Bitcoin is Forever Money with Michael Saylor

happy Thursday uh thank you for a lovely

pizza yesterday on Pizza day uh and

having us here that was two pizzas two

pizzas and a cheesecake I think that's

the best cheese cheesecake and a steak

and a steak a

whole it was a I I don't think anyone

finished it

um but uh it's always good to see you I

think when did we last sit down was it

in

Miami last year who it's been while it's

what happened yeah yeah the world has

changed a couple of times yeah a couple

of times

um you kind of have this pre- Bitcoin

life and post Bitcoin life where your

world must have changed quite a bit yeah

yeah definitely did um I would say uh

you I started a company in 1989 I came

public in

1998 there there was the stage from 98

to 2008

and it was all um business

intelligence and um then around 2008 I

felt like I conquered the business

intelligence World I'd been successful

and i' proven everything I need to prove

and so I wanted to go create value by

inventing new stuff and so I launched a

bunch of businesses I had you know I had

alarm.com and angel.com and usher.com

and wisdom and alert.com and I think

probably 10 different things and you

know I I'd hit like a single like a you

know with alarm but I end up spinning it

off it's a public company today but

there's no way that micro strategy could

commercialize that and then with Angel

we sold it for a lot of money but we

couldn't commercialize oursel that was

like an early competitor to Sur and

interactive voice response and then we

had a bunch of whiffs where I'd launch a

business it just didn't work and it

crashed and burn and um and over time I

think I just I came to realize that it's

very hard to be to if you if you manage

to do one thing in life and you're lucky

enough to have one thing that's

successful you know you should declare

yourself fortunate and then when you

start to do maybe you can do a second

thing but the second thing is really

hard and then when you start thinking

you can do a third thing a fourth thing

a fifth thing a sixth thing and you're

like the portfolio Guru and you launch

10 or 10 things at the same time you

start dropping balls and so when I got

to um I think sometime in the 2012 2014

time frame I realized I was going to

have to refocus you know and put the

laser eyes back on and go back to just

focusing on micro strategies business

intelligence business and I focused on

that from you know 2014 all the way to

2020 and we tried everything we could to

grow that business 20% a year you know

everybody in a tech business you know

the definition of success is are you

growing 10 to 20% a year and if you are

then you're good and if you're growing

faster than 20% You're great and if

you're growing 0% you're just deemed a

failure you know which like if you grow

your family 0% you're not a failure like

I have three kids imagine if you had to

go from three kids to six kids to 12

kids to 24 kids to 48 kids to 96 kids to

192 kids so you know like every mother

would fail but but in fact in business

the expectation is you have to double

double double double double failing so I

found it very frustrating you know I

tried spending massive amounts of money

on marketing massive amounts of money

buying the stock back masses amounts of

effort doing other things and by 2020 I

think we realized that we we weren't you

know success was continuing to generate

cash be profitable but we weren't going

to double double double double double

and um and then Along Came the pandemic

the lockdowns covid zero interest rates

and uh the world turned upside down for

a lot of people and and I would say the

next phase of my life started somewhere

in the March 2020 time frame and uh and

it forced me to rethink a lot of my

ideas I I was avidly against remote work

I would have fired you if you wanted to

work remotely in February 2020 and in

March of 2020 I was dragged Kicking and

Screaming into remote world work and all

of a sudden I I discover zoom and then I

discover I discover YouTube and I

discover you know all sorts of ideas for

doing business remotely that I would

have rejected

reflexively just because I didn't you

know it's like I was set in a certain

way I was going to do everything a

certain way and something snapped me out

of that and um and in the world of

Finance uh when uh the markets crashed

and they rebounded and you know I saw

this delamination of Main Street from

Wall Street every Main Street company

suffered struggled you know was

discriminated against was shut down

failed you know almost like a death

sentence for yoga studio or gyms and not

only were they were they harassed shut

down but people were like sent to jail

because they wanted to show up to the

office right and then all the Wall

Street businesses they all doubled in

value in 12 weeks while the world was

shut down and everybody on the Wall

Street side of the equasion had the best

year of their life in 2020 and it kind

of yeah it kind of really shocked me

broke my mind I'm like how is it

possible that this part of the society

is is having the worst year of their

life and this set of of societies having

the best year of their life and then you

have the Schism where one group of

people people are getting rich and not

working hard and they don't see what the

problem is and another group of people

