WBD388 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin Rehab: Money for Enemies with American HODL & Jason Williams

Interview date: Friday 20th August

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with American HODL & Jason Williams. 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 American HODL and Angel Investor and Author Jason Williams. We discuss the negatives of cancel culture, asset inflation, buying Lambos and how bitcoiners can manifest the future.

“It’s already the reserve currency of the internet which is a global phenomenon so it’s already the reserve currency of the digital world, so it’s already won, Bitcoin has won.”

— American HODL

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: HODL, man, we are scraping the fucking barrel this month, scraping the barrel!

American HODL: I know!  I mean, isn't this guy half a shitcoiner?  I mean, what's up, I thought this wasn't a shitcoin podcast?

Peter McCormack: Ben and Danny went through everyone, and I don't know what's going on this month.  They were like, "Everyone else, no, holiday, busy, can't do it", so literally all we had left was fucking Jason Williams.

Jason Williams: Yeah, and I was reading recently you're getting back into mining, so should we call some interventionalist?  Are you back on drugs or anything?  Fuck, you lost all your money doing that last time!

Peter McCormack: Oh, he's come out firing!  We were just joking, man, we were just fucking with you and you have to actually hurt my feelings!

Jason Williams: I read that, I spit my coffee all over my Porsche; I'm going to send you the cleaning bill! 

Peter McCormack: Jesus, man!

Jason Williams: So, what are you mining?

Peter McCormack: Fucking hell, man!

Jason Williams: No, seriously…

Peter McCormack: You see, this is the problem; Americans don't know the difference between banter and just being mean, and you're straight being mean now.

American HODL: No, that's minor to us!

Peter McCormack: Listen, why the fuck have you both got sunglasses on; do I need sunglasses?

American HODL: Yeah, get your shades, bro.

Jason Williams: You got to wear shades.

American HODL: There you go.

Jason Williams: How are you feeling, by the way?

Peter McCormack: Dude, I'm feeling good, I'm feeling strong, my back's fixed.  All those weirdos sending me a book to read saying, "Look, if you read this book, your back will get better", absolute bullshit.  I read the book, I felt the same.

Jason Williams: What, Sarno?

American HODL: Yeah, Sarno.

Jason Williams: Sarno's book on, it's all in your mind; the back pain is in your mind?

American HODL: Bro, my L5/S1 is out, it's still out to this day, because I had a snowboarding accident.  You know, it's an acute thing, and people were telling me to read that book.  I was like, "Bro, I didn't imagine my fucking snowboarding accident.  I crashed into the fucking jump, you know what I mean?  My shit's fucked up".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so I think what it is, I think the deal is with that book, sometimes if you've got a herniated disc, over time your back heals.  And I think some people, during the time of reading that book, their back heals, and they think it's the book.  But you can't, just by training your mind, have a protruding disc that's protruding onto your nerves just suddenly pop back in; you need fucking surgery.  I had surgery and I woke up within three hours and I was fixed.  I should have done it ages ago, man; ages ago.

Jason Williams: Peter, what were the symptoms that you had; I'm just interested?  Did you have consistent pain down your leg; did it feel like fire; was it weakness; what was going on?

Peter McCormack: It changed.  So, the first time I herniated it, it was about a year ago.  I was in the gym and I found out why it herniated.  Basically, I went to pick up a bottle of water and it just popped.  It turns out, the way you tend to herniate a disc is you bend forward at an angle, so not only are you bending the spine, but you're twisting it, and that's what tends to do it.  Because my bottle was to the right, that's how I did it.

I couldn't properly walk.  I had to get help to my car.  I got home and I was kind of okay and then the next day, I was fucked.  I could not put any weight on my left foot.  It was agony, and then over the space of a week, that was okay and I could walk it off.  Or, if I got on the inversion board, the pain would go.  Then I was pretty much back training within three weeks and I was fine, and then within a month it went again, but this time it never healed.  It just hurt for a while and then it was just annoying.  I couldn't bend over properly and whatever. 

So, I got the MRI scan and it herniated.  What happened was, when I was away, when I was at the Indy 500 and I was flying back, I woke up that morning and my leg just felt weird; just a really soft pain, but weird.  It gradually got worse and worse and it got to the point where it was like a hot poker being yammed in the back of my leg and I couldn't sit down.  I could stand up and I was fine; I lay down and I was fine; but I could not sit down.

The pain was so bad at one point, I was on tramadol, diazepam and another muscle relaxant, and they weren't even getting rid of the pain.  There were certain things I was doing and honestly, it was the worst pain of my life, it was fucking awful.  Then I had the operation, I woke up and I was instantly better; instantly.  Incredible.

Jason Williams: And, HODL, have you had surgery yet on your back?

American HODL: No, I'm not a pussy like Peter is.

Peter McCormack: You statist cuck!

American HODL: I just deal with it like a man, bro!

Jason Williams: Because, I think I was one of the people who recommended Sarno's book actually, because I'm an "avoid surgery at all costs".

Peter McCormack: Whoops!

Jason Williams: No, no, look, I'm an "avoid surgery at all costs", so it just didn't work for you.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you're healthy as fuck, you've trained your whole life.  I mean, look at you, you're 74 years old, you look great!

Jason Williams: You know, what's so funny, Peter, before Ben Askren fought Jake Paul, we were playing around with that I was going to watch the fight, and out of nowhere, Peter challenged me to fight.  We had never really met, I had never seen him in person, or anything like that.  Then he DMs he, because I was like, "Yeah, I'll fight you", because I was just, "Fuck it, whatever", and he was like, "Hey, man, how tall are you?"  I'm like, "I'm 6'1, 200 pounds, something like that".  Peter's mood changed a little bit.  He said he had this back problem and that was the end of it.

Peter McCormack: Dude, I did have a back problem.  I'd fuck you up, honestly.  I'm from Bedford.

American HODL: Peter, have you ever been in a fight?

Peter McCormack: I've been in a few fights.

American HODL: When?  When was the last fight you were in?

Peter McCormack: The last fight I was in, I was 14 and --

American HODL: Okay, it's been a long time.

Peter McCormack: -- we used to play this game, Bulldog, in school, where you had to run past people.  This one guy was a dick, so I had a fight.  He won, but we had a fight.

Jason Williams: I'm not into fighting, I'm just bullshitting with you.

Peter McCormack: It's because I'd fuck you up.  I can't actually see.  Why are we wearing sunglasses?  I fucking can't see!

American HODL: Because we're cool, man.

Jason Williams: And, mine are for computer glare, so mine are special Pit Viper computer glare glasses.

American HODL: Same.  These are blue blockers.

Jason Williams: Yeah, we're professionals here, Peter.

American HODL: Yeah, they help, totally.

Peter McCormack: My challenging you to a fight was British humour; I was never actually going to fight you.

Jason Williams: I was trying to arrange it.  I thought it would be a nice spectacle.  We could go hang out, have some beers, fight and then go have some beers.

American HODL: Jason, weren't you going to fight notorious Twitter troll, Dieter Bob, at one point?

Jason Williams: No, it never got to that.  I actually like Dieter a lot.  I would even say this: if Dieter and I met -- no, I'm telling you.  If Dieter and I met, we'd be best friends.

Peter McCormack: No you wouldn't.  That guy has literally no redeeming qualities; zero.

Jason Williams: I don't know.  I'd like to re-enact a moment between he and HODL, if you'd entertain me, because HODL's an actor and I'd like to be Dieter Bob.  Can we do that for a second?  I thoroughly enjoyed the debate between HODL and Dieter that was on Twitter Spaces.

American HODL: It was good.

Jason Williams: Did you watch that, Peter?

Peter McCormack: So, I came in at the end of it.

American HODL: Some people called it, "the high point of Twitter Spaces".  You know, the President of El Salvador, that was pretty good; but this one just took it to the next level, you know?

Peter McCormack: Well, without the President one, I don't think your one would have happened, because there wouldn't have been an incentive.

American HODL: That's right, it was a good opening act for us; that's true.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, he was, yeah.

Jason Williams: So, is he banned from Twitter Spaces?

American HODL: Yes, we all got banned from Twitter Spaces after that debate.

Peter McCormack: Hold on, you can get banned from Twitter Spaces?

American HODL: You can get banned from just Spaces, yeah, apparently.  So, everybody who participated in that debate got banned for the most part, because Twitter transcribes it in real time; they apply the same algorithms to it.  We were using some very choice language with each other!

Peter McCormack: I was at that one.

American HODL: That's right.  Stoney was going after you for being a sell-out and all that, the usual.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it would be interesting to talk to him if he could articulate himself and control himself, but he just can't control himself; he just wants to yell.  There's no actual discussion at an intellectual level, it's just this angry, rabid dog just wanting a treat and just getting fucked off, because he can't get his.

American HODL: Hey, should we actually talk about Bitcoin on this hangout?  Sometimes I read the YouTube comments and people are like, "This was fucking pointless.  What is this stupid shit?  I came here to learn about Bitcoin".

Peter McCormack: Dude, I make 13 shows a month; they can just skip one.  Actually, I'll tell you one thing we can talk about Bitcoin is that you two have something in common, in that you both in the last year have made donations to my Bitcoin stack.  So, I just want to say thank you for the Bitcoin you've both given me.  You're both fucking terrible at betting.  HODL's about to give me another half a Bitcoin; thank you again.

American HODL: No, that bet I feel very confident about.  I'm very confident that we're going to be over $300,000 by the end of the year.  I mean, this train has no brakes, people.

Jason Williams: I don't think I've ever won a bet with Peter, actually, being honest.  There's been three or four bets; I just continue to send him Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: I haven't lost a bet yet, but I've got one I think I'm going to lose.  There's a chance I lose my bet to Raoul Pal.

American HODL: I think it's pronounced RuPaul, but anyway!

Peter McCormack: My bet with him is that Bitcoin will outperform ETH.  And we bet, it was about 0.032, and I think what is it now?  About 0.058? 

American HODL: I don't know.

Peter McCormack: I think I'm going to lose that one, but I'll just pay for that with your money, HODL. 

