[MUSIC]
All right, everybody, welcome to Phantom Power Business Hour.
Really happy to have a friend of mine here, local from Nashville,
two-time Bitcoin book author, Mr. Chris Bullbey.
He has written two books that we're going to talk about.
One is Bitcoin for kiddos.
I think it's probably the only children's book for Bitcoin on the market,
as well as a book that made me laugh out loud, 99 signs.
You might be a Bitcoin maximalist.
Chris, thank you very much for coming on, buddy.
Yeah, absolutely.
Glad to be here.
Yeah, so let's do a little background first.
I don't want to give away what I read on your website or on the intros of the book,
but tell us how you got in, let's start with how you got into Bitcoin.
I guess you could say I've always been in Bitcoin even before I knew Bitcoin existed.
I've always been a student of money, always trying to figure out how money works,
how the wealthier using money in order to better their lives and buy more assets
and accumulate more things and kind of live the lifestyle that we all see in the Hollywood movies about,
you know, the glamour and the glitz and the fame and the jet setting and all that other kind of stuff.
But I never really knew how to get there.
So I went to school, got a degree in finance and got into sales and I've just basically
been selling most of my life.
And I had a conversation with my dad many, many, many years ago in college and we were talking about
what it would take for the world to get along.
And you know, it's kind of, it kind of comes back to the source here because the conversation we had
was about US and Chinese relationships.
And now we seem to be right back in a situation where US and Chinese relationships are tense.
And one of the things that came out of that conversation, my dad asked me what I thought it would
take for the world to get along. And I said, I think we probably need one money or one one thing that
binds us all back together that we can at least all agree on has value and work off of that.
And at the end of the conversation, we kind of realized that was never going to happen because
there was just too many other differences and too many other political challenges.
So fast forward about a decade later, I'm taking a walk with a buddy of mine just before my first
son was born and he tells me about this thing called Bitcoin. He goes, hey, have you ever heard of
this thing called Bitcoin? And I said, yeah, I've heard of it. I've heard it's for money laundering and
I've heard it's for criminals and at the time there was this website called Silk Road where people
were buying drugs and guns and all sorts of nefarious things on it. And he said, I think you really
need to take a look at it. And I said, I don't think so. You should probably get out of this as well.
And over the course of two hours on this hike, he tried to convince me to take a closer look at Bitcoin
and I tried to convince him all the reasons why it was never going to work. But at the end of that
conversation, he intrigued me enough where I went home and I did a couple of quick Google searches
on it and I found Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper, which is basically the description of what Bitcoin is
and how it's going to change the financial systems and provide a peer-to-peer system of exchange.
And it reminded me of that conversation I had with my dad a decade before.
And I thought to myself, oh my god, this could be that thing.
And so I went down the rabbit hole a little bit deeper and learned about how to buy it in
the exchanges and Coinbase, Crackin, Gemini, all the exchanges that were selling it at the time.
And I just started nibbling at it and just buying a little bit of it and then I'd make a little
profit and then I'd sell it and then I'd see the price start running up higher and I'm like,
whoa, wait a minute, what's going on here? Why is this thing going so fast, so high? And I just started
researching more and more about it and buying a little bit more nibbling away at it and the more
you buy, the more you start, you want to know why you're building this thing and then the price would
crash and then I would want to know even more why I was owning this thing because it seemed really
volatile at the time. And just over time, I just kept talking about it and talking with friends about
it and reading about it and listening to podcasts like yours and other people discussing it.
So finally, my wife said one day, Chris, you keep talking about this thing, you never shut up.
You need to write a book about it for our kids and I was like, write a book about Bitcoin,
are you kidding me? I'm not like an economist. I'm not a journalist. I don't know how to do anything
like that and she said, just think about it. So over the course of a year, I kind of thought about it
and thought about it. I couldn't come up with it. It's such a vast subject. There's so many different
things that you can talk about within Bitcoin. I was like, how am I going to dial this down to
just one concept? And one night I was sitting on the sofa kind of meditating and this idea popped
into my head. And before I knew it, I basically had the outline to the whole book right now.
And my wife's an artist and so she did the illustrations for the kids. She did the illustrations for
the book. I gave her some kind of some ideas on what to draw on each one of the concepts of the
pages and then she kind of went to work. So over the course of about four months while our kids were
sleeping in bed, we'd sit up from about 10 o'clock till 1 o'clock in the morning at the dining room
table, just kind of hatching that ideas and drawing and discussing and putting the book together.
