Michael Saylor: Bitcoin's 'Gold Rush' Has Started: 2024-2034, Why Smart Money is Buying #Bitcoin

[Music]

well first of all Michael thank you so

much for always being so gracious and

giving so much of your time to

interviews like this and also events

what do you think of madira it's lovely

Island beautiful views of the sea it's

uh I've never been here before and it's

amazing the society and the and uh the

culture they built here in the middle of

the Atlantic well you're traveling

around the world now giving the the

gospel of Bitcoin so I want to hear what

is your feeling about the recent price

action and the success of the ETF launch

you know I expected the ETF launch to be

successful but I think uh it's quite

impressive just how successful it's been

um at this point we can see that uh

these ETFs are going to surpass gold

ETFs in not too uh long a Time the uh

the big Bitcoin ETFs are the most

successful ETF launch in 30 years and

apparently in the first 30 days they

outperformed every other

ETF um they've crawled to the top of

3500 competitors in short order and um I

think that they have sparked you know

the uh the bull run and the upward

movement in the price I mean definitely

there's a huge amount of institutional

Capital flowing into Bitcoin right now

that is driving the price because of

asset scarcity I think the most uh the

most important thing uh or the most

important result of this is the ETFs

themselves

represent um regulatory

Clarity for Bitcoin as the institutional

grade crypto asset I think that's a very

important thing uh I think secondarily

the ETFs represent an onramp for for

institutional money and they open up a

Gateway between1 trillion dollar or more

of institutional money and Bitcoin I

think uh the third thing is uh they have

sparked this price action and as Bitcoin

moves back toward its all-time high they

have generated an extraordinary amount

of media coverage and Wall Street

awareness and Bitcoin benefit it's from

the awareness um of the asset class

because as of now

99% of the mainstream investors really

have uh an

incomplete understanding of Bitcoin and

then and the best thing that we could do

is just build awareness that it is an

asset class and then people will start

to do the work to understand what it is

and so all three of those things have

been catalyzed over the past month by

these ETF launches well ETFs have been a

very popular investing vehicle over the

last decade and it seems like it's not

just going to eat into the gold ETFs but

perhaps even maybe something like the

SNP the Spy ETF which has been so

popular do you have any thoughts on that

that is one of the surprising

consequences we thought that maybe

Bitcoin was competitor to Gold but it's

actually run up the leaderboard and now

it's it's starting to nip at the heels

of the S&P 500 index ETFs um

if you're looking for an analogy um

imagine a business uh without a

website you know it

was uh pools of money

uh without uh an ETF ticker were mutual

funds so if we look at the history of

investing we kind of went from buy the

stocks individually to trust a money

manager with a mutual fund and the

mutual funds made Fidelity and and then

um 30 years later the ETF came along and

it was an a universal API that you could

use to trade a mutual fund so in the

mutual fund World it takes you a few

days or a week or two weeks to set up an

account and it takes you a few days to

move your money in the mutual fund and

it you know you have to redeem your

money and it takes you a week to get

your money out and so it's a very slow

low frequency relationship and the

typical investor is going to just do

business with one company like

Fidelity when the ETFs came along you

could have any stock trading app and you

could trade from One Fund to another

fund you could trade you know in and out

of fund six times a day you could every

day say well I want to buy this thing

from Fidelity this thing from Black Rock

this thing from Vanguard and you could

put those those funds in the same watch

list as your Apple stock or your Google

stock so it's it's it's kind of the same

impact the internet have which is oh

there's a a retail store there's a

restaurant what's the website like I

want to say let's go to a restaurant you

go check out the website it says this is

where it is this is how long it is these

are pictures of it this is the menu of

it now imagine I tell you uh we're going

to meet at a hotel or in a restaurant

and there is no website yeah like no

like your reaction is so so how am I

supposed to figure it out like well you

get on a plane and you fly there and you

walk through the door and you ask for

the menu and and at that point they tell

you what it is you think that just seems

so 20th century so you know you're

laughing but like you can't do business

without a website the website is a

universal API of

information that ETF ticker is the

financial API for an investor and so

that that has been extraordinarily

successful but Bitcoin it's like Bitcoin

didn't have a website right Bitcoin

didn't have a website for institutional

investors and about a month ago Bitcoin

all of a sudden became something you

type it into you know your Bloomberg you

type it into your Robin Hood app or you

type it into any stock ET trade or any

stock trading app

instant instant information you can buy

you can sell and of course those those

ETF tickers they don't just give people

you know perfect awareness and ability

to transact that's also uh the global

protocol for trading volatility or for

issuing credit so if I had a bunch of

money in uh

Bitcoin and I wanted to get a loan

against it it might take me a month or

two months to find someone that will

give me a loan then I have to move the

Bitcoin then I have to pay double the

interest rate that's normal and that's

kind of scary but after the ETF people

could have the the same economic value

in Bitcoin with JP Morgan or maril Lynch

or Bank of

America and they could just say to this

broker or Banker they've been doing

business with like um I bought a house I

want a big mortgage on it and I'm going

to post a little bit of my Bitcoin is or

Securities is down payment against that

mortgage and I use it to get a mortgage

or use it to get a margin loan or maybe

I could use I could hedge against it and

so so these ETFs opened up an entire

Financial world of uh awareness and

opportunity and functionality to the

99% mainstream investors and you really

can't underestimate just how profoundly

important that is to the uh to the

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I had a guest on my Show recently and a

