Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] We all have our bear markets and our bull markets. Life itself is volatile and has its many ups and downs. Bitcoin will always reflect that in a fashion. It's easy for new normals to be established, for things to feel stagnant. And like my own recent weeks, there will always be a convergence of bad outcomes, failures, and periods where it feels like there's no progress being made. But something that I feel life has taught me is that most of the time, success is not about building a great tower. It's about lifting the foundation. It's about a consistent, small push in one direction or toward one goal every single day, every single week. It's about being 1% better over and over and over again, not 100% better all at once.
[00:00:59] Bitcoin is 21 million. And no matter what happens to the price in the short term or even in the midterm, there is a small, unceasing upward push. As long as society is growing and we are all still here and bitcoin is still 21 million, it will remain and it will grow. And all the leverage, all the finance bros, all the hedge funds in the world can't make that not true. In the end, that push will overtake, but only after it has exhausted and beaten all of the hope out of every fool trying to trade it or leverage it for bigger gains.
[00:01:43] Be like bitcoin. Small, unceasing progress.
[00:01:49] Be the one that lasts through the bear markets. And when it all feels stagnant and hopeless, know that this is when everyone else gives up. And all you have to do is be the one who doesn't.
[00:02:03] This is why bitcoin, and many times, life will always take the path of greatest pain.
[00:02:11] It's time for a guys take episode.
[00:02:32] What is up, guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin Audible. I am Guy Swan, the guy who has read more about bitcoin than anybody else, you know.
[00:02:41] And I wanted to do a guy's take today for a couple of different reasons. One is I'm.
[00:02:50] Last week was just a hell of a week.
[00:02:56] Bunch of stuff going on. Buncha.
[00:02:59] Just a lot of it was just, like little bad news that was just piling on top of each other and like, every single day. And then, as in combination, my wife's grandmother passed, and so we were saying goodbye to her and a couple of things with a side project that I have been working on for a really long time that just not lining up and maybe things aren't where I thought they were.
[00:03:35] And lots of expenses, lots of capital leaving, not much coming in anymore. Just so many different things on top of each other, along with kind of like bad outcomes in like four or five different things that I'm working on. Basically. Basically a series of everything either being worse than I thought it was, or the, the bad situation revealing itself more than, or kind of punching me all at the same time.
[00:04:08] And then. No, really, like every single time there might have been like a little, well, maybe this will be good, maybe this is fine. No, that turned out, even if it was something small, that turned out to be a mess as well. And then, of course, the price is dumping. So right when I don't have any capital or any extra flows to allocate towards anything, I get a. I get bitcoin on sale. In fact, I get bitcoin on sale when I have to sell it. I have to sell it for a discount to keep things afloat. So got the opposite of. Usually I get really excited when the price falls. I mean, my bitcoin is safe. No key troubles, no anything like that. You know, I got a cold card and I got my multisig, I'm using nunchuck, I got all my setups. Everything's fine there. My bitcoin is safe. And the only thing that I can actually depend on, also just a heads up, family is fine, everybody's okay. You know, at the end of the day, the situation is just a bunch of, just a bunch of stuff.
[00:05:14] But I was reading, in fact, one of the posts was from FTB, who I believe he's in audio, not actually talked to him a bunch of times. And it was, I don't have the post right in front of me, but it was something that I've felt many, many times before. And I understand the feeling. In fact, right now I particularly understand the feeling just because even though it's not really about bitcoin and the state of the bitcoin market or stagnation in the price, whatever it is, it's really just more about the situation and a bunch of things that are happening with the business and projects and all of that stuff. So I do feel or get that kind of the bear market, like we're in the doldrums feeling. And that's mostly just after doing lots and lots of grinding and not seeing anything for it and doubling down on things with the amount of work and capital I put into it and then still not seeing anything for it. But I understand, and I know the feeling. I know the feeling. I've been through, what, four massive bear markets now? I think thats right. And I remember getting to this place with just the general bitcoin price, which feeling like the ecosystem, the excitement, the price, the network, the expansion of the network that was all dying down or it was all becoming stagnant. And thats really kind of what the post was about. Just that, man, am I, am I an idiot kind of thing, like asking the question, you know, did I make a bad move? Is it stupid? Why? How is this stagnant? Even through all of this stuff? It feels like from four years ago back in, you know, 2020 or whatever, the price hasn't even changed. Have we not been here the whole time? Is it just 58k forever?
[00:07:22] And I remember that feeling.
[00:07:24] I remember and I know very much what it's like to be in that place.
[00:07:31] And so I thought this would be a good reframing for myself as well as a reframing for anybody who's feeling that way right now.
[00:07:45] Now, you guys know I don't like to talk about the price much, but really, the easy way to clear yourself of all of the noise of that is just look at the 200 period moving average line.
[00:08:00] And if, you know, it seems like if it feels like the bitcoin price hasn't moved in the last four years because, you know, in 2020 it shot up at the end of 2020. Granted, it started in 2020 at like 5000 or $6,000 or something like that, but it shot up to 60,000 range, then did its little wobble back and forth where it tried to do it again. But this was during FTX and all of the explosion of the Ponzi scheme and the deleveraging event, which I think really just cut it all short.