American HODL: No, don't worry, because I'm taking my half a coin back, baby.  Although, Willy Woo was bugging me.  Willy Woo was on this show being like, "Yeah, we're definitely going to $300,000", then I listened to his most recent pod and he's like, "Yeah, $162,000", I was like, "What the fuck, Willy!  That's a 50% reduction, bro!  You've got to stay the course!"

Jason Williams: What is your bet that you have with Peter right now, HODL?

American HODL: If Bitcoin goes above $300,000 or above before the end of the year, I win.  If Bitcoin does not go above $300,000, Peter wins.

Jason Williams: I bought out of the money calls $250,000.  I think I have them, so I'm there with you, man.

American HODL: That's really bullish; that's properly bullish right there.

Jason Williams: Peter, why are you such a bear?

Peter McCormack: I'm not a bear, I'm a realist.  And I like taking your money!

American HODL: That's what bears say.

Peter McCormack: I'm bullish on taking half a Bitcoin off you every year.

American HODL: Don't worry, you're not going to take it by the end of the year.  People forget how fucking fast this thing rises.  This is not a linear progression; this is exponential growth.  It just comes out of nowhere.  In two months, we can 10X.  Anything can happen and will happen and you should fucking count on it.  Always count on being surprised.  The fact that consensus view is, "Bitcoin's going to $150,000", lets me know that's not going to fucking happen, because you're all going to be wrong, as you always are.

It's either we're going to stay at $30,000 and we're all going to be desperately wrong, or we're going to $300,000-plus; there is no in between.  $150,000?  What is this mushy -- Bitcoin doesn't do compromises and middle rail, it's not going to happen.

Peter McCormack: $290,000.

American HODL: I mean, $290,000 would suck a lot of balls; that would suck so hard!

Peter McCormack: I would love, on New Year's Eve, to see it hit $299,820.

American HODL: And then keep going, yeah, I know, it's terrible.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and then at 12.10am, it goes to $400,000!

American HODL: I have to stop making Bitcoin bets, I really do, because no matter what, you know.

Peter McCormack: I'll take your half a Bitcoin, because you paid the deposit for the Aston; I could take the other half and pay off the car!

American HODL: If I had to pay you at $290,000, I'm basically paying you, what, $145,000!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's about my outstanding payment on the Aston. 

American HODL: Yeah, then I'd be buying you a Mercedes.

Peter McCormack: The nice thing is though, every time I get in that car, I'll think of you.  It's better than being in the bath!

American HODL: You're going to lose this, so this is a moot point.  You've already lost.

Peter McCormack: We will see, man.  Anyway, how have you been, HODL, are you well?

American HODL: Good, yeah, I'm just chilling.

Peter McCormack: Jason, how are you doing?

Jason Williams: Yeah, doing good.  I spent the last two hours talking to HODL before we came on here, so we've been trying to convince people that buying homes and paying them off is kind of a loser move, it's an antiquated strategy in my opinion.  I look at homes as a liability and the majority of people we're talking to still feel likes homes are an investment; they're something they're driven to own and driven to pay off, and they don't understand the long-term liabilities, the fact that you're still renting it after you pay it off.

American HODL: I was telling the story about all my neighbours, everybody's home value is up 30% to 40%.  Everybody thinks they're a genius, because they bought in this neighbourhood and they've all convinced themselves, "We live in a hot neighbourhood"; not taking into consideration the fact that everyone's home value is up 30% year over year.  Every time I bring that up with them, they just gloss right over it, it goes right into the denial pile.  They just go, "Oh, well.  Anyway, we're all rich, it's great".  I'm like, "But you're not, it's a trick, it's fake".  If you have to get a new house, which Jason says and I agree with him, it's a liability because you have tremendous costs associated with the upkeep of those properties.

You're breaking even, at best, unless you want to move to a lower cost of living area of the country, in which case you could have done that last year and it would have been the same.  So, you're not coming out ahead in this.  Inflation is this trick that makes everybody think they're getting wealthier, and really you're just running in place.  It's incredibly insidious.

Peter McCormack: One of the issues we have in the UK with housing, especially in a place like Bedford is that, that's all well and good, but we don't have a good supply of rentals above a certain level.  If you want to rent a flat, like a one-bed, two-bed flat, even a small house, it's not a problem.  But if you want a four-bed house for a family with a garden, there isn't a big supply; it's pretty much entirely a market for buying and taking out a mortgage.  It's not like the US where a lot of people rent anyway, so you can go and rent big properties in most places, or a decent family-sized.  You can't rent a decent family-sized home somewhere like this.

Also, the other thing is, the cost of rent somewhere is usually very similar to the cost of a mortgage anyway.  In a place like Bedford, if you wanted to buy, say, a four-bed house, your mortgage is going to be £1,200 to £1,500 a month.  If they did have rentals available, it's still going to be about £1,200 to £1,500 a month.  So, in some ways, you might as well buy the property and pay off a mortgage and you are getting an asset out of it.

American HODL: Well, I've heard also that you guys don't have as robust of a refinancing market as we do here in America.  So, in America, people are constantly refinancing their homes.  I've heard you get worse deals across the pond; is that true?

Peter McCormack: People do remortgage; it's not a big thing.  Most people buy a house and then ten years in, their salary's gone up a bit, then most people go through about two or three houses, I think.  I mean, I'm in my second one I've owned.  If I buy another one, that will likely be the last home I buy.

Jason Williams: Yeah, but are you buying them, or are you taking a mortgage out on them?

Peter McCormack: I consider it the same thing.  I'm buying it, but with a mortgage.

Jason Williams: Yeah, you see I don't really consider it the same thing.  You're working to buy it, but the bank owns it, in my opinion.  Again, I think that's a stronger way to go, but you don't own it, you don't own a home, you're not a homeowner.

Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, I do.  I own it, because I can sell it at any point I want.  But if I miss my payments and can't afford to keep it anymore, then the bank can take it, like they have --

Jason Williams: You got your taxes, homeowners association fees lean against it, and I'm not so sure that there aren't some structures around selling it too.  You can sell it however you want?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, pretty much.  Most of the structures around are if you want to extend.  We have a thing, you have to get approval from local council; it takes forever.

Jason Williams: In the United States, that's not the case.  If you were selling the property and someone needed a mortgage, the property has to be in a certain condition to be purchased.  There's just all this structure around it.  So, if you were someone who deferred maintenance, and say the integrity of the roof wasn't right, or there was something wrong, you could get some severe penalties to something that you own.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but we just do a survey.  So, you have to have a survey done, a professional has to come round and do a survey, and that will tell you if there's rot or damp or a problem with the roof, and then it's your choice if you want to buy it and fix it, or if you turn round and say, "Look, there's a damp issue, it's going to cost £10,000.  We've offered you £500,000, we're now offering you £490,000".

Jason Williams: Right, and then it's repaired?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jason Williams: Yeah, I get it.  Yeah, again, my perspective is, if you're going to try to select a property like this, take a mortgage, don't go out and buy it, I think it's just dead money.  In my opinion, it's just dead money.  It's highly illiquid, unless you take a second mortgage and pull it out; at least, here.  I'm surprised to hear, because I assumed that the stigma around renting was less in Europe than it is here in the United States.

Peter McCormack: There isn't really a stigma around renting, it's just a thing; most people just want to own a home.  It's the thing, they think, "If I buy a home, that's an asset I have, I'll take out a 25-year mortgage".  Say if you buy it at 30, that will take you to 55 and then maybe, 5 years later, you take out another 25-year mortgage on a bigger home, and then hopefully it's paid off by the time you retire.  So, you've got no mortgage payments or no rent, and if you really need it, you can sell it.

A lot of people tend to downsize when the kids move out; so, maybe they have this big four-bedroom, they downsize, and they put that, whatever bonus they make out of that, towards their retirement.

American HODL: This is something I've thought a lot about in terms of home ownership, and what we're really doing here is comparing store-of-value assets.  So, you're comparing the opportunity cost of buying a home in cash to the opportunity cost -- or even the down payment, to the opportunity cost of buying Bitcoin.  That's the calculation you need to make, especially if Bitcoin is your unit of account, which it should be if you're planning to absolutely crush, from a financial perspective, over the next 10, 20, 30 years, right?

One of the problems though is that, because real estate has become a de facto store-of-value asset, you have the wealthy up there acquiring so many single-family homes, like BlackRock is buying 100,000-plus single-family homes; they plan to be the renters, they're going to be the landlords of that and do rent-seeking on top of that.  And I think this is one of the cheap causes, in my opinion.

The money printing is the cause of the wealth inequality that we're seeing right now, and that's the cause of the social turmoil that we're seeing right now.  But I think it would go a long way if the wealthy, instead of parking their wealth in real estate as a store of value, they would park it in Bitcoin instead, and that would free up the real estate market for regular people, you know, bring prices down, there'd be a repricing, and would free it up for regular people to get in on single-family homes. 

Because really, that's all that normal people want.  They just want home ownership and they want to be left alone, they don't mind going to work.  So, if you have a society of owners, rather than a society of renters, you fundamentally have more social cohesion, and I think that's one of the things that I'm really excited about.  As the wealthy elite start to understand Bitcoin better, they're going to understand that parking their wealth in Bitcoin is much better, not just for themselves from a monetary perspective, which it is, they're absolutely going to dominate the return of their peers who go into real estate; but it's better for a societal cohesion standpoint.

What's the point of being super fucking rich if you have to live behind barbed wire gates, like we're in fucking Buenos Aires or some shit?

Jason Williams: Hey, did we just hit $40,000 again?

American HODL: I see it on Jason's clock.

Jason Williams: Yeah, $40,255.

Peter McCormack: We just hit a better sound quality for you and people are going to be, "What happened to your voice?"  So, despite doing this for months and paying you handsomely for doing this and helping recruit other people --

American HODL: I do not get paid!

Peter McCormack: -- and despite being Employee of the Month, you still don't know how to select your fucking microphone!

American HODL: I'm not employed!

Jason Williams: I was up all night buying Bitcoins.

Peter McCormack: Dude, why do you need to buy anymore Bitcoin; you're already a "ge-billionaire"?

Jason Williams: I want to own it all!

American HODL: Because he's realised that his unit of account was off and it was fucking up his wealth, which is the realisation that everybody's going to come to.

