WBD319 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin, Gold and Tax with Dominic Frisby

Interview date: Tuesday 9th March

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Dominic Frisby. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, I talk to him about his book Daylight Robbery, the effects of taxation and the proposed rise in corporation tax in the UK, libertarianism and gold vs bitcoin.

“The most expensive purchase you ever make in your life is your government, and over the course of your life… roughly 50% of everything you ever earn will be taken from your taxes.”

— Dominic Frisby

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: So, you were telling me?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, I was just saying, I see you're a big champion of Bedford?  I used to do gigs in Bedford back in the day.  There was one in the Corn Exchange on a Friday night that I used to compere, and there was another; was it called, The Shed?  You'd come over a bridge and you'd turn right over the bridge, and you'd go along that road for maybe half a mile, and it was in a pub along there.  It was called, The Shed or The Barn, or something like that; that was a lovely bit.

Peter McCormack: Oh, that's going back a bit.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, that's going back a while!

Peter McCormack: When was this, because this is like 1980s?

Dominic Frisby: 1980s; I'm not that old!  The one in the Corn Exchange was quite recent, maybe five years ago, something like that; and the one in The Shed would have been the beginning of the century, 2001, 2002, 2003, something like that.

Peter McCormack: I'm trying to think what the shed is, because the two famous ones --

Dominic Frisby: It might not have been called The Shed.  There were lots of great names did it before they were great names; Al Murray, I remember doing it with Al Murray one time.

Peter McCormack: Oh, I know, that's the one on Castle Road?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, that's right.

Peter McCormack: Basically, that's our tiny little middle-class part of Bedford.  That's like Bedford's Notting Hill.  So, if you're middle class and you've got a bit of money, that's where you live.  You've got a nice little butcher, you're by the river, there are a good couple of pubs; but, the houses there now are really expensive.  There's one road, Bushmead Avenue, where everyone wants to live, and they're over £1 million a house there now.

Dominic Frisby: I do remember going to Bedford and expecting it to be rough as fuck, and then going to that gig and it not being, and being happily surprised.  I also remember, because you then go -- there was a bit around the back, like if you're looking at the Corn Exchange, you'd come out of the Corn Exchange and turn left and turn left again; I remember parking my car up there one time and it would have either have been a Friday or a Saturday night, at pub throwing-out time, and it was mental.  It was like one of those war zones and we need another war to send all those people out to fight for us and we'll conquer the world again!

Peter McCormack: Well, I'll tell you how we've done well.  When we used to have the fast train into London, we were the first stop; the fast train that goes up to Leeds and Nottingham.  What happened was, a lot of people would commute to London, because you can get into London in 35 minutes on the train, but you could afford a house.  But, a lot of people who lived in London have started moving back, because they bought maybe a flat in Brixton for £300,000 and it was suddenly worth £800,000, and they could come and get a nice house with their kids; so, a lot of money came back into the town.

We still have our useless council, but there is a funny story recently that we had a whole new development, a cinema complex and we got a Wagamama and a Zizi.  The Wagamama was a big deal; we felt like we'd arrived!  But, there's this famous story that whoever it was from Wagamama who came down to see the plot, whether it was the Managing Director or whoever, he got the train and then he walked from the train station to Wagamama, and basically you have to go through Bedford's Beirut to get there and it's awful.  By the time he got there he said, "I'm not having a Wagamama here.  So, the council ended up convincing him, but the rumour is that it's going to close.

The two venues I thought you might be talking about, there's Esquires -- I thought you were talking about like concert venues.  We've got Esquires and we used to have this one called The Angel, and I can tell you a funny --

Dominic Frisby: I'm not that big!

Peter McCormack: Well, I'll tell you a funny story about The Angel.  When I was 16, which never used to feel like a long time ago, but actually what is that; is that 28 years ago?  26 years ago, which feels a long time now, I was at school and my mate came to me and said, "There's a gig on at The Angel on Friday, do you want to come?"  I said, "Who's playing?"  He said, "Oh, it's this band called Oasis; they've got a new single out".  I was like, "No, I don't like this Indie crap".  Obviously they went on to be huge, and he was one of the people who got to see Oasis play The Angel in Bedford in front of 300 people, and I missed out on it, which was a shame.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, but you got Bitcoin early and he didn't, so you're all right; you win!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, exactly, fuck you; I got Bitcoin!  Are you a Londoner, born and bred?

Dominic Frisby: I'm born and bred Londoner, yeah.

Peter McCormack: I always wanted to move to London; just, man, it's expensive.

Dominic Frisby: Even to a bitcoiner, who's got his Bitcoin millions, it's a bloody expensive city; and a lot of the time, needlessly expensive.  It's all caused by overinflated property prices.

Peter McCormack: And all the Russians buying the properties!

Dominic Frisby: Well, yeah, exactly.  And it's just constantly and never endingly being -- I was about to use, it's a bit early in the morning, but London rapes you; it just constantly squeezes you for every last cent that you've got, and it won't stop doing it until you die.  And then even after you die, it will carry on squeezing you.

Peter McCormack: Well, if Bitcoin keeps going up, maybe I'll get a flat down there.  I always wanted to live on South Bank.  I always like it up near Tate Modern, and I remember looking at those flats; do you know the new flats next to Tate Modern, around the back of it?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: I was always like, "I'd love to live there".  So, I had a look on Rightmove and it was something like £2.5 million, and I was like, "What?  For a flat?!"

Dominic Frisby: Well, I used to live on a boat in the Thames.  In fact, I wrote that book there, the one behind me, on a boat on the Thames in Canary Wharf.  It was Groove Armada's boat, or one half of Groove Armada's boat, and it was his studio.  And you know that song, "If you think of sand dunes and salty air…"?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Dominic Frisby: So, he composed that song, or mixed that song, because he would go on his boat down the Canal du Midi and keep encountering these quaint little villages everywhere, as the song goes.  Hang on a minute, let me turn my WhatsApp off.  Anyway, then he moved to the -- he hated the internet, because he felt the internet killed music, so he effectively retired from the music industry and bought a chateau in the South of France, where he wanted to have as little contact with anyone ever possible; that was his goal in life.  I really rather liked him.

So anyway, I was staying on his boat when I wrote that book.  And every now and then -- and, it was moored in a dock in Canary Wharf and it was bizarre, because it was by the HSBC tower and the Barclays tower, and every night I'd go and stand on the deck of the boat, and you'd see these huge letters, Barclays, HSBC, coming down about you, and I'd be looking back up at them going, "Fuck off, I'm writing a book about Bitcoin that's going to take you out!"

But, we'd take the boat out onto the Thames and you'd drive it up and down the Thames.  And, you know, the Thames is like, if you look at an old painting of The Thames, a Canaletto painting or something like that, in the 1800s, it's just busy.  Everyone lived on the Thames, they worked on the Thames, the slept in boats on the Thames; and it was the lifeblood of England.  You go and look at the Thames now, it's a total economic desert, nobody uses it; it's dead.

Then they've just built all these flats like the one you described, all the way up at the side.  And we actually went on the boat and we went the other way, so we went from Greenwich out towards the tidal estuary, and it's just an endless sea of ugly buildings built on either side, you know, of overpriced flats.  All those buildings have been built with no thought for legacy whatsoever and in 20 years' time, people will look back and go, "How can they have built that stuff; it's so ugly?" and it's just grim.

Peter McCormack: Well, I can't justify downsizing to a flat.  We have a nice-sized house up here in Bedford and Bedford's improving.  But, if it was a second property, I would like something in London.

Dominic Frisby: Well, I'd rent it.  It's a nice place to go for parties and stuff, but COVID has killed London.  I mean, property prices haven't come down, but London is dead.  All the atmosphere that was in -- I think 700,000 people have left and it's 700,000 productive people.  The sort of unproductive underbelly is still there, leeching its way through life.

Peter McCormack: Well, you say that.  When the last lockdown ended, I went into London and I went into Soho and it was crazy busy still, really crazy busy, but that was in between lockdowns.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, maybe it will pick up again.  But, there are so many people who remote working has become normalised now.  It's a big city and Soho is just the best place in the world, so people are always going to go there to have fun and stuff.   But, there's definitely a big movement of people leaving London thinkig, "Do you know what; now I can work remotely, I can do without the high cost of living, I can do without the high house prices, I can buy a nice house in the country".

The other thing is, you know I say London rapes you?  One of the ways it rapes you is not just through property prices; it's through endless taxes.  And a lot of people are going to be looking at the cost of living and thinking, "Do you know what?  I'll just go and become a digital nomad and work remotely and go and live in Mexico".  So, I think that's a big trend.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's a tempting lifestyle.  I interviewed this guy recently, Didi, who travels the world and I was thinking, "Do you know what?  My kids are at the right age; I would do that", because all I need is a backpack, a microphone and a laptop and I could work anywhere and avoid all this bullshit.

Dominic Frisby: I'm gone, Peter.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, me too.

Dominic Frisby: My eldest kid is 19, my youngest is 14.  I've got a few more years in the game and then I'm gone.

Peter McCormack: You're a couple of years ahead of me.  So, my oldest is 17 next month and my youngest is 11, but I get a bit more flexibility when he's gone because, I'm separated from their mother, so I can move around a little bit more once whatever he does, whether he goes to university or I'm trying to encourage him to go travelling.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, you say that though; my eldest is at university and I thought, "Right, as soon as he's gone; that's him".  They're just as dependent.  They don't think they are because they're at university, but they need somewhere to come back in holidays.  They're just as dependent on you.

Peter McCormack: So you're a big fan of Soho as well?

Dominic Frisby: Oh, I love it; I just love it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, me too.

Dominic Frisby: In fact, I always wanted a flat in Soho and to be a digital nomad.  I was CEO of a company called Cypherpunk Holdings for a bit and you'd trot around the world going to conferences, holding court, and everyone would listen to your wisdom; and you can do that, you just go around the world to Bitcoin.  What is it; Tone Vays does that.  He just goes around the world holding court at Bitcoin conferences, and he does his YouTube channel and stuff and it's a great little life.

Peter McCormack: Well, I used to kind of do it half.  So what I used to do is go away for three weeks and then come back for three weeks, and it was tiring.  But, doing it, I knew I could just do it constantly if I didn't have to come back and spend some time with the kids. 

Dominic Frisby: Families tie you.

Peter McCormack: Oh, but there's so much incentive, especially with the taxation.  We should probably talk about the impending tax bombs that are coming from Rishi Sunak and what we're going to be paying for a few years.

Dominic Frisby: With pleasure.  Will that be of interest to your American listeners?

Peter McCormack: Well, you know what; they get enough content; I don't give a fuck!  It's nice to talk to a British person --

Dominic Frisby: I'll make sure it's interesting for them.

Peter McCormack: -- struggling with the same issues that I'm struggling with.  Quick question though: what are these London taxes I don't know about, because is it just the council tax?

Dominic Frisby: Well, council tax isn't too bad in London, it's no worse; but for example, business rates are very high in London and those taxes get passed on to the consumer.  So, just by living in London, everyone has to put the price of everything up to make sure their own business is profitable, and that gets passed onto you, the consumer.  That's what makes the cost of living so high.

One of the things I go on about in that book there, Daylight Robbery, my new one, is that if I asked you, Peter, you'll probably know the answer to this, but what's the most expensive purchase you ever make in your life?

Peter McCormack: Does divorce count?!

Dominic Frisby: Well, wives don't count because you can't buy them; not even on DeFi!

Peter McCormack: My house, of course, is my most.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, so everyone says your house, and houses of course are very expensive; but, they're not the most expensive purchase you make in your life by a long chalk.  The most expensive purchase you ever make in your life is your government and over the course of your life, assuming you live a legally-abiding life, roughly 50% of everything you ever earn will be taken from you in taxes, not just in income tax, but as I just described to you just then; just buy something in a shop in London.  A lot of that money is just tax.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's funny you should say that, because somebody put it to me a while back.  The way they explained it, they said, "You work six months of the year for the government for free".

Dominic Frisby: Yeah well, they do, exactly.  There's a thing called, Tax Freedom Day, which was invented by an American guy, whose name escapes me.  It was invented shortly after World War II, when he wanted to make it clear to people just how much of what they earn goes on government.  So, he invented this idea of Tax Freedom Day, the day in the year when what you earn starts to become yours and you're no longer paying for government.  In America, it falls in May --

Peter McCormack: 30 May.

