[00:00:00] I love Prague
and um, and I was delighted to be invited to speak again. I got invited back if you're, uh, if you're not Bitcoin enough, you don't get invited back to speak. So I've been spending the entire year trying to, trying to convince these guys to let me back on stage. And, [00:00:30] uh, they relented. And I get a chance to present a new set of slides.
My, uh, second best set of slides, 21 Rules of Bitcoin. Uh, I didn't label it the 21 Rules of Bitcoin because everybody's got their rules and, uh, I'm not so presumptuous to think that I know the 21 rules. But I have my 21 rules and I'm delighted to share them with you [00:01:00] today.
I'm gonna start by framing my conversation. Bitcoin's a singularity where science collides with economics, right? Thi this is a profound thing, just like when science collided with astronomy and the Copernican revolution. Just like when science collided with medicine and we realized that [00:01:30] diseases aren't caused by demons, Bitcoin is where science collides with economics, and it ushers in a new age of economic insight, which will profoundly change our political systems, our financial systems, the way we think about the world.
And of course, we all know this. Bitcoin's the world's first perfect money. The human race has lived for thousands and thousands of years with [00:02:00] defective money, seashells, bales of tobacco, glass beads, copper tokens. One day we'll look back and we'll kind of chuckle at silver tokens and copper and pieces of paper and, and we'll wonder how do the human rays get this far.
The implications of perfect money are profound. It's a paradigm shift. It's a, [00:02:30] it's not like your, your assets are appreciating in price. You're just falling through space. This idea of relativity, you're in a relative frame of reference. Everything around you is distorted and, and you have to break out of your frame of reference in order to see the world differently.
I. Einstein did it for us with relativity, but every great scientist has done it, and Satoshi introduced a paradigm shift in [00:03:00] economics and in monetary thought. And so with that as my preamble, I like to talk about the 21 rules of Bitcoin. I'll start with rule number one. Those who understand Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin and those that don't.
Criticize Bitcoin, and you can see in a paradigm shift, it's just so profound. There'll be people [00:03:30] that'll talk about it, and as long as you're talking about it is not clear, you understand it. At the point that things click for you, you're not just gonna talk about it, you're not gonna criticize it. You're going to run, not walk to the nearest place where you can buy Bitcoin.
And for me it was very clear when it clicked, I had to buy it. And on the other hand, the world's full of people that criticize it. They criticize it 'cause they [00:04:00] have not yet grasped the paradigm shift. And if you ha, if it hasn't clicked for you, you'll have 10,000 criticisms. Rule number two, everybody is against Bitcoin before they're for it.
Right. It's, it's not a surprise. Why is this person against Bitcoin? Why is this banker against Bitcoin? Why is this bank against Bitcoin? Why is this politician against Bitcoin? They're against Bitcoin because they don't understand it. [00:04:30] Everybody will be against it. Uh, we're going to introduce such a profound new idea that the natural human reaction.
Of, of a healthy institution, a healthy political system, a healthy intellect is to first reject it. This should not be discouraging. It should not be surprising. It's, uh, it's exactly and, and completely natural that this would happen.[00:05:00]
Rule number three, how do you know you understand bitcoin? Well, the way you know you understand Bitcoin is you realize that you're never fully going to understand Bitcoin. If you think you've understood it, if you've studied it, if you're sure you get it, that means you haven't quite grasped it yet.
People that really embrace brick Bitcoin understand it. They realize you'll never be done learning [00:05:30] about Bitcoin. Never. What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin's not just the protocol, it's not just the software. It's not just the way you interact with it or everyone else that uses Bitcoin interacts with it. Bitcoin's a, it's a virus.
It's, it's an economic virus. It's a monetary virus. It's an ideological virus. It's going to ripple through time and space. So to understand Bitcoin, you have to [00:06:00] understand how. The existing sets of adopters will interact on the layer two, the layer three, the layer four, the layer five. You have to understand how the layer three applications will interact with each other via layer two protocols via layer one protocols.
You have to be thinking about what will people that haven't even discovered Bitcoin be doing with Bitcoin in 10 years, in 50 years and a hundred years. [00:06:30] If you wanna understand Bitcoin, you think about what will 10 billion people a hundred years from now be doing with Bitcoin through 300 million different institutions across protocols and extensions of Bitcoin that have not yet been conceived and have not yet been invented.
So when you consider how the idea will ripple through time, through space, through complexity. Through the endless, uh, ways [00:07:00] that humanity can organize itself, then you grasp the full scope of Bitcoin. How will an artificial intelligent entity created in 10 years living in cyberspace 50 years from now, integrating with a million other ais?
Use bitcoin. Right. That, that this is a profound chain reaction. It's a fire in cyberspace. It's uh, it's [00:07:30] viral through time, through space, through humanity, through all of the various, uh, vestiges of humanity. And of course, once you get that idea, you realize that you don't really know everything that's in the minds of 8 billion people or 300 million corporations, or a billion things that are yet to come.
And with that comes humility. And with that comes a thirst to keep studying Bitcoin. You'll never be done [00:08:00] learning about Bitcoin. Rule number four, Bitcoin's powered by chaos. When you take your money and you put it in a bank and and you save it in a fiat currency, you're loaning your money to a country.
When you, when you take your money and you buy a stock, you're loaning your money to the management team of a company. [00:08:30] When you take your money and you buy a building, you're loaning your money to the mayor of a city. When you take your.