Very interesting discussion! It was actually really refreshing, usually I agree with what your guests are saying from the start, but this one really challenged a lot of the opinions I had going into it. I appreciated the international perspective--this has been the first time someone has articulated a use case for Bitcoin that makes any sense at all to me. I'm still not completely convinced, but it definitely opened my eyes to a new perspective, so thank you for that!
Same. The Carbon Backed Currency was equally compelling and challenging in particular. But in a paradoxical way creats a value that makes it difficult to discount carbon output and disregard the environment as an externality.
Nice to have a guest with a different point of view (different from most guests). I think I disagreed with every point Alex Gladstein made except that the developed nations (especially the U.S.) are exploiting the less developed nations. Well of course that's true, it's a basic tenet of Capitalism that you increase profits by externalizing costs. Alex also said he was a big fan of Capitalism. He does realize Capitalism is 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮, right?
Hey at least we can agree on something! Can liberal democracies exist without exploiting poorer countries? It's a great question. I ask myself this all the time now.
I want Axel Gladstain and Simon Michaux to be on the same podcast and talk about bitcoin and energy/materials. Then we can have this triage that Nate is always talking about
Axel Gladstain's claims could be debunked from a distributed systems perspective (CompSci), so not sure if Simon Michaux knows what to say. In brief, ASICs have de facto turned bitcoin into a proof-of-stake network, with ASICs being the stake, which actually make bitcoin secure in a better threat model right now. Yet if too many ASICs go off-line then bitcoin is no longer secure in a standard byzantine threat model, as you donno if they're really off-line or double spending. In particular bitcoin is not really secure if powered by solar and wind. This is why Alex is so obsessed with OTEC here, but OTEC has some downsides and remains fairly underdeveloped.
Let me start by saying Gladstein is incredibly intelligent and clearly well-versed in the monetary colonialism system; and I found myself agreeing with quite a bit of his perspective - but when he got to Bitcoin I had to pause. As a fellow analyst and options trader, Nate, I couldn’t let this one go without some serious critique. Some Critical Analysis While I agreed with his observation that many of the existing currencies are failing, he failed to mention the Petro Yuan and BRICS - both of which could completely disrupt dollar dominance and significantly aid in de-dollarization. BRICS is backed by gold and rare-earth minerals; these types of pegged-to-commodities-currencies stand a chance (and have proven so in the past) to stay grounded in some form of physical reality. Bitcoin, on the other hand, acts as a no limits instrument of Modern Monetary Theory - further detaching us from our ecological reality. His fantastical speculation that Bitcoin is emissions free literally had me pause the video and take a walk to get some air. Bitcoin is parasitic having double energy expenditures and siphoning from multiple systems without even the notion of any type of return to these systems. The hardware alone required (we will leave out the energy to power the computers for a moment) to “mine” requires the most complex of computer chips built using the most specialized and highest refinement of our ever-dwindling supply of minerals. Not forgoing the energy expenditure (diesel) to extract, distribute, refine (often nat gas or coal with massive amounts of water), then distribute further (using more diesel). On the energy to power this specialized hardware, many nations’ power grids are strained, breaking, or have already collapsed with examples of rolling blackouts, brownouts, and prioritization in places such as Puerto Rico, Texas, Shri Lanka, South Africa most recently, with many other countries across Africa and South and Southeast Asia. There is no excess energy. Though I did find the whataboustism with the cruise ship industry and air conditioners an entertaining way to deflect for the massive (nearly always overlooked) ecological cost of Bitcoin. But let’s suppose for a moment Bitcoin is and does all he says, the Lighting Network entirely and completely defeats Bitcoin’s original intent of transparency. These layered payment protocols are simply duplicating the existing tertiary wealth system we have now - just a digital version of our current petrodollar system experiment - just more claims on future energy we won’t have. Unfortunately, his energy and mineral blindness has prevented him from seeing this. In addition, there is no real anonymity or ability to secure or otherwise hide assets. Time and time again the US government has been able to easily recover most Bitcoin ransoms, though the price volatility will often cause the value or amount recovered to drop, despite the same number of Bitcoins being recovered. The reigning king of Bitcoin Sam Bankman-Fried of the spectacularly failed FTX flat out admitted on Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” Podcast that Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme; as does author Stephen Diehl, a Financial Technologist, on Bloomberg. Gladstein is right, Bitcoin isn’t a redistribution scheme, it’s a Ponzi Scheme. Its success is based solely on a belief or ideology and getting more people to put their beliefs, energy, and dollars into Bitcoin. In closing, I found Gladstein’s virtue signaling more of the same old hollow, hypocritical, western values coupled with a massive dose of Xenophobia & Sinophobia - that the Western way is the only way. Additionally, why must there always be this flat-earth and binary view of China? They are not our enemies, they are a 3,000-year-old civilization that, while we might not always agree with, we must work with. Non-interference and cooperation should be our goals in a globalized world, not othering each other because of our differences. From the perspective of the Global South, he is demonizing much of their population, their values, cultures, governments, and beliefs as less than, while openly admitting to giving dissidents guilt money funneled via Bitcoin to fund Color Revolutions in the most antithetical attempt to make up for exploitative Colonialism. This is not how we solve the problem. It’s just trying to change things via the backdoor. A more PR-friendly version of CIA coups that make you feel good. It will only create more sovereign interference, deaths, and dependence, which I suppose is the goal of Western imperialism anyways. Sovereign independence for the Global South will never be accomplished this way. It's just the global version of the failed American Dream. He kept repeating the word freedom, over and over, but can he define what it means and looks like in action? For the US, for each nation, country, and person? More importantly, why is your version of freedom the right one? And lastly, it is possible to believe that NATO not abiding by the Minsk Agreement is a factor that contributed to the war without being crazy or pro-Putin or pro-war crimes. It’s a double standard without acknowledging the massive war crimes of the US in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, plus those committed against the African Americans and Native Americans on your own soil. Gladstein states it himself when speaking of the Iraq invasion and oil dollars but fails to mention how many Iraqi citizens had to die for that (it is about a million). In the book, “Rising Out of Hatred” the grandson of David Duke didn’t change his white supremacist values and beliefs because he was ostracized and isolated by his fellow students at the liberal college he attended. Even though they disagreed with his belief system, he was welcomed and invited to join and work with them. He was able to see the humanity of the people he'd been trained to hate. This is what led to his evolution and change. The Western world needs to evolve as well by rethinking its values and belief systems. That is the only way to truly atone for the exploitation and deaths created by colonialism and US imperialism. As an American living the Global South, it is very clear, all they want the American bully to leave them alone. Any kind of interference, even with good intentions, is a net detriment. Just let them be. They’ll be fine without you, trust me.
Thank you for the kind words and the thoughtful criticism. I do agree that we are moving to a more multi-polar world where BRICS countries will have more power both politically and economically. I do NOT think China wants to or even can issue a global reserve currency. Its entire system is based on the US having the reserve currency and the CCP swapping exports in exchange for dollars which it then uses to buy hard assets or make investments. It is now for example the world's biggest car exporter. This gets destroyed if they are the issuer of the world reserve currency. So maybe it won't be Bitcoin but it won't be the Yuan either. Bitcoin mining machines themselves do not generate any emissions. The power that it takes to run them can generate emissions, if it is from burning fossils. My point is that fossils will likely get very scarce and expensive and Bitcoin miners will prefer cheaper sources of energy. But we can debate that. Bitcoin mining cannot compete with existing customers on grids. They are willing to pay a lot more than what residential and industrial consumers can pay. This is why you see Bitcoin miners search for stranded or excess or wasted energy. In fact because Bitcoin mining is the world's best demand response technology it is likely that it leads to more stable grids with overbuilt renewables, and not unstable ones. Lightning is one way to spend Bitcoin. I am optimistic about it but it may be a different solution that really thrives in the future. In any case, Lightning is not "claims" it's real Bitcoin. There is no credit here. In any event there are many other competing ways to non-custodially scale Bitcoin transactions, none of which involve creating more than 21 million Bitcoin. Further, Bitcoin can be used very privately, provided you do not connect your address or LN activity to a real-world identity. All of the cooks busted by the US government made the mistake of connecting at some point their identity to their Bitcoin activity. Bitcoin privacy technology is also improving every few months. It's definitely still a vulnerability and takes expertise to do the right way. It's true that scams like FTX can create "paper Bitcoin" -- the solution to that is to custody your own coins and verify them yourself. It's also true that most cryptocurrencies are scams or ponzi schemes. Bitcoin is a system where you can exchange electricity for scarce digital currency. Bitcoin cannot be minted into existence. Users can verify exactly how much Bitcoin there is and how much will ever be created. Users control the rules of the system, not issuers or administrations. This does not fit into the definition of a Ponzi scheme. The Chinese Communist Party is a totalitarian regime that is engaged in a genocide of its Muslim minority. It also subjugated Tibet and Hong Kong and runs an Orwellian, dystopian surveillance state. Say what you want about the US and its neocolonial policies (and I say a lot! Especially on the incredibly unethical and destructive Iraq War) --- defending the CCP's human rights violations is incomprehensible to me. In fact, the CCP is practicing an even worse kind of debt colonialism that we practice. "The Western world needs to evolve as well by rethinking its values and belief systems. That is the only way to truly atone for the exploitation and deaths created by colonialism and US imperialism." -- I totally agree. I submit that we have to evolve our monetary system to make any significant change. "They’ll be fine without you, trust me." -- this is unfortunately naive. If we "leave the Global south alone" then our multi-national corporations and lending institutions will continue to drain the region of labor and resources. Something fundamental has to change. What's your proposal?
@@alexgladstein5136" In fact, the CCP is practicing an even worse kind of debt colonialism that we practice." that is when you are too biased... Nobody even come close to USA. China is miles away.. And come on, USA hate Muslims, that is just an excuse with China, INdia has bigg issues with their Muslim population, no word. It is just interest. China so far doesn't even come close to USA..
Agree with what most has been said. However, do take time to examine the problem of propaganda that western countries used to paint other countries and leaders as dictators or authoritarians. If COVID_19 has not taught you what your precious western values mean to those who are now injured or sick, you have not learnt anything. You might think twice before espousing your western centric values if you were to take more time to learn more about the history of countries such as Russia and China. Above all, the energy predicament facing us will not be solved with such partisan view. Global collaboration is absolutely necessary.
Correction, in the US, the real cost of food and shelter has gone up since 2000. Just check it, take median or mean hourly earnings and divide it by case Schiller index or Big Mac index and you’ll see you can afford less food and shelter over the last 20 years
I've been thinking about this conversation non-stop since I listened to it yesterday. I just read The Quest for Digital Cash by Mr. Gladstein for some historical reference about the concept of Bitcoin and the values behind it. Freedom. Perhaps it's not perfect, but I sense it's a viable rope to grab in an effort to escape the fire. I don't know much, but I will keep learning. Thank you both for your hard work & time.
Nate's guest is almost apologetic in his recognition that Marxian critiques of capitalism along with more recent ecological economic analyses have largely been proven correct. Neo-liberalism, primarily driven by US far-right ideologues and enforced by US controlled institutions (the World Bank, IMF, CIA, military etc) has largely been prejudicial to the economic interests of much of the global south. This together with the dollar's reserve currency status - which as Charles De Gaulle put it, gave the US an exorbitant privilege - ensured an almost unrivalled high standard of living for US citizens during the second half of the 20th century. In addition, the US had massive oil reserves and was all but energy self-sufficient during most of the 20th century. Today, with dwindling crude oil reserves, a shale oil industry that is barely solvent, staggering levels of public and private debt, a looming bonds crisis and the increasing stridency of the BRICS+ economic bloc, the US empire looks to be in terminal decline. De Gaulle referred to only the one form of exorbitant privilege, that of owning the world's reserve currency, the 'petrodollar'. However the US enjoyed many other privileges during most of the last century. Unfortunately the US squandered its many privileges, just as it abused its economic and military power. Now, as Malcolm X predicted, the chickens are coming home to roost.
What a great podcast. Nate is well on his way to becoming a bitcoin advocate. Love the open mind and the questions he kept having. That was me 2 years ago and I spend about 3-5 hour s a day still trying to answer them. I recommend listening to Troy Cross to learn more about the energy side of bitcoin and understanding Jeff booths thesis *** cheers
"So the implication is that, in order to label ourselves as democracies, we have to be international authoritarians?"... thanks for asking this question Nate. I really struggled with your guest's politics and checked out shortly after this section. Enjoyed the postwar global economic timeline though. Would love a deeper dive on that stuff if anyone can recommend a YT or pod because my brain is bad at reading. 🙃
Gladstein’s views on international affairs are nearly pure American Exceptionism. They are CIA talking points either by ignorance or imperial will, and considering many Human Rights NGOs are intelligence cutouts-it doesn’t even matter. I was fortunate to find this recent lecture on Neoliberalism as a global system for cultivating private power at the expense of democratic freedom. Putin and Xi got nothing on London and Wall St… m.th-cam.com/video/hLtkJ-AgLuY/w-d-xo.html
I will say I was impressed with his knowledge on how the new monetary colonialism post WWII actually worked, all the details he brought to the table. Although he was wrong, misinformed or naive on numerous aspects. Which I have been hard pressed to find sources that go into detail on the likes of the World Bank, the IMF, and structural adjustment. There’s books on neoliberalism and privatization that mostly depict its domestic implications, but internationally the material is buried. Confessions of an economic hitman and Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket are two books that point in this general direction. And Predator Nation is an absolute essential read on the financial takeover since Nixon by these big banks and Venture Capitalism and too me underscores their plan for devastating our economy to the point of another Great Depression in order to bring about WWIII. But Breton Woods is totally connected to the Cold War and you absolutely must first watch Oliver Stones ten part series on Amazon Prime or her on YT that lays out its geopolitical unfolding in chronological order, decade by decade, president by president, starting before FDR and WWII. Then listen on Audible to his 38 chapter heavily detailed book by the same title. But then you have to go back further to WWI and the beginning of the Federal Reserve, which Ferguson, author of Predator Nation mentioned above briefly depicts in his book, who is also the author of the best documentary on the 2008 subprime mortgage crises, but the Creature from Jekyll Island goes into greater detail about the beginning of the Fed, but I feel is heavily biased towards a conservative view. But you absolutely can’t even begin to understand what’s going on in our world today without seeking to know the history of banking. And there’s numerous documentaries on the subject. One is entitled All Wars are Banker’s Wars. To me Bretton Woods and the establishment of the Federal Reserve was simply the Bank of London and the imperial powers in Europe taking over the controls of our democracy, which was a threat to Britain as a rising power, as China and Russia are to us today, esp with their vast territories of undiscovered raw resources, but unlike these countries. we had individuals, like the Robber Barons, such as Rockefeller, JP Morgan, the Solomon Brothers, the Dulles Brothers, etc that were amenable to seeking out our country for money, power and prestige. FDR, with the gold confiscation, that wasn’t him, it was the Fed, the Council of Foreign Relations, Wall Street and these key figures mentioned, plus many others, that were responsible for that, and although it might have been written in terms of funding the New Deal that’s not what it was used for, but I believe is what fueled Hitler’s rise and his economic miracle (another term suddenly buried on the internet), as Germany was not only a huge threat themselves to Britain’s global supremacy, but Germany had 90 percent dominance in the emerging petrochemical technology that was the real sought after prize, And besides the financial aspects gave rise to the huge surplus of new items available to domestic economies after WWII. But we didn’t just steal their chemical secrets, but through Operation paperclip, we took key Nazi figures into our military and research fold to execute the Cold War and to bring about the blueprint for the next world war, which one could say when suffering though all the evidence that they’ve been preparing us for since the close of the last Great War. But esp since the 70s and peak oil and Nixon’s introduction of fiat currency. Were the actual Dictator dressed up in sheep’s clothing and I feel the interviewee gets it wrong here in accusing Putin. Not only did we privatize the hell out of Russia’s economy after fall of the Soviet Union through structural adjustment, causing a Great Depression greater than ours of the 1930s, but this is what was offered to Pres Yanakovich of Ukraine by the European Union in 2013, for Ukraine, which he rejected and took Putin’s much preferred offer, which subsequently resulted in us overthrowing him in 2014 via the likes of the neocons. Which seem to have taken over the controls of the Democratic Party in the past decade, but of which they’ve been trying to do since the 80s, having no problem wrestling it from the Republican Party and ESP the takeover of the Christian Right since Reagan. Anyways check out the above audio books and documentaries above as essential starting points.
