3min chapter

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#284 – Saifedean Ammous: Bitcoin, Anarchy, and Austrian Economics

Lex Fridman Podcast

CHAPTER

Passion for Soccer and the Dynamics of Bitcoin Energy Consumption

This chapter explores the speakers' love for soccer, highlighting legendary players like Maradona and Messi while discussing the deep emotional ties fans have to their teams. The conversation also touches on Bitcoin's energy consumption and its broader implications on energy markets, clearing up common misconceptions about its relationship with traditional energy use.

00:00
Speaker 2
I would say, no, I wouldn't say I'm a Barca fan, but a Barca fan because of Messi. And I just, I think it's like, there's certain things. So when I was growing up in the Soviet Union, Russia, I remember Maradona. He was the first person I saw that I was like, oh, wow, this could be, this is greatness in sport, not just football, in sport, right? And for some reason, I mean, it's something about like Diego Armando, Maradona, like the way they were commentating, the genius of his play, the mix of ego, and again, the performance, but being able to carry a team on his shoulders, that I just fell in love with whatever he represented, and then by that Argentina and then Messi, I saw when he was like 16, 17, when he was just like right in the early days. And when you, when you first see a person and you see the genius and you notice that, and then it turns out to be actually a great player. For some reason you're invested, you're emotionally invested. You're, um, don't know so you kind of just fall in love and then uh you get you pick size i mean that that's the thing about football part of the fun things about uh football soccer is like you pick a guy you pick a team and fuck everyone else and you just have fun talking shit i mean there's part of it you know it's great it's great because uh i think you know obviously it's very stupid thing to do. But I
Speaker 1
think if you don't do it in football, you're going to do it in real life. Elsewhere. That's right. That's why it's very good. You know, instead of hating people for their religion and for their skin color, hate them because they support Manchester United. So you're a Liverpool fan. Yes, yes. Hardcore, long term. But yeah, so to go back to the original point on Portugal. Energy. Yeah, energy. Bitcoin is not competing with Portugal because Bitcoin is buying energy from places where we can't buy it. Because all the places where we can buy energy for our washing machines, we're bidding up the price enough to make it non-viable for Bitcoin. That's why, you know, you'll see headlines about Bitcoin consuming more energy than Portugal. Well, if you look at Portugal, I mean, they've got giant power plants in Portugal. They've got millions of people and they've got enormous amounts of infrastructure. Where are all of these infrastructure for Bitcoin mining? You don't see it in the cities. It's all isolated. It's all out away from the cities, or it's connected to grids that have serious overcapacity. So Bitcoin is not out there buying the expensive energy, taking energy away from people who can't afford it.

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