Michael Saylor: Why Every Nomad Needs Bitcoin

today we're going to talk about the

future of bitcoin with one of its

biggest proponents

and by biggest i mean over a billion

dollars michael saylor is the founder

and ceo of micro

strategy i'm andrew henderson this is

nomad capitalist we help seven and

eight-figure entrepreneurs go where

they're treated best from lower taxes to

dual citizenship to

international opportunities and i'm

excited to welcome mr sailor today thank

you for

uh for being with us thanks for having

me andrew you

must be i think uh because you explain

one of you explain crypto better than

perhaps anyone i've heard i've listened

to some of your interviews

and the way you explain it historically

is someone who i think came from a

background that was

not you know entirely it was a little

bit crypto skeptical you must

explain it better than anyone and i

think you're one of the top five guys

now

in this space talking about crypto am i

correct on that

you're too kind i'm happy to do my part

for the team

but you are really been out there

because you run microstrategy and i want

to talk about

what your company does and how that

factors into this at a moment but i saw

just recently on your twitter feed your

company

has moved its treasury into bitcoin you

own almost

71 000 bitcoins how does that feel

great feels great look i think the

bitcoin is the it's the technically

superior asset in the world it's digital

gold and

and if i had to figure out how to invest

a treasury i'd have to go through do i

want to own cash do i want to own gold

do i want to own an index of stocks or

bonds or commercial real estate

and the ideal thing to own is a you know

1 121 millionth of

everything there's ever going to be you

know and if bitcoin is like

manhattan and cyberspace then we bought

71

000 city blocks of it and uh

it's a long duration safe haven asset

it's not

you can't debase it it's not a fiat

derivative

like a bond or a stock and so if you're

looking to the long term outlook 10

years 20 years 30 years

then uh owning bitcoin is

is uh like uh encrypting your monetary

energy

in a way that will preserve it without

any uh degradation over the long term so

i feel great about it i want to go back

to the

i would have been go back to the

beginning for a second i was reading

about you and and your child

your father was in the air force is that

correct

yeah my father's career non-commissioned

officer in the united states air force

30 years i lived on military bases air

force bases my entire

life as a youth we moved around

here and there i lived in japan i lived

in new zealand

i lived in colorado i lived in

nebraska lived in florida lived in ohio

here and there in virginia do you think

that had an impact because i think as

the go where you're treated best people

and i look at people who have this

international upbringing who move around

i even think for myself

we moved around the same city growing up

from suburb to suburb i almost think

that

was a little bit of rootlessness nothing

compared to you but i feel like

what you you know experienced perhaps

that was the impetus for

this contrarian way of thinking and

being such an innovator is there

something about that international

upbringing that contributes to where you

are today

um i think so i mean i think it was

really

a good formative experience to see other

cultures

and to travel travel the world i think

that opens your mind to things

i thought it was very positive influence

to live on air force bases air force is

a very forward

technology thinking organization there

are airplanes around

they're always thinking about the future

i thought that was useful

i discovered science fiction very early

on and i read everything by science

fiction authors like robert heinlein

and and uh that had an impact on me so

the combination of all those things and

you know air force is about space

shuttle

and test pilots and astronauts and

going to the moon and going to mars and

and uh looking out beyond yourself and

not being provincial i think that

i think those are all helpful they call

us keep an open mind toward things

those are values that shaped where you

are today growing up on the basis

yeah i think i thought it was really

great to grow up on bases because

it's a very merit merit-based

egalitarian structure

which sounds kind of odd to say because

there everybody's got ranks

but the point is at the end of the day

there was a profound belief that

that the that the most meritorious

would advance and you felt safe

and everything was based upon integrity

and duty and trust and

you know it's like it's it's a felony i

think

uh to commit adultery on a military base

you know so this idea that you cheat on

your wife or something and it's a crime

it's like

very very interesting they had different

sets of values you you know

as opposed to you know living off off a

base where

you've got lots of other politics that

impinge

on your uh your views as a young child

is bitcoin

partially successful perhaps in response

to the fact that maybe the west

maybe the world in general but it seems

particularly the west is much

less meritocratic today where people

aren't supposed to get ahead of their