So the name of the book just for everybody, it's called Bitcoin for kiddos and you can actually go
to Bitcoin for kiddos.com and see it and you can buy it there. You can also buy it on Amazon.
And this was self-published, right? Like you guys did it through your own because you've got a
website, btcpublish.com, right? Yeah, yeah. Cool. So they can find it at btcpublish.com, they can find it
at Bitcoin for kiddos.com and then they can find it at Amazon, right? Yeah, you can buy it on Amazon,
so it costs a little bit more on Amazon because Amazon charges a lot of fees. Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that
when I was doing some research on it because you live like five, 10 minutes away from me and I'm
like, "Why do you say, "Why is Amazon charging more for this?" Anyways, you just rattled through a bunch
of the questions that I had for the book and I wanted to comment really quick too, but I mean,
I love your origin story. You're just nibbling away at it. But the absolute beginnings of it comes from
a desire for everybody to get along, a desire for everybody to live peacefully together. That's where
your thought process started. I also love your wife's story that I saw. I can't remember which book I
saw it in or if it was on the website. And I won't give it away, but she talked about reading another
woman's experiences in life and how Bitcoin was able to improve that woman's life and that's what
was kind of like the tipping point for Frida, your wife. Did I pronounce that right? Frida?
Frida. Yes. Frida. So that was kind of like the tipping point for your wife to really buy in on this
with respect to its benefit for everyone. Yeah. Yeah, it was a story of, I believe the woman was from
Afghanistan, yeah, on a day. And she was living in a very impoverished life married under the thumb of
her husband in an incredibly male dominated society. And she was in it was an abusive relationship.
And she discovered Bitcoin in a way for her to make her own money and ultimately make enough money
writing articles and kind of telling her story that she was able to save up enough money and to
get out of that relationship and leave the country ultimately, I believe. And she was only able to do
that through Bitcoin and getting her story out on the internet to the world and then having them
compensate her from around the world in a form of money that she could store and hold herself.
That wasn't confiscatable. It wasn't subjects to the rules and regulations of either her husband or
or the banking system. Yeah, that's such a massive benefit that I don't think people understand is
possible and is happening with Bitcoin. I mean, I like to believe that we're all philanthropic at heart.
And to have that power in your hand with your phone, with your lightning wallet, with your
on-chain Bitcoin, whatever, to be able to change somebody's life in another part of the world
instantly. And to do so without any sort of interference, without any sort of middlemen is just
it's so powerful. And I find that that really resonates with women when you're telling them about
what Bitcoin is. But let's get back to the book real quick, Bitcoin for kiddos. Tell me real quick,
what was the easiest part of the book to write? Because this was your first, as you said earlier,
in the interview. What was the easiest part of the book to write? And what was the hardest part of
the book to write? For me, my wife always tells me that I'm a good storyteller, but for me,
the challenge is always getting the story started. Where to start? What's page one? What's the original
I, what's the idea? And then, so once I had the first kind of sentence, the book starts out with,
Bitcoin is something is something quite rare. It was not something you'll find in your pocket
or under your chair. So the whole story is written in rhyme. And at that moment when I was meditating
on it, I was like, "Man, Bitcoin is something, it's something special." Just that thought really
kind of was the kick start to, and I was like, "Well, why is it special? What is it?" And just
from there, it just kind of manifested itself. Again, it took me a year to think of a concept,
about 45 minutes to write the whole story out. So it's almost serendipitous of that respect.
You know, there's a synergy there to songwriting because like, you're like, "Damn, I got an idea."
Like, I know I want to write about X and you're mulling on it and you're mulling on it. And then that
first line comes to you and then the whole thing just cascades out. And you know, it's funny.
Another comparison I'll say is that songwriters, sometimes they'll fight and fret and
just beat a song up that they're trying to write over the course of two or three weeks,
you know, two or three months, or they've had ideas in my head for years that I've never been able
to finish. And then one day, something pops in your head and the whole damn thing comes out in 45
minutes, just like you said. You know? So I think there's a synergy there to, you know, from being an
author to being a songwriter. What type of reaction have you received from kids
about this book? Yeah, they really love it. They really love the illustrations in the book and they
really love the rhyming style of it. And it's written simplistically enough where even if you're
new to Bitcoin or you don't understand money or you don't understand the 2008 financial crisis,
it's engaging enough. There's enough going on in it where it's a fun story and it's easy to remember.
