FFS065 - BJ Dichter

[00:00:00] Intro

BJ: [00:00:00] Canada has had this wonderful reputation, which, a lot of our reputation really was undeserving. , Canadians can be very authoritarian, it's the fault of Canadians not understanding. What authoritarian governments can lead to.

Luke: 'Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint show, the Bitcoin philosophy show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke the Pseudo Finn. Today we're joined by Benjamin Dichter, the author of Honking for Freedom, the inside story of the historic Canadian trucker convoy of 2022, the largest peaceful protest in Canadian history.

Benjamin is also a Bitcoiner and Bitcoin played a big role in the protests. We hear all about it. Let's get into it.

[00:00:40] Honking For Freedom

Luke: Benjamin, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show. Thanks for joining us.

BJ: My pleasure, thank you for having me.

Knut: Yeah, great. Today we have two Canadians on the show. That's not every day, one who fled and one who stood his ground back in Canada, uh, and I can see your coffee mug there, Benjamin. It says honking for freedom.[00:01:00]

BJ: Honking for freedom, and, uh, and don't be a

Knut: Don't

BJ: Who is that there?

Knut: I think I recognize that face. so, so you were the spokesperson for the whole, um, like a trucker convoy that happened, uh, like a year ago now,

BJ: it's about a year and a half, well it's February, it'll be two years in February. Yeah, I was the spokesperson and did the media strategy and a bunch of other things behind the scenes that people don't know about, but yeah.

Knut: I wrote a book about it,

BJ: did, here is the book, Honking for Freedom, trucker convoy that gave us hope, and you can get it at honkingforfreedom.

com and we'll talk about later the bitcoin story that's in this book, which is very important for everyone.

Knut: it is a very important story and, uh, for those of you who don't know, like, um, some of these truckers bank accounts were frozen and then there was only one way to get around, uh, the [00:02:00] totalitarianism vibes that were going on in, in, uh, Canada at the time, and that was through Bitcoin and, uh, well, Benjamin, I'll let you tell the story from beginning to end.

First, a little TLDR on who you are and your background, and then, uh, about the Trucker Convoy, what happened, how it played out,

BJ: Okay, um, and just an asterisk to start with, when you mentioned our bank accounts were frozen, uh, it wasn't just mine and many others personal bank accounts, it was our credit cards, lines of credit, Corporate bank accounts, absolutely everything that you would need to transact were, uh, were frozen. But, uh, anyway, so a little bit of context of who the hell is this guy?

I'm, uh, just kind of a serial entrepreneur. I started, I went to school and became a gemologist and a diamond grader just because I like the science aspect of it. I decided after several years I didn't really love that industry so much because of, you know, [00:03:00] the, the The cliquey nature of it, and I invented a product for motorcycles, patented it, uh, started working on that, ended up, uh, working at Harley Davidson, then a sales director for another company, and then started my own business, that was on a university campus for, uh, many years.

And that's where I guess the shift, I started to see the shift in society, which got me to get involved politically. I decided to run for political office in the municipal campaign in the city, just because we saw some crazy nonsense in our particular riding. The person was... Tied to the CCP and was running an organization called Queers for, uh, Palestine or something like that, just some nonsense.

And, uh, one thing led to another, I, you know, I decided I'll, I'll get involved in politics to try to help, right? You know, everybody complains, but they never do anything. And, uh, I figured I'll go as far [00:04:00] until I stop, until I get stopped. And I was eventually asked. to run for federal parliament for the conservatives and which is ironic because I really kind of hate politics because I don't like politicians.

I always grew up with you can't trust them sort of thing. One thing led to another. I sold my business. I started doing podcasts because I always wanted to do podcasts. That was the latest, you know, venture. Learned how to do podcasts from Uh, a YouTuber that my ex girlfriend knew by the name of CGP Grey and, uh, started doing podcasts.

And the next thing you know, I'm at the center of this trucker convoy because during convoy, during COVID, you know how, uh, I mean, look, Luke, you know how ridiculous the, the, um, lockdowns were in Canada

Knut: I, I, I say, uh, let's use the right terminology during the Lockdowns , because there's no such thing as during Covid, right? It's during the Lockdowns[00:05:00]

BJ: during the government's response to that nonsense sort of thing. Uh, but during the, uh, the lockdowns. Um, my brother had already bought a truck because he wanted to go, he always, he's gonna be retiring, he's a police officer, um, and he always wanted to, to, uh, get back into trucking, which he did when he was younger, that's how he paid his way through school, I think, and, not I think, but it's more, there's more to that, but anyways, and he said to me, hey, let's, why don't you buy a truck, get your license, he told me a few years prior to get my license, just as you never know, so I did.

While I was doing podcasts, I got my trucker license. Okay, fine, cool. Interesting to learn this, to have another skill set and be on, you know, planes and motorcycles. And then he, he said to me during the lockdowns, he said, why don't you get a truck and we can go together. I'll cross the border and get some sanity in the United States, have a little bit of freedom, and go for dinner and spend some time and [00:06:00] whatever.

And, uh, you never know, maybe when I retire we can start a trucking business together or something like that. You know, just kind of, I've always been one of those things, try everything. Uh, Bill is Scott Adams, so I've gotten to know pretty well. Now he talks about building, you know, your, uh, your skill sets, your talent stack.

Knut: the Dilbert Dilbert creator, right? Right.

BJ: That's right. That's right. A network creator. And, uh, so I ended up, uh, you know, cross border trucking just to get some sanity in my life and boy, it, it really helped. It's not that I followed any rules. I never put on any masks beyond when I had surgery. And, uh, you know, I got a call one day from Tamara Leach, who I knew, I knew her from when I was producing my podcast, she was a fan of one of those podcasts, and that podcast where we went on a tour of Western Canada, Uh, I can't remember what year it was, 2018 maybe, 2017, and that's where I met her, and we always [00:07:00] kept in touch, developed a friendship sort of thing, and you know, she's a political hawk, I'm, I don't like politics, I just don't like, you know, bullshit in our government, and so we always talked about that sort of stuff, and one day she called me up, she said we're getting married.

Me and my friend started a convoy, which turns out that wasn't exactly entirely true, but okay, fine. And she said, we need somebody who's going to do some, uh, who can, who has media training, understands media, alternative media, all that stuff, can do press releases. And I said, yeah, sure. If it's going to help put an end to this nonsense, I'm on, I'm on board.

And I said to her, but there's one, I have one condition, no political parties, no politics, no nothing. We're not here to help any political parties, we're here to end mandates and end arrive cam. The only politicians we want to talk to are the ones who actually hold any power and who can reverse these temporary measures, and that's how I got involved.

Knut: who could imagine that 10 years ago that Canadians would [00:08:00] go to the US across the border, to the US for sanity,

BJ: Do you know how, do you know how many Canadians I know who have not only moved to, you know, Florida, but are all over Latin America?

Knut: Yeah, yeah, I know, I know a whole bunch, uh, uh, that have done that, like, uh, a few come to mind, like Francis did that, right, from BovikCoin,

BJ: Yeah.

Knut: uh, and a bunch of others,

BJ: One of the people I've become friends with, which is, it's funny, Megan Murphy, who used to be, you know, uh, feminist, uh, socialist, very, very much to the left. So we have a polar opposite political worldviews, which is fine. You know, we have to have more friends who disagree with us politically. Uh, close with Joe Rogan, that sort of stuff.

She left Canada. She moved to Mexico. She's like, screw this. I'm not staying here under any authoritarianism. I'm like, oh, that's, it's interesting how that has helped wake up a lot of people who might have been on the fringes, either fringe of the political [00:09:00] spectrum. So I think it's going to end up being a net positive over the long term because it's allowed many of us who probably wouldn't have been able to engage in conversations many years ago.

To form friendships and start to understand each other, which is a massive benefit of Bitcoin that we don't talk much, uh, enough about the fact that it brings together people who have divergent political worldviews.

Knut: absolutely, um, divergent religions, or... Other things as well, like, uh, Bitcoin is apolitical, there's the, it's anti political even, so please tell what happened, like, what, uh, what led up to, to Canada being one of the most awful places to be during, during this, uh, for lack of a better word, pandemic?

BJ: Well, the first thing, just to, uh, you know, to change perspective a little bit, I think one of the benefits of this whole, you know, the COVID years, the lockdown years, whatever you want to call [00:10:00] it, is it's, it's helped people to become better informed about their countries and how they operate, and a perfect example is, you know, in Australia and their constitution, there's no such thing as natural rights.

It's really, it's a very authoritarian state. They believe their constitution states rights are granted to you By the government, natural rights don't exist. Uh, Canada has had this wonderful reputation, which, you know, Luke, you're from Alberta. Alberta has, has bared the brunt of the Trudeau family for, for decades, for a couple of generations now.

And I know a lot of Albertans would, would not be paused when I say, We'll now take pause and when I say that, a lot of our reputation really was undeserving. It really wasn't. That, um, Canadians can be very, very authoritarian, just like the, um, uh, just like people. Uh, just like the Australian constitution, right?

It's, it's [00:11:00] really quite concerning. It's like, you know, where I live, you can see it, that the authoritarianism has been empowered now, where I drive down the street and every block, not every block, every house has a sign saying, slow down. It's like, you're thinking past the sale, buddy. You know what I mean?

But that's kind of the mentality of people here, and that's why it was so easy, uh, I believe, to promulgate this nonsense in Canada. It's the fault of Canadians not understanding. What authoritarian governments can lead to. I'll get to the background in a second, but just one other point on this is, you know, we all come from different backgrounds.

I happen to be adopted, but I was raised in a Jewish family. I'm very, very secular, but at the same time, I grew up. Being taught about the, you know, the horrors of the Holocaust and, you know, genocide and, you know, Rwanda happened later on and this is, you know, Pol Pot, [00:12:00] Cambodia, like this is not new to humanity.