Jason Williams: HODL, I hear you when you're talking about real estate.  I just, for some reason, don't agree.  And that doesn't mean I won't change my mind in the future, but I just feel there's a time for a paradigm shift right now, and the pursuit of academic credentials, a high-paying job and home ownership, it sounds mental to me.

American HODL: Well, no, I agree with that.  Which part of my real estate diatribe did you not agree with?

Jason Williams: That society fundamentally wants home ownership and to be a part of -- you're almost talking like a tribe; that's the highest level they could achieve is that home ownership, it gives them some kind of stability.

American HODL: I agree with you for the above-average person, that's not what you should be striving for.  But if we're talking about the average individual, most Americans, if they have any net worth at all, most of their net worths are zero or negative.  But if they have any net worth at all, it's tied up in home equity.  So, that's how it's been for the last 50-plus years, and I don't necessarily see that changing in the future.

For instance, old biblical -- the Bible says, "You should keep a third of your wealth in gold, a third of your wealth in your home, property, and then a third of your wealth in your business".  So, this is a fundamental human feeling that you must own property.  I feel like if you feel like you can be easily displaced from where your roots are and where you raise your children, that's just uncomfortable for the vast majority of people.  So, I agree with you; mathematically, it's fucking stupid.

Jason Williams: Hold on, but it seems to fly in the face to what's really happening today, where we've sent people to go work from home, everything is remote, people are choosing to not necessarily even say, "I have to stay in this state, this country, this continent".  I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it seems like that is a contradiction.

American HODL: That's like the tiny home thing, right?  Do millennials actually want tiny homes, or are they just economically disempowered serfs, because I would argue nobody actually wants to live in a tiny home, which is just a rebranded trailer.  It's the same phenomenon.  Nobody actually wants to be a renter in their society; people want to have ownership over their society. 

This is a core human need and I think, if we see a shift from the wealthy out of real estate as a store of value asset, to something like Bitcoin as a digital property store of value, it frees up a lot of physical property; the regular people, the plebians get to have ownership over their society and feel like they belong, etc, and yeah, they're still going to be getting screwed and all the stuff that normally happens.  But they're going to feel like they have a piece of something, and you'll see less payoffs on the streets, less draconian tyranny to keep a lid on everything.  It's a more cohesive society; that's my point.

Peter McCormack: Do you not think it's conditioning though?  You grow up with this conditioning.  It's like, okay, you go to school, you go to university maybe, you get a job, you buy a house, you get married, you have kids.  It's this pattern and your measuring stick is usually the house you have compared to your friends, or the car you drive, and you condition yourself that you can have two holidays a year, if you're lucky, and you just go on this hamster wheel year after year and nothing fucking changes.

We're not giving people the tools, or the creative thinking, when they're young enough to say, "Actually, you can live whatever life you want.  You don't have to go to university, you don't have to get a job sat in a fucking box, working for a guy".

Jason Williams: Peter, this is the stacking of debt.  This is what I was saying this morning in that, that kind of conditioning, I don't know if it's a strategic conditioning done by our founding fathers so that we can keep you oppressed, because every layer of that, every step of that progression is another layer of soul-crushing debt, in my opinion. 

It's like the pursuit of the high-paying job.  Well, it costs a lot, there are your academic expenses.  Make sure you get a nice house for your family; more debt.  We have the mortgage and the American dream.  When you get that house, you need the 3-series BMW so you can keep up with the HODLs and the Jones's; you're leasing that.  It's just one thing after another and before you know it, you're just overwhelmed and lost and you're smoking crack cocaine.

Peter McCormack: But you're always relatively broke?

American HODL: We live in a debt-based society and in order to succeed, you're going to have to take on a lot of debt.  Even if you're a very wealthy person, you're going to have to have an extremely high amount of debt and risk being wiped out at any given point.  This is why we hear the stories every recession or downturn about the billionaires who went to zero.  If you were on a hard-money standard, it's much less likely that a billionaire is going to go to zero, unless they've structured their assets in just some sort of insane way, but we all have to be insane in order to participate and strive in the fiat economy, right, when you have an inflationary economy as opposed to a deflationary economy.

Peter McCormack: Yeah!

American HODL: Regular people, normal people, they want homes and they want to be left alone; I know this about normal people.  They want to have their little, tiny home, they just want to sit in it, they want to feel safe and they don't want anybody coming in through the door.  That's it; that's all they want.

Peter McCormack: But those basics are getting harder, those basics of even getting a home.

American HODL: Yeah, because of the money --

Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course, and we've got more and more people and less and less space and less housing.

American HODL: Well, that's like a European problem, we have tons of space here.  But think about what I just said.  All my neighbours think they're wealthy because they're home is up 30% year over year.  But if you don't own a home, homes just got 30% more expensive and you don't have a 30% salary increase.  So, it is now 30% harder for you to have access to the American dream, and that happened in 12 months; so, think about it.

Jason Williams: HODL, it's 30% more expensive to take care of the home too, right?

American HODL: Right, because services go up, yeah, and taxes go up.

Jason Williams: You're going to get taxed from the appraisal, services all go up, repairs go up, and you didn't get a 30% raise.

American HODL: Yeah, I had to replace an air-conditioner in my home, and two or three years ago I replaced one on another property.  It was $6,000.  This time I got it replaced, it was $9,000.  So, boom, there it is.  And, if I didn't have my money parked in assets and I wasn't participating from the printing that's going on, if I wasn't one of the beneficiaries, I'd be totally fucked.

So, it's harder and harder to get assets.  Once you do have the assets, it's harder and harder to catch the people with the assets.  Most people are never going to own anything.  It's like that World Economic Forum of, "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy".  Well, you'll own nothing, because you're getting locked out.  You're going to be a permanent underclass.  Will you be happy?  I don't know, but it's not like ownership in society is going away.  Somebody's going to own your society, it's just not going to be you, and that's distressing.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's when revolutions happen.

American HODL: Well, that's the problem.  The Fed's policy of not raising rates and keeping rates low and continuing to print money is ultimately going to lead to social revolution, and you have to do something to head that off.  Or, if you raise rates now and you stop them printing, you do forced austerity, you just have total global economic collapse and that's going to kill millions. 

So, they're between a rock and a hard place, and they're picking the lesser of two evils in their mind, which is kicking the can down the road to ultimate revolution, which is an uncomfortable thought that we all have to live through it, but I feel like we all have to live through it.

Peter McCormack: Well, an economic collapse has to happen; it's inevitable. 

American HODL: It doesn't, though.  Well, it will happen at the end during an unwind, but they don't have to force it.  They can keep it going for a long time.  There's going to be a melt up in the markets; that's my fundamental thesis.  So, you talk to a lot of people and they say basically, "There's a big correction coming.  We're going to scoop up all the real estate, just like we did in 2008".  Bullshit; it's not going to happen.  You know why? 

First of all, you don't have privileged access, you're not BlackRock, so you're not going to get the free and the cheap money.  Number two, there's not going to be a correction, because they're going to print harder and faster than they've ever done before, which is what they did during the coronavirus pandemic.  The market can't even get coal nowadays.  If it goes down 20%, immediate printing.  You have to do it, it's a national security issue, because they know that it will cause widespread economic collapse and you'll have something worse than you've ever seen before in our lifetimes.

Peter McCormack: Did you see what Plan₿ tweeted about two hours ago?

American HODL: People are fucking weak now.  They have no ability to live through something like the Great Depression.  People are soft.

Peter McCormack: Two hours ago, Plan₿ tweeted out, "USD is imploding.  Fed overnight reverse repo has exceeded $1 trillion.  Fed creates money to buy treasury bonds, QE, market is flooded with case, there are no good investments.  Market parks cash at Fed.  Why not stop QE plus repo?  Because US interest rates up three years would be negative".  I mean, I don't fully understand it, but I know it doesn't sound good!

Jason Williams: Yeah, again, I'm going to keep pounding my position that buying property, commercial or residential property, is a bad move right now.  You should be buying Bitcoin and not exposing yourself to those carrying costs.  I've spent the last year unwinding whatever real estate I could and bought Bitcoin with it.

Peter McCormack: So, we just lost connection, because the billionaire doesn't have Wi-Fi that fucking works, and that was 20 minutes ago, for anyone watching or listening.  Does anyone remember what we were talking about?

American HODL: I've no idea.

Peter McCormack: For fuck's sake.  Shall we talk about what we were talking about while Jason was offline?

American HODL: What?  Oh, I was telling Peter that I think my fundamental thesis is that the Bitcoin community has imploded, or splintered, and there's no Bitcoin community anymore.  I think there's just too many people here who are brand new, too many outside voices, and maybe it will go back and there'll be some cohesiveness during the bear market, but right now it just feels like a bunch of individuals.  There's no community feel anymore like there was a couple of years ago.

Jason Williams: Well, let me hit you with this.  Has Bitcoin become boomercoin?  I'm being honest.  Have we aged out as a community, and there's so much peripheral noise and distractions that we are just not participating in, because we're fundamentally opposed to it?  And, I'm throwing myself in that crowd.  I may not be a good example, but is that why the Bitcoin community feels a bit disconnected?

American HODL: The boomercoin is like a shitcoiner.

Jason Williams: It's like a boomer upset being called a boomer.

American HODL: I mean, listen, when you get bigger and there's more wealth, there is more stuff.  Like you said, there's more peripheral stuff that's attached to that, and it's not as easy as when you were the young, nimble Dogecoin moron who's out there just tweeting, "To the Moon!" and eating Tide pods.  It's funny, because I've been here for a while.  We were the Dogecoin morons.  Everybody thought we were the idiots who were eating Tide pods and dealing in fake money and all that kind of stuff.  So, I don't know, I think it's interesting now to be called boomer, or whatever.  I think it's a sign of Bitcoin's success.

Let me put it this way.  I was looking at Hass McCook.  His thing is DCA, it's all he's ever cared about.  That's what he cares about, that what he talks about, etc.  He was in a flame war with one of the privacy guys and they were going back and forth and there are so many different distinct interests in Bitcoin now that everybody has their little piece of the elephant that they've glommed onto, and that's very important to them and is their sacred cow. 

I think that's just going to continue to splinter outward.  It's Tower of Babel shit.  There's just going to be a lot of different kinds of bitcoiners over the years, and there is not going to be one single monolithic Bitcoin community anymore; it's gone.

