Bitcoiners are going to be the richest people on planet Earth,

and you're going to have connections to those people because you do

business with them. So when I went to my barber and paid in Bitcoin for

Yeah, three Bitcoin. But then he turned around, he actually

The government encourages you to stack this money for

retirement. And now they're coming into the very end and say, actually, we need some

of that now. And this is part of the reason why a lot of people are now thinking we need to get out

If somebody is going to leave, I think it's really important to leave loud and

to let people know that you're taking a lot of money with you. Bitcoin is

What advice do you have for parents who want to raise financially sovereign

and Bitcoin literate young men and women? Supposedly. I'm

Matthew Fraser and this is Crypto Collective. After

making millions with Amazon and e-commerce, I realized that

if I was starting again today, crypto would be my

first choice. I'm here to help you take your first steps

and build real wealth. Ready to set yourself up for life?

Let's go! Today's guest is Brian DeMint, author of best-selling

books, Bitcoin Evangelism and Parallel, a leading voice

in the world of Bitcoin. We dive into why digital money was

always inevitable and to why huddling might not

I got my hydration, my hydration drink, my electrolytes, so I'll

be good to go. But yeah, next time, if I'm gonna be dehydrated anyways, I might just be

Yeah, exactly. You might as well do that. I've actually done

some Kyokushin karate in my time. I've spent about 10 years doing

that. So I think there's certainly a synergy there in, I

think, The Bitcoin movement, martial arts,

discipline, I think there's something that's, I think, you

Yeah, no doubt. I was just at that,

I mean, I don't know, kind of wrapping, but there was

a lot of that. I was at the Bitcoin conference in Vegas. Did you go to that? Did

No, last time I was in Vegas, I was, nothing

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's the funny thing was that it was, you

know, half the conference I'm talking to guys about, uh, health and

martial arts and fitness and those, you know, it's, it's all these big corners, but

that's, that's kind of the fun thing that you get to talk about because you know that

there's all these branches and that sort of thing where like, it's, it's so funny cause

it's the last thing you think you'd be talking about in Las Vegas is health and

taking care of yourself when everybody there is just like a

wreck. You know, you walk through the casinos and it's kind of, it's a little, it's a little sad

Yeah, that's so true. I mean, I've taken steps, I guess, in my life. I'm in

my mid-40s now. And I think the Bitcoin journey

helped me also to obviously understanding money, and

the broken money, and also from a

holistic level of health, Freedom

as well is become a really big thing for me right now, and I'm happy to talk about

that as well And so I guess and so my wife and I

are on this journey now like she's now started going to the gym Like I'm going the

gym like four days a week She's now going the gym to just things like this right

because we're thinking about the future and I guess having the best life

possible Which combines with you know, the Bitcoin? Ethos.

no doubt. I get asked that question a lot. It's like, why are

Bitcoiners so into health and wellness? And why

do they read so much? And that sort of thing. I think the common thread

is, and it's not that everybody goes from Bitcoin into health. My

wife, she was the opposite. She was very holistic and healthy, and

we recognized that at a certain point years ago,

probably 8 or 10 years ago, the health podcast that she would

listen to or she would watch, for whatever reason, every once in a

while, there would be a Bitcoiner on there. And it was vice versa. On

the Bitcoin podcast, there would be somebody talking about health. And we're like, oh, it's

weird that there's a cross-pollination between these two. But I think it's

that underlying principle of, in first principles, you

ask, what's in my, and fill in the blank. So

what's in my food? If you ask that question, what's in my food? Or what am I doing with my

body? Or those types of things, you tend to ask, what's in my money? Or

how does my money work? And so you tend to be that type of inquisitive person

who, is willing to dig a little bit deeper. And so that's, to

me, that's the common thread. And that's why we arrive at these same

things. We're truth seekers or we're people, it's not just truth seeking, but

it's people that are willing to dig and be uncomfortable and

kind of be wrong for a little bit. And then, you know, hopefully refine that.

And, you know, it's almost the scientific method, but in real life

Yeah, that's so true. I love that truth seeking because I think another

dynamic to this was which sort of sprouted during COVID. That

was the lockdowns. I mean, we had one in our, I don't know if you know, but in

Australia, in the state of Victoria, was the longest lockdown in

all of the world. They locked that place down. And

I think it was that moment too that also opened my eyes to

government overreach, government control, not

listening to the mainstream narrative. This

all blended into then, Finding Bitcoin on

you know, realizing that the money system was broken not trusting what

was just being sprouted through through mainstream media And

so that's that was I guess my shift which is now transgressed right

into More from a freedom side of things. Let

me let me ask you this though, because I mean I've been to America a few

times and I love the country. I absolutely

love it and There's a big shift in

Australia right now of moving out of Australia because we've got

this big tax regime. Now, you've got a president now who

is talking about, obviously, no

tax on tips. That was the big one that's just gone through, right? No tax on tips. But

also, not taxing crypto

or Bitcoin, like no capital gains tax, things like that. So

is there a movement in America for people who are thinking we want to

get out of America? Or is it just how I feel like people in Australia who

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of one of the nice things of the way that the United States is

