FFS92 - Eric Weiss

[00:00:00]

Intro

Eric: for Bitcoin to hit 600, 000 in US dollar terms, that's just the equivalent of gold, every time in history a digital successor has gone after an analog predecessor, it hasn't equaled it. It's like crushed it, whether you think of like automobiles versus, you know, like horse and buggies or mobile phones versus rotary phones, this is Bitcoin verse analog gold, right?

So, okay, let's get to 600, 000 of Bitcoin. Right? And then let's see what happens if it goes to 10x that, right? And we're at 6 ,million of Bitcoin. These other things are going to take care of themselves. We don't need to fight those battles now. Let's just fight the battle of being a digital gold

[00:01:00]

Welcoming Eric Weiss

Knut: eric, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show and welcome to Madeira.

Eric: Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great to be here. It's quite a, quite a venue.

Knut: you got in yesterday night, I guess? Or yesterday afternoon? Yesterday morning?

Eric: morning, yeah. Red Eye.

Knut: How scary [00:02:00] was the landing?

Eric: It was actually pretty scary. There was quite a crosswind and, uh, we made it in one approach. We didn't have to pull up. I was speaking to someone last night and they had to take three approaches before they landed, but, uh, it was, it was a little scary.

Those wings are getting pretty close to the runway and I've never landed on a runway that was supported by like cement pylons that's hanging out over the ocean. That's pretty scary. Now I know why it's the second most dangerous airport in the world.

Knut: Yeah. That, that statistic though is, uh, a according to under at least, it's, it's slightly off. Because that was

Eric: Before they

Knut: they extended it. Yeah. Yeah. And I was, I was here once with a, uh, small sailboat and we anchored just, just down, down from, uh, from the, the edge of those, of the runway on the pilots. So we, we saw the planes like.

Lifting off, taking off above our, above our mast and everything.

Eric: That's,

Knut: it was pretty wild.

Eric: Apparently now underneath the runway, they have like go karts [00:03:00] that you

Knut: Oh yeah.

Eric: So maybe we'll check

Knut: pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Introduction to Eric

Knut: for our listeners that don't know you tell, can you tell them a little about yourself and

Luke: Quick TLDR,

Eric: Yeah. The, the, the TLDR is, uh, started out in traditional finance. And, uh, discovered Bitcoin in 2013, bought my first Bitcoin at the end of 2013, um, started a Bitcoin fund, um, called Bitcoin Investment Group for people to, who are used to more traditional investing, high net worth individuals and family office types, to invest in Bitcoin.

Uh, you know, opening an account at Coinbase wasn't something that was comfortable to them. There was no publicly traded products at the time, and so I started a fund that allowed people to invest dollars in Bitcoin. And they can leave and get back dollars, but we're also the only fund that will actually send them Bitcoin when they're ready to self custody as well.

And, uh, charge like very low fees, 1 [00:04:00] percent a year, which includes The custody at Fidelity Digital Assets and it's a simple little straightforward vehicle and uh, yeah, it's got, you know, decent amount of capital has flowed in and a lot of people got into Bitcoin like way before the ETF so it was great. Some happy, some happy limited partners.

Bitcoin ETFs

Knut: So what do you, uh, speaking of the ETFs, what do you think this will do to the, do you see, do you think we've seen even the beginning of what that's going to do to?

Eric: I was, I was always in the camp very vocally that this was a really big deal. And people were saying, nah, it's all hype. All the money's come in. It's going to be a sell the news kind of situation. And I was very much having worked on Wall Street my whole life, not in that camp. The truth of the matter is the money of the world is in Wall Street.

And until you open up the window for them to invest, and it gets blessed by the powers that need to bless it, it's just the capital's not going to come in. And so, there's this tidal wave of money, and we've [00:05:00] just seen the first kind of splashes of this coming in. I know that some of the bigger firms like BlackRock and Fidelity, they haven't even unleashed like 25 percent of their distribution capabilities yet.

The, this is mostly a retail wave of investors, institutional investors have way more constraints. For example, they can't be more than 5 percent of daily volume. They can't be. So even if you're trading a billion dollars, that's 50 million that they could do. And for the pension funds and endowment funds of the world that doesn't even register.

And the other thing is they just want to, they don't take risks. They want to see how the ETFs play out, how well they track bitcoin, which one, if any, are better than the other, before they make their move. And to us, the retail investor, there may be a really big difference between 40, 000. To the institutional investor in this pool of, you know, many, many, many billions of dollars of capital, there's no [00:06:00] difference.

They don't care about allocating. It's not a, oh, we got to get in. It's 60, 000 versus 120, 000. They genuinely do not care. So they're happy to take their time and wait, which is great for us because there's plenty more capital to come.

Knut: Yeah. And most of them are using the same custodian, right?

Eric: A lot of them are using Coinbase. Fidelity is obviously not. I think Fidelity is probably the safest custodian in the United States. They're doing their customing themselves. The other thing that's really big about the ETFs is not just the flow of funds and what it does for price. What's really big is from a regulatory and legal standpoint in the United States, this can never go back now.