But the problem they always seem to skip over was, you know, those mid century Germans were the government. And the people who engaged in killing and ratting people out and sending them to camps, in the views, in the eyes of the government at that point, those were lawful, upstanding citizens. And it's amazing, it's just striking how that is so lost amongst so many people.

in the west so we take we take the bait about different people's cultures and this group is controlling the world and blah blah blah blah blah but we forget the fact that it's the government apparatus that has killed immensely more people throughout human history than any other individual or group or what i'm not a big group guy i'm an individualist guy

Knut: Word, brother. I mean, this is, as I always say, like, if you don't want to be labeled a Nazi, don't be a [00:13:00] nationalist and don't be a socialist, and you're fine, like, those are the two things you need to avoid.

[00:13:08] Totalitarianism and Democracy

Knut: So, we'll get into the meat of this a bit later on, like, because I'm very curious if, like, Uh, totalitarianism is inevitable to happen in a democracy at some point, and also if democracy is just socialism in disguise, and that it's inevitable that it's an unsustainable system that does not scale, like, um, what are your views on that?

BJ: I don't know. I think it's a very good question that a lot of us are examining right now. And, you know, the tyranny of the majority is something that everybody who's a, you know, philosopher, political thinker has thought about, you know, since the inception of these democracies, even the four founders in the United States.

Knut: Yeah, the word democracy isn't [00:14:00] mentioned once in the constitution of the US, which I find hilarious.

BJ: That's right. That's right. Um, Thank you. So I don't know, I, I don't know if it's a bug in the code of human programming. Uh, one of the things that, you know, I got on to, I got in touch with Scott Adams, you know, during, after the convoy, but I started following him years prior because I was a fan of Robert Cialdini's work.

And persuasion and influence and that sort of NLP pop psychology. I just got really deep into it many, many years ago as part of learning marketing for, uh, one of the projects I was involved in and I'm getting, you know, you can see, especially during the, the legacy media response to the Trekker convoy, we'll get back to the origin in a second, how easily human beings can be programmed to believe absolutely anything.

And if that's the case and the non free will people have a point [00:15:00] in some capacity, then well, this democracy thing might not actually work if people can just be manipulated into believing some of the most absurd things Uh, that will be pitched to them, as long as there's social proof, sufficient fear, and all the persuasion tactics that are piled on top of it.

So I think it might be more of a problem, uh, the buggy code of human beings, and understanding how we're programmed. Whereas democracy just might be the apparatus, that it might be a great system, like E. O. Wilson said about socialism, he said it's a great system, wrong species, maybe that applies to democracy as well, great system, wrong species, and we need something else, I don't know, I really, that's too, that's above my pay grade,

Knut: Well, I can recommend a couple of great books on the subject and how, how it might be the system itself and not that there's something wrong with humans, because the system leads to these [00:16:00] things, uh, institutions growing like cancers on society and people voting. Like if, if you're the, on the receiving end of a tax funded benefit, You're unlikely to vote against it, which means that people want to live off of other people's work, uh, in the long, and in the long run, that leads to collectivism, more and more collectivism, more and more socialism, and then totalitarianism, and then collapse, then via clown world.

BJ: yeah, if you want more clown world, then subsidize it.

Knut: That's quotable. If you want more clown world, subsidize clowns.

[00:16:43] Origins of the Trucker Convoy

BJ: anyways, so to get back to a little bit, you know, the short version, the origin story, . I was asked to become, you know, a voice, spokesperson, press releases, media strategy, all that sort of stuff.

And... Uh, I realized, I thought [00:17:00] back to when I was, uh, a teenager and I used to go to Grateful Dead concerts and Fish concerts and the Allman Brothers and stuff, that we needed that sort of vibe. We needed to have a positive, loving vibe to bring people together. We can't focus on what the government always does, which is divide people into different camps and different voting blocks.

I needed to, I needed to shred all of that and have us just be kind of one unified group. Those of us who value freedom. And that's why I culminated on peace, love, unity, and freedom. Try to give some positive connotation to what it was and change it from, like, when she called me, said, you know, we're gonna go and we're gonna protest Trudeau and the mandates.

And, you know, I thought, well, why don't we just celebrate freedom and celebrate Canada and celebrate getting our freedoms back? And if we could do that... Then maybe, uh, this, you know, political spectrum, which is no longer relevant, you know, the left right paradigm, [00:18:00] it's no longer relevant in our current world.

Maybe we can break that up a little bit and we can get people from all, you know, perspectives and all ideas coming together. And I remember when I came, uh, when I arrived in Ottawa the first day, I'm walking up to, um, Parliament Hill on Wellington. And the first group that really, that really, um, captured me were these three girls that maybe late teens, early twenties, something like that, decked out, even though they're in snowsuits, they're decked out in tie dye with a peace sign that was like straight out of Woodstock sort of thing and I'm like, it worked!

It works! And I looked to my right, and I saw next to the Chateau Laurier, which is the hotel next to Parliament, uh, there is a path between the two and a big park, and at the end of that park there's a bridge into Quebec. Quebec is French Canada, Ottawa is Anglo Canada. And I saw all these [00:19:00] people...

Thousands of them, I took a picture of it, just a mob of thousands of people who apparently got out of their cars because the city of Ottawa blocked the, um, the, uh, bridge entering into Ottawa. And they said fine, they just left their cars at the side of the road and they walked from Quebec into Ontario with, and Luke you'll, you'll understand the significance of this, Canadian flags and Fleur de Lis, which is the Quebec flag.

Uh, they're holding signs that said freedom and liberté, which is freedom in, in French. And, you know, I've said this many times, I would, I, I walked with a whole crowd of them and then up Wellington, back up Wellington, I saw them reach out to and find all these truckers with Alberta plates and Saskatchewan plates and reach out and hug them and thank them.

Nobody was wearing masks, because at that time we had mask mandates again. Nobody gave a damn about any of that stuff. [00:20:00] And I realized that, wow, when you get the, the, the fake news media and politicians out of the way, you know, we all love each other. Yeah, we're different. People from Quebec and Alberta are different.

Whatever. Who cares, right? It's the political apparatus and the structure that builds these narratives to brainwash us. To think that we're completely different and we have a different value system. So that was just the first day that I was there. And the entire time, I mean for me it was chaos because I was dealing with problem after problem after problem after problem and trying to mix in as many interviews as possible around that.

But everybody who was there had that similar experience and that's why It ended up they had dance parties on different corners around the city, you know, there was one that was a salsa latino music, there was one that was EDM in front of parliament near the stage and stuff like that, uh, they built three, uh, sorry, they [00:21:00] built a soup kitchen, uh, there was a guy, a group of guys, a hot tub, three saunas, yeah, everybody saw the bouncy castles, uh, the Sikh community came out and a bunch of them brought barbecues, somebody owned a chain of restaurants.

So they brought packaging for the food and they were just giving out food to all the people who attended. And then they found people like homeless people in the city and they started distributing food to the homeless people in the city that really bothered the politicians , right? Because they can't virtue, they can't use 'em as a political pond now because the truckers are actually doing the crap that they claim to do.

So that was the vibe of the entire thing and. You know, when I realized that I got buy in with this narrative of peace, love, unity, and freedom, I realized that, okay, the government's got a problem now, because how are they going to go violent on these people when we're just having a celebration and asking for these [00:22:00] temporary authoritarian restrictions to be removed?

I mean, you can't have a more reasonable ask than that. And, um... Yeah, that's, that's really how it started, and that was the vibe the entire way through.

Knut: one thing that wasn't reported in the media was, like, how did the whole thing end? Like, did it just snuff out naturally, or, like, how long were these protests going on for, and, like, how did the whole thing end?

BJ: Well, that's, that's part of why I wrote this book as quickly as I could, because I knew the, um, the spinmasters and media and government would try to spin, you know, racist, bigot, blah, blah, blah, whatever phobe, and that that was all nonsense, right? So a word first on the media, and then I'll explain how it ended.

This, I thought, was my opportunity. To, uh, troll and destroy the corporate legacy fake news media. That was one of the goals. I knew, [00:23:00] I looked at, cause again, I've been producing podcasts forever. I knew everybody in the alternative media space. And I thought, I did a basic, you know, threw out a spreadsheet, a bunch of different platforms.

And I'm like, I think we could get a hundred million views the first week. And if I could do that, that would dwarf and crush all the legacy media. Who, at that time, weren't even reporting on it. You'd see one story here and there that, oh, there's going to be a convoy, but they were largely trying to ignore it.

So I needed to bait them into talking about it, but I wanted the actual, uh, legacy media, alternative media, I wanted them to be the voice for what we were, because we're all sick of fake news media, whether it's CTV, CBC, CNN, Fox News, whatever. We know it's all scripted. So, what I did was we had our first press conference on January 30th, and I sent out an invite to a media list that I [00:24:00] had, because again, remember, I was a political candidate, I'd done some political stuff, very libertarian stuff in politics behind the scenes prior, so I had a media list, And I also had an alternative media list of people I know, so I emailed everybody and I said, Hey, we're going to have our first press conference on the 30th of January, but we have limited space because it's in a small hotel.

If you want to attend, please send a request to attend and we'll try to accommodate you. So the very first news agency, I believe it was the Globe and Mail, which is a legacy newspaper in Canada, responded. And remember, these are people who were ignoring us and any sort of coverage would be, you know, defaming us.

I, um, they responded and they said, yeah, we would like to attend. So that was like my little moments of joy during the convoy. I just got to, and I typed them individually just because I wanted to. I sent a response saying, I'm sorry, you're not recognized as a credible news agency, you're not permitted to attend.

Thank you for [00:25:00] your request to

Knut: Oh, fantastic. That must have felt so good.

BJ: They went crazy, and that's when they started racist, bigot, white supremacist, whatever, and I'm like, perfect. That's exactly what I need. I need them to discredit themselves, and have the actual story dwarf them in alternative media. And their heads are still spinning from this.

So that was kind of the media play that I did the entire time, and I remember one time they got, they got so butthurt, the people, the collaborators who sabotaged us, and they tried to hang me with this and the POEC, not, I was not going to adjudicate media strategy with them during the commission, which we'll discuss after, but I remember I got a CBC, Like political parties, they test messaging, right?