[00:08:36] The blow off top that's usually accompanying the hype cycles, those huge growth periods in bitcoin, I genuinely think we didn't get it.
[00:08:49] I think it would have gone to the 80 to 100 range had it not been for the fact that FTX blew up in the middle of it rather than after we had the hype cycle. Malgox blew up on the way down. But it's important to remember how quickly we get normalized to new ranges, to new prices and fail to recognize that that normality shift is what's important. And it's specifically because we start to use it as the new judge for where we feel progress has been made. So after it went to 60k, just kind of became normalized, that that's now bitcoin's price, that that's its market. So when we're here at 58k or, I mean, I don't even know what it is today, probably 52, 55, whatever, who cares? But when it's in this price range again, it becomes the obvious. Like, clearly this is supposed to be the price, and then it falls down to 45, and it's like now it's not at the price it's supposed to be. And so falling back down to 15 or 20k isn't seen as the move from six k to 20k, which is really what it was. It's seen as the failure to maintain its real price at 60k.
[00:10:26] But if you look at the 200 period on any chart, which honestly is the only thing, if you just want to look at the growth, if you just want to see it, just go do that. Go open up a weekly chart and look at the 200 period. The moving average line, by the way, for those who don't know what I'm referencing, because I can't say the whole thing, apparently, but if you put yourself a simple moving average line on the chart and do a weekly and look at where the 200 period was, and you go back to when it first hit 60,000, a 200 period moving average was at like 10,000. And now we're right around the exact same price, and the 200 period moving average is at like 40,000. So it's important to remember human framing, how we normalize the new state of things and become used to the new state of things. And why it is that that fuels the next growth phase is specifically because it is normalized.
[00:11:30] Like sub 58, even. Even for me. It's funny, I referenced earlier that I usually get excited when the price drops. If I, you know, I've pulled out anything in fiat or I've, you know, pushed stuff to the fiat bank for bills, and I get a price opportunity, you know, drops to 52 or something, I'm like, okay, boom, I'm going to go ahead and buy in. Well, the funny thing is, the reason I get excited about that price drop is because I've normalized the higher price. So 52 feels like a dip. It feels like it's on sale. But when the price is normalized at 150,000, $300,000, $60,000 is going to seem like a frigging steal. And I should be buying it at $60,000, like I would be buying it then. But human emotion is only ever going to normalize what makes sense for the range that we are in. And no matter what, that's extremely hard to override. Like, extremely hard. You know, one of the things that people talk about is like, oh, if the bitcoin price was $5 again, I'd sell my kidney and would have bought all these things and I never would have let go any of it. I would have known. I would have known. And it was funny. Like, I did know, know. I did know that it was going to be worth a lot. Like, I was. I was. I felt it in my gut. I was like, holy crap, this thing might actually work. But the crazy thing is, is that no matter what you do, it's still just worth $5. And if you lose a little bit of it, you still just think, oh, well, only lost $5. Like, it's extremely difficult to weigh it differently than what it literally means at the moment when it is being weighed, which means that if it's literally worth $5 in the market or in a trade or something, you can't help. Even if you kind of know, you can tell that this is going to be worth way more and that you have a massive opportunity. It's still very difficult to put it in your head to treat it as if it's worth $60,000 because you still did really, in that moment, lose or give away or spend a just quote unquote $5 of stuff. And this is the slow shift of moving on to a bitcoin standard on a bitcoin weighting system that you are weighing things versus against how much bitcoin you will receive or how much bitcoin and how many sats it will cost you.
[00:14:05] So feeling weighed down or I depressed or as if nothing is happening because it's been stagnant at this price for a rather long time, it seems, or it feels. It's important to remember why it feels that way. And it feels that way specifically because we have had so much growth and we simply took the trip the long time that we had down in the 20 and 30 thousands. We took that as the anomaly when really then that was the 200 period moving average line like we were in line with what? A stable growth of the, of the network or of the. The value, or I guess the dollar denominated value of bitcoin would have been.
[00:14:57] So it's just important to keep that in mind.
[00:15:00] Now, there's another thing about bitcoin, and I guess probably just markets in general or honest markets probably is the way to put it, because fiat loves to paper over all the problems and risks as if they don't exist.
[00:15:18] But there's a reason we say bitcoin takes the path of greatest pain.
[00:15:25] Because really what has to happen is not that there's a hype cycle. Not that there's tons of people super excited about bitcoin, and everybody just thinks bitcoin is the greatest thing in the world. Like, that is not.
[00:15:43] That's the end of the growth. That's when we know the growth is no longer real anymore.
[00:15:50] What has to happen for bitcoin to start growing again in earnest is for sellers to be exhausted.