are being decimated you know destroyed

physically mentally emotionally

economically and there seems to be a

disconnect and uh it was in that

environment that I just realized that

there was a part of my business which

was Main Street the $500 million

software company and working very hard

and as part of my business which was

Wall Street being a publicly traded

company with 5600 million of cash that

earned 0% interest and I thought well if

we're going to be successful going

forward I'm going to have to embrace the

Wall Street side of the business and

rethink that it's obvious that if you're

in if you're T bills are generating 0%

interest then you're not going to double

your money invested in t- bills so we

went on the search to find something to

invest in and that search brought us to

bitcoin and uh and then Bitcoin force

made a think you know at first it made

me rethink treasury strategy the

convention of there must be 43,000

publicly traded companies the

conventional Finance view is your

treasury should be invested in t- bills

sovereign debt cash or credit C and and

that and that leads to the conventional

view you should uh isue any investment

that creates volatility never invest in

anything that might go down right you

want to you want to have that money for

a rainy day and you should probably run

your your p&l so you asso volatility

volatility is a dirty word so what's the

perfect example like Microsoft sells

three-year contract so three years in

advance they know exactly what the price

is going to be for their customers and

if you ask the CFO how much revenue will

you generate in the fourth quarter of

next year they know plus or minus 1% so

all they got to do is just tweak the

cost and they will hit their numbers

every quarter because the p&l isn't

volatile it's very transparent very

predictable and so on the balance sheet

I give you a100 billion doll what do you

do with it well you don't go and and buy

Nvidia stock you don't buy Tesla stock

you don't bet it on anything you you buy

you know short you don't even buy

long-term treasury bills you wouldn't

buy 30 year bonds you would buy put it

in the money market generating whatever

if you're lucky at that point it was 3%

but today it's 5 a half% and you take no

interest rate risk and you take no

Market risk so now what if you construct

you've constructed like the ultimate

predictable company with no

uncertainty so if you're an investor you

know you make one decision a year do I

invest or not and then you you know you

might do a quick check quarterly but any

volatility is probably negative it's

either oh they outperformed that you

know that doesn't happen that often or

they screwed something up well that was

conventional wisdom 43,000 companies did

it and everybody with cash would

basically Buy t- bills shortterm and

since t- bills shortterm yield 3% after

tax and the cost of capital is

12% then that means you're losing 9% or

10% of shareholder value every year that

you hold t- bills and since people get

that the conventional view is buy your

stock back the the cost of capital so

people

understand yeah is that that's is that

the the gap between inflation and really

if you could get to it a number of ways

one way to get to it is actually look at

the expansion of the money supply you

know and if and and the money supply

expanded maybe s or 8% over 100

years and you could look at that and

then you could tack on a risk premium I

need to get that plus a risk premium the

money suppli has been if that was the

case the risk premium is normally four

5% so you go 7% plus 5% gets you to 12%

cost of capital but the cost of capital

is the cost of holding that capital and

doing nothing with it yeah another way

to look at it is the S&P index might

generate a 10 to 12% return and so if I

have a billion dollars my option as an

investor is just put it in the S&P index

and get the 12% Diversified kind of

quote unquote risk-free Equity return so

if the company is going to keep the

money and they're going to invest it in

a t- bill that generates 3% after tax

they should just give it to me and even

if I'm brainless I just put it in the

S&P index and generate 12% % tax

deferred so that that's the disconnect

right you're destroying shareholder

wealth if you're generating a a tax

deferred yield of less than 12% but this

that guaranteed almost guaranteed 12% on

the S&P feels a little bit scammy

itself um how how can you guarantee that

like the 3% is guaranteed yeah the three

well the 3% is guaranteed that is true

but over a hundred years the S&P has

yielded

78 9% on average but but you would have

down years right true or do you not have

down years but the decision or the

opinion is in the eye of the beholder or

the truth is in the eye of the beholder

and the beholder is the investor yeah so

the outside public if if you go and you

survey a hundred institutional investors

that invest in equity and you ask them

what is their Benchmark The Benchmark is

the S&P Index right like if the investor

is returning less than the S&P index all

their Capital would be called away from

them when you when uh an Institutional

Investor goes to the Yale pension fund

or the Harvard endowment and they say

hey I got 3% guaranteed in my T bills

Yale and Harvard would say you're an

idiot we could get 3% in t- bills we pay