Dominic Frisby: 30 May, and in the UK it's early June.  And in France, it's July.  But, the one thing they don't take account of in Tax Freedom Day is the taxation that bitcoiners hate so much; inflation tax, which Milton Friedman described that as, "Taxation without legislation".  When I said that 50% figure, it doesn't include taxation via inflation, or taxation via the debasement of money.

Peter McCormack: I was thinking about it the other day.  I've been going on long walks with my son, just because we've got nothing to do and the government allows us one trip out a day, supposedly, and I've been talking to him a lot about this stuff trying to help him understand it; and I said, "Look, the problem you've got is, right now, I run a business and if I make profits, I have to pay tax.  And then I pay myself, which I have to pay tax on.  And once I've got that money, if I make any investments from what's left over, if those investments make profit, I have to pay tax on it.  And then, if I want to buy a house with that, I have to pay a tax on that house.  And then, with that money that's left over, if I want to buy goods in a shop, I have to pay tax.  And then, when I die, whatever's left over, you're going to pay tax on that".  I said, "It's just a constant attack on the money that you go out and earn".

I'm not full libertarian.  I don't know how many of my shows you've listened to.  I didn't know about libertarianism as an idea until I discovered Bitcoin, and it's made me gradually shed my statism skin.  I'm not a full libertarian yet; I theoretically love it.  And I'm not completely anti-tax but at the same time, now it's kind of out of hand.  And I'm like, what are they spending all the fucking money on; where's it going?

Dominic Frisby: Well, you raise about five different issues there.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, let's work through them.

Dominic Frisby: The first thing is, whenever I go to a really hardcore Bitcoin conference, I'll often come away full-on Anarcho-capitalist; we do not need government to provide anything.  And then, when I start hanging out with some of my friends; most of my friends are all Social Democrat fools.  And, when I start hanging out with some of them, I sort of compromise a little bit.  So, I sort of meet in the middle at the libertarian, 10% to 15% of GDP should be taken in taxes, classical liberalism; that's the sort of compromise position; the old Gladstonian liberalism.

But, if you look at history, there has not been a single example of a civilisation, at any time in history, where there was not some form of taxation.  It is as old as civilisation itself; in fact, it's probably even slightly older, because there would have been an idea of the sense of duty to the greater collective.  So, I would argue that taxation of some kind is as inevitable as death.  Now, an Anarcho-capitalist would take the other side of that and they would say that it's theft and so on, and I hear you.  It is theft; it is forcibly taking something that's yours. 

Nevertheless, there have existed societies in history where taxation was voluntary.  One example of this is Ancient Greece.  It was considered the duty, and it's interesting how a lot of the words for taxation, things like "duty", have this sort of moral undertone to them; but, it was considered the duty of the rich in society to share the greater spoils of their earnings with everyone else.  And so, we had voluntary, but they were not legally obliged or forced to.

But, what would tend to happen is, it was a system called "liturgy" and if, for example, the city needed a bridge or it needed a warship, or it need some games or some theatre or whatever put on, the liturgist would put it on; but not only did he put it on, he would have to carry out the work himself.  So, not only did he pay for it, his reputation was on the line.  So, with his wallet and the reputation on the line, what you tended to see was that things tended to be carried out, not just with -- you know, with legacy in mind, with his reputation on the mind and also, because he was risking his wallet, they tended to be carried out at an efficient cost.

So, that's why you have these great -- you know, the Parthenon was built with liturgy.  So, that's why you have this great tradition, this great sort of legacy of Ancient Greece, because people were building it with so much more in mind.  Now, it became a device by which to gain political influence and power, so all systems get corrupted sooner or later, but it was eventually corrupted and eventually the system was abandoned during the Peloponnesian War.  So, you can have voluntary taxation.

The tradition of the tithe, where we give a tenth of what we earn to the Church or whatever, again that predates Christianity by a long way; it goes all the way back to Ancient Mesopotamia.  And in fact, the first written records we have, I'll talk about those in a sec actually, but the tradition of the tithe, where you give a tenth of what you earn, and they think it's a tenth because we have ten fingers on our hand and it was an easy number to calculate.

In Britain in the late 1800s, that was sort of Britain at its best, tax was only about 10% of GDP.  Hong Kong in the second half of the 20th Century, the economic success story of the second half of the 20th Century, taxation never exceeded 14% of GDP; and what's more, they never levied income tax, except on the very highest earners.  Ordinary workers didn't pay income tax.  Most of the taxes came from, or 40% of tax revenue, came from land value tax.  So, I would argue that tax is inevitable, but it doesn't necessarily have to take the form of income tax, and it doesn't necessarily have to be forced or coerced; it can be voluntary.

Let me just tell you about taxation in Ancient Mesopotamia, because there's an analogy to Bitcoin here.  The very first forms of money in -- so, human beings sort of lived nomadic lifestyles on the hills and so on, and then as the water went out, that's the whole Noah's flood narrative.  But, as the water went out, they descended from the Zagros Mountains onto the plains of Iraq, Ancient Mesopotamia, the lands between the Tigress and the Euphrates.  And they discovered this mud there, where the waters had receded.

They found that this mud, they could plant crops in this mud and they had crop yields, the likes of which had never been seen before.  They made pots out of this mud, tools, sickles, axes, hammers, things like that; and they also found that, if they baked the straw with mud, it formed bricks, and the bricks built the first homes, which built the first cities, and so on. 

This mud also made the very first system of money.  That money took the form of tokens.  You would have a disc for a sheep, a cone for a measure of barley, two cones would be two measures of barley, and so on.  These tokens would be baked inside clay balls and then, when the debt was settled, the clay balls would be smashed open and the debt would be settled.  So, that clay ball with the tokens inside, preserved, was a blockchain; it was an early blockchain.

Then people found that -- and by the way, the most common form of debt that was owed, was taxes.  You didn't necessarily pay your taxes in money.  We would have had bits of gold and so on then, but we didn't have -- and shekels, you know, the old silver; but, we didn't have coins yet.  So, these were like records of debts; they were blockchains.  And, taxes were often paid in labour, so you paid with a share of your produce, or a share of your labour, rather than actual coin as we do now, because coin didn't exist.

So anyway, then people found that rather than baking these tokens inside clay balls and smashing them open, you could just have clay tablets and inscribe the tablets with pictures instead.  So, the very first form of writing was developed; hieroglyphs.  But, these very first forms of writing, hieroglyphs, were records of taxes owed; so the very first blockchains, if you like, were ledgers of outstanding taxes, so nice analogy there.

Peter McCormack: When did you read all this; is this in a book?  You must have read it somewhere.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, it's all in Daylight Robbery, the book I've just written.

Peter McCormack: Oh, yeah, you see I skimmed through that; I didn't actually see the detail.  I'm also one of those audio book people now, so I get up every morning and go for a long walk.  I need a dog basically, because I'm just walking on my own.  Everyone's walking with dogs and I'm just on my own, walking around a park.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, get a dog; they make your life much better.  And get a poodle; they're really good dogs.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  So, I've been listening to audio books and I'm doing, When Money Dies, at the moment.  Is Daylight Robbery coming out as an audio book?

Dominic Frisby: It's already out and it's had incredibly -- it's got an average viewer, or listener rating, of 4.9 out of 5, which I think eclipses just about any other audio book out there.  I spent my early years doing voiceovers and I read the book, so it's a combination of a brilliant book and a brilliant voice!

Peter McCormack: Right, I'm going to do it now, so it's -- I've got three credits.  Is it on Audible?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Right, here we go; I'm going to set it up.

Dominic Frisby: Can I pimp you something else while you're at it?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because I've got three credits.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, so buy Daylight Robbery with one of your credits, and then buy this book here; you see that; The Shadowpunk Revolution.  I'm going to sidetrack and pimp Shadowpunk Revolution; do you mind?

Peter McCormack: No, do it, man.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, so one of the reasons we're seeing this boom in audio is that the human brain -- we only invented writing as a means to transfer information over distance and over time.  The human brain is actually much better designed to absorb information through the ear; we absorb information better that way; that's just how we're designed.  That explains why there's this huge boom in podcasts, audio books and everything else; it's a better means to transmit information than is the page.

So with that in mind, I was a big fan -- I think format is often determined by the media available at the time.  So, for example, the album only came around with the invention of 33 rpm records, and you could store more on an album than the previous 78 rpm.  And then, with the invention of all the digital technology, the iPod, iTunes, Spotify, and all the rest of it with the internet, the album as a medium has pretty much died a death; everyone listens to playlists now rather than albums.

But, I used to love the old concept albums of the 1970s, things like War of the Worlds, when there'd be a story and a narrative to music.  So, my idea is there's going to be a huge boom now, as people start to discover it, in audio stories told to music.  Another great one was Peter and the Wolf; did you used to that old Russian, Peter and the Wolf, when you were a little boy?

Peter McCormack: Yes, I did.

Dominic Frisby: And where each instrument in the orchestra represents one of the characters in the story.

Peter McCormack: Gosh, that's a flashback.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.  Anyway, with that in mind, I wanted to write a sort of drama, a musical drama.  And then, when I wrote this book, Bitcoin: The Future of Money, back in 2014, and the story then, "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" it was just like a thriller.  He's invented this new money system; the money system's going to take down the world; who is this guy; the whole thing just read like a thriller.

So, I wanted to do something, and this idea of Bitcoin; somebody needs to write a Lord of the Rings where Bitcoin is the ring; do you see what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I get it.

Dominic Frisby: It's just crying out to be done.  And so, with that in mind, and I'm very much interested in the subject of privacy as well.  So, we invented this thing, let me just turn the thing round so you can see the --

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've just ordered it.  Well, it's downloading.

Dominic Frisby: Thank you.  So, the idea is that somebody in the future -- the story's set five years in the future, and it's set in rural Devon where, people don't realise this, but North Devon is one of the most overlooked parts of the UK.  Everyone thinks it's Glasgow or up north somewhere; North Devon and Cornwall --

Peter McCormack: Which part, because I know North Devon; which part?

Dominic Frisby: Well, we started it in Torrington.

Peter McCormack: So, the areas I know; I know Axminster, Lyme Regis, that part.

Dominic Frisby: Well, Lyme Regis is Dorset.

Peter McCormack: Oh yeah, of course it is.

Dominic Frisby: And Axminster; I think that's Somerset.

Peter McCormack: No, you're right; they're both Dorset.

Dominic Frisby: That's all a bit wealthier there.  I'm not sure if Axminster -- it's on the way into Exeter anyway, so I don't think you're quite in Devon yet.  It's either Dorset or Somerset.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm confusing Dorset with Devon there.

Dominic Frisby: Anyway, it's easily done.  Anyway, County Lines is this practice of sophisticated urban drug dealers taking their drugs into rural communities, to kids who are totally naïve and totally unprepared to deal with this experience, and then getting them addicted.  It's one of the most evil things that's taking place; and that's not me saying, by the way, that drugs should be illegal.  I'm in favour of them being legalised, but I think that County Lines, just getting kids, naïve rural kids --

Peter McCormack: It's exploitation.

Dominic Frisby: -- hooked on drugs is just evil beyond belief.  Anyway, so these drug dealers in the future, these County Lines drug dealers, have invented these coats of invisibility with which to deal these drugs; and, you can only buy these coats of invisibility on the dark net.  The people who've invented these coats of invisibility are called the Shadowpunks.  The parallel there is obvious. 

Now, the Shadowpunks were techno-activists, physicians, who'd found this way of using mirrors, meta-materials, in order to protect invisibility, and they invented them to protect against state and corporate invasion of privacy; so, with exactly the same motivation that the Cypherpunks invented Bitcoin.

Nevertheless, people then used these coats to commit crimes, and people use Bitcoin to commit crimes; they use it to buy horrible things on the dark net, and also nice things on the dark net.  So, the whole idea of these invisibility coats was used for good, but also used for evil; it was a whole metaphor for Bitcoin.  And, this police office from North Devon goes on this investigation to crack the County Lines, and he then ends up going on this whole mission to find out who the guy who invented these coats was, and bring him down.

Obviously, the guy, I think I call him Natoshi Sakamoto, or something!  It's stupid, but anyway, the whole thing is a metaphor for Bitcoin.  So, it's only an hour long, but I think if you're into audio books, I think bitcoiners will really like that.

Peter McCormack: Well, I've got it now.  So basically, I need to lose a little bit of lockdown weight, and I took on a coach and he's just like, "You've just got to get moving"; it was quite interesting.  So he said, "Just do your 10,000 steps a day", which I always thought was nonsense.  So, when I plugged into my app I looked, and since we've been in lockdown, I'm barely walking more than 2,000 steps a day, because you're just in your house; and now, I'm getting excited.