Peter McCormack: All right, well I'll tell you my issue, because I'm definitely having one of those periods in times where I'm proper self-reflecting and thinking, "What am I going to do for the next year?"  I've been getting a little bit bored of just making the same show over and over again, talking about why Bitcoin's monetary policy's great, why it's the best money that's ever existed, etc.  But also, I go through these periods where I get drained by the shit you get, whether it's the YouTube comments, or the tweets.

The thing that's bothering me is I want to explore other topics.  I'll give you a good example.  I live exploring the idea of governance, because I'm sat firmly in the middle.  I'm historically, as a kid, I was definitely a socialist, because I believed everyone should be fair and play their part, etc.  And then, as I got older, I became more of a conservative, because I realised actually, the incentive structure's wrong.  Getting into Bitcoin, I've been exposed to libertarians and anarchists and I think theoretically, it sounds great, but I think the reality of anarchism is quite difficult to envisage and is it net good for society? 

So, I like exploring those subjects and I think they are interesting subjects to explore, because we live in a world where pretty much, you live in a democracy or a dictatorship, pretty much.  I know people say the US -- the US isn't a democracy, it's a constitutional republic, etc, but the point being is I like to explore those subjects, and I think conversations are healthy to go through it.  Because, as Bitcoin gets bigger, we're going to have more socialists come in and buy Bitcoin, we're going to have more republicans, we're going to have all different types of people, and we're going to have to try and find a way to operate cohesively as a society.  Well, we don't have to, but it's nice if we do.

I feel this social pressure, as a bitcoiner, that there are certain subjects that are off limits, that are hard to touch, and I push the envelope.  I'm like, "Yeah, I'm vaccinated, I think vaccines are great.  I'm still a bit of a statist", etc.  But there are certain subjects, certain times I'm thinking, "I'm just not going to tweet that, because I just cannot be bothered to deal with the hundreds of people who are going to come in and just fucking insult you and shout at you, etc.  Then, part of me is like, "Well, fuck you, I'm going to do it anyway", which I probably most likely will, but it's draining over and over again.  I think the problem is, and I've touched on it before, and I wrestle with it myself is, what is this toxicity about? 

I fundamentally stand behind the Bitcoin thesis as good, sound money, censorship resistance, fixed monetary policy; I stand behind all of that.  What I don't like is that it's become this thing where it's this guiding light for your diet, your political persuasion, all these other things.  If you talk about getting the vaccine, you're a test subject and you're a vaccine shill and you're a big pharma shill.  It just gets fucking tiring that you're trying to have intellectual conversations, or nuanced conversations, and you just can't get there. 

So, do you know what I've done?  I've just changed my Twitter strategy.  I've basically got rid of Twitter off my phone.  The only way I see it is through the browser, and I've given up trying to reply to everyone who's a dick, but it's draining, man, it's draining.  I think it's now to the point where the confusion between the importance of protecting the protocol and then asymmetric topics is just going to turn people off.

It's like, whenever you see a criticism of Bitcoin, these criticisms, whether they're right or wrong, they're fair, because they're thoughts we've had before.  Someone makes a criticism, you just click on them; if they're a public figure, there are hundreds of bitcoiners there shouting at them.  They must think, "What the fuck is this?"  I don't know, I just think we need to grow up, myself included, by the way; I just think we need to grow up with this.  We need to have a more mature conversation about, "What the fuck is it we're actually doing here?" a bit like Weinstein said to me, "What is it we're doing here?"  Rant over.

American HODL: Yeah.  I mean, I have thought about what Eric said on your show, which is, "Can the decentralised people do centralised things?" and the answer I've come to is no, no we can't, we're just individuals.  There really never was a Bitcoin community, there was just a loose association of people who believed in Bitcoin and wanted to get together and shoot the shit and talk about how they only eat meat and stuff like that, right; and how they all hate you for taking the vaccine!  That's a very small subset of bitcoiners. 

I meet bitcoiners all the time who have none of these ideologies.  They don't know what's happening on Twitter, they don't care to know what's happening on Twitter, they just know that Bitcoin is the soundest money.  We used to say it more and we don't say it as much, but Bitcoin is money for enemies, it's always been money for enemies.  You don't have to have any pre-described or prescribed ideology in order to be a bitcoiner.  Jason buys a bunch of jpegs; he thinks there's a lot of value there.  That's not an activity that I personally subscribe to, because I can just steal them.

Peter McCormack: Well, I stole one of his!  I stole one.

Jason Williams: You were early on fighting the NFT, the jpeg thing.  I think another struggle for bitcoiners is, it attracts so many diverse, intelligent people.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say there are highly intelligent folks in the space who don't necessarily subscribe to the social norms that people do.  So, they're wild, they'll say whatever's on their mind and for the most part, they're pretty intelligent.  It's a tough group to manage.

American HODL: Totally.  It's like herding cats.  And I think Twitter itself has become a game where people are just saying things to get a rise out of other people, which is Twitter in general.  That's not just Bitcoin Twitter, that's all Twitter, right.  So, the community is a little less ideological; the rose-coloured glasses are off and some of it has just become about being dicks for no reason about stuff, because frankly a lot of people, bitcoiner or not, they get on Twitter and they don't have any real power in their regular life.  They're everybody's bitch in real life, and so they get on Twitter and it makes them feel good

It's cathartic to be like, "Peter McCormack's a fat piece of shit!  Fuck that guy!  He got the vax!  Fuck him!"  It makes them feel good, because then they hop off Twitter and their girlfriend goes, "Did you do the dishes, huh?"  That's what I think when I see a lot of these dudes who are angered for no reason!  I know somebody in their real life is treating them like the little bitch that they are!

Peter McCormack: Do you know what; I wonder how many people who've given me shit about getting the vaccine have actually also had it?

American HODL: Oh, yeah, I assume so.  Every bitcoiner knows there's things you can't post on Bitcoin Twitter.  So, if you got the vaccine, you're not going to post it.

Jason Williams: I think that another problem with Bitcoin Twitter and maximalism, and it's around trying to impose limits on people's research they're doing.  I find that I'm naturally curious and I learn by doing.  So, if I don't participate in mining chia, I don't realise that it just wrecks your fucking computer and it's a fucking waste of time.  I don't know how you arrived at that, other than casually saying, "I don't even have to look at it; it's fucking stupid".

But I'm interested to know.  How do you arrive at knowing that downloading the chia blockchain to your hard drive and smoking your computer --

American HODL: No, Jason, I'll give you an example, because I never mined chia and I arrived at the conclusion that it was all bullshit, but I didn't do it from reflexive maximalism; I did it because I said, "Okay, Bram Cohen's got a new project, it's hard drive storage space instead of computational work.  That's kind of interesting, I guess.  It doesn't seem like it's going to work, but let's see".  One of their stated claims was they weren't going to cause supply disruptions, because there's plenty of hard drive space.  Boom, they immediately cause a supply disruption; project invalidated.  Very simple for me, and I didn't have to mine chia to understand!

Peter McCormack: Do you know, it's not even the shitcoin stuff for me, or the NFTs.  I mean, I did at one point want to cover the NFTs and I think it was Jimmy Song I was going to do it with, but I was going in with an attitude of dismissing it, because I'm a bitcoiner so I have to dismiss it.  That felt wrong, even though -- it felt like it was the wrong approach.  But I just feel like there are certain topics that feel off topic, or they feel like, is it worth the energy and the shit you'll take.

So, let's give an example.  I don't like BitClout in any way at all and I thought the way Breedlove approached it was slightly odd.  But I think the reaction to that and the shit he took was savage.

American HODL: It was.

Peter McCormack: It acts like a warning to everyone.

American HODL: It was a beheading, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah. 

American HODL: The head goes on a pike; digital head, digital pike, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, "You, any of you, you touch this shit, we're going to fucking finish you, we're going to end you".  And, do you know what; he was one of the stars of the movement.  He went on Lex and he crushed it.  Every podcast he was going on, he was crushing it.  His writing was incredible.  He went from that to completely dismissed by nearly half the community I'd say, I mean picking a number out of the air.

American HODL: More, more than that.

Peter McCormack: But also, he couldn't post, he blocked a bunch of people and any time he posted, you would just go in and it would be, "Yeah, what about BitClout, you scammer?"  I reached out to him and I've spoken to him a few times, because I was like, "Well, hold on, you're my friend.  I might disagree with what you're doing, but I still support you as a person.  Let's talk this through".  But it acted like a fucking warning.

I just did an interview with Erik Voorhees and I got Udi to join me to talk about him decentralising ShapeShift.  Now, look, I don't care about ShapeShift because I don't use it; I don't care about the FOX tokens; I just don't care about it.  But the idea of essentially decentralising your business and winding it up, he's essentially winding his business up because he doesn't want to provide KYC.  So he's like, "The only way I can rid of KYC is completely decentralising my business and essentially winding it up and putting it out to the community".

I was like, "That's an interesting topic.  I don't care about shitcoins, but the idea that you're winding up a business to decentralise it, I want to talk about that", but I was having a moment thinking, "If I do this, how much shit am I going to get?  How many of the morons are going to say, 'Yeah, but Erik Voorhees is a shitcoiner.  Yeah, but Erik Voorhees tried to destroy Bitcoin'".  It's like they're missing the topic of conversation that's interesting.  I'm like, "Is my head going on a pike?"

American HODL: I mean, it could.  I think fundamentally, I'm not scared of shitcoins, because I know that they're not going to work.  There's not going to be something that displaces Bitcoin.  Bitcoin will always have the prominent, or premier store-of-value asset place in the entire crypto ecosystem.  I mean, some people talk about it being the reserve currency of the world; it's already the reserve currency of the internet, which is a global phenomenon.  So, it's already the reserve currency of the digital world; it's already won; Bitcoin has won, so I'm not afraid of shitcoins.

I don't personally like when people engage in shitcoin behaviour, and by that I mean promotion.  So, promotion is where I draw the line.  If you're going to do whatever you're going to do, you're going to trade in the background in order to make more Bitcoin, personally I've never had a problem with that.  That used to be something everybody agreed with.  Nowadays, that is maybe a statement that could get you cancelled; don't know, don't care.  But when you're promoting a shitcoin, you are leading people down a primrose path that is ultimately going to destroy and hurt them and just morally, I have a compulsion against that and I must speak out against it if you're going to promote.