clip went viral because uh he said that

the ETF

were a sign that the industry the

ecosystem sold out to Wall Street that

means that we're giving up that Bitcoin

this decentralized network is ultimately

becoming centralized and I wanted to get

your reaction to that because I know

that something you talked about in your

speech here in madira was that we don't

have enemies we just have people we

haven't recruited to be our supporters

yet and the government isn't our enemy

wall Street's not our enemy so maybe you

can touch on some of those points yeah I

I think that ETFs are just another

application of Bitcoin and there are

thousands and thousands of applications

coming so in this particular case 1% of

Bitcoin uh 1% more assets kind of flowed

into the ETFs it boosted the price of

Bitcoin in the last two months by

$20,000 a coin and that means that 99%

of the $200 billion do of of market cap

got created and something like

99.7% of of the benefit was for the

people that didn't own the

ETF if you think about it once you do

the math the the ETF people bought in at

40,000 and drove the price to 60,000 and

have

1% and everybody else had the other 99%

and their Bitcoin is worth 60,000 so so

in this particular case if if that's

taking over Bitcoin by basically making

all the people that don't use

ETFs $200 billion richer right then then

you probably want that to happen a

hundred more times and you know you'll

see other apps at some point an

insurance company will build Bitcoin

into an insurance policy and then

companies will build Bitcoin into their

balance sheet and then a country you

know and if you know if a country that

you don't like buys 1% of the Bitcoin

Supply and drives up the price by a

factor of two it'll be another example

of every other country getting 99% of

the benefit so as people uh embrace the

Bitcoin Network and as as they build

applications on it and as they invest in

it uh it's impossible for them to take

it over because the network outside of

the new actor is actually getting more

powerful at a faster rate and it

actually it actually empowered the non-f

holders 100x more than empower the ETF

holders so it's not a a fear I have I

think that every single new participant

just makes the entire network better and

more successful and empowers every other

uh type of bitcoiner so you've now been

through your first full fouryear cycle

the highs the lows what's your biggest

lesson that you took away from the bare

Market I think um the lesson of Bitcoin

is Bitcoin is the best asset there is no

second best

asset buy

Bitcoin keep buying

Bitcoin don't sell the

Bitcoin ignore the noise were there any

moments though I mean when it was

plummeting down a lot of people thought

it would go below 10,000 that anything

made you a little nervous you wish you

had waited to buy some of it no I like

the truth is other people with um with

uh either less

information or uh or less awareness they

when when if if someone studies Bitcoin

for an

hour then they will watch the news for

for 1,000 days and they will have 87

moments of anxiety during which they'll

sell the

Bitcoin and and so Bitcoin has a lot of

those people like they heard someone say

buy it and then they buy it but if you

would buy it because someone said it's a

good good idea then you would sell it

because someone said it was a bad idea

because you're not making your own

decision you're basically reacting to

the crowd or sentiment or emotion so you

know a lot of people make investments uh

based upon a recommendation from

somebody else and in the non-bitcoin

world that's almost essential because

there's 10,000 stocks most people don't

study you how many people spend a 100

hours studying each of the S&P 500

stocks nobody okay so if you own one of

them did how many people spend a 100

hours studying One stock that they own

98% of people don't spend 100 hours

studying the one stock the uh the stock

analyst the person that covers Apple

they spend 100 hours and everybody else

kind of outsources the thinking to that

person and says the analyst put a buy

rating on it so I'll go ahead and take

their recommendation I'll buy the stock

and when the analyst puts a sell rating

on it and they sell the stock and you

know that's understandable in the 20th

century economy because in a world where