Bitcoin is now through the ETFs in the hands of endowment funds, pension funds, retirement accounts. So whether the next chairman of the SEC or the next president of the United States is against Bitcoin or not, it doesn't matter. They can't take it away from the people now. And that's the really big thing.

We've crossed this massive chasm. And [00:07:00] interestingly, right, it's only Bitcoin. That has crossed this chasm. It's not any of the other tokens or coin.

Knut: No, no, no. And rightly so.

Eric: Yeah.

Knut: I mean, yeah, yeah, it's just fascinating to think about, like, the way I visualize it is, it's really this immovable object meet unstoppable force. That, that's where, that's the supply demand curve. That's the cross point, like, the crosshairs.

Luke: but one point is one, one thing is more unstoppable than the other though, right? You can't stop that supply. Supply is capped,

Eric: That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. We're, we're getting a real supply shock and a demand shock right now. And people don't fully understand it and it's going to get worse with the happening. Right. So people just really don't quite understand, uh, you know, the dynamic we've seen a little bit of it in the last month or last, 72 hours, even, where it seems to go parabolic, but it could, it could be significantly more dramatic.

We could even see [00:08:00] 50 to 100 percent in one day, because When, when the Bitcoin lands in strong hands and there's traders and there are people, um, who live their lives in fiat and they have goals and objectives for their life to buy a house, buy a car, whatever it is, and they will have a number in U. S.

dollar terms in their mind where they're going to sell, but generally speaking, there are a lot of people like the three of us or Michael or others or micro strategy that just like, aren't going to sell. That's, most people are just not going to sell. Like, you'll pry it from my dead hands, right? So there's just very little supply factor in all that's been lost, you know, whatever, 4 million or so.

And we're going to reach a point where you've got, you know, someone wants to buy a thousand Bitcoin of demand and there's 500 Bitcoin of supply. And the price is just going to go up very, very dramatically, very quickly.

Knut: You think that this, these last days little hint of a bull run is, is the start of that?

Eric: Yes and no. Yes and no. We're getting a glimpse, [00:09:00] but also, you know, there are, there are traders out there. So there are plenty of people who came in at 51, 000 less than a month ago, and they're at 61, 000 now, and that's a big gain. And there will be no shortage of people who are going to take those profits.

So that's going to generate sellers for us. The other thing that we have kind of helping us is as the US dollar price goes up, it takes less Bitcoin to meet the demand. So right. It's like if you have a hundred thousand dollars come in and at 50, 000, they could have satisfied it with two Bitcoin, you know, price of Bitcoin doubles.

And now it's, they only need one Bitcoin to satisfy that same demand.

ETFs and Self-Custody

Knut: So, do you see a risk with this ETF? Like, not your keys, not your coins, right? So, so like, that, that not, not only is It's owning a Bitcoin ETF, not only owning Bitcoin, but it's also like, if the ETFs themselves are using a custodian service, like, do you see a risk with that, that so many [00:10:00] of the Bitcoins are going to end up in a so far

Eric: I don't, I understand the conceptual risk. Um, I, I don't think that that's a legitimate concern, certainly not in the United States at this point. And if that were to become a concern, I don't think it happens overnight. There's plenty of foreshadowing, there's discussions in Congress, you know, there's, there's a lot of smoke before there's fire.

And if that were to be a situation and people wanted Bitcoin, they would sell their ETFs and buy Bitcoin and take custody of their Bitcoin. Uh, in a more direct way, I, I really don't think it's a, a concern.

Knut: Yeah. I think we should, as Bitcoiners, encourage that always, though, like self

Eric: Yeah, I

mean, the truth is I think self custody, we don't have the killer app for self custody yet in my opinion. It's still too, complicated may not be the right word, but it's still too, in some ways it, it presents more risk and more hassle and a lot of people [00:11:00] don't want, I mean, I have some good friends in the self custody world, right, who, like, make the hardware wallets, etc, right, and I have looked into it extensively, I understand it fairly well, and it's not for me.

I'm still more comfortable having my Bitcoin custody at Fidelity. So, you know, when, when they have the, this killer app that makes it super easy and safe in a multi sig way, and it's like, uh, it's a simple user interface, and I'm not worried about if something happens to me, what happens to my custody, and all these fail safes, or if I forget my pen, all kinds of stuff, like, there, there, there will be more mass adoption, but we're not there yet.

I was with the folks, uh, one of the founders of Trezor, um, when we were in Prague at dinner. And by his numbers, 2 percent of people, self custody,

Knut: Is that low?

Eric: that low.

Knut: Oh, holy. I mean, um, yeah, the, the, the thing with the, um, simple UXs [00:12:00] and everything and, and, uh, convenience is that the trade off is always there. Like, so, so we might never see a killer app for, for self custody. Like, do you think such an app even exists?