So, I think what Breedlove was doing, it was not quite a promotion, but it looked like a promotion in the beginning, which is why it caused the big reaction, and then everybody doubled down.  He doubled down, the community doubled down, nobody wanted to admit that they were wrong and it was like, "We know what you were up to", and he was like, "But I wasn't up to that". 

The truth is probably, Robert probably thought he could get away with this from an intellectual standpoint, because he knew that there were certain rules in the community that you weren't allowed to broach.  So, he was trying to basically take advantage of his BitClout token in order to get more Bitcoin.  I fully believe that Robert is a hardcore maximalist, so he was trying to get more Bitcoin and he thought he could walk across the tripwires in a specific way where it was intellectually passable that he did this.

What he found is that he tripped one of the wires, essentially.  Does he deserved to be cancelled for all time because of that?  I don't know.  How do you come back from a cancelling once a large body of people have a negative feeling about you, especially if you were one of the tall poppies and you were an exalted voice in the community?  It's really fucking difficult, man.  So, I don't know.  I just want to say, I agree with you, I feel like everybody went too far on Robert, including myself; I had extremely negative feelings about it, and I just don't think it was the appropriate reaction.

I think we're embroiled in bullshit.  You have senators and congressmen who are out there with their knives sharpened and they want to stab Bitcoin in the back and kill it; and the Bitcoin response is, "Who cares?  Nobody can do anything about it", which is nonsense, because they can't do anything to Bitcoin, but they can do stuff to us.  So it's like, who gives a shit what Robert did.  There are real people that hate Bitcoin and want to kill it and want to see all of our wealth go to zero, which is terrible, and we should use every legal and ethical and moral means to push back against those narratives, which I think are outright wrong; they're lies.  I think the truth is on our side and will prevail ultimately.

Peter McCormack: Let me ask you a question, HODL.  So, one of the things that came up during the conversation I had with Erik Voorhees was this idea that in a decentralised world, if you wanted to create a company and you wanted to get investors and you wanted to decentralise the ownership, you know, if you wanted to be a digital nomad and you wanted to have a bunch of people invest and there was no share structure, how would you do it? 

In my head, one of the ways you could do it is a token, a bit like the IMX guys have done on Liquid.  And there is that kind of feeling that this coming, the token structure is coming, and it's something that might happen on Liquid.  When I did the IMX interview with the guys, ignore the fact that they put it first on Ethereum, the idea just of a token, even on Liquid, the responses, the YouTube comments, the Twitter comments were all very negative.  Do you think that's rational, or do you think that's PTSD from token bullshit from 2017?

American HODL: I've been here for a while, not a really early OG, but I've been here since 2015 in earnest.  During that time period, when I first came in, there were two distinct schools of maximalism, and we forget that because one won and the other one lost.  It was monetary maximalism, which was, "Bitcoin's the only money in the entire world and the money's the only thing that's important"; and then there was platform maximalism, which was, "Bitcoin isn't the only money; it's super important.  These other things are going to exist and instead of being built on their own chains, they should be built on top of Bitcoin".

I think platform maximalism is going to make a resurgence.  And whether the monetary maximalists feel one way or the other about it, there's nothing you can prevent.  You can't prevent people from building on Bitcoin.  So, yeah, you can apply negative social pressure, but people are going to do whatever the fuck they're going to do.  So, platform maximalism might win the day and come in at the end, because there is going to be shit built on Bitcoin, built on Lightning, and some of those things might have tokens attached to them.  It's up to you whether you participate in them or not.

Jason Williams: But, HODL, it just gets so slippery when you start to really look at the technologies, even the work that Jack was doing.  He was using Tether and he started to take damage because of that.  You've got to let the person build, you've got to give them a break.  What if people took Jack down at that moment for using Tether as a fundamental port in the middle of those transactions; that could have Breedloved him?  Would that have been a great service to what we're trying to do?

American HODL: No, it wouldn't have been.  And you can see that Jack Mallers, for instance, has a protective shield around him for the moment, because he's basically the only Lightning entrepreneur, he's one of the youngest entrepreneurs, he's a Bitcoin-only guy, we all know he's a good bitcoiner, everybody likes Jack, and so he has a shield around him.  But he can misstep and if one of those missteps causes the next great thing to not be built on Lightning, that would be a travesty.  So, I don't know, I think we should all just cut each other some slack and shit, honestly.

But don't promote shitcoins; that's the line in the sand.  Don't promote shitcoins, don't do that.  That's where you've fallen off the path.

Peter McCormack: So, I'm with you on the monetary maximalism, 100%.  And, I'm primarily there on the platform maximalism.  But the thing is, doing this job, I know of plenty of Bitcoin companies who, at some point or another, have had to work with Ethereum to do things.

Jason Williams: Look at Sovereign.  I made an investment in Sovereign, I continued to ask them questions around a token.  The SOV token is on the RSK mainnet, and it's an ERC-20-based token.

American HODL: And, Jason, let me ask you point blank --

Jason Williams: Am I shitcoining?  Am I shitcoining right now, because I invested in Sovereign?

American HODL: I already know the answer, and full disclosure: me and Jason are friends, we're good friends.  We've become really friendly over the last year.  I like Jason a lot and, yeah, does he do things that are considered -- so, the cancel-culture squad might come for me because I'm guilty by association, right.  But, does Jason do things that I consider shitcoining?  Jason, let me ask you, what's your unit of account?

Jason Williams: Bitcoin.

American HODL: You're doing everything in service to make more Bitcoin, right?

Jason Williams: That's what I'm doing.

American HODL: Yeah.  You don't usually, or you don't outright promote shitcoins, or have you ever?

Jason Williams: I'm not working hard to hold gyft down.

American HODL: Yes, exactly.  So, to me, as a bitcoiner from back in the day, Jason is somebody I consider an ally in the Bitcoin space.  I do not consider him to be anathema to Bitcoin.  And Jason probably holds more Bitcoin than hundreds and hundreds of plebs combined.  So, I don't know, sometimes I just ask myself, "How counterproductive is all this stuff?"  And, I'm not saying you can't have negative feelings about Jason or what he does; I just don't give a shit, and that's just my personal opinion, if I want to be friends with him, you know what I mean?

So, there's just all this dumb bullshit that has gotten in the way of things that are more important.  Like, for instance, they're going to try and put a fucking property tax and a wealth tax on Bitcoin.  Is that something that you want to rally against and get your allies together and do the legal, ethical, political path in order to prevent that from occurring; or is that something you just want to take on the chin, or you want to say, "Oh, well we'll just move countries".  You've going to move countries and give up half your wealth and then move to a place that's less secure, where the US has interest anyway and they can still get -- what the fuck are we talking about?  Do you guys know how the world works or not?

To me, the enemies of Bitcoin have their knives sharpened, they don't like Bitcoin for whatever reason, I don't understand.  To me, I think it's like an apolitical technology, but people don't like it, etc.  Those people are trying to harm you and your family and your future prosperity, and you're worried that Breedlove did a little shitcoining?  Fuck, who cares?  I count myself in this.  I got caught up in the bullshit too.

Jason Williams: Hold on, what was his motivation?  I'm a Breedlove fan, so what was his motivation of even pursuing BitClout?  Was it intellectual curiosity, or the opportunity to sell that token and pick up some Bitcoin?

American HODL: It was the second, we all know it.

Peter McCormack: Well, no, we don't, and I think this is the key point.

American HODL: We do know, come on.  Of course that's what it was, but that's fine too.

Peter McCormack: No, it's not, it's called speculation.  We have his version, we have other people's versions; we don't know the actual truth.  We don't know if he was investigating it, we don't know if he was trying to pull a fast one; we just don't know and we'll never know, we'll only speculate.

American HODL: Robert's too smart, come on.

Peter McCormack: But then, Robert's too smart to blow up his -- he was the golden boy and he blew it up.

Jason Williams: Hold on.  I think Robert is a very smart and a powerful person, and I think he was grossly offended by people telling him what he should and shouldn't do; I think that happened.  I think that's the reflexive response he got; he got pushed against and I think he pushed back, and that's the fight that ensued in my opinion, my humble opinion.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Listen, it keeps bringing me back; the Weinstein interview's really interesting me for a whole number of reasons and I've thought about it so many times.  I've really battered myself and beaten myself up about it, about the way I approached it, about the way it went.  I left it thinking, "Oh, God, this guy just doesn't get it", but actually --

American HODL: Can I give you some feedback?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: You did terrible during that!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but why do you think I did terrible?  Tell me why?

American HODL: Because you sounded like a meme from Bitcoin Twitter, and you didn't seem like you had the depth behind the memes, do you know what I mean?  Because, I think for you, you've been so pressured --

Peter McCormack: On one point.

American HODL: You've been socially pressured into being a maximalist.  I don't know if you got there through intellectual rigour.  I know you got there eventually, but was it through social pressure?  To me, it seems like it was.

Peter McCormack: I think you're right on one point, because it stood out.  It's the point where I said, I basically ripped off a Breedlove line where I said, "The money printer is counterfeiting", and then I didn't have the rigour behind it, I didn't have the defence behind it, and you're absolutely right, and I think you're referring to that point.

I actually think, generally speaking, I did okay.  I think my main issue was that I didn't think about the audience for the interview.  So, I went in, and I prepped hard for that interview, and I went it to defend Bitcoin and try and get Eric's interest and make a show for bitcoiners.  What happened was, you go on the YouTube comments and the YouTube comments are dominated by people early on, bitcoiners, going…  I tried to do what I do with everyone, but with Eric.  I tried to get Eric to explain his concept so anyone can understand, and I failed to get him to do that and a lot of people recognised that.

But what happened was, over time the comments started to be more about criticism of me and criticism of maximalists.  So what's happening, clearly, is that the bitcoiners all watched the interview, and then there are Eric Weinstein fans who are searching YouTube, finding the interview, and they're just dismissive of it, because they just don't get what's going on.  The failure of the interview was to recognise that the show should have been made for non-bitcoiners.  It should have been one where I just went in and let Eric talk about the things he's interested in, and I should have just let him talk.  That was the interview I should have made and I got it wrong.  