merits and those who do are demonized it

seems in the west is bitcoin

somewhat of an answer to that do you

think or what's the relationship

i think bitcoin appeals to uh those

that uh are in on a quest for truth or

integrity um if you're an engineer you

appreciate the concept of conservation

of energy

and if you're a mathematician you

appreciate the idea that two plus two

always equals four

and so the mathematical beauty

and um and the conservation of energy

and the laws of thermodynamics that are

sort of embedded in bitcoin

appeal to those who wish to design

beautiful things that work

especially when they see things around

them that aren't working

i think it's a great response you're an

mit guy is that your background

aerospace engineering aeronautics and

astronautics at mit

i saw i said this guy's a thousand times

smarter than i am so but i want to talk

as you talk about tech you talk about

your background for people who don't

know you run microstrategy it's a

multi-billion dollar company what is it

that microstrategy

does microstrategy is an enterprise

software company that sells business

intelligence to about 5 000

large enterprises all around the world

business intelligence software is used

to design

sophisticated analytics systems to

extract insight from data

so banks use it to calculate credit risk

retailers use it to calculate marketing

and merchandising

activities anybody that has large sums

of data

trying to figure out what to do next

would typically create some kind of

business intelligence application

and we have a a set of software tools

and servers that we sell to all those

organizations everywhere on earth

and when did you start the company 1989

okay so over 30 years the company's been

going

uh you're still writing it and you were

as i

recall originally a bitcoin skeptic is

that correct

i think everybody starts that way yeah i

was a bit quite skeptic

and 2013 i thought it was going to go

the way of

online gambling but i didn't really

understand it

and i didn't really need it in 2013 and

it was a much younger

more immature asset and a

more immature network so i think it took

me until 2020

for me to need it and then once i

until you need it you're not going to

put in the effort to understand it

and luckily for me by the time i needed

it and by the time i understood it it

had matured

to be a much stronger network it's

interesting because you know so many

people have been coming to us in the

last

year they look at what and i've heard

you talking about this 2020 this

calamitous year

uh which i think you've suggested i mean

look at how well bitcoin is done

and people have been coming to us

because they're seeing for the first

time the united states isn't what they

thought it was or their country or you

know their government's not supporting

them the way they thought it was

supposed to be

what is it that brought you around in

2020 because i

i read that you were looking at

different asset classes to move your

treasury into

and it was gold it was bitcoin there

were different things what is it that

got you into bitcoin that turned you

around

i think the pandemic is catalytic event

and accelerated

transformation in a couple of areas you

know zoom went from 10 million users to

400 million users in

weeks like we we embraced

remote work and and video conferencing

and probably we leaked forward a decade

and in the same way

in march we had a set of lockdowns which

really impaired main street

assets and operations but then we had a

v-shape recovery on the wall in wall

street

and that case-shaped response where wall

street recovers

and main street doesn't recover

caused me to stop and reassess

everything that i knew about

finance and economics and uh

on the uh at the same time as that we

had

an aggressive fiscal response by the

central banks everywhere in the world

and the real result of that is that the

money supply that had been expanding by

five percent a year for about a decade

started expanding at 20 to 25 percent

for this year

and now i realize and we look out we

we have a forecast i mean most

reasonable people would think we're

going to continue to run deficits

the interest rates are going to continue

to stay low we're going to continue to

uh to create more m2 broad money supply

and we're going to be in a monetary

inflation environment that looks more

like 15

a year for the next five years instead

of five percent

so 2020 was the year where you had a

problem

and the problem got really big in

essence the cost of capital for any

corporation

and any investor leaped from five

percent to 15

if it used to be if you didn't get a

five to eight percent return on your

investments you would say i'm

i'm not keeping up right the s p was

about eight percent return over the

decade

and it makes sense to get eight percent

against the cost of capital of five

percent if the

if the risk-free cost to capital is five

percent

attack on three percent risk you're at

eight percent that's what the market

looks like

what happens when the cost capital goes

to fifteen percent and now you gotta get

twenty percent return

on your cash that ain't happening

on your bond on your that ain't

happening on your real estate on your

stock

the only way you get over the hurdle