you to pick companies that can

outperform the t- bill return and so if

the in if a hedge fund manager or an

investor goes to his limited partners

and says we're generating the S&P

return then the limited partner would

would say well that's interesting but

you're charging me 2% management fee and

20% participation fee and all you did

was the S&P index I can do that myself

there you go so at the end of the day I

have a billion dollars I can either put

it in the S&P index and get that and pay

a fee of nine BAS points to State Street

or I can put it into the T Bill take

zero risk get 3% after tax and pay no

fee or I can give it to you Mr you know

professional investor so the

professional investor says I'm going to

do better I'm gonna I'm going to pick

the 10 winners and my proof is I got 18%

return the S&P got 12% return but I kept

2% management fee so that's said I 18 is

16 and then I kept 20% of my return you

know and by the way some of them don't

do that some of them are just mutual

funds and they just take a 1% fee but at

the end of the day the the investor or

The Limited partner investor you know

the big boss at the at the back of the

line says what's my effective return

versus the S&P index and if you can do

better than that I'm going to give you

as much Capital as you want and if you

underperform that I'm going to take away

Capital so The Benchmark in the in the

modern era since you know 1993 was spy

was launched so Benchmark in the last 30

years is probably the S&P index that is

the effective cost of capital right The

Limited partner puts that burden on the

general partner running the investment

fund the general partner puts that

burden on the CEO and the CFO the

management team that run apple and Tesla

and Microsoft if you can't generate that

return or better for me my view is give

me the capital back so that means The

Limited partner takes the money away

from the Bridgewaters or the hedge funds

of the world and then the general

partner takes the money away from the

corporations and that just kind of

ripples down but if there's increasing

profits increasing companies putting

their money into the S&P as a as a way

to almost guarantee their

returns are those investments in those

companies uh reflective of their

performance or or they reflective of a

safe haven and a because it's almost

like a guaranteed it's like a

self-fulfilling prophecy yeah now now

you're getting to like rational Market

Theory it's um if you have active

investors they pick the winners and out

of them S&P 500 there's like seven

winners The Magnificent Seven and

there's 493 losers or or Treading Water

right so if the active investors pick

the winners they overinvestment

than the losers if everybody just uh

invested in the index there would be no

picking of winners or losers that's

almost just like a Socialist Communist

idea and that would be an example of the

investment Community stopping to stop

thinking right index investors they

don't think they just buy you know x% of

500 companies and so the truth is the

index strategy only works if you have

actor actors who are activists in the

market that don't index but does the

index itself naturally lead to companies

being

overvalued some yeah some companies will

be overvalued some companies may be

undervalued right so so it is it's uh an

example of an imperfection in the

marketplace that creates opportunity if

if everybody else chooses to index and

you're the one person that that doesn't

then it's like you're saying the emperor

has no coach you guys are all invested

in Kodak and Xerox and you're not

invested in Amazon and apple that's how

the big Tech investors could outperform

the overall market and again if I step

back and I'm I'm looking at you as the

activist investor the way that I know

you're thinking properly is you're

outperforming the index if you're

underperforming the index you're

thinking

poorly and if you're outperforming index

you're thinking properly but let's come

back to 2020 you came back to bitcoin

anyway um so in 2020 uh we had uh half

of our Enterprise was in cash and it was

generating 0% yield and it was very

clear that if if we wanted to actually

um have the uh the success of Wall

Street firms we needed to have an asset

and the asset needed to generate more

than the cost of capital so the search

is to and the cost of capital jumped

because of an Environ

where you print 40% more money all of

your assets have to go up and price 40%

for you to keep parity right and so what

did well big Tech stock surged uh real

estate surged um you know so so those

things do surge cash doesn't surge

owning a bunch of dollars dollars

weren't worth 40% more three years later

than they were in 2020 so we went on

this search and we and you know

considered art and real estate and

buying the index and buying big tech

companies and there are regulatory uh

considerations that keep you from just

buying Securities you can't have more

than 40% of your liquid uh Assets in

Securities if you're a publicly traded

company generally and so you can't just

buy $500 million of spy but and even if

you did There's then practical

consideration which is if you told all

your investors we just took all this

money and invested in the Spy their

response would be well there's nothing

special about that that's the most