Eric: I think it will. I think it will. I think it'll happen in the next, you know, 12 to 24 months. I think we're going to see great strides in that area.

Knut: In the next 12 to 24 words.

Eric: ha.

Knut: Yeah, exactly.

Eric: Coincidence? Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, I think, I think we will.

Knut: There's so much, I, I think that's that whole area of money now being nothing but information and provably so, so it's so unexplored. Like this whole notion of, you know, 12 words, 12 magic words. It's so powerful. Like it's, it's

Eric: And there's virtually no chance explaining that to someone over a certain age.

Knut: No, they can't, can't get it.

Eric: Can't get it, don't want to get it, and in a lot of cases, their livelihood depends on them not getting it.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's [00:13:00] the, uh, what was it? Upton Sinclair quote. Yeah, yeah. That's really good. It's a very, uh, very hard to grasp something if your salary depends on not understanding it. Yeah. And all the boomers that actually do understand Bitcoin, they're all, they're all here.

Eric: A good number of them. That's quite a turnout. Yeah, but it is, I mean, that's one thing that Wall Street does. And don't underestimate the benefit of The two largest asset management firms in the world, BlackRock and Fidelity, with their credibility, right? Nobody has more credibility than, uh, you know, Larry Fink or Abigail Johnson, right?

They're not only the CEOs of their respective companies, they are the founder, in Larry's case, and the heir. In Abigail's case, and so they can have the courage to do something bold like this, whereas the CEO of Vanguard, right, serves at the pleasure of his board, and it's a job, granted he was in it for a long time, [00:14:00] but you know, there's risk to that person,

Knut: yeah,

yeah,

Eric:

you know, it's their job, they serve at the pleasure of the board and they can be fired.

He just resigned yesterday, or announced that he was going to resign, whether or not that's coincidence or not, who knows, but, you know, I can imagine. That his perspective was, yeah, this may be coming, but not on my watch. And he knew that he was leaving soon or something and you know, just kicked it down the road a little bit and now he's gone and now we'll have another bite at the apple.

And maybe the next CEO embraces Bitcoin and maybe not, but the benefit of having the BlackRock's and Fidelity's. And the reason why they're doing this is they will educate their consumer in a credible, um, and very effective way. I mean, some of BlackRock's marketing materials, I don't know if you've seen them, they're excellent.

So, you know, the plebs, we all create stuff and put it out there and it's on X or Twitter or whatever, but when the BlackRock's infidelity is of the world Uh, go to sell something and explain something. They're [00:15:00] excellent at it.

Knut: yeah, yeah, but

Don't Sell Your Bitcoin

Knut: don't sell your Bitcoin to BlackRock, like, that's a pro tip

Eric: Don't sell your Bitcoin to

Knut: no, don't even sell it to MicroStrategy, like, don't

Eric: sell it to me.

Knut: it. You don't sell your Bitcoin. That was, that was the phrase,

Eric: That's right. You don't sell it. Yeah. Seller will say that as many times as he can.

Luke: but you can trade it for goods and services though, right? Eventually. What do you think about that? No.

Eric: No, that's, that's, there's no difference between trading it for goods and services and selling it in my opinion. Uh, you, you can borrow against your Bitcoin and then repay the loan and keep your Bitcoin in exchange for those goods and services or whatever you want, but no, I'm not, I'm not inclined to sell my Bitcoin for goods and services.

Luke: What about in the scenario though, when everyone is completely hyperbitcoinized, right? I mean, maybe that's not in any of our lifetimes, but, uh, when, when everything is only Bitcoin, then it's just, just got to move around for, for costs and stuff. What do you think about that?

Eric: [00:16:00] Oh, I, I'm all in favor of the movement of Bitcoin. I might, you know, in some scenarios, lend my Bitcoin out, uh, to earn interest on it if there is. A way to make sure there was no real counterparty risk or something like that. I'm, I'm not at all opposed to the movement of Bitcoin. I'm just not going to be parting with any of my Bitcoin.

Knut: that's a good way of putting it. Like play the Fiat games until Fiat disappears. Right. I guess.

The Future of Fiat

Eric: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I don't, I think a lot of fiats will disappear. I don't think fiat is going to disappear. I actually think that Bitcoin is Really good for the US dollar, and I think there can be plenty of nation states with fiat currencies that can make their fiat survive by backing it with bitcoin. So, I, I think fiat is necessary and will exist.

I, I'm just

Knut: Forever?

Eric: potentially, yeah. I don't see any reason for the US dollar or euro or Chinese yuan. To go away, I think the weaker fiats will go [00:17:00] away, but as a, as a medium of exchange, I think they serve a valuable purpose.

Knut: Hmm. Interesting.

Luke: Can you explain how it's good for the US dollar specifically?

Eric: Sure. I mean, first of all, it's good for Bitcoin that their fiat currencies exist to the extent that you start viewing Bitcoin in opposition to fiat currencies. You create the single most powerful enemies in the world. And as great as we're feeling about Bitcoin right now, as a 1 trillion asset, if China and the United States were to get together and decided they wanted Bitcoin to go away, it will go away.