So some moron at the CBC started, uh, was on some show and saying, asking the question, [00:26:00] could this be a Russian disinformation plot or however they described a Russian operation? And I thought, wait, Russia Today asked me for an interview. I wonder if I control them to shoot themselves in the foot again. So I respond, I'm like, hey, Pavel, yeah, you said you wanted to have me on?

Sure. Let's, let's do an interview tonight. And he said, okay. So I went to Russia that night and I thought the CBC would take the bait and double, triple down on this Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. But, uh, they were wise enough not to do it, unfortunately. So those are the sorts of games that were going on every day.

Every day I was dealing with stuff like that. It was amazing.

Luke: I think I'll just add quickly that CBC is state funded media in Canada, it receives funding from the government, it's absolutely the most ideologically down the line with Trudeau of any of the media, the rest are bad too, but CBC [00:27:00] is the worst

BJ: And they get 1. 2 billion a year in funding and you get more views on your podcast than they get. You know how many paid subscribers the CBC has? I, I, somebody leaked this to me a couple years ago. You know how many paid subscribers that 1. 2 billion dollars has allowed them to capture? I know the actual number.

Take a guess. The CBC, 1. 2 billion dollars. They have, uh, stations, hundreds of stations across the country. TV and radio. How many paid subscribers do they have? Take a guess. Throw out a number.

40 million people.

Knut: 10, 000?

BJ: 2, 000.

Knut: Fantastic. Yeah, this reminds me a lot of Sweden. I like similar things have been going on. Like we, when I grew up, everyone had to pay a fee if they had a television. So if you bought a television, you were sort of on the government radar. And you could always claim that you gave the television away or something and [00:28:00] refuse to pay the fee.

But they fixed that by, by like, Making everyone pay for everyone else's state funded TV media, and that costs around nine million kronor per year. No, not nine, nine billion kronor per year.

BJ: Money well wasted.

Knut: completely ridiculous to produce stuff that, that is very, very embarrassing. So, but these, these institutions, They're, they're, they're trying to cling on to whatever power they have, because I think some of them know that they're a dying breed, uh, that, uh, Tucker Carlson interview with, um, Melee on Twitter got more views than anything on TV, like that week.

BJ: I think it was 400 million over the first week if I'm

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. It's completely ridiculous numbers. And, and your Rogan is the greatest [00:29:00] journalist in history. Uh, if, if you only count views, like there, there's, there's just no one in even close to getting as much attention. And he, as he does, so the, the internet is like, markets unite, politics divide, and they can feel that they're, that, that's why you get all these like fake news and like.

This terminology that they invent, you know, calling everyone who isn't a Nazi a Nazi, and calling people who don't care about race racist. And all these Orwellian

newspeak words, they really try to make 1984 become a reality in that sense.

BJ: Yeah, go figure, the government runs the most incompetent protection racket in [00:30:00] human history.

Knut: Yeah, yeah.

Okay, we have some big news. We have a new lead sponsor, AmberApp. They're the number one exchange in the Southern Hemisphere. They're rated for the best customer service around and their global launch is coming. But the reason we're partnering with AmberApp is because of the people. If you haven't listened to our episode with Izzy, CEO of AmberApp, you really should go check it out.

You'll see why it made perfect sense to partner with Izzy and AmberApp. That's it. All I'll say for now, you really have to check it out for yourself. They have loads of great features coming that we're excited to share with you when the time comes, but for now, just check out the episode, check out their website, Ampr.

app. You can see for yourself, why we're thrilled to bring Ampr. app on as our lead sponsor and partner. So go check it out. Next up WasabiWallet. The privacy by default, open source, non custodial Bitcoin wallet with CoinJoin built in. It's the easy to use, comprehensive, [00:31:00] affordable way to make your coins private. And the best part is, they've been making huge improvements to the app.

They're really focusing on the user experience, adding advanced features for power users, they just keep getting better. You send your coins to your Wasabi wallet, and they get combined with loads of other coins using the Wabi Sabi protocol, so they're private on the other end. Your tracks are covered so you can work on expanding your Freedom Footprint without worrying about your privacy.

So, check out wasabiwallet. io and download Wasabi today.

[00:31:30] How the Trucker Convoy Ended

BJ: so how did it end, you asked me? Well, basically, the short version, and it's very, there's a lot of nuance to this, and I would argue so much has gone on since the convoy, than happened during, which was only three weeks long, uh, but basically, the, uh, police ended up moving in. Uh, they started raiding some trucks.

They, uh, it started on the night of the 17th, uh, after Chris Barber, uh, Chris Barber and Tamara, who, the person who [00:32:00] called me, uh, were arrested. Uh, unfortunately, since then, the video has surfaced of... Uh, Tamara Asking to be Arrested, which nobody will answer any questions about, so there's, there's a lot more political stuff going on behind the scenes than we realized during the time, but, um, the 17th, uh, it started with one trucker particularly, he was raided by the police, they smashed his windows.

He tried to hide in the back of his cab like everybody was told and was doing for the previous three weeks. And they came with guns drawn, threw him in the snow, arrested him, and uh, took him down for processing. They came, the road captains came to me the next morning and said, you know, this is what happened last night, should we leave?

And I explain this in the book, all these stories are in the book. And I said, well, listen, uh, you know, uh, if you're, it's, somebody and I both said the same thing one after another, I can't remember which one, I think I started first, but maybe they did, and I said, uh, you know, I'll do what you want, like, I'll, [00:33:00] I'm, I'm the voice and the strategy and media guy, but if you want to leave, if you, if you want to leave, like, we'll leave and I'll tell people, uh, if you're asking me personally, Uh, I think it's, you know, maybe it's time to leave.

If the government's getting violent, then we've won. There are going to be a laughingstock around the world, and we'll make sure, from a PR standpoint, that they are a laughingstock around the world. And, uh, and you know, it was funny, a month later, or a month and a half later, when I was in Colombia, Learning how to walk again, because I broke my ankle during the convoy.

Uh, my friends who used to say, oh, you know, Justin Trudeau, he's so, he's great, he's young, and whatever, and I would just ignore it. And they started calling him, this trip, they started calling him, uh, Cara Negra Fidelito, which is, uh, Blackface Little Fidel. Uh, so his reputation around the world, uh, was destroyed and has not recovered since.

But the problem was that, why did it end? How come the police moved in? And there's a lot of nuance to it, so there's a [00:34:00] independent publication called Diverge Media, run by Greg Staley, who is from, uh, from Saskatchewan. And he's been diving into all the circumstances since the convoy and the subsequent commission around the convoy, which was completely staged as well.

And he's uncovered a lot of the shenanigans that went on behind the scenes and how we were co opted and sabotaged. By the entire political class, and even in the POEC evidence, there's, there's emails that were made public, partially redacted, but between the new temporary conservative party leader, who was installed on February 3rd, and Justin Trudeau, so liberal and conservative, agreeing that the protest needs to come to an end and we need to have, get the truckers out of Ottawa.

So they were working together to screw us. [00:35:00] And what we didn't realize is, you know, there's so many people around, like it was crazy that the thousands of messages I would get, like I learned not to go down to the, the um, The lobby of the Sheraton Hotel, because I'd have a hundred people trying to talk to me and ask me questions, and I'm like, I don't know, ask this person, ask that person, whatever.

But it was, it was total chaos, but with that many people, you gotta think, and you know, it was in the back of our heads that there are gonna be people who are tied to the political establishment. Or law enforcement or, but usually it's a political establishment in Canada that are going to try to sabotage us and subvert us and they ended up doing it right in front of our eyes and I had somebody, a friend of mine, her name is Diana Davison, she's a very well known men's rights activist who did a lot of work for anti MeToo stuff for many, many years.

I produced a podcast with her on false accusations. She called me and she said, [00:36:00] Hey, I heard the JCCF is involved with you guys, and they said, yeah, they presented us with some lawsuits, some class action suit, but they said they'll take care of it. And don't worry, they'll cover all the fees and whatever.

And despite the fact that I have a long list of lawyers, I tried to tell everybody else, they're like, well, let's just go with them, I'm like, whatever, fine, we'll, we'll go with them. And she said to me, whatever you do, get them as far away from you as possible. All their lawyers left en masse a year prior, and all they have left are political activists with law degrees.

Uh, they will screw you. Get them as far away as possible. So, great. There's another problem I had to deal with is keeping them at bay, keeping all the different groups who are trying to take over and sabotage us at bay, the people who showed up on scene to defame first Tamara and myself, and then myself.

When I wouldn't go along with all this crap of, you know, allowing the [00:37:00] political establishment to take over. And I remember somebody said, you know, I got these, uh, emails saying, you know, you should do this with messaging and that messaging and talk about vaccines and whatever. And I'm like, hey, hey, we got our hundred million views the first week.

I think I know what I'm doing. I don't need you. When you guys learn how to win an election, then we'll talk. You know, like it was, it was so frustrating. You had members of parliament, like former members of parliament, call me, pretending to be staffers, trying to persuade me. To use conservative party talking points.

They're like, Oh yeah, don't talk about freedom and don't talk about, you know, uh, money and Bitcoin because, you know, Bitcoin became part of it at that point. What you need to do is talk about the reason the truckers are upset is inflation. No, it's because we're locked in our homes and you guys want to force people to take something against their will.

So no. And that's [00:38:00] why I became the demon, so you'll see a lot of this online from political ops and bot accounts, constantly attacking me, because they're still butthurt, and they still have to make sure that people won't listen to me, talk to me, listen, or read, uh, some of the, the research that Diverge Media has uncovered, because we've shown how it is the uniparty.

It's one party, and that is the problem. You talked about what democracy will lead to, and I'm going to give you one example, and they're going to get so butthurt and upset when I say this, but I don't care. I ain't leaving, and I don't work for any political party. Um, you know, people in Canada, they're all very excited that, you know, Pierre Polyev is the new leader of the Conservative Party, and that's great, and yeah, he's probably going to be the next, Prime Minister, there's no question.