So, I woke up this morning, it was 5.30 am; I was like, "It's a bit too dark to go out now".  So, I had a coffee and waited, and I go out and walk an hour, 90 minutes, every morning, round Bedford Park, doing a few laps and listening to books; because, I don't like reading a book.  I don't know if you have this; when I read a book, I can sometimes read a few pages and go, "Shit, I haven't taken any of that in", and I have to go back and reread them, whereas with an audio book I get engrossed and I make my way through books.

So, I'm enjoying it.  I've got both of those downloaded.  I'm going to do the Daylight Robbery first, I think, though because the tax thing --

Dominic Frisby: Daylight Robbery is the more serious one.  But, what you've described is exactly what I'm talking about, that the human brain takes information in through the ear.  Also, the other problem we have is these things; phones.  Since phones have been invented, like if I'm given the choice between reading a book or picking up my phone and playing with the phone, 99 times out of 100, the phone wins.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Half an hour before bed, checking Twitter rather than reading a book that you used to do.

Dominic Frisby: Sure.  And I get into bed, I open my Kindle, I read two pages and it's the surest, quickest way to get me to sleep.

Peter McCormack: Well, we ban the phones around the house.  Me and the kids, if we go out to dinner now, phones are left in the car; because, we went out for a cheeky Nandos once, and I looked around and all three of us are on our phones.  I was like "What the fuck are we doing?", so we've started to do that now; you've just got to have that break from it.

Dominic Frisby: Well, it's very wise.  The only problem is, when you're having dinner and the subject, you know, who was centre-forward for Manchester United in 1988 and you're like, "If only I had my phone, then we could just look it up".

Peter McCormack: Was it Brian McClair, or was that a bit later?

Dominic Frisby: 1988?  Yeah, I think it probably was.

Peter McCormack: Brian McClair, Mark Hughes.

Dominic Frisby: But again, we'd need to check.

Peter McCormack: We'd need to check, and how I want to check!

Dominic Frisby: I think it was just a bit before Mark Hughes.

Peter McCormack: Is that because you're a United fan?

Dominic Frisby: No, it was just generic.

Peter McCormack: I had you down as Arsenal.

Dominic Frisby: No.  I grew up in Fulham, so my local team is Fulham, and we used to go and watch Chelsea and Fulham when I was a little boy.  But, when I was a little boy, I never really liked Chelsea, so Fulham was always my team, but they were always in the Third Division.  So, I used to support Fulham in the Third Division and Liverpool in the First Division, because TV makes everything local.  And, I remember watching Kevin Keegan on The Superstars fall off his bike, and he was so brave and magnanimous about it, and I just completely fell head over heels in love with Kevin Keegan; I would have been 7 at the time.

Then literally, that week or two weeks -- and David Vine said to him at the end of the programme, "Good luck with Liverpool".  And then, a week or two later, I switched on the TV to watch Match of the Day for the first time, and Kevin Keegan scored; and, that was the beginning of my supporting Liverpool.  So, I support Liverpool in the First Division and Fulham in the Third.

Peter McCormack: Well, I'm a Liverpool fan, but there are two funny things you said there that people won't understand from America.

Dominic Frisby: I thought you were a Spurs fan?

Peter McCormack: No, I fucking hate Spurs.  Have you not seen, I always hate them.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, I thought that was a love thing!

Peter McCormack: No, I physically can't stand them.  Because, I'm from Bedford; we don't have a team.  I mean, some people support Luton, but not for me.  So, I supported Liverpool just because they're one of the big teams on the TV, but a lot of my mates at school support Tottenham, and they never shut up about what a big team Tottenham are, yet they've never won anything; and I've just grown to really hate them.

But, there are two things you said there that American listeners won't know about.  You actually referred to "the First Division" which is what it was.  They ruined it when they became the Premier League, because you have to say, "Well, there's the old First Division, then we've got the Championships, and then…", which is annoying; and Superstars, which I only have vague memories of, very vague memories.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, well it was probably before your time.  I'm 51.  They've destroyed football.  You look at the terraces and so on and what an atmosphere was.  Football was very political back in the 1960s and 1970s and there was a real relationship between, you know, the young bucks of the area would go and pay for the club, and there was this real relationship between the club and the area.

You just watch football now with these bloody sound effects and you just realise what a difference the fan makes.  And, you look at how players celebrate now, in silence, with nobody cheering; it's just COVID's destroyed football. 

Peter McCormack: But, it was dying before that.

Dominic Frisby: They've sanitised football anyway.  Say again?

Peter McCormack: Well, it was dying before that.  So, one of the things I struggle with now is that you don't have the characters.  I think peak football for me, for my age was, you remember the era when it was United and Arsenal just hated each other, and you had Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira, and you had those real battles, Ruud van Nistelrooy, and they all hated each other; but there were those real characters at play, Tony Adams.  We don't have characters anymore.  We've essentially eradicated the real characters in football.  Now we just have a bunch of athletes, and that's what I miss.

Dominic Frisby: Well, that's certainly true.  I think there's another dynamic there though, which is how stuff goes -- you watch the journey from, stuff becomes reality, and then gradually it becomes history, and then it turns into myth, and then it turns into legend and heroes and all that.  So, at the time, I can remember that was a great era; that Arsenal, Man United, you know; that was a great era.  But at the time then, people were moaning about too many foreigners in the game, it wasn't as good as it was in the 1970s, "Do you remember that time when Don Mackay held up Billy Bremner?"

If you look on YouTube, watch Liverpool play Leeds; there's five minutes of clips.  Liverpool play Leeds in, I think it was the 1975 Charity Shield, and it's just the two teams literally kick the shit out of each other.  It's not even football; it's just violence with the occasional ball thrown in.  And Keegan got sent off, but he was absolutely shafted; it was a terrible decision.  Billy Bremner's kicking the shit out of Keegan, and it's just great. 

When United were playing that, they would have been pining for that then.  Now, we'll probably look back and the Gods will be Mohammed Salah and Kevin de Bruyne and whatever.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, I did the search, and as I got to Leeds, it brought it up: Charity Shield 1974, which is quite funny; but, that could be this privacy thing you're talking about.  It could have been you saying it, going down the pipes, YouTube already knowing that's what I want.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, my God.  That's just happening all the time.

Peter McCormack: I know, man.

Dominic Frisby: Last week, I was walking my dog, and occasionally I get blocked ears, so I googled an ear clinic --

Peter McCormack: I saw a video.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, have I already done about that?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so I saw a video on your Twitter.  That one didn't worry me.  I'm like, yeah, I expect that.  You do a search, they share your results; and the one that worries me --

Dominic Frisby: It's fine if it's being used to sell you stuff, but what else is it being used for?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I get that, I mean we can go into that; but, I think the one that worried me is, you had a conversation with your daughter about Timberlands and you've not done a search online, you've just had a conversation; and, it's like your phone in your pocket's picking that up and goes, "Ding, ding, you want some Timberlands".  That's the one that weirds me out, because it must mean my phone's recording me yelling at my children!

Dominic Frisby: For sure it is.  And, if you've got an Alexa, that's listening all the time.  If you listen to -- I did a thread about it on Twitter, I don't know, about a year ago, but loads of people posted examples of similar shit that's happened to them; it happens to everyone.  And, you know, there are so many leading -- for example, if you look, there are lots of threads on Twitter about architecture and people posts pictures of nice, old buildings.  If you're the sort of person that looks at those pictures and likes old architecture, as opposed to brutalist modern architecture that I was complaining about by the river, but if you like the old stuff, it inevitably means, apparently, that you're right wing and you'll vote Conservative and whatever; whereas if you don't mind the modern brutalist stuff, it tends to mean that your left wing.

Peter McCormack: Saifedean would agree with you on that.

Dominic Frisby: Well, the point is that algorithms can detect your political principles by the things you do that have nothing to do with politics.

Peter McCormack: Well, there is that alignment in Bitcoin, right.  They talk about that time preference.  If you're a bitcoiner, you have a low time preference, therefore you appreciate modern architecture.  Actually, I saw it when I went out to, where was I?  I was in Latvia, in the centre of Latvia just walking around and just seeing -- was it Latvia?  Yeah, it was -- the buildings, the structure of the buildings, looking at just the fascias, the ornate decorating of the fascias when they built these buildings hundreds of years ago.

But then, Saifedean extrapolates it to modern art.  So, if you like modern art, then you've got a high time preference and all modern art's bullshit; and the difference between Tate Modern and Tate itself.  I don't buy into all of that.

Dominic Frisby: Well, I haven't actually read Saifedean's stuff, so I don't know, but I'm sure he's right.  In the same way, you can tell what tribe somebody's in by the clothes they wear, you know; you could tell a Mod and you know what Mods think by the fact that he's wearing his jeans in a certain way, or whatever it is.  But, by the things you like, by the things you buy…

There's one, I can't remember what it is, and there'll be some guy listening who'll know better than me, but I think Facebook can ask you five questions and by those five questions, it can make more accurate decisions about you than your wife can!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, isn't that what Cambridge Analytica was using?

Dominic Frisby: It's exactly what that game is.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so they know how they could politically influence you.  But, I don't know how we get away from this; I just don't know how we get away from this, unless somebody invents a new phone.

Dominic Frisby: Well, you've got two choices.  One is, you just swallow it and you go, "It is what it is"; and the other is you use privacy tech and you don't use Google, you use DuckDuckGo; you don't use Facebook; you don't have an Alexa; you use an Android phone with some kind of blockchain-based operating system on it, if that exists yet.  But, the problem with privacy tech is, you make sacrifices.

Google is a better search engine than DuckDuckGo; it just is.  And Twitter and Amazon Alexas; they're really good.  If you just want to walk into the kitchen and go, "Alexa, play Radio 4", or not Radio 4 but, "Play the What Bitcoin Did podcast while I'm cooking my lunch", it's just really good.  And so, privacy tech takes effort and it costs money and most people aren't prepared to either make that effort of pay that money.

So, you go down the other route and you're being spied on and monitored.  And, at that point, the issues of censorship and free speech and free thought -- because, you know, if society is to progress, you need to question accepted assumptions.  But, a lot of this censorship argument that's going on at the moment won't allow you to question, even question accepted assumptions, without trying to get you cancelled in some way.

By the way, here's a really interesting little thing from Daylight Robbery for you.  In Ancient Rome, the magistrate responsible for maintaining public morality was the censor, as in that's where we get the word "censorship" from.  He was also the tax collector, and that's where we have this idea of a census, when people do a census so that they know where you are in order to collect taxes.

Peter McCormack: Mine came through in the post yesterday.

Dominic Frisby: Well, that's the modern census.  That's to do with voting, not to do with taxes.  But even so, they're linked.  And so, for example, there's a link between -- taxation is a measure of freedom.  The more taxed you are, the less free you are; the less of your own labour you own, the less free you are; the more of your own labour you're earning, the more free you are.

So, if you want to basically get a quick idea of how free a society is, just look at how much it's taxed.  The freest, most innovative, most progressive, most brilliant societies in history were almost all 10% to 15%, 20% of GDP as a percentage of taxation: early Rome, Ancient Greece, Britain in the 1800s, America about 50 or 100 years ago.

Then, you look at the worst societies: North Korea; an ordinary labourer earns none of his own labour.  And a slave society is even worse, because the slave doesn't even own his own body, let alone his own labour.  But, slavery was a reality of the world until the 1800s; it still is a reality in certain parts of the world.  So, when I say Ancient Rome or Ancient Greece was wonderful, it was for the people that were citizens, but for the slaves it wasn't quite so good.  But anyway, machines ended slavery.

But, coming back to this thing, so this technology, the invasion of technology, it isn't at the moment, but it potentially has the possibility to become a means to invade and prevent free speech and free thought and experimentation and everything else.

Peter McCormack: Wow.  I've got one for you to tell you about before I forget it.  I've got my son here; come on, come here a second.  Say hello to Dominic Frisby.

McCormack Junior: Hello.

Dominic Frisby: Hello, son.

Peter McCormack: So, because we're working from home and he's doing schooling in the next room, I heard him having a bit of an argument with his teacher the other day [yeah, you can't him, but bear with me] and I was like, "What was that all about?"  What's that lesson?

McCormack Junior: It's like sex education.

Peter McCormack: But, what's it called?