rate is you either have to grow 20

percent like amazon or google

or facebook you gotta be a screaming

great big tech company

or you have to leverage up you have to

borrow billions buy back your stock

cut your share count in half and that

way leverage up your cash flows which

are growing less than that cost

capital everybody leveraged up for a

decade

when the interest rate gets to zero or

close to zero and everybody's got full

debt on their books

you've leveraged the bonds you've

leveraged the real estate you've

leveraged the stocks

big tech's had its run what are you

gonna do

right and it's not a problem if you're

just

if you're just expanding at five percent

a year you're going to lose

you're going to lose half your money

over 12 years

okay you can think about it for a year

or two when

the monetary supply is expanding at 15 a

year you're going to lose

half your money over four years

and now you start thinking well i mean

half of my wealth is going to be cut in

half unless i make a good investment

and every investment is getting a lot

harder very complicated

that'll shake you out of your comfort

zone

and kick you into a search for something

new

and that's how i discovered bitcoin and

that's how most people are discovering

bitcoin

they've been forced out of their comfort

zone they need

they need a safe haven asset which is

not uh

pegged to fiat cash flows it's not a

function of the cash flow forecast or

the bond coupon or the real estate rents

so what would that be gold well gold was

the best idea in the 19th century

and we can have a debate over how it

worked in the 20th century but

in the 21st century if gold if sorry if

god came down and he created perfect

gold

he would create 21 million gold coins

put it on a network that you could move

at the speed of light

if you wanted to and make a make it

impossible for anybody ever create any

more gold

he'd make it impossible for a bank to

steal your gold

he'd make it impossible for anybody to

lie to you about how much gold they had

in the vault he'd make it perfectly

transparent and he'd give it to you

that's what bitcoin is it's digital gold

designed designed with all of the

attributes we love about gold none of

the liabilities

you've been critical on 2020 gold's

performance you said this should be the

breakout year and you said that's what

convinced me that it was bitcoin that it

did

300 some percent golden 15 is gold

dead are you saying it's now going

forward it's no longer a

an asset yeah gold's dead money

sell your gold buy bitcoin because other

people are going to sell their gold

and if you wait until you've been front

run by

all the hedge funds when they dump their

gold you're going to be the last

person out i think gold is getting

demonetized that is

i mean like being demagnetized it's like

there's 10 trillion dollars worth of

monetary energy in gold right now

eventually it'll only be the central

banks that'll want to hold it

i mean every private rational actor is

going to move

out of it and move into bitcoin

yeah what is it good for well i mean

people held goal for political unrest

lord knows you got enough of that this

year they held they hold gold

as a hedge against money printing

we got a lot of that this year why

hasn't gold tripled

gold had a slight bounce up but look at

every asset class for the last six

months look at gold look at nasdaq look

at s

p look at bonds they're all chopping

they're not going anywhere what's

working

bitcoin's working it's twer it's tripled

or quadruple but let's say tripled easy

uh square is working because square

plugged into bitcoin's network square

lets you buy bitcoin on a mobile app

paypal is working because pay is plugged

paypal is plugged into bitcoin it runs

on a mobile app

grayscale is working because they plug

their mutual fund or their

their investment fund into bitcoin

things that are plugging into

this digital monetary network are

working

things that are running on top of

traditional fiat

euros and dollars they're chopping

and then of course if you're unlucky

enough to have companies or investments

in venezuela argentina

lebanon turkey south africa

you know fill in the blank

they're not working at all because the

currencies are collapsing

and no company can be successful no

matter how competitive it is

if it's if it's generating revenues in a

currency

which is collapsing or weakening and so

that means none of those stocks are

going to be a store of value if their

currencies don't hold value

you're swimming against a 15

annual monetary inflation current which

is in your face

it's a wind blowing in your face right

now so let me be the devil's advocates i

asked some folks in the audience

what what should i ask michael stay

where they said well you know what's

your argument you see russia you see

china you see all these

these sovereigns they're they're

stockpiling gold what are they going to

turn to stockpiling bitcoin what happens

if they create their own

i mean what is your response to that

point

uh governments will be the last ones to

to make this decision but every rational

actor

will move before the government so paul

tudor jones stanley druckenmiller bill

miller rick reeder who works for

blackrock