Recommend Professor Michael Hudson’s book “Super Imperialism” Goes into significant detail about how the US took control of the world’s financial system after the Second World War. As Alex referred to during his interview, the US had all the gold and made all of the rules. (As the saying goes, he who has the gold makes the rules).
As a 74 year old techno-moron, I feel very vulnerable as a result of this conversation. Often, it seemed like I was listening to a foreign language, a language that I will never learn in my life time. Should I be concerned? Also, what happens when there is a glitch or disruption in the electronic "grid"?
Once the internet collapses sometime in the next few decades, it will go away. AI, blockchain currencies and social media manipulation will all disappear once the laws of thermodynamics inevitably assert themselves on an ignorant, energy blind humankind.
Do not worry about your intellectual capability's, it needs 100´s of hours for everyone to understand bitcoin even remotely. But its worth the study for sure.
Like yourself I’ve had my three score and ten, formally a controls and automations engineer, later an industrial automations software developer, and I came away from the Nate and Alex’s conversation with same views as yourself, but like Peggy Lee’s sings “ Is That All There Is”🤔
This conversation reminds me of the phenomena you talk about where every advancement in "efficient" technology results in an increased consumption of scarce resources. Techno-optimism seems like a new-age "religion" based on narrow interests and naive optimism. I am admittedly a luddite, but the contemporary world is rife with presumptuous regrets. I hope this isn't another one.
If bitcoin really has success in outcompeting fiat systems, it will force all of them on a slow path of hyperinflation, and in the meantime reduce buying power of almost all people (fiat) to a significant degree, which will be the forced simplification the earth needs, but humans were previously unable to chose. What do you think of this theory? Remember that no extra bitcoin can be arbitrarily printed, exactly like energy/materials....
@@Waldschwammerl compare the chart of bitcoin (in USD) vs Weimar hyperinflation. If Bitcoin has done anything it’s actually delayed or helped to transition smoothly away from the previous system which would have already gone into hyperinfaltion.
Wonderful conversation. Couple of things to clarify - bitcoin energy use is a function of energy availability. So in a future of less surplus energy, it will simply operate securely on less energy since the energy required to attack the network is also more scarce and expensive. Secondly, in theory, Bitcoin doesnt require the internet. It requires transmitters and receivers of short wave radio communications to send and receive the latest blocks. That technology has existed for 300 years. Calculations could be done by hand because of the difficulty adjustment. Energy use would be that which feeds the human brains of those doing the calculations.
I’m on a road trip today and I’m finally able to listen to this episode without interruption and WOW !!! this is absolutely the best 100 year look at history ,geopolitics,fossil fuels and economic growth
If you have this guest back on in the future (or I see he's been in the comment section some, maybe he'll see this), I have a couple of questions: 1) Much of Nate's work and many of his guests' have shown quite convincingly that the six continent supply chain is not sustainable and will likely not survive a Great Simplification (and if it does, it will be greatly diminished). The future is likely much more regionally-based. On the other hand, the presumption of Bitcoin is a world that is more and more intertwined. A one-world currency only matters/makes sense when people from various countries are making a lot of transactions and have very intertwined economies. Would Bitcoin make sense in a less globalized world? 2) At 1:58:10, when discussing the Cantillon Effect, Alex makes an off-handed comment about how future taxes will need to be consumption taxes. In the context of wealth inequality, that's actually very concerning, as consumption taxes are quite regressive. This conversation has focused on individuals vs governments, and I'm surprised that companies/corporations didn't really factor in at all. The US may nominally be a democracy, but even more than that, it's an oligarchy. Wouldn't Bitcoin as currency just give corporations even more power? If, say, a company is paying their employees in Bitcoin, it's essentially the same as paying them under the table. It becomes impossible to know if the company is, say, paying their employees minimum wage. Companies would no longer be paying into workers comp or unemployment insurance. If Social Security and Medicare are suddenly funded by consumption taxes instead, that's vastly more regressive and really hurts the working class. So taking wages out from under government oversight has the strong potential to weaken labor protections and social programs, right? And wouldn't the combination of a more regressive tax structure and weaker labor protections/social programs increase wealth inequality rather than reduce it? Thank you for an interesting discussion!
1) Great question. I think globalization has really meant the ability for big powers to connect to other parts of the world and funnel in their resources and cheap labor. That system may now be breaking down, which will cause an economic crisis in the West. Maybe tied in with the great simplification. For what comes after: the impact on global labor markets of one neutral currency that no one nation can control could be massive. I don't think you see such disparities in wages if you don't have 150+ currency markets where leaders can squeeze their people. 2) Another great question. Consumption taxes are regressive, yes. But you know what also has been regressive? Dollar privilege which has squeezed lower and middle class Americans at the expense of the 1%, who have done fabulously well in the past 50 years. I think the US would be a more capital-labor balanced society under a Bitcoin standard. I also think national borrowing to do things like fight imperial wars in Asia would be reduced. I think consumption taxes would be easier to collect but it's not like the state is going anywhere. It would still be a crime to not pay your taxes, just like it is today. A lot more thinking needs to be done in this area. 3) As for paying people "under the table" -- Bitcoin is digital cash. So are you saying cash shouldn't exist? Again I think concerns / questions about taxation are important but -- cash is in general very good for disenfranchised people.
@@alexgladstein5136 Hey, thank you for taking the time to respond! I appreciate it. So.. absolutely no argument about dollar privilege being regressive and exploitative, but I feel like that's just an argument for why the current system sucks, not really a good reason why Bitcoin would be better. I guess I just don't really understand why the US would be a more capital-labor balanced society under a Bitcoin standard. If Bitcoin is really just digital cash, like you're saying in point 3, then why would capital-labor balance be any different under a Bitcoin standard than it has been under a regular cash standard since money has existed? People were paying for things in cash in the 19th century, when people were working 12 hour days 6 days a week for pennies. I know TH-cam is in no way conducive to long drawn out conversations, so if you have links to resources with more information on this, I'd be curious to learn more. But in your interview, it sounded like you were suggesting that the only way forward was consumption-based tax laws. If that's just your opinion because it'd be easier, that's totally fine, but it sounded like it was going to be a requirement somehow as a result of a switch to Bitcoin, which would imply that Bitcoin is fundamentally different from cash in some way.
@@Namari12 All I'm saying is the taxation system will have to adapt to the new paradigm. There's not really anything we can do to stop this so -- best thing we can do is think about it now and prepare
@@Namari12 How are you guys defining "regressive"? It doesn't sound like you mean the classical definition of "regression toward the mean", but rather as being a retreat or advancement in the opposite direction of "progress." And if you define it as the latter, how do you define progress? Do you or anyone know the ultimate goal or what utopia you are moving towards? Doesn't progress imply you have a known destination? In other words, if you are traveling East at 50 MPH, can you say if you are really making progress if you don't have a clear destination?
Wow, its a long time since I have had so many aha-moments in the bitcoin space. The way Alex is combining the human rights value propositions of Bitcoin with the actual work and projects being done in the real world as we speak is awesome! Protect Alex and these TH-cam videos at all cost :D
And btw, he is a genius. He has found a hole in the market that he can fill in order to enrich himself. No analyst wants to represent the Tesla bear case
this guy was working with anti-Castro Cuban dissident groups straight after college? I know a spook when I see one. I didnt get far in this episode, does Nate challenge the Bitcoin fanaticism with questions about how energy intensive Bitcoin could possibly exist after The Great Simplification?
Yes, anti-Castro so young says CIA of course. Also, google crypto-colonialism. No. Nate lets him pump his bitcoin bags. Bitcoin would throttle its own energy usage after several weeks, but.. Bitcoin is de facto proof-of-stake now, with ASICs being the stake, along with power contracts. If too many ASICs go off-line due to losing energy, then bitcoin cannot achieve probabilistic finality, aka you've no idea if those ASICs are powered down or doing a double spend. It follows renewables cannot power bitcoin. Anyways, two mining pools control 54% right now, so not really secure anyways. lol
@@alexgladstein5136 How do you propose nations protect themselves from colonialism while maintaining liberal democracy? Allende won a liberal democratic election in 1970 in Chile and the west killed him and installed a fascist dictator.
Hey Nate, that Balaji 8 hour podcast wasn't with Tim Ferris, it was with Lex Friedman. It was a good show, I listened to the whole 8 hours. Insanity, for sure. I'm just starting to listen to this podcast, the first thing that strikes me is how this AI alignment "problem" will at least be democratic and won't unduly punish the poor - we'll all be dead. I'm curious right now about ways that Eliezer could be wrong. Listening to how humans treat each other, it's a hard argument to make.
Excellent content today. Alex Gladstein's case for Bitcoin is similar to that of Andreas M. Antonopoulos whose TH-cam channel is aantonop. The emphasis on democracy as critical for the people to have good money is reinforced in "The Dictator's Handbook" by Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. Left brain idealists of the right or left think a strong leader is needed for their big changes, but the bureaucratic mind doesn't produce that. Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and His Emissary" explains that issue, which is critical to the perspective Daniel Schmachtenberger provided. "The Dictator's Handbook" explains that Western countries like to deal with dictators because it is so much easier than dealing with a democracy where the people might have their own ideas. Alex Gladstein's suggestion for a show about the French Colonial Currency in Africa would be a great way to expose that game for its evil face and impact on people.
It's very encouraging to hear a younger person understanding the situation with such scope. On the other hand, it's worrisome to hear how long it's taking for the info to reach the public. I got my bfa in 2006 at an **arts university** in Toronto (OCADU). We were taught about the exploitative actions of the IMF back then! We watched the 2001 documentary, **Life and Debt**. We learned about the Cochabamba Water War. - Again, there was no economics, or political sciences departments at OCADU. I majored in drawing and painting and took some classes in cultural theory and psychology. This an art school in Canada, yet almost 20 years ago, we were taught many of the very things being discussed here. My point: This information must be more widely disseminated. P.s. As Canadians, we also freely discussed American "Cultural Imperialism".
Thank you Nate so much for bringing up how much energy the US Dollar takes to manage. It is never touched on in these conversations, even when the cost of bitcoin is brought up. Blew my mind!
Just so we are clear, American values have never NOT BEEN imperial EVEN IN THE BEGINNING. Check the history of Native Americans and African Americans and the U.S. policy toward those two groups alone to prove that point. It has ALWAYS been a grift from the VERY beginning.
Growth is so central to our psychology, which is partly why I think we in the west/ global north tend to ignore the externalities of our chasing of growth both for us as individuals, and within our societies. Yes, we'd prefer not to essentially enslave people in the 3rd world, but we'll never rationalize not doing that because pragmatically I think we understand that our societies only work because people can pursue growth within our societies. When people can't grow, things become zero-sum, and the cost of maintaining high levels of complex organization fall apart. It's so fucked, but I don't think there's a way out of that need of ours. It's socially and game theoretically reinforced.
Unchecked growth is cancerous. Nothing in the body grows and grows and grows in such an unbalanced way except for cancers. We don't need constant growth. People lived for hundreds of thousands of years without this cancerous growth mentality. We are ruled by fear and anxiety now, and as such we never feel like we have enough. If you have a billion dollars, you feel you need another billion to survive just in case something happens to your first billion. It's insanity, not based. Also, we're status seeking animals and have become strongly attached to displaying our status through wealth and consumption rather than through skill, prowess, wisdom, etc.
@@brushstroke3733 I would argue that since we left our agrarian lifestyle as a species, we have selected for growth for a variety of different reasons. As you point out, we're status seeking animals, and we "keep up with the Joneses" because we have an internal sense that we will both be at a power disadvantage and be selected against in the mating sphere, and the competition that this instils in us drives up the need to grow. This is really difficult to get out of because it is pragmatic for us to be like this from an evolutionary perspective. Because of that it is very fundamental to our psyches, and so I think people do not tolerate being held back when they could otherwise expand. Also quite philosophically fraught to successfully draw boundaries around what we should do in a way that is fair. I'm sure we could have a culture that is less like that, but it would need to develop in an environment that enabled those attitudes and preferences. Unfortunately Moloch forces prevent that from being an environment that we can reasonably create (or at least make it an extremely difficult thing to do). But yeah, we're acting fairly cancerously, and it is insane for us to be doing on a global level. At the local, short-term, who's to say if it's insane? If there's no global coordination strategy to do the globally optimum thing, and doing so makes you a sucker, dead, or enslaved, then you'd be insane not to be cancerous. We're in a bind.