[00:16:01] We have to drain everyone of the exuberance of the hype, of the certainty that it is going up, and it will continue to do so until all of that excitement will continue to refuse to go up, until all of that excitement is bled out of everyone and nobody is selling anymore because exuberant exuberance and excitement and surety that it's going to go up in price is what causes people to leverage. It's. It's what causes people to trade it, what, it's what brings in a bunch of crypto bros. And finance bros. Coming in and betting on the market that it's going to go that way. And what, what ends up happening there that ends up being enormous amounts of posted liquidity for it to fall to sell if it doesn't immediately go up without a flood of new people coming in because they're excited about it or they heard about it. The exuberance of the people who are already here works against you because crypto bros. And finance bros. Are just here to make a dollar, and they are all noise in the markets. That's all that they are. So after it fails to hit the mark or break through three times, that's when they're like, oh, it's definitely going to happen this time. It's definitely going to. I watched this chart so many times. Look at. Look at this history. Last time it did this three times, it totally broke through. Just smash right through it next time. Oh, my God. Look at the RSI. So it's crossing. It's crossing. This is it. This is it, people. I'm gonna buy $200,000 with the options right now. And then some financier or some ETF manager in the back door just says, oh, my God, I saw this. Look at this order. If we knock it down $700, this guy's gonna have to put up more or get margin called. And look at how many of these are stacked. And this is, and this is important to all of those people. All of that side of the market has the insider information. They're buying it from Robinhood when they don't post it publicly or they have private order books. Your pride, those private order books, those private options that aren't getting publicly posted, they're simply not publicly posted because they are vastly, vastly, vastly more valuable if they are privately shared with people who are purchasing, purchasing the information. That's exactly what makes it. This is why it always seems to just, that WIC just hits your option, it just knocks you out. And if it had just gone $5 more or $5 less, then it wouldn't have called you out. The reason is, is because that's where the liquidity is. And because they have batched all of this information, they have sold it to a bank and a bunch of finance people who are literally trading against your quote unquote, non public, not on the books trade. The way they make money is by buying the options that you, the information of the options that you have placed, that the Normie trader has placed so that they can make money on the difference.
[00:19:02] They pay for the data so that they know exactly how much to push it down, so that they can make twice as much as they paid for the data. Probably ten times as much as they paid for the data on calling you out of your option and cleaning up your sats.
[00:19:18] But bitcoin is 21 million.
[00:19:22] It is 21 million. And that is it.
[00:19:26] The supply shock, the pressure for the price to go up is constant, persistent, never ending. It is natural and inevitable. As long as society grows and continues to exist, that is it in the market. If you want to capitalize on that, you should be constant, consistent, and never ending in the stacking of bitcoin in exact accordance, in exact correlation to the fact that there is still 21 million in supply, if that ever changes, get out. Otherwise, keep going. Because when sellers are finally exhausted, when they're finally sick of trying one more time to see it break through, of drawing another one more stupid line on a chart, they're putting three more indicators and trying to guess when, in which way the wind's going to blow and what the ETF's going to do. They're doing backdoor deals, they're doing off books trading, they're clearing. And in fact, I just read something today, somebody published on Twitter, which, forgive me, I was on Twitter for a little while today. I was on there hanging out with Brady and P and John and a bunch of people and Shane for cafe bitcoin. And I got roped into some stuff later on, but I found some. I found a couple of useful articles. I didn't completely just lose all of my time spent up there, but somebody was showing that this was like published by Coinbase or no, Blackrock, I believe. But the Blackrock and Coinbase are doing off books exchanges of bitcoin such that the bitcoin isn't actually having to be proven one to one. Like, nobody's actually having to put anything on the table. They're just basically issuing debt back and forth for Blackrock. And so trades are being able. It's kind of like, at least the situation sounds like it's kind of like naked shorting. And this has nothing to do with the ETF specifically, by the way. So this is not them, like saying that they have bitcoin in their ETF that they don't have. That's not what this is about. This is about them trading against or on top of this is, this is them playing the market in and around what's happening in the ETF's by putting, quote unquote, bitcoin up for a trade or in a, you know, buy order, or trying to play against something without actually having to put it up, without actually having to transfer the bitcoin. Coinbase is just saying, you're worth, you're good for it. I know you, buddy, you're good for it. You got the coins. So, perfect example of how they're going to screw you if you think you're going to play the market. They own the market. They've built it so that they have a backdoor. All of your trading data, all of your order book can and will be used against you in the stock market in an option or a call. So many of these institutions and companies and finance systems, like that's literally their raison debt now. That's their, their whole business model is around taking advantage of people by having more data and faster access to the books, faster access to the trade itself. And a lot of this stuff is run by machines now. None of it, none of it is designed in your favor. It's actually designed to put you over there, to get you in there, to lure you in so that you can be their liquidity. And this, and many other reasons is why it has to feel like it's over. Like it's never going to go anywhere. Like it's stuck here forever and nobody cares about it anymore. And it's old news before it will really start to climb again. And I highly suspect, and this is, this is just kind of how it does for a long time. It will climb slowly and everybody will be certain that it's another one of these stupid, not gonna break throughs. And then when it breaks through, you know, quote unquote, all the, all the flags and all the lines and all the stupid crap that everybody's drawing. It's gonna break through in a really boring fashion. It's gonna break through really slow. It's gonna kind of like just meander through to the right and maybe a little bit up. And everybody's gonna be like, this is not it. This. It's just the same boring thing. And it won't be until that happens for like four months in a row. But it's like, wait a second. It's really at like 70,070, 5000 again. And it's kind of just been going up this whole time. And then suddenly, suddenly a little bit excitement comes in and then you get the real stupid stuff starting to happen. And that's when it starts to defy physics and all sensibilities. And it's a Ponzi scheme again, and it's chaos. And it's the most important issue in every discussion, because obviously you're a bitcoin billionaire or you're absolutely crazy or you're just supporting a scam and you have no idea what you're talking about whatsoever. But everybody's got an opinion on it. Everybody's doing their nails and getting a tattoo. That's not the place you want to be. Sure, it's fun for like a minute, but that place sucks.