you have to sift through 100,000

different investment ideas to figure out

what to buy and sell you can't possibly

do it a dentist doesn't have the time to

sift through 100,000

things okay why do you have to sift

through a 100,000 different things in

order to

actually a Avid losing all your money

and that's because the money's broken

okay so in a world where the money is

broken where there isn't a money where

you can just buy the money and wait

forever and have it go up in that world

you're an investor and you're running

your own hedge fund and and of course

most people don't have the time to run

their own hedge funds so they're the

worst of all worlds they're taking the

risk of a hedge fund but they're not

putting the in from they're not putting

the effort in to run hedge fund and even

if they did I mean how many 65y old

retirees you know have the ability to do

stock analysis on 500 different stocks

like I I would argue almost none of them

so in this particular case Bitcoin is a

new asset class it's digital money once

you understand it's digital money and

you probably get there somewhere

between1 hours and ,000 hours once you

understand it's digital money then you

realize that the strategy is you just

buy it and keep buying it and don't sell

it until you have to pay a medical bill

or until it's it's an urgent life or

death matter where you just have to sell

it but otherwise you just keep

accumulating and you wait for all of the

chaos and entropy and inefficiency and

disorder that undermines every other

asset to take hold the longer time goes

on the more difficult and the more

disorder there is and the and the more

people appreciate the value of good

money so so I I wasn't bothered by the

volatility I was just waiting you know

for nature to write

itself and I think that the biggest

mistake you can make is become

insecure is it money is it not money

right once once you've made your

decision you're

committed then then you're just thinking

if the price is low that means I get to

buy more that's right well I want to

pull on the thread of what you said

about being broken you've said money is

toxic I think a lot of people know

something is wrong many people are

turning to politics instead of maybe

examining what's at the root of all this

which is the economic issue of our

financial system being broken so why are

more people not getting it and how do we

translate that message um you know uh

western civilization used Roman numerals

for a long long time because of the

Roman Empire and uh it's a very if

you've ever tried use Roman numerals to

subtract and add and divide and and do

math or program a

computer I don't know anybody that you

actually programs a computer with Roman

numerals today it's very very

challenging but it was pretty sticky for

a couple thousand years and then at some

point Arabic numerals came along and

someone said you know we use these

numbers like 1 2 3 4 5 6 Seven 8 nine

and it's just a lot more efficient and

here's a new notation now why does it

take people so long well because because

the old protocol is embedded in

everything it's embedded in the

accounting it's embedded in the law it's

embedded in everybody spent 30 years of

their life learning it and so people

people struggle with new protocols and

so if I come up with a new protocol

which is an order of magnitude better or

two orders of magnitude better right you

you have to migrate the institutions the

governments the individuals and and

often times you have to have a

generational shift um Bitcoin represents

a new economic protocol a new monetary

protocol so you have 5,000 years of

recorded history during which Humanity

has functioned with uh defective

money and you didn't and and every book

on economics by whether it was an

Austrian Economist or whether it was a

Fiat Economist or any kind of Economist

or political Economist or the like every

single book was written in a world where

the money was mathematically defective

and it's impossible for you to

appreciate that the

um the theoretical sound money or proper

money until you've seen an example of

one right you have to see one clean

money the austrians the only model they

had was gold but we knew that but but

you couldn't make the argument in favor