set up. I live in California, and so people

commonly call it commie-fornia. It's just amongst the

United States, California, New York, the two coasts, with

the two largest cities. New York's the biggest city in the United States,

and LA, close to where I'm at, is the second biggest city. I

mean, you're talking about population densities of millions and tens of millions

of people in these cities. And so they tend to outvote

the rest of the state. If you were to look at a map of California, it's

almost all red. It's almost all Republican, but it's, a

Republican's probably not gonna win an election here

in any of the next coming cycles. I mean, it's just very unlikely. And

the reason being is because these cities, these densely populated areas just

outweigh the rest of the state. in terms of how much vote and

swing they have. I mean, we have super majorities of Democrats here,

which, you know, again, Democrats for the international audience,

the Democrats are the party of collectivism. Republicans aren't

immune to collectivism, but still we

tend to, the Republican side tends to be a little bit more individualistic And

all that to say is I don't think that so many people are looking

to move out of the United States as they are, we see this

a lot, people looking to move out of California. It's kind of

the brilliance of the way that the United States

was formed is that if you don't like legislation in one place, then there's

very different legislation in a different state. um because of

the separation of powers of states the separation between the

federal government and the power of the states the states have a lot of

power basically for anybody that doesn't know if something is not

outlined um if a power is not given to

the federal government in our constitution if it's just not

mentioned that's that power automatically goes

to the state. So everything that's not mentioned in the constitution goes

to the state. So the states actually have quite a bit of legislative authority.

And so if you go to, or if you're somebody

that's very conservative and you don't like the tax burden that is here in

California, or people have heard about in California, if you

leave your Bitcoin or crypto on exchanges, it can get seized

here. I don't know if you've seen that. I don't think that's entirely true. I think that's actually,

that's probably a little overblown because that's, There's more

details to that. It's not as simple as them just going in and taking it. That

principle still holds true. You should probably hold the keys to your

Yeah. That's the lesson there. All that to say is if you don't like those policies, it's

very easy. I've had family that's moved to Arizona,

which is one state over from where we're at. You can get there in four hours by

driving and there's really nice areas there as well. completely

different type of government form, not

form of government, but in terms of politics in that place. And so, yes,

I run a chain of wellness studios out here. The number

one reason that people cancel is because they're moving out of state. And

so that's, it's just something that we fight as entrepreneurs.

I have a kind of a philosophy that we don't need to go in necessarily unless

you care, but like there's a reason I think that some people decide to

stay in these areas. And I don't know if you're, maybe you're the same way, but I think that

there's a fight to be had. And if we

constantly are moving away from policy we don't like,

then we're conceding ground. And so I'm a big fan of being

willing to die on hills. And saying, you know what, no,

I don't want the Overton window to get shifted so

far beyond. And maybe there's a time where my family

needs to get up and move to a different state, or maybe the United States

becomes so bad. I mean, that was a lot of talk during COVID under the Biden

administration. A lot of conservatives will wear where am I going to go? I'm going

to try and go, you know, maybe we'll move to El Salvador, you know,

that type of thing. But I think that we're placed here for

such a time as this to be in it. Thankfully,

you know, our forefathers fought revolutions. They had to go out on, you know, load

up a musket and go out on a battlefield. We get to have a peaceful

revolution where we have tools, we have money, we have the

internet, we have social networks of people, not

just social networks like Facebook, but actual social person-to-person

networks of what we're doing right now. We're forming something that

no generation in history had the ability to do what we're doing right now and

come together as a freely associating collective, which

is very different than a government collective. And we have a very powerful

movement to shift things. And it just takes

brave men and women that are willing to do that. So if somebody wants

to move because it's not the right fit for their family, I don't begrudge them.

I think that that's for some people in certain times and places, I've

had friends that were very deep into the political fights

here in California, but they were getting threats. They were getting and

they have young kids, I get it. If that's the case, then maybe you

need to do what's right for your family. But it's not a decision that

I take lightly. I think that that's something that's probably on my mind pretty

constantly, which is a great question that you brought up to kick off the show. That's

Yeah, yeah, well, so basically what you what you're saying is you fundamentally

believe in obviously the United States and the principles and the values of

what it was founded upon because you have Obviously the rights there.

We don't we don't have a rights bills and things like this, you

know, we just have We just don't have that So,

but you've made this, I guess, this stand to say, look, I'm going to stay here. Because

I've got friends who have moved to, one's recently moved to Cyprus, who's

quite a lot, who's a big Bitcoiner now and has quite

a large sum of money. It's like, you know what, I'm getting taxed the

bejesus out of here in Australia. Why am I going to stay here

and just put up with it? I'm going to go where I'm treated better. And

it turns out that, obviously, Cyprus is one. I mean, you even just saw Brian last

year, 2024. 10,000 people now reportedly moved

out of the UK. Took their money and just left and said, we're

out of here. And that was because the left-wing government there

just changed the rules and said, we're just going to tax you more now. It was actually more about

taxing income overseas that wasn't produced in

the country. So we're going to tax the whole lot. So they're like, we're going to

Dubai's happy to have him. Dubai's happy to have him. So I'm

in this battle right now. One side of me wants to stay and

fight in Australia. The other side's like, you know what? I'm just going to go out

and just not pay capital gains tax on anything outside of

that. I want to shift it, Brian, to I'm going to have to bring out

the book. Bitcoin evangelism, the

book that everybody must have. I know you wrote this a

couple of years ago now, but I don't think you can really stop

talking about it, to be honest. You're probably sick of talking about

it. But it is such a great book, and it's one of these books that I'm always

pushing to people, because I have read, of course, the other one that's here, which

is the Bitcoin Standard, which I'm sure you love as well. This

one, though, I found Personally, I think first of

all when you start talking about jujitsu and I was like, ah, this

guy's real He's telling a story about his his

growth his understanding of Bitcoin and weaves it into his life story

And I found that really powerful. And so this is why it's sort of tell people

look the Bitcoin stands good But start with Bitcoin evangelism, right?