[00:24:54] The people suck. It's impossible to talk to anybody with any sort of, any sort of sense. You don't get genuine conversations about any of it. It's all just hype. And then all those people are so shallow. And then they. They leave. The second there's a solid red candle and it appears as if there's just not infinite green on the, on the chart. They will run away chasing the next flashy thing. Understand, the real heart of the hype cycle is awful.
[00:25:25] You're gonna find out that the most popular person that everybody's listening to for bitcoin information or news is a total moron. Like a total absolute buffoon. You are not gonna believe some of the stupid crap that they say and that everybody else parrots around them. And it's gonna be people who don't even know, don't even know what running a node means. Like the gen, the simple context of what that. What that statement even involves. But here's the thing. We're going to be back there and don't be upset about this feeling of stagnancy. Be upset about the fact that that's where we're going. The only. The consolation prize is that the price is going to skyrocket, but it's not going to be any fun. At least now you're still talking and hanging out with bitcoiners. In fact, you're talking and hanging out with the people who still know how powerful and how important all of this is, and the people on noster who are building, literally building our own decentralized social media protocol. We have the pair stack, and we're genuinely redesigning and rethinking the entire systems of monetization and how file storage and connections and peers meet each other and actually control and own their own environment. We're creating our own messaging systems, our own resource sharing systems.
[00:26:53] We have zaps. Everybody's zapping each other on noster like crazy. Like, this is the good old days, guys. This. This is the good old days.
[00:27:03] You know how the office guy in the office, Andy, I believe it was said, I wish you could realize you were in the good old days while you were still in them.
[00:27:13] That's now.
[00:27:15] That's. That's where we are today. These are the good old days. And even in this, even right now, Trump has talked about, has actively engaged in, and on multiple occasions talked about a strategic bitcoin reserve, about not selling the us government's bitcoin, which is not even, like, fantastic news. It's not even like a solidly good or solidly bad thing, really, in a lot of ways. It's just kind of neutral to me. It's like, okay, cool. We get the signal that they're supporting and they're recognizing, like, as a form of normalization. Like, that's a huge step. But I don't really get all the warm and fuzzies because a politician said, we're going to control bitcoin and bitcoin is going to be made in America. That's not. That's not exactly the reason I got into bitcoin. But then also to reject the fact that that's huge. That is a huge piece of news, and it's a massive, massive framing shift for a potential.
[00:28:16] The top presidential candidate for the 2024 election is talking about a national reserve of bitcoin, about holding bitcoin on the United States balance sheet specifically because it is considered a. It has been normalized as a legitimate global asset. Understand that. 2023, that wouldn't have worked.
[00:28:39] That doesn't. That doesn't work. The ETF's, everything that has happened this year has fundamentally shifted the mindset. I do not have, like, 99% of all of the odd looks and the quiet judgments, the rolled eyes, all of the stuff that I received for so, so long from so many people has kind of just faded into the background. It's just. It's just disappeared. It's no longer a joke. No matter what anybody thinks about it, it's no longer just a joke. And RFK junior seems like a. Like a full on bitcoiner. And the concern about how serious of an issue this is has actually made the people who have been attacking bitcoin shut up.
[00:29:40] Like Kamala and Elizabeth Warren, like all of these people who have been heavy into the choke, .2.0 into the. Squeezing out the regulatory approval to pushing out any banks who attempt to work with this, the people that custodia have been fighting against, they clearly got marching orders to stop talking about it. Like, it's. It's just kind of gone quiet on the we hate bitcoin front. And I think there's a very good reason. I think it's because they see it as a failing strategy. Again, this all signals normalization. To me. It is becoming simply, simply bitcoin. Shout out to Niko says it's becoming simply. It's not. It's not bitcoin, the Ponzi scheme. It's nothing. You know, bitcoin, the tool for criminals. And those people still exist. Like, don't get me wrong, like that. That narrative is still blasted out there all over the place, but in the general mindset of the people, it's. It's now just bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah, there's bitcoin. That does it. Does the thing. There it is.
[00:30:51] Do not discount how much we are winning.
[00:30:58] That this has become the state of things.