But in the end, something he said stuck with me since more than in any other interview.  He said, "I have belief in you guys", and I'm paraphrasing him here, "You guys are the rebels.  But what the fuck are you doing here?  Lambos and laser eyes; what the fuck are you doing here?" and it's stuck with me ever since.  It's like, actually, what are we doing here?

Jason Williams: It's another nuance to it and I've had a few chances to speak to Eric, and he said something to me that stuck with me, and it was, nobody speaks to him in the language he can hear, because the language that we're using, from the toxic maximalist language, is just screaming memes and crazy shit at him, and he's not receptive to it.  Nor is Elon Musk.  These guys, it just doesn't resonate with them.  They're used to being the talkers, not the people listening, and they feel like when they're listening to you, you should be respectful; they're giving you their attention, regardless of what you think. 

Most plebs are going to be like, "Fuck you!  Who are you to require my attention?" or whatever.  But that's how these guys operate.  They're professors, they're leaders.

American HODL: I agree too.  Peter, I think we all have a lot of programming from when we grew up that we think success is having a Lamborghini and getting your dick sucked and living like Wolf of Wall Street, or something, right, which who doesn't want to do all that shit?  It sounds fucking awesome.  Jason owns tons of Lambos and shit.  How many Lambos do you have; just one, two, three, four, five?

Jason Williams: Just one.

American HODL: Anyway, and I'm sure he's gotten his dick sucked in them, because this guy's a Chad, you know what I'm saying?  But to me, that's not the point of your Bitcoin holdings.  Your Bitcoin holdings are for increased prosperity, for your life and the life of those around you and to do things that are beneficial for society, to become real risk capital for things that actually fucking matter that are innovative, that help humanity.

It's not for us to sit and be the rent-seekers from the past generations; we're not those guys.  Every time we are frivolous with our thoughts and actions, it makes us look like those guys, and people have a misunderstanding of who we are.  We're the guys who build the cathedral that 200 years from now, you wonder how it got built; that's who the fuck we are, and we put one brick in it in a time until the thing is fucking done.  That's how we're going to operate in the world.  We're not going to be Moon Lambo bitches.  Sell your Lamborghinis right now, Jason; come on, man!

Jason Williams: No, but here's the evolution.  That's why you are now boomercoin, because we used to be the guy in the cap, T-shirt, with the Lambos and the Super Saiyan memes and the $10,000, $11,000.  All that stuff seems kind of dumb now.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: Yeah, it does.

Jason Williams: I'm saying, it seems kind of dumb, because you're older now and you're actually thinking.  You're going, "How do I spend my Bitcoin when it gets to a certain number, because I actually want to have a house or a car at some point, and my kids need to go to school?  Because, I didn't have kids when I started, but now I have three, and they want to eat and they need clothes; and my wife's looking at me like, how long am I going to drive the 1983 Minivan?"  All this stuff is real and you're going to have to spend some Bitcoin if you put the majority of your wealth there.

Bitcoiners have gotten older and they're starting to think about tax planning, trusts, wills and, "How do I spend my Bitcoin?" not Moon Lambo, give me a blow job!

Peter McCormack: But this is what I'm getting at.  I'm definitely self-reflecting on this.  Everything you're saying is right, HODL, but I'm self-reflecting on this saying, "What are we doing, man; what the fuck are we doing here?"  We've got a country now making Bitcoin legal tender.  Are we excited because our value in Bitcoin might go up; or, are we excited because we're bringing economic freedom to El Salvador?

If we're excited, and I say "we", but economic freedom's being brought to El Salvador; is it happening in the right way?  Is enough time and energy being focussed on educating people, because what we're talking about, we're talking about a lot of people in this country who are poor; it's a Third World country, right.  These aren't people who are going to have a Casa multisig and distribute keys around El Salvador; they're going to have a phone wallet, and they're maybe going to put a few sats in it.  And, those few sats might be most of their income.  And if Bitcoin drops by 50%, that's going to fuck them.

So, are we educating people; are we planning for these ideas; are we really helping people?  Are we also using our wealth to do better things?  I have a feeling that there are many people in the early Bitcoin community, who were on Bitcoin Talk back in 2011, looking and going, "What the fuck has this become?  This has become a bunch of morons, yelling at each other, taking the piss, doing memes", and yeah, memes serve a certain purpose; but are we serious about this, and what are we actually trying to achieve?  What are we trying to do here?  It's really bothering me at the moment.

It's to the point where I'm feeling dejected doing my job as a podcaster.  Am I serving any purpose anymore?  Am I just every week getting somebody on to repeat the same fucking points over and over again?  Willy Woo's my biggest show.

American HODL: Because that's what people want to hear.

Peter McCormack: My biggest show every month is Willy Woo, and I was talking to my producers and saying, and sorry if you're listening, Willy, but I'm thinking of getting rid of it.  That means cutting off a whole bunch of my downloads every month, which affects my -- I'm thinking, is this the right approach?  Have we lost a touch of humanity with this?  Honestly, it's really fucking getting to me; I'm really self-reflecting.

American HODL: I think it's like, when you look at the cancelling of Robert Breedlove, for instance, Robert was a person who was adding bricks to the cathedral.  He was helping build what we're all trying to build, just a better, safer, more fair, more equitable society, right; true capitalism, not oligarchy and not socialism or communism, where there's just a small group at the top who have power, but a distributed power set.  We're like, "Yeah, there's going to be rich people, there are always rich people, but it will be a more fair world for everybody". 

The same rules of the games apply, no matter what your sex, race, creed, religion, whatever.  And, Robert was a guy adding to that cathedral.  There are other guys taking bricks away from that cathedral and those people are the enemies of Bitcoin, not the people adding bricks who have human fallibility.

Peter McCormack: Well, let's ask a question then.  So, on the BitClout thing, does it actually harm Bitcoin?  Did he harm Bitcoin by talking about that in his tweets?

American HODL: No.  BitClout doesn't harm Bitcoin at all.

Peter McCormack: But does cancelling him -- you see, I think the net score of what happened is a negative.  If you add up any potential damage you think he did by talking about BitClout in a few tweets, to the response of essentially cancelling him, I think that was a negative output for Bitcoin.

Jason Williams: I would even take it a little different and say, Robert's a human being and has a wife and kids and I don't know why we would treat anyone the way he was treated.  This is someone who's given of himself to try to move this stuff forward, and people treated him like an asshole.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think a lot of these people, they don't know what it's like for the internet to come at them.  You've had it; both of you have had it at certain times, but when you've got 100 followers, or 500, or even 1,000 followers and you see some negative feedback, it's kind of small.  When you've got 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 followers and you fuck up and they come after you, it is rough.  I talked to Dan Held about this; it's rough.

American HODL: Well, it feels good to be on the other side of it, the side where you're piling on.  It feels good; it's like cathartic for people.

Peter McCormack: I don't know, I don't feel good.

American HODL: No, I mean if you're casting stones, it feels good to cast.  It doesn't feel good if the stones are hitting you, but if you're casting stones, you feel like you're the person who's in the moral right; you're the higher virtue person, so your behaviours are acceptable.  This is a human phenomenon; it's not going away.  You can't get it out of Bitcoin, you can't get it out of people; it's just how it is.

What I'm saying though is, I wish we had a little bit more thought leadership around doing the long-term actions that are going to promote a better world, instead of Moon Lambo bullshit, or whatever the fuck, because I don't care about that.

Peter McCormack: What is that to you, though, promoting a better world?

American HODL: To me it's, if Bitcoin is going to be the next reserve currency, then bitcoiners are going to have tremendous amounts of wealth and they're going to be the capital allocators of the new age.  And, the places that they allocate capital to, the things that they allocate capital to, will shape the world for not just 100 years or a generation, but maybe 1,000 years in the future.  So, the seeds that you plant in your lifetime are incredibly important and I hope you're planting seeds in the right place; and I think there should be more discussion around that, rather than, "You're going to get a Lamborghini".

"You're going to get a Lamborghini", is fiat bullshit thinking.  It's your past self, it's 8-year-old you who saw that on TV and thought that was what a high-status male, or whoever, achieved.  It doesn't mean anything about you; it's nothing.  I could buy myself a Lamborghini right now.

Peter McCormack: You've basically echoed what Weinstein said, you've literally echoed it.  You basically just said, "What the fuck are we doing here?"

Jason Williams: But we're having this conversation all the time.  This is a conversation we're having internally.  I feel like we're challenging ourselves with this all the time.

American HODL: I think essentially Weinstein's question was, "Can the decentralised people do centralised things?" and I think the answer is no, not as a monolith.  We can't all come together for one thing.  But the splintering of the community will produce different outputs from the different bitcoiners that care about different things. 

If you look at something like what Untapped Growth is doing.  Him and Marty Bent are always on the anti-ESG crusade, and that's a great crusade for them to be on and they care very deeply about it.  For me, I don't really know about that and I don't really care about that; I'm interested in other things.  Then, you have the bitcoiners who are extremely interested in privacy, or extremely interested in financial education, which is the zone that I'm in. 

For me, I want as many people to come along on this ride as possible, and then later I'll figure out what to do with the money.  But it's just, we're going to have a splintering of the community, people are going to come together to do centralised things, to one degree or another, and it's my great hope that those things greatly impact the world.  Of course there will be failures, and nobody who strives for greatness ever reaches it, and so you're always a hypocrite, because greatness is always just out of reach, right, but that's what we should be fucking striving for.

Peter McCormack: I think we're going to get a growing voice of what appears to be more left-wing bitcoiners.

American HODL: Which is fine.

Peter McCormack: Which is fine, yeah, and what I mean here is, this is the people --

Jason Williams: Bitcoiners are NFTers!

American HODL: True!

Peter McCormack: Well, I certainly think on certain subjects that that's why I get thrown into the left-win bucket and get called a whole range of things.  I definitely have concerns about the environment; I definitely think vaccines work and I would encourage certain people, they should think about having them, but at the same time support it being optional.  I'm really interested in topics light that, and I'm really interested in truth-finding as well, because I think the most interesting thing about COVID is how fucking hard it is to really understand the truth. 