Yeah. Well, I'll give you credit. Like I really like the way that it's written. You know, kids are
smarter than we give them credit for. And I liked the fact that you threw some big words in there
for them to really chew on, so to speak, you know, like you use the word paper, you use the word currency,
you use the term ivory tower. You know, kids that they're naturally curious, they're going to
ask questions. And I really like the fact that you threw out just enough big words in there to get them to
you know, to think and to ask questions. And then of course, I also loved how it ended. And I won't
give it all away with the end. And the side bar comments that are made in some of the illustrations,
like the one that stuck out to me is why do all the boring things go up in price and the fun stuff
goes down in value over time. I mean, those are those are some big topics to cover with kids.
Yeah, we wanted to we wanted to create a story that would create kind of a platform for parents to
be again, engaging in their with their kids about money. Because growing up, I grew up in a family
with two entrepreneurial parents. And the discussion of money and business was something that we
talked about the dinner table all the time. And as my brother and I got older, we of course had to
help our parents where we could with with their businesses, whether it be stuffing embellopes or,
you know, linking stamps or all sorts of things way back in the day. Compared to my wife's family
who she grew up in a fairly well off family. But money was never discussed. So the women in the
household didn't really understand money like the men did and it created a sort of barrier
in communication. And I never wanted that to happen in my relationship. And I wanted my kids
the earlier you learn about money, the easier it becomes to understanding and using to your
advantage. Like a sport or like a song. The first time you play the song, it's clunky, it's hard,
it's difficult. But the more you practice that at the easier it becomes and the more fluid things
become. And you can kind of see the trap that you're you're moving down before it even happens.
And so that's kind of the idea we've taken with the concept of money and finance for our kids too.
Get them started early and get them started often. So it doesn't become this taboo subject later in
life. Yeah, fantastic. You know, I think as a parent, I think the the two most important things you can
give your kids. Number one is your time. And number two is a great thought process. You know,
a good critical thinking skill. And and by writing this book, I think you I think you've done that.
It's really impressive. What what what what have your kids thought about this book? You I know you've
got two kids. What what do they think about it? Yeah, they they like it. My my daughter reads it all
the time, but she's at the bathroom. Got it memorized. She's put it to music and then my my son he
hears about Bitcoin so frequently now he's he's he's almost bored with it. He's yeah, he's not either way.
Yeah. Well, did you get any sort of yeah, you know, when you write a song or you write a book or
or you're crafting a sales presentation, you're always thinking of, hey, this is what the message is.
But then somebody interprets it in a different way in a positive way and you're like,
oh, that's cool. I didn't even think about it in that respect. Like, did you get any sort of
unintended positive feedback from this book? Yeah, there's if you go to the the Twitter account.
There's a lot of testimonials from families that have read the book and comments of how
their children spoke up about certain concepts or topics within the book that they found is their
favorite parts. You know, it's and it's one of the things that I love about podcasts and, you know,
living in the time that we live in right now because the access to information is so easy to get.
And the way we the way we think about things is is different from person to person. And so listening
to these conversations allowed me to kind of, yeah, think about things in a way I hadn't thought about
them before and kind of get new insight into, you know, so what a lot of people would consider
really complicated topics. But just listening to conversations from, you know, people a lot smarter
than me and people who have had this conversation a lot longer than me, the way they're able to break
it down and simplify the concepts in a way that is more relatable to my life as it has really helped
in the educational process of learning more about Bitcoin because by all means am I not an expert
or I'm definitely not an expert at Bitcoin. But I continue to just just plug away on it and keep
learning more about it. Well, I'll tell you every time we've talked either when we met per copy
that one day or when we played golf, like I always walk out of the conversation or even if I run into
you for a couple of minutes at Bitcoin Park, like you always drop like a little nugget that lead to just
you know, it's like a bowling ball kick and kicked around on my head and I'm like, oh god,
I got to write that down and figure out what the hell he was talking about.
You always give me a lot of, you ought to get as the young kids say, man, you're spitting bars,
you know, like you, you're one of the guys that I know whenever I see you or I know whenever I talk to you,
you're gonna, you're gonna give me something new to think about and I greatly appreciate that.