Bitcoin! This episode had me smiling because in other interviews, particularly the recent one on interest rates and debt with Edward Chancellor, it seemed like there was something important missing from the conversation. In the Chancellor episode, you actually did mention it, but you dismissed it as a waste of energy. If only there were a new money that was tied to energy... Glad you finally had this conversation! Alex did a wonderful job explaining it and it really cemented my feelings about it. When the CSO of the Human Rights Foundation is a Bitcoin advocate, that says something. PS I am also a reader of Lyn Alden
The only caveat to your point about energy, is that Bitcoin mining energy has already been used. A currency tied to energy should be tied to energy that is available for use. The energy used in Bitcoin mining now has the same use value as the oatmeal I ate last week.
@@scottharding4336 Interesting point… the way I see it, Bitcoin functions as a way to store energy as monetary value in a form that is easy to exchange, and that this is what all money is essentially trying to do, to a lesser or greater extent. In this sense, money IS the energy that is available to use. Bitcoin is like you say based on past energy expenditure. Our current system borrows energy from the future. I am still learning about how all this works but this is my current understanding
Does he know that the only reason the Cuban people were able to read the books he was smuggling in is that the Castro Government reduced illiteracy rates in Cuba from 40 percent or so to around 1 percent. Does he understand that when the Cuban people had private property rights, 90 percent of the people lived in abject poverty.
I just wanted to remind Nate or whoever monitors the comments about Alex Gladstein saying he would love to come back and talk about the Israeli/Palestine currency issue, where Palestine gave up their currency/monetary independence for political independence. Given how impossible it's been for them to get goods, energy, and food during the current military operations, this would be a very timely conversation. Given the widespread interest in the conflict, more people outside of your normal viewers would click on it and then get drawn into your wider conversation.
The fact that bitcoin uses less energy than the cruise ship industry is no way an argument FOR bitcoin, on the contrary. The entire concept of mining and scarcity of bitcoin is stupid. We can have a decentralized currency without mining, and with privacy. Alternative local currencies are the solution, not an oligarchic system like bitcoin. And why is bitcoin tradable in dollars? Another major flaw.
If a token of any sort is intended to represent or to have value, you have to be able to exchange it for other things having or representing value, including more traditional tokens like fiat currencies.
@@JonathanMaddox I disagree. Value is not represented by the exchangeability of a token. Tokens ARE NOT value. They are supposed only to store it, or to quantify it, albeit imperfectly. Air has value, rivers have value, food has value, etc. Bitcoin fails at virtually all attributes of money: durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability.
@@alexgladstein5136 A lesser evil, is still an evil. Money creation should be completely decoupled from CO2e emissions. We can have local alternative currencies, decentralized, autonomous, that have zero footprint. e.g. Degrowth supports such currencies. We can replace "mining" with "trust" for example. See Circles UBI as an example.
@@VladBunea As I explained I think there is a lot of evidence to suggest Bitcoin will be primarily powered by renewables in the future, just like it is today
This was excellent. I learned so much about things I didn't know about money, and now I want to learn more about it. As far as Bitcoin, I was aware of the financial freedom it provides to people in Global South, but I had no idea about the cheap energy it seeks. OTEC and Gridless give me hope about mining energy consumption. A universal cryptocurrency is in the cards for humanity!
Good dialogue, but what will keep Bitcoin from eventually being monitored and controlled by centralized authorities? Also, if the 7 billion more impoverished people of the world are happened to be empowered through Bitcoin, what guarantees are there that they won’t go from being planet nibblers to planet eaters? Also, why would more liberal democracies in the world be better? Aren’t the US and Europe historically(and currently) the biggest exploiters the planet has ever seen?
Bitcoin is already monitored but what they can’t control it until quantum computers come and that will be a test of bitcoins ability to adapt, when the time comes.
Bitcoin is transparent. Any authority anywhere could learn everything whenever they like. It's true accounts can mix, but the US works to stop this, ala Tornado Cash. You need ZCash or similar for privacy. ZCash was meant as a bitcoin upgrade, but the bitcoin community is technologically ossified and rejected it. ASICs act like stake in bitcoin, so if enough ASICs exist in one country, then ultimately that control controls bitcoin. Afaik "enough" means like 20% of hash power if they mix in other attack vectors. Texas easily has this much. Also 54% of bitcoin hash power is controlled by two real "nodes" aka mining pools.
As correct as it all is, I always shake my head on Americans bragging about their values from the founding fathers .... after the genocide on the American natives
If goods were made in the United States, they would cost more, but then wouldn't those workers have more money to spend? It seems like a circular system to me, and that the decrease in price of goods manufactured in foreign labor markets is on only realized one time by domestic workers before their own wages stagnate and the cost relative to their wages rebalances back to where it started. In other words, it's a trick that must be repeated over and over again to sustain the gains made by the investors.
@@alexgladstein5136 Thanks. I appreciate your involvement and interaction in comments. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for trying to help us understand your perspective.
you know why I believe this guy when he says he's a liberal? he's like none of these people will ever suffer any consequences for anything we've done and we just have to accept that......DO WE????
@@alexgladstein5136 Thank you for your info and for replying to this comment! Thanks for your work as a human rights activist! You have the responsibility to consider the radical implications of your research and knowledge base. I just don't understand how you can speak to the inherent corruption and planned/controlled nature of markets and call yourself a classical liberal. You know that free markets are not possible. You say you respect the values of the West...the values that the west doesn't follow at all as it functionally undoes all human achievement through to the 21st century. Is ownership of bitcoin not fairly concentrated? I understand you said fee structures must incentivize mining, but my understanding is that mining is not profitable. It's not as though you disagree with Nate about the energy consumption You say that bitcoin is valuable to the disenfranchised,,,and I understand you are doing what is practical. You are doing praxis (thank you) but the problem is our corrupt financial system via the internationally mobile financial elite corporate oligopoly. We need to organize as a society and you academics and researchers are important for defining these people as criminal and organizing ourselves around enforcing the bottom up legitimation of society like Locke said and like Rousseau said. You say it's worth it to spend scarce energy on a monetary bypass to corruption. The energy needs to be spent on undoing the corrupt systems. You don't run from the cancer of predatory financialization but you cut it out. A single currency where Jeff Bezos doesn't get bailed out would be great but let's end neofeudalism and corporate authoritarianism. Im not sure one currency ends the possibilities of bailouts and disproportionate access. Let's end billionaires. If you believe in the great simplification I don't see how you can be a liberal! If you know the plan behind CBDCs, how can you be a liberal?? BTW please dont call the fact of the Iraq war for oil controversial. I understand there is controversy with the American mythos, but you deal in facts you need to frame the truth confidently. I'm not saying everything you think is wrong and I'm grateful to you for a lot of good information, but we cannot vote our way out of the issues we have. I don't think you believe that we can vote our way out, which is why you are pursuing radical action and doing praxis, but you're calling yourself the wrong thing. Liberals don't see the need to build alternative structures in society. I just think you go a little too soft on the west, and we must entertain the possibility of holding elites to account for their crimes!! Are we all serfs?? Let us be honest about the implications of the facts that we deal in! These discussions have radical implications that are not given their due justice. The facts of which you are aware impugn the west must worse than you let on is my main contention. As it pertains to bitcoin it's as you say we'll see, but I sympathize with skepticism on an energy input basis or internet viability basis. It is a kicked can. I like your advice about learning from those who have been through simplification. Thanks again! Love the info about financial colonialism totally agree let's discuss money. You said it liberal democracies exist with countries to exploit and your own research finds that. We need to fundamentally rework economy and social relations to improve upon models proposed thousands of years ago Ultimately we are together in the struggle for giving increase to human wellness, flourishing, and felicity in the 21st century and beyond with prosocial humanitarian ecological and biocentric values. Thank you!!
Jonathan, Alex G worries me with his certainty about things he clearly knows very little about. He seems like a true believer in the Constitution and all that document has lead to. America isn't bad, it hasn't a bad bone in its body. It just made the occasional mistake in killing 4.5 million people since Korea. And that's a conservative number. Techno liberals will be the end of life on earth. Their privilege and certainty is terrifying.
@@jonathantrautman I agree entirely, thanks. Either naivety or doner funding adds subtlety to the way Alex speaks. The name Peter Thiel rings alarm bells with me.
I wonder if he works in the US of human rights now that we live in a authoritarian regime - no fair elections, J6 political prisoners, limited free speech/censorship,....
The US government is very flawed and very exploitative (as I laid out on the podcast) -- but fundamentally different from the CCP, an actual totalitarian regime
1:19:40 Are 18% of argentinians using Bitcoin ? I'm argentinian and I only know a friend of a friend who have bitcoins. I never know of any transaction made by Bitcoin. And we have an inflation of 10 % by MONTH.
After the JFK assassination, The MIC knew Johnson was a pushover so it wasn’t “REALLY” about the Vietnam War, it was about every military contractor becoming obscenely rich. You forgot to mention NASA & the space program. And thank God we did. It makes this conversation possible today.
The argument that BitCoin has a greener portfolio of energy than cars is irrelevant. If it is using green energy, than it is displacing that energy from another use. This is the same argument that supporters of Carbon Capture plants use: they will run on green energy! But this means less green energy for other uses, so in the end, it still increases the use of fossil fuels, at least until the grid is fully powered by renewable energy.
Maybe I didn't make this clear enough. Bitcoin uses a lot of energy that no one else is using. It's not "stealing" energy from something else. It's energy that is going wasted or is stranded
1) Tying digital currency to a physical constraint makes sense, in this case energy with Bitcoin. I've heard an idea talked about that I like even better. It would be a new currency backed by the world's major countries, based on carbon sequestration. To make a new unit of currency, you have to sequester a ton of carbon. This would also tie to the physical, but also motivate people in a helpful direction. In this scheme, I would not only include sequestration by carbon-sucking machines, but also restoring nature, soil-sequestering farming practices, etc. 2) Amazing coverage here of the world's unfair rich vs. poor currency and economics. Another great resource in this area is Jason Hickel. I highly recommend his book The Divide, about all this. He has also done great work on Degrowth economics. He'd be an outstanding guest on your show.
Looking forward to this. Ive long since pointed out how the monetary system turbo charged overshoot, and how BTC at a minimum provides a model of a more sustainable money. For anyone interested, I wrote an essay on the topic. Essay discusses: - A combination of debt based money, untethering money creation from the physical world, and the need for intermediaries turbo-charged climate change and overshoot. - Unconstrained money creation facilitated exponential growth. - Neoclassical economists have it the wrong way round: they believe once there is money, energy and resources will magically appear - this inversion is at the heart of ecological overshoot - Bitcoin is an old idea, a money whose scarcity is enforced by tethering it to the physical world via electricity, just like all the old moneys such as rai stones, sea shells, goldl etc. Bitcoin isnt the experiment - fiat is. - Since money is a claim on energy and resources, and measuring a region's surplus energy is a good proxy for its resource richness, Bitcoin mining could achieves this since it measures surplus energy. - A money that holds its value over time addresses the problem of planned obsolescence as companies prioirtise product longevity and durability over short-term spin-offs of existing products since consumers are more likely to think twice before making a purchase. Link: docs.google.com/document/d/1essV0yMPSt7RVC0ZQk6oUK-1QDWfN3OY33xpDvwg8yM/edit
Money is not wealth. As a medium of exchange, it is a tenuous claim on resources. Fiat meets the functionality required of a medium of exchange. Never look at fiat as a reliable store of wealth. The purpose of money is for the convenience of not having to barter. Nothing else.
@@bumblebee9337 As Nate says, money is a claim on energy and resources. It prices natural capital. But because more and more units can be created out of thin air, you've ever more claims on finite resources. Fiat would, for example, allow you to mine the moon. That would be a losing prospect becsise of the energy deficit. But the point is fiat enables over-exploitation of resources. Then there is the Cantillon effect. As more units and created from thin air and the pizza is sliced from 4s, to 8s, to 16s etc but does not increase, those closest to the money printer benefit, those holding the pizza slices have ever shrinking slices. Hence the enormous inequality we see.
Amazing guest Nate. What an interview. Well done on the choice and the execution, thx. Not something, absent your input, I would have exposed myself to, and was surprised at a couple three bits I learned covering knowledge I thought I had covered well previously. Luv when that happens.Thx again.
Everytime I hear somebody talk about Bitcoin like this it comes across as somebody spinning a yarn of BS. Also, Nate really needs to learn about mmt from a proper mmt source, not the critics that don't understand it. I normally love Nate's podcast but this this was definitely the flakiest
Bitcoin is well known for its learning curve. It’s not more complex than the status quo, it’s just so radically different in its logic from any other system of value that it’s hard to grok without some (re)education. I notice how every single proponent of bitcoin I can think of first rejected it or ignored it for a loooong time.
How do we stop the most basic human trait... Desire to dominate and enjoying the benefits of dominance. When i push people on this point, it comes down to, it's better we are dominant than being dominated.... And this is the absolute ground floor no one is willing to give up the relative benefits we all enjoy...
I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I agree. It’s a super hard problem but the main source of the entire machinery of human struggle. My closest answer to this involves: A. Some kind of capacity for Telepathic communication. A medium of sharing and relating with others that cannot be manipulated or intercepted by a third party without consent. B. A Public sector that stays fundamentally Public. On B, I mean Public as the space where transactions, exchanges, or other interactions happen freely. It seems all hierarchy is directly a result of Public spaces being Privatized by Power seeking people OR initially supportive add-ons “gaining self awareness” unintended to it (and hence Privatizing it). If we could create a Public space that mirrors back to us all the creativity we put into it without any Private subversions that would be the answer. That would be a kind of Hyper transparent Public space where nothing in it can be hidden if one wants to examine in more detail. However, due to that telepathy aspect, anything that people seek to make a private exchange wouldn’t hinder the process of the public. Those two conditions, to my understanding, will prevent any weaponized capacity for human tendency for power to subsume our natural creativity on mass. At best individual bad actors could make a malicious deal on in one but without a hierarchy to hide and camouflage behind, they would be identified and avoided quickly without massive collective scams happening for extended periods of time or more power amassing that could be weaponized on someone else
1:02:22 yeah the cold war proxy wars bankrupted the usa, killed millions for the banksters this guest likely decries, and lead to massive inflation of the 70s, eventually to the neoliberal hellscape, which yet again killed millions more for "freedom". Oh but it was a "good" to wage cold war based on the BS domino theory for "freedom"?. This is reductionist and not the reason the cold war was waged.