This will help you every single every single time to

orange pill people I wanted to just open up to this part here in this in

the book and which is this part here where you've got this picture of

a newspaper article. And it says, internet may

be just a passing fad as millions give up on it. Which

I think is just brilliant. You just added that in there. So tell

me, because this comes up a lot, Brian, you know what this is going to lead to, which is,

is Bitcoin just a fad? And where is it leading

I love that picture. I was like, that was probably one of the first things that I

had in my mind as I was framing the book. I was like, how do I

fit this, this newspaper clipping, which many Bitcoiners have

seen before, but it's something that if somebody's going on their

Bitcoin journey and they haven't seen that, it's really important because

I think if not, we can think that Bitcoin is just another

technology. One of the frequently asked

questions that I have in the back, And I think this is

kind of that same question, is will Bitcoin

just be usurped? Will it be like the MySpace getting passed up

by Facebook? I mean, that's a really good question. I think it's a very fair

question. And you can give a variety of answers that

one, Bitcoin is not a company, it's a protocol. It's

like comparing apples and oranges. That's why the internet comparison right

there is much more apt. When we tried to improve the

internet, we didn't create a new version of

the internet. We took the original chain of the internet, you

know, and we take HTTP protocol. And if we wanted email,

we just added SMTP protocol towards it. Or if

we wanted video, we added protocol to it. and we stacked on

top of that. And so the internet is a much better example.

And that's what we tend to do. And the reason why we do that is because things have network

effects and the hardest thing to build is a network effect.

So the reason why we didn't... The internet was in

its infancy and five years or six years had passed and people

had started building on top of it. We didn't come

along and say, you know what, we need a faster internet or we need a

different internet or needs to have more functionality. So let's build a different version of

it. The reason why we didn't do that is because you'd be starting over and

you would have no users. So you would have a network that

has no users, which is inherently valueless. And

so when you have the network effect of Bitcoin, there's

no precedent in history of something

like this being unwound. We use the term escape velocity,

that Bitcoin has this escape velocity for which you can't put

the toothpaste back in the tube. When society first

discovered this is, Safedine uses this example all the time. When

society discovers or develops gunpowder, that

technology, that leap forward in technology, you cannot go

backwards. Because if you go backwards, you could say in our society, we're

not going to ever use gunpowder. Well, guess what? You're going to get conquered

by somebody who uses gunpowder. So your society will end up

using gunpowder. Your people are all going to be dead, but the people who

will use gunpowder are going to come along and conquer you. It's the same thing

with fire. The people who said, you know, we just, you know, the Neanderthal that

discovered fire. Well, guess what there might have been another tribe somewhere

that says well i don't want to use fire well that's fine but unfortunately

that guy does not make it to the next phase of history because

he's going to eat meat that isn't cooked and he's going to get sick and he doesn't know

how to stay warm and he doesn't know how to use that technical that that

discovery that came along and bitcoin's essentially the

same thing i mean there's virtually no difference it's a discovering something That's

why we like to say that Bitcoin is actually a discovery and not an

invention. The internet was the discovery of

how to connect people electronically. And once we discovered how

to connect people electronically, we just called that the internet. It was

going to happen at some point because humans were eventually going to figure

out how to harness electricity in a way. that we could talk over the internet.

So whatever, that was eventually going to come, because it exists

in the physical universe, our ability to tap into that reality. Bitcoin

is that same thing, but for money. We found a way,

the first time since the electrical age, since

the digital age came along, we found a way to digitally cap

something. And that is the profound discovery of Bitcoin. you

could never have digital money until Bitcoin. So, you

know, whenever you would say like the electrical revolution came

online, say the early 1900s to 2009, we

could never have a truly digital monetary system because

anytime we were going to go over to purely digital money, there

was always a way for people to reproduce it. Digital things could always

be reproduced. That's why when Napster and LimeWire came along back

in the late 90s, early 2000s, The music industry was

destroyed because before that you had analog

and analog CDs were a way for the music industry to

keep music valuable because you needed to have the physical thing

in order to listen to it so somebody had to pay

you money for it. But once music went to MP3, you

could just copy and paste it endlessly so music for a short period

of time lost value. That same thing would have happened

with money. If anybody could just create money out of thin

air, you wouldn't just have a Federal Reserve or a central bank, you would have millions

of central banks and everybody would be their own central bank if

you could do that. Bitcoin was the discovery that

humanity made of this is how we finally cap

digital things. 21 million, brilliant, okay,

Well, I've got to put my hand up, Brian. I'm just going to show my age now. I still have a CD collection.