And conservatives do what the liberals do at the speed limit. Uh, so what's, what is my, my problem with that? And I try to warn people. Well, the deputy leader, my pet hate, I [00:39:00] hate her, she hates me. I know who she's a mouthpiece for. Cause she's a psycho and that's it. The deputy leader, who is a rookie. So how you're a deputy leader when you're a rookie, I don't understand.

Was working, uh, on behalf of a lobby firm. With Walmart as her client during lockdowns to ensure that lockdowns were enforced, Walmart could stay open, but small businesses would close. That's the deputy leader of the Conservative Party, and the firm that she worked for was co founded by Justin Trudeau's chief of staff.

It's the Uniparty, and until we break the Uniparty, nothing's gonna change.

Knut: One of the most eye opening moments about politics for me was when I saw staple diagrams of, uh, the expenditures, like the, the budgets for, for the, the so called the left wingers and the so called right wingers, and you saw the [00:40:00] staples just, just barely, uh, I mean, They don't really want to change anything.

They just want to keep on going as things are, and change a little here, a little there, and a little lever here, but no one wants to really change anything,

BJ: Well, look, in the case of Canada, Justin Trudeau polls right now at the base level. This is why I love Scott Adams. 25 percent of people will screw up every question no matter what you ask them. But they have a base of 24 percent right now that still think Justin Trudeau is doing a wonderful job. Why?

Because they're in business together. It's either big business, or people work for the government, uh, or they have contracts with the government, they're a subcontractor. This is the danger of big government. It leads to this grift that everybody profits from, but unfortunately also destroys the society, and it tears apart any sort of freedoms that we should have.

Knut: So, how did Justin Trudeau get into power in the [00:41:00] first place?

BJ: Because conservatives are completely incompetent.

Knut: yeah, I mean, the left isn't right, and there's no right left,

BJ: like, I'll give you one perfect example. Like, when Justin Trudeau was elected, that was the election that I ran for the conservatives as a favor to them. I bet they regret that, asking me for that favor now, but what can I do? I tell the truth, man, whether you like it or not, just don't lie and you'll be cool.

But anyways, they, um... They ran this campaign. They send, what they do is they'll, they'll send lit the, the literature to all the campaign offices. So you get an email and has all the different sort of flyers and different size and configuration with the branding and the three main points that you are supposed to talk to people at the door.

So I took it all and I said to my campaign team, I'm like, yeah, take all that stuff and you can just throw it out, get rid of it. At that time I had a business that was on campus doing graphic design and. I knew enough about persuasion and marketing and stuff. I'm like, yeah, throw it all out. [00:42:00] Get it away from here.

We'll make our own lit. And I managed to take us from a 4 percent low in our riding to 10 percent by ignoring the conservative party headquarters. Why? Because, and this was my argument to them, but they're so incompetent. And so stupid, and it's the revolving door of losers in all these conservative parties that run all these campaigns.

This is why they always lose. And the, for example, with the lit that they sent, there was a tagline, Luke, I'm sure you remember this. It was Justin Trudeau. He's just not ready. And I saw that and I wanted to break my computer. Why? Because marketing 101, the subconscious cannot process negative ideas. So when you say Justin Trudeau, he's just not ready, you're forcing the recipient to imagine Justin Trudeau as prime minister.

They got him elected because they're so incompetent and stupid. [00:43:00] And when I tried to bring that up, I was the bad guy because political parties are cults and when you leave the party, what do they do? They spend all their time online creating bots to defame you just like a cult.

Luke: There's another, there's another deeper answer to that question that I think it was maybe also getting at here was that Trudeau was only in this position because his father was the prime minister for a decade or so back in the, it was the 80s, right? I think, um,

yeah. 70s and he was terrible. He broke the oil industry the first time in Canada, and well, then he took a trip to Cuba, and that was exciting And then, so Justin

gets born nine months later or so, something like that, and then he was a drama teacher, and, uh, but he gave a, he gave a eulogy at his father's funeral back in the early 2000s, and that's what got him onto the, uh, radar of political people, and [00:44:00] then I don't know, somehow the drama teacher upbringing, silver spoon, et cetera, et cetera, wasn't a recipe for a great political mind.

BJ: Well, there's also something to add to that. So, you know, I've always tried to make sure I had friends from all sorts of different backgrounds, political ideas, whatever, because that's how you learn. You, you don't, you can't believe in your ideas if you don't challenge them and have people who disagree with you, right?

And so I have a friend, uh, for many, many years, he was a political guy, never thought I would be in politics, it's because I saw what he wasted his time with, I'm like, I don't know what you're doing, but anyways, he's a liberal, he was a liberal for his entire life, until recently, and I think he might try to go back in to try to fix it, but anyways, uh, he was, uh, helping a candidate in a certain writing, uh, leading up to Trudeau, And he explained, him and many other people have explained, I've heard this many, many times, including former Liberal [00:45:00] cabinet members who have reached out to me since the convoy, by the way, because they're also concerned.

And basically what they did is they had a deal. So it was Omar Algebra, Hoskins, Uh, Jerry Butts, who's Trudeau's brain, uh, and a couple of other people. They approached Trudeau, they understood that the name recognition would work, he was the right age, uh, he looked good enough, and that they thought they could make him, uh, win the nomination for leader of the liberal party.

And everybody else, you know, the Kretchen liberals and whatever, like, The guy's a moron. No, he's not gonna be elected leader. I mean, they spent four years raising 40 million dollars, uh, to get him elected. And once he did, kind of the older, all parties have an older generation of people who have experience.

They understand you can only go so far. You also have to give something to the other side. You can't be quite extreme. [00:46:00] They were thrown out of the liberal party. And it just became the Trudeau party. But Trudeau's deal was, he, and he let this slip one time in an interview, he was to be the relationships manager.

He didn't know anything about politics. Again, he's a moron. Everybody knew that. So they told him, look, We'll run PMO, you just have to go out and sell people on Canada, inspire them to be progressive and have a brighter future and blah, blah, blah. We'll give you the talking points, but we'll do everything behind the scenes.

And he agreed to it and that, and nobody in that party thought he stood a chance, but he won and there we are. And then the Conservatives ended it all.

Knut: But, like, for me, it's so hard to understand that it can go so far. I saw an interview with Trudeau from back before he was elected president,

BJ: Yeah,

Knut: where the reporter asks him if there's a [00:47:00] specific country that he's... Especially impressed by, and he answers China. Like, that's a good role model. And people vote for that,

BJ: because remember we, we all have, all of us do have, um, a certain confirmation bias. And when we're already sold on somebody or an idea that's in front of us, we become blind and oblivious to the things that should be red flags. I guarantee you... All those people in that room who saw that interview, because it was like a women in, in politics or something event.

When he said, the country I most admire is China, I bet you if you asked every woman in that room, they'll say, he never said that.

Knut: And they say, oh, what a good looking man.

BJ: Yeah, but just say, what are you talking about? He didn't say anything about China. He's just talking about Canada. He's running for Canada. Why would he, I bet you if you polled him, that would happen. Because we all have these blind spots when we buy into some sort of ideal. [00:48:00] Right?

[00:48:00] Bitcoin and the Trucker Convoy

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of us do. Um, Yeah. What a, what a story. Okay. The part we haven't talked about yet in this whole, um, um. Uh, adventure is how Bitcoin comes in. There's like, the way I remember it, there was a GoFundMe campaign and then all of a sudden all the GoFundMe funds were go fund GoFund yourselves.

Uh, uh, like, uh, they were given back to whoever tried to, uh, or just. Locked in somewhere, uh, or went to another charity or something. I think those sent them back to the people who tried to donate, right? Uh, so you couldn't do a GoFundMe for, for this particular thing because, because of, uh, I guess, influence from the Canadian government.

BJ: Okay, so there's, there's a lot to unpack there, but I'll do, I'll try to do the short version, uh, from the beginning. Uh, something that I didn't know, that I, I only was told maybe, I don't know how many months [00:49:00] ago now, was there was a, a Bitcoiner who used to handle Moses. On Twitter, who came to one of the Bitcoin spaces, because I'm frequently in Bitcoin spaces, and he mentioned something about the Canadian truckers, he's like, oh yeah, I tried to help you guys.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, we had some Bitcoiners. He's like, no, no, no, before. Well, what are you talking about? He said when Tamera and whoever was going across Can it on the way to Ottawa? He said, we were already concerned because they saw the GoFundMe at that point had some like four or 5 million when we arrived, he said, we Bitcoiners already thought you guys would have your GoFundMe frozen.

And listen, we all kind of knew that when they started to GoFundMe, the idea wasn't to get, you know, 6 million. They didn't think it would grow that big. But he said, I got on the phone with he said this. A woman, Tamara, and somebody in the truck and said, I'm a, I'm a Bitcoiner and we want to help you because the money's going to get frozen.

And apparently, and she never told me this, [00:50:00] you know, you think she'd tell me this stuff, but she didn't tell me a lot of stuff. Uh, she said, I don't need video game money. I need real money. I'm like, I thought this is not about money. I was shocked when he told me this. I'm like, what? Like, you're lying. He's like, no, no, I did.

I'm like, that's crazy. So, uh, it became, it came on my radar when after one of the interviews that I did, maybe it's after the first weekend, beginning of the, the, the first, after the first weekend, I think into the first week, just after I broke my ankle. So, February 5th, I think is what it was, if I'm not mistaken.

I get a message on Twitter from Caribou, and Caribou says, Hey man, you know that's, he's like so soft and subtle, even in his text, like, Hey man, are you a Bitcoiner? And I'm like, yeah, because they saw me on somewhere. On some interview and they looked me up on Twitter and they saw the hashtag Bitcoiner, hashtag Bitcoin.

And I'm like, yeah, I never talked about Bitcoin. I always [00:51:00] just did it on my own. And, um, he said, so he obviously gave me some test questions. I can't remember what they were, but he's like, Oh yeah, where do you custody? You know, how do you buy it? Blah, blah, blah, all that sort of stuff. So I'm like, Oh, I use this wallet, that blah, blah, blah.