Yeah, that's, in by the way, I don't know what the hell happened to my camera there.
We're not used, we're not gonna use the video, but for some reason my camera cracked out. So
all right, let's move on to the next book, which I seriously laughed out loud at a bunch of these signs.
Your second book is called 99 Signs, you might be a Bitcoin maximalist and
this is a really great gift for any friend who is in Bitcoin, either one year and or 10 years in.
It's a fun read, it's a great, kind of like a great coffee table type thing.
Tell me about your thought process behind writing it and how that whole thing kicked off.
Yeah, well, several years ago back in the Bitcoin space, there was some people in the all-coin space
that were trying to find ways to poke fun at Bitcoiners. And, you know, I thought it was really
funny because Bitcoiners already know these things about themselves. It's what makes us,
it's what makes us unique in the sense that we can take a kind of a lighter hearted look at ourselves
and realize the outside world that we may be seeing a little crazy if you want or a cult
ask for religion like we get a lot in the space. Yeah. And I was just thinking about some of the things
that I think about it, what I hear other Bitcoiners in the space talk about and think about
and you know, in our world right now memes are a really big part of the online communication style
and you know, like the saying goes, it picturesets a thousand words. And so honestly, my wide
window to store one day with the kids and I was sitting down at the table and I was listening
to some podcasts and some reading some articles and going through Twitter and I was kind of thinking of
Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian, you know, like this is your sign. I do. You might be a red neck if.
Yeah. And so I started thinking of the idea, you know, you might be a Bitcoin maximal if
you think these things. And I just started, I wrote down one and then I wrote down two and then,
you know, before I knew it, I had 25 different ones. And then I was like, okay, well, you know,
let's see how far I can get. And before I knew that I had like a hundred of them. And so my
wife comes home from the grocery store and while she's putting groceries away, I just started reading
it to her and she started laughing and we're like, okay, you know, this could be the next book that we do.
And then so we wanted to go to El Salvador to visit and to, you know, El Salvador is known as a
Bitcoin country now. Now they have Bitcoin as legal tender in the country. And we wanted to go the
first year after that was done so we could kind of see where El Salvador was at and then go back
several years later and see, you know, how Bitcoin, if at all, it had changed the country, which
for anybody who is following El Salvador now knows that Bitcoin is changing the country. And there
have been remarkable changes to the infrastructure, to the crime rates, to people's prosperity,
people are actually leaving the United States and moving back to El Salvador because it's a safer,
a much safer country and a lot more business-friendly than it used to be. And so while we were down
there on that trip, we wrote out all of the different little comics and memes that are in the book.
What a great, dude, you're an artist more than you are a sales guy, I think. I mean, you're a,
you are a storyteller. Now, how many, you've got 99 here in this book. How many did you leave out?
Not too many. After I read it through several of them, a lot of them were very similar, almost
duplicated. So once we eliminated those and figured out whether or not we were hitting the same topic twice,
then it just kind of naturally said, these are going to be 99 or 101.
Yeah, that's a good, that's a good title. You got another one coming out, like you have version two,
because culturally, as you were alluding to with the memes and the education process and the
advancements of Bitcoin, I would imagine you're probably driving around, you're like, "Oh, damn,
there's another sign." Like, you know, like, "I got to write volume two."
Yeah, yeah. No, not right now. You know, life with two kids is a lot busier than one kid and I'm a
traveling sales guy and I want to make time for my family and for Bitcoin. We have a couple of
other concepts that are written down that we've been mowing over, but the words haven't come out yet.
Yeah. So, you know, like you were saying with music writing, if you can mull over something for a long
time and then finally it all just kind of spills out, I've had to learn with myself not to rush the
process and to just let it become more organic and let it happen when it happens. When the time is
right, it'll happen. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I mean, if you force anything, I think, in the creative
world, you end up not being true to yourself. You're not being true to what the message
should be. You know, I think if you force something, you're allowing your process to get
poisoned for lack of a better word by selfishness or by influence or whatever. And it's, you know, if
if you've got an original idea, just keep feeding that original idea organically and I think the
best of it will come out in time. So they can buy this book on BTCPublish.com as well as Amazon.com.
Man, this is so neat. Like I'm sure maybe 10 years ago when you thought about it or when you were
starting your professional career after college, you didn't realize you were going to be a published
author, so to speak. Well, I'm a self-published author. Anybody get self-publish.