Do you have the old stacks, like where you can see them

I was going to say, if you're a real collector, I'm sure it's very organized. I know when I

was a kid, my CD collection, it would take me 15 minutes

I've got a lot of pride in my CD collection, to be honest. and

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to the episode. But let me ask you, Brian, do you, so as

a true Bitcoin and you now have these health wellness stores,

right? Is that what they call it? Are they stores like you go and buy

So what we specialize in, it's services. So we call them

studios or wellness centers, whatever you want to call them. But we just do cold

plunges. salt therapy, which is you just breathe in salty air.

The stuff's fantastic. If you haven't heard of it, look in, you know, tell people, I

tell people all the time, just Google halo therapy. Halo is like Latin

or Greek for salt. I forget. I should probably know that. Um, and

uh, yeah, the, and then we do red light therapy, we do infrared

saunas, we do vitamin D sunbeds, which integrate red light therapy

and uh, UV lamps to stimulate vitamin D. Um,

and I don't know if I mentioned cold plungers, but yeah, so

we're essentially recreating, if you were to go to the beach, the

elements that you're gonna get, because from sunshine we get- In California, where

you've got a great beach. And that's the funny thing is that people ask all the time, it's like, well, we're

50 miles from the beach and why would you do that? It's like, well, because you

actually need to kind of expose regularly to these things. And in

California, everybody's working two jobs and people are

overworked and so, Yeah, being able to come in and have a controlled environment for

that is actually... Brian, I'd come in for... Yeah, I'd come in because I

That's the thing. I'm like, no, I don't do that

sand. So my question then is like, you've got these businesses, so are you

And quite frankly, very few people spend Bitcoin. Aside from

people on Orange Pill app, which Orange Pill app is kind of like, the

diehard Bitcoiners, and we have our business listed on there. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's essentially if an OrangePull app user comes in, they're probably going

to pay in Bitcoin. Outside of that, very few people use

it. Even our guests or members that have Bitcoin

tend to be people who don't spend it. I'm a

huge advocate. I know you've read Bitcoin Evangelism. I don't know if you've had a chance yet

to read my second book called Parallel, but Parallel is

my case for why we should be spending Bitcoin. That's

the most pushback. Bitcoiners have always been very gracious to

me on Twitter. But when I wrote Parallel and I started advocating for spending Bitcoin,

that was like touching a third rail that really pissed

a lot of people off because we have this ingrained

into us, this hodl mentality. And I'm a big fan of hodling, but

I also think that there's something to be said about finding a

constructive way to spend your Bitcoin and participate in the economy. If

I can give my quick elevator pitch for why, is that okay? Yes.

The people who've benefited from Bitcoin the most are the people

who look to the next phase. They don't think about the phase we're in. They look to the next

phase. And so money gets adopted in four

distinct phases. This is true for gold, for any type of

monetary element that we've used that has been widely adopted. It

starts off as a novelty or like a collectible

It then goes into the store of value phase. From the store of

value phase, it goes into the medium of exchange phase. From the medium of exchange,

it goes into unit of account. So think about this, go back

to gold. In early Egyptian society, before gold was

monetary or store of value, somebody found these shiny gold rocks

and they just thought they were cool. Maybe they gave one to their girlfriend, maybe they kept one

because it was fun to look at. But then as enough time went

on, people noticed that other people were collecting those shiny gold rocks. And

so they said, hey, there's something here. then that's why it transfers

into a store of value phase because somebody at some point said, you know what, can I buy

that from you? I want one of those too. And all of a sudden people realize

that like, oh, other people want these so I can actually store my value in

them. That's a very rudimentary way to think of it, but then it goes into the store of

value phase. we're clearly in the store of value phase for

Bitcoin right now. The collectible phase was 10,000 Bitcoins

for two pizzas, right? Like that was, that was the, nobody

knows what they're valued at. Um, you could go to, uh, bitcoinfaucet.com.

I don't know if you ever did that back in the day, but I never did. Unfortunately, there

was a website where you could once a day solve a

Kapschka just to prove you're a real person, click a button and get

five Bitcoin. You could go back to the website every single day and do it.

Yeah. Go to my website, bitcoinevangelism.com. No,

I'm just kidding. No, it's not there.

Unfortunately, it's not there anymore. But think about it. You're talking

about a half a million dollars every day you could harvest. That

was clearly the collectible phase. So The people

who looked at Bitcoin back then as a store of

value, they looked one phase ahead, those are the people who hold

10,000 Bitcoin. Those are the people that hold 5,000 Bitcoin, 500 Bitcoin.

They have astronomical amounts of wealth because During

the collectible phase, and Satoshi, guys like Hal Finney, Hal

Finney was calling for $10 million Bitcoin back in the day. These

guys, even in the collectible phase, they understood that it could be

a store of value. They just looked one phase ahead. Now,

we're in the store of value phase. Well, what's the next phase of

money adoption? It's medium of exchange. It's

the exchange of Bitcoin. Well, people say all the time, well, going

from collectible to store value, it was easy to capitalize

on that because you just needed to hold it, right? Like if you huddled, then

you would be able to capitalize on it. You're asking me to participate in

medium of exchange. That means I'm supposed to spend my Bitcoin. How

is spending my Bitcoin actually benefiting me? Well,

let me give you this example. It's like, who were the people that got wealthy

from the internet? There was people who got rich from the internet, guys that

day traded or bought and hodled for a little while, domain

names. They bought like business.com or pets.com or

hey.com. They held it for a few years and then sold it for

$10 million or $15 million. Those guys got rich. But who got

vastly wealthy? It's the guys who built and participated in

the building of the internet economy. You're talking about Bezos, you're

talking about Musk, the payment rails for those guys. that didn't

see it for like, Oh, I could buy a domain and sell it later for a little bit more money.

