent properties of the fiat system of having weak money. But if we have hard money, it sort of just happened. We will have emergent properties for that as well, where we, instead of engaging in consumers, hookup culture and fiat food and fiat science, all that, we will have a fiat architecture for that matter. I mean, looking at all the architecture that is being built today, they're here to last for decades, up to 100 years and not thousands to tens of thousands of years. But we see that cultures that have had hard money, they build for the future. We know that this is an emergent property of hard money, that we extend our time horizons. And this is going to happen for everybody because as culture begins to change, as people expand their time horizons, it is going to change all of society, all of culture and even the ones that are less prone to waking up or being receptive to change, they're also going to follow it. They're, they're naturally going to naturally slip into this new kind of culture and this way of thinking by just being, being present in that system.

By being exposed.

By being exposed.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's in, that's in line with what I think. Like, I, I don't think for a second that majority of the people will ever understand or be liberated by Bitcoin the way we are. I don't expect that. However, and this is something that Saifedean and Knut Svanholm like to talk about, I believe it was Saifedean's book that stated that you cannot insulate yourself from the effects of somebody using money harder than yours, which is basically what you were talking about as well. Because like it, it, the effects, the positive effects of in entrepreneurship and, you know, development of society, they will spill over even to that, let's say, Quote unquote stupid people. Of course, that's a politically incorrect term to use, but let's just say that. So I think in that sense, most people are stupid in the way that they will wait for somebody to make that breakthrough and for it to become mainstream. Like same happened with the internet, mobile phone, everything, the car. You know, Henry Ford said that if you ask the market, they would want faster horses. Like, I, I think it's the same thing all over again and it has never changed. There's this part of innovators, scientists, entrepreneurs who push humanity forward. And I don't think Bitcoin is any different to that. Like, I, I think we, we need to dial down a little bit on our enthusiasm. Like you said in the beginning, like you are, how, how did you put it? Irrationally enthusiastic. No, not, maybe not that word. What did you say?

I think I said that I'm a delusional optimist.

Oh, there you go. Yes. You're delusionally optimistic about Bitcoin. Yep. And I'm the same way. So, but we have to understand that that's not everybody and it is not for everybody. It won't work the same way. It won't hit, it hits different and in a different way and a roundabout way. And that's also something that Hayek said that, you know, this is the roundabout way.

That's okay. What we need is people who push boundaries because we need science fiction authors. We need Bitcoiners, people who can imagine a different kind of future. So that we can recalibrate our compass as a civilization, as a species, and work towards that. We need people to imagine the future before we can build it. And so everybody, it doesn't have to hit everybody in the same way. No. It's happening. It is happening. It's here. It's already working. And if it hits a few people, that's enough because we just seen where this is, where this could take us. We can imagine that kind of future. And that is what I do with my book. I visualize, I provide a high-resolution image of what the future could be like now that we have Bitcoin. First and foremost, it's pretentious. We are currently in a civilizational decline, and as I make clear in the book, people are never aware that they are in decline, heading for collapse because it happens so slowly. But we've been at a, in a very clear decline for the past 50 years, and it takes a civilization a few centuries to collapse. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes a couple of centuries. It happens so gradually that nobody really notices. But Bitcoin is a protection against final collapse, and that is very important. I mean, does everybody have to know about this? Not necessarily, but it is important that we know that we have this kind of technology that actually protects civilization against the very dire consequences of currency devaluation. So we have that, but Bitcoin does a lot of other things as well, and it is here. It is here to stay. It's not going anywhere. And if it takes a long time for people to grasp the technology and start to integrate it in their lives, that's fine too. I mean, we're in no rush here really.

Yeah. I mean, I like the way that Knut puts it, that But Bitcoin will make your life better whether you like it or not.

That is brilliant. It really is a good way of putting it. Yeah.

All right. One last question before we wrap up here. Did psychedelics help you understand Bitcoin or did you understand Bitcoin before you took psychedelics?

You know, it goes in stages. In my book, I'm exploring an entirely new path in the Bitcoin rabbit hole where I look at what it means for the future of our civilization. And I don't think a lot of people have explored that before, but that's what I intended to do with my approach. And so I've obviously had some knowledge. I mean, I try to understand people better and better all the time, and sometimes you feel that you plateau and then you learn something new and somebody comes with a new perspective and you sort of gain new insight. What psychedelics have done for me is that it has spawned a ton of new great analogies that have shed new light on Bitcoin and that have helped me see Bitcoin in an entirely new light. And I will be talking about this in my presentation in Prologue on Bitcoin and psychedelics. But Bitcoin really has taught me, say, I'm sorry, psychedelics have taught me things about Bitcoin that I don't think that any book or other person could have ever conveyed because it really offers this deep dive into what it really is. What is Bitcoin and what is money? And as Breedlove often contends, this is the question of the century. What is money? It's a defining question. And to really, B Finance helped me zoom out and see what Bitcoin means for our civilization. I mean, that's basically the topic of the book as well. I don't think that I would've been able to write this book without the help of psychedelics.