of um of uh perfected money using gold

as an example because because gold

actually suffered or created

hyperinflation in Spain you know in in

the 16th century so someone could say

well look even in the gold standard they

had hyperinflation so I guess Gold's not

perfect so then my my paper money is

okay so I think um after 5,000 years of

the billions of people all writing about

politics and economics based upon uh

defective money it's not surprising that

it takes more than 15 years from the

from the uh first theoretical

establishment of proper money before

people start to absorb the the idea of

clean sound

money right I mean like there's there's

not a single PhD

Economist that actually went to school

in the era of uh perfected money right

and I I use the phrase um or the example

of um Dr Harvey and he discovered that

the heart pumps blood out through the

arteries back through the veins and that

it circulates through the body he

discovered that after thousands of years

of belief that the blood did not

circulate and when he presented it uh to

the world of medicine he was uh

castigated and rejected by every learned

Medical Professional and he famously

said nobody over the age of 40 will ever

believe me no doctor over the age of 40

will ever accept this I'm just G have to

wait for them all to die plank said

something similar which he said new

scientific breakthroughs are never

embraced by The Establishment you just

have to wait for the next generation of

scientists you know they they just

cannot accept the profound paradigm

shift in this particular case you know

you can you can take the position that

people are just stubborn but you can

also if you want to see it from their

point of view you can just you can say

look we all grew up speaking the English

language and then you introduced a new

language which is uh 27 times more

efficient but but you know I'm just too

old to learn that language right it's

just it's it's a new thing the the world

is changing too fast so so it's like I

came from the old world I SP spoke

French or Italian or Spanish I struggle

with English but my kids speak perfect

English and of course because they speak

perfect English they're professors and

CEOs and politicians and presidents and

I will not be a president or a CEO

because my English is not quite good

enough to compete in that economy it's

was I was I a bad person was I no I was

just in a generational shift and now

we've got to move on to the next thing

and it's it's not easy to turn your

entire worldview upside down inside out

even if it gives you a 10 or 100x

advantage over the the traditional view

no that's very true and a lot of people

are having a hard time seeing what is

right in front of them with Bitcoin and

they resist and reject in so many ways

um you're such a student of history and

I want I wanted to ask you what do you

think is the ideal

form of government and its role with

money because a lot of people right now

both in Bitcoin and outside I feel like

there's a growing distrust in government

people want government out of their

lives they feel like government has

screwed things up including the money so

what is the ideal government and its

role with

money I think Bitcoin provides an

inspired example as does nature you know

for example your

DNA in nature transmits all that's

necessary for the future of the species

and so from a small strand of

DNA millions and millions of creatures

can form you know and those you know

whether it's Birds they kind of come out

knowing how to fly or a spider knows how

to spin a web or uh you know a fish

knows how to swim you know you look at

them and you're like well how do they

figure that out um and it starts with a

strand of DNA and you basically inject

the most elegant protocol elegant piece

of code into nature subject to the laws

physics and the laws of nature and then

life manifest and it's beautiful right

whether it's a tree or a bird or or or

your dog right um with regard to bitcoin

you're the most elegant piece of code a

very elegant

protocol right with uh with a not that

many lines of

code it's like a virus or like a strand

of DNA it's a it's a genetic code for uh

a syst system a trust Network a Money

Network an energy Network it gets

released and it spreads to 10 people 100