I want to participate in the building of this economy. Those guys got

vastly wealthy. I mean, they shoot rockets into space for fun. Like they

have that kind of money at this point because they looked

ahead one phase. And so for the Bitcoin or today, how

do you capitalize on the parallel economy? Well, Tell

you what, in your fiat economy, we tend

to spend less, hopefully if you're doing it right, you

spend less than you take in.

So if you're providing a good or service to the Bitcoin economy and

you're spending in the Bitcoin economy, you should be accruing

more sats through the interaction of it. I

know it feels like you're going to be losing sats by spending them,

but every time you spend Bitcoin somewhere, you've just made a

social connection with somebody who also spends Bitcoin. So

when I went to my barber and paid in Bitcoin for the first time, I

Yeah, three Bitcoin. I paid 20 or $30 in

Bitcoin, but then he turned around, he actually bought five

of my books from me for $100 because he thought, you

know what? I wanna give these to my friends and family. And so by me spending

Bitcoin, I can't predict that that's

how it's gonna manifest itself, but you will build economic connections.

And guess what? Five years from now, 10 years from now, do

you think you're going to wanna have I want to develop

those types of economic connections, I believe that it's going to bear fruit

because we're looking one step ahead. And I suggest that other Bitcoiners do

that. They don't have to do it at scale. They don't have to spend thousands

of dollars a month. Buy $100 a month of

It doesn't need to come out of your stash. Let me ask you this, Brian, because in

my case, I've gone, well, I wear a Bitcoin hat, for God's sake.

And even out in public. And it's

true, I do. I wear a Bitcoin hat all the time. But what I'm doing is I

started buying up Bitcoin in my personal name. I then started allocating my

company funds to Bitcoin. And then a

couple of years into that, I'm like, what else can I allocate to Bitcoin? And

I've allocated all of my what's called in Australia a superannuation account,

a 401k, basically. All of that just went, boom, into

Bitcoin. And then now I'm, you

know, you hear the term now, you'll own nothing

and be happy. I'm actually kind of falling into that.

I'm actually dematerializing now. I'm like selling properties.

I had a car collection. I had like seven cars in

this shed. that I collected, my

dreams. And I'm down to two of those now. And

they're going. And I feel like I'm moving to this phase

of owning nothing except for Bitcoin and being happy.

So in your eyes, Brian, considering what

you just said, am I doing the right thing? I am hodling. I

haven't actually spent any of this Bitcoin. I'm just stacking Bitcoin and

Yeah, I don't think there's clearly nothing wrong from

a Bitcoin perspective with what you're doing. I mean, you're going to outpace most

of humanity by doing that. I just think that there's alpha to be had in

Bitcoin. So the reason why I'm a big advocate for

this, too, is because I think a lot of people look at Bitcoin and they

say, I've missed the boat with Bitcoin. there's no alpha

there, so I will therefore go to crypto. Crypto

is where I'm going to get my alpha out of it. I don't think that that's the answer. I

think getting the alpha from Bitcoin is stacking

every satin you possibly can, but there inevitably will

be money that you need to buy groceries. Again,

you need to get a haircut. If you need to hire a plumber, there's

probably a plumber near you that will accept Bitcoin.

And so if you can then instead just say, you know

what, I'm gonna like buy the Bitcoin, I need to pay this plumber in

Bitcoin, it seems kind of like, it's kind of silly almost to do that. I'm

telling you, you're creating economic

connections, you're stimulating a parallel or a circular economy

in your area, which one gives you like an off

ramp. If things ever get crazy in Australia, but Matthew

knows all of the guys who sell meet directly

to you and you don't want to feed your family bug protein, you

have an economic connection that cannot be censored. So

there's also insurance right there. So I just think it covers so many

bases. But yeah, I mean, to your point, to your question, no,

there's clearly nothing you're doing wrong. But there could be alpha

there. And one, I mean, it's even giving guys access

to you. Like, man, Matthew came and

he got a haircut from me. He bought plumbing services or my IT services,

or maybe the people that work in your studio, maybe they get paid in Bitcoin. It's

giving you access. you kind of

get to know who the real ones are. anything

very good. And so I think that you're, it's a filter for you. I think Bitcoin acts

as a really good filter. And so that, yeah, that

would be my suggestion. No, I mean, I don't think that, I don't

I was hoping you were going to say, Brian, go and talk to your wife and your family and

Why do you have a microphone right there? You shouldn't even have a chair. You shouldn't

have a microphone. We should be talking by tin cans through a

Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you this then, because I'm dying to know, you

know, someone of your caliber and status within the Bitcoin community, what

do you currently do? You know, do you continually stack more

Bitcoin even now? Like, do you just DCA just for

the fun of it? Or are you dematerializing properties and

For the most part, my investment portfolio goes

like this. It's 100% Bitcoin and my companies. That's

literally, or my house. I have a house and a few cars, that's about it. Everything

goes into those things. The bet is on, in my life, is on

Bitcoin and my companies. My companies, that is how I

stack. Personally, we do some mining. I

go through SAS Mining, who's like a hosted mining service. Awesome.