Okay. So, you know, let's see, we, we are as unstoppable as we can be, but we are stoppable, right? And to some degree,

Knut: Really?

Eric: yes, really.

Knut: Oh, this is fun, because I think this is where we might disagree. I think we may be stoppable for a thousand years, but I think we come back after that.

Eric: [00:18:00] I, uh, My, correct, my, perhaps my view was a little shorter than yours. I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, maybe selfishly, slightly more concerned about my lifetime than, than post 1, 000 years. But, you know, in, in, uh, also in, you know, fi all of, you know, known history is what, like, a few thousand years. So, you know, in 5, 000 years, you know, like, uh, Marcus Aurelius, soon you will have forgotten all and all will have forgotten you.

So, you know, I'm not sure anyone from You know, our civilization will be remembered in 5, 000 years.

Knut: years? Because that's sort of required, too, like,

Eric: Yeah. I mean, as long as the, as long as the world is still here as we know it, then I think the answer is yes, but it's also entirely plausible that, you know, we'll blow ourselves up or something, or there'll be a total reset as there's probably been many, many times. Throughout civilization, right? We've, they found, eh, they found a hand [00:19:00] axe factory

in

Ethiopia that they estimate is 1.

2 million years old. So, you know, if you think about that,

Knut: yes,

Eric: civilization got to a point. Where it wasn't an individual making a handaxe for personal use, it was a factory where they were assembling handaxes. So, civilization got to a point 1. 2 million years ago where we were that far along. There's nothing in our history, no knowledge of that.

We go back a few thousand years. So, you know, maybe there was some kind of reset or something, some Nuclear holocaust or something that like annihilated the planet and we started again or something. I don't

Knut: it's probably the CO2 levels from the Handaxe factory that

Eric: Exactly. You got to be careful with those CO2 levels, man. You got to be very careful about our energy usage.

Knut: Oh, well, yeah, what a time to be alive

[00:20:00] [00:21:00]

Backing Fiat with Bitcoin

Eric: yeah, but I do, I do think that, I do think that, um, for example, if a country like Turkey, okay, that's still able to issue Turkish lira and sell bonds and do things of that nature. If they were to issue, you know, billions of dollars worth of, you know, national debt and they took the entire proceeds of it and they bought Bitcoin, they could start to back Their currency back, the Turkish lira with Bitcoin, and it might just save the Turkish lira, which is otherwise doomed.

Knut: Yeah, that's, that's so fascinating though, because like, that's, that is, you know, there's no, there's no such thing as intrinsic value as you know, but this, this is like such a weird abstract, uh, mind, experiments with something that is just. Mathematics and,

Eric: Yeah,

Knut: and communication backing something that is [00:22:00] just like I have a difficulty seeing how people wouldn't choose to self custody Bitcoin instead of, you know, using the Lira that is backed by

Eric: they may, but if, you know, every Turkish lira was, you know, backed by a thousand sats. And one Turkish Lira was equal to a thousand sats, the Turkish Lira would maintain value and have value as Bitcoin had value.

Knut: Yeah. Except you can do fractional on the Lira, but not on the Bitcoin base layer. So you could say that they're redeemable for this, but you could still do fractional reserve banking, right?

Eric: Yes,

Knut: In a way you can't on the base layer. So,

Eric: Yeah. The government can still screw you. Right. Essentially. But my point is. They're completely screwed now. Like, it's obvious to anyone that the Turkish Lira is going the way of the Argentine Peso, right? Or Venezuelan currency, right? So, they can try to do something. This would be something good that would help.[00:23:00]

All of a sudden You know, if Turk, if, if they were honest about it and they didn't screw you and a Turkish lira was backed by some number of sats, people would want to, I would want to hold Turkish lira. I'd be like, wow, the Turkish lira is trading cheap right now to the number of sats it's backed by.

There's some level of trust, you know, that maybe the government's going to honor it and really keep it. I'll stack some Turkish lira.

Knut: Do you think they have any incentive to do so though? Like, why would the government do that?

Eric: Well, every time, you know, a, a currency, you know, go, a fiat currency goes to zero. It's not, it's not good for the no, no, no, So, uh, that, I guess that's their incentive is take a shot. Like what is it if, if, if death, if death is inevitable? You, you it

Knut: might as well.

Eric: and by the way, it can happen at a municipal level.

It doesn't have to be a national level. You could have like the, you know, the state of New York, you know, or New York City could issue bonds. And by Bitcoin with the proceeds, it worked out really well for micro strategy. Why wouldn't it work [00:24:00] out well for a municipality or a

Knut: No, no, yeah,

Luke: Maybe I'm getting the, maybe I'm a little lost on the math here a little bit though, but when a currency is already hyperinflating, it's a bit of a risky game, right, to try and catch it, to inflate further to buy the Bitcoin, right? Like, is there some risk?