people a thousand people a million

people 10 million people 100 million

people and it metastasizes and it moves

through corporations and governments and

and nonprofits and the like and and how

is it distinguished from every other

crypto is not more complicated it's

simpler right everybody else looks and

and says I have to make it more

complicated and they break it right so

what why is Bitcoin great because it is

elegantly profound and

decentralized uh you know why is life

great it's like there's no one tinkering

with the genetic code of the mice and

trying to actually capture 18 billion

mice and inject them with a new upgrade

right there's there's no one that's

actually when you start trying to like

uh sequester a billion people and inject

them with your idea right it doesn't

make things better right it so

centralized planning and centralized

tinkering actually undermines the

ecosystem it doesn't help it so nature

is decentralized and

elegant and Bitcoin is decentralized and

elegant and so now we get to the

question of government what's the best

government the least

government decentralized and elegant

some simple elegant rules right that

that are that are decentralized and

pushed down to the uh to the most local

element a country that has 50 states

that all act independently is much more

robust

antifragile perhaps just you know offers

more dignity and and and more freedom to

its citizens than a country with no

States and just a single central

government

a country that has has a separated

branches of government has checks and

balances with a a strong Judiciary a

strong executive branch but also a

strong legislative branch and perhaps

even upper and lower houses of

legislative branch and and um a system

of checks and balances offers more

freedom and is more functional

um the more centralized the government

and uh and the the the more power that

can be acted upon by Fiat by an

individual or by a small

group right the more Fragile the

government is and uh and so

ultimately it's the key to what the

reason that Universe Works is no

well-meaning

genius Gra graduates from college with a

PhD and decides to change the speed of

light or the speed of sound or the

gravitational constant right God doesn't

change the speed of light and the

gravitational constant if if that was

changed every mechanism on Earth would

stop working and every building would

collapse and everybody would die right

that's why the universe works the reason

that life works is that no alpha male

genius rat gets to change the genetic

code of all the other rats right it's

like uh and when you have a new

idea like oh I you know I think that I'm

going to live by myself on an island

spear fishing if that works and you're

able to procreate and prosper maybe

there'll be millions of people like you

on that island but if it turns out you

forgot to bring someone to procreate

with or if it turns out you run out of

stuff to spear fish with or you can't

catch the fish you're going to die and

that entire idea gets pruned out of the

genetic tree of life and I think the

same is true with Bitcoin you know

someone comes up with a better idea for

Bitcoin and we just ignore them you Fork

off a Bitcoin and you know what happened

with the Bitcoin forks and they all go

to zero and that's basically natural

selection the laws of nature and the

market economy working with government

when the governments have some natural

selection like some State some State

comes up with a rule you're not allowed

to wear orange and you can't work on

Tuesday and Thursday everybody gets to

leave that state move to the other state

where you can wear orange and work on

Tuesday and Thursday and then people in

the the first state kind of realize that

maybe that wasn't very

rational and so maybe there's a hope for

you but when the person at the top of

the government gets to dictate no

working on Tuesday and Thursday

and no orange pretty soon it becomes

nobody with blue eyes can vote and then

pretty soon it's nobody with blue eyes

is allowed to be free and you just

plunge into a dark abyss at that point

it's it's too much power and too little

uh natural law and and uh market

economics it's time for a quick break to

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way today all right back to the show if