It's still published. Come on. Pat yourself on the back, dude.
But yeah, seeing the community accept it and buy it and like it and talk about it, that's really
that makes us happy. That really helps us feel like we're moving the needle in the Bitcoin space
and helping with helping people educate themselves on money and hopefully how to live a better life,
right? Because we're only here once, you know, it's not like a video game where you get three lives,
you only get one life and then the longer you spend it in a place you don't want to be the more of it
you've wasted. So get out there and do what you love and don't worry about what anybody else
thinks about you or your decisions because at the end of the day it's your life you're living,
not theirs. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. 100%. Well, I would be remiss if I didn't
get your opinion on a couple of things going on with Bitcoin recently. Before we get there,
I mean, what was your favorite comment or favorite idea in Bitcoin for kiddos and what were your
two favorite signs in the 99 sites? Okay, so going back to Bitcoin for kiddos, I'll reiterate, I love
the, there's a bunch that I loved about it. Number one, you use some big words that are going to force
kids to ask and you're going to force them to pry open their brain and get away from Nickelodeon
for a little while. So that's number one, number two, the last page with the family they're sitting on
the planet, that the message that you put out and I don't want, I'm not going to read it here,
I don't want to give it away because I want people to buy the book. But I was like, okay, that's cool.
Damn it. That's that's needed. And then the other, there is like right in the middle of the book,
I want to say where there is that everything's for sale, low or no money down, like you had that
sidebar comment or Frida had that sidebar comment, why do all the boring things go up in price and
the fun stuff goes down in value over time? Really great thought process for kids. Again, I fully believe
that their kids are always a hell of a lot smarter than we give them credit for. And there's nothing
wrong with talking to them like their adults. There's nothing wrong with using big words around them.
You you give them a mental challenge and you will be surprised at what they give you back. So
that answer, does that answer your question on on the kids book? Yeah, it's one of my favorite pages
too. It's a page that we took a lot of time writing down and that concept of money versus currency
and what the difference is and how it's a rabbit hole that one page is a is a master's class you could
get in college just all written at one page. Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. Okay. And then the two signs
that I liked the sign number one, let's just call it the dosekies guy. Yeah. Right. That one made
be like right off the bat I laughed out loud. I'm like, yeah. Okay. I get it. Well, I want to give it
to give people a sense of what it is. Okay. So all right. All right. So this this is page
seven of the book and it's sign one. You've read the entire Bitcoin white paper. And what I'll do is
I'll I'll put this up as a chapter so people could see it. But then there's a picture of that there's
a drawing and illustration of what everybody would know would be the dosekies guy. And he says,
I don't always send money to Nigeria. But when I do, I send Bitcoin like absolutely.
Interesting man in the world. Yeah. That is such a great campaign. Yeah. I love that. I absolutely
love that I laughed out loud at it. And then I would say sign 57. You love pointing out all the
things that Bitcoin fixes and you've got an illustration there of the cost of food going up,
the cost of education going up, the cost of real estate, sea song, but going up and the cost of fuel
going up. Those two, the more, you know, as you know, I'm I'm I'm only about a year into this. But
the more I read the more I'm like, damn, like it like Bitcoin does not all of these problems out of
the park rationally, you know, and and gets rid of that centralized control that invisible hand that
pushes the rest of us down or keeps us in our place, so to speak. So those two are the the very
first one made me laugh out loud and made me want to read the rest of the book. And then 57 is a great
example of just how in-depth Bitcoin goes. Goes are my two. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you,
man. I think it's a great book. I can't wait for a I can't wait for for for for version two. So to speak.