Eric: Oh, of course, of course. I, well, there's a little bit of, yeah, there's risk, but you're, you're going to die, like you're, you're in critical condition, right? So. It depends, like, how high will Bitcoin go, right? If you're, if you're diluting yourself now, essentially, and inflating the currency now, but Bitcoin 1000Xs from where we are, and you, you know, inflate your currency by, you know, 100X, you're still going to get massive benefit.

Luke: So the point is to get, to get some backing in Bitcoin. It is sort of tethered to a specific level and then that level can stay somewhat

Eric: Right now, the Turkish Lira has no backing, [00:25:00] right?

Knut: no.

Eric: The full faith and credit of the Turkish government, which is worth what?

Knut: Yeah. They have more faith than credit, I think. so,

Eric: That's good. Yes.

The Fate of Small Currencies

Knut: speaking of fiat currencies, like right now, Bitcoin is at an all time high in a lot of fiat currencies, including the currency I grew up with, the Swedish krona, and also in the Norwegian kronas. It's, uh, because the Swedish krona lost 40 percent against the dollar in the last 10 years.

And people in the country, like, no one talks about this. Everyone's oblivious to it. They, they don't realize what that means. but what it basically means is that you guys, well, not you personally, but the Fed printed stuff and stole all our stuff like that, that's, that's what's going on, right?

Eric: That's exactly right.

Knut: so, uh, so what do you think about these smaller national currencies?

Are they, how close to hyperinflating are they in, in, in your view?

Eric: I'm not a, I'm not a macroeconomist, but [00:26:00] it is, it is clear that every currency is doing worse than the dollar and the dollar is doing poorly against truly scarce hard assets as well. So it's, it's just devastating. Um, how long it takes. I mean, there's what, 140 or something now, uh, no fiat currencies. In a hundred years, you know, I'd be surprised if there's more than 40.

So, you know, what the timetable is, I don't know, but governments aren't going to stop. There's no way to stop. People have learned, people are power hungry. Politicians are power hungry, almost, you know, to a person. There's very few exceptions, right? And they've learned that they get elected by promising people shit that the government can't afford.

And this is what they, and it's, it's not unique to a particular political party. Some are worse than others. But at the end of the day, they all spend money they don't have. And that cycle [00:27:00] continues, and the government can try to misdirect, all governments can try to misdirect us that there's some other cause of the inflation, whether it's Putin's war, or greedy companies, or whatever it is.

But at the end of the day, it's money supply. And they're not slowing down the increase in money supply. I mean, they are slowing it down, but just because it was so hyper crazy, but it's not stopping.

Knut: Yeah. The, the way I see it is like the, the urge for there to be a free lunch is the root cause of all human problems almost.

Eric: And also, like, the lag is what causes the problem, right? It's, uh, you can do this on your watch. The effect, the negative effects of what you've done happen, happen one chapter later. So you, the individuals that did this aren't going to get immediately killed for doing it. It's the next. Group that comes in that's gonna bear the burden.

Knut: That's one of the, uh, [00:28:00] inherent problems with democratic systems like the, they don't, uh, you're not incentivized as a politician to think long term. So that's why these narratives around monarchies being better long term is popping up in the Bitcoin space.

Short vs Long Term Thinking

Eric: Yeah, I have a, I mean, one of those things on that topic that always stuck with me is I have a friend who's in the uh, uh, selling defense related stuff, and they sell to like basically every nation state in the world, and they were talking to China. Actually, and the Chinese said, yeah, we're, we're interested.

And he came back to him like a year later and he's like, you know, when we're interested, but we're not interested like now, soon though. And he said, well, what do you mean soon? And he's like, yeah, you know, come back to us in like 25, 30 years. So they're thinking in a hundred year cycles, whereas the United States government.

is thinking in, you know, two to four year

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric: right? And it's just a very different perspective.

Knut: [00:29:00] Very much so.

Eric: Advantage, you know, monarchies or dictatorships.

Knut: Yep.

Luke: The US Congress two year cycle I think has got to be the worst almost in the whole world in terms of just this churn, right? The entire lower house has to be re elected every two years. How do you get anything done? That system just seems crazy.

Eric: getting stuff done is overrated, but, uh, but, yeah, it's, it's clearly a broken system. And the fact that like a, a senator serves one term, and they get their salary for life. Absolutely ridiculous. Um, there, there are so many, there are so many broken things about the US system. I mean, the very fact that, um, they're not subject to the same rules that they create for the rest of the world, like Obamacare was another it's like, Hey, this healthcare system is good for you.

Entire country. Oh, but members of Congress, we have our own. We're not, we're not subject to, to that nightmare. It's just, you know, very, very [00:30:00] Messed up. There's a lot of misincentives and misalignment in all government and U. S. is no exception.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, uh, like the clown world we see everywhere that the same rules do not apply to, like, and it should be so obvious in this interconnected world that we live in in 2024. Like, why don't the same laws apply

Eric: Yeah. Rules for

thee, but not for

Knut: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric: It's like California lockdown, right? Like nobody can go anywhere. And then Gavin Newsom's at like, you know, Thomas Keller's restaurant, like having dinner. It's like, really? Like this is your state, you idiot. You can't even like follow your own mandates. It's amazing.