McCormack Junior: No, but that wasn't my lesson.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but what is it?

McCormack Junior: PSHE or something?

Peter McCormack: PSHE, this lesson they have.  And I heard him arguing.  I was so proud of him because he came back and said, correct me if I'm wrong; I said, "What are you arguing about?"  He said, "Well, we're not allowed now, when they show the anatomy of a man and a woman, we're not allowed to say 'male' or 'female'; we have to say 'person with a penis' or 'person with a vagina' because we don't want to offend, if there's one child who maybe has a penis but identifies as a woman; we can't offend him by saying male or female, because he'll say, 'Well, I'm not a female; I'm not a male' so they have to…" and I was like, all right --

McCormack Junior: It's about, they can't categorize them as a male; they can't teach in a lesson and say, "You're a male and you have this", just in case they don't want to be like that.  So now, for all the sheets they hand out, they have to put "person with penis" and "person with vagina"!

Peter McCormack: I'm like, "This is ludicrous.  I'm going to write to the school and say this is ridiculous.  I'm not having you teaching this bollocks to my children".

McCormack Junior: But they're like 12-year-olds.  I hardly can see one of them figuring out what they are already at that point anyway!

Peter McCormack: But they're influential -- you can highly influence them at that age.  So I said to him, "Look, I'm going to write to the school".  I said, "This is nonsense.  I'm not paying school fees for this to be taught".  And he said, "No, this is what they've been told by the government they can say".

Dominic Frisby: Is this a private school or a state school?

Peter McCormack: A private school.

McCormack Junior: When I asked her, I don't know the facts around it --

Peter McCormack: Oh, okay.

McCormack Junior: -- so I don't know if it is based on what our school -- I think it's government guidelines.

Peter McCormack: I'm certainly not having it.  I mean, I don't care if a kid wants to identify as a -- I don't care, but I'm not having the facts of biology changed in the school I'm paying fees for.

Dominic Frisby: Well, I'll tell you who's very good on this; Taleb's very good on this.  I know he's made some interesting calls on Bitcoin in the last couple of weeks, but he's very good on the power of minorities to influence the whole of a group.  And, the NHS at the moment, it now says in its literature about pregnancy, it says "pregnant people"; it doesn't say "pregnant women".

Peter McCormack: I mean, just…

Dominic Frisby: And it's just this insane narrative.  And it's built on bullshit and it's built on this ability…  I think what happens is the left tend to take offense at everything; everything's offensive to the left.  And to the right, everything's an outrage; it's outrageous.  Those are the two, "This is an outrage.  This is offensive". 

But, it's insane that women are no longer women and -- my daughter's 18 and in her final year at school, and there's a boy called Harvey in the year below her who identifies -- and she's at boarding school -- and he identifies as a woman, so everyone has to call Harvey "she"; and, she now gets changed in the women's changing rooms at school.  And you're like, "She's got a cock!", you know; it's nuts, but that's where we are.

Peter McCormack: I'm trying to be sensitive to it.

Dominic Frisby: And, it won't be long by the way if, what we've just talked about, invasive technology, goes full Aldous Huxley and full George Orwell, before we're not allowed to have this conversation.

Peter McCormack: Well, that concerns me and I wonder how far we are off that.  And, I am trying to be sensitive to the issues, because I'm sure there are people who feel like they're in the wrong body, and that's fine; I get that.  And do you know what, I also think there are certain people like to actually deal with this is quite a brave thing, because it must be quite torturous, especially as a, you know, let's forget even children; let's say an adult, who decides, "I am in the wrong body" and a man decides he wants to be a woman, wears a dress, probably gets pointed at a lot; it's a brave thing to do.  I don't care; I'm trying to be sensitive to it.

But, at the same time, the basic facts of biology being changed, I have an issue with.  This is scientific fact and we're changing it for this kind of new woke culture and it's really starting to bother me, and I don't know how you strike the right balance.  I guess you will say you just have to go back to free speech; you have to just have the…

Dominic Frisby: Well, all these things boil down -- free speech, free markets, free choice, low taxes, free movement; and again, Bitcoin solves this because the government wouldn't have the power to impose these narratives on the education system if government was less involved in education, which it would be if it didn't have the power to print money, and so on and so forth.  So, they all come back to the same free narrative.

Peter McCormack: Can we get there though, because I sometimes look at the US as being one of the, in some ways, one of the freest places; it least it has First Amendment protection.  But, it also seems to be the biggest shit show there is right now.  So, can we get there; how do we get there, because I hear all the libertarian arguments, I hear all the free marketing and theoretically, I agree with all of it; I just sometimes wonder, in practice, how does this play out?

Dominic Frisby: Well, I'm not entirely sure, but this is a dance that has gone on, again, since forever; and as the new technology develops and the new means to impose the dance go on, but there is just, you know, ever since ancient times, there's been this battle between those who advocate freedom and free speech and experimentation and free thought and all the rest of it, and those who would impose their narrative and restrain your freedoms. 

It's an endless dance and in some countries, some places win and in other countries, in other nations -- and also, where they are in whatever evolution of the cycle.  You look at Ancient Rome; the Roman Republic was a brilliant civilisation, then the Roman Empire was very decadent, so each one goes through its own little cycle.  And, we're just going through another one of those cycles.  And in some places, the free thing will win; and in other places, it will lose.

In America, what America has going for it that no other country has, is this thing where it's got the 50 different states competing with each other.  And so, if the laws get really stupid in one place, for example California or New York, people can do what Elon Musk did and just go to Texas.  Texas, I believe, has pretty much opened up, coronavirus-wise, in the last --

Peter McCormack: Well, no, they have.  The Governor's just removed the face mask mandate, opened up businesses.  I think he even mandated that by 15 March, schools have to be open.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.  But so, you know, or you can do what Florida did and have no income tax, or very low levels of income tax.  The problem is, there is still income tax at the federal level.  But America at least has that thing where, it's a bit like if you go back to renaissance Italy and you had the city states in renaissance Italy; if one of them, Florence, got really corrupt, then everyone would just go to Venice; or, if Venice got too bad, then they can go to Genoa.  So, there's a bit of that can apply, but there is still this federal Obergruppenführer.  

Peter McCormack: Well, it's the regulatory arbitrage, sorry to interrupt, that they've had for a long time, but it's never been really exploited.  But when you mentioned about earlier, you know, people realising they can work anymore and live in London, I think this is one of the benefits of the pandemic, is people have realised that, "Actually, I don't need to live in San Francisco where I can get shouted at by a crackhead because the local law enforcement isn't dealing with these issues, or if I've got problems with my business, or if I don't like the tax, I can move", like you said, Elon Musk 

There is that migration of people from San Francisco who are moving to Miami or Wyoming or Austin.  There is this, and so we're starting to see it actually play out.  And do you know what; even with this federal problem, these people might go, "Well, do you know what; I'll just leave the country.  I'll go to the Cayman Islands, or I'll go to Estonia".  I think we're starting to see -- Balaji talks about the 10,000 city thesis.  There are a group of people, not everyone can do it; you can do it, I can do it; we can actually start considering where we're going to live based on these rules.  So perhaps, finally, we have that exit.

Dominic Frisby: Well, we do have that exit.  It's easier when you're younger but again, this is another thing I twat on about in Daylight Robbery, but the fastest -- the tax system was built around an industrial age where physical goods moved from A to B and it was all in the physical world, and the worker went from his home to the workplace; and, that's how the whole tax system's devised.  It just hasn't been able to cope with the rise of the digital economy where, you know, the IP's in one place and the product's delivered in another, but the good is manufactured -- it just hasn't been able to cope. 

The digital economy, partly because of the fact that there's just so little government involvement, it's just grown at this incredible rate.  There's no government involvement in the Bitcoin ecostructure, so the crypto community has just explored and developed.  And, if you just look at where crypto is now to where it was ten years ago, that huge expansion, a lot of that has been made possible by the fact that there's no restriction; it's the Wild West.  And the same thing's happened with the entire digital economy from since probably the mid- to late-1980s.

It used to be that non-dom status was the preserve of the very rich, but technology has now made it possible that anyone can be a non-dom.  And, for governments around the world, the largest source of tax is income tax.  50% of government revenue derives from income tax where, you know, a person had a fixed job, he had that job for 10 or 20 or 30 years, the tax is deducted at source; it works as an easy tax to collect. 

But, with the rise of the gig economy and freelance workers and contingent workers, it's much harder to collect taxes, because you have to collect taxes after the event, and that relies on -- so, people find all sorts of expenses to write off against their tax; or, they don't declare their taxes properly, either deliberately or through accident.  But one way or another, they end up paying much lower levels of tax and it's harder for governments to collect.  So, that's going to put a lot of pressure on the rise of the contingent worker.

Now, the estimates are, from Ernst & Young, that by 2030, so ten years from now, half of the workforce in the USA will be contingent, freelance.  That's a huge number, and COVID has accelerated it.  Remote working; I've always been Mr Freelancer, so maybe I'm not a good example, but I can do a bit of comedy, I'll do a zoom gig this evening, I'll write a song this afternoon, I'm doing your podcast now, I'll write an article later on; that's four different jobs.  And loads of people moonlight; they just do do that.  People are entrepreneurial; they want to earn as much money as possible.  So, we're just seeing this huge rise.

Now, of those contingent workers, a lot of them will go, "Oh, well I don't need to live in London, I don't even need to live in New York, I don't need to live in San Francisco", and a lot of them start working from home or, in the old days, you could go to the café and start working from there.  Like, I phoned up a friend of mine who's a solicitor and he had this stupid background on his zoom thing and I was like, "Why have you got a spaceship as your background?" and he said, "I don't want people to know where I am".  So I said, "Where are you?" and he said, "I'm in my house in the South of France".  I said, "How long have you been there?" and he said, "We went here last February and we haven't come back"; and, this is a solicitor who's supposed to be operating a London practice.

So, he's just gone to the South of France because it's nicer.  And, taxes are only going to go up, as a result of all the government spending in COVID, whether it's through inflation or debt, which are all forms of taxes, or just regular VAT.  And, we saw yesterday, he put corporation tax up from 19% to 25%, Rishi Sunak, and people say, "That's only a 6% rise".  It's six percentage points, but it's a 30% rise.

Peter McCormack: Lowest in the G7 though!  That's what his claim is.

Dominic Frisby: Only just!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, only just.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, I mean that's just bullshit.  And apparently, everyone in Ireland's like, "Hooray, you stupid plums".  And so, corporations will go to Ireland, like they keep doing, and the Irish will benefit from that, but loads of workers are going to go.  Greece is saying to people, if you come to Greece, all you have to do is buy a house in Greece and I think it's €90,000, or something like that, minimum spend, and you can become a Greek citizen.  And, Greece has much lower levels of income tax than other places in the world, and it has a rich tradition of not paying any tax at all. 

So, people are going to go to Greece, people are going to go to Cyprus.  I was on the phone to Raoul Pal the other day and he said so many people are trying to go to the Cayman Islands at the moment.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's trying to sell it to me!

Dominic Frisby: Oh, is he?  Okay.  So, there's a big -- you will see.  And, there's a guy called, what's his name?  Peter… I forget his name, but he does a fantastic presentation about digital nomads, the rise of digital nomads, "We'll go to Mexico, because Mexico's open.  Oh no, we'll go to Texas, because Mexico's open.  Do you know what; I fancy Cartagena; let's go down to Columbia.  I'd love to go to Thailand; let's go".  And so you see the rise of this new digital nomad.

So, the global population in 2035 will be about 9 billion, of which about 6 billion will be workers.  Of that 6 billion workforce, if Ernst & Young's projections are right, roughly half of the global workforce will be freelance, one way or the other, which is 3 billion workers.  Of those 3 billion workers, 1 billion will be effectively non-domiciled; they'll be digital nomads.  And when you go from one country to the other and you don't spend more than half a year in any given place, it becomes very difficult to actually -- it's just a nightmare knowing who to pay tax to. 

Even if you want to be compliant, who do I pay tax to, where it's just a nightmare to work it out?  A lot of people just go back to their original country of birth; but a lot of people feel no loyalty to their original country of birth, because it's the shit taxes and the cost of living that drove them to leave in the first place.

Peter McCormack: Exactly.

Dominic Frisby: Of these digital nomads, of these 1 billion digital nomads, already over 50% of digital nomads transact in the crypto economy, and that's only going to grow.  If I'm paying you, if I'm in Cyprus and you're in Texas and I've got to pay you to do a job where I want to advertise on your podcast or something, the easiest way to pay you is via crypto; it just is.  It's the money for cross-border payments.  The internet is borderless, so is crypto borderless.