systems function better in a

decentralized way more organically why

over history do we have a tendency to

concentrate power and centralize is it

that technology leads us that way is it

part human nature is it because our

money has been

broken I think um yeah history is like

50,000

stories of um of some well-meaning

inspired person thinking that they can

do

better they want to fix

things so there's a there's a continual

power Dynamic and a gathering of power

whether it's at the family level the

clan level the tribe level the city

level the provincial level the state

level the country

level and you just you tend T to see

Power aggregate um and I think it's

because there's a natural process if you

have um if you have one

state next to another state and the one

state has a leader that that is uh that

wants to Aggregate and channel power so

what do I do first I I want as many

people as possible and then I want to

feed them bread and water cuz that's

cheaper and then I get an army 10,000

times bigger and it's maybe not so

healthy to do that but I don't care if

they live to 60 or 80 I just want them

to live to 25 to be in my Army so then

once I gather the Army then I basically

decide that the people across the river

speak the wrong language worship the

wrong God or they looked at me the wrong

way so the people across the river are

decentralized peaceful in 27 different

hamlets and they eat good food and

they're organic farmers and there aren't

as many of them and they don't spend all

their time killing each other

so you know so the great you know on the

left side of the river gathers you know

27,000 teenagers gives them Spears charg

it across the river and murders all the

peaceful people takes all their

stuff and now now the great rules over

both parts of uh of the uh the island

and then they do it again and and they

grow and at some point they get to some

extreme and then their people start

dying and then

their communication lines get

elongated and they start to collapse

under their own weight there's there's

an entropic Frontier for example it's uh

it's better for you to get bigger but

when you get bigger than an elephant you

know you collapse under your own weight

and the really aren't creatures bigger

than elephants because the law of

physics starts to work against that so

in this particular case the the law of

nature is there's an advantage to the

violent over the nonviolent

which is unfortunate and and we've

always had this cycle of violence and

you just have the rise the

rise and then subsequent fall of Empires

as another Empire Rises and fall and

generally the

violent the violent Dynamic is driven by

the fact that the property is all

material and so there's an incentive to

violence because if I simply cross the

river and kill everybody on the other

side I get all their land

mhm right and and so that will

continue you know until the entire

Society gets to its extreme like

Alexander the Great Kills and kills and

kills and he gets to this point where

he's gone all the way into India and

then he dies and the entire thing breaks

up and collapses and then all the little

ones continue um it's not it it's not a

beautiful Story by any means it's it's

really uh you know a a

a tragedy you know 10,000 times over

right and uh and throughout of the

humanity attempts to attempts to crawl

out of that cycle of violence and the

way we crawl out of the cycle of

violence is with some combination of uh

inspired uh philosophy and inspired

systems if you can establish an economic

system of

interdependency then uh then you Channel

your energy to trade like like if if the

way I get rich a thousand years ago is I

kill somebody else then right all of the

alpha males in the society were taught

to you know to fight and and uh you know

and Lead armies and that's the only way

you created Property and if the way you

get rich is writing computer code then

maybe all of the upwardly mobile

individuals decide to channel their

energy into writing Compu computer code

to destroy the other software company so

so I think that you that the formation

of global markets and and the

availability of um of

peaceful

Pursuits to channel basic human

aggression you know are are are useful

and constructive but is always a tenuous

balance between the tendency toward

violence and the tendency toward

cooperation or or or creation of sorts

how will bitcoin's impact on the world

um meet with those forces because one

thing that I've actually heard is that

people fear that Bitcoin will be hoarded

and then it will be amassed by a few

people or a few organizations at the

tippy top and it will be this even more

dramatic concentration of wealth than we

see today but others are saying no it

will be a more egalitarian society

because the distribution will diffuse

more and more over time as people

provide value in order to earn their

Bitcoin so how do you see it I think

it's continuing to

decentralize I think that every single

time you have a new participant in the

network they decentralize the network

further and I I think that the more

participants we have the less likely it

is that someone will corrupt the network