The next one. Hey, let me ask you a couple of quick quick questions about just what you're take on
some of the issues recently, some of the cultural events surrounding Bitcoin. I was listening to
Natalie Brinnell the other day and she was talking about the price of Bitcoin after the ETFs
got approved and how the price went down. What are your thoughts on on that? Just, you know,
because I always ask these types of questions of you because I know you're studying it and you're
always in your hell of a lot further along in the process than I am. But what are your thoughts on
that price drop since the ETF approval? No, that's a good question. And I definitely have it spending
a lot of time on it and you know, follow to the run up to the ETF approval and, you know, now two
weeks past the ETF approval. And you know, it's kind of one of those things where it's always hindsight is
2020, right? Where until the approval of the ETF, the narrative was there's a wall of cash that's
looking to get into Bitcoin, but they can't hold it or custody it themselves. So they can't buy it on
Coinbase exchange. And it has to be in the form of an ETF. And but once that ETF is approved,
then all these financial institutions and pension funds and, you know, basically all the finance
was going to get into the space. And so it seems rational, but I guess the overexuberance of that was
the message was kind of put out there in a way where it made it sound like the money was going to
come all at once, right? Where in reality, most of financial advisors or most of the financial
industry wasn't sold on the fact that Bitcoin ETF was actually going to be approved. So they spent
zero time educating themselves on what Bitcoin is, how it solves a lot of the clonkiness in our
current financial system, how it allows for the peer to peer transfer of
money between individuals in real time and final settlement and being your own bank,
basically, and a lot of the stronger conceptual things of Bitcoin, none of these people did any research
on, none. And so now that the ETF is approved in CNBC and the financial times and everybody,
all the contributors, they were all saying this is going to be the sell the news event. And everybody
in Bitcoin said, no, no, no, this is just the start, you know, everything's going to be great. But I
feel like people didn't think about the whole grayscale trust. And how many people were really upset
a year and a half ago or two years ago when this trade that people in the Bitcoin space were
putting on that was called, they called it a contango trade. Now, I'm not an expert, so don't ask me how
to really explain what that is. But in general, what it was is it was allowing people to basically buy
into this Bitcoin trust, the grayscale Bitcoin trust at a discount, but then be able to mark on their
on their books or in accounting ways, take advantage of the of the market price of Bitcoin, which was
at a premium. And so they could capture the difference between what they bought it and what the true price
if it was and make make that profit in the middle, basically arbitrage. And so more and more people started
piling into this and piling into this and piling into this and companies like Celsius and Voyager and
FTX were all piling into this trade, and that's where a lot of their money came from. And when this trade
unwound and blew up and Celsius turned out they didn't have the Bitcoin they said they had and when
people started doing a run on the exchange and pulling their Bitcoin out they didn't have it. So they
went bust and Voyager the same and that FTX the same. And then all of this money that was locked and
then so the price of Bitcoin started dropping quickly and people couldn't get their money out of the
grayscale trust because the trust in the trust Bitcoin could never be sold from it. It goes in it
goes in there it gets locked up basically forever until the road map always said that they were going to
get an ETF and then that was going to unlock the value for people to be able to take their profits out.
But the way it all unfolded was the complete opposite. And so now when people are sitting at a 20, 30,
40% loss in the grayscale trust when it finally was approved for the ETF in that wealth was able to
become unlocked and capture people were so upset that they just started selling it right because two
reasons one because they didn't want to hold their money with grayscale anymore because of the
the situation that they put it in just from an ethical business standpoint. And the other reason was
is because the grayscale fee is like one and a half percent where like the black rock fee is
like point two or point three percent. So the profit margins for the individual investor in the other
ETFs are much better. And so people started selling the grayscale trust which in one side was great
because it provided liquidity for the other ETFs that did have money flowing into them to be able to buy
the Bitcoin. And so now we're just kind of seeing this balancing of the Bitcoin flowing out of the
grayscale trust into the other ETFs while all of us hardcore Bitcoin maximalists continue to buy
the dip you know when it went to 48 and then it dropped down to 38 I was buying I didn't I wasn't worried
about it because the fundamentals of Bitcoin haven't changed how it how it solves all these
problems around the world for you know and anybody anybody outside the United States hasn't changed
and so it becomes another good buying opportunity and you know as we've seen the the price has already
hung back up to 42,000. Yeah so these kind of volatile price changes are incredibly common to Bitcoin
and just like we were talking about earlier with the more you practice something the better you get at it
the more you suffer these these big downward price movements the less they start to affect your
emotions and when you're when you're dealing with assets and buying and selling any kind of
whether it's a stock or a bond or a house or anything else you really don't want emotions to get
involved which is incredibly hard to do it takes practice and that's why you know the kings of