conventional strategy you could pursue a

12-year-old could do the same give us

the capital back so we discovered uh the

idea of gold and then we thought about

it we decided the digital gold would be

better than gold if we could get all the

benefits of a non-sovereign store of

value Bearer instrument that's a hard

money and if we could combine it with

all the benefits of Apple Google

Facebook Amazon a big Tech Global

dominant Network putting the idea of

Technology investing with the idea of of

hard money investing together in the

year 2024 it struck us as being a

reasonable strategy and at the time it

was really the only reasonable strategy

we we either going to give the money

back to the shareholders and that's a

fast

death give the money back decapit lies

have no assets right once you lose your

financial Capital you're going to lose

your human capital because if you have

no money on the balance sheet and if

your business has no volatility the

options have no value stock options have

no value you can't afford you can't

overpay the employees you don't have the

cash and so you're probably going to

lose the employees and then three to six

years later the product's not going to

be competitive so the fast death wasn't

all that appealing if you're going to do

that you might as well would just sell

the company the slow death is sit on 600

million in cash which you know we could

we could run at an operating loss for 20

years with that much cash but you're

just waiting to die right it's like

you're not going to beat Microsoft and

Amazon and Facebook and Google that's

like H holding up in your Citadel while

the Army's outside they're just going to

starve you to death and okay I've got

7even years of food in my Citadel but

while I'm sitting here and for seven

years they're going to burn all my field

you know Dam my water supply and take

over the rest of the world and when I

come out in seven years people have

forgotten me so that's no good so the

last thing is you go you ride out of the

Citadel you take a risk you know pick

sides join the

fry uh you know take a decision and at

the time you know the the obvious uh

Team to join was team Bitcoin the

obvious movement was the crypto movement

and and there was a lot of risk but but

the alternative was just either a slow

or fast death you keep saying we but it

was really you and you brought it to

your team right um well I I'm the

Catalyst but the difference between uh

an individual investor and a public

company is an individual investor can

can think about it maybe discuss it with

a family member two and make the

decision a private company thinks about

it talks to one major investor three

people in the private company and makes

a decision and tells nobody a public

company you would have to you would have

to persuade your entire uh management

team the CFO The General Counsel the CEO

the head of Technology maybe then you

have to get the consensus of the

directors so the management the the the

directors and the officers have to come

aligned then you have to get consensus

from the outside auditor from the

outside Council and after you consider

those two you have to get consensus of

the outside public company investors and

the problem with the investors is at

9:30 in the morning the investor base

turns over it changes and by 400 p.m. in

the afternoon you have different

investors so you have to think really

hard about how you communicate Telegraph

and build consensus with the

investors and so so public companies are

interesting creatures because on one

hand it's like a 19 legged race you know

fought you know or something it's it's a

very intricate uh dance to build Harmony

across many constituencies that have

asymmetric information and they also

have asymmetric priorities right the

general Council doesn't want you to get

sued right the directors of a fiduciary

obligation the out you know there's a

set of investors that think one thing

another set of investors that think of

different things so you've got to

balance all those constituencies and

that's the negative or the challenge but

the positive is when a public company

does something it does it big right in

size so when we finally did something it

was a $250 million acquisition of

Bitcoin and and for me I was like I

wanted to do 500 million but 250 million

was the compromise and we agreed to buy

back 250 million of our stock at the

same time kind of as insurance to to to

give all of the the the the um

shareholders that were concerned about

the strategy give them an exit at a

profit so that was our move but in

retrospect of course 250 million was

like the largest public purchase of

Bitcoin that anybody in the world had

ever admitted to or the world had ever

seen I don't there there may have been

larger uh public Investments or larger

Investments but we don't know about them

and they're not credible about 12 of

them from

you yeah and then once we did that then

we then we were able to do the next one

the next one the next one so public

companies are very powerful Vehicles if

you can align all of your interest you

know just like countries are powerful

you know getting a country to get behind

Bitcoin would would be a very powerful

idea it's just you have a lot of

constituencies and so the exercise

becomes one in in uh

diplomacy politics and consideration are