I think that I think that um if you have

powerful companies and Powerful owners

in a different countries the network is

less likely to be corrupted it's it's

it's more its Integrity is enhanced

because now you have uh strong political

actors with a vested interest to keep

anybody from attacking the network so I

um I don't really think uh if if Phill

in the blank if a country in the Middle

East decided that they wanted to buy a

lot of

Bitcoin uh I don't think think they're

taking over Bitcoin because 99% of the

Bitcoin is in someone else's hands and

they triple the price of Bitcoin and so

the 99% of the people that hold the rest

of Bitcoin just got three times as

powerful and so there's no way for

someone to join the network and

undermine the network they're

strengthening the network as they join

it um what they would do is if a big

player in the Middle East joined the

network and became embedded and had skin

in game if the US government took an

adverse position you would have another

Sovereign that would take the opposite

position so if you if you're worried

about one country or one company having

an influence then the best thing they

could possibly happen is have 10 other

companies and 10 other countries because

now you have a network of

interdependencies and you have checks in

balances uh throughout and I I think

that we've got more and more checks and

balances and and as people as people

invest more in the network they become

more

conservative and and they will resist

you know

enthusiastic uh proposals to fix Bitcoin

right it's

like it's it's very easy I I I notice

that most enthusiastic proposals to fix

Bitcoin come from people that don't have

any

Bitcoin right and and if you actually

bet your entire country on bitcoin

then you wouldn't be so enthusiastic to

Tinker with the network if you bet your

entire company on bitcoin then you

wouldn't want to Tinker so ironically

these bigger actors are actually more

conservative they like it because they

can trust it and they can trust it

because no one's changing it if um if

you take certain other crypto networks

where they change them every six months

and they Tinker with them every time you

do a hard Fork you could destroy the

entire thing right so who is it in favor

of hard Forks it's generally the

protocol developers that that you know

want a job they want to do something to

help they're the one they're the only

ones that can do the hard Forks so

they're the ones to promote them who

doesn't want to do the hard Forks it's

everyone that's bet their life their

future if you're actually planning if

you're buying a lot of Bitcoin to give

to your great great

granddaughter you're not terribly

enthusiastic about a road map with six

hard Forks right so I think that I think

that um there's no way for any one actor

to get control of the network all you

can do is empower the rest of the

network by a factor of a 100 and owning

a lot of Bitcoin doesn't really give you

power I mean the the network right the

network is stabilized by a combination

of computer Power electric power

political power economic power right and

and transactional power so you know

coinbase and cash app have power but

that's different than the Black Rock

power and that's different than the

marathon or the riot or all the Bitcoin

mining power and that's different than

the power of all the node Runners and

that's different than the power of The

Regulators or the politicians that

support it and uh and so there's a lot

of different power in the network and

it's just getting more decentralized now

it just turns out that instead of

instead of the uh traditional Bitcoin

voices from 2020 you still got them but

you've also got voices from Fidelity and

black rock and other other players and

you've got voices from the Senators and

the Congress people that support them

and you've got voices of the regulator

that improved the ETF that's not fewer

voices that's more voices and the only

reason

reason the only reason that Bitcoin was

approved as an ETF is the consensus that

it's

commodity and the the fundamental

distinction of a commodity is it's an

asset without an issuer and that means

that it has to be the consensus of

everybody in the world there isn't one

single voice that can that can change

the protocol speak for the protocol or

or is even relevant right if there there

isn't anybody none of these buyers could

speak for it and of course the thing you

have to keep in mind right there

sometimes people are kind of cynical in

the Bitcoin community and they're like

they always assume the worst but if

someone's going to actually buy a

billion dollars of Bitcoin that didn't

buy it

before they're not buying it because

they think you can change it right

they're not buying it because they think

they can change it if I thought I could

change Bitcoin I wouldn't have bought

any Bitcoin right for ethical reasons it

would be a security for legal reasons

and then just for technical reasons if

if it's weak enough for me to change why

would I trust the money of all my

shareholders on the network so now

you've got this interesting logical