So, more and more people are going to use crypto; crypto is hard for governments to tax and regulate, almost impossible in fact, because the point is it's apolitical; and so, you just see this huge rise in this huge workforce.  And everything that Lord Rees-Mogg said in Sovereign Individual --

Peter McCormack: I was about to say, this is just The Sovereign Individual!

Dominic Frisby: It's pure Sovereign Individual.  And, you're going to get these two classes of people in the future.  You're going to get these sovereign digital people who flit from country to country, and if Columbia starts getting really arsy about your taxes, fine; I'll go Thailand.  If Thailand gets arsy, I'll go to Texas, whatever.  So, that will force countries to sort their game out and become more compliant.  And, already there are cities in China that are being designed specifically to accommodate sovereign individuals, to attract this new workforce.

Or, you're going to have these people stuck in the physical economy, and we all have to clap for the NHS every day at 8.00 pm, and we all have to do all the things.  And, the government won't be able to tax the digital economy as easily, so they will put their burdens on the physical economy.  And, the physical economy will pay the price and those that can't move will have lower standards of living, higher taxes and they'll be more trapped. 

So, this is the situation we're going into; and those nations that adapt to this new world will be the ones that fare best, and those that don't will go down the bloated government lack-of-growth route.  And America, coming back to the original premise of the question, is caught between the two.  It sort of has digital nomadery between states but, you know, there is this really powerful statist narrative.  And I don't think it's the majority view, but as Taleb's shown, it doesn't matter if it isn't the majority view, that is taking hold. 

So, you've got this transgender Health Secretary, and Rand Paul's trying to tell her that men and women are different; "But, no, it's my right to be a woman", or whatever; and you've got this Cortez, AOC, or whatever her name is, and this powerful left-wing thing; and the Democrats are in power and they've now got control of Congress; and, they are very much prone, susceptible to all these narratives.  And, the technocrats like these narratives, because it enables them to increase government control.

So, as I keep saying, it's this dance that's gone on since the beginning of time, but this is how the new dance is unfolding.  Those that can, become digital and become nomadic and not be bound to one state.  I can only advise you that you're going to have a much better life that way; much freer, much richer, much more inventive.  And then you go, "Oh, well, but when they have kids, they'll want to settle down; they'll want one place".  Yes, they will want to settle down, but now we're seeing technology solve this, where we seeing…

I know a guy who's trying to raise money at the moment for like WeWork, but for schools.  So, you become a member of WeWork and while you're in Columbia, you send your kids to WeWork University in Columbia and if you move to Chiang Mai, well then he goes to WeWork in Chiang Mai; do you see what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Nice.

Dominic Frisby: The market will find a solution, and it is.

Peter McCormack: Well, I mean, there are so many things we can unpack here.  Firstly, I was chatting to my brother last night.  My brother's come to work for me.  He hated his job; he was a transport planner.  I was like, "Come and work with me".  But my brother's historically been a Labour supporter, big Tony Blair supporter.  He used to have big rows with my father.  But, in working with me I've said, "Look, you've got to shed some of this Labour stuff, because I'm involved in Bitcoin.  Politically, if we're anywhere, there are certainly some right-leaning items, but we certainly don't support the state".  I'm trying to get him to shed this whole skin of his; and it's happening.

But, he said, "Look, the reality is, everybody has a utopian view of how they think the world should run.  I just accept it's chaos now; it's just chaos and there are swings and roundabouts and you can't change it; you can't".  He said, "I accept that it's chaos".

Dominic Frisby: Well, it's a very zen attitude and it's one that I admire.

Peter McCormack: I know; it surprised me.

Dominic Frisby: But, you're absolutely right.  Everyone's got their own view of what utopia should be and we're in an almighty cultural, ideological battle at the moment to impose a certain world view.  And the bitcoiners, and I'm on their side, I'm a bitcoiner, think the no-state whatever model is the best one, small state I should say; and then, there's a massive statist thing that believes in the magic money tree and you can print money and we need to spend more on schools and we need to spend more on education, never mind how inefficient government provision of those services is, we need to spend more on them. 

That narrative in the US and throughout Europe is extremely strong and I would, in fact, go as far as to say it has control at the moment.  But, technology is fighting back in the form of Bitcoin and so on.

Peter McCormack: Even with education though, and even though my children are in private education, I still think it's shit now.  All I think is, it's a better quality of teaching.  But, it's good access to the arts, which I'm really glad about but still, it's still crap; what they're teaching is still crap; it's still outdated.

I was watching the Billie Eilish documentary with the kids last night on Apple, I'm not sure if you've seen it, and it is fascinating.  It's sad, because this girl obviously has depression issues, which is really sad, and she's thrown into the limelight.  But part way through it, she talks about, you know, someone's interviewing her and talks about schooling and she's like, "Well, I've never been to school; I was home-schooled". 

I was just thinking, "This is why you're so talented and creative, because you had all this time to focus on your music with your brother and write music and focus on something different", whereas I'm just lost with my children about a lot of the things they're being taught; it's just an absolute waste of time now.  But, I certainly know my ex-wife wouldn't be keen on them leaving and my son's too old to leave now anyway; he's in his A-level period.

Dominic Frisby: No he's not.

Peter McCormack: Well I'm just saying he's got one year to go and he's got --

Dominic Frisby: No, get him out.

Peter McCormack: What now?  Pull him out today or tomorrow?

Dominic Frisby: Well, I say this; in my other book, Life After State, I advocate -- I do a whole chapter about the history of education and how bad education has become.  And, you teach a subject like chemistry and you teach the whole thing in theory and it's completely divorced from reality.  And kids are like, "Why am I learning this stuff; what's this got to do with the world?"

But, a lot of the evidence, there's a whole movement of people that they don't even teach their kids anything; they just go about their daily lives and the kids just learn by doing.  You learn basic maths just by going to the shop and buying something and doing your adding and taking away, or going to the market and buying a pound of apples, or whatever.  The same thing happens with physics and languages.  You don't formally learn a language, "If you want to learn French, we'll go and live in France for a year and you can learn French".  It's done generically and naturally.

I'm not necessarily advocating that, because I think there's a definite place for formal learning.  But, since the rise of home education this year, now 10% of families apparently are saying they're not going to send their kids back to school.  10%, that's an extraordinary number.  Before, it was like 2%.  Another one who was home-educated, Caitlin Moran; I don't necessarily particular like her, but she's an extraordinarily talented woman and she's a product of home education.  It makes you focus on what you're interested in.  Once you do what you're interested in, it no longer becomes work then.  I only do jobs that I'm interested in and they're not work, because I'm interested in them.

But the reason I say get your son out is, my son, who was in his final year of A-levels, we had this ridiculous run-in with his maths department.  He was quite good at maths, right.  He wasn't the next Alan Turing or something, but he was quite good.  Given that his mother and I are both pretty much mathematically illiterate, it was organic.  It was natural, it wasn't because he'd had it imposed on him in the family; and he got an A-star in his GCSE and they put him in the top set of his school.

His school had imported all these -- they had a deal with Asia, and they'd imported all these Chinese/Korean kids, who'd all been hot-housed, were all mathematical geniuses and they'd all done the course already and were correcting the teachers.  And it was like my son and all these Asian kids; and he just totally fell behind, fell out of love with maths and wanted to give it up.  And I was like, "No, you were good at maths, you shouldn't give it up; and maths is really useful".

Anyway, he ended up getting an E in his end-of-year exam and they said he had to repeat the year.  And I was not fucking having him repeating the year, and we got a tutor in.  The tutor started teaching him a little bit and the tutor said, "No, he's perfect good, he picks it up really quickly; he'll get an A in his A-level" and we were like, "Really?"

Then he had to do these retakes in August and he failed those, having worked really hard in the summer, and the maths department were real arseholes about it.  And then we found out that they'd set him twice as many questions as they should in one paper; there'd been a cockup.  I discovered this and I pointed it out to the teachers and there was a huge apology, and they said, "Oh, sorry.  In that case we're upgrading him to a B".  By this point my son was like, "Please don't send me back to that school".  And this was two days in September, two days before the beginning of term. 

So I thought, "All right, I won't force you to go back there".  I went on a website called, Tutor Hunt, and found him some tutors in the meantime while we tried to find him another school.  The three tutors were all three kids from the local university, Kings University, up the road in London, who were all looking to supplement their university studies by tutoring.  They each charged £25 an hour and they were the best-ranked tutors.  They had the equivalent of Amazon 5-star reviews on Tutor Hunt; they were the best-ranked tutors.

We had one kid teach him maths and one kid teach him geography and another kid teach him economics.  And they came to our house, or my son went and met them in Wetherspoons and they did lessons in Wetherspoons, or he went and met them in some café, and my son got a taste of the university; he was going round, because they had some of the lessons and he was mixing with the university a little bit.

After a couple of weeks I thought, "Actually, this is better than school and it's costing me less money", so I just carried on with it.  I didn't bother trying to look for another school; we just carried on.  Then we found some local exam centres and he did his exams through the exam centres there, which were a bit of a shitshow, I have to say, but nevertheless he got through.  And he got his grades, and he got an A in maths, as the guy said he would, and he's now at Bristol University doing economics, which is a perfectly respectable university.

Peter McCormack: Nice!

Dominic Frisby: So, there's no reason why everyone can't do the same.  Well, not everyone, but those that have the means.

Peter McCormack: Well, there's a slightly different complexity in that he does the arts, so he's got access to this art department, and he's also doing drama, so he's working alongside other kids.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, that is different.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that is a different scenario.  If he was doing just the academic subjects…  I did try and get him into a creative school.  But I am also, at the same time with my daughter thinking, "I know you don't enjoy school".  She doesn't enjoy any lessons.

Dominic Frisby: Look at Rochester International College.  I had the same thing with my daughter, my eldest daughter, and for the exact same reasons, I didn't want to home educate her in her final year, partly because we'd drive each other insane in the house, but partly because she was doing arts subject.  You can do all your A-levels in a year there; Rochester International College.

Peter McCormack: Well, she's 11, so a bit young for that.

Dominic Frisby: Well, okay, but just look at it anyway.  It starts at age 8.  It is the best school ever.

Peter McCormack: Well I'm just thinking, look, she's 11, so she's going to leave school in seven years.  God knows where we're at in terms of the world right now, in seven years.  And then, she doesn't enjoy the work.  She's sat there and she's not enjoying it.

Dominic Frisby: My youngest son's 14 and he's going absolutely spare.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Do you know what she did; this is really sweet.  So, it's a funny story.  So, we finished watching that film last night; we watched it in two parts, because there's an intermission.  And afterwards, my son said, "Tell dad the song you wrote", and I was like, "Yeah, what?  Tell me" and she was like, "No", and she got all embarrassed.  He was like, "It's really funny, dad.  Four years ago, I wrote a song and she's just written one; she's written the lyrics".  He said, "Look, I'll read mine".  His was all right, it wasn't great.

She wouldn't do it and I was like, "Okay".  So, I had to rap to her as a deal.  I was like, "Okay, when I was 17, I was in a rap band", as you do when you're white and middle class; I joined a rap band.  So, I had to rap for her.  And then, eventually she gets it out and she reads it and honestly, we'll meet up one day and I'll show you what she wrote, and it kind of blew me away, because it had structure, it had emotion to it.

I was like, "You've sat there and you've watched this story of this girl's career and you've been inspired and, off your own back, you've gone upstairs and you've written something.  That's more important than any schoolwork you've done.  This is something which was a bit of passion to you.  Yet every day, I'm getting you up for school and you're like, 'aargh', and you're sat down in front of your laptop speaking to your teacher with the other teachers, and you can't wait for it to be done because you want to go and do something else", and it's just a real eye-opener to me that we're definitely handling this all wrong.

Dominic Frisby: Do you know what a lot of that is?  Again, it comes back to this tax thing I keep harping on about.  It's because she did what she did on a voluntary basis.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, there you go.

Dominic Frisby: You watched the Billie Eilish film together on a voluntary basis.  You were inspired and you were educated by it and so, everything was done voluntarily because you were interested.  Whereas, when you're at school, it's not voluntary.  You're told to do this; it is imposed on you.  And, as soon as you introduce that dynamic, some kids don't mind, some kids will respond anyway; some kids will be like, "Well, I'm interested anyway".  But there are others who, that process of forced learning is far less effective than voluntary learning; and the same applies to taxes!