you surprise more companies haven't done

it or done it to the scale you have

because you you've put the playbook out

there you've told everyone you run your

conference I don't on a very small scale

of my little businesses but and and it's

worked amazingly for every single

business I've had I've done my small

version of what micro strategy does

which is buy as much Bitcoin as I can

and it def it's protected and grow each

business but are you surprised that are

more large public companies have gone

wow we should have done that we should

be doing that um I'm not surprised and

I'm not disappointed with what we've

achieved in four years I mean we did I I

think there has been a sentiment shift

throughout the Bitcoin Community to to

look uh further in the future you know I

think there has been a positive

sentiment shift in media you know on on

in the financial you know television

networks it used to be people lamented

nobody talked about Bitcoin or they

talked it to scam me and I think I think

we legitimized Bitcoin as an asset class

with CNBC and Bloomberg and fox

I think um I think a lot of private

companies you know uh got very heavily

involved I get I get letters from from

people that are private investors and

also everywhere I go I meet somebody

that says oh I watch one of your videos

and I you know I finally got Bitcoin I

started buying heavily so a lot of

private investors a lot of families a

lot of private

companies and you know like my first

podcast with pum you know he always said

this question at the end of the day he'd

ask a question goes do and I watched his

previous podcast and I noticed he always

says so do you have a question for me

and I looked at that and I thought yeah

I'm gonna have a question for him so in

my first podcast with pump you know what

my first question was like my first

podcast my first question and pomp was

the most influential podcaster in the

Bitcoin space I said but that is

debatable at the time still debatable

okay I

thought no you m you me you messaged me

and I was like was this guy and I

ignored it and then you went on pumps I

was like

[ __ ] yeah I mean I messaged a lot of

people the day we bought $250 million of

Bitcoin and like half of the ogs ignored

me yeah but um I'm on Pal's podcast he

says you have a question for me and I

said yeah yeah I noticed Jack dorsy

likes Bitcoin he he tweets about it he

seems to really appreciate the value of

it he runs a publicly traded company

Square do you want to join force with me

and let's go ask Jack if he'll buy some

Bitcoin and p goes that's that's kind of

interesting and then a few weeks go by

maybe a month go by and square announced

that they bought Bitcoin yep I remember

and and that was a game Cher you know I

thought you know at the point they did

that you know I I

thought we're good now we're gonna win

like that was the that was the point at

which I thought we're going to win two

public companies took a position you

know and then when Elon came along long

and Tesla bought Bitcoin that was three

public companies and perception of

Bitcoin and mainstream media I mean it

it it's cross the front page of Wall

Street Journal New York Times Etc so I

think we accomplished a lot in those

four years but it doesn't surprise me

that you don't see a hundred or a

thousand publicly traded companies

adopting Bitcoin as a primary treasury

Reserve asset in those four years

because I think the modern era the

institutional era Bitcoin adoption

starts January

2024 right and and I think uh what

changed in January 2024 was the SEC

approved 11 10 to 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs

and that started an avalanche and I

think today there's like 24 there's 22

last week and there were two added in

London or getting added so we went from

a perception that this was not an

endorsed or legitimate asset class at

the at the regulatory level and someone

could have said I think the SEC is going

to ban it or they're going to deem it a

security or something and and the world

Changed by the middle of January and now

it was clear that it wasn't going to be

banned and then at the same time in

January um the accounting uh the

accounting profession offered fair value

accounting they they changed the

accounting guidelines and they made it

optional starting in January and

mandatory next January so in a regime

where it is uncertain whether the

administration will deem Bitcoin a

commodity or security and they haven't

they haven't definitively spoken and in

a world where the accounting profession

requires that you adopt indefinite and

tangible accounting indefinite and

tangible accounting is the most uh toxic

prejudicial discriminatory accounting

treatment you can have if I didn't want

you to buy something or invest in

something I would give it indefinite and

tangible accounting because that means

you can only write it down you can never

write it up and so you could have $15

billion doar or $150 billion do of

something and it could be held on your

balance sheet at 100 bucks and and not

only can you not ever acknowledge it uh

all of your losses under indefinite and

tangible they actually uh infect the p&l

so if if a if a normal company bought a

billion dollars of Bitcoin and it traded

down 30% and then traded up

150% they would be showing a $300