[00:31:02] This episode is brought to you by cold card or by coingite and their cold card hardware wallet. If you want to keep your bitcoin safe, get a cold card. It really. It really is that simple. You need a hardware wallet if you are holding any amount of value. I had a couple of people actually send me DM's recently saying they finally broke down and got a cold car and that this was actually the first time they were holding their own keys, which is epic. And, you know, as much as I joke about, like, you're not a real bitcoin if you don't hold your own keys, like, literally, don't feel bad about it, but do it. Do it for your own sake. I really think you will find it a kind of a wild experience. There's something very genuine about, or very real about the feeling of, like, wow, like, this is this is on here. Like, this is, this is behind this seed phrase and these keys. And I am the only one who has this. This is actually mine and for no other reason. If you haven't felt that feeling yet, you should. And also, if you want to support this show and you want to use a solid hardware wallet that I have been a fan of for an incredibly long time, you can grab a cold card and you can use my discount code, bitcoin, audible, all one word. The link and details will be in the show notes. But no matter what you do and whatever hardware wallet you use or whatnot, I love to hear about it. I love to know that you guys are withdrawing, and I love to know that I have encouraged you to take that step. So shout out to everybody who has.
[00:32:39] And I've always also talked about, you know, in the will bitcoin save the dollar episode, which was the previous guy's take, if I'm not mistaken, talking about Mark Goodwin and Whitney Webb's pieces and their, their breakdown of the bitcoin dollar theory.
[00:32:58] I really find this framing and their breakdown of all the pieces of this, like, really fascinating.
[00:33:05] But I also, I cannot help but see this as them pivoting to having to deal with the fact that bitcoin exists, that they are trying to ride with bitcoin. They're trying to use bitcoin to their advantage because bitcoin is not something that they can get rid of. And this was always, this was always the game theory, right? This was, this was how it unfolds is that you cannot fight bitcoin. It's a question of how and when and at what point do you use it to your advantage. And it becomes a race to see who can vie for as much control over it or who can get as much of it as possible before the other powers that would, would, might be that want to be the powers that be, realize it such that they can be the only game in town. And it's going to kick off a rush. It's going to kick off a gold rush, a capital rush, in attempting to buy and consolidate as much power over any and every market into and out of bitcoin. And that is what I think a massive amount of the stablecoin push. I mean, I find Mark Goodwins and Whitney Webb's a lot of very deep threads of truth in how they frame the data and the relationships that they've put together that they are trying to. There are people who are trying to capitalize on the stablecoin market and using essentially the expansion of the network and the systems of the stablecoin network in order to expand the dollar network and use it as pressure to buy US treasury bonds in a market where US treasury bonds are running out of buyers.
[00:35:00] But also, this is a win, this is a pivot. This is them having to deal with the new technological reality and attempting to vie for power within it. This is like moving the game to a different. It's like, you know, you have a football field or a game or a playing board where they literally have, you know, magnets under the board or something where they're able to manipulate, manipulate the game completely. And we've moved it to a new board. But now they're just trying to make sure that they control all the best players and they have a really good position on the new board. But the reality is, is they're playing on the new board. They've. They've had to move away from the one where they literally control what happens to the pieces. I mean, their plan for a long time was, you know, serious. It was, they attempted to do the Bancor and SDR special drawing rights with the IMF and the World bank, and that this was going to be the thing that every, what everybody was going to move to, and this would end up replacing the dollar and the euro. And it looked like they were hedging. They were moving to have this in place and essentially be there as the backstop when we had these sovereign debt crises. Because I think anybody with half a brain, even, even them, even in those institutions, knew that all of these debt crises were going to cascade and collapse in on themselves. Like, there was no, there was no way out of it. It had to be reset. This is why they have been branding the great reset. For how long? This has been going on for like seven to ten years or something, publicly. And certainly it was privately a plan for longer than that, and a global stablecoin system that is attempting to reinforce the dollar or that is vying for, you know, because you think about this, it's important to remember that, like, all of these power hungry, crazy tyrants all want power for themselves. They don't want to be part of a group where they're giving their power to somebody else. They are fighting each other. I think that's something that's really lost, is that we kind of have almost the same personification that we do with AI, where AI is going to be this one global, overarching, authoritarian thing, when in reality it's millions of different models and competitive variations and LLMs and fine tunes and God knows what.
[00:37:38] It's everything. It's this massive ecosystem of stuff. And then we kind of had the same thing with this global cabal.
[00:37:48] Even them, even when you look at what goes on with undercover intelligence and the.
[00:37:57] What's the. The concept? What is it called, the mutually assured destruction, where they basically hold enough dirt on each other that their incentives are aligned? Well, that doesn't mean that they're friends. That doesn't mean that they aren't like, they're. They're the worst people. They're awful people. And they explicitly are vying for power. They all want to be top dog. And you are not somebody's friend because they hold a piece of information, because they hold a tape within Jeffrey Epstein's vault that could literally destroy you. That means that they hate each other, but they are incentivized to cooperate because they know that they are both in deep crap if they don't. The euro and the dollar are not friends. They might be aligned, but they both want to be in charge. And we are in a massive transitionary period.