conundrum the person that bought the

billion dollars of Bitcoin is too stupid

to understand why they bought it and

that's why they gave you their money

after 15 years of not wanting to buy it

they all of a sudden they bought it not

knowing why for stupid reasons or the

person that bought it looked at it

studied it and came to a rational

conclusion that they would actually

invest a billion dollars because they

thought that they couldn't change it and

no one else could change

it right and and you know it seems

pretty obvious that that if you find a

hundred people that are intelligent

enough to make a billion doll risk or

billion dollar bet they're they're the

smart money this smart money is buying

Bitcoin because it is the crypto

commodity Network it it is the

decentralized asset without an issuer

right the dumb money is buying

everything else that's right that's

right so I don't I don't worry about the

people joining our Network we're winning

the Smart Ones and they're going to

fight to defend uh the values of Bitcoin

you want to worry about it right your

enemies aren't the people buying Bitcoin

because they want a decentralized crypto

asset that's without an issuer your

enemies are the people that are buying

an inferior asset like gold or real

estate or Equity or bonds or they're

buying a a crypto token Network which is

centrally controlled that is an asset

with an issuer those are the people that

actually have divested interest in

undermining Bitcoin because they're

threatened by a superior technical

ethical economic

idea let's talk a little bit about

Bitcoin being a trust Network and the

work you're doing turning micro strategy

into this Bitcoin development company

because Bitcoin facilitates the ability

for businesses to securely transact with

one another and businesses securely

transacting is really the cyber security

of Any Nation and we need to advance to

cryptographic security so can you talk a

little bit about that and the role that

maybe micro strategy will play yeah to

today there is a um there's a a security

vacuum in the world and that security

vacuum uh deres from the fact that it's

very difficult to establish your

identity in cyber space in an open

permissionless uh trustless

fashion so right now people they use the

log in with apple and they trust their

they trust apple with all their

passwords and identity and if you lose

your iPhone or get kicked off the Apple

network that's big problem in a world

the proprietary online identity or

proprietary digital identity you have

these authentication credentials in a

very fragile corporate

database and maybe maybe you

trust Apple or Google or Microsoft now

the next question is does the US

government trust them with its

credentials okay now the next question

question is does the Chinese government

trust them does the Russian or the

Ukrainian or the EU or any South

American or African government and now

you get to this interesting issue which

is how do I establish my digital

passport or my cyber identity in a open

global fashion that would be accepted by

every country on Earth that would be

accepted by every company on Earth and

that would be accepted a 100 years from

now when I actually create a document

how do I sign a document and certify it

such that 500 years from now it will not

be tampered with and this this challenge

of how do I uh how do I inscribe a piece

of information on an immutable Network

that's

Unstoppable and in Immortal right this

was the challenge that Satoshi struggled

with in the white paper and this is what

Satoshi solved with Bitcoin and the the

killer app that we've used it for is for

a trillion dollars worth of money or or

property on a on a crypto network but

you have 8 billion people on the planet

and 8 billion people need an identity

and right

now if you go to x you can pay $8 a

month or $96 a year for a blue check or

you can pay double that for a premium

blue check and if you want to be a

corporation with identity you can pay

$1,000 a month for a gold

check and then $50 for each additional

person for a gold check and if you've

done that that gives you the ability to

post things on one

platform but that doesn't solve your

problem of how you send a message on all

the other 100 platforms how do you post

something on Tik Tok or Instagram or

Whatsapp or signal or iMessage and stuff

you have these proprietary silos you

have the iMessage check you have the

Instagram check you have the YouTube

check you have the X check and then you

have the Microsoft sort of check they're

all hyper expensive hyper cumbersome and

what we need is a single open system

that is not subject to nation state

capture that where where your identity

can't be scrubbed out with a subpoena

maybe maybe you trust your government

but do you trust the government that

your government's at war with because

they could scrub you out with their

subpoena on their server so the prise of

Bitcoin really is um if you take a

public private key combination and you

can sign a transaction you can also send

a message and if if your transaction

happens if you use those keys and you

start to digitally sign messages or you