million operating

loss even though you know well the same

the same happen with my business I did

one advertising deal it was all paid in

Bitcoin uh it was a multi-year deal uh

seven figures and I took the deal

because it was paid in Bitcoin it was

under the value I normally do uh un

normally accept uh the price and the

price of Bitcoin was 42,000 at the time

um by the time we uh my year end Bitcoin

had dropped to below

20,000 and uh I had to pay taxation

based on the value of the Bitcoin at the

time I received it and it was a big hit

I managed to survive it but I nearly had

to you there was a Potential Threat of

selling some Bitcoin to pay the taxes at

that time it was a real threat to the

business we survived it and now we've

not sold any of that Bitcoin but it was

concerning if you look at the 42,000

publicly traded

companies and you went to a CFO in 2023

or 2022 and you said I think I want to

buy Bitcoin they would have said well

the accounting is a real problem the

accounting is going to let me tell you

how much of a problem it is it's going

to obscure all of your p&l and all of

your balance sheet such that your EPS

doesn't it doesn't uh have any useful

information anymore and it means that

any investor is going to have to

reconstruct their own view of your

business so it it takes uh it takes

financial reporting from something where

I can look at a glance and 30 seconds

and figure out whether you had a good

quarter to I have to spend three hours

thinking about it and and so that's kind

of a nonstarter so um I I think that

we're all only like we're May late May

and the era of institutional adoption

for Bitcoin started in January and and

it's and it's like uh if you go went

back to

1994 and we said well the first

companies in the world rolled out their

website in January of 1994 and now it's

May of

1994 and we're sitting in a podcast

you're saying well Michael are you

surprised that more companies aren't you

know rolling out websites or don't

appreciate the web and I'm like

well it's really year one and and and

give it four more years right give it 10

more years and you'll see that the

consensus will be of course you need a

website just like of course you need

Bitcoin and and with Bitcoin you you

found a place to park your Capital you

found a place to deliver a better return

but but you do also

mention you mentioned earlier during

covid there was an inequity during the

lockdowns where small yoga businesses CL

down and and whilst you're obviously a

very successful investor uh I have also

noticed you do have a lot of empathy you

do have uh you have an eye on the

inequities of the world whether it's

caused by the system or bureaucracy and

so how do you how do you manage those

two different parts of Bitcoin because

Bitcoin is a great investment tool but

it also is something that brings a lot

of equity with it you know a lot of

fairness is that just like a beautiful

marriage

yeah I think that uh that Bitcoin is

it's an

asset and that makes it the ideal

treasury asset that makes it a solution

for every corporation in the world and

every investor and every family every

individual it's uh it's also a

technology but it's a technology for uh

for human

empowerment right and you know I think

Peter teal pointed out that that

cryptography Y and and and giving strong

encryption to the individual it shifts

the balance of power away from the

corporation and away from the central

entity whether it's a government or a

big corpor and it shifts it back to the

individual you know and and that

movement started with pgp you know and

pretty good privacy and and uh it was

simmering it just and I knew it went on

because a lot of people at MIT were very

much into it and one of my MIT friends

Simpson garfinkle wrote a book on pretty

good privacy and so and I I follow a

little bit but it was never uh an

existential it was never I never had an

existential threat and I never had a

mortality experience or near-death

experience where I needed it to survive

right so so I started appreciating

Bitcoin not just as an asset but as a

technology and then and then once you

understand the technology you know how

do you Empower someone with whatever all

their money in their head or in their

hands and how do you Empower someone to

move all their assets from here to to

there without asking permission that

leads you to the

ideology right and and the and the

ideology is based upon you know a

protocol that empowers technology that

creates an asset But ultimately the

ideology is you know self- sovereignty

privacy individual rights and you know

the the sovereignty of the individual

and and also property rights and

freedom and um and I think that once I

got involved I you know I started

looking for a solution to a treasury

problem so I kind of got involved

because I had an economic problem and

then in the research it leads you to

understand the technology and and

appreciate the combination of

cryptography and proof of work and and

and and uh energy and then once you

start following all the bitcoiners you

get drawn into the ideology and then in

the ideology people start to start to

cause you to question basics for example

what is inflation I I would have I would

have accepted the party line inflation

is CPI and then as soon as you realize

inflation is not CPI or inflation and