[00:39:00] Everything is up in the air, everything is shifting. And they, all of the players who have enormous amounts of capital and are vying for control and power in whatever the new system or whatever the new structure is going to be, which is everyone, by the way, like us, buying bitcoin is the same thing from a goal oriented perspective. It is us trying to hedge our bets. It's us trying to be in the future before anyone else, essentially. So it's not hard to understand the motives, whether they're awful, awful, horrible people or not. The motive is the same. But this is the game theory.
[00:39:42] This is how it plays out, is everyone will vie. Bitcoin will be 21 million.
[00:39:48] Bitcoin will be 21 million. And I think people really discount. It's so easy to get lost in the technology. And, you know, we just had a conversation with Burak and we're talking about Ark and, oh, we need to solve fork to see tv and all of this stuff. And as much as I like talking about the new tech and the new ways we can build systems and layers on top of this and all this stuff, it's all great. I want privacy. I want so many different things to be improved, and there are so many different things we are improving and are working toward.
[00:40:23] But it is really, really important to stress that the millennial level breakthrough, it's never been done before and we've never had it so clear.
[00:40:40] And there is nothing more important that we could have solved. Innovation of bitcoin is the 21 million supply.
[00:40:52] It is the fact that the consensus for the money is not politically decided or controllable.
[00:41:03] And whether bankors or sdRs, whether you're the IMF, or the World bank, or the United States government, or the Federal Reserve, or you're the euro, whatever you are, whatever power you're vying for, and wherever you are in the world, bitcoin is still 21 million. And as long as that remains true, I think it will take over the world and it will take the path of greatest pain, because that's how bitcoin does. That's just how the satoshis roll. And when you just think about fear and greed in the markets, and you think about when you have come to the point where you feel hopeless, where you feel it's not going anywhere, and even your questioning whether or not you've made the right decision, like, let's say you're not on a bitcoin standard, uh, like myself. And your, you've just invested some money into this and you, you're certain that there, there's gotta be some sort of a future here. But, you know, for six months, for a year, for a year and a half, for three years, it's done nothing but be down and sideways and it feels like, which is not where we are, by the way, but just. But these moments happen like this. This is the course of bitcoin history. It's always been this way. It has awful periods and I remember them vividly. It is not hard, I mean, it's not easy to forget how hard it was to get through certain eras of bitcoin's past. But the name of the game is that when it's to, is to literally outlast.
[00:42:50] It's to literally outlast everybody who is too weak to stay.
[00:42:55] Everybody who just decides to give in, decides to give up and lets go, and is convinced by the feelings and the sentiment of the market over what they actually know, that the social consensus trumps what they personally know about the tech or about it. And which I don't even want to imply that this is like a super negative or terrible thing, or that people are stupid. Like, I have been in places where I have sold something that I shouldn't have sold it, or I made a decision when I shouldn't have made it, because I was just overcome with doubt. It's perfectly human. I only point it out to say that that's when the opportunity is, because that's when everybody else is going to Bailey, you know, going back to my week and the situation I found myself in. And I basically have gone to all of my projects and all the things that I'm doing. And I've done a regroup in the last couple of days. We've redesigned my schedule, the publishing schedule for the show. It won't feel a whole lot different from your side, by the way. We'll still have pretty much Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday episodes. Even though I'm pretty sure this one's not coming out on Monday. This is going to be on Tuesday, just because I'm behind.
[00:44:26] But on the back end, it's actually changing a lot. And the extra things that I have obligated myself to and numerous things. And a lot of side work that I have consistently put on myself and said, oh, I'm definitely going to get this done on the extra day. I've basically been committing myself to publishing, like, six things a week. And it was stupid. It was stupid. And I was also making this plan. Or thinking about this from the context of, like, a normal week is to have five days where I am available. To just commit to working all day on the show. And then, you know, something comes up with construction, and I lose a day. And then I lose two or 3 hours here every day. And then Brianna has something. An appointment or something. Or, you know, we're doing a checkup on the new baby. Or we have to go see her parents, or we have to go see my parents. Or somebody comes into town, like just.
[00:45:27] Or I have a conference, or I have to travel somewhere, something comes up. And every single week. Every single week, something has come up. And I realized that kind of my assumption or my framing as to what was a normal week was never a normal week ever. And I was putting way too much on myself. And then I felt guilty the whole, like, throughout all of it. Because I had just put this arbitrary deadline or this arbitrary workload on myself.
[00:46:03] And then I was constantly. I have been constantly beating myself up about not meeting what is a ridiculously impossible goal when I honestly look at it. And during all of this, I do audiobooks. I'm still. I'm in the middle of an audiobook, which I haven't even worked on. Knuts new book, Inverse of Clown World, which is so good. But I'm also, you know, I'm five days, four days that I haven't recorded on that. And I probably could be done with it today had I actually recorded it. But I just don't. I just don't have the time to cram all this stuff together. And so I'm letting things like that that I really enjoy, and I love Knut's books, and I love doing the audiobooks, and I'm, you know, letting that. I'm letting everything slip, you know, what's the.