Excellent interview with suggestions near the end for how environmentalists can help support better energy sources for mining bitcoin. Lots to think about! Thanks so much.
Its a money whose scarcity is enforced by being tethered to the physical world (through electricity generation) - just like all the moneys before Fiat. Fiat is the experiment, not Bitcoin.
If you're mathematically inclined check out "But how does Bitcoin actually work?" by 3Blue1Brown. Even if you are not mathematically inclined, you can still appreciate the beauty of the technology. It's a very thorough explanation of how Bitcoin works without any metaphors. I'd also recommend reading the Bitcoin whitepaper, but that is a little more complicated.
Does the guest really think the cold war, which was a bankers war, was a net positive? Lead to massive death in global south and massive inflation in the west, as well as correlated with destruction of labor via unions as unipolar moment ushered in neoliberalism in full force.
Good question. Currencies emerge over long periods of time. They don't just go from zero to widely used. My view is we will watch this happen over the coming decades.
So glad i found your podcast through this interview. I am a big Gladstein fan through his human rights work. I see you've got a lot of other really fascinating sounding interviews as well. I look forward to watching them.
Alex does a great job exposing egregious examples of human exploitation especially in the developing world and how it's benefiting the advanced economies, and how Bitcoin is starting to tip the scales in favor of equality and potential for a much more equality of opportunity in the future.
Is the BTC networks energy cost even relevant in light of all that debt by governments for large scale kinetic military action and the fact some people never get to build up savings even today despite all the technological progress? A decentralized layer of trust and the option to exchange value as one pillar of our civilization could maybe shift the time preference of consumption towards the long-term approach. Im just a dreamer 😉
1:30:09 - 1:31:10 Flawed premise. The thing is a virtual asset while its adopters aspire to make it ascend to currency status. A cloud based apparatus will never be more "tied to the real world" than what we have now because everything is ultimately tied to r e l a t i v e v a l u a t i o n. Relative valuation as in 2:07:31 - 2:08:00 And ultimately, it all comes down to the political economy or else why 2:07:06 ? ;-) 2:09:10 * We're undergoing energetic and resource pool atrophy; no currency will ever buy more than what it is now on a sustained basis. 2:09:27 - 2:09:41 * lol " ...impractical... " 1:58:53 * Short answer is yes. *Its a nifty little trick with some good incidences in marginal use cases(for now), but there are still many unexamined points on the operational level as well as on the philosophical level. The one that comes immediately to mind is that from what I understand, the amount of bitcoin operating and circulating in the system will actually d e c r e a s e over time as people die, get killed, lose ...or forget their keys (...). The plumbing side of something that has a pretense to such ambitions warrants a lot of scrutiny; understanding that how it was designed has ramifications that you have to consider could evolve with wider adoption.... It's an experiment with money as a stored password, but it won't change human nature nor the conditions of our predicament.
Seems odd that a country that makes citizens recite allegiance to it's flag on a daily basis is seen as bastion of free thought. A place that bans abortions and books is not an example of democracy for the world. India and South Africa are perhaps more balanced examples. India is the Biggest Democracy. Democracy is an ongoing project.
Do we really have to report crypto currency holdings to the IRS, or is that just something H&R Block implies to collect info when you use their tools to file tax returns? Why is it the IRS's business whether we hold crypto or not? I'm afraid to hold any because when I file my tax returns using H&R Block, it asks if I have any crypto holdings.
Austerity for the global south and austerity for the majority of people in the rich countries are not competing options, but two sides of the same coin. Once there has been the resource transfer from the global south there is the question of how these are distributed within the rich countries. We're told by Alex that the wider adoption of bitcoin he foresees will erode the tax base and necessitate the switch of taxation from income (and presumably capital gains) to consumption. No doubt the beneficiaries of this process will still want their property rights enforced by government and for the countries in which they operate to by a favourable environment to operate. It seems to me that that needs to be contended. The switch to taxes on consumption may herald a more regressive system of government tax an and spending depending upon which government programmes continue to be funded and those which are not.
Nate are there any plans to cover the three topics Alex brought up at the end of the episode? It all sounds incredibly important. I’m going to start reading his book in the next few days. Other the The Great Simplification, what other published material have you penned? I’d love to read anything else you have done.
A wonderful discussion (as always"the time flew by")....can folks suggest just where I start my 'education regarding Bitcoin (usage)'? Thanks to you both for your work.
I can recommend 3 youtube channels that are very different: BTC Sessions gives general tutorials (how to use wallets, set up a node, etc) Stephan Livera has more technical discussions if you want to go deep into the rabbit hole. WBD podcast brings all kind of guests to discuss general topics (energy, politics, philosophy, etc) and how they relate to bitcoin.
A great book, and easy read, on the topic is Jeff Booth’s “The Price of Tomorrow”. This made understanding Bitcoin and money in the context of technology very approachable for me and Jeff even touches upon the climate/environmental impacts of inflationary money. Happy learning :)
@@spencern22 Spencer, thanks I’ll get it and read it with interest. Anything that puts this topic ‘in context’ and makes it ‘approachable’ is most welcome :) Rus
The people with the most Bitcoin would have the most power. The people that have the most money and power now will be able to buy the Bitcoin and retain all of the wealth and power. Why wouldn't current governments, with the current insanely unequal ability to produce electricity, reproduce the current inequality.
As opposed to what, those closest to the halls of power get all the money? Bitcoin is more like collateral for energy investment for nation states because they can scale investment more than the private sector. It also incentivizes governments to think of generating revenue within the limits of the national energy reality.
Not quite. They have no power over the currency itself. Totally different than today where billionaires are in league with the government re: monetary policy
While at home homeless soaring. Gun deaths out of sight. 78 million no health insurance. $32 trillion debt. Spending more on military than next ten nations combined. Great interview, thanks
This is where I have a problem, whenever I listen to Bitcoin evangelists: 90.5% of all Bitcoins are already mined. About 85% of those sit in less than 0.4% of addresses. What ever energy (both human and physical) will be used to maintain BC ecosystem, 85% will go towards pumping up the value of those 0.4% and only 15% towards saving the world and democracy.
@@alexgladstein5136 if Bitcoin fails, we will have only wasted trillions of MWs of electricity in mining a digital asset that has only been useful to a very limited number of people, some of them, by the way, criminals, human and drug traffickers who operate outside the law on the dark web. Another group will have benefited from laundering money to avoid paying taxes. And, obviously, an even larger number of people will have lost tons of money or maybe all of their life savings. Sounds like a great bet. BTW, spoiler alert: it will fail.
Those numbers include Bitcoin addresses of exchanges that hold Bitcoin for millions of people. So, it is not .4% holders but .4% of addresses. Also, the concentration has been dropping every month for years now and even with the exchanges holding Bitcoin for many millions in a few addresses the .4% figure is out of date.
When this guy brought up Kasparov and Maidan, it told me everything I needed to know. Be very skeptical of these NGO's, their names usually mean the exact opposite. Next time ask him what Human Rights Foundation thinks of Bukele.🤔😆
@@DavidMarcotte-xx1nw It’s highly revealing. If you are a supporter of the fascist Russian state then I don’t need to waste time responding to you. What do we think of Bukele? He is swiftly eroding democracy
The coup immediately resulted in a war that has needlessly caused the death and suffering of thousands of human beings. Is this your definition of "human rights"?
@@nubraskan the diagnosis he gives is actually quite insightful and fundamentally correct. The solution (bitcoin) is basically flawed, to put it mildly.
Thank you for this uploaded discussion/interview. While watching I couldn't help but raise some questions. 1) All Bitcoin transactions depend on energy and an infrastructure that can only be financed by government issued currency and debt and also maintained by staff paid in the same currency(think IMF and World Bank). All users and consumers of energy and infrastructure will be expected to share the cost normally referred to as tax which a government can specify the currency of payment. If Bitcoin is a government hands off currency, are Bitcoin users expecting to be free-loaders in this scenario and not carry their fair share in paying such taxes? 2) Computer programming started by simply using bits and bytes that has become a plethora of programming languages marketed as specific technologies to address particular short-comings of previous languages. Similarly Bitcoin is presented as another technology to 'solve' a particular problem. Isn't Bitcoin simply another technology of the western mind that objectifies problems as external and that can only be solved by an objectified external technology? 3) Bitcoin's objectives are as if the fish thought it was in water but since the fish perceives itself out of water it invents bitcoin to achieve integration with the water consuming resources to do so. Similarly energy is objectified as external to the human being instilling the sense of separation but the Universe is an ocean of energy of which human beings are an unseparated part. All energy that makes and binds the universe is the product of useful work, work that is both made and consumed by all in relationship to sustain and serve the Universe. Earth is part of this working relationship as is the work made and consumed on Earth by the biosphere. Bitcoin certainly consumes work(energy) but does it contribute to making useful work in return to restore the consumed work in order to preserve the relationship to sustain and serve Earth or is it just another high entropy generating technology? Human relations and the perception humans and human societies have of themselves on Earth is deeply flawed and this has been assisted by the "soft systems" that have been developed based on these perceptions. The most divisive of these systems are law and accountancy which are the primary systems of relationship applied by all organizations utilizing the "soft technologies" of language and mathematics respectively to build and apply them. These systems and technologies are heavily influenced by the western mind as eloquently explained by Vandana Shiva at the recent Beyond Growth conference in the EU Parliament, Brussels www.beyond-growth-2023.eu/lecture/focus-panel-13/. Thank you again for a stimulating discussion 👏✊❤🙏
Thanks for watching! And for the kind words. My thoughts below 1) I think that if Bitcoin continues to grow into a bigger piece of the global economy, taxation regimes will shift accordingly. Some governments may give up on their own fiats (like dollarizing countries have done) and actually try to get people to pay taxes in Bitcoin. This is similar to Thiers' law in economics (good money drives out bad) 2) We don't know who created Bitcoin. They spoke English, that's about all we know. Bitcoin is currently being worked on by people all across the world. It is, by its very nature, anti-colonial 3) Bitcoin turns energy into high quality money that will preserve purchasing power over time. I think this is very useful but I suppose that is in the eye of the beholder
It sounded very interesting but the "and property rights", "and property rights", "and property rights" got boring real fast. Putting torture and property rights in the same basket is part of the root problem. The rest is noise.
Not having property rights is otherwise known as "slavery". If you don't think slavery and torture are in the same category, then I don't know what to tell you.
@@itssteve6018 property rights is simply the capacity to exclude and it’s protected by the state. You can have a society with property rights or a form of Proto-property rights and slavery. Slavery is also a slippery concept, it’s not as cut and dry as it seems.
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Very interesting discussion! It was actually really refreshing, usually I agree with what your guests are saying from the start, but this one really challenged a lot of the opinions I had going into it. I appreciated the international perspective--this has been the first time someone has articulated a use case for Bitcoin that makes any sense at all to me. I'm still not completely convinced, but it definitely opened my eyes to a new perspective, so thank you for that!
Same. The Carbon Backed Currency was equally compelling and challenging in particular. But in a paradoxical way creats a value that makes it difficult to discount carbon output and disregard the environment as an externality.
@@jessieadore Time to listen to Ministry for the Future again. 😳🔥
@@christinearmington sure is. Parts of this conversation are dystopian.
Nice to have a guest with a different point of view (different from most guests). I think I disagreed with every point Alex Gladstein made except that the developed nations (especially the U.S.) are exploiting the less developed nations. Well of course that's true, it's a basic tenet of Capitalism that you increase profits by externalizing costs. Alex also said he was a big fan of Capitalism. He does realize Capitalism is 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮, right?
Hey at least we can agree on something! Can liberal democracies exist without exploiting poorer countries? It's a great question. I ask myself this all the time now.
@@alexgladstein5136 Liberal for whom? A democracy for whom? Code for oligarchy as Michael Hudson eloquently argues. Rome collapse kind of stuff.
Me listening to this episode: "WAIT, WHAT!? I didn't know that!" (every 30 seconds)
Haha I would say the same for myself. Fascinating.
That’s why I found it fascinating… I made like three pages of notes and check out the topics they discussed, wish they taught this stuff in school.
I want Axel Gladstain and Simon Michaux to be on the same podcast and talk about bitcoin and energy/materials. Then we can have this triage that Nate is always talking about
That’s not the triage I’m talking about. But we just started Reality Roundtable so I’ll try to make that happen
@@thegreatsimplification Tanks for the response :-)
Axel Gladstain's claims could be debunked from a distributed systems perspective (CompSci), so not sure if Simon Michaux knows what to say.
In brief, ASICs have de facto turned bitcoin into a proof-of-stake network, with ASICs being the stake, which actually make bitcoin secure in a better threat model right now. Yet if too many ASICs go off-line then bitcoin is no longer secure in a standard byzantine threat model, as you donno if they're really off-line or double spending.
In particular bitcoin is not really secure if powered by solar and wind. This is why Alex is so obsessed with OTEC here, but OTEC has some downsides and remains fairly underdeveloped.
@@annibjrkmann8464 That would be a total waste of Simon Michaux time imo
Throw schmaktenburger in there too.
Let me start by saying Gladstein is incredibly intelligent and clearly well-versed in the monetary colonialism system; and I found myself agreeing with quite a bit of his perspective - but when he got to Bitcoin I had to pause. As a fellow analyst and options trader, Nate, I couldn’t let this one go without some serious critique.
Some Critical Analysis
While I agreed with his observation that many of the existing currencies are failing, he failed to mention the Petro Yuan and BRICS - both of which could completely disrupt dollar dominance and significantly aid in de-dollarization. BRICS is backed by gold and rare-earth minerals; these types of pegged-to-commodities-currencies stand a chance (and have proven so in the past) to stay grounded in some form of physical reality. Bitcoin, on the other hand, acts as a no limits instrument of Modern Monetary Theory - further detaching us from our ecological reality.
His fantastical speculation that Bitcoin is emissions free literally had me pause the video and take a walk to get some air.