Yeah, that's what I thought. That's, that's why I asked the question. It's the same for me. Like I, I heard about Bitcoin long, long before I, I tried psychedelics, but I think, and of course it's impossible to prove, but you know, after your mindset, uh, your, your vision of yourself and the world and, and the society you live in is completely shifted. Yeah. And, and upended. Uh, of course it's going to have an effect and I think it's, it affects, uh, are mostly positive.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Mostly positive. But most of all, psychedelics reveal the truth in much the same way that Bitcoin reveals the truth about the shits in our current economic system and a lot of how the world works today. Bitcoin reveals the truth about that. It shows us where the story is wrong. And psychedelics show us where the story we have about ourselves Are wrong. And yeah, and also about where society has gone wrong. And that is why counterculture emerged in the '60s. And, you know, I'm a little worried that psychedelics may be happening a little bit too fast this time. It needs to gain enough momentum so that it becomes strong enough to withstand potential attacks from the state. Exactly like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is now strong enough that it can withstand Most attacks, but it wasn't always like that. It needs to gain momentum before it, it comes, it becomes too popular before it reaches mainstream consciousness. Because if people understand the threats of Bitcoin and psychedelics to existing power structures, our existing power structures will do what they can to stop these movements.

Well, I think, I think they already do, like the, the powers that be. They certainly understand the dangers of Bitcoin and psychedelics to the powers that be. So that when we, we do have these wars on drugs and, and we have all kinds of scapegoats that way, we tell these stories to the normies or the stupid people that they, these are somehow worse than, and, and you should only drink alcohol and, and, you know, eat prescription drugs because those are like FDA approved and safe for you. Which is another lie. But unfortunately, historically, majority of humans have never been out in the market for truth. They have been out in the market for comforting lies. And I don't think this time is different.

No, it's not different. But what, what we also have to understand is that the magnitude of the threat is not perceived accurately by our power structures. Because if they could extrapolate where Bitcoin and psychedelics are going to take us as a society and see how They will, their influence in society, I mean, the influence of the state and our existing power structure is going to diminish over time and eventually become obsolete. If they truly saw what psychedelics and Bitcoin are going to do, how they're going to transform society, they would act differently, I think. But they're not perceiving this threat from that magnitude. If we were about to be invaded by Aliens. If we receive the message that, hey, earthlings, we are going to be, we are going to land in 50 years, we're going to take your planet, prepare if you like, it doesn't matter. We would mobilize all of our defenses. We would take all of our resources to prepare for a threat that we don't even know what it is going to be like. And in the process, we would create mayhem on Earth, but we would do it for the purpose of defending against this threat. And Bitcoin and psychedelics is that existential threat to existing power structures that they're not preparing in the way that they would with a much clearer threat, like an alien invasion. So in that way, they are misinterpreting The magnitude of the threat against them.

Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe we are even underplaying the power of Bitcoin. Like maybe, maybe we are underselling it. It's difficult to tell because things move so fast in the information age. Like if you look at the, in your book, you also talk about the, you know, biological evolution and the development of tools, how it took 2 million years for a slight improvement in, in the stone tools. And now we have like in the, within a span of 10 years, we, we have artificial intelligence, smartphones. The development is, it's just like we cannot handle that kind of thing. So it's very, very, very difficult to see like 50 years from now where we are. And maybe we shouldn't, maybe we should just focus on building. Like, I, I, I think that's the, that's the key message here.

Yeah. We need to secure the survival of our species because we don't know what's coming. Right. I think Elon Musk is one of the most important human beings on this planet for this reason, because he can see the threats that we're facing. We have no idea what this planet is going to be, what we are capable of doing to ourselves. And in just a few decades' time or a few centuries, we could face existential threats from AI, from ourselves. We need to become multi-planetary and we need to become multi-planetary fast. We need to create fusion power. To have a more or less endless source of energy.

Yeah. I mean, you know, talking to you, it just feels so crazy that the mainstream is all about carbon neutrality and decreasing energy consumption. It's just like,

this is, it's alone to be woke in this sense, you know, to be outside of the matrix, to wake up. It's a bit elitist to talk in this way, and I realize that, but it's also I realize that we are privileged in seeing the flaws in the system, but we're also alone. I mean, we, that's why we have, that's why we're creating a new network state on the Bitcoin network with shared values rather than being unified by state currency. People are waking up, more and more people are waking up, whether from through the use of psychedelics or encounters with enlightened people or Bitcoin. And the community of truly woke people here, let me use that term, uh, is growing.

Woken people, not woke.

Exactly. Sorry. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I mean.

Yeah. I guess like to start to wrap, wrap it up, uh, you know, ConsenSys Network is kind of like this sort of, uh, network state as well. It's more like a, a new way to organize and, and do some work.

Yeah.

Based on reputational capital and proof of work rather than fiat coupons. So I'm pretty proud of what we built here. And also, I'm extremely proud of your book. It's one of my favorites.

Thank you.

Excellent. Do you have anything else to add before we quit? At least tell people where to find you.

Yeah, well, I always have things to add, but I'm not going to go anymore. Not today. Let's save that for another day. Another occasion. My Twitter handle is @ioniappelberg, I-O-N-I-A-P-P-E-L-B-E-R-G. I also have a YouTube channel where I make whiteboard explainer videos about Bitcoin, easily accessible, fun, and engaging animations. If you want to delve deeper into the Bitcoin rabbit hole, it's a fun place where I collaborate with the Swan Holding guy, Swan, also Yoni Appelberg. So go to YouTube and find me on Twitter. And of course, come to Prague and pick up a signed copy of the book.

Yep. And also remember bitcoinbook.shop. It's gonna, we, we don't have it listed yet because we're waiting for the Prague release, but right after the, the conference, you'll, you'll be able to pick up your copy online in our, our bookshop as well. Both hard and soft covers.

Excellent. Perfect, Niko.

All right. Thank you so much, Jonny, for, for joining, joining today. I really enjoyed the conversation and I hope everybody in their homes, on their computers and their mobile phones did as well.

Thank you. Bye.

Thanks everybody.