You can find a convincing argument for whatever side of the fence you fall on.  If you think vaccines are terrible, you can find data and arguments that say, "Vaccines are not effective".  If you are pro-vaccine, you can find data that promotes its efficacy.  How the fact are we even truth-finding at the moment?  I don't know.

American HODL: That's part of just the world living, that has nothing to do with Bitcoin, right.  It's gotten really difficult to try and source truth, so I think people are…  There's this psychology of choice, I think Malcolm Gladwell talks about it, that when they tried to find the perfect Pepsi, essentially people didn't want the perfect Pepsi, and then they figured out that people wanted the perfect Pepsis, so there was a whole range all over the taste pallet. 

That's why, when you go to the grocery store, there are seven different types of ketchup.  But there are not 90 different types of ketchup and the reason there's not 90 different types of ketchup is because, when humans are overwhelmed with an abundance of choice, they default back into themselves.  So I think the amount of information we have is the same thing as having no information, in that it causes tribal behaviour between humans.

Peter McCormack: You have seven types of ketchup?

American HODL: There's probably more, honestly.

Peter McCormack: We literally have one that people buy here, maybe two.

American HODL: The ketchup aisle is full of different ketchups.  Everything in America is just tasters' choice, whatever you want.  It's all over the place; it's the psychology of choice.  People want to have options, but if they have too many, they'll shut down.

Peter McCormack: What about you, Jason?  You're obviously a very successful entrepreneur, author, and family man and bitcoiner; what's the shit that interests you?  Thinking longer-term legacy, personal, etc, where are you feeling drawn to?

Jason Williams: Recently, and it's going to have long-term impact, it's the importance of education, higher education.  So, I've really been spending a lot of time thinking about that and talking about it with my children.  Like, "Do you really want to go to college, or have I pressured you, or has society pressured you into feeling like you'll be validated and you'll have the stamp of approval by going to college, versus picking what you love to do; because I did some work before you came along and I can give you a little push or a boost into doing what you want to do now?" 

Even High School, "Do you want to home-school, versus continue on that path for a few years; do you want to start now?"  I found that to be really, really interesting.  It's probably just because of where I am in my own life, but I've enjoyed that discussion with the kids, and I seem to have challenged them.  I don't know what they'll choose, it's their choice in the end, but I feel like I've enjoyed challenging them with that.

Peter McCormack: Because you're an allocator of capital, but if Bitcoin goes to multiple hundreds of thousands, you are going to have more money than you can spend on yourself, and that might become a burden.

Jason Williams: Well, I don't feel like it's a burden, so I've already crossed that bridge in my own mind.  I want to acquire as much money as I possibly can, because I think it gives you options, and that's really why I want the money; I want the options.  I want the options to do things with money and be philanthropic, like we talked about, but also to make dreams.  That's the thing that I'm talking about with the kids.  It's like, "If you want to open a surf shop, coffee shop, why go and get an MBA?  You don't have to have that and you can travel the world and start when you're 18, not 23, because time is precious.  And you can always go back to school".

It's like when I'm talking to professional athletes, it's like, "Take the chance now.  You don't have to go to college, you can be a pro-athlete now, you can always go back to school".  I'm just modulating that space now.

Peter McCormack: It does really make you think.  Once your kids become young adults, when they say things to you that surprise you and they have real intellectual thoughts and really challenge you, it really makes you rethink about yourself.  I mean, I don't know, I'm answering for you.  I just know that's what I've done.  I feel the burden of helping my kids make more radical decisions, because they are feeling obliged to go to college and follow the traditional school route and build up their debt, etc.  And, I'm trying to give them options where I've looked like the radical idiot.

If you tell other parents the things I'm saying to my kids, they'll be like, "What the fuck are you doing?"  It's a real burden.

Jason Williams: Yeah, it's incredible when a kid gets exposed to me or the things I've said to my kids.  Those kids will come round and say, "Explain to me why college isn't important.  What are you seeing [or] why do you feel this way?"  I know the parents, their hair is standing up on the back of their neck, because they're concerned about these discussions; they are a bit radical.  But I think it goes along with a lot of the things I said earlier. 

I feel like I've been conditioned to believe that having a master's degree defines me in some way, as having a PhD makes me even more superior, and I should tell everyone that I have a master's and a PhD, because that also keeps you in check and allows me to talk just a bit longer and maybe have just a little bit more influence.  I hate all of that; I despise it.  I just feel like my parents did me a disservice by saying my escape from poverty was an education.

American HODL: Do you know what, Peter, do you know what Jason does when he drives his nice cars around, and I'm sure his car collection is worth several million dollars?  When he drives his cars around, he wears T-shirts that say nonsense on them!  What does your T-shirt say right now?

Jason Williams: It's Troubadour Lounge and Park, Music.

American HODL: And then he's got some version of a mullet and Pit Vipers, and when he gets out of the car, he tells people he's just gassing it up for the rich guy who owns it!  How great is that; it's so good!

Peter McCormack: Well, listen, you don't want to be driving those cars when you're in your 60s and 70s and look like an old dude!

Jason Williams: I agree, man, and again, that's the soundbite.  It's like, "Do you want a Lamborghini; It's just a little trophy along the way?  Well, get it when you're 25.  That's fun.  Don't be 75 in a Lamborghini.  That's just, you're a creepy old dude in a Lamborghini, in my opinion.  Enjoy it while you're young; do it then".

American HODL: If you can afford it!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, 25, buy a Lamborghini?  Hold on, I'm living with my fucking parents.

American HODL: Jason Williams' financial advice!

Jason Williams: No, but financial advice starts with taking wild swings and risks at a young age, not going a traditional path.  I'm saying, go for it.  If you go for it at 18 and you get it right, by the time you're 22, 23, you're set, man.  You're making way more money.  Once you start to make money, you figure out how this thing works, it's quite easy to make money.  And then you start to make money in different ways, some passive, some active.  You continue more passive revenue streams, and you start making piles of money and you start realising, "I don't have to wear the suit, I don't have to listen to you, I don't have to listen to the compliance officer, I'm not going to play by your rules anymore; I'm out; I'm going to do it my way".

Peter McCormack: I think it's a certain personality type, though.  You either have it in you or you don't, to go out there and be entrepreneurial and think about money.  My son just does not care.  He's this beautiful, arty -- he just doesn't care enough about it to go out and put the work in.  He's this beautiful, creative soul; he just wants to paint, and that's fine and that's cool.  I just think some people don't have it and some people need to be led and some people want to lead, and it is a range.

Jason Williams: The majority of the bitcoiners and the people I hang around with are very financially focussed, they were learning about money, they want financial security, they want to break away from the 9 to 5, so I think that's why I'm speaking this way.  I think this would be highly offensive if I was sitting down, indoctrinating your child with this kind of rhetoric, because he's just like, "I don't care about the things you care about".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but for each of you, how many of your friends have you actually sat down and tried to have the Bitcoin conversation and they've done the opposite; they don't care, and you told them at $1,000, you told them at $20,000, and they just don't care?  You can sit there and say, "Look, 21 million or infinite?"  You can explain the logic of Bitcoin, it never fucking lands.

Jason Williams: They only come back when that happens, when Number Go Up; that's the only time they come.

American HODL: Jason has described this to me, because I have an infamous story about riding a moped all during the bear market in 2015/16, and he's described this to me as "being on the moped", like, you're on the moped.  So, you seem like the guy I was in 2015, where I'm in the bar parking lot screaming about monetary policy at the top of my lungs to anybody who will listen, and then I hop on my moped and I'm a little buzzed and I take off and I go, "Peace out, bitches!"  No one's listening to that guy.  You'd have to be an insane person to listen to that guy!

It's the same thing.  We all seem a little crazy, and people have a tough time -- Jason pretends like he doesn't own his own Lamborghini!  We all have a tough time, you know what I mean, acting normal in society, and I think it's just one of those time to grow up, kind of things.  So, yeah, I don't have good success --

Jason Williams: We will.  The next version of bitcoiners, so this is what I see happening, is them actually participating in a big way in consumerism.  Because, HODL feels it and I feel it.  I woke up this morning and I had this intense need to buy something.  It happens every now and then to me, Peter.  The thing I wanted to buy was a helicopter, and I was like, "I should own a helicopter".  It would be so much easier for me to go to Franklinton if I had a helicopter.

Then I thought to myself, because some of the ideas start to overlap, I was like, "I'm a little worried about security; these are scary times.  I wonder if I can have an attack helicopter; could I have an armed helicopter?"

Peter McCormack: Please, please tell me you got one of those!

Jason Williams: Well, I thinking, "Could I actually buy an Apache helicopter?  That would be kind of dope to have an armed helicopter".  But when bitcoiners start to make these purchases, when they're the Russian oligarch vying for the mega-yachts, when we're buying all of the Honda jets, when we have the mansions, everyone will yield.  When the citadels go up, everyone will yield.  Right now, they don't understand.  They're looking at us and going, "Do you really have money?  You look weird".  Show up with the stuff.

American HODL: I love what Jason just said, "When the citadels go up, all will yield"!  It's like, "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" you know what I mean; that's what it is!  It's like Ozymandias shit!

Jason Williams: When HODL walks into Christie's and buys all of the paintings, people will go, "What just happened?  Who's that?"  Bitcoiner.  Bitcoiners are here.

Peter McCormack: It reminds me of, have you seen Land of the Dead?

American HODL: Yeah, with, what's-his-face?

Peter McCormack: It's George Romero.

American HODL: George Romero, yeah.

Peter McCormack: It's so smart, that one.  The way they set it up is essentially, the non-zombies are living in the citadel, and the zombies are the lower class living outside the citadel.  There's the moat that surrounds it.  That's like, it sets up as two classes.  You have that beautiful moment where the zombies realise that they can walk through the moat.  They have that moment where they just go under the water and they come in and then they attack and they get into the citadel.  That's what you're talking about, Jason.  Hopefully they do it by buying Bitcoin, not attacking us!

American HODL: Listen, the citadel is you.  Because Bitcoin is property that you can keep in your head, the citadel grows outward from you and changes the world around you.  I've been doing this thing where I take a picture of the home I live in every year since I had my first home, and it's pretty crazy when I put them all together in a picture edit.  You can see reality warping around me.