And he's like, Oh, okay. So when you get in and I told him how I, you know, my origin story. And then he said, cool, man. Can I come see you? Because we're trying to raise money for Bitcoin for you guys. And I said, yeah, sure. Do you want to come tomorrow? He's like, cool. So he, apparently he was on his way to see me and he was wearing the Bitcoin toque that he gave me and a bunch of people saw him like, Hey, Bitcoin.

He's like, yeah, I'm going to meet BJ. You want to come with me? He's like, oh, yeah, sure. Let's go. So like 15, 15 of them just show up in. And we had two rooms. One was the media room. One was my hotel room. They show up in the media room and all these guys all around me, they all had Bitcoin stuff. I'm like, Hey guys, what's up?

So they told me, yeah, we're, we're running a tally [00:52:00] coin and we've raised, I can't remember what it was at that time, maybe two or 300, 000 or something. Um, but he said, we've raised a few Bitcoin already. And so we have more coming in and you're worried about the money being frozen, but we're also worried, you know, it seems nobody understands Bitcoin here or whatever.

I'm like, oh yeah, dude, they're total boomers, all of them. And I said, look, go get Bitcoin. You have my blessing. Uh, I support you. I'll deal with the boomers and try to sort that out, but, uh, I got your back, and yeah, it'd be great if we can get some, uh, Bitcoin to some of these truckers, and make this Bitcoin's moment.

So here I am, in this, this scenario where I, I'm trying to now make... This alternative media's moment and Bitcoin's moment. It was awesome, right? That's why I probably enjoyed it so much. And, uh, so he went out and they started raising money and that's when I, I met, um, He connected me with, uh, BTC Sessions.

And I'm [00:53:00] like, oh my god, I started watching him. I've told them this a few times. I started watching him on his second or third video. Like, he's one of the people who really helped me. Learn how to custody Bitcoin and all that. I was just watching his tutorials, my entire Bitcoin.

Knut: He's also one of the first Bitcoiners I hooked up with in Riga in 2019.

BJ: So they were all kind of working together and they had so many technical problems that it's beyond my capacity to understand. Uh, you know, like, yeah, I can run a node, I can self custody. I have a minor, but that's about as advanced as I get. Like I just have other things in my life, but so they were trying to figure it out.

They're trying to set up a nunchuck wallet. They want it to be multi sig and I'm like, okay, you guys do it. Just let me know what's happening. Keep me up to date so I can support you. And if we got a message, something we can, and I went to the [00:54:00] boomers. Who half of them were now political ops, as we know, as a result of diverge media, uh, who are not there to help us.

But I said to them, uh, good. Hey, they, a bunch of them came into my room cause at that time I had a broken ankle, so we would have, they basically have to come in and out of my room regularly, uh, just to apprise people, apprise each other, everything that's going on. And, uh. A group of them came in to my hotel room.

I can't remember the reason. There was always a different reason. You know, the fuel truck was being blocked. Uh, you saw what happened with the gas cans and me and a couple other people thought, well, why would just buy all the gas cans in the city of Ottawa? You know, so the stuff like that was going on.

So they came in, I'm like, Hey guys, good news. Knowing, knowing exactly what I was going to get. I said, there's a bunch of people out there raising money in Bitcoin for us. And they just, one of them just piped up, that's for criminal activity, that's criminal money. We [00:55:00] can't have bitcoin here. I'm like, oh, for fuck's sakes.

It's like, it's like easier to orange pill people in a retirement home than some of these people, you know? But, um. So I did my best to try to rapid orange pill people, rapid fire orange pill, uh, failed miserably, but I knew I'd have to do it over time, and I said to Kerby, don't worry, just ignore them, just do your thing, I got your back, and they were great.

So, amongst the, you know, the political people is always fighting and infighting and people fighting with each other and trying to cause fights cause, you know, people wanted to be on camera, wanted to be famous, wanted to be rich, and whatever, and I'm like, oh my god, you guys don't know what you're into.

The bitcoiners didn't care about any of that. They're like, we just want to help truckers. I'm like, God bless you guys for being so normal and sane. Thank you. You know, it was, it was a pleasure, it was like a release. to be able to reach out and talk to them, uh, periodically and they'd have some sanity versus the other, [00:56:00] uh, nonsense I was dealing with.

And it was great. So we eventually raised 1. 2 million in Bitcoin, uh, distributed over 800, 000 in that. I can't remember how many Bitcoin it was. Otherwise I'd be speaking in Bitcoin. I think we raised 21 Bitcoin. Approximately, and distributed 17 bitcoin or something like that, in and about, okay? And, uh, so those 17 bitcoin went directly to the truckers, and the only way the remaining bitcoin was seized, was the OPP, which is the Ontario Provincial Police, and the RCMP, which is the Federal Police, got a warrant from a judge who rubber stamps anything, and they raided Caribou's house.

And they took his laptop, they took his phones, they took his podcast mic, they just took like a whole bunch of stuff, anything that was electronic, and they scared him. And they're like, what's the seed phrase? They clearly knew [00:57:00] about Bitcoin and how it operates, and, you know, he'd never been in trouble with the law, he's never done anything wrong or whatever, you get scared when you get raided by the police, it was just a full intimidation tactic.

Knut: He still hasn't done anything wrong.

BJ: That's right. That's right. He's a hero. He really is. He's a hero that we need to celebrate. And we're going to celebrate him much more in the future. But, um, so he, uh, okay, fine. Here, here's here's my seed phrase, whatever. And then the remaining because I think he got the others from the other people when when things started to get really hot.

And that's how we distributed the, uh, the 800 plus thousand, because I was dealing with chaos all over the place. And then I submitted the remaining seed phrase into escrow to, uh, our, the lawyers who just showed up. Remember the JCCF I told you about? Who now wants claim over the remaining Bitcoin, by the way.

Uh, so they, uh, submitted the seed [00:58:00] phrase in an affidavit to court. So there's an affidavit on the record that it's verified it is in the possession of the bankruptcy trustee. What do you think our lawyer who's tied to the conservative party did? Well, he went on the record in the POEC and said, I don't know what happened to the Bitcoin, uh, BJ and his Bitcoin guys must have stolen it.

Or something like that, you can use those exact words. That's the political class who screwed us all, right? They're definitely afraid of Bitcoin, but I think it was an amazing story. That just shows the power of Bitcoin.

Knut: It is so amazing because like now, uh, whenever there's a peace, peaceful freedom protest anywhere on the earth, literally anywhere where there's an internet connection, uh, the protesters have this way of funding themselves that they [00:59:00] didn't have before. And a way to get around any type of, uh, embargo against them, uh, any type of, you know, political interference that it's, it truly is unstoppable.

And, you know, you can memorize the seed phrase and cross a border, uh, with 10 million in your head. Like the, it, it. On a long enough time frame, but, but also right now it's, it changes the political map completely.

BJ: and something to add on to, very important, I don't know if you're going to get there, but this is really important. When I left, we had this whole commission, which was an investigation. I testified, they denied me standing, so I didn't get the right to cross examine people, because if I did, I would have destroyed all of them.

But I came out of that hearing and there was some woman with a pride flag screaming, you know, they knew who I was, she's a political operative now that we know, but screaming, you know, racist, bigots, [01:00:00] blah, blah, blah, BJ terrorist, Hong Kong terrorist, whatever she was, just stupidity. And what I did was I grabbed my phone and I went up to right in front of her, I turned on Instagram, and I said, Uh, the, the whole purpose of the Freedom Convoy was to protect all our freedom of speech, including hers.

She should be able to say whatever she wants, and we have the right to refute her if we want. That is the whole purpose of what the Freedom Convoy is, and that's the purpose of Bitcoin. I don't want Bitcoin, I want Bitcoin to be for my adversaries as well, for them to protect their speech, because that's the only way we fix what's going on in our society right now.

Knut: Yeah. How did the racist thing come in? Like, what did this thing have to do with race? Like at all?

BJ: The Prime Minister inferred that, and some other [01:01:00] Jewish organizations, inferred... That I'm a white supremacist, that I'm a Jew. I explained in an interview, like, unlike Prime Minister Blackface, Mr. Diversity, uh, some of us still have family buried in mass graves in Europe, but, you know, what a, it's, it's clown world, man.

Just say whatever they want to say. That's it. And they hope that they're persuasive enough that a percentage of the population will just parrot it. Unfortunately, sometimes that happens.

Knut: Oh man, but, but yeah, it's really a testament to the power of Bitcoin. I know around the same time, like when, um, um, Putin invaded Ukraine, there was picture that there were pictures of a, um, some from some border where the customs officers have had confiscated a, um, briefcase full of gold bars, rubles.

Euros and dollar bills. And, and the funny thing about the picture, I don't know if, if, [01:02:00] if the, the refugee was Russian or Ukrainian, it doesn't really matter. The, the, the, what matters is the answers to the post on Twitter because all the answers, uh, or all the Bitcoin answers said, like, look at this idiot who can't remember 12 words, like, uh, so, so.

Yeah, but it's true, like, if you try to bring a gold bar across a border in 2023, you're an idiot, like, we have ways of doing that, that are completely undetectable, because bitcoins are in your head, and it doesn't even have to be a seed phrase, it could just be a secret, any, any type of secret that unlocks your, your ability to send the bitcoin.

It's the bitcoin, so you are your bitcoins.

BJ: And, you know, there's a story I incorporated in the book that Jeff Booth told me about. That he was, I think it was at the Oslo [01:03:00] Freedom Forum, I'm not sure. Um, about some people in Ukraine, by the way, Ukraine, Russia, they all suck. They're all corrupt. I'm not taking a side. They're all horrible in my opinion.

Okay.

Knut: Oh, well, the governments, their governments are

BJ: That's right. That's what I mean. I don't mean the people. I mean the

Knut: Ukrainians and Russians are, are, uh, are cool people.