guggenheim sky bridge my company

square you're going to see an avalanche

of smart money

in the investment community and you're

going to see an avalanche of smart ceos

and you're going to see high net worth

individuals well it's like

you can have your goal this year you got

18 return on your goal but if you bought

bitcoin you got 290

return on your bitcoin okay that's been

going on

it didn't happen this year it's been

going on every year for a decade

bitcoins running 200 percent on average

annually every year for a decade so i

guess my answer would be

how many years you have in your life

because if i show you something that's

doing 200 a year and the average thing

is doing 10

a year and the best thing did 20 a year

and you wait five years you gave up 5

out of 30. you wait 10 years you gave up

one third of your life you're going to

wait 15 years and give up half your

working life

do i got to do it for 30 years before

someone actually says maybe it works

gold like gold is antiquated store of

value it peaked in the 19th century

it's not working you can see it's not

working and the reason it doesn't work

is because you can corrupt it you can

confiscate it

you can hypothecate it and lie about it

and

try moving a hundred million dollars of

gold or 10 million

of gold through an airport when you

decide you need to change jurisdictions

or

you know when a country decides to tax

it how are you going to move it

it'd take you a year and

have hundreds of thousands of dollars so

so gold

gold is this 5 000 year old idea of a

bearer

instrument of value or apex money

if everybody in the world with money

agreed that you're going to use gold the

gold standard it might sort of work

but it's too slow for the 20th 21st

century

probably too slow for the 20th century

so people moved away from it

and we've replaced it with something

better

moves at the speed of light that you can

program smart

money pure monetary energy

you can cling to your gold but it's like

clinging to your kodak

stock because you like photos instead of

buying

apple it's like it's like clinging to

rand mcnally maps

instead of google maps the digital

version is going to be a hundred times

better

and there's just no you can cling to

your horses when the

automobile comes along it's it's

it's not a speculative asset it's a

digital monetary network

which is a million times better than the

physical monetary networks and the paper

monetary now

it's replacing so you if you ignore it

you're kind of like

ignoring running water and electricity

and railroads and airplanes it's

technology it's the future

you you describe some basket case

economies do you think there will be

another

gold confiscation or some kind of

confiscation where the government comes

in and just takes people's assets

whether it's gold or anything else

i i don't think though there'll be a

confiscation like 1933 at least not

in the us i mean i can't speak for every

country

i i do think some

countries you know like china they're a

little bit threatened by

capital flows zimbabwe when their

economy collapsed

they didn't want people to be able to

buy bitcoin

if countries in a country where the

economy completely collapses

they will probably be concerned about

capital controls

and uh and there'll be various

regulations when you have a currency

collapse

in argentina we had um

there are there are quasi capital

controls there about how much money

you could move out of the country and so

those happen from time to time

and we'll probably continue to see those

but

in general i think that more likely gold

is just going to be passed over it's 10

trillion dollars right now and it's it's

seen its height and it's probably going

to

peak and and deteriorate by a trillion a

year

or something like that for the next

decade it's seen its best

years bitcoin is going to grow past 10

trillion dollars and then 20 30 40 50 60

100 trillion i think

because it is the digital monetary

network and half of all the money on

earth wants to be

in a monetary network we're looking for

a store of value for half of our

monetary energy and

currencies aren't working gold is not

working

index funds aren't working

people as soon as they start to realize

bitcoin works

they're all going to jump on it and how

fast well the thing's growing 200

a year you can't grow much faster than

200 percent a year i would think so

it's going pretty fast at some point

um those the the bitcoin will be

it will be wrapped in in a regulation

that's a parity with the regulations

that control

cash bonds stocks real estate

uh aml kyc regs

i i don't see that as being a problem

it's probably a welcome thing because

institutions and

and corporations are going to funnel 10x

and 100x as much money into it as it

normalizes in that way

to parity with stocks and bonds so

that that'll probably happen yeah that's

one question i wanted to ask you was

you seem okay with the regs because a

lot of the early crypto adopters

let me ask you that the the folks who

got it in 2013

you know you've said that they were uh

you know pretty courageous

as i recall uh you know how how does

your view differ from their view

how do you look at uh you know the delta

between you know getting it in 2020

getting it in 2013.