[00:46:53] Ron Swanson, you know, don't half ass a bunch of things. Whole ass one thing. I've been failing pretty hard at that advice, but essentially, I've spent the last couple of days trying to regroup, and I'll probably spend most of the rest of the week trying to complete the regrouping of all of the projects and the status of them all and funds and things that I'm allocating to each. But I care enough about the things I'm trying to get done and that I want to build that I'm not stopping. And one of the things, I don't remember exactly what the quote is, but it's something like the overwhelming majority of success is just still being there after everyone else gave up. And it's funny, I remember reaching this point in my podcast when I was burnout.
[00:47:57] It was probably within the first year, it was probably nine months, maybe, maybe one year in, and it had been growing, but it got stagnant at one point, and I was just exhausted. And I think this is when I first kind of stumbled upon or I guess maybe like, really took to heart and really thought about that comment like that, that idea.
[00:48:25] Because, you know, most people don't do anything, most people, myself included, on most things. I talk a lot. I'm a talker. I have a podcast.
[00:48:39] Who knew? I know. Shocker. Go write it down in your journal. Big news today. Guy talks.
[00:48:45] But I have a million ideas, and the overwhelming majority of the time, I do nothing. They're just ideas. They just come out. I think they're interesting. I would love to be able to spend some time on them, but I don't have any of it. Well, this is true for basically everyone, that there's an idea, there's something they want to do, and they just don't even pull the trigger. Not only do they not pull the trigger, they don't even do the first step. They spend hours, days, weeks, months, years thinking about it, and they literally never even make the phone call to start the process or go to the thing to start the simple course for the certification. That's like, you know, 8 hours on a Sunday or something like it just never even begins. That's where most. The overwhelming majority of people are. Then there is the group of people who start but peter out really quick they, there's like a spark of excitement. They're really into the project or the thing, the goal they're trying to accomplish for a few days. And then it just kind of gets put to the sideline. They procrastinate and it just kind of dies off. And then there are the people who start a project in earnest.
[00:50:17] They really go for it. They stay consistent for a really, really long time. They're super excited about it. They're very invested emotionally and personally, and maybe even reputationally or in a capital and resources sense. They're just very deeply invested in the thing. And it actually seems to succeed. It actually seems to grow. And then you have your first trough, your first bear market. Everything has bear markets, all things that life is a series of bull markets in bear markets. And every sub thing inside of life is a series of bull markets and bear markets. And the better the bull market, most likely the worse the bear market. But inevitably you reach that point in one of your projects. I remember reaching this point, I've kind of reached this point twice with the podcast, actually, with the show and my business, where you just feel like it's going nowhere and you're, you're spinning your tires or you're just exhausted with it. And that first bear market is where, by that, by the time you get there, that's where like 99%, 99 and a half percent of people, the last of them drop off.
[00:51:35] Now, getting through that does not guarantee success.
[00:51:40] We could all still make the wrong decision, pivot in the wrong way. It could still be an idea with a very short time span, and it was always just going to grow and then Peter out and never recover. That's not really the point or not the point of the statement. I think, of, you know, the overwhelming majority of success is just being there when everybody else gives up. The point is, is there is no success if you haven't gotten through that. Like that is a prerequisite to being successful. Whether or not the project or the idea or the business is going to succeed, you still have to get through that point.
[00:52:25] And, you know, in a way, that's kind of where I am again, I'm in a, I'm in a bear market in a lot of different zones, but I can tell that I'm, I'm also on the cusp of a bull market.
[00:52:39] Bitcoin is absolutely preparing for, honestly, what seems like if I, if I really just take, take a sober look at it, it feels like this one's going to be bonkers, this one's going to be really crazy.
[00:52:58] I'm not dropping my other project.
[00:53:02] I am staying the course because I know I have tested it. I have used it in the simplest fashion that I want to and I have proven it. It does work. It can work.
[00:53:16] We just have to. And we. And we have. We just have to change how we are doing it. But I'm going to solve that problem and it's going to be. It's going to be so awesome. It doesn't even have to be cool. Like, the way there's so many things that I can just ignore and just be like, okay, we'll solve this problem later because the thing itself is going to work and it is going to be awesome that it works. And it's just possible. It's not like, you know, I could. I could easily be deterred from going further with that project if I wasn't. If I wasn't even sure if it was physically, like, like, technically possible, like, if. If I was going for something that couldn't even work. But I know. I know it works. I know it will work. And eventually it's just going to click and I'm going to have something. I'm going to have the start of something that does solve this problem and I am going to be so freaking excited about it. It is going to be awesome.