industry or whatever they almost seem like sociopaths like they have no emotion on anything because
they've been wrecked once or twice before in their past and they you know they they've learned how
to manage their expectations and their emotions better. Well I guess for me that's a great that's a great
explanation and thank you and I guess for me like what I don't understand when I look at at the price
and I think of the people out there who are massive holders you know like Michael Sailer's company
and some other large firms that are buying up as much as they can I I was really surprised to see the price
stay down at around 40 for a couple of days or a week or whatever it was because I looked at that I'm like
damn why aren't you know why isn't more people you know buying right now and driving the price right
back up like I was in my limited knowledge I was just surprised to see the drop and that's really
all I'm saying and I was surprised that you know we didn't hear about somebody major coming in and
you know buying up X amount and and and pushing the price back up. Yeah well I mean it's just one
of those things where it's you know it's a supply and demand type of thing right. Yeah so there was a
lot of supply that was that had been locked up that became available and there was a lot of demand too
but you know there was you know billions of dollars in demand and you know unfortunately
several billions of dollars of more supply. But these are these are short time frame things you know
in another three months no one will even remember this little blip and in the drop of the Bitcoin price
so you know the Bitcoin price is just kind of you know what what a lot of us say in this space is
when we're asked how do we get into Bitcoin and it's like well we came for the fiat gains and stayed
for the revolution and and I'm sure you've heard that before or yeah along those lines and maybe
you were even you know one of those people who came in like like we all did because we're all looking
for a way to live a better a better life and we all realize that there's something fundamentally
broken with our money with the dollar system with the with the fiat system which is basically
fiat is just a fancy word for saying a piece of paper contract that's supposed to be attached
to something of value and it's not anymore and but people don't see okay I'm gonna go down a
little bit of a rabbit hole here go for it when you think of everybody we all deal with money
and we've all dealt with money since you know as early as probably since our earliest memories
and what we don't think about is where that money comes from and how what gives it value right we
just assume it's taken for granted because when we were born it had value quote unquote and here we
are still living in a world where we use it to buy things of value so it must have value still
but we don't we're terrible at remembering the past and we're terrible about studying history
on the whole not everybody but society in general because it's painful to think about some of
the things in the past have happened and you know we'd much rather think about the future because the
future is always brighter right and in 1971 when Nixon took some took us off the gold standard
we were not the the U.S. dollar was no longer paid to anything any asset it used to be paid to gold
at silver now it's not paid to anything and so when 2008 happened the financial crisis happened
and then we started having all of these stimulus packages that entered the marketplace and
at first asset prices went down and then they started skyrocketing and people just saw their
ability to be able to afford a home just get further and further out of reach but they couldn't really
understand why it was happening and then COVID happened and then the government injected trillions
of dollars into the marketplace and then we saw what happened last year with the incredible high
inflation rates that we got and so now the governments or the federal banks are trying to get all
that money out of the system which is why interest rates are so high but asset prices are still high
because they keep saying okay inflation we want inflation to be 2% when inflation was at 10%
there's a we're going to get it down to 2% but what they don't tell you is okay well all that all
those assets that increased at that 10 to 15% amount those are not going back to the prices that
it was in 2008 those are going to stay high they're just not going to appreciate in price as quickly
so things that became unattainable for people like homes right now is you know is a big is a big problem
those prices are not going to come back down that far because the government has been spending
so much money and taking on so much debt you know using the the government credit card if you will
yeah to continue to finance this lavish lifestyle that we can't afford and so when they decide that
they can't do that anymore that basically means the demise of the dollar and the demise of the world
as we know it now which basically means that there's no turning back we've we've reached a point where
the debt load is so high there's no amount of economic growth that can happen that will help us pay
down that debt and get our financial house back in order basically in the in the in the regular world
what a normal person would do in that situation is file for bankruptcy or default in some form
and if the u.s. government were to default on its debts it would basically completely unwind
this imaginary value that the world has put on the currency and people would run from the
dollar as fast as possible which would basically make the dollar worth less or worthless and they can't
do that so what they need to do is they need to continue to spend they need to continue to drive
asset prices higher so that they can continue to play this fiat game of artificial wealth
and so those of us who are beginning to do the work who have seen kind of the wizard behind the
curtain in the in the wizard of boss sort of analogy realize that there's nothing special about