We get really cheap electricity because we have

a hydroelectric dam and they take care of my stuff. I love that.

Do they do pools there? It's pool

mining. Yeah. So it's all from that facility. We all work

together. And I've been doing that for a couple of years. The

sats that I've mined through them as a appreciated

tremendously and I love the fact that they're just KYC free sats.

They're the only ones that I stack that, again,

are KYC free. Everything else I'm buying is through an exchange somewhere and

Can I just stop you there, Brian? Because I just want to just talk about this because I also

do Bitcoin mining. In I've got a

couple of pools. I'm involved in one out of Norway one out of Ethiopia, right?

And this I just keep going up more spending more on mining machines and

having them in the pool But I think you just touched on something really important, which

is it's non KYC Bitcoin into I run

my own note as well So I'm basically my own sovereign bank And

I think that there is the ultimate power.

Get up and walk away and just go to another jurisdiction if you want to. Why

do you think, if you can just explain it a bit more to maybe

other people, of why this Bitcoin mining thing is so important, rather than just

It's a really good question. I think there's probably things, there's a case

to be made that we could devote a whole episode to it. But

it is, it's kind of, it's almost like, If

you live in a representative democracy and

you choose not to vote, well, you can

still live there and you can still participate in the society, but you're forfeiting one

of the rights that you have to hopefully help make your society better.

If your vote would help make your society better and you're not doing that,

it's just to do. one

element that helps secure Bitcoin. It secures yourself. I

love the fact that there's independent people who run their own node because

again, it deters threats to the network because there's just

no point to attack Bitcoin because every one of us

has our own node. So what are you going to do? You're going to hack me. You're going to hack Matthew. Like

you're not going to do all that at scale. The other element is

the hash rate of the Bitcoin a mining network,

the more computers that are plugged into that network, it

increases the difficulty. And again, it makes it

less likely. I mean, back in the day, if you went back 10 or

15 years ago, maybe the incentive was for big

publicly traded companies to try and attack the bitcoin network and it would have

been too big for them but they maybe maybe they were tempted to do it now the

scale that bitcoin's at the amount of money i'm talking about the amount of money that's in

there it's it's it's enticing perhaps for a

giant country to say can we take over that network and steal all

that money well guess what Because of the incentive structures for

Bitcoin mining and because you and I benefit by plugging

our computers in and adding to the power of the network, the

hash rate or the computing power of the network, it's so

massively gigantic that

no country or no no union

of several countries together could hack the Bitcoin network.

And so the reason why our Bitcoin is so safe

is because we do this and we don't just do it because we

want it to be safe, but we do it because we financially benefit from it.

And in doing so, the sats that I mine or you mine

directly from our pool go directly into our own wallets,

which are, you know, so hopefully secured and safe

and there's no record of it. So I think that that's, again,

one more element of security that bad

actors, foreign governments, whatever, they can't just

go and hack exchanges. They can't just go, they have to

hack millions of wallets around the world, millions

of computers that just can't be done at scale. And even if they don't,

if there's one termite left, if there's one cockroach node

left, Bitcoin remains and goes on, and then it

re-propagates. So it's so difficult to destroy

Bitcoin that it makes it so safe. It's the biggest dog on

I think if anyone is against the current government, certainly

in Australia, we have a, I call them a radical left-wing

extremist government. Some might say they're centrist. Don't

think that's the case. So they're trying to bring in right now Brian. You won't follow this

But we follow a lot of u.s. News. You wouldn't see anything. It was

happening Australia, but but Basically our

prime minister can't get a meeting with Trump. That's how much really loves it but

there's also our prime minister's been on record after the first term

of Trump he was saying some nasty things about Trump

as a lot of Political people did after the first term

thing. We never see him again We'll just say he's an idiot and

everything and Trump the great thing about Trump and I love Trump The

director there anything better me never forgets Especially

on Twitter So our government right

now is trying to bring in this unrealized capital gains

tax Can you believe I did see that and I

thought it was true. I thought there's no way nobody be

foolish not foolish enough to do that this is how crazy these people are and

On retirement savings, that's what they're trying to bring it So that so

the government encourages you to stack this money for retirement and then now

they're coming in at the very end to say actually We need some of that now,

right? and so I've been doing a lot of videos about it and I freaking

I can't stand it and this is part of the reason why a lot of people are now thinking we need

to get out of here because where does it end Brian because it could be unrealized capital

gains on Super and of course what's in my super

right now Bitcoin? Yeah Right, so I see it as

the government is now trying to steal my Bitcoin through legislation,

you know, legalized theft. And so

anyway, so I think this is coming back to the mining. This

is why the mining is so powerful, because one of the things you

said before, it's not controlled. And also, it doesn't go through an exchange. And

you can sort of walk off with it and say goodbye to

the government. So that's basically why I love it.

Yeah. It's freedom that you have at your fingertips. And

sadly, many people around the world who could use that freedom don't know about

it. But going back to our earlier point about, whether

people should leave or not. And I said, you know, Oh, I'm staying where I'm at. If

somebody is going to leave, or if I ever do leave California, I think it's really important

to leave loud and to let people know that you're taking a lot of

money with you. You know what I mean? I think that's important because that is a vote, right?