BJ: Yeah, no, no, for sure. For sure. No, but the people in government are all exploiting the people. So that's why I don't, but anyways. And I say that as a preface because the story that Jeff Booth told me met with some Ukrainian woman and they needed, um, you know, protection, like a bulletproof vest and stuff like that.

And what they did is they raised it in Bitcoin and they were able to buy what they needed for their community to keep people protected and stuff. So it's not an endorsement for or against Ukraine or Russia, but the point is Bitcoin was there for everybody on any side who needed it for, you know, humanitarian needs, right?

Knut: and isn't it funny how people who have a money [01:04:00] printer called bitcoin, the, you know, criminal, criminal money, money for criminals, they can print. Money. And they call Bitcoin criminal.

BJ: Yeah, they're worried about the competition, man.

Knut: as they should be.

BJ: Yeah, for sure. So the other thing is, you know, you mentioned the GoFundMe and then the GiveSendGo. The GoFundMe raised 10. 1 million dollars. The first week when we were doing the paperwork with GoFundMe, the fake news media, took the bait and started saying, oh, the money has been frozen.

The money has been frozen. And I told everybody, don't respond. Just let them keep running this narrative because I was ready with a press release. Once the money, once the paperwork was approved and they started transferring money, they, uh, I put out a press release saying, I don't know why the fake news has once again been lying to their audience, but we've just been doing paperwork with GoFundMe, AML, uh, registration, all that sort of stuff.

And, uh, everything's been approved and they're transferring money now. And that [01:05:00] lasted, I don't know, three or four days until there was, uh, pressure from the city of Ottawa and the Canadian government and then some people on the inside who didn't do us any favours. That ended up them cancelling that GoFundMe and then we started a GiveSendGo.

Alright, GiveSendGo was already there, started being utilized, whatever it was. Uh, I'm not sure exactly because I'm getting conflicting stories from people, but regardless, there was GiveSendGo that raised 9 million dollars in the first 12 hours? Everybody said screw it. And the reason was because nobody cared about the money.

The money was a vote because we were the official opposition to the Uniparty. We were the first real opposition that said enough and had a voice. And people, you know, that inspired people. You know how many messages I got from people? Like some of them were really heavy and difficult to read. And I always remember these two, uh, women who had very, very similar stories in different provinces in Canada.[01:06:00]

That they both had two children, they were both single, they both lost their jobs, and they had both been considering suicide. And the only reason they didn't do it is because they didn't know what would happen to their children. Um, and that was until they saw the trucker convoy. And these trucks driving across Canada, bringing people together and they realized, oh my God, I'm not alone.

[01:06:27] Unity and Nationalism

BJ: And I think that was the whole lesson from all of this, that even though we're the silent majority, we're all doing our different lives, we have different things we got to deal with, uh, at the end of the day, none of us are alone. Most of us are pretty rational and practical, and we just want to be left alone and focus on the things that we're passionate about, focus on our families and our friends and the people we love, and we don't want this bureaucratic bullshit in our life, and this was the first real, uh, culmination of [01:07:00] unity in Canada that said, we want to go back to that, we're not going along with this, and you know, one of the first interviews I did in Ottawa, and I mentioned this On trigonometry or on low deceders, I know one of the recent interviews I did, I mentioned this.

It was with a journalist who was in Quebec. She's a Quebecer working for a French publication. And we did an hour long interview. It was one of the few print interviews that I did. And I asked her at the end, I said, you know, what do you think about this? And she said, you know, I, and it's, you know, you, Luke, you might be able to help give some additional context to this.

She said, I used to be a Quebec separatist, meaning wanting Canada, she did, she rejected Canada. She's a Quebecer and wanted to separate from Canada. She said, I was a separatist my entire life. Until I saw those trucks driving across the country and I realized I'm not alone and that Canadians [01:08:00] can come together and unify and she said I went out and I bought my first ever Canadian flag and I now identify as a Canadian.

That's the power we had over the political class and that is what struck so much fear into them. In my opinion.

Knut: Yeah, I have to play the devil's advocate here, because like, I think separatism sounds like a very good idea as long as goods and services can cross the border.

BJ: Yeah, I mean, I, I can understand, I can see that point of view, but you know, at the same time, there's a, a, a YouTuber who, uh, I've spoken to a couple of times many years back. And his name is Red Van. He runs a channel called Apostate Prophet. It's a political thing. We agree, disagree, whatever. But he brought up a really, really interesting point, at least for me.

And he said, you know, he comments on problems in the Middle East, because that's where he's from. He's Turkish, okay? And he said, what people fail to [01:09:00] understand is we see countries where they have really radical extreme laws that have full restrictions on freedoms. We'll put it that way. He said, but me being Turkish...

We had the solution, he said, that's why Ataturk was so important for us, because Ataturk made us Turkish first, and our religion came second, and he said, in my opinion, that's what prevented Turkey from going down This rabbit hole of extremism that a few countries have done, he said, in my case, it's nationalism and the identity of being Turkish is what protected us.

And that's a very interesting perspective. So I think, like many things in life, there's always additional nuance and complexity, and every situation can be different.

Knut: Yeah, and I think that was very important. [01:10:00] You know, states becoming secular was an important step in their evolution towards more freedom. I mean, that's the basic idea of John Locke and like, that was incorporated in the U. S. Constitution. So, so, and Ataturk, like, it's too bad that his, that is all being reversed right now.

The show is also sponsored by Orange Pill App, the Bitcoin only social network where you can stack friends who stack sats. You can connect with your favorite Bitcoiners on the app, make local connections, and even connect with Bitcoiners around the world. You can see what's going on in your area and organize and attend local events.

I've been to multiple events organized on Orange Pill App and they brought Bitcoiners together from all over. And now, with group chat, it's easier than ever to stay in touch with all your Bitcoin friends. The best part is you know it's high signal. There's no spam on OrangePillApp because everyone pays to be there.

So download OrangePillApp on Apple or Android and start building your local network of Bitcoiners.[01:11:00]

 Next up, The Bitcoin Way. Their mission is to onboard, educate, and remove barriers to taking self custody of your bitcoin. They cover everything from cold wallets to nodes, no KYC bitcoin purchases, inheritance planning, payments, and more. Whether you're new to bitcoin or you're an experienced bitcoiner looking to expand your freedom footprint, Or you know someone who this sounds perfect for?

The Bitcoin Way has something for you. They have a skilled team, well versed in the Bitcoin space, and their goal is to make all the complexities of Bitcoin as straightforward as possible for everyone. And the best part is you can get started with a free 30 minute call with their team. Go to thebitcoinway.

com slash contact for more info.

Our newest sponsor is Geyser. They are the portal to the creator economy on Bitcoin. On Geyser, creators can monetize their work through their communities in a social and engaging way. And supporters can send sats to their favorite projects. Geyser has also recently integrated with Zapps and Podcasting 2.

1. [01:12:00] So every Zapp sent to a Geyser address shows up on the Geyser page. We have a Geyser fund ourselves. It's the best way to support our show directly with Bitcoin. So whether you're a creator or a supporter, check out geyser at geyser. fund today.

[01:12:14] Free Speech and Property Rights

Knut: When you were talking about, uh, you know, the, the right to be left alone, like from a. Libertarian perspective, or like the great libertarian insight, as I see it, is that it's to realize that if you don't have the right to be left alone, which is the only, you know, arguably the only universal right that can be the same for all ages and all people, like, uh, if there's one, if there is such a thing as a human right, uh, it would have to apply to all humans.

forever. Like, otherwise, what's the point? Then it's not a right. So from first principles, the only right that can be is the right to be [01:13:00] left alone. And if you don't have the right to be left alone, all you have is the right to obey.

BJ: I couldn't agree with you more. You know, one of the, I mentioned I produce podcasts. One of the podcasts I produce, you probably would know him, I guess, is a professor by the name of Stephen Hicks. And Stephen wrote Explaining Postmodernism, what he's most famous for. And, um, so we produce, we do a podcast called Open College with Stephen Hicks, which were, he sent me all the, um, all the edits for season two, which we're going to release sometime soon.

And the hope that I have in the world is I'm starting to see us. We're starting to branch away from this bifurcated view of the world, which is also why I wanted to go to alternative media, because there seems to be less appetite, although the political establishment is trying to force it on people, there seems to be less appetite on for the binary worldview.

And there's this emergence [01:14:00] online of the libertarian view, which is a whole spectrum. And, you know, I explain this on, uh, Michaela Peterson's podcast, kind of my worldview that I'm trying to, I don't know, propagandize people with out of the bifurcated view, which is personally, and I think most of us feel fit within this frame.

I like the goals of the left. Or at least what they state, that they want to help people whenever. I like the systems of the right, and I like the freedoms of libertarianism. And depending on what the issue is we're talking about, I'm going to plot differently in that triangle. And I think that serves for all of us.

I mean, there's nobody in the Bitcoin space who doesn't believe in the principle of helping people. And that's what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is about helping people and giving them the opportunity for self sovereign. I think if, if we look at the [01:15:00] world in that, those sorts of terms, it becomes a lot easier for us to communicate and understand each other, especially when it's most important when we disagree.

Knut: Yeah, absolutely. Like, um, and, uh, there's also this. This notion of free speech and how important free speech is, Rothbard points out in the Ethics of Liberty that free speech is only necessary when preceded by theft. And what he means by that is that free speech only applies to public domains, like public property.

And Rothbard argues that there's... No such thing, and these are all things that, these are all stolen goods, stolen, the institutions aren't real, it's all stolen property, so if we had absolute property rights, we wouldn't need freedom of [01:16:00] speech laws, because you could make your own rules on your own property, of who gets to say what, which is like, That was a mind blow moment for me.

I never thought of it that way, but, but I think that you can see that in the world today with people from countries with, uh, uh, very well functioning free speech laws, like the Scandinavian countries, you can say a lot of things in Scandinavia, believe it or not, but, uh, uh, but people move to Dubai. Why?

Because stronger property rights, because property rights more important than free speech. Because you can't have one without the other, really.