Just the arrogance is amazing.

How COVID Helped Orange Pill Saylor

Knut: Late stage, uh, lockdowns were, were an interesting time because I flew, I flew quite a lot then and you're seeing different airports having different rules. So in one airport, nobody gives a shit and then another, everyone's wearing the double diapers and whatever. And it's, yeah,

Eric: And it was, it was, it was also not [00:31:00] particularly commonsensical, right? I mean, there was one situation where, uh, they wouldn't let, uh, us leave a country. I was with some friends and they wouldn't let us leave a country unless we had. And we had COVID tests and proof of this and proof of that. Right.

But we were getting on a friend's airplane and we were leaving the country on our own airplane by ourselves. If anybody on that airplane had anything, you want us leaving your country. Like, exporting us is the best thing you can do without risking any other people. Right. And it's like, it's

Knut: Not for

the other country though.

Eric: yeah, well, but it wasn't them that cared.

It was the people that wouldn't let us leave. Like, where's the thought? There's like no thought process whatsoever. It's just, you know, government regulation, overreach, massive overreach.

It

Knut: showed us how common sense is not very common.

Eric: Yeah, but it, but it did shake up a lot of people. And one of the benefits of that was, um, you know, I've been talking about Bitcoin a lot since 2013, [00:32:00] and Saylor wasn't particularly receptive to hearing about it.

He's running a company with a couple thousand people fighting the likes of Microsoft and Salesforce every day, and it was only because of that lunacy in the world not making sense that I was able to, you know,

get through to him at that time.

Knut: So

that played such a huge part in that.

Eric: A hundred percent. It was the only reason he was receptive.

Knut: Fantastic.

Eric: Yeah. He remembers. I said something to him like we were, we were at his house quarantining there because it's very

Knut: I would quarantine there too, if I had the option. Yeah, yeah.

Eric: It's better, much better than my apartment. Um, not that my apartment's not great, but his, his place is spectacular. So we were, we were, the two of us were kind of hanging out quarantining there every day.

And, um, trying to make sense of what was happening in the world stock market going up while every business is closed and the world is coming to a stop and unbeknownst to me, he was very concerned about MicroStrategy's situation, having 500 million in cash [00:33:00] and, you know, thinking inflation is taking away 10 percent of this 50 million a year, I'm losing in purchasing power.

And meanwhile, 2000 people are working For his company in the hopes that the company makes 50 million a year and it's like a treadmill, right? Just like you're never gonna get anywhere. So he was looking for stores of value. I didn't know that part And then when I brought up Bitcoin, I said he remembers me saying something like anytime there's a paradigm shift, you know Like this there's opportunity.

We just have to find the opportunity And then I didn't connect the two, but I started talking about Bitcoin again, because that's what we do, right? And, uh, this time, instead of dismissing the conversation, Michael said, Tell me more about that. And I was like, what And, uh, so that, that's how we started and then spent, I don't know, the better part of a few weeks.

Talking about Bitcoin and, uh, yeah, that's how it started.

Knut: That's fantastic. And like, Michael is not the only intelligent person in the world. There are, I'm sure there are plenty others that have, like, had similar stories that [00:34:00] might not be as vocal about it. But these things are happening everywhere They are. that's what I thought when I left, left my last Fiat position and, and, um, back in Sweden, like, uh, I'm the dork here in this office that goes around being a maniac.

And, uh, but, but there are plenty, plenty like me and we're all around the world. So when you go to these conferences and these meetups, it feels small, but we're everywhere. Like it is really, I mean, every little one horse town in any country.

Eric: It's all about, it's all about individuals. I don't want to steal too much from Michael's presentation in a, in a couple hours, but at the end of the day, everything is comprised of individuals, whether it's government, corporations. Families. And so everything is at the individual level, right? So you, when I orange pilled, for lack of a better term, sailor, right, I was talking to my friend is a one on one thing, but he had a company, right?

And I wasn't trying to orange [00:35:00] pill micro strategy. I was just trying to explain to my really smart friend why this is cool and perhaps really meaningful. And then he's part of a company, he's got political views, he's got whatever he's got. And so it's one individual impacts all these different areas. So at the end of the day, everything comes down to one on one communication or education and individuals.

Knut: yeah, and that's, that's such a beautiful, that's what Bitcoin points out to people because at the end of the day, the Bitcoin are the people, like we have, if you have a private key or know the location of it, it's in your head, so effectively you are the Bitcoin, so it's about us and it's about us as individuals.

Beautiful.

Eric: it's true, man. It is beautiful. The other thing is, it's, um, it requires a lot of either courage or, Confidence in oneself to see Bitcoin. You know, it's like you can, your friend can tell you about Bitcoin. Someone can tell you, this is cool stuff. And you can [00:36:00] think, okay, this person's really smart. I respect them.