Bitcoin is parasitic having double energy expenditures and siphoning from multiple systems without even the notion of any type of return to these systems. The hardware alone required (we will leave out the energy to power the computers for a moment) to “mine” requires the most complex of computer chips built using the most specialized and highest refinement of our ever-dwindling supply of minerals. Not forgoing the energy expenditure (diesel) to extract, distribute, refine (often nat gas or coal with massive amounts of water), then distribute further (using more diesel).
On the energy to power this specialized hardware, many nations’ power grids are strained, breaking, or have already collapsed with examples of rolling blackouts, brownouts, and prioritization in places such as Puerto Rico, Texas, Shri Lanka, South Africa most recently, with many other countries across Africa and South and Southeast Asia. There is no excess energy.
Though I did find the whataboustism with the cruise ship industry and air conditioners an entertaining way to deflect for the massive (nearly always overlooked) ecological cost of Bitcoin.
But let’s suppose for a moment Bitcoin is and does all he says, the Lighting Network entirely and completely defeats Bitcoin’s original intent of transparency. These layered payment protocols are simply duplicating the existing tertiary wealth system we have now - just a digital version of our current petrodollar system experiment - just more claims on future energy we won’t have. Unfortunately, his energy and mineral blindness has prevented him from seeing this.
In addition, there is no real anonymity or ability to secure or otherwise hide assets. Time and time again the US government has been able to easily recover most Bitcoin ransoms, though the price volatility will often cause the value or amount recovered to drop, despite the same number of Bitcoins being recovered.
The reigning king of Bitcoin Sam Bankman-Fried of the spectacularly failed FTX flat out admitted on Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” Podcast that Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme; as does author Stephen Diehl, a Financial Technologist, on Bloomberg.
Gladstein is right, Bitcoin isn’t a redistribution scheme, it’s a Ponzi Scheme. Its success is based solely on a belief or ideology and getting more people to put their beliefs, energy, and dollars into Bitcoin.
In closing, I found Gladstein’s virtue signaling more of the same old hollow, hypocritical, western values coupled with a massive dose of Xenophobia & Sinophobia - that the Western way is the only way.
Additionally, why must there always be this flat-earth and binary view of China?
They are not our enemies, they are a 3,000-year-old civilization that, while we might not always agree with, we must work with. Non-interference and cooperation should be our goals in a globalized world, not othering each other because of our differences.
From the perspective of the Global South, he is demonizing much of their population, their values, cultures, governments, and beliefs as less than, while openly admitting to giving dissidents guilt money funneled via Bitcoin to fund Color Revolutions in the most antithetical attempt to make up for exploitative Colonialism.
This is not how we solve the problem.
It’s just trying to change things via the backdoor. A more PR-friendly version of CIA coups that make you feel good.
It will only create more sovereign interference, deaths, and dependence, which I suppose is the goal of Western imperialism anyways.
Sovereign independence for the Global South will never be accomplished this way. It's just the global version of the failed American Dream. He kept repeating the word freedom, over and over, but can he define what it means and looks like in action? For the US, for each nation, country, and person?
More importantly, why is your version of freedom the right one?
And lastly, it is possible to believe that NATO not abiding by the Minsk Agreement is a factor that contributed to the war without being crazy or pro-Putin or pro-war crimes.
It’s a double standard without acknowledging the massive war crimes of the US in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, plus those committed against the African Americans and Native Americans on your own soil. Gladstein states it himself when speaking of the Iraq invasion and oil dollars but fails to mention how many Iraqi citizens had to die for that (it is about a million).
In the book, “Rising Out of Hatred” the grandson of David Duke didn’t change his white supremacist values and beliefs because he was ostracized and isolated by his fellow students at the liberal college he attended.
Even though they disagreed with his belief system, he was welcomed and invited to join and work with them. He was able to see the humanity of the people he'd been trained to hate. This is what led to his evolution and change.
The Western world needs to evolve as well by rethinking its values and belief systems. That is the only way to truly atone for the exploitation and deaths created by colonialism and US imperialism.
As an American living the Global South, it is very clear, all they want the American bully to leave them alone. Any kind of interference, even with good intentions, is a net detriment.
Just let them be.
They’ll be fine without you, trust me.
Thank you for the kind words and the thoughtful criticism.
I do agree that we are moving to a more multi-polar world where BRICS countries will have more power both politically and economically. I do NOT think China wants to or even can issue a global reserve currency. Its entire system is based on the US having the reserve currency and the CCP swapping exports in exchange for dollars which it then uses to buy hard assets or make investments. It is now for example the world's biggest car exporter. This gets destroyed if they are the issuer of the world reserve currency. So maybe it won't be Bitcoin but it won't be the Yuan either.
Bitcoin mining machines themselves do not generate any emissions. The power that it takes to run them can generate emissions, if it is from burning fossils. My point is that fossils will likely get very scarce and expensive and Bitcoin miners will prefer cheaper sources of energy. But we can debate that.
Bitcoin mining cannot compete with existing customers on grids. They are willing to pay a lot more than what residential and industrial consumers can pay. This is why you see Bitcoin miners search for stranded or excess or wasted energy. In fact because Bitcoin mining is the world's best demand response technology it is likely that it leads to more stable grids with overbuilt renewables, and not unstable ones.
Lightning is one way to spend Bitcoin. I am optimistic about it but it may be a different solution that really thrives in the future. In any case, Lightning is not "claims" it's real Bitcoin. There is no credit here. In any event there are many other competing ways to non-custodially scale Bitcoin transactions, none of which involve creating more than 21 million Bitcoin. Further, Bitcoin can be used very privately, provided you do not connect your address or LN activity to a real-world identity. All of the cooks busted by the US government made the mistake of connecting at some point their identity to their Bitcoin activity. Bitcoin privacy technology is also improving every few months. It's definitely still a vulnerability and takes expertise to do the right way.
It's true that scams like FTX can create "paper Bitcoin" -- the solution to that is to custody your own coins and verify them yourself. It's also true that most cryptocurrencies are scams or ponzi schemes. Bitcoin is a system where you can exchange electricity for scarce digital currency. Bitcoin cannot be minted into existence. Users can verify exactly how much Bitcoin there is and how much will ever be created. Users control the rules of the system, not issuers or administrations. This does not fit into the definition of a Ponzi scheme.
The Chinese Communist Party is a totalitarian regime that is engaged in a genocide of its Muslim minority. It also subjugated Tibet and Hong Kong and runs an Orwellian, dystopian surveillance state. Say what you want about the US and its neocolonial policies (and I say a lot! Especially on the incredibly unethical and destructive Iraq War) --- defending the CCP's human rights violations is incomprehensible to me. In fact, the CCP is practicing an even worse kind of debt colonialism that we practice.
"The Western world needs to evolve as well by rethinking its values and belief systems. That is the only way to truly atone for the exploitation and deaths created by colonialism and US imperialism." -- I totally agree. I submit that we have to evolve our monetary system to make any significant change.
"They’ll be fine without you, trust me." -- this is unfortunately naive. If we "leave the Global south alone" then our multi-national corporations and lending institutions will continue to drain the region of labor and resources. Something fundamental has to change. What's your proposal?
@@alexgladstein5136" In fact, the CCP is practicing an even worse kind of debt colonialism that we practice." that is when you are too biased... Nobody even come close to USA. China is miles away.. And come on, USA hate Muslims, that is just an excuse with China, INdia has bigg issues with their Muslim population, no word. It is just interest. China so far doesn't even come close to USA..
Agree with what most has been said. However, do take time to examine the problem of propaganda that western countries used to paint other countries and leaders as dictators or authoritarians. If COVID_19 has not taught you what your precious western values mean to those who are now injured or sick, you have not learnt anything. You might think twice before espousing your western centric values if you were to take more time to learn more about the history of countries such as Russia and China. Above all, the energy predicament facing us will not be solved with such partisan view. Global collaboration is absolutely necessary.
Correction, in the US, the real cost of food and shelter has gone up since 2000. Just check it, take median or mean hourly earnings and divide it by case Schiller index or Big Mac index and you’ll see you can afford less food and shelter over the last 20 years
I can just go to the grocery store and look at my wages and rent prices to confirm this. Just sayin' :)
I've been thinking about this conversation non-stop since I listened to it yesterday. I just read The Quest for Digital Cash by Mr. Gladstein for some historical reference about the concept of Bitcoin and the values behind it. Freedom. Perhaps it's not perfect, but I sense it's a viable rope to grab in an effort to escape the fire. I don't know much, but I will keep learning. Thank you both for your hard work & time.
Wow thanks!
Nate's guest is almost apologetic in his recognition that Marxian critiques of capitalism along with more recent ecological economic analyses have largely been proven correct. Neo-liberalism, primarily driven by US far-right ideologues and enforced by US controlled institutions (the World Bank, IMF, CIA, military etc) has largely been prejudicial to the economic interests of much of the global south. This together with the dollar's reserve currency status - which as Charles De Gaulle put it, gave the US an exorbitant privilege - ensured an almost unrivalled high standard of living for US citizens during the second half of the 20th century. In addition, the US had massive oil reserves and was all but energy self-sufficient during most of the 20th century. Today, with dwindling crude oil reserves, a shale oil industry that is barely solvent, staggering levels of public and private debt, a looming bonds crisis and the increasing stridency of the BRICS+ economic bloc, the US empire looks to be in terminal decline. De Gaulle referred to only the one form of exorbitant privilege, that of owning the world's reserve currency, the 'petrodollar'. However the US enjoyed many other privileges during most of the last century. Unfortunately the US squandered its many privileges, just as it abused its economic and military power. Now, as Malcolm X predicted, the chickens are coming home to roost.
What a great podcast. Nate is well on his way to becoming a bitcoin advocate. Love the open mind and the questions he kept having. That was me 2 years ago and I spend about 3-5 hour s a day still trying to answer them. I recommend listening to Troy Cross to learn more about the energy side of bitcoin and understanding Jeff booths thesis *** cheers
I’ll check it out 🤝
"So the implication is that, in order to label ourselves as democracies, we have to be international authoritarians?"... thanks for asking this question Nate. I really struggled with your guest's politics and checked out shortly after this section.
Enjoyed the postwar global economic timeline though. Would love a deeper dive on that stuff if anyone can recommend a YT or pod because my brain is bad at reading. 🙃
Gladstein’s views on international affairs are nearly pure American Exceptionism. They are CIA talking points either by ignorance or imperial will, and considering many Human Rights NGOs are intelligence cutouts-it doesn’t even matter.
I was fortunate to find this recent lecture on Neoliberalism as a global system for cultivating private power at the expense of democratic freedom. Putin and Xi got nothing on London and Wall St…
m.th-cam.com/video/hLtkJ-AgLuY/w-d-xo.html
I will say I was impressed with his knowledge on how the new monetary colonialism post WWII actually worked, all the details he brought to the table. Although he was wrong, misinformed or naive on numerous aspects. Which I have been hard pressed to find sources that go into detail on the likes of the World Bank, the IMF, and structural adjustment. There’s books on neoliberalism and privatization that mostly depict its domestic implications, but internationally the material is buried. Confessions of an economic hitman and Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket are two books that point in this general direction. And Predator Nation is an absolute essential read on the financial takeover since Nixon by these big banks and Venture Capitalism and too me underscores their plan for devastating our economy to the point of another Great Depression in order to bring about WWIII.
But Breton Woods is totally connected to the Cold War and you absolutely must first watch Oliver Stones ten part series on Amazon Prime or her on YT that lays out its geopolitical unfolding in chronological order, decade by decade, president by president, starting before FDR and WWII. Then listen on Audible to his 38 chapter heavily detailed book by the same title.
But then you have to go back further to WWI and the beginning of the Federal Reserve, which Ferguson, author of Predator Nation mentioned above briefly depicts in his book, who is also the author of the best documentary on the 2008 subprime mortgage crises, but the Creature from Jekyll Island goes into greater detail about the beginning of the Fed, but I feel is heavily biased towards a conservative view. But you absolutely can’t even begin to understand what’s going on in our world today without seeking to know the history of banking. And there’s numerous documentaries on the subject. One is entitled All Wars are Banker’s Wars. To me Bretton Woods and the establishment of the Federal Reserve was simply the Bank of London and the imperial powers in Europe taking over the controls of our democracy, which was a threat to Britain as a rising power, as China and Russia are to us today, esp with their vast territories of undiscovered raw resources, but unlike these countries. we had individuals, like the Robber Barons, such as Rockefeller, JP Morgan, the Solomon Brothers, the Dulles Brothers, etc that were amenable to seeking out our country for money, power and prestige. FDR, with the gold confiscation, that wasn’t him, it was the Fed, the Council of Foreign Relations, Wall Street and these key figures mentioned, plus many others, that were responsible for that, and although it might have been written in terms of funding the New Deal that’s not what it was used for, but I believe is what fueled Hitler’s rise and his economic miracle (another term suddenly buried on the internet), as Germany was not only a huge threat themselves to Britain’s global supremacy, but Germany had 90 percent dominance in the emerging petrochemical technology that was the real sought after prize, And besides the financial aspects gave rise to the huge surplus of new items available to domestic economies after WWII. But we didn’t just steal their chemical secrets, but through Operation paperclip, we took key Nazi figures into our military and research fold to execute the Cold War and to bring about the blueprint for the next world war, which one could say when suffering though all the evidence that they’ve been preparing us for since the close of the last Great War. But esp since the 70s and peak oil and Nixon’s introduction of fiat currency. Were the actual Dictator dressed up in sheep’s clothing and I feel the interviewee gets it wrong here in accusing Putin. Not only did we privatize the hell out of Russia’s economy after fall of the Soviet Union through structural adjustment, causing a Great Depression greater than ours of the 1930s, but this is what was offered to Pres Yanakovich of Ukraine by the European Union in 2013, for Ukraine, which he rejected and took Putin’s much preferred offer, which subsequently resulted in us overthrowing him in 2014 via the likes of the neocons. Which seem to have taken over the controls of the Democratic Party in the past decade, but of which they’ve been trying to do since the 80s, having no problem wrestling it from the Republican Party and ESP the takeover of the Christian Right since Reagan. Anyways check out the above audio books and documentaries above as essential starting points.
Recommend Professor Michael Hudson’s book “Super Imperialism” Goes into significant detail about how the US took control of the world’s financial system after the Second World War. As Alex referred to during his interview, the US had all the gold and made all of the rules. (As the saying goes, he who has the gold makes the rules).