[00:54:22] And we've had to change plans on the basement and make some shifts, but I actually think the shift that we had to make made us realize something that we had been kind of dismissing. And it actually had us put in a door in the back where it would actually be really annoying to not have one. And the walls are going up down there. We've just run water lines to the bathroom and to where the laundry is going to be. The plumbing is now put into the concrete. I can see and feel what the space is going to be like. I'm going to have a studio. I'm going to have a studio. I am sitting here in our extra bedroom with two rickety light stands that are not meant to be fully extended and don't really hold a big green cloth very well behind me just to cover up our pantry and a whole bunch of boxes of crap and storage stuff. Because I'm just. I'm just. I'm just crammed into here with what is basically half storage room, half my desk and equipment and in some form or fashion, this is. This is all I've ever had. I had a closet. I had a desk in the living room. When I. When I first started this, it was just on my bed with my phone. And then I got a yeti, which was actually a terrible choice for how my setup was for using that mic. I don't know why I chose that one. Not very good thinking on my part. But then I had a blanket for it. A literal, like I would throw a blanket and build this stupid contraption up around my desk to easily throw a blanket over me so that it would dampen the sound because it would just echo. And the yeti was really particularly bad for picking up all of the echo. And that was my office. That was my studio. And then I had a closet in the other extra bedroom, which became rads room. And now I'm in the other extra bedroom and it's a storage closet. And the closest I ever had to a studio was in the in between when I was downstairs in the basement, which was literally just a concrete, a big concrete room. And I just kind of had my crap strewn about. Also just a big giant storage room. Im going to have a studio for the first time and it is moving. And the reason all theres so much suck and bad news and frustrations and new costs is because were doing it is because its actually happening. And thats what happens when you try to build something.
[00:56:52] Shockingly, its never once, every time ive ever had a plan for everything, not once ever, ever has it gone exactly according to plan. The plans just don't fit. In real life. The plan is always just a plan. And I have another kid on the way.
[00:57:09] In February, we're going to have a little girl in the house and rad's going to have a baby sister. It all kind of feels like crap right now, but there is a freaking bull market on the way.
[00:57:21] And as Dave Smith says, I can't be black pilled. I can't. Because I have kids. I don't have a choice.
[00:57:30] I have to know it is going to get better and I have to know that I can do something about that. And you know, it's funny. The most consistent part of all of this is that bitcoin is still 21 million and that I hold my keys and it is safely locked away. And every time I have called upon it or I have needed it, it works. Which I mean, technically is all the time. I use it every day. But you get the idea, I think.
[00:57:59] But it will always, it'll always take the path of greatest pain because that's just kind of what it takes to wipe out all the people who have no idea why we're here.
[00:58:12] So be the one who sticks it out. Through life's bear markets.
[00:58:18] You know, it's hard. It's hard to analogize this to bitcoin right now because bitcoin is not in a bear market. Bitcoins, really, I know it can feel stagnant at times.
[00:58:27] And I do get the sentiment of, like, four years ago, it was basically the same price. But the sheer, the chasm of difference between the foundation between the underlying network liquidity, social framing, normalization of it between now and four years ago, I think just really hard to understate.
[00:58:54] But nonetheless, everything, everything has a bear market.
[00:59:00] Life is a series of bull and bear markets. Like I said, be the one that sticks it out.
[00:59:06] And honestly, this episode is for myself as much as it is for anybody else.
[00:59:10] I need to quit being a bitch, quit complaining, suck it up and push forward.
[00:59:16] As much as I will let my situation or all kind of pain and difficulty and bear markets, whatever you want to say, are all relative. They're around the normalization level. This is why $20,000, even though it's a massive increase in bitcoin's value, feels like the worst thing in the world when bitcoin has been $60,000. And then it feels like absolute magic when bitcoin has been $2,000. Hey, buddy. What's up, dude?
[00:59:50] Yeah, what you got?
[00:59:55] Slide.
[00:59:57] Running down your slide. Oh, cool. Are you getting it? Oh, that's exciting.
[01:00:02] But it's all relative. And even in just the situations and the frustrations that I've been dealing with lately, all I can think sometimes is how shockingly easy I have it when I step back and how unbelievably easy so many, almost all of us, have had it for a long time. Like. Like how we are getting our liberty and engaging like this is a revolution. We are witnessing it. And the degree of cost which we have had to pay to get that revolution is nothing.
[01:00:49] Nothing compared to what our forefathers, compared to what the people before us have had to pay for theirs, for theirs. That put us on a foundation where ours is even something that makes sense, something that is even in the realm of possibility.
[01:01:09] And the simple truth is, we're going to win.
[01:01:13] We're going to win.
[01:01:16] And all you have to do is still be here when they give up.
[01:01:22] And they're gonna give up first.
[01:01:24] They just are.
[01:01:26] I don't have a choice.
[01:01:29] So I'm gonna go watch my kid play on his slide for a little bit and get a coffee, and I'm gonna come back and work on the audiobook and another read for Wednesday.
[01:01:40] Thank you guys for listening. I hope you guys got a cold card for no particular reason. It's not like they sponsor the show or anything. And I'm sure you've never heard of this really cool new cypherpunk wallet, but you should check it out. It's a really cool thing, and it's got a discount code. Bitcoin, audible. Holy sh. Oh, my God. It's the name of this show, and it is right there in the description so you never have to send me a message. If you send me a message asking for where it is, I'm going to slap you.
[01:02:09] I am guy Swan.
[01:02:11] And until next time, everybody. Take it easy. Guys.
[01:02:17] Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh. Somewhere ages and ages hence, two roads diverged in a wood. And I. I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.
[01:02:38] Robert Froste.
