The "What is Money?" Show
WiM007 - The Saylor Series | Episode 7 | The Virtues of Strong Money
Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Bitcoin operates as a perpetual monetary network, outcompeting individual organisms and adapting to market signals.
- Bitcoin aligns with the natural laws of thermodynamics and provides an alternative immune response to centralized control.
- Bitcoin offers a more stable store of value compared to traditional assets, capitalizing on its liquidity, openness, transparency, and resistance to external threats.
Deep dives
Bitcoin as a Monetary Missile and Swarm Intelligence
Bitcoin channels human ingenuity into improving its energy, making it better than any other commodity. It operates as a perpetual monetary network, outcompeting individual organisms and adapting to market signals. Its swarm intelligence allows it to strengthen through the highest common denominator, benefiting all network participants. Bitcoin's transparency and liquidity make it the highest bandwidth asset for price discovery. It is a living asset class that continuously develops, strengthens, and attracts capital. Centralized entities, on the other hand, are susceptible to vulnerabilities and weakest links.
The Negative Consequences of Human Intervention
Human interventions in complex systems often lead to unintended consequences. Trying to manipulate interest rates, for example, goes against the principles of thermodynamics and distorts price discovery. Discounting the value of time and energy can create moral hazards in the economy. Bitcoin, on the other hand, aligns with the natural laws of thermodynamics and provides an alternative immune response to centralized control. It is an autoimmune response of society to central banking, offering a transparent, decentralized, and sovereign money system.
Bitcoin as the Sole Store of Value for the 21st Century
Bitcoin is an ideal store of value compared to other options. Traditional assets like bonds, equities, and real estate face limitations such as taxation, regulatory risks, and impaired value. Bonds are reaching the limits of interest rate suppression, equities become riskier as their valuation delaminates from fundamentals, and real estate has uncertainty and tax burdens. In contrast, Bitcoin offers a more stable store of value, capitalizing on its liquidity, openness, transparency, and resistance to external threats. With its simplicity and security, Bitcoin becomes the perfect organism to endure the test of time.
Bitcoin as a Store of Value Beyond Time
Bitcoin is positioned as a store of value for the long term, with its key attributes making it superior to other assets. It offers the ability to project values and aspirations into the future, creating a mechanism for achieving long-term goals. By reducing the features of money to its bare bones, Bitcoin has perfected the monetary properties, optimizing them for maximum security and reliability. This focus on minimalism and the removal of negative aspects has made Bitcoin a robust and indestructible network. The beliefs and fanaticism of its adherents, the Bitcoiners, are crucial in preserving the integrity and strength of the network as they function as the keepers of the flame, passionately protecting and ensuring the perpetual existence of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and the Religious-like Nature
Bitcoin exhibits parallels to religion, with devotees who share common values and beliefs. The fanaticism of Bitcoin maximalists is likened to religious conviction, as they uphold principles of truth, natural law, self-reliance, fairness, and technology. Bitcoin functions as a mechanism to immortalize values and intentions beyond one's lifetime, enabling the projection of will and preferences into the future. The 21 million supply limit of Bitcoin is regarded as transcendental and imbues the network with mythological bedrock. The unidentifiable founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, contributes to the value proposition of decentralization, reinforcing the idea that Bitcoin exists beyond any single individual or institution. The level of faith and conviction in Bitcoin as a store of value classifies it as a religious-like institution.
Michael Saylor joins me to discuss anthropology, energy, and technology from first principles as we build the intellectual foundation necessary to truly grasp the historic significance of Bitcoin.
00:00:00 - Episode Trailer
00:01:06 - Swan Bitcoin
00:05:42 - Bitcoin like a cruise missile
00:06:07 - Holding high ground behind a wall of encrypted energy
00:06:27 - Crypto Bank is strongest, fastest, smartest financial entity in the world
00:08:07 - Impact of 24/7 Operations ( 35 hours to 168 hours per week)
Highest bandwidth of any asset. The Apex Asset.
00:08:47 - Dangers of fighting the Cyber Swarm
00:10:03 - Strength of the Highest Common Denominator
00:10:32 - Virtues of Hodling & Benefits of Joining the Network
00:12:27 - Inverting the asymmetry from fragility to vitality
00:12:43 - Herd immunity
00:13:08 - The Parable of the Lazy Lions
00:13:46 - Destroying Crypto Networks by hobbling transaction fees
00:14:47 - Dangers of Socialism in Competition for Capital & Products
00:16:33 - Interest rates & thermodynamics
00:17:43 - Insanity of negative interest
00:19:23 - Bitcoin as auto-immune response to global crisis
00:21:45 - Inevitable technology driven by toxic inflation
00:22:47 - Impact of Pandemic Crisis & Acceleration
00:23:36 - The Currency War
00:25:01 - Bitcoin as a Store of Value
00:25:36 - $250 Trillion in Bonds, Equity, Metals, Property
00:26:03 - Challenges to Storing Value in Real Estate
00:26:47 - Challenges to Storing Value in Bonds
00:27:58 - Challenges to Storing Value in Equity
00:30:25 - Bitcoin vs. Equity
Analogy to Plankton as the Base Layer of Ecosystem
00:32:48 - Virtues of Simplicity
00:34:48 - Proper mission of a company
00:35:48 - Preserving energy for a century
00:36:15 - Via Negativa & Ideal Design
00:37:46 - Success without Transactions
00:39:12 - Intelligence built into Google
00:40:34 - Impact of a century on stores of value
00:42:20 - Crypto POW is the ideal theoretical solution
00:42:58 - Criticality of the Maximalists & Religious Conviction
00:44:29 - Institutional Longevity
00:45:46 - Keepers of the Flame – Altars & Chapels in Bitcoin
00:46:53 - Strength of Gods in Fantasy Genre
00:47:39 - Feeding the Fire of Crypto Network (Miners & Nodes)
00:48:47 - Challenges of Novel Crypto Networks & Altcoins
00:49:24 - Values of Maximalists
00:50:53 - Crypto Networks – A path to immortality
Bitcoin - “The pursuit of immortal life”
00:51:11 - Projecting values thru time
00:53:03 - Bitcoin as a Higher Truth
00:53:58 - A religion for those that worship the laws of science & math
00:54:09 - The moral & intellectual hazards of short time horizons
00:55:47 - Virtues of taking the Long View
00:56:48 - What is required to store value 100 years? 1000 years?
00:57:21 - Economics as a Science
00:58:03 - Importance of Isaac Newton
00:58:19 - Robert's Outro
01:31:27 - End
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