Thankyou! @@robinsmith2771
As a 74 year old techno-moron, I feel very vulnerable as a result of this conversation. Often, it seemed like I was listening to a foreign language, a language that I will never learn in my life time. Should I be concerned? Also, what happens when there is a glitch or disruption in the electronic "grid"?
Exactly! I’m 70 and my comment was that I need a more in-depth look into how it works.
Once the internet collapses sometime in the next few decades, it will go away. AI, blockchain currencies and social media manipulation will all disappear once the laws of thermodynamics inevitably assert themselves on an ignorant, energy blind humankind.
Do not worry about your intellectual capability's, it needs 100´s of hours for everyone to understand bitcoin even remotely. But its worth the study for sure.
@@davehendricks4824 Appreciate you listening. The journey can always start today!
Like yourself I’ve had my three score and ten, formally a controls and automations engineer, later an industrial automations software developer, and I came away from the Nate and Alex’s conversation with same views as yourself, but like Peggy Lee’s sings “ Is That All There Is”🤔
This conversation reminds me of the phenomena you talk about where every advancement in "efficient" technology results in an increased consumption of scarce resources. Techno-optimism seems like a new-age "religion" based on narrow interests and naive optimism. I am admittedly a luddite, but the contemporary world is rife with presumptuous regrets. I hope this isn't another one.
Thank you for so eloquently describing how I and likely quite a few others felt while listening.
If bitcoin really has success in outcompeting fiat systems, it will force all of them on a slow path of hyperinflation, and in the meantime reduce buying power of almost all people (fiat) to a significant degree, which will be the forced simplification the earth needs, but humans were previously unable to chose. What do you think of this theory?
Remember that no extra bitcoin can be arbitrarily printed, exactly like energy/materials....
It’s called Jevon’s Paradox. I was thinking the same thing you expressed so clearly.
The name of that concept is "Jevon's Paradox"
@@Waldschwammerl compare the chart of bitcoin (in USD) vs Weimar hyperinflation. If Bitcoin has done anything it’s actually delayed or helped to transition smoothly away from the previous system which would have already gone into hyperinfaltion.
Wonderful conversation. Couple of things to clarify - bitcoin energy use is a function of energy availability. So in a future of less surplus energy, it will simply operate securely on less energy since the energy required to attack the network is also more scarce and expensive. Secondly, in theory, Bitcoin doesnt require the internet. It requires transmitters and receivers of short wave radio communications to send and receive the latest blocks. That technology has existed for 300 years. Calculations could be done by hand because of the difficulty adjustment. Energy use would be that which feeds the human brains of those doing the calculations.
😳🤯😱🤷♀️
I’m on a road trip today and I’m finally able to listen to this episode without interruption and WOW !!! this is absolutely the best 100 year look at history ,geopolitics,fossil fuels and economic growth
This was an absolutely fascinating conversation
Our homeless (USA) are learning about the great simplification as we speak. I'm just one eviction away.
If you have this guest back on in the future (or I see he's been in the comment section some, maybe he'll see this), I have a couple of questions:
1) Much of Nate's work and many of his guests' have shown quite convincingly that the six continent supply chain is not sustainable and will likely not survive a Great Simplification (and if it does, it will be greatly diminished). The future is likely much more regionally-based. On the other hand, the presumption of Bitcoin is a world that is more and more intertwined. A one-world currency only matters/makes sense when people from various countries are making a lot of transactions and have very intertwined economies. Would Bitcoin make sense in a less globalized world?
2) At 1:58:10, when discussing the Cantillon Effect, Alex makes an off-handed comment about how future taxes will need to be consumption taxes. In the context of wealth inequality, that's actually very concerning, as consumption taxes are quite regressive.
This conversation has focused on individuals vs governments, and I'm surprised that companies/corporations didn't really factor in at all. The US may nominally be a democracy, but even more than that, it's an oligarchy. Wouldn't Bitcoin as currency just give corporations even more power?
If, say, a company is paying their employees in Bitcoin, it's essentially the same as paying them under the table. It becomes impossible to know if the company is, say, paying their employees minimum wage. Companies would no longer be paying into workers comp or unemployment insurance. If Social Security and Medicare are suddenly funded by consumption taxes instead, that's vastly more regressive and really hurts the working class. So taking wages out from under government oversight has the strong potential to weaken labor protections and social programs, right? And wouldn't the combination of a more regressive tax structure and weaker labor protections/social programs increase wealth inequality rather than reduce it?
Thank you for an interesting discussion!
Namari12, you make some excellent points. To me, Alex appears either naive, or funded by a tech billionaire like Thiel.
1) Great question. I think globalization has really meant the ability for big powers to connect to other parts of the world and funnel in their resources and cheap labor. That system may now be breaking down, which will cause an economic crisis in the West. Maybe tied in with the great simplification. For what comes after: the impact on global labor markets of one neutral currency that no one nation can control could be massive. I don't think you see such disparities in wages if you don't have 150+ currency markets where leaders can squeeze their people.
2) Another great question. Consumption taxes are regressive, yes. But you know what also has been regressive? Dollar privilege which has squeezed lower and middle class Americans at the expense of the 1%, who have done fabulously well in the past 50 years. I think the US would be a more capital-labor balanced society under a Bitcoin standard. I also think national borrowing to do things like fight imperial wars in Asia would be reduced. I think consumption taxes would be easier to collect but it's not like the state is going anywhere. It would still be a crime to not pay your taxes, just like it is today. A lot more thinking needs to be done in this area.
3) As for paying people "under the table" -- Bitcoin is digital cash. So are you saying cash shouldn't exist? Again I think concerns / questions about taxation are important but -- cash is in general very good for disenfranchised people.
@@alexgladstein5136 Hey, thank you for taking the time to respond! I appreciate it.
So.. absolutely no argument about dollar privilege being regressive and exploitative, but I feel like that's just an argument for why the current system sucks, not really a good reason why Bitcoin would be better. I guess I just don't really understand why the US would be a more capital-labor balanced society under a Bitcoin standard. If Bitcoin is really just digital cash, like you're saying in point 3, then why would capital-labor balance be any different under a Bitcoin standard than it has been under a regular cash standard since money has existed? People were paying for things in cash in the 19th century, when people were working 12 hour days 6 days a week for pennies.
I know TH-cam is in no way conducive to long drawn out conversations, so if you have links to resources with more information on this, I'd be curious to learn more. But in your interview, it sounded like you were suggesting that the only way forward was consumption-based tax laws. If that's just your opinion because it'd be easier, that's totally fine, but it sounded like it was going to be a requirement somehow as a result of a switch to Bitcoin, which would imply that Bitcoin is fundamentally different from cash in some way.
@@Namari12 All I'm saying is the taxation system will have to adapt to the new paradigm. There's not really anything we can do to stop this so -- best thing we can do is think about it now and prepare
@@Namari12 How are you guys defining "regressive"? It doesn't sound like you mean the classical definition of "regression toward the mean", but rather as being a retreat or advancement in the opposite direction of "progress." And if you define it as the latter, how do you define progress?
Do you or anyone know the ultimate goal or what utopia you are moving towards? Doesn't progress imply you have a known destination? In other words, if you are traveling East at 50 MPH, can you say if you are really making progress if you don't have a clear destination?
Wow, epic conversation. So revealing and insightful. Thank you Alex and Nate. Inspiring.
Wow, its a long time since I have had so many aha-moments in the bitcoin space. The way Alex is combining the human rights value propositions of Bitcoin with the actual work and projects being done in the real world as we speak is awesome! Protect Alex and these TH-cam videos at all cost :D
And btw, he is a genius. He has found a hole in the market that he can fill in order to enrich himself. No analyst wants to represent the Tesla bear case
Human rights? More like covert operations.😆
this guy was working with anti-Castro Cuban dissident groups straight after college? I know a spook when I see one.
I didnt get far in this episode, does Nate challenge the Bitcoin fanaticism with questions about how energy intensive Bitcoin could possibly exist after The Great Simplification?
Do you think it's incompatible to be a) anti neocolonialism and b) anti dictator?
Yes, anti-Castro so young says CIA of course. Also, google crypto-colonialism.
No. Nate lets him pump his bitcoin bags. Bitcoin would throttle its own energy usage after several weeks, but..
Bitcoin is de facto proof-of-stake now, with ASICs being the stake, along with power contracts. If too many ASICs go off-line due to losing energy, then bitcoin cannot achieve probabilistic finality, aka you've no idea if those ASICs are powered down or doing a double spend. It follows renewables cannot power bitcoin. Anyways, two mining pools control 54% right now, so not really secure anyways. lol
@@alexgladstein5136 How do you propose nations protect themselves from colonialism while maintaining liberal democracy? Allende won a liberal democratic election in 1970 in Chile and the west killed him and installed a fascist dictator.
Bitcoins energy consumption is self regulating and has no problem scaling down. I don't see the issue here?
Exactly what my first thought was right after what a doooosch….
Hey Nate, that Balaji 8 hour podcast wasn't with Tim Ferris, it was with Lex Friedman. It was a good show, I listened to the whole 8 hours. Insanity, for sure.
I'm just starting to listen to this podcast, the first thing that strikes me is how this AI alignment "problem" will at least be democratic and won't unduly punish the poor - we'll all be dead.
I'm curious right now about ways that Eliezer could be wrong. Listening to how humans treat each other, it's a hard argument to make.
Excellent content today. Alex Gladstein's case for Bitcoin is similar to that of Andreas M. Antonopoulos whose TH-cam channel is aantonop. The emphasis on democracy as critical for the people to have good money is reinforced in "The Dictator's Handbook" by Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. Left brain idealists of the right or left think a strong leader is needed for their big changes, but the bureaucratic mind doesn't produce that. Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and His Emissary" explains that issue, which is critical to the perspective Daniel Schmachtenberger provided. "The Dictator's Handbook" explains that Western countries like to deal with dictators because it is so much easier than dealing with a democracy where the people might have their own ideas. Alex Gladstein's suggestion for a show about the French Colonial Currency in Africa would be a great way to expose that game for its evil face and impact on people.
Thanks for recommendations.
It's very encouraging to hear a younger person understanding the situation with such scope. On the other hand, it's worrisome to hear how long it's taking for the info to reach the public. I got my bfa in 2006 at an **arts university** in Toronto (OCADU). We were taught about the exploitative actions of the IMF back then! We watched the 2001 documentary, **Life and Debt**. We learned about the Cochabamba Water War. - Again, there was no economics, or political sciences departments at OCADU. I majored in drawing and painting and took some classes in cultural theory and psychology. This an art school in Canada, yet almost 20 years ago, we were taught many of the very things being discussed here. My point: This information must be more widely disseminated.
P.s. As Canadians, we also freely discussed American "Cultural Imperialism".
Eye opening facts podcast And Bitcoin sounds like a Wise and Safe Currency for us All
Thank you Mightily Alex 🕊🌏🙏🏼❤️
Thank you Nate so much for bringing up how much energy the US Dollar takes to manage. It is never touched on in these conversations, even when the cost of bitcoin is brought up. Blew my mind!
Just so we are clear, American values have never NOT BEEN imperial EVEN IN THE BEGINNING. Check the history of Native Americans and African Americans and the U.S. policy toward those two groups alone to prove that point. It has ALWAYS been a grift from the VERY beginning.
Utterly brilliant conversation. Thanks for introducing us to this amazing person
Growth is so central to our psychology, which is partly why I think we in the west/ global north tend to ignore the externalities of our chasing of growth both for us as individuals, and within our societies. Yes, we'd prefer not to essentially enslave people in the 3rd world, but we'll never rationalize not doing that because pragmatically I think we understand that our societies only work because people can pursue growth within our societies. When people can't grow, things become zero-sum, and the cost of maintaining high levels of complex organization fall apart. It's so fucked, but I don't think there's a way out of that need of ours. It's socially and game theoretically reinforced.
Unchecked growth is cancerous. Nothing in the body grows and grows and grows in such an unbalanced way except for cancers. We don't need constant growth. People lived for hundreds of thousands of years without this cancerous growth mentality. We are ruled by fear and anxiety now, and as such we never feel like we have enough. If you have a billion dollars, you feel you need another billion to survive just in case something happens to your first billion. It's insanity, not based. Also, we're status seeking animals and have become strongly attached to displaying our status through wealth and consumption rather than through skill, prowess, wisdom, etc.
@@brushstroke3733 I would argue that since we left our agrarian lifestyle as a species, we have selected for growth for a variety of different reasons. As you point out, we're status seeking animals, and we "keep up with the Joneses" because we have an internal sense that we will both be at a power disadvantage and be selected against in the mating sphere, and the competition that this instils in us drives up the need to grow. This is really difficult to get out of because it is pragmatic for us to be like this from an evolutionary perspective. Because of that it is very fundamental to our psyches, and so I think people do not tolerate being held back when they could otherwise expand. Also quite philosophically fraught to successfully draw boundaries around what we should do in a way that is fair.
I'm sure we could have a culture that is less like that, but it would need to develop in an environment that enabled those attitudes and preferences. Unfortunately Moloch forces prevent that from being an environment that we can reasonably create (or at least make it an extremely difficult thing to do).
But yeah, we're acting fairly cancerously, and it is insane for us to be doing on a global level. At the local, short-term, who's to say if it's insane? If there's no global coordination strategy to do the globally optimum thing, and doing so makes you a sucker, dead, or enslaved, then you'd be insane not to be cancerous.
We're in a bind.
It would be interesting to hear Professor Richard Wolff's response to Gladstein's comments on FDR.
The confiscation was necessary for the greater good?
@@alexgladstein5136 taxing the rich for the greater good
Bitcoin! This episode had me smiling because in other interviews, particularly the recent one on interest rates and debt with Edward Chancellor, it seemed like there was something important missing from the conversation. In the Chancellor episode, you actually did mention it, but you dismissed it as a waste of energy. If only there were a new money that was tied to energy...
Glad you finally had this conversation! Alex did a wonderful job explaining it and it really cemented my feelings about it. When the CSO of the Human Rights Foundation is a Bitcoin advocate, that says something.
PS I am also a reader of Lyn Alden
The only caveat to your point about energy, is that Bitcoin mining energy has already been used. A currency tied to energy should be tied to energy that is available for use. The energy used in Bitcoin mining now has the same use value as the oatmeal I ate last week.
@@scottharding4336 Interesting point… the way I see it, Bitcoin functions as a way to store energy as monetary value in a form that is easy to exchange, and that this is what all money is essentially trying to do, to a lesser or greater extent. In this sense, money IS the energy that is available to use. Bitcoin is like you say based on past energy expenditure. Our current system borrows energy from the future.