BJ: And isn't it interesting how some of the, the authoritarian policies that we're seeing around the world are all about attacking property rights. You know, I had somebody a couple of days ago just sent me something from Mexico. They have a new [01:17:00] law in Mexico that if you own property, but that property is vacant, You know, it's, lots of people in Mexico have ranches, uh, out in the countryside, in the middle of the country, whatever.

So if you have, I don't know, a ranch in Jalisco, for example, and somebody decides to move in and just settle on your property, and you haven't been there for three months, that's their property. You're basically surrendering the property to them. And I see all of these policies that are, you know, behind the scenes and politics are buried into another bill.

They're all attacking property rights. So it's a very important point you bring up.

Knut: There's a very, very similar law here in Spain. If there are occupants in your home, they can, they have a right to literally take it over.

BJ: And isn't it interesting that that comes on the heels of, uh, Niall Ferguson's book and subsequent documentary on what has made the West great, and it's from 12, 15 years ago, [01:18:00] on the thing that made the West great was our adherence to property rights. And here we are now, what are they going after, you know,

Knut: Probably, yeah, our friend Giacomo Zucco had a great paraphrase of, uh, paraphrasing of Evelyn Beatrice Holtz, uh, I don't care what you say, but I'm gonna fight. Uh, for your right, fight to the death for your right to say it. And Giacomo's version is, I don't care what you pay, but I'm going to fight to the death for your right to pay it, which is, which is like, like Bitcoin has so beautifully pointed out to us the same thing, like freedom of speech doesn't matter if you can't say everything that includes.

Expressions of value, that's money, so freedom of speech, it doesn't exist until, uh, it's an illusion unless you have absolute property rights.

BJ: from a, from a [01:19:00] marketing and persuasion perspective, that is amazing framing to communicate to the normies who are still confused about, you know, free speech. That your freedom to transact is your ultimate free speech.

Knut: Yeah, you don't have free speech without that, there's no such thing, because as Bitcoin so beautifully pointed out. Money doesn't have to be anything but information. It's literally pure information. All the numbers in Bitcoin, all the addresses have existed forever. The numbers were there always. It's just that the hash power was zero before 2009.

So we didn't know how to utilize it. But you can, you can find a Bitcoin address. A bitcoin private key by flipping a coin 256 times, and you can derive a public key from that and send money via SMS to that address, which is just [01:20:00] absolutely mind blowing, and people are completely oblivious to this wonderful technology that has just, I mean, to us that have found it and are discussing this on a regular basis, it's just, it's just mind blowing.

It keeps blowing our minds like how, how, how deep this rabbit hole goes and how, how weird it is that this is the case. Everything we were told about money was a complete lie. It was just information all

BJ: Yeah. It's, it's amazing. The, um, you know, I, I learned about central banking and our current system when I was 17 years old. I think I, I watched, uh, over a week 'cause I, I never watched really tv. I was big into documentaries and stuff, and I watched this documentary called. Uh, The Money Changers by Bill Still, and he talked about the history of, uh, central banking, the history of the dollar, all that sort of stuff, and I was already knee deep into James Burke's documentaries, [01:21:00] Connections, where he did a series of episodes on money, And the tally system and all that sort of stuff was always already primed for Bitcoin, not realizing it when it finally came on my radar.

But what's so amazing about it is it has something for everybody. Doesn't matter what your philosophical worldview, it has something that will. That will communicate with you on a personal philosophical level. And I think what we need to do, in my opinion, this is why I go to so many Bitcoin spaces or non Bitcoin spaces and talk about Bitcoin when I can, uh, or when I get invited to speak in places, I'll try to always, like on Trigonometry, I brought up, uh, Bitcoin as well, is it's, we, I, I think in the space, one of the things we need to work on.

You know, taking a page from Warren Buffett, you know, there's always wisdom in people we disagree with. He starts his AGMs with, what did we do wrong this year, right? And which is a very important [01:22:00] question. And one thing, you know, when I look at Bitcoin, I think, what did we do wrong? Is our ability to persuade and reach people who don't even know how our fiat system works and don't care.

Like there's people who will never care how Bitcoin works. And I was in this space earlier this week, a guy who was, I think his first time on stage, he was a little bit nervous, small. He's got a, you know, just a guy who's into Bitcoin, wanted to talk about Bitcoin. And he was telling this story. His name's Clark.

He was telling the story that he was in work. Recently, and he never talks about Bitcoin with anybody. And when Bitcoin had this recent upswing compared to fiat, by the way, I don't, I never know what the price is because I don't care after this whole convoy thing. It's freedom money. That's what I care about.

But anyways, these guys, you know, you know how it is. Once Bitcoin goes, goes up 20%, all of a sudden people start the chatter. Oh, Bitcoin, what is [01:23:00] Bitcoin? And these guys mentioned that, um, in the lunchroom, something to the effect of, yeah, Bitcoin went up. And then one of the other guys says, yeah, but it's really volatile.

And Clark, like this is so persuasive and I think a lot of Bitcoiners don't realize it. Uh, he did what's called a high ground maneuver. And he just said, I don't know, looks like the dollar's the one that's volatile to me. I didn't say anything else, right, because when you say enough, just to spark interest, they have to fill, the recipient has to fill in the gaps.

And yeah, I predicted it, they, they, they paused for 5 or 10 seconds, thought about it, they didn't have a rebuttal, and so what is the default? Oh yeah, that, that's a good point, and I think that's what we need to work on in Bitcoin.

Knut: along. Price stability, uh, and the, the need for an institution to, to ensure price stability is probably the greatest lie ever told. [01:24:00] Uh, yeah.

Luke: I'm just going to do a quick time check here, guys. We got less than half an hour and this is, so far, this is a fantastic conversation and I have a feeling we'll need to do a follow up. But, BJ, I'd like to give the floor to you because I know you had some questions you wanted to ask Knut, actually.

So,

[01:24:20] Knut's Origin Story

BJ: Well, uh, Knut, I, you know, I'm going to be sharing this with people who don't know Bitcoin, people in my Discord, no, don't know Bitcoin, don't know your story. Uh, people in my Discord, uh, people in my DM groups and all that sort of stuff. I, why don't you give, I mean, I know a lot of your story, it is fascinating, but why don't you give, you know, not the elevator pitch, but the extensive elevator pitch of yourself, uh, to help me better introduce you to people who follow me?

Knut: Oh, what an honor. Uh, well, uh, I'm 47 years old. Uh, I grew up in [01:25:00] Sweden, uh, and a couple, a handful of other countries, uh, lived for half a year in Mozambique and a couple of years in Tanzania. So I was like exposed to other countries as an, uh, at an early age. And I studied engineering like after, after high school, I started studying, uh, engineering, um, uh, electronics engineering, but I only did that for, for one year because I was so tired of school.

So I dropped out, uh, with a, with a huge loan and nothing to show for myself. So then I decided to, to sort of semi follow in my father's. Footsteps and aim at becoming a sea captain. So I started working on, on ships. Um, I, my hobby at the time was sailing, uh, old traditional, gaff rigged sailing ships.

And, um, so, so, uh, I tried to [01:26:00] make a career out of that, basically. So, so my university degree is Master Mariner.

BJ: Oh, cool.

Knut: So, and after I graduated from that, a couple of years later, when I got my certificates and everything, I started working as an officer on a tall ship with high school students on board. So, sailing around the Atlantic and visiting a lot of countries.

And, uh, I did that for eight years, and I had a lot of time to, to think there, the job wasn't very hard, so, so I had a lot of spare time, and I spent a lot of time abroad, um, seeing different countries and different systems, and that's somewhere, somewhere during that journey, I found Bitcoin, and I don't remember exactly when, But then I met my wife on board this ship and I had, when we had kids and everything, I had to figure out something else to do, something closer to home, I couldn't really be away for 10 weeks at a time, [01:27:00] that just didn't work.

So I found another job at a shipping company in Gothenburg. as a, the skipper on small crew transfer vessels, uh, to that, uh, transported technicians to, um, to, uh, wind turbines in the Baltic Sea and in the North Sea. So, so that's what I did for a couple of years. And then I started working in the office and worked my way up to, uh, a, being the HR manager of this, um, this, uh, shipping company, which is the last fiat position I had before I decided to quit and, uh, start.

To do Bitcoin stuff full time, because during my time, uh, on the boats and, and, uh, in the office for this shipping company, I also started writing about Bitcoin. So I started writing articles after, uh, I took an online course in 2016, started writing articles in 2017. Got a bit of attention for that and compiled the articles into [01:28:00] a book, uh, which turned out not so good because I wasn't very proud of that book and this was like my learning journey to writing, uh, so, so I decided to write a proper book, which was Sovereignty to Mathematics, my first book, and that was done, um, spring or summer 2019.

And then I brought them to the Baltic Honey Badger Conference in Riga. I brought 50 books there, gave 25 of them away to important people in Bitcoin and sold the other 25. And then that that book started to have a life of its own. And it was, uh, were very well received by the community. So I continued writing.

I wrote another book the next year. And I started writing articles for, some for Bitcoin Magazine, some for other publications, and most of them for Citadel 21, which is Hodlonaut's Bitcoin fanzine. That I'm sadly is not making any, any more [01:29:00] issues of, uh, and one of the articles in that, uh, had a sentence in it, an article called deeper down the rabbit hole, uh, which was published on the 21st of August, 2021, which I figured out in hindsight, I didn't know that until this comes to later in the story and in that, in that article, there's a sentence that says, imagine everything there is and everything that ever will be divided by 21 million.

Which then, uh, uh, Yoni Appelberg made a beautiful animation of this article, um, and we made it into a little video, which is where this equation was first shown, and then that got a lot of attention and people started coming up Uh, adding this equation to their Twitter handles and stuff and all of a sudden I had a folder on my computer with everything divided.

Tattoos, like I've seen, I think there's between [01:30:00] 20 and 30 different slots. People in that folder on my computer now that have actually tattooed this thing onto their bodies. So that really, that thing really changed my life. And it led also to the, how we, uh, invented Bitcoin Infinity Day, which is still a thing.