Like on the way out, I'm going to do the best thing you can do for

your brothers and sisters that still live in Australia is to tell your

government that see you later, the hot chicks leaving the

dance, I'm not going to be here anymore for you to tax me.

And so I'm one of the guys you need to be taxing

in order to make this thing work. And we're taking this elsewhere. We're going to greener pastures.

And that is a vote against the totalitarianism or

the overreach of whatever your government's doing. So yeah, I

mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with leaving, but if you do, maybe

Throw grenades. You want to implode this?

Brian, we're going to run out of time soon. But I want to jump to these, because I've

got a small online community. I help people transition from

traditional superannuation and allocate their funds to Bitcoin within the

superannuation space. So I just help people guide them through

that. And I'm always talking about your books

heavily. Thank you. So I love it, and I really appreciate it. So if

you don't mind, I've got a few questions, five questions that the

members in the group wanted to ask you. Beautiful. Would that be okay? I would love it. So

the first one is, as a Bitcoin evangelist, if

you had five minutes with the likes of Warren Buffett and Peter Schiff

or Bill Gates, what would be the key points to raise?

Or would you just rather not bother if trying to convince them to

allocate to Bitcoin? I mean, each one of those, who

Was it Bill Gates? You got Peter Schiff, Buffett

and Gates. Okay. I mean, they're all wildly different

perspectives that I would take. And I even say this, as

a Bitcoin evangelist, These guys, we kind of

know their responses, so maybe you don't have to ask questions. But

if you do have friends in your life, and I'm speaking to your community here, if

you have people who are asking you to explain Bitcoin, you've

got to ask questions first, because you've got to know what to answer for them. If

I'm talking to a gold bug, which Warren Buffett certainly is not, but

if I'm talking to a gold bug, I'm not talking about censorship

resistance. and hash power and all these things.

I'm talking about 21 million and digital scarcity because gold

bugs care about scarcity and hard money. So I'm talking about Bitcoin

as hard money. I'm being very specific. We get so excited that

when somebody talks to us about Bitcoin, that we just give them everything we

know about Bitcoin. as a fire hose. So

for Warren Buffett, I lose a lot of friends. Avoid

that guy. And so for Warren Buffett, his favorite investment of

all time is Coca-Cola. So how can I make the case that

Bitcoin is Coca-Cola? Well, people,

Bitcoin versus or excuse me, Bitcoin versus Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola's

biggest competitor ever was Pepsi. And side-by-side taste

tests forever, Pepsi always won. Well, why

did Warren Buffett invest in Coca-Cola? It's because they

had distribution. He always talks about distribution. And

if Pepsi could never capture Coke's market cap,

because they had the network effect. We always talk about

network effect. But I would make the case that Bitcoin is

the Coca-Cola of the digital world, and

it has distribution, it has distribution in Africa, in

Australia, in the United States, it has distribution on the moon,

it has distribution everywhere. And so that's the powerhouse, and I

would try to appeal to that nature in him. With Bill Gates, I

would say it's gonna help everybody get a vaccine, so don't worry. I'm

just kidding. But yeah, hopefully they understand my point, is that you really

have to appeal to what does that person care about, and how does Bitcoin

Well, Brian, this is a follow up to that because then the person says, well, do

you think that perhaps these guys are actually secretly stacking Bitcoin?

I don't know. Maybe. I think that there's so clearly like

BlackRock was doing that. We were saying that for years, like I bet BlackRock's, you

know, they're poopooing it publicly, but then they're buying it. I mean, clearly they

must have been buying it publicly and privately. And then

as soon as they could buy it publicly, they've been they've been buying more Bitcoin than

anybody else. So I assume they've been doing that before. Warren

Buffett, Bill Gates and Peter Schiff. Well, Peter Schiff does have some Bitcoin.

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I believe it's through his wife and his son has it,

which wouldn't be his. But then he's had a bunch donated to him. And

he's even sold gold for Bitcoin. He claims that they've always

liquidated the Bitcoin. But they, They

try to get some of that Bitcoin share and they say, hey, Bitcoiners, come buy some gold

from us. So I would imagine that he has some Bitcoin. I don't think he's

stupid enough. He's the one guy in that group that I think actually has Bitcoin like

a meaningful amount. I genuinely believe Warren Buffett doesn't have

it because he always says he doesn't invest outside of his core competency,

what he understands. And I don't think he understands Bitcoin. And Bill Gates, I

think, is fundamentally opposed to Bitcoin. I also think that

Bill Gates, if he thought he could exert any power over it, I think

that he would be buying Bitcoin. I actually think he's probably more likely to

buy like Ethereum or something that's proof of stake so

Yeah, interesting. Thank you, Brian. Second one, what

advice do you have for parents who want to raise financially sovereign

and Bitcoin literate young men and women? And let me just put something in

there. I actually just saw recently, Brian, on a social that

Indonesia was teaching Bitcoin within

Huh, that's interesting. I have a friend who lives in Indonesia. He's

an American guy. I'm gonna ask him. He's a Bitcoin advocate. So I

didn't realize that, that's interesting. I've

heard, and this might be just hearsay, but

supposedly there's studies that support that if you have, parents

who have their children do chores, that's one of the highest associations

with success in the future. And so if you're a parent that's

having your children do chores, you're already giving them

a leg up, I would say just pay them for those chores in Bitcoin. There's

nothing that orange pills somebody better than holding

Bitcoin. I tell people all the time, if I'm speaking at

a conference, what's the best way to orange pill somebody? Because you got this book, Bitcoin

evangelism. I'm like, I'm going to convince you to not buy my book right now because

I'm going to tell you the easiest way to orange pill somebody is have them download a

lightning wallet and just send them a thousand sets. You'll do two things.