Peter McCormack: That leads me to another question then, because you said your son is studying economics; was it Bristol, did you say?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: You've obviously talked to him about the Bitcoin thing?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Well, I studied economics at A-level.

Dominic Frisby: He buys weed with it!

Peter McCormack: Good lad!  I hope he shares it!

Dominic Frisby: I have to nick it!

Peter McCormack: You have to nick it from him!  So, I studied economics at A-level and I was taught micro and macroeconomics as two separate subjects and the macro world was very much based on Keynesian theory which, I've come to study Bitcoin and it's like, that's all suddenly bullshit.  So, is he going into economics as this kind of rebel bitcoiner/Austrian Economist; in there, is he debating or arguing that; how's he handling that?

Dominic Frisby: No, he isn't.  I have to say, he finds it boring as hell and he's absolutely hating it, particularly the maths that they teach him, that sort of econo-maths, which isn't real maths.  So, I'm not sure how long he's going to last, to be honest.  But, if he can find something else that interests him, I'll encourage him to do it.

He's heard me ranting at the dinner table, relentlessly, about anything to do with free markets, free this, free that, free money and so on; and, before I was a Bitcoin bug, I was a massive, massive, and I still am actually, a massive, massive gold bug.  And it was gold that got me into Bitcoin in the first place and I still own quite a bit of gold and a lot of gold shares.  And, I just despair, because the whole sector's been a total disaster for ten years, and 2011 I should have --

Peter McCormack: Well, why is that?

Dominic Frisby: A million different reasons.  I'll talk about that in a sec; I'll just answer the question about my son.  So, he's had it all by osmosis and I think -- he's mixed race, my son, or my eldest two are mixed race; my youngest two aren't.  And so, he gets the whole, you know, when this whole Black Lives Matter thing kicked off last year, he understood that in a way that I was quite proud of him, because he was just like, "This is bollocks.  This is not what it's about".  And, he looks around him at the sort of social hierarchies of South East London, where we live, and he's like, "This is…", you know.

So, he's quite able to think contrarily without me forcing him to think contrarily, and it takes quite a lot of balls to go against that Black Lives Matters narrative, particularly last summer; it really does, to stand up to it.  So, I admire him for doing that.  And I think he thinks a lot of what he's taught in economics, and it's all Keynesian bullshit he's taught, and I've looked at all the professors there and they're all left-wing nutjobs.  But, I just hope he'll discover the whole Austrian stuff as he gets older and it will make sense to him.

But my instruction to him was to just play the game.  If they argue for some left thing, just repeat their ideology back at them; you'll get better marks that way, and then you can learn the true stuff later on. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's funny that influence you can have on your own children.  Tell me the gold thing?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, so I wrote a film, called Four Horsemen, which was very popular a few years ago and it's a Bible for a lot of people.  It's all about the global financial crisis and how we're going to save the world; I narrated it as well.  And, if we're going to save the world, we need to change our system of money.  And the guy I wrote it with was much more lefty than me.

So anyway, this film was very popular, and it was advocating -- I think it did a really good job in educating people about the flaws of our money system and what it leads to and so on; and it was a very successful film.  As a result of that, I wrote my first book, Life After the State, and the whole argument of Life After the State is, we need to take control.  Governments need to lose control of the money system and while they have power over money and while they have the power to create money, their role in our lives will be too big.

Peter McCormack: Hold on, when did you write that?

Dominic Frisby: Life After the State?  2012, 2013.

Peter McCormack: Right, okay.

Dominic Frisby: Four Horsemen was about 2011, 2012.

Peter McCormack: Were you already exposed to Bitcoin when you wrote Life After the State?

Dominic Frisby: I got my first email about Bitcoin in December 2010 when it was 22 cents!

Peter McCormack: Oh, man!  Let's not do that conversation.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, don't get me on -- I've done really well out of Bitcoin, but I should be a billionaire and I'm not.

Peter McCormack: Well, we all have that story.

Dominic Frisby: Well, exactly.  And I had quite a few -- I've got sidetracked again, but it was 22 cents and I remember reading the email, and it was about an article in PC World; it was one of the first articles about it.  I thought, "That sounds like a good idea", and then I forgot about it.  But, because of the Four Horsemen and because I had my column in money week, where I'd been twatting on about gold and fiat money for seven or eight years and I had a big podcast at the time, loads of people were going, "You've got to look at this thing called Bitcoin". 

Then, people started sending me them.  But at the time, gold and gold shares were doing so well, I was like, "Yeah, yeah, but it's all gold, gold, gold.  They should invent a gold-backed Bitcoin and that will be fine; that's going to solve it", really just totally didn't get it.  So, I built up quite a reasonable horde by people trying to get me into it, and then I watched the price; and it kept doubling.  It was $1 to $2; $2 to $4; $4 to $8; I'm not fucking buying this; I'm not buying something after it's doubled like that.  So, I kept thinking like that.

Then, they invented these physical Bitcoins; I remember they had these physical Bitcoins.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, was it Casascius coins?

Dominic Frisby: I can't remember what they were called.  And, they were on eBay, and they were $18, $15, and Bitcoin itself was trading around $15, I forget the precise amount, and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to buy.  I understand physical Bitcoins; I'm going to buy physical Bitcoins".  So, I started sticking in stink bids on eBay, I always try and be clever on auctions, and of course the ones on eBay went for a premium to what the Bitcoin price is.  So I was like, "I'm not buying; that's just a rip-off".

So, I kept missing it and it kept doubling and then eventually, I was just like, "Oh, fuck", but I still had quite a decent horde with people giving them to me, and then I'd got a few.  And then, that was it, I think it went to $32 and then it went all the way back to like $2 or something and I was like, "Oh, it's fucked; I'm not buying that!"  Oh, what a fucking idiot!

Peter McCormack: I did the same, but mine was 2013.

Dominic Frisby: Okay, but then I think it went to like -- I missed it again, basically.  It was so quick.  When it moves, it moves so quickly.  And then it went all the way to $1,000, or the same price -- it was like $1,200 or something -- that was the same price as an ounce of gold.

Peter McCormack: That was 2013.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, and that point I was like, "Oh my God, I've got to write a book".  And, in Life After the State, which I wrote in 2012, there was like two or three pages about Bitcoin and I said, "If we're going to save the world, we need to change our system of money, and it's gold, gold, gold; maybe it's this new thing called Bitcoin", two or three pages about Bitcoin, and I'm sure that is the first mention of Bitcoin in a proper book, Life After the State.

Then, literally as Life After the State was then published, Bitcoin then went to $1,200 and I was like, "Fuck, I've got to make up for the fact that I've missed the Bitcoin boat by being the guru about Bitcoin".  So, I wrote Bitcoin: The Future of Money? in 2014, and I'm sure that's the first book about Bitcoin from a recognised publisher. 

But it came out in that first crypto winter, when Bitcoin went from like $1,200 to $200.  Everyone was in despair; they'd given up on Bitcoin; and I remember we tried to get it published in America and the Americans were like, "No, Bitcoin's over.  We've got another book about Bitcoin coming out next year", which was that Nathaniel Popper book, Digital Gold, or something.  So they were like, "No, we've already got the Bitcoin book".

So, it never got the proper release in America, so it never -- but, the book was written as a catch-up trade.  I thought, "I'll become the guru about Bitcoin, even though I haven't made as much money out of it".  And then, when the book came out, then I obviously became a target in the space and I got hacked.  I remember I went to this big Bitcoin dinner, and everyone at the Bitcoin dinner got hacked.  So, my whole little fortune that I did have, even that went.

So, I've since bought back in and I'm doing very well, and I've had lots of great speech and everything else, but I'm afraid I'm in the category -- like, I read yesterday about this guy, the first big hack of Bitcoin, he had $500,000 worth of Bitcoin nicked, but that was 25,000 Bitcoins.  So, 25,000 Bitcoins would be over $1 billion worth.  Because I got hacked and I lost my, what would be several million pounds' worth today, that one when it went to $20,000, I used to wake up and have sleepless nights of regret about how rich I could have been; it probably would have been tens of millions.

But imagine being one of those guys who lost 25,000 coins, or one of the people in Mt Gox?  They were right, they got in early, they saw it coming; and they had them nicked.  You know, there are people who've committed suicide as a result of this.

Peter McCormack: Well, there's that British guy who's got it all in the tip.  He's got 7,000 Bitcoins in a tip.

Dominic Frisby: Well, he's become a Bitcoin cash advocate, so it does terrible things to you.  But he still loves it and he works in the space, but all those people that had their coins stolen one way or another, or there are people who bought at 50 cents and sold at $5 and made ten times their money; woohoo, what a mistake!  So, this is why the whole hodl narrative has come around, because you just do not sell.

Even, I tried to be clever the other day, when it was at $58,000, and it just pulled back.  I thought, "This is going tits up", so I sold a few coins, and I had my orders to buy back at $42,500 and it went to $43,000.

Peter McCormack: Oh, you were close, you were close!

Dominic Frisby: I missed it, and I'm a good technical analyst and I thought I'd do that whole thing and give myself a bit of leeway, and I missed it.  And now it's gone back to $51,000 and it's at the same price.  That was just me trying to be clever and trade it, and I'm a good technical analyst; there are lots of people who are worse than me.  So, you just can't fuck around with it; you've just got to own it and swallow.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Back in 2017, I had at one point --

Dominic Frisby: I saw you had 150 Bitcoins, didn't you?

Peter McCormack: Well actually, it was a bit more; it was about 180, but that's not just in Bitcoin.  That's in Bitcoin and altcoins valued in Bitcoin.

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, okay.

Peter McCormack: Then I bought $0.5 million of mining equipment and lost money on that.  Then I ended up with shitcoins, having to sell them at a loss.  And then, I was stuck in this contract for my mining, where I was having to pay off in Bitcoin; and I lost the majority of it.  But, I've rebuilt myself, I'm okay, I accept it, it's gone, I missed it; I wish I'd done something different. 

But, I'm certainly prepared differently now for this year.  I mean, I've bought a fair amount; I've put all the podcast profits into Bitcoin.  I've bought a good amount over $10,000; I bought a few at $17,500 with a bank loan, which was funny.  I pissed a few people off when I said I lied about what it was for!

Dominic Frisby: I saw that; that made me laugh.  Was that the Lloyds thing?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  What it was, basically I had to go and, I can't remember what the reason was, but just say I had to go and get some money out the bank once, and say it was for a car or pay a decorator, and it was cash.  And I'd wanted £3,000, £4,000.  I went to the till and got it out and they said, "Can you tell us what it's for?" and I was like, "No".  And they said, "We need to know" and I said, "It's for coke and hookers", and I just decided from then on I'm just going to lie.  Every time the bank asks me something, I'm just going to lie every single time.

So, when I took out my loan, they asked what it was for; I just lied, I'm always going to lie.  It's none of your business.  I've never missed a mortgage payment, I've never been in debt with you, I've always had my accounts in surplus, I've never done anything wrong; I'm probably not the perfect customer, because the perfect customer probably is in debt and does have an overdraft, you know.  But, I'm a good customer for 25 years and I was just like, "It's none of your business; I'm not answering these questions".

So, when I took the loan, I did it and some people got really upset by it and suddenly started defending the banks, "You've committed fraud!"  I was thinking, "What the fuck are you on about?  Why are you even in Bitcoin?"  Yeah, so I did that --

Dominic Frisby: Was this the bounce-back loan?

Peter McCormack: No, this was just a loan.  I woke up one morning and I'd seen the Saylor news that he was raising that first convertible note, and the Bitcoin price dipped down to $17,500.  I was lying in bed with my laptop and I was like, "I'll just see how much money Lloyds will give me".  Immediately, £35,000, and I immediately put it into Bitcoin.  I think I said it was for a car.

I mean, my defence is, I'm actually going to be buying a car with the profits for my dad, so I've kind of done what I said.

Dominic Frisby: I saw that.  It's a black one, isn't it; it's a black Jaguar or something you're buying him?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  He's always wanted a Jag.  He could never afford it because he was always working so hard to put us through school, so he can have that car.  But the point being is that you get this -- I think you have to go through a good four years of Bitcoin to understand how to Bitcoin.  You have to go through the ups and downs and make all the mistakes and hopefully, you won't make any more mistakes in the future.

Dominic Frisby: I saw some guy on Twitter about a month ago, who managed to recover the keys for a wallet.