I like them. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll get some Bitcoin. And then you live through some Bitcoin cycles, but it goes down 50%. And it's almost impossible for you to have the conviction in this because your smart friend, you know, has conviction in this. You've got to do your own work and your own research. And if you've put in the time and you've spent, you know, a thousand hours looking into this, then when it goes down, if you really have conviction, a la Warren Buffett with the stocks that he invests in, right?

Bitcoin Price as Adoption Proxy

Eric: When it goes down, you're happy. It's a really weird concept. People don't believe it when we say it. But you're like, Oh shit, I can get more for less. Right. And it's a, it's a great experience because you're so confident in where it's going. Like selling when it goes down is not, you know, it's not even a thing.

Right. So it's just a very different mindset, but it only comes from the confidence and self security to do your own research.

Luke: That's not to say that we're not all [00:37:00] super excited when it pumps, but, right?

Eric: Yeah. No, there's a, the price in fiat terms. As I see it is also like, it's the best thing we have to as a proxy for adoption. And so it's kind of like, you know, because it's supply demand and when we see demand, it means. We're winning in the sense that more people are adopting it. And that's, what's super exciting about it.

You know, the fact that I'm never going to sell my Bitcoin does make some of those questions at the beginning, a little more challenging, like, well, how am I going to do the nice stuff that I want to do for my life? The family that I don't currently have and like, you know, whatever else down the road or whatever material things I may want or whatever.

And like, we'll figure that out. But right now, like, that's not the concern. It's like, let's, let's get there first. Let me see, you know, Bitcoin 500, 000. Let me see us at least equal gold. I think [00:38:00] the, the clearest analogy and clearest path for Bitcoin in my mind and the most constructive narrative. Going back to what we said about kind of pitting Bitcoin against a fiat currency, I think that's like really counterproductive and maybe unnecessary, right?

Uh, for Bitcoin to hit 600, 000 in US dollar terms, that's just the equivalent of gold, right? In 12 trillion dollars, right? And so every time in history that a digital successor has gone after an analog predecessor, it hasn't equaled it. It's like crushed it, whether you think of like automobiles versus, you know, like horse and buggies or mobile phones versus rotary phones, this is Bitcoin verse analog gold, right?

So, okay, let's get to 600, 000 of Bitcoin. Right? And then let's see what happens if it goes to 10x that, right? And we're at 6 million of Bitcoin. These other things [00:39:00] are going to take care of themselves. We don't need to fight those battles now. Let's just fight the battle of being a digital gold, which nobody's threatened by.

Everybody accepts. No nation state is concerned if you want to be a digital gold. That's great. You start talking about taking out their fiat currency, you're going to get holy hell from that nation state.

Knut: Yeah.

Eric: be a digital cold.

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. Gold is just Bitcoin for boomers, isn't it? Yeah. So it goes away with that generation.

Eric: hundred percent. Only unlike other technologies and things, we don't have to wait for that generation to die completely because people can dip a toe, right? They can do a 1 percent allocation, even though it's like, you know, they'll call it schmuck insurance. They'll be like, all right, these kids may be right.

And this is what a lot of my investors do. You know, these are. You know, big family offices with many, many hundreds of millions of dollars and they're like, okay, my son, my grandson, this, that, whatever, they keep talking about it. Now it's on CNBC, [00:40:00] now the SEC approved it. It's like, okay, you know what, let's get a few million dollars worth of that stuff just in case my kid is right, you know, and that's, that's how it starts.

Knut: Interesting. You used the word schmuck there. I saw Larry David once explain the difference between a schmuck and a prick. And the difference is that there's no such thing as a rich schmuck, and there's no such thing as a poor prick. It's always the other way around. But I think Bitcoin allows for rich schmucks.

Eric: Yes, it does.

Knut: And that's liberating.

Eric: we should be careful not to become pricks

Knut: Exactly,

Eric: the fiat price goes

Knut: no, have fun staying boar pricks. Yeah.

Eric: Exactly.

[00:41:00]

Madeira and Bitcoin Atlantis

Luke: So, how are, how are you finding, uh, things, Omid, there? I know you, you just got in, but, uh, what's your impression of, of, uh, what's going on so far that you've seen, uh, in the last, I don't know, 12 hours or something?

Eric: Yeah. So the last, uh, the last couple of years of conferences have been great. Bitcoiners are always positive. It's remarkable to me just how positive. A group of people we are, and it's always fun to be around Bitcoiners, but I'm really excited for this conference because it's the first one we've had in a long time where price has been up.

And so it does, it does feel good and it doesn't necessarily feel good because people are like, Oh, [00:42:00] cool. I'm wealthier now on paper. It feels good because we talk to the people we love. We tell them about Bitcoin, your aunt, your uncle, your brothers, your sisters, your friends. You know, have bought Bitcoin because you've told them to buy Bitcoin and now, you know, they're in profit.