One, they'll see it work in real time. So they're like, wow, that's literally all

it took because I was making it to be this abstract thing in my head. Okay.

That actually makes a lot of sense to me. And then two, they're no longer an

other. When somebody is a non-Bitcoiner, they're the other. You're

the Bitcoiner and you're this crazy guy and I'm the guy

that's reasonable. I'm not into Bitcoin. Well, you just sent me Bitcoin. Well, now I'm a Bitcoiner,

I guess. And so we're kind of on the same team. We're all in. That same

thing happens with kids. And

once your kids have their Bitcoin, they're going to keep an eye on it like we do. My

kids ask me all the time, anytime Bitcoin hits a new all-time high, hey, can I

see my spreadsheet to see how much money I have? And

then two, I give them tasks. We homeschool

our children. One of our school tasks was, hey,

what's the best way, if 12 words secures

your seed phrase, we're gonna do a school project today. Who can come

up with the most creative way to secure their seed phrase? Those

types of things are fun and they're practical lessons for

their kids. And I'll tell you what, my kids came up with some really good ones that

I didn't even think of. So sometimes their minds- And you're like, you're a genius. Yeah.

Sometimes their minds just work better than ours, but they then have buy-in. They've

gone through the steps themselves. So I would say that there was personal responsibility

of chores and then paying for those chores and sound money. And

when they see that their money goes up in value over time, it's

going to convince. My kids have been stacking Bitcoin for two or three years now, and

they're richer than all of their friends. How old are they, Brian? My

oldest are 11. I have two. My son's adopted. So I

have a daughter and son who are both 11, down to seven years old.

And even my seven-year-old has some Bitcoin. I mean, none of

their friends are close, have anywhere close to the amount of money they

have. And they know that. They know that they're richer. They don't brag about

But it's pretty crazy for my kids to

be like, yeah, I realized I have a lot of money. I don't think

I thought, I thought if I had, you know, when I was 10 years old, if I had 13 bucks,

I'm like, well, I know I can buy this or I'm gonna save up $60 and

buy a video game. My kids, I ask them all the time, I try to

tempt them. I say, yesterday we were riding mountain bikes and

my one daughter probably could use a new bike. I said, you know how you can afford a new

bike? I mean, you'd have a lot of money left over. She goes, no, I'm gonna ride

Oh, is that right? How awesome is that? I actually take my kids. We collect

cans and bottles at home. We can take them down to a local depot, and we get like

$0.10 a bottle. And so those funds actually then go into, I

transfer it into Bitcoin. That's brilliant. And they have their own sort of separate wallet to

do that. And now they tease me about Bitcoin. You

know you've made a difference when they're teasing you about Bitcoin. Brian,

what do you think is the biggest threat to Bitcoin adoption today from

I think it's people's resistance to spending Bitcoin. I

agree. I'm not a big fan of Jack Dorsey, to be honest, but

he has said something that I do agree with. He

said something to the effect of, somebody asked him, what

does the future look like where Bitcoin has not won? And

I think it's a future where we have failed to accept Bitcoin

as a medium of exchange. I don't think it's the only thing we need to focus on. There's

lots of good things happening. I think it's going to happen in a natural

progression and you know positive things are happening in

terms of taxes with capital gains getting removed on Bitcoin in

certain places and so that will stimulate economies and stuff but

I do agree that it would be a miss for us to not

have a future where we could spend bitcoin because think about it if

if government if if tyranny reigns and we

don't have um i might have you could have a

billion dollars of bitcoin but if you have no one who

you know that you can buy things from in bitcoin What

good is that? Because if the government's running everything and the only place you can go cash

it out is on an exchange, you were at

the beck and call of the government under which you can cash that

Bitcoin out. So just as a form of anti-fragility, I

would say have some places where you could go spend some Bitcoin if

Brian, that's absolutely awesome. Now, I'm going to have to wrap up the episode, but

just please tell us, you mentioned the book Parallel. Now,

how long has that been out for? A little over a year, yeah.

Okay, so that's the next one to get. We can start pushing that one. I'm

still going to stand by my words and say Bitcoin evangelism is the one

to start with, and then we're going to move to Parallel after that. And of course, Brian,

you mentioned about the Orange Pill app. Yeah. I'm

on the Orange Pill app. I've been pushing that out to my community as well. So that's

awesome. So, Ryan, I'm going to wrap it up with you and say thank

you so much for joining me on this episode of Crypto Collective and look forward to seeing you

Thanks for tuning in to Crypto Collective. If you've enjoyed this episode, the

best way to show your support is to leave a five-star review on

Apple Podcast or Spotify and make sure to subscribe to

the YouTube channel so you don't miss an episode. You can also find

more of me I'm Matthew Fraser on