Peter McCormack: That was great, wasn't it?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, and you know, that is literally the best way you could have possibly invested in Bitcoin and I'm really pleased for that guy.  And by the way, if the person who hacked me wants to give me my coins back, I'd be very grateful for them, if you've made all your millions.

But, I'm pretty good friends with a lot of OGs and everyone's very, very shady.  I'm pretty open about my mistakes and I think a lot of OGs, you know the old thing, you talk about Bitcoin but not about how many you have, or whatever the phrase is?  I wonder how many of them just never, never sold.

Peter McCormack: I don't believe it.  And Martti Malmi, he told a good story about that.

Dominic Frisby: He had 55,000 coins, so he'd be a billionaire twice over.  I mean, he dealt with it well in that story, but he still must have sleepless nights.

Peter McCormack: Of course, but you have that all through.  I mean, I could think, "I wish I hadn't got married, because my divorce cost me so much.  I wish I hadn't done this…" you can have all those regrets.  But, I thought his story was really good, because he said, "I've got this flat".  My son at the moment is like, "Dad, why don't you sell some, get yourself a car?"  He's always encouraging me.  I said, "No, you need to hodl".

The other point is, you might be buying yourself higher wealth in the future, but you're also losing time.  So, I've got no issue, if the kids, once this lockdown's over, want to go on a really big, lovely holiday to, I don't know, somewhere in the Caribbean and get a nice villa out in the water; let's sell a bit of Bitcoin, because you can have that memory.  We never know how much time we've got.

Dominic Frisby: That's a very millennial attitude.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think you've got to live a little.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, you do.

Peter McCormack: Like, how rich do you need to be?

Dominic Frisby: So, let me ask you a question.  My dad died earlier this year, and he left each of my kids £10,000, so they've each got £10,000; and the age of the kids is 20, 18, 16 and 14.  So, they've each got £10,000, and the money will come, it's like three months away, they'll get their money.  Do I buy them each £10,000 worth of Bitcoin at whatever the market price is at the time?  Do I stick it in an ISA and buy them a sensible portfolio of FTSE 250 stocks, or whatever?  Do I just let them blow it on clothes or whatever?  Or, my daughter wants to take the £10,000 and spend it on her year off.  Which is the best option; go travelling?

Peter McCormack: Well, the best option is free choice, right?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: But what I would throw in there is, yeah, just go travelling.  I mean, look, the reality is, I had this conversation with my son.  I've actually got him his first hardware wallet here ready to go, and I said to him, "Look, you need to start learning about Bitcoin; put some savings away".  But also the reality is, he said to me, "Dad, I'm never going to have as much Bitcoin as you, so what's the point; I'm just going to get yours when you die?!" 

So, why don't you just let them go travelling, let them spend it, whatever they want and leave a little bit of Bitcoin for them?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, I think I will.

Peter McCormack: I think you can just lay it out for them, "What do you want to do?"  You've given the options so you say, "Here are your options".

Dominic Frisby: Well, the obvious thing to do is to put £2,500 in Bitcoin, £2,500 in FTSE stocks, £2,500 travelling and £2,500 in partying in London, which I think is the worst thing you can do.  I think you want to stick it all in one and really go for it.

Peter McCormack: I think the travelling thing.  I've said to my son -- it's funny, I wish I'd done it differently.  So, since my children were born, pretty much the day they were born, I set up a bank account.  I put £50 a month in.  It's just a direct debit that's sat there, because in my head at the time I did it, I was like, "Well, by the time you're 18, that's your year-off, go-round-the-world fund".  They'll have £10,000, £12,000, whatever it is.  Imagine at 2009, I'd switched that over to Bitcoin; they'd be billionaires!

Dominic Frisby: I know.  Right, let's talk about gold stocks; you want to talk about gold stocks?

Peter McCormack: Yes, please.  Tell me what's going on with gold.

Dominic Frisby: I came to gold stocks in 2005 and I'd made a bit of money, I was looking to invest it, I started reading on the internet and I started reading about gold and I started reading about money; and I started to understand the thing about the fraud that is fiat currency, and everything that Bitcoin understands.  And by the way, one of the most important things that Bitcoin has done for the world is, once you buy Bitcoin, you become an advocate of Bitcoin.  Either you're a miner or you're a communicator or you're an educator or you're a salesman, or you build some business on the infrastructure.  Just by getting involved in Bitcoin, you add to it, and that's a really positive dynamic.

But, one of the important things Bitcoin has done, and the most powerful message in this whole thing has been the Bitcoin price relentlessly going up, is that it has taken that anti-fiat narrative into the main thing.  The fraud that is inflation measures is exposed by Bitcoin and more and more people get it.  I remember in 2005, 2006, I made it my life to try and educate people about it.  That's why I wrote that film, Four Horsemen, and many other books and animated videos about the evils of fiat money.  A lot of them are the most watched stuff on the subject, and Bitcoin has taken that to a whole other level and I just think that's so important to the world.

But in any case, this same narrative was out there in 2005, 2006, except it wasn't Bitcoin, it was gold; it was gold that was going to save us.  We had to go back to gold; gold is honest money, it is traditional money, it has no other purpose in the world expect to be wealth; it is the purest, most distilled store of wealth there is in the world.  And, there's a brilliant picture of Putin holding up a gold bar like that and just staring at it. 

When you hold gold, it's captivating; there's an allure to it.  It's the very first metal that mankind used.  He used gold long before he used copper or tin or everything like that; he found nuggets in streams and so on and he began to use it.  And, they'd use it as reward and it was money in the Stone Age, effectively.  The first examples of human beings using gold are like 10,000 or 20,000 years older than any other metal.  And I think we have an instinct for beauty and we have the same instinct for gold.

It was just such a strong narrative and it was just confirmed by the gold price, because every year the gold was going -- it seems pathetic to a bitcoiner, but every year the gold price was going up 15%, 20% and the story was getting out.  They invented the gold ETFs, there were bullion vaults that ordinary retail investors could put their money in and buy physical gold, institutional money was coming in via the ETFs.  And these things called "junior mining companies" emerged. 

You'd have the large mining companies, Newmont and Barrick and things like that, but you'd have these junior mining companies which were basically mining exploration companies; a couple of blokes with a beard raised some money and they're going to go and drill this property in Outer Mongolia, or Alaska, or wherever it is, and they think because of the way the rocks are, they think there's some gold there and they're going to drill it.

This idea that junior mining companies were effectively an option on the gold price came along.  And junior mining companies were like Bitcoin; they would double and triple and quadruple for no reason whatsoever.  Well, the reason they tripled is that everyone was buying them.  And so, 2008 came along and everything collapsed in 2008, including the gold stocks.  But, the gold stocks were the first to rebound.  And, the S&P was dragging low, it was going all the way to 666; gold was going higher and higher; and that period between 2008 and 2011 was just one of the best periods ever, well it was probably the best period ever, to be a gold mining investor.

You just could put £10,000 in a gold stock and it would be £50,000 a year later.  It was like Bitcoin.  And, that's one of the reasons I think actually, psychologically, why I didn't get as involved in Bitcoin as early as I should.  And then, the whole thing peaked in 2011, the Greek Crisis; September 2011, the Greek Crisis, and gold peaked at £1,920 an ounce.  There's nothing to confirm a narrative like price and if you think fiat money's collapsing and inflation and all these narratives, when you see the gold price going up, that confirms it; so all my focus was on that.

But then, these guys who had these gold mining companies, they'd come and have these lunches to raise money, and they'd be staying at The Savoy, and they'd be showing up in these incredible suits and flashy cars and you were like, "Shouldn't that money be going into the ground; shouldn't that be going into drills?"  So basically, junior gold mining companies were shitcoins, effectively; they were stupid altcoins, is what they were.  And rather like you got burnt in 2016, the market pulled back in 2012 and then 2013, the arse fell out of the market.

Gold itself only pulled back about -- it went from £1,920 to like £1,050, so it pulled back 40%, 45%, something like that, but most of those mining companies went to zero, zero, zero and they went so quickly.  And it was so hard to sell, because you were like, "But, I bought at 100 and I'm selling at 20, I may as well just hold on", and it would just go lower and lower and lower until you lost everything".  And I got so badly burnt, and I saw how the anti-fiat money narrative could unfold and then I would go to Bitcoin and I would hear all the same narratives that had proliferated in gold before the bubble popped, in the Bitcoin bin.  I was like, "I know how this ends".  And so, that held me back.

But in any case, why has Bitcoin been so much better than gold?  And, here's my explanation.  Do you remember, at the beginning of the programme, we talked about The Sovereign Individual and these two economies, the physical economy and the digital economy; and the physical economy is the one that's going to be persecuted in this new digital nomad tax-free world that we're going into; not tax free, but you know what I mean?

The physical economy, since about 1990, has grown at 3%, 4%, 5% a year, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less and it's done well; but, the digital economy has just grown at the most exponential rate.  In 1990, the market cap of the four biggest companies in Silicon Valley today, compared to what it was in 1990, 30 years ago, it's over 100 times higher.  The physical economy has just grown at nothing like the same rate.

The reason for this is the scalability of digital technology.  If I invent a brilliant app, the best app in the world, I can upload it to the App Store and a billion people can download it, or 10 billion people can download it.  If I invent the best mug in the world, I've still got to manufacture and distribute a billion of those mugs; it's just so much less scalable.  And as a result -- you see Google gets a really good search algorithm going, it can just grow it really quickly.  And as a result, market caps triple and it attracts more investment and there's a virtuous cycle.

So, we've moved into a new age where the value is no longer in traditional value, you know, farm land, mining companies, factories, all these kinds of physical things.  The value now is in Bitcoin, shares in technology companies, intellectual property, trademarks, all these non-tangible assets; that's where the new wealth is.  Data didn't even exist 40 years ago and now suddenly, everyone's talking about data like it's the new real estate, you know; data. 

So, the real wealth is to be found in the digital economy and gold is the single most analogue asset there is.  It is so analogue, I could take gold, I could smash gold into a layer that is an atom thick, one atom thick, but I cannot destroy it.  All the gold that's ever been mined in all the world's history still exists.  It's permanent; it is eternal; and it is pretty much utterly useless for anything else, except to be a store of wealth. 

But, it's problem in this new, digital age, it is an analogue asset.  And, I'm convinced that that is why -- you can make all these arguments about, we had to go through a bear market to cure all the ills of the previous bull market, so 2011 to 2015, 2016; and then it's been pretty good since 2016; but, now, the fiat narrative is owned by Bitcoin.  If I go to a gold conference, I'm 51 and I'd be the youngest person there.  When I was going to gold conferences 15 years ago, aged 35, I was the youngest person there.

When I was going to Bitcoin conferences 10 years ago, I was the oldest person there, so I'm in the cut-off generation.  But, there's a generational gulf --

Peter McCormack: You're on the cusp!

Dominic Frisby: I'm on the cusp.  But, there's a generational gulf between Bitcoin and gold, which is digital and analogue, old and young.  And old people do not get Bitcoin and young people do.  And, young people are more dynamic, they're more energetic, they've got more get-up-and-go, they've got more fight; and all these qualities have piled into Bitcoin and its marketing. 

Gold meanwhile, you talk to a bullion dealer, and he's got your custom and he'll do everything else to make sure you buy it with him, hold with him, sell with him; whereas Bitcoin, it's a whole movement.  Gold is lots of little things.  There's not one overwhelming network that Bitcoin has.

Peter McCormack: Well, I've never owned gold, beyond it being within things I've bought.  So, whether it's jewellery for me or, well not for me, I don't wear jewellery, but jewellery for somebody else, or it's within my phone, I've never bought gold.  My son has never asked me about gold.  He asks me about Bitcoin all the time.  And, look, I know it's my job, so he has that side interest but at the same time, he was listening to Logan Paul the other day, his podcast, talking about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and NFTs.  But, he asks about it and he wants to own Bitcoin; he gets it.  It makes sense to him in his world and his life.

So, everything you're saying is that transitional thing, and it's kind of funny when you talk about --

Dominic Frisby: It's the narrative; we respond to stories.  There's no narrative for gold.

Peter McCormack: We do, but also, I think you can spin in there the ease of use as well.  There is that ease of use, ease of access, which makes it a more compelling…  It's like Vijay Boyapati says, he was on Tom Woods' show and he said, "Bitcoin is like gold, but it has this magical property that you can teleport it anywhere in the world", and I just love that narrative; so it is narrative, you're right, it is narrative.