you can generate as many inflation

metrics as you as you wish to generate

then you realize well I can just

cherry-pick any inflation and so the the

best possible situation is to run an

economy with 12% inflation while I

convince the people that it's 2%

inflation because the cost of capital

really is 12% but they think it's 2% and

the difference of the 10% I get to give

to anybody else I want right so like

every every pension is indexed at CP Pi

you know so I'm I'm raising your

pensions at 2% I'm inflating the money

supply at 10 or

12% right and and um that leads you to

question a lot of things well if the

inflation rate isn't cor correct then

maybe GDP isn't correct how do you

actually measure gross domestic product

you know if it's not inflation

adjusted you know and I think uh I think

the CEO of Microsoft you know made a

point a very quiet point no one noticed

which is you the real e the economy is

shrinking it's not growing in nominal

terms people will perceive the economy

to be growing but once you put in place

the right inflation rate the economy is

shrinking nobody in the modern era wants

to admit that they that their National

economy is shrinking due to political

policy well that leads you to start

looking at all these other things like

uh PPI indexes what does that really

mean and then what about unemployment

how can you have unemployment of an

unemployment rate of 2 or 3% when 45% of

the people don't have a job like what

what's the definition of unemployment

well we we only count people as

unemployed if they wish they

weren't huh huh like uh so so all of

these metrics that that Talking Heads on

TV they they argue about they're all

synthetic flow metrics and and you know

you can build an entire world in a trade

strategy and an ideology around

synthetic

cherry-picked false metrics or once you

discover Bitcoin you start thinking well

if the GDP is not right and the

unemployment's not right and the

inflation's not right then what you know

then what is right and so I think that

uh the Bitcoin opened that door for me

and it cause me to question a bunch of

other things I taken for granted and

that leads you to you know it leads you

to read you know the creature from

Jackal Island and then it leads you to

read everything by Murray rothbart you

know a history of economic thought and

you discover Austrian

economics and then it causes you to go

back and and you rethink all of history

like I you know I go back and I reread

the history of the world if you read

Durant's story of civilization he wrote

15,000 pages on the world if you most

people didn't read 15,000 pages of world

history when they were 18 years old old

but if you did you didn't understand

inflation and you didn't understand

money and you didn't understand politics

and you and you hadn't lived through a

war and so you misinterpret or you or

you you know shallowly interpret what's

going on when you go back and you read

history again after you've lived through

an actual war or currency meltdown or

you live in in in 2020 right you see one

part of the economy being destroyed and

another part of the economy being lifted

up by the political action of a few

people and then you watch the media and

you realize there's there's one set of

media that doesn't even recognize

there's a problem and there's another

set of media that uh that takes a a

totally different point of view and then

you realize that that news is just a

curated stream of opinions and if you

wanted one set of opinions you could

watch one set of channels if you want

another set of opinions you watch other

set of channels but what do you do with

this now you cuz you you you it's like

anyone you have your eyes opened you

question everything but for you what

does that mean what do you do with this

now once you

realize that so many things you took for

granted aren't necessarily so and it and

it and it cause you to open your eyes

toward a bunch of things in the world

well there's there's there's two

responses you could have one response is

to not there's a hundred things that are

wrong with the world and start to

complain about all 100 of

them and the other response is just to

pick one single thing that you can do

that might make a

difference and uh and I'm of the opinion

that uh I could complain about a hundred

things in the world that I disagree with

that I would talk about with you

privately but the world doesn't want my

opinion and it doesn't care and and uh

and those things aren't going to change

based upon me complaining about them I

don't have any real power

and I and I also think I remember the

words of of Hayak you know he says you

know you want to take money away from

the state you know you can't do it you

know in a frontal assault you have to do

it in a Sly roundabout way MH so my view

is how do you

fight you know something which is so

entrenched in the

civilization that the harder you push

the harder pushes back and the answer is

you have to in you have to introduce a

new idea that will go viral so for

example

Bitcoin you know is a new idea you could

view it as Freedom technology a freedom

virus and you can also view it as a

monetary virus to give sound money to

the world so if I want to give freedom

and sovereignty and dignity and

empowerment to eight billion people