And we had an Infinity Day special here this year, me and Luke. We started this whole Freedom Footprint thing on Infinity Day last year, which is the 21st of August then. So, um, And now I do all sorts of Bitcoin stuff for a living, um, including this show, including the books, including going to conferences and talking and advising a couple of companies and anything fun.

So, uh, so, so that's my story and my, my journey. And, uh, I love to think about Bitcoin and I love to talk about it. I love to try to explain it to [01:31:00] people. I love to talk to other. Interesting people in the space, uh, such as yourself. And, uh, I, I love doing what I do.

BJ: Well, I met in, uh, in Florida on one of my many trips. I've basically grown up partially in Florida, but on one of my trips there, I think it was Bitcoin 2023, actually, uh, I met an artist who, uh, does Bitcoin art and he gave me a bunch of very cool stuff. And, um, one of them is, it's with kanji and it also has infinity divided by 21 million and I have that in the back of my car.

It's a very subtle sort of, uh, bitcoiners will understand it and the rest of the people have no clue what it is. It's

Knut: what are, what artists was that?

BJ: You know, I can't, I have his, I'm looking for him on Twitter. I can't remember his name. I'll find it. You know, I'll send it to you.

Knut: Yeah, the artists I've been collaborating with back and forth and we go way back is of course Fractal Encrypt, who I [01:32:00] think is by far the best artist in Bitcoin. He's the Leonardo da Vinci of our time.

BJ: Very cool.

Knut: So anyway, yeah, as Luke put it in Logano, like the surreal doesn't end.

I mean, we both keep on pinching ourselves for just ending up in this weird, surrealistic situations that we end up in and we try to do our best and be polite and uh, Learn from each experience and, uh, we try to stay humble, uh, even though a lot of weird things are happening to us all the time and, uh, we just love it.

We want to embrace life and, and live it to the fullest, to the fullest.

Luke: we follow the orange glowing light.

Knut: That's what Izzy called it. And that's exactly what we're doing. And we're proud of it.

Luke: Which, by the way, if anyone would like to, if anyone from, from your, [01:33:00] uh, following would like to get an introduction to us, a proper one, our episode with Izzy is, is, uh, definitely the one. He's, he's a, a dear friend and, uh, it, it shows the absolute best of me and Knut and, uh, and Izzy.

Knut: And the absolute worst.

BJ: Send me the link, send me the link and I'll post it. And you know, you also, you touched on something that for me is very, very important. Um, and I think this is going to become increasingly important for people in the Bitcoin space as Bitcoin becomes more adopted. You know, during this period of my life, this trucker convoy, I saw the best in humanity.

You guys all saw it on TV when you saw the dance parties and us coming together, but I also saw the worst in humanity, and that was some of the noise that I was, not just the politicians, but some of the noise that I was dealing with, um, that surrounded us, and, you know, my advice, [01:34:00] somebody told me this a long time ago, and I'm sure other people have shared similar things, which is, before you achieve any sort of fame, or any sort of wealth.

You need to have your demons sorted. We all have them. Because if you don't get your demons sorted, then fame or wealth or mass adaptation of bitcoin that makes you wealthy is going to amplify the worst parts of your character. And that's what I was dealing with during the freedom convoy from a whole bunch of political people that all the demons came out and I don't want to see that happen in Bitcoin.

All I've seen from people in general, because I've orange pilled a lot of people. Who were normies prior to the convoy and the convoy really woke them up about the importance. I mean, uh, RFK said it on stage in Bitcoin, uh, 2023, he said, [01:35:00] uh, it was the Canadian truckers that made me realize we have to have, uh, free money that's separate from state money.

And so all the experiences everybody had brought into Bitcoin has been positive. Because everybody's been humble. I'm just a regular guy with a truck who's got some opinions and doesn't back down from the government, but I'm just a regular dude, right? Uh, I think that is going to be very important for bringing people into the space and showing that juxtaposition between the authoritarian fiat system that, Hey man, look, you have this positive.

Really level headed freedom space called Bitcoin. You can come in if you want, if you don't want to, fine, but we'll always be there for you. I think that's going to help us over the longterm as well. We, we all have to be aware of our demons and, and focus on humility.

Knut: [01:36:00] absolutely. That's, that's beautiful. And, uh, I agree a hundred percent, like, as you said, like money is an amplifier, uh, of, of your personality. You get to do what you want to do more. If you have more money, that's, that's what money does. And, uh, uh, the, the thing that differentiates, uh, Bitcoin from traditional money though, is that there's no way to abuse the system.

BJ: Yeah.

Knut: So the only, the only way for you to use Bitcoin is to exchange it for a good or a service, which is good for everyone in society, like that's how civilizations work. We, we exchange goods and services with one another and then we thrive via the free market system. So, uh, and that's the only thing Bitcoin can do.

You can't leverage. Uh, the system and, uh, abuse it, like maybe to some extent here in the, in the first years, you could be a whale and sell a whole bunch and then the price goes down and then you can buy in again, [01:37:00] like, but, but you can't, you can't do that forever. And I, I suspect we're past that phase already.

BJ: Oh, and, and, and also, yeah, and also in that vein too, um, I was just, after I went to the UK, I went to Florida and I spoke at an altcoin conference or a cryptocurrency conference, whatever it was, and before I did, I made sure to tell everybody who knew me, I'm not an altcoiner, I never will be, we all went down the rabbit hole for a few months and got taken for a little bit, it's happened to everybody, it was part of the learning experience with Bitcoin, I've done it, everybody's done it, okay, fine.

I said, but the reason I'm going there is because the people who host it are also Bitcoiners, and it was the story of the trucking convoy that they wanted me to share with them. to try to explain to them that you can't ignore Bitcoin. And I went into some of their spaces. You know, these younger kids are all into [01:38:00] NFTs and all this sort of nonsense.

They didn't even know what Bitcoin was.

Knut: No,

BJ: No clue. So I explained my story, the trucker convoy, whatever. And then all of a sudden, oh, and so I went down to Florida. I gave the speech. I promise people I'm not going to be hostile. I'm not hostile towards people who go to Vegas and throw money away in a casino if they enjoy it.

I don't gamble, but if that's what you want to do, fine. But we got to agree on Bitcoin. So I went, I gave a speech. I got to talk to Davey because he hasn't uploaded it yet. I gave a speech on stage. About Bitcoin and freedom and how Bitcoin helped us in Ottawa. It's the only thing that worked. We didn't go to sushi swap.

We used Bitcoin for a reason because of proof of work and all that sort of stuff. And when I saw them the next night at the after party, uh, that one of the organizers came to me privately and he said, man, that was great what [01:39:00] you did. Everybody was talking about your speech today. It had an impact.

They're now becoming curious about Bitcoin or less adversarial towards Bitcoiners or whatever. And I think that's something to show moving forward that, look, nobody likes scam artists. There's always going to be scam artists in everything. There's scam artists in Bitcoin or trying to steal other people's Bitcoin.

What are you going to do? Right? That's just how humans behave. But I think if we work towards making it an open space for people who are genuine and want to come in and learn about Bitcoin if they're doing projects whenever like, it's not my thing. But the problem is the authoritarian fiat system and we can all have this common denominator of Bitcoin and if we can do that, that's what's going to grant greater individual freedom to all of us over the long term, and I think a lot of this was just a distraction to get people fighting [01:40:00] with each other.

So I'll share that with you when that speech comes out. Uh, it's one of the ones I'm very proud of because, as I was told, it had an impact reaching to the other side. Many of them are younger, they don't know, and now they're curious about Bitcoin, which I'm going to try to continue to do more and more of that.

Knut: they're a bit curious. Yes.

BJ: That's right! That's a good way to describe it!

[01:40:24] Wrapping Up - Where to Find BJ Dichter

Luke: All right, I think this is the perfect point to wrap this up on because I know we have to let you go here in a bit. So, BJ, can you tell our listeners what you'd like them to check out from your side where they can find you all that?

BJ: Yeah, there's two domains. One is honkingforfreedom. com. That's where you get this book. And by the way, it's Christmas season. And what's very important in this book, there are two chapters in this book. So it's a normie book. It's all the positive stories about Bitcoin. I don't get into a lot of the political [01:41:00] BS and all that sort of stuff.

It's all the heartwarming stories, but there's two chapters. Chapter 29. This was Bitcoin's moment. And chapter 30, Bitcoin Proves Its Power. And this is what I call the soft orange pill. This is for the normies, to give them an introduction to make them curious about Bitcoin. I tell Caribou's story and myself and Sessions and what we were all dealing with at that time.

This is a good word of warning to the normies of why you need Bitcoin and freedom money in your life. So honkingforfreedom. com, it is Christmas soon, it's a great gift, and by the way, this is not partisan. This is designed to resonate with people across the spectrum. And the other one is my personal domain, because I do live streaming now.

I'm in Twitter spaces all the time. My sub stack's got 80 people who subscribe to it, uh, which is BJ... Go to BenjaminJDickter. com and that will lead you to the book, the [01:42:00] sub stack, my locals, my live streaming, uh, or join talks at Cappy Hour with Pubby and the guys and Anders. I'm there with them almost every day and sometimes in Cafe Bitcoin as well.

Knut: Excellent. I'll try to join Pavi and Anders and their toxic happy hour more. But yeah, somehow I have less and less time now that I have more time on my hands.

BJ: Yeah, I hear you.

Knut: Anyway, for your friends and for people who already have your book, go to knutsvanholm. com to find all my stuff, all of my books, all of my videos, and don't forget to like, subscribe, and brush your teeth, uh, and, uh, I absolutely love this conversation, Benjamin, and, uh, we'd love to have you back on again, uh, to, to follow this up at some point.

And the next, next time around, we'll talk about why my name is almost Kant and why you're called BJ Dichter. Yes.

BJ: It's cause it's a [01:43:00] simulation, man. That's more evidence.

Knut: yes. So yeah, thank you, BJ, and see you, see you around and good luck with everything.

BJ: I love it, brother. And we'll talk soon. I'm here anytime you need me.

Knut: Great.

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