the dollar there's nothing special at all you know we won world war one we won world war two we had to
recapitalize the world because we were a huge industrial powerhouse in the in the middle of the
1900s and we needed people to sell them to so we had to basically fix the world economies to give
the strength so that they could start buying our stuff and now we have completely stripped out our
entire industrial complex in the United States where we hardly make anything anymore in fact China
makes all the stuff or Europe makes the stuff and we buy it all from them so in order for us to
build our country back in a way that would give our money value is we would actually need more
industrial infrastructure here in the United States I agree but because our dollar is so strong
the amount of money we would have to pay employees to do that would make our products
unaccessible for the rest of the world because they couldn't afford them right yeah so it's this
is this really precarious situation that we find ourselves in right now and going going back to
you know wide bitcoin why bitcoin is because it's a decentralized money the digital money
we as as the younger generations understand the power of digital wealth and how companies can
just have an online presence and have value you know amazon google facebook yes time you know my space
you know napster was kind of one of the first ones that really you know not to talk about that
in the music industry but in one sense it destroyed the music industry and in another sense it
rebuilt it from the ground up in a way that was much more advantageous to the consumers of music
right yeah and it also pointed the signs of distribution you know it realligned the the paths of
distribution for musicians especially independent musicians you know yeah it's kind of like the idea
of the phoenix right and uh out of the out of the flames of the death of the phoenix you know is
re re born a new um and that's kind of you know napster is to music as bitcoin is to finance
wow that's a great that's a great analogy i hadn't thought about it like that i'm going to
steal that from you i didn't thought about it so just right now too damn dude i never had to put
bitcoin and bit and music together before so well that that's a great way to wrap up this whole
conversation because of course you know that like what we do with the four podcasts that we put out
and that we try to put out it because that they are nine times out of ten they're focused on
musicians and and what we have seen with musicians posting their music in the bitcoin space be it
through wave lake or self-hosting through rss feeds or things like that like and starting to make
some decent money every month and it's and it's still the early stages like this isn't even the first
inning or the first quarter man this is preseason you know this is spring training and um the
opportunities that align that are out there for musicians in the value for value space
this is what's happening now is very much napter 2.0 for the for the music industry and this
and this direct link between the listener and the artist that you know via the via value for value
the direct compensation of you know i'm listening to chris's band play down here in in
Nashville and i'm like man that band's great i'm going to send them some bitcoin directly i'm
missing them some satoshi's directly you know we've never had that before you know uh the the ability
for somebody in another country to listen to your band and send you sats directly and and support
you directly we've never had that before so it very much is napster 2.0 but um yeah i i i see your
analogy napster is you know bitcoin is to to finance what napster was to the music industry so it's
going to change everything so cool man chris thank you very much for coming on uh really appreciate it
don't forget everybody you can find his books at btcpublish.com uh don't buy them on amazon buy them straight
from the website is that that the better way to do it buy them from the website you'll get the same
experience at a lower cost right and chris will probably sign them for you um both of these books are
great gift ideas great for kids uh the the 99 signs book uh is is such a funny way of looking at it
and and i think it's uh it it should be in the library of everybody who owns bitcoins so i i uh
i'm happy to help you uh spread the word of this book and uh look forward to the next one you're
going to write i don't know you know however many years it's going to take do let let me know and
uh what we'll do it again appreciate that right chris all right buddy have a great day we'll
see you soon all right you too thank you so my thanks to chris for coming on the show and joining us
make sure you go to btcpublish.com and you can buy those two books i got uh copies of them i love them
bitcoin for kiddos is great for young kids and 99 signs is is a perfect gift for that maximalist
in your life you know what i you know what i thought would be kind of cool it's kind of like a
bro man's gift right i love that idea um hey next week on the fan some power business hour we've got
Brian de mint from the orange bill app coming in that'll come out a week from today today is the
is Monday the 29th right uh don't forget on wednesday we will have the next phantom power music hour
which is pretty much an hour of uh music right all value for value sometimes i shake it up sometimes
i do jazz sometimes i do a chill sometimes i do edm this week is going to be uh just your standard
pop and rock stuff love it love it love it and then friday we've got phantom power music review where
i'm going to dive into three songs until you what i like about them and kind of deconstruct them
and who knows you might even hear me play a little bit of piano as i deconstruct them so
thank you guys so much for listening if you like the show please send us some sats
reach out to us via noster or telegram or twitter if you've got any suggestions or a guest
that you would like to see on the show happy to accommodate and i think that'll do it good good
don't forget to smile for the mugshot guys see you later
you
(upbeat music)