I am still learning about how all this works but this is my current understanding
Iam a Boomer HODler & learned alot from you 2. Its not just about US economies but positive global impact Bitcoin it has.
Does he know that the only reason the Cuban people were able to read the books he was smuggling in is that the Castro Government reduced illiteracy rates in Cuba from 40 percent or so to around 1 percent. Does he understand that when the Cuban people had private property rights, 90 percent of the people lived in abject poverty.
I don't support dictatorship in any circumstance
But now they can watch hollywood movies! Seriously, I think this guy is either corrupted or clueless.
@@DavidMarcotte-xx1nw Have you seen Chuck Norris vs Communism? Great film
Echoes of ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ (John Perkins)
I just wanted to remind Nate or whoever monitors the comments about Alex Gladstein saying he would love to come back and talk about the Israeli/Palestine currency issue, where Palestine gave up their currency/monetary independence for political independence. Given how impossible it's been for them to get goods, energy, and food during the current military operations, this would be a very timely conversation. Given the widespread interest in the conflict, more people outside of your normal viewers would click on it and then get drawn into your wider conversation.
The fact that bitcoin uses less energy than the cruise ship industry is no way an argument FOR bitcoin, on the contrary. The entire concept of mining and scarcity of bitcoin is stupid. We can have a decentralized currency without mining, and with privacy. Alternative local currencies are the solution, not an oligarchic system like bitcoin. And why is bitcoin tradable in dollars? Another major flaw.
If a token of any sort is intended to represent or to have value, you have to be able to exchange it for other things having or representing value, including more traditional tokens like fiat currencies.
@@JonathanMaddox I disagree. Value is not represented by the exchangeability of a token. Tokens ARE NOT value. They are supposed only to store it, or to quantify it, albeit imperfectly. Air has value, rivers have value, food has value, etc. Bitcoin fails at virtually all attributes of money: durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability.
It has a smaller carbon foot print, is my point. And no one complains about cruise ships.
@@alexgladstein5136 A lesser evil, is still an evil. Money creation should be completely decoupled from CO2e emissions. We can have local alternative currencies, decentralized, autonomous, that have zero footprint. e.g. Degrowth supports such currencies. We can replace "mining" with "trust" for example. See Circles UBI as an example.
@@VladBunea As I explained I think there is a lot of evidence to suggest Bitcoin will be primarily powered by renewables in the future, just like it is today
This was excellent. I learned so much about things I didn't know about money, and now I want to learn more about it. As far as Bitcoin, I was aware of the financial freedom it provides to people in Global South, but I had no idea about the cheap energy it seeks. OTEC and Gridless give me hope about mining energy consumption. A universal cryptocurrency is in the cards for humanity!
Thank you Alex & Nate, several revelations (for me) in your discussion. Much appreciated.
Good dialogue, but what will keep Bitcoin from eventually being monitored and controlled by centralized authorities? Also, if the 7 billion more impoverished people of the world are happened to be empowered through Bitcoin, what guarantees are there that they won’t go from being planet nibblers to planet eaters? Also, why would more liberal democracies in the world be better? Aren’t the US and Europe historically(and currently) the biggest exploiters the planet has ever seen?
Great questions. Could fill up another 2 hours answering them!
Bitcoin is already monitored but what they can’t control it until quantum computers come and that will be a test of bitcoins ability to adapt, when the time comes.
Bitcoin is transparent. Any authority anywhere could learn everything whenever they like. It's true accounts can mix, but the US works to stop this, ala Tornado Cash.
You need ZCash or similar for privacy. ZCash was meant as a bitcoin upgrade, but the bitcoin community is technologically ossified and rejected it.
ASICs act like stake in bitcoin, so if enough ASICs exist in one country, then ultimately that control controls bitcoin. Afaik "enough" means like 20% of hash power if they mix in other attack vectors. Texas easily has this much.
Also 54% of bitcoin hash power is controlled by two real "nodes" aka mining pools.
Over the top excellent Nate. Thank you and please keep going.
This was one of my favorite episodes. So much I never knew about. Great guest .
As correct as it all is, I always shake my head on Americans bragging about their values from the founding fathers .... after the genocide on the American natives
If goods were made in the United States, they would cost more, but then wouldn't those workers have more money to spend? It seems like a circular system to me, and that the decrease in price of goods manufactured in foreign labor markets is on only realized one time by domestic workers before their own wages stagnate and the cost relative to their wages rebalances back to where it started. In other words, it's a trick that must be repeated over and over again to sustain the gains made by the investors.
Workers would have more money to spend but our currency would be weaker
@@alexgladstein5136 Thanks. I appreciate your involvement and interaction in comments. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for trying to help us understand your perspective.
I tuned out as soon as your guest started disparaging President Putin.
you know why I believe this guy when he says he's a liberal? he's like none of these people will ever suffer any consequences for anything we've done and we just have to accept that......DO WE????
I mean. I do think Bitcoin is a way to fight back
@@alexgladstein5136 Thank you for your info and for replying to this comment! Thanks for your work as a human rights activist!
You have the responsibility to consider the radical implications of your research and knowledge base. I just don't understand how you can speak to the inherent corruption and planned/controlled nature of markets and call yourself a classical liberal. You know that free markets are not possible. You say you respect the values of the West...the values that the west doesn't follow at all as it functionally undoes all human achievement through to the 21st century.
Is ownership of bitcoin not fairly concentrated?
I understand you said fee structures must incentivize mining, but my understanding is that mining is not profitable. It's not as though you disagree with Nate about the energy consumption
You say that bitcoin is valuable to the disenfranchised,,,and I understand you are doing what is practical. You are doing praxis (thank you) but the problem is our corrupt financial system via the internationally mobile financial elite corporate oligopoly.
We need to organize as a society and you academics and researchers are important for defining these people as criminal and organizing ourselves around enforcing the bottom up legitimation of society like Locke said and like Rousseau said.
You say it's worth it to spend scarce energy on a monetary bypass to corruption. The energy needs to be spent on undoing the corrupt systems.
You don't run from the cancer of predatory financialization but you cut it out. A single currency where Jeff Bezos doesn't get bailed out would be great but let's end neofeudalism and corporate authoritarianism. Im not sure one currency ends the possibilities of bailouts and disproportionate access. Let's end billionaires. If you believe in the great simplification I don't see how you can be a liberal! If you know the plan behind CBDCs, how can you be a liberal??
BTW please dont call the fact of the Iraq war for oil controversial. I understand there is controversy with the American mythos, but you deal in facts you need to frame the truth confidently.
I'm not saying everything you think is wrong and I'm grateful to you for a lot of good information, but we cannot vote our way out of the issues we have. I don't think you believe that we can vote our way out, which is why you are pursuing radical action and doing praxis, but you're calling yourself the wrong thing. Liberals don't see the need to build alternative structures in society. I just think you go a little too soft on the west, and we must entertain the possibility of holding elites to account for their crimes!! Are we all serfs?? Let us be honest about the implications of the facts that we deal in!
These discussions have radical implications that are not given their due justice. The facts of which you are aware impugn the west must worse than you let on is my main contention. As it pertains to bitcoin it's as you say we'll see, but I sympathize with skepticism on an energy input basis or internet viability basis. It is a kicked can.
I like your advice about learning from those who have been through simplification. Thanks again!
Love the info about financial colonialism totally agree let's discuss money.
You said it liberal democracies exist with countries to exploit and your own research finds that. We need to fundamentally rework economy and social relations to improve upon models proposed thousands of years ago
Ultimately we are together in the struggle for giving increase to human wellness, flourishing, and felicity in the 21st century and beyond with prosocial humanitarian ecological and biocentric values. Thank you!!
Jonathan, Alex G worries me with his certainty about things he clearly knows very little about. He seems like a true believer in the Constitution and all that document has lead to. America isn't bad, it hasn't a bad bone in its body. It just made the occasional mistake in killing 4.5 million people since Korea. And that's a conservative number. Techno liberals will be the end of life on earth. Their privilege and certainty is terrifying.
@@jonathantrautman I agree entirely, thanks. Either naivety or doner funding adds subtlety to the way Alex speaks. The name Peter Thiel rings alarm bells with me.
@@jonathantrautman I appreciate your comments. I think I was pretty hard on the West, lol!
I wonder if he works in the US of human rights now that we live in a authoritarian regime - no fair elections, J6 political prisoners, limited free speech/censorship,....
The US government is very flawed and very exploitative (as I laid out on the podcast) -- but fundamentally different from the CCP, an actual totalitarian regime
USA has what it has exported all over the world. Now its your turn.
Great discussion... many thanks 🙏 I have followed both you and Alex for a few years and have learned a lot... it is great to see your paths coincide.
Exceptionally good podcast
Thank you so much, Mr Hagen. Jeff Booth and Jason Lowrey would be good guests to round out your bitcoin inquiry.
1:19:40 Are 18% of argentinians using Bitcoin ? I'm argentinian and I only know a friend of a friend who have bitcoins. I never know of any transaction made by Bitcoin. And we have an inflation of 10 % by MONTH.
This was one HECK of a convo guys - 3rd time listening, wow.
After the JFK assassination, The MIC knew Johnson was a pushover so it wasn’t “REALLY” about the Vietnam War, it was about every military contractor becoming obscenely rich.
You forgot to mention NASA & the space program. And thank God we did.
It makes this conversation possible today.
The argument that BitCoin has a greener portfolio of energy than cars is irrelevant. If it is using green energy, than it is displacing that energy from another use. This is the same argument that supporters of Carbon Capture plants use: they will run on green energy! But this means less green energy for other uses, so in the end, it still increases the use of fossil fuels, at least until the grid is fully powered by renewable energy.
Maybe I didn't make this clear enough. Bitcoin uses a lot of energy that no one else is using. It's not "stealing" energy from something else. It's energy that is going wasted or is stranded
1) Tying digital currency to a physical constraint makes sense, in this case energy with Bitcoin. I've heard an idea talked about that I like even better. It would be a new currency backed by the world's major countries, based on carbon sequestration. To make a new unit of currency, you have to sequester a ton of carbon. This would also tie to the physical, but also motivate people in a helpful direction. In this scheme, I would not only include sequestration by carbon-sucking machines, but also restoring nature, soil-sequestering farming practices, etc.
2) Amazing coverage here of the world's unfair rich vs. poor currency and economics. Another great resource in this area is Jason Hickel. I highly recommend his book The Divide, about all this. He has also done great work on Degrowth economics. He'd be an outstanding guest on your show.
Looking forward to this. Ive long since pointed out how the monetary system turbo charged overshoot, and how BTC at a minimum provides a model of a more sustainable money. For anyone interested, I wrote an essay on the topic. Essay discusses:
- A combination of debt based money, untethering money creation from the physical world, and the need for intermediaries turbo-charged climate change and overshoot.
- Unconstrained money creation facilitated exponential growth.
- Neoclassical economists have it the wrong way round: they believe once there is money, energy and resources will magically appear - this inversion is at the heart of ecological overshoot
- Bitcoin is an old idea, a money whose scarcity is enforced by tethering it to the physical world via electricity, just like all the old moneys such as rai stones, sea shells, goldl etc. Bitcoin isnt the experiment - fiat is.
- Since money is a claim on energy and resources, and measuring a region's surplus energy is a good proxy for its resource richness, Bitcoin mining could achieves this since it measures surplus energy.
- A money that holds its value over time addresses the problem of planned obsolescence as companies prioirtise product longevity and durability over short-term spin-offs of existing products since consumers are more likely to think twice before making a purchase.
Link: docs.google.com/document/d/1essV0yMPSt7RVC0ZQk6oUK-1QDWfN3OY33xpDvwg8yM/edit
Money is not wealth. As a medium of exchange, it is a tenuous claim on resources. Fiat meets the functionality required of a medium of exchange. Never look at fiat as a reliable store of wealth. The purpose of money is for the convenience of not having to barter. Nothing else.
@@bumblebee9337 As Nate says, money is a claim on energy and resources. It prices natural capital. But because more and more units can be created out of thin air, you've ever more claims on finite resources. Fiat would, for example, allow you to mine the moon. That would be a losing prospect becsise of the energy deficit. But the point is fiat enables over-exploitation of resources. Then there is the Cantillon effect. As more units and created from thin air and the pizza is sliced from 4s, to 8s, to 16s etc but does not increase, those closest to the money printer benefit, those holding the pizza slices have ever shrinking slices. Hence the enormous inequality we see.
@@Zanderzan1983 💯
Thank you for such a high quality podcast
Very interesting podcast. I learned a lot, thanks
Amazing guest Nate. What an interview. Well done on the choice and the execution, thx. Not something, absent your input, I would have exposed myself to, and was surprised at a couple three bits I learned covering knowledge I thought I had covered well previously. Luv when that happens.Thx again.
Everytime I hear somebody talk about Bitcoin like this it comes across as somebody spinning a yarn of BS.
Also, Nate really needs to learn about mmt from a proper mmt source, not the critics that don't understand it. I normally love Nate's podcast but this this was definitely the flakiest
Great guest, didn't convince me on Bitcoin.
Haha, I'll take the first part of the praise any day!
Bitcoin is well known for its learning curve. It’s not more complex than the status quo, it’s just so radically different in its logic from any other system of value that it’s hard to grok without some (re)education. I notice how every single proponent of bitcoin I can think of first rejected it or ignored it for a loooong time.
💯
His sales pitch on Bitcoin is unconvincing. He will string you along and mesmerize you, but it is just a veneer.
How do we stop the most basic human trait... Desire to dominate and enjoying the benefits of dominance. When i push people on this point, it comes down to, it's better we are dominant than being dominated.... And this is the absolute ground floor no one is willing to give up the relative benefits we all enjoy...
I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I agree. It’s a super hard problem but the main source of the entire machinery of human struggle.
My closest answer to this involves:
A. Some kind of capacity for Telepathic communication. A medium of sharing and relating with others that cannot be manipulated or intercepted by a third party without consent.
B. A Public sector that stays fundamentally Public.
On B, I mean Public as the space where transactions, exchanges, or other interactions happen freely. It seems all hierarchy is directly a result of Public spaces being Privatized by Power seeking people OR initially supportive add-ons “gaining self awareness” unintended to it (and hence Privatizing it).