I don't loudly scream that their

overlords ought to stop leaning on them

you know I I'm not going to topple every

government and every corporate over

Overlord and everything so what I do is

I introduce a new technology that

spreads virally and if I want to give

property rights to 8 billion people I

introduce a new technology and when you

introduce a new technology you there's a

right way to do and a wrong way to do it

I think when you say you're wrong you're

stupid I'm smart do it my way change

your way right the harder you the louder

you say that the harder someone pushes

back against you that's like parenting

you create inflammation yeah right and

and there are examples in our political

system where certain political parties

their position is the other party is

wrong we're right they're stupid we're

smart do it our way and give us credit

and blame them right and so that that's

an inflammatory approach I think that um

you could spend a hundred billion

dollars trying to to jam your idea on

someone that doesn't want it they will

just crowdsource a hundred billion

dollars of power to push back and that's

called fighting a war right you're just

going to war I think that the more

elegant way is to introduce a new idea

you know Bitcoin what is it good for oh

it'll it'll be good for your family what

else it'll be good for your company what

else oh it'll help your bank what else

it'll help your state what else it'll

help your city it'll help your country

what else oh you know you want to fight

a war it'll help you win the war you

know you disagree with X it'll help your

political party you want to win an

election it'll help you win right what

what is bitcoin Bitcoin is is good for

you right Bitcoin is empowerment

technology that will allow you to be the

best version of yourself who's losing

nobody's losing

who's wrong nobody's wrong just

everybody's just better with this is

Better Living Through technology and I

you know my Approach is I think about

the one thing that can make the world a

better place and I think about the one

thing I might accomplish like I I

literally I don't think like micro

strategy spent seven a half billion

dollars buying Bitcoin I don't think

that if we spent $7.5 billion dollar on

the next 100 things you think are wrong

with the world I don't think it' make a

difference I think that you would just

spend the money and the counter side the

other opposition would spend an

equivalent amount of money to negate the

amount of money you're spending so I

don't think you change the world through

full frontal attacks and I don't think

you change it through aggressive

confrontation I think you change it

through elegant diplomatic Innovation

and and uh that's that's my observation

if I look at at the history of the world

the people that made the world a better

place the people that introduce steel

electricity

antibiotics you know the small pox

vaccine airplanes steam engines internal

combustion engines Motors but starlink

these are all very elegant things and

they're non-controversial at the end of

the day maybe early on people are afraid

of new tech but if you look back and you

say well just give me an example of

someone that righteously opposed

electricity who history deems was on the

right side of that I think generally

history views you on the wrong side of

technical

Innovation and uh and so you'll win over

time if you want to change the world

with technology tech technology is

bipartisan if you want to change the

world with religion or you want to

change the world with ideology or

politics

or you want to change the world with

with critique you know or violence I

think the world has a way of pushing

back and and so I I guess I was just

practical and and uh in 2020 what

started as a how do I saved my own

company became uh oh how do I actually

do something good for my shareholders

right I started with a defensive

strategy almost out of desperation it's

either this or throwing the towel on out

of business and then it became oh

opportunity I actually can actually make

money for my shareholders we did it when

the stock was $120 a share and then when

the stock gets to three or $400 a share

we think well maybe we can keep doing

this and then it became a well you know

wait a minute there's a lot of other

people there's 400 million people in

this crypto community and they actually

like Bitcoin and there's hundreds of

millions of people that own some piece

of Bitcoin and they love it and then

there's the Bitcoin maximalist and they

think that's an instrument of economic

empowerment they think it's going to

change the world for the better and they

don't want to live in a world without

it why do they you know and and so

getting drawn into the spiritual side of

Bitcoin it came later right I mean I

realized there are a lot of people I

mean Jack dorsy maybe being the most

famous of these people that clearly they

were motivated by spiritual drivers and

spiritual motivations more so than by

monetary you know he didn't need to do

Bitcoin to save his company he was a big

Tech billionaire success I I did you

know and and on the other hand it's not

bad that uh that we both had different

motives because my motive was save a

zombie company guess what there's 30,000

other zombie companies and there's 300

million corporations in the world