As my mindset is changed, my reality around me continues to warp, and I feel like I'm a fucking warlock or something.  That sounds really stupid for people who don't actually know what I'm talking about.  What I'm saying is, when you have the toolset, when you have the correct mental models, you really can bend reality to your will and you can do things.  This is a realm of potentiality that we inhabit. 

We're all going to be fucking dead in 80 years, so you have a short period of time to manifest shit, and you need to start manifesting it now.  You need to build your citadel, which can be whatever you want it to be.  It doesn't have to be a physical location with turrets or something.  It's probably really stupid to put up turrets, because people could just show up and be, "We have a warrant", you know what I mean, so it makes no sense!

But you need to build your cathedral, you need to actually bend reality to your will and make something, leave something behind, be a person who creates, not just a person who takes.  That's the Bitcoin ethos; that's what you do with your Bitcoin well.

Jason Williams: Yeah, and I want you all, as fast as you can, to get to the part of the video game where it kind of greys out, you know what I'm saying, where they haven't quite built yet.  So, whether you steal the helicopter or the plane and you fly it out of Grand Theft Auto, and you go to the spot that the game just hasn't made it yet, and you manifest what that world looks like.

Peter McCormack: The Truman Show!

Jason Williams: Do it while you're young, don't do it as an old man, don't burn through your family.  Do it while you're young, bring your friends with you and have a blast.  That's what I'm trying to do.

Peter McCormack: Dude, before this, I had Will Clemente and Dylan LeClair on, and their combined age is younger than me, which is fucking scary.  And they're both definitely smarter than me, which isn't hard, but they're definitely smarter than me and they've got their shit together.  Dylan quit uni, he's like, "Fuck this, this is a waste of time.  I've got a certain amount of time to stack as many sats as possible.  I need to get on this train".

He gives me so much hope.  I don't want to patronise or condescend him in any way, because he's a smart dude, but just to see a couple of young guys like that going, "You know what; I'm going to get into this, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to work hard", and they've done it, they've done the work.  They've studied Ray Dalio, they've read all the books they can read.  That's cool as fuck.

American HODL: Dylan was one of the guys, he slid into my DMs a couple of years ago during the bear market and was like, "Do you think I should do this; do you think I should drop out of school?" and I was like, "Fuck, yeah, go for it".  And, dude, just to see who he is now, he's fucking crushing it.  These young kids have life by the balls, right, and more than that, they're escaping nihilism, the nihilism that is sucking in all of their peers; they've escaped it.  They're over the Event Horizon, onto rational optimism and having a positive life, because they have a tool at their disposal that allows them to build for the future.  So, it's a game-changer.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and while their friends are out, getting drunk, getting laid, TikToking, doing whatever and wondering what their --

Jason Williams: At a second-rate school, too.  Don't even get me start about, like, what the fuck?

Peter McCormack: Their friends are going to be wondering, "Why aren't you coming out?  Why are you still working?  That's my weird Bitcoin friend", etc.  In five or ten years, they're going to be, "Oh, shit!  Yeah, you were right, we were wrong".  I think it's great to see.

American HODL: Well, it's like the gap between you and your loser friends at 30, I've experienced this, it's just fucking insurmountable.  It's so large that you could never -- and I'm sure by the time you're Jason's age, or your age, Peter, it's the size of the Grand Canyon.  There's just no possible way you could ever traverse it.  So, if you make the right decisions, life is all about decisions, man.  You make the right decisions when you're young…

A lot of people will spend $1,000 on the new iPhone, but they're not going to put $1,000 into Bitcoin.  A lot of people will spend 19 hours watching the newest Netflix series, but they won't spend 19 hours learning about Bitcoin.  Life is about decisions, so everybody's got the same time in the day, you and Elon Musk got the same time in the day, you and Jeff Bezos have the same time in the day.  Do the right things with your time and you will get the right results, you're going to have a great life.

Peter McCormack: Listen, Jason, we're running out of upload speed again for you, but I don't want to finish without at least shilling your book a little bit.

Jason Williams: It's cool, man, it's not why I came.

Peter McCormack: No, this is my choice.  I've got a copy, I haven't read it, but it looks cool.

Jason Williams: Yeah, it's cool.  It works well to hold a door open, if you need the door, or a fucking bug, just hit it!

Peter McCormack: I just don't really read books; I do audio books, that's the way I do it.  But I'm away on holiday for two weeks from Tuesday and I'm taking some books with me.  I'm going to take yours with me; I'm going to read it.

Jason Williams: It's on Audible; it's on Audible too.

Peter McCormack: Oh, it's on Audible?  You see, I've got the hard copy, I didn't know it was on Audible.  But just a couple of questions: did you write it, or did you have a ghost writer, be honest?

Jason Williams: Of course I wrote it, what are you talking about?  I spent a fucking year doing it.

Peter McCormack: Well then, you did it so covertly, it was impressive.  You just came out one day and said, "Here, I've done a fucking book", and I was like, "Wow!"

Jason Williams: Yeah, well it took planning.  I was in Peru and started working on it there, then COVID happened and it was just perfect.  It was on the bucket list.

Peter McCormack: Well, look, it's impressive work, man.  But just shill the book, please, just shill it.

Jason Williams: Look, I wrote a book that my kids would hopefully read, and they did; and would hopefully explain somewhat a bit of my life, some monetary policy, how money works and why I think Bitcoin is so special, and that's really it.  It's a culmination of a lot of Twitter banter and it was very topical, so it recounts what I was experiencing late-2019 through 2020, and I think it's a cool book.

Hopefully, it's one of the books that are on everyone's shelf, along with the rest of the stuff that we've read.

Peter McCormack: Wicked.  Well, listen, I'm going to stick it in the show notes; hopefully people will buy it.  Look, we're running out of time, because of your upload speed.  I appreciate you coming on, Jason.  This definitely makes the top eight rehab shows that me and HODL have made, so I appreciate you coming on, dude.  I look forward to winning more money off you this season when Liverpool beat Man U again, and yeah, man, thanks for coming on.

Any closing comments, My HODL?

American HODL: No.  I just think you need to think about what you're going to do with your Bitcoin wealth.  It should be obvious to you that Bitcoin's going to succeed; it is succeeding, it has succeeded and it will continue to succeed.  I think, if you're going to spend time ruminating, you need to replace the fiat programme that you have in your head that says, "I'm going to buy a Lamborghini, I'm going to live like I'm on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or like a set of the fucking MTV Cribs", and you need to say, "What meaningful thing or meaningful impact can I have on the world?"  And maybe that's just raising a beautiful family and collecting past childhood trauma.  That's something that would be amazing too.

But if you have the ability and the means to go out and be true risk capital, and actually fund the things that matter in this life, and that we can get humanity the innovations that we were supposed to have 50 years ago, but we've been in this stagnation since, that's the thing you should fucking do.  Do something fucking meaningful with your life; do something meaningful with your Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Okay, thank you.  I thought you didn't have anything to say, but they are some great closing comments!  Jason, do you want to send us out, man, anything you want to leave us with?

Jason Williams: No, I love what HODL was saying.  I think it's really important, as bitcoiners now, in this next phase of its maturation, to figure out what are you going to do with your Bitcoin?  Are you going to spend it; are you going to borrow against it?  And this is about adulting now with your Bitcoin.  It's not about screaming about Lambos and hopefully you've got a stack and that stack's going to be worth a lot of money.  What do you do with it?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, good words.  Well listen, Jason, it's devastated me we've never actually hung out in person, which is annoying, but I'm going to be out in the States from 24 August for six to eight weeks.  I've got plenty of time on my hands.  If you're not going where I'm going, I'm coming to you.  I'm coming out in your Lamborghini, we can go training and we can get up in a ring and I'll fuck you up; not too badly, just a little bit.

Jason Williams: We'll have a good time.

Peter McCormack: Dude, I'm going to come and see you, man, I want to hang out.  The football will have started by then.  You know what; let's check the schedule.  If the Man U/Liverpool game -- let's do it right now.

Jason Williams: HODL, you watch soccer?

American HODL: You know what; I actually watched a little bit of soccer, because you too idiots were both talking about it all the time, and you know what; I found it is the perfect sport.  It has replaced golf for me as the thing to take a midday nap to, so thank you for that, it's been very good.

Peter McCormack: 23 October and I might be in the States.  So, I'll come to you and we'll watch that game, dude.

American HODL: Have you ever taken a nap during soccer; as you fall asleep, it's 0-0 and you wake up and it's 0-0!

Peter McCormack: He just doesn't get it, does he?

Jason Williams: No, not at all.

Peter McCormack: He just doesn't understand the sophistication of football.

American HODL: You know, I used to play soccer when I was a kid.  I was on a club team and everything.  I was a striker.

Peter McCormack: You used to play football?

American HODL: Yeah, I did, but it's extremely boring to watch, but I like playing it.  I would get out on the field with you, for sure.

Peter McCormack: Do you know why you find it boring to watch?  Because you've got a low time preference.

American HODL: High time preference, you mean.

Peter McCormack: High time preference.

American HODL: You attempted to slander me.

Peter McCormack: I did, and I got it completely wrong.  Do you know what; I'm going to do it again and I'm going to get this edited in.

American HODL: Oh, you son of a bitch.  He can do this; it's his show.

Peter McCormack: Do you know why you hate football?  Because you're a dick!  I've going to leave it all in.

Jason Williams: Did you see Bitcoin's price went only up while I was talking to you guys, by the way.  It's at $41,000.

American HODL: Oh, are we at $41,000 now?

Jason Williams: Almost $41,000. 

American HODL: Thank God.  I'm getting so fucking bored.  It's been so boring!

Peter McCormack: Did you see Lionel Messi's left Barcelona?

Jason Williams: No!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's left Barcelona.  I've got a news alert here.

Jason Williams: To where?

Peter McCormack: "Lionel Messi leaves Barcelona after club says new contract cannot happen".

Jason Williams: Leaves Barcelona to where?

Peter McCormack: Who's going to pay his wages?  Basically, he's going to want £1 million a week, or €1 million a week.

Jason Williams: Well, we need a midfielder!

Peter McCormack: He would struggle in the Premier League.  I mean, he'll do well, but they'll kick the shit out of him.  He'll go to the US, I think.

American HODL: You think?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