So we're like, okay, good. It's working out for the people that I love, right? So people are in an extra good mood. Everybody's smiling, hugging people. Everybody's happy to see one another. And it's just, it's a, it's a great feeling. And, you know, as my friend Jared says, we deserve this.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, that's the feeling I had last night at that reception. It's like, these are all my favorite people in the world in the same room. It's just fantastic, mind blowing to be in, among such a group of people. It's just, and I think everyone feels the same way. Everyone, you see, everyone is almost and Tears because of how beautiful the, the group

Eric: Well, Bitcoin is a truth network, you [00:43:00] know, and so you've got advocates of truth. And when advocates of truth find other advocates of truth, it's a warm embrace, right? Like it's just, you know, everybody's kind of on the side of honesty and fairness and good. And it's a, it's a nice group of people to be around.

Knut: Yeah. And I, I think the, the further we go into them, the more Bitcoin only oriented these conference become, the more we've weeded out the bad seeds and we're with, it's, it's like you've boiled down this wonderful beef stock that's, it's just,

Eric: What do you mean as who, who are we, what do you mean? Like shit coiners and stuff like that? Or

Knut: and stuff like that. They're like, if you go back five years, there were a lot more shit corners at

Eric: there were,

No Bad Holders of Bitcoin

Eric: but, but I, I'm a, I'm of the belief that there are no bad holders of Bitcoin and there are no wrong ways to hold Bitcoin. I am a, I'm a freedom maximalist. And if someone wants to hold, you know, some Bitcoin and a bunch of shit coins and a bunch of stocks and a bunch of real [00:44:00] estate and a bunch of fiat currency, awesome.

It's better than them doing that and not holding Bitcoin.

Knut: good for Bitcoin

type of thing. Yeah. but also like, you know, I just, um, it's, it's always been something that's been a little perplexing to me is how Bitcoiners can be such advocates of freedom, but then also want to dictate how people should

Oh yeah, no, no, no, no, I'm not saying we want to do that, dictate how anyone else should live. But I'm, yeah, from just the quality of event type perspective, It's great.

Eric: It's great to be around like minded people who are All happy and cheerful, but I, I do see a lot on X, not, not at all from you, just like in general from, you know, a lot of, uh, this, this toxicity of the maximalists, you know, whether it's ETF related or, you know, all of these institutions, all of these different holders of some kind, they do bring something of value to Bitcoin and we know that [00:45:00] Bitcoin brings tremendous value to them.

And I think, you know, in my mind, it's all holders are welcome. You know, if Putin wants to hold Bitcoin, man, awesome, dude. Like, you know, hold the Bitcoin. There's, there are no bad holders.

Knut: no, more importantly, that's not up to any one of us, and that's By design, that's the beauty of the system.

Eric: But the other beauty of it is they have no more influence. Right? Like it's, yeah. Sailor, sailor with all his Bitcoin, you know, by virtue of holding the Bitcoin has no more influence, which is thing of beauty.

Knut: that's not true for the dollar, at all.

Eric: At all political influences purchased.

Wrapping Up

Knut: Anyway, like, where can people find you online? Like, what are you currently working on? Like, what's anything you

Eric: on Twitter

or X or whatever it's called these days. And I think my Twitter is

Knut: Yeah, it's Twitter. It's Twitter. Let's be honest, it's Twitter. Yeah, yeah.

Eric: you know, don't want to, whatever Elon wants to call it is fine with

1. Um,

but what am I? [00:46:00] I'm Eric underscore, uh, BIG fund, Bitcoin and Bitcoin investment group fund.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, I, yeah, so it's not just that the fund is big, it's, yeah, okay.

Eric: fund is unfortunately not as big as we would like it to be, but it's an acronym for Bitcoin Investment Group. Um, yeah, so, and really what I'm just working on is just, you know, education, explaining to folks that are interested. Um, I'm no longer explaining to folks that aren't interested. So that, that's been a big change.

Um, I, I, I wouldn't phrase it in terms of like, I no longer have the time or patience, but there are enough people that want to know, that are genuinely curious. And I focus my efforts in those groups as opposed to trying to convert people who are opposed to it. And in some way, I'm actually like, content for them not to get it.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Eric: Let, let them fall into the everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve

Knut: exactly. Like you either take the orange pill now or the orange suppository later. That's, that's a choice you got.

Eric: I so badly wanted to tweet [00:47:00] that once and I just, I, I,

Knut: Samsung beat

me to I had another version of it and I just thought, I can't do that. That's a little too off brand. I just can't do it. But, but I wanted to.

All right, EEric thank you so much for doing this and great to have you in Europe and, um, yeah, good luck with everything.

Eric: with you guys.

Luke: This has been the Freedom Footprint Show, thanks for listening.

Knut: Yes, if you can't see Luke, this has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Press the goddamn like button and, you know, brush your teeth and all that.

Luke: Oh yeah, we're keeping that in. Cheers! Thanks again, Eric.

Knut: do I look?