But, what is really interesting is that I've been -- my Bitcoin period from 2013 to 2017 was really buying drugs on the Silk Road in 2013, trading and losing and forgetting about it; and then I've been properly in from end-2016 to now.  I've heard all the narratives about what Bitcoin can really be, and there was always that tinge of doubt, "Well, it's still magic internet money; I get what you're saying", but now, I'm fully in, I'm fully convinced; I get it now.  I do not want to sell it.  I would like, maybe at some point, to leverage it or maybe sell a little bit but generally speaking, I think the writing's on the wall for gold and fiat currency.  So, I don't know if you've felt that?

Dominic Frisby: Listen, I've still got loads of gold, so let's not -- you see this round my neck, this little bit of gold here?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Dominic Frisby: I had some sovereigns, gold sovereigns, and I took two of them.  I was so pissed off with gold in about 2014, you know, I was just sat there holding this fucking thing that kept falling in value; and the gold, I bought all that gold and I was going to be a billionaire, because we were going to go back to a gold standard, I was going to liquidate my gold and buy Soho.  That was the plan.  I should have done it with Bitcoin.

Anyway, so I took two sovereigns and there was a woman.  My daughter's school had a little market fair and there was a woman who was working on jewellery there at the market fair and I said, "Can I give you two sovereigns and you make me a necklace?" because I thought at least I'll just have some pleasure to be got from the gold by wearing it.  So, I've always worn this necklace ever since, which is basically half an ounce of gold.

If you ask me what's going to be worth more in 200 years' time, gold or Bitcoin, I would say almost certainly gold.

Peter McCormack: You need to explain that.

Dominic Frisby: But, we don't invest with 200-year timeframes; we invest with 5-year, 3-year, 5-year timescales.

Peter McCormack: Well, we're lucky between us.  I mean, we're ten years apart, but we can have a broad range.  We've got 20 to 30 good years left and then, the decrepit bit afterwards.

Dominic Frisby: Sure, but I mean we don't invest with 30-year timelines; we invest with 3- to 5-year.

Peter McCormack: So, why 200 years; because, what, gold will always exist but Bitcoin could die, or something else could come along?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah.  I mean I'd like to have this conversation with Michael Saylor, because I'm sure he'd put me right, but some new technology will come along, some new monetary technology, that will supersede Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: But, what does this new technology need to do, because the thing about Bitcoin is, I don't think it is about the technology; I think it is about the mystery, the decentralisation, the anonymous creator, the mythology, it's narrative and it's network effect.  There's already --

Dominic Frisby: There will be something, I don't know what it is, Peter, but something will come along.  Either the technology will be better, you know, there are all sorts of problems that can happen with Bitcoin.  Too many Bitcoins could be lost 200 years in the future; so many Bitcoins could be locked away; there could be too great an unequal distribution of wealth on the Bitcoin network; too few people could own too many, just by virtue of when they bought.  And, it does seem at the moment there's less and less Bitcoin on the market.  More and more people are buying, so there are less and less available.

But, there is, again, coming back to Daylight Robbery, money is technology.  What we use as money has always been driven by technology.  So, we talked about the mud, the evolution from the balls to the writing in the clay tablets.  In 700 BC in Ancient Lydia, they found ways, I forget the king who did it; it was Alyattes, I don't know how you pronounce it, minted the first coins in Ancient Lydia.  They were probably minting them earlier in China. 

So coinage, where you could certify the amount of metal in a coin and then stamp it with the issuer to guarantee the purity, it was a much better form of money than the sticks that they used at the time, or whatever other forms of money that they used.  So you'd see copper coins, silver coins and gold coins.  Coinage was one of the most brilliant technologies ever; we still use it today, just, but it's a technology and the use of that technology has improved throughout all that time.  But, the basic principle was invented 700 BC.

But then, the next evolution in money was the inventing of the printing press and we found that it's more convenient, rather than using gold coins, to use bits of paper instead.  This happened in China under Kublai Khan, or whoever it was; and then in Western Europe, it came around from about the 1400s onwards.  Then we started using running cash notes, and then we got the Bank of England and we'd have state-sponsored notes and so on.  And paper money replaced gold.  It was still backed by gold, but use of paper was just more convenient.

Then the next stage in the evolution was the evolution of digital technology and communication.  People forget the role of communication in money.  The first transatlantic transactions between the dollar and the pound happened in, whenever it was, 1850 or 1860, with the invention of the telegram and by telex and the cable.  That's where we get the expression "cable" from.  But, the cable went across and the money was transferred.  It wasn't transferred across the table, but it was just acknowledged by both sides of the trade that that money had now passed there.  So, there wasn't a physical passing of money; it was just a communication.

So, when you hear this thing, "Oh, gold's useless because you can't -- if I want to port 100 pounds of gold from America to China, that's going to take me a warship and 20 days and it's going to cost me this much".  Well, no, you can still have the vault and just the ownership can be transferred.

Peter McCormack: Well, that hasn't worked out well for Venezuela with us holding their gold.

Dominic Frisby: Well, exactly, but there are all sorts of other issues to do with where the ownership is stored; I accept that.  But the point being that, you know, the Bitcoin never moves; it's just the transfer of ownership is on the blockchain, it's logged on the blockchain so now you own it.  It's the same as the old Stones of Yap.  So, the stones stayed where they were, but the ownership transferred in the ledger, which was in people's heads.

So, the same can apply to gold, so it's not totally redundant; it just badly needs to reinvent itself.  But, coming back to the "money is tech" thing, digital technology came along and it was much better and we can send money by internet banking now, so the cheque's died a death; so, paper money's died a death.  We don't use paper money barely at all any more.  So, there's just this constant evolution.

Then, the ultimate form of digital money was the ownership issue, which Bitcoin, the decentralised thing.  And, I can't say what the next invention will be because, usually invention happens in reaction to a problem; we don't even know what the problem is yet, because Bitcoin's working very well.  But, problems will arise and then something else will come along and replace it.

So, that's why I say, gold is the money of last resort, it's the very first metal we ever used and it will probably be the last metal we ever use.  And it has its variations and it comes in and out of fashion, and at the moment it's very out of fashion and I would advise people to be more overweight Bitcoin at the moment than they are gold; but, I'm hedged, I've got both.  But, in 200 years' time, I would -- in 5 years' time, I'd bet on Bitcoin but with a 200-year timeframe, I'd bet on gold.  But, what do I care about a 200-year timeframe, because I'm not going to be alive?

Peter McCormack: Why don't you sell your gold and buy Bitcoin?  Why are you short Bitcoin, Dominic, why are you short Bitcoin?!

Dominic Frisby: I have sold gold and bought Bitcoin and not early enough.

Peter McCormack: Oh well, man, listen, we've crushed out a pretty good couple of hours here.  Is there anything we've not covered that is burning on your list?

Dominic Frisby: Loads, but just, listen, whenever you're up, I can talk forever as you probably gathered, and whenever, if you need a guest or something, I'm only up the road.

Peter McCormack: Well I think this is going to be very popular.

Dominic Frisby: I look forward to actually meeting in person one day.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well what we'll do is, when all this bullshit's over and Boris lets us out, let's meet up; let's go out in Soho.  There's a restaurant I really like down on -- you'll know Frith Street?

Dominic Frisby: Yeah, I love Frith Street.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I love Frith Street.  That's where I get all my tattoos; these are all on Frith Street.

Dominic Frisby: Oh, is it?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Do you know Chotto Matte on Frith Street, the Japanese Peruvian place?

Dominic Frisby: No.  I think I've eaten there once, but has it got sort of benches all up and down, or is it all separate tables?

Peter McCormack: It's separate tables; it's on two floors.  Anyway, we'll go there; that's my favourite place in London.  I'll take you there and then we can go to Ronnie Scott's afterwards and have a drink, because I always think that's good.

Dominic Frisby: Sure, that will be fun.  We can go to the Groucho Club and be like horrible media whores!  Berwick Street is where I want to live; that's my favourite ever street.

Peter McCormack: I mean, I would be -- any of those places around there.

Dominic Frisby: How many tattoos have you got?

Peter McCormack: 53, I think.

Dominic Frisby: You're kidding?

Peter McCormack: I think so; 53.

Dominic Frisby: I've only got one, but I do want to get -- have you got a Bitcoin tattoo?

Peter McCormack: No.  I did think about that.

Dominic Frisby: Is that too religious?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and there are a couple of tattoos I've regretted in my life and that's one that in the future, I might regret it, you know.  It's a bit like, I don't know --

Dominic Frisby: It's like having laser eyes on your Bitcoin user profile!

Peter McCormack: Why, have you got a Bitcoin tattoo?

Dominic Frisby: No, but I'm tempted to get one.  I want to get one, "Bitcoin fixes this".  I can't remember, there's another one, I was talking to my girlfriend.  I've only got, which is Professor Calculus from the Tintin books.  But, I want to get one that says, "Know thyself", but either in Greek or in Latin, but apparently that's really clichéd.  My girlfriend says her previous bloke had one of those on, so maybe I shouldn't get that one.  I had a really witty idea for a tattoo, but I forget what it was.

Peter McCormack: Usually the witty ones are the ones you probably regret.  I've got certainly three or four I regret.  That's why you just get more, so the shit ones get lost amongst the others.

Dominic Frisby: It is addictive, isn't it?

Peter McCormack: Very, very addictive.

Dominic Frisby: It's like plastic surgery; you keep wanting to get more.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, although I haven't had any for a couple of years, so I am overdue.  They fucking hurt, that's the problem, and I went through a phase of about two years when I'd get them all the time.  And then I started to get ill.  I'd have one and then I'd have like a flu for 24 hours; you just feel terrible.

Dominic Frisby: Was that the impurities getting in your bloodstream or something?

Peter McCormack: No, I think it's the shock to the body because essentially, it's like a trauma when you have a tattoo, because you're constantly attacking it with a needle.  And I just think after a while, my body was like, "Look, you need to have a break".  So, I am overdue getting one.  I am overdue any trip to Frith Street.  I haven't actually been into London since before the first lockdown, so it's coming up to a year.

Dominic Frisby: I've been three times.

Peter McCormack: I used to be there every week.

Dominic Frisby: You said you went into London between the two lockdowns?

Peter McCormack: Yes, you're right, I drove through London.  I was driving through Soho because, what was I there for?

Dominic Frisby: The traffic was horrendous.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, the traffic was.

Dominic Frisby: That's because nobody's using public transport, because they don't want to get COVID.

Peter McCormack: Well also, they seem to have pedestrianised part of Soho and we were being routed around.  When I say I haven't been to London, I haven't been out in London; I just haven't been out.  I haven't been and had a drink, haven't been to a show; haven't done all the things we want to do.

Dominic Frisby: We'll go and get pissed and then get a tattoo.

Peter McCormack: We'll get tattoos, we'll go and see Jordan Teear on Frith Street, we'll get tattoos, we'll get drunk; I'll bring my friend, Tom, who I think you'll like and we'll get some food.  But, look, this has been great.  People are going to love this; I'm probably going to have you on very soon again to just talk shit for a couple of hours.

Dominic Frisby: With pleasure.  And, yeah, I'm really doing as many podcasts as possible at the moment, because I'm trying to flog this book, Daylight Robbery.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, let's promote this book, Daylight Robbery.  I mean, I've got it.

Dominic Frisby: I think people will love it.  But, bitcoiners, it's only £3, this Shadowpunk Revolution.  It's only like 50 minutes long.  You buy it for £3 on iTunes or --

Peter McCormack: For fuck's sake, I've just put a whole credit on that and usually you can get a £22 book!

Dominic Frisby: I know.  Do you know what?  I pitched the price.  It's too short and it tells you what the price is.  You can't put the price in and because it's short, they pitched it at £3 and everyone wastes a whole Audible credit on it and then gets really resentful afterwards, because it's so short.  So, don't use an Audible credit; pay with money, and then you'll get better value.

Peter McCormack: I've just done that.

Dominic Frisby: I'm sorry.  Well, you can always send it back.

Peter McCormack: Well, let me finish When Money Dies and I've then got to finish, I've got about a third to go on The Sovereign Individual and then I will move onto Daylight Robbery and every chance I'll probably say, "Okay, I need to have this conversation again" and we'll get back on.  But, I'll put the links in the show notes.  Hopefully people check them out, go and check out the books, and once this lockdown bullshit ends, let's go out and grab a steak.

Dominic Frisby: Sure.

Peter McCormack: All right, my man, good to see you.

Dominic Frisby: Cheers, Peter.