well you know you have different

factions and there's dozen of them

um if uh if you're a crypto anarchist

then you're not really all that excited

about government in general you don't

like any

laws you're not a big fan of taxes you

know people say inflation is theft

you know austrian economists think

inflation is

theft but i i've heard people say

taxation is theft right a

perfect libertarian so if you're if

you're an extreme libertarian or

anarchist maybe you don't like

government you don't like taxation at

all they're

they're really fixated upon privacy and

no

no aml kyc they don't want to you know

they want to trade through decentralized

exchanges anonymously right

that's an extreme on the other end mass

mutual

a big publicly traded company they're

not

they're not buying it for that they

simply want an inflation hedge or they

want to

they might even they might even not look

at it as inflation hedge

on on that extreme they might just say

it's an uncorrelated asset which is

doing really well

like if i'm just a macro trader i might

just say i'm going to buy two percent of

it because it goes up 200 percent of

years uncorrelated asset

helps my portfolio then you've got

people that

don't really care for inflation right

they want to preserve their

family's wealth wealth preservation or

wealth creation

or treasury preservation for them they

need to buy it on a regulated exchange

and keep it with a regulated custodian a

public company can't

it's like we're not going to buy it on a

decentralized exchange

and store it in a you know in a private

wallet that we take home at night right

that's not happening

so those companies are looking at it as

um as a treasury reserve asset

and uh they have a different view i

think in general 99

of the money in the world maybe 99.9

of the money in the world probably wants

to be in a in a regulated environment

at parity with other regulated assets

i mean they're comfortable with that and

so the the future of bitcoin is going to

be determined by those actors by the

institutions by the corporations by the

high net worth individuals

within a given standard aml kyc

framework

we can talk about the the politics of

this maybe in a moment but you know for

me i tell people

if you're living in the u.s if you're

living in a western country regulations

are going to increase

taxes are going to increase they've got

people coming who they want to leave

they're paying big tax bills to take

their crypto and leave

but then the crypto anarchist is you say

say what idiot pays taxes on

on crypto you put on a wallet you fly to

the airport you sell it you don't tell

anybody what do you say to those people

my view here is that if you're really

smart i mean the

first let's talk talk about wealth

creation world preservation

the richest families in the world the

way they got rich is they created assets

or they purchased assets and they held

them forever

and they never sold them there's no you

know john malone

never wants to pay capital gains tax you

never paid long-term capital gains

short-term capital gains

and then they don't generate uh they

don't generate income

they have appreciating assets and they

borrow against them

they mortgage them they mortgage their

buildings they buy a football team and

they borrow against the football team

they borrow against their art you know

whatever it is you buy the highest

quality asset you hold it forever and

then you borrow money

and then there's no tax on money you

borrowed that's not income

no income tax and there's no tax on the

asset because you never sold it

so rather than jumping through all these

contortions

trying to figure out how to minimize

your taxes or the like how about just

don't sell it

right now what do you have to do to not

sell it you have to buy the best asset

if you buy the pristine

most technically pure long duration

asset

there's no reason to ever sell bitcoin

you could give it to your grandchildren

in a vault it should last for a hundred

years

a thousand years right it transcends a

company a country

if i have a hundred million dollars and

i have it in land in california

california can tax it and i can't move

it i will have to sell it at some point

i'm gonna get taxed on it

if i buy a hundred million dollars worth

of stocks

right and i i'm stuck on the new york

stock exchange or i'm stuck with a

custodian i

i've got all those regulations and maybe

income tax on the company will impair me

capital you know capital gains i can i

can avoid without

if i don't sell it but the problem is

the company has competitive risk

and if the company becomes

non-competitive you might have to sell

it because the company's

not a monopoly on pure money

but you know what's the what's the best

asset i can buy pure monetary energy

there's no ceo there's no company

there's no product there's no iphone 11

to not like

and by the way if you move from

california to wyoming now you got

wyoming state tax when wyoming changes

their taxes move to florida

when florida change their taxes move to

puerto rico when you don't like that

move to singapore when you

by the way if i have my gold and a bank

in new york it's kind of hard to move it