If we could create a Public space that mirrors back to us all the creativity we put into it without any Private subversions that would be the answer. That would be a kind of Hyper transparent Public space where nothing in it can be hidden if one wants to examine in more detail. However, due to that telepathy aspect, anything that people seek to make a private exchange wouldn’t hinder the process of the public.
Those two conditions, to my understanding, will prevent any weaponized capacity for human tendency for power to subsume our natural creativity on mass. At best individual bad actors could make a malicious deal on in one but without a hierarchy to hide and camouflage behind, they would be identified and avoided quickly without massive collective scams happening for extended periods of time or more power amassing that could be weaponized on someone else
1:02:22 yeah the cold war proxy wars bankrupted the usa, killed millions for the banksters this guest likely decries, and lead to massive inflation of the 70s, eventually to the neoliberal hellscape, which yet again killed millions more for "freedom". Oh but it was a "good" to wage cold war based on the BS domino theory for "freedom"?. This is reductionist and not the reason the cold war was waged.
Excellent interview with suggestions near the end for how environmentalists can help support better energy sources for mining bitcoin. Lots to think about! Thanks so much.
If buying oil in US dollars is a monetary system advantage to the USA why would the USA want to decarbonize the world energy economy?
I need a more in depth look into how exactly bitcoin works. From start to finish.
Its a money whose scarcity is enforced by being tethered to the physical world (through electricity generation) - just like all the moneys before Fiat. Fiat is the experiment, not Bitcoin.
If you're mathematically inclined check out "But how does Bitcoin actually work?" by 3Blue1Brown. Even if you are not mathematically inclined, you can still appreciate the beauty of the technology. It's a very thorough explanation of how Bitcoin works without any metaphors. I'd also recommend reading the Bitcoin whitepaper, but that is a little more complicated.
Bitcoin is digital gold. Period.
@@stopper90004 😂it’s a worthless joke!
Does the guest really think the cold war, which was a bankers war, was a net positive? Lead to massive death in global south and massive inflation in the west, as well as correlated with destruction of labor via unions as unipolar moment ushered in neoliberalism in full force.
If people can't use Bitcoin for daily currency, how can people use Bitcoin?
Good question. Currencies emerge over long periods of time. They don't just go from zero to widely used. My view is we will watch this happen over the coming decades.
Just wow. A complete new insight on history foe me. Wow. Great interview/conversation.
So glad i found your podcast through this interview. I am a big Gladstein fan through his human rights work. I see you've got a lot of other really fascinating sounding interviews as well.
I look forward to watching them.
What I’m taking from the conversation is freedom is going to die with the carbon pulse
Alex does a great job exposing egregious examples of human exploitation especially in the developing world and how it's benefiting the advanced economies, and how Bitcoin is starting to tip the scales in favor of equality and potential for a much more equality of opportunity in the future.
Had my attention until "... and therefore, Bitcoin!!" Oh, fer chrissakes....
Very happy if you just listen to the first part!
Great interview Nate. Thank you sir
52:21 it’s all of us. Time for a system upgrade or reboot. ❤ thank you again for doing this
Alex & Nate, what are the chances that we get ya’all and Jeff booth and Michael Sawyer all on a panel to discuss all of this?!?!
Is the BTC networks energy cost even relevant in light of all that debt by governments for large scale kinetic military action and the fact some people never get to build up savings even today despite all the technological progress?
A decentralized layer of trust and the option to exchange value as one pillar of our civilization could maybe shift the time preference of consumption towards the long-term approach.
Im just a dreamer 😉
48:38 Thank you for getting specific about who’s fault it is.
1:30:09 - 1:31:10
Flawed premise.
The thing is a virtual asset while its adopters aspire to make it ascend to currency status.
A cloud based apparatus will never be more "tied to the real world" than what we have now because everything is ultimately tied to r e l a t i v e v a l u a t i o n.
Relative valuation as in 2:07:31 - 2:08:00
And ultimately, it all comes down to the political economy or else why 2:07:06 ?
;-)
2:09:10
* We're undergoing energetic and resource pool atrophy; no currency will ever buy more than what it is now on a sustained basis.
2:09:27 - 2:09:41
* lol " ...impractical... "
1:58:53
* Short answer is yes.
*Its a nifty little trick with some good incidences in marginal use cases(for now), but there are still many unexamined points on the operational level as well as on the philosophical level.
The one that comes immediately to mind is that from what I understand, the amount of bitcoin operating and circulating in the system will actually d e c r e a s e over time as people die, get killed, lose ...or forget their keys (...).
The plumbing side of something that has a pretense to such ambitions warrants a lot of scrutiny; understanding that how it was designed has ramifications that you have to consider could evolve with wider adoption....
It's an experiment with money as a stored password, but it won't change human nature nor the conditions of our predicament.
freedom of information, is as important as clean water, clean air and free trade.
Seems odd that a country that makes citizens recite allegiance to it's flag on a daily basis is seen as bastion of free thought. A place that bans abortions and books is not an example of democracy for the world. India and South Africa are perhaps more balanced examples. India is the Biggest Democracy. Democracy is an ongoing project.
well said
This is your best guest Nate!!!
Do we really have to report crypto currency holdings to the IRS, or is that just something H&R Block implies to collect info when you use their tools to file tax returns? Why is it the IRS's business whether we hold crypto or not? I'm afraid to hold any because when I file my tax returns using H&R Block, it asks if I have any crypto holdings.
I was also curious about the taxation aspect.
I mean. Consider it like cash. The burden to disclose is on you, and you face penalty for breaking the law
@@alexgladstein5136 There is no box for reporting cash holdings though. IRS's business is income, not savings.
Austerity for the global south and austerity for the majority of people in the rich countries are not competing options, but two sides of the same coin. Once there has been the resource transfer from the global south there is the question of how these are distributed within the rich countries. We're told by Alex that the wider adoption of bitcoin he foresees will erode the tax base and necessitate the switch of taxation from income (and presumably capital gains) to consumption. No doubt the beneficiaries of this process will still want their property rights enforced by government and for the countries in which they operate to by a favourable environment to operate. It seems to me that that needs to be contended. The switch to taxes on consumption may herald a more regressive system of government tax an and spending depending upon which government programmes continue to be funded and those which are not.
hey nate, i have an interesting proposal to shift how humans are living on a daily basis. where can i contact you?
Nate are there any plans to cover the three topics Alex brought up at the end of the episode? It all sounds incredibly important. I’m going to start reading his book in the next few days. Other the The Great Simplification, what other published material have you penned?
I’d love to read anything else you have done.
A wonderful discussion (as always"the time flew by")....can folks suggest just where I start my 'education regarding Bitcoin (usage)'?
Thanks to you both for your work.
I can recommend 3 youtube channels that are very different:
BTC Sessions gives general tutorials (how to use wallets, set up a node, etc)
Stephan Livera has more technical discussions if you want to go deep into the rabbit hole.
WBD podcast brings all kind of guests to discuss general topics (energy, politics, philosophy, etc) and how they relate to bitcoin.
@@exoosteology7775 you are very kind, thank you I am most appreciative…rus
A great book, and easy read, on the topic is Jeff Booth’s “The Price of Tomorrow”. This made understanding Bitcoin and money in the context of technology very approachable for me and Jeff even touches upon the climate/environmental impacts of inflationary money.
Happy learning :)
@@spencern22 Spencer, thanks I’ll get it and read it with interest. Anything that puts this topic ‘in context’ and makes it ‘approachable’ is most welcome :)
Rus
Very interesting episode!
Excellent!!
The people with the most Bitcoin would have the most power. The people that have the most money and power now will be able to buy the Bitcoin and retain all of the wealth and power. Why wouldn't current governments, with the current insanely unequal ability to produce electricity, reproduce the current inequality.
As opposed to what, those closest to the halls of power get all the money? Bitcoin is more like collateral for energy investment for nation states because they can scale investment more than the private sector. It also incentivizes governments to think of generating revenue within the limits of the national energy reality.
Not quite. They have no power over the currency itself. Totally different than today where billionaires are in league with the government re: monetary policy
its crazy. many people already know this story. we have heard this story before. but continually we get caught up in the bullshit
While at home homeless soaring. Gun deaths out of sight. 78 million no health insurance. $32 trillion debt. Spending more on military than next ten nations combined. Great interview, thanks
Fascinating.
This is where I have a problem, whenever I listen to Bitcoin evangelists: 90.5% of all Bitcoins are already mined. About 85% of those sit in less than 0.4% of addresses. What ever energy (both human and physical) will be used to maintain BC ecosystem, 85% will go towards pumping up the value of those 0.4% and only 15% towards saving the world and democracy.
If Bitcoin succeeds, then holders will be forced to spend their Bitcoin into the economy. If Bitcoin fails, then we don't have a problem here
@@alexgladstein5136 if Bitcoin fails, we will have only wasted trillions of MWs of electricity in mining a digital asset that has only been useful to a very limited number of people, some of them, by the way, criminals, human and drug traffickers who operate outside the law on the dark web. Another group will have benefited from laundering money to avoid paying taxes. And, obviously, an even larger number of people will have lost tons of money or maybe all of their life savings. Sounds like a great bet. BTW, spoiler alert: it will fail.
Lastly: if a poor guy from a poor country makes it through by playing at the casino and making tons of money, that does not make the casino good.
Those numbers include Bitcoin addresses of exchanges that hold Bitcoin for millions of people. So, it is not .4% holders but .4% of addresses.
Also, the concentration has been dropping every month for years now and even with the exchanges holding Bitcoin for many millions in a few addresses the .4% figure is out of date.
They truly are evangelical aren't they? I'm pretty sure there's some neurological thing going on, somewhere on the beliefs part of the brain.
When this guy brought up Kasparov and Maidan, it told me everything I needed to know. Be very skeptical of these NGO's, their names usually mean the exact opposite. Next time ask him what Human Rights Foundation thinks of Bukele.🤔😆
Are you pro-Putin?
@@alexgladstein5136 What kind of an answer is that?
@@DavidMarcotte-xx1nw It’s highly revealing. If you are a supporter of the fascist Russian state then I don’t need to waste time responding to you. What do we think of Bukele? He is swiftly eroding democracy
@@alexgladstein5136 Weak rebuttal, have you heard the Nuland tapes?
The coup immediately resulted in a war that has needlessly caused the death and suffering of thousands of human beings. Is this your definition of "human rights"?
How many bitcoins does this guy have?
Enough bitcoins to make him want to sell us a false narrative, I guess.
@@santiaguadoIgnoring the bitcoin side of the argument, what do you disagree with in terms of diagnosis of worlds monetary systems?
@@nubraskan the diagnosis he gives is actually quite insightful and fundamentally correct. The solution (bitcoin) is basically flawed, to put it mildly.
@@santiaguado Good to hear the former. Bitcoin or otherwise, awareness and desire to improve the situation is necessary to start.
How many petrodollars do you have?
Fabulous discussion!
Very key how, when you lose control over energy production, your currency goes down and becomes worth much less.
Hey Nate. Please consider : Russell-Jay: Gould. On the show!!!!!
Thank you for this uploaded discussion/interview.
While watching I couldn't help but raise some questions.
1) All Bitcoin transactions depend on energy and an infrastructure that can only be financed by government issued currency and debt and also maintained by staff paid in the same currency(think IMF and World Bank). All users and consumers of energy and infrastructure will be expected to share the cost normally referred to as tax which a government can specify the currency of payment. If Bitcoin is a government hands off currency, are Bitcoin users expecting to be free-loaders in this scenario and not carry their fair share in paying such taxes?
2) Computer programming started by simply using bits and bytes that has become a plethora of programming languages marketed as specific technologies to address particular short-comings of previous languages. Similarly Bitcoin is presented as another technology to 'solve' a particular problem. Isn't Bitcoin simply another technology of the western mind that objectifies problems as external and that can only be solved by an objectified external technology?
3) Bitcoin's objectives are as if the fish thought it was in water but since the fish perceives itself out of water it invents bitcoin to achieve integration with the water consuming resources to do so. Similarly energy is objectified as external to the human being instilling the sense of separation but the Universe is an ocean of energy of which human beings are an unseparated part. All energy that makes and binds the universe is the product of useful work, work that is both made and consumed by all in relationship to sustain and serve the Universe. Earth is part of this working relationship as is the work made and consumed on Earth by the biosphere. Bitcoin certainly consumes work(energy) but does it contribute to making useful work in return to restore the consumed work in order to preserve the relationship to sustain and serve Earth or is it just another high entropy generating technology?
Human relations and the perception humans and human societies have of themselves on Earth is deeply flawed and this has been assisted by the "soft systems" that have been developed based on these perceptions. The most divisive of these systems are law and accountancy which are the primary systems of relationship applied by all organizations utilizing the "soft technologies" of language and mathematics respectively to build and apply them. These systems and technologies are heavily influenced by the western mind as eloquently explained by Vandana Shiva at the recent Beyond Growth conference in the EU Parliament, Brussels www.beyond-growth-2023.eu/lecture/focus-panel-13/.
Thank you again for a stimulating discussion 👏✊❤🙏
Thanks for watching! And for the kind words. My thoughts below
1) I think that if Bitcoin continues to grow into a bigger piece of the global economy, taxation regimes will shift accordingly. Some governments may give up on their own fiats (like dollarizing countries have done) and actually try to get people to pay taxes in Bitcoin. This is similar to Thiers' law in economics (good money drives out bad)
2) We don't know who created Bitcoin. They spoke English, that's about all we know. Bitcoin is currently being worked on by people all across the world. It is, by its very nature, anti-colonial
3) Bitcoin turns energy into high quality money that will preserve purchasing power over time. I think this is very useful but I suppose that is in the eye of the beholder
It sounded very interesting but the "and property rights", "and property rights", "and property rights" got boring real fast. Putting torture and property rights in the same basket is part of the root problem. The rest is noise.
I liked the part when he said "we are ran by criminals, and need to get used to accepting it." Very good
Not having property rights is otherwise known as "slavery". If you don't think slavery and torture are in the same category, then I don't know what to tell you.
If you live under a dictatorship then I think you start to see the need for property rights pretty quickly
@@itssteve6018 property rights is simply the capacity to exclude and it’s protected by the state. You can have a society with property rights or a form of Proto-property rights and slavery. Slavery is also a slippery concept, it’s not as cut and dry as it seems.
@@matthewcurry3565 classical liberal.