to singapore

but if i have my bitcoin in a bank in

new york i can move to singapore in 30

minutes for five bucks

so so the beauty of uh

owning property in cyberspace

is it can be moved at the speed of light

or near the speed of light for almost no

cost that means that the number of

potential custodians

goes up by orders of magnitude all the

custodians and counterparties are

made much more honest because they have

to treat you fairly

if somebody in singapore will give you

eight percent interest on your bitcoin

you know you can move it there in 30

minutes if they change the rules and

screw you over

you can take it back right you can't do

that with gold you can't do that with

apple stock you can't do that with land

in upstate new york

you can't do that with a bond a piece of

sovereign debt you're

you're you're held hostage by

the uh the bank or the counterparty

which has got a regulator which has got

a set of systems

and so therefore the market optionality

is much lower on every other type of

property and the likelihood you would

have it impaired

and you have to sell it is much higher

and so

my answer is buy property that will

never be impaired

that you will never have to sell that is

not subject to income tax

capital gains tax employment tax hip

attacks

and it doesn't operate a business that

requires

import export therefore tariffs are not

a threat to it

it has no competitors if i took away all

the moving parts

everything to break what's left

one bitcoin right bitcoin is manhattan

and cyberspace with 21 million

city blocks every bitcoin is a block you

can own a block in cyberspace but it's

better than man

it's like the best city in the world

that every rich person will want to live

in for a thousand years

right that's what that is if i could

give you

a city block and the best city in

cyberspace that's good for a thousand

years

why would your family ever sell it

because every rich family i know in new

york city

they're rich because their great

grandfather bought

a city block and they've been just

handing it down

and when the bankers print five percent

more money the value of the land goes up

by five percent and they refinance

the block and they take a loan and you

can do that forever

if if your asset goes up 20 a year

and if your cost of living goes up 10 a

year

you can loan or you can borrow against

your asset forever and your debt to

equity ratio will fall

and you will never incur income tax you

will never incur

uh capital gains tax and you can do it

from anywhere on earth

that's a better idea but so so

so i perhaps we have a bit of a

disagreement on moving the gold but i do

understand the counterparty

what i think about crypto that i want to

ask you about

you know the government's always behind

what you are hearing now is you're

hearing about wealth taxes you're

hearing about janet yellen wants

unrealized capital gains taxes people

say

we'll just borrow against it never sell

it pass it down what happens when south

africa comes along and says seven

percent a year we want to take our

you know our our peace off the top uh or

we're going to tax your unrealized gains

what

is that something that you think is

coming and what do you do then

i think the best thing you can do is

make sure that

you're mobile and if you're not mobile

make sure your property is mobile

right own the most mobile

liquid property on earth what would that

be

think about it what is the single

most mobile tangible property

you can own on earth more mobile than

sovereign debt

more mobile than cash more mobile than

gold more mobile than a house in the

hamptons more mobile than timberland

more mobile than oil

oil contracts or natural gas fields or

ships

yachts what's more mobile than any of

those things

more mobile than shares of stock more

mobile than bonds more mobile than

derivatives

i just named 500 trillion dollars worth

of stuff andrew

what's more mobile than that you're

gonna say bitcoin

right so if you were starting over would

you start microstrategy in the united

states knowing where the us is today

well i think that's a different issue

right i mean you

you start a company based upon uh

based upon where you want to be to

attract the right employees

we put microstrategy in northern

virginia because we wanted to hire

engineers

without the engineers there'd be no

company sometimes you know

so a company needs human capital after

that you need financial capital well if

being a us-based company we were able to

go public on the nasdaq

if we were you know based in another

country switzerland we wouldn't be able

to do that so

so we had good access to people we had

good access to

financial capital we were we had better

access to customers most of our

customers were on the eastern seaboard

that's why we did it

so i think you put your company

where you need it to be in order to

produce the thing

that you're going to produce to sell to

the customers

you're going to sell to and sometimes

there are some jurisdictions that are

better than others

but um i tell you one thing for sure if

bitcoin existed

i would have bought more bitcoin but

look bitcoin didn't exist in its current

form until 2020 or late 2020.

it's only matured as a digital monetary

network

since march right right now you can look

at it and say

there are there are a hundred billion

dollar type

entities that have all adopted bitcoin

as their standard monetary network

and they feel comfortable with it and

they're going to defend it

and i couldn't have said that two years

ago so

so bitcoin's a new thing and it's a new

monetary system

i would say regardless of where you put

your company

you should plug your company into

bitcoin the beauty of bitcoin is you can

plug a company in switzerland or haiti

or singapore or malta or

or anywhere on earth into bitcoin and

you will get the benefits of uh the most

intelligent capital wherever that might

be

if uh if you buy bitcoin in alabama

and you just huddle it you put in a call

storage wallet and forget about it

and someone in singapore comes up with a

derivatives exchange that's able to

trade and

and finance and is the best crypto bank

on the universe and it attracts

hundreds of billions of dollars of

capital that

singapore crypto bank will drive up the

price of bitcoin for you in alabama

and you will end up rich because of

something happening around the world

in a different country a different

language a different jurisdiction

while you're sleeping that's the beauty

of bitcoin it's it's

global it's open permissionless

anybody can do something to help it it's

going to be improved by the highest

common denominator not the lowest common

denominator

and it's happening very very rapidly

that's that's the secret to it being the

apex

asset that's outgrowing everything else

in the last decade

couple more questions one one phrase of

yours that i love

stability is stagnation and you've

talked about things like gold he said if

you want to keep your money in cash it's

zero percent or even less now

stability is stagnation from my

perspective and i know some of our

audience members wanted me to ask you

this

to me the u.s is the legacy brand in or

the uk or canada

these are the legacy brands that people

are they believe that they're stable

we would argue that they're less stable

you know is there a case would you ever

look at

moving to living in investing in doing

business in emerging markets that are

less stable including some of the the

basket cases that you mentioned

well i i think that um one

core requirement for a company to do

well in any market

is it has to be able to function in the

currency of that market

and so if you're if you're um

operating in a country with a collapsing

currency the weimar republic

zimbabwe venezuela it is hopeless

so no if it's a collapsing currency i

wouldn't be doing business there

if it's merely a weak currency well we

do business in 27 countries

you know so we're we're everywhere in

the world

right now uh that like uh

in japan and korea and australia and in

the emirates and

in most european countries and most

south american countries

we struggle in countries where the

currency is collapsing more so

but otherwise i think you just have to

be open-minded to every opportunity

you've mentioned malta uae do you think

that there will be countries that want

to stake out a claim particularly

smaller countries is being

the most crypto friendly to attract an

ecosystem is that

are there particular countries you see

that are doing that

i think so i mean i think you'll see

you'll see countries embrace it

uh more rapidly than other countries i

mean

the progressive ones if if your currency

completely collapses and you're trying

to build

a new currency system your choice is

gold the dollar or bitcoin

well if you do it in the dollar then you

have to get the dollars from the us

and then and so you kind of lost your

sovereignty

if you wanted to create a sovereign

currency

that's backed by a tangible asset i

would think that

that bitcoin would be the best one

because gold's not going to work for you

not in the 21st century so i think you

may see people reconstruct

collapsed economies on bitcoin

i think you'll see other progressive

countries um

you know singapore or something that'll

be uh that'll be crypto friendly because

they want to lead in fintech

you know in digital assets they are it's

like the granite

that you're going to build manhattan on

right if you if you're building a bank

on an asset which moves at the speed of

light

that uh that is thermodynamically sound

that's programmable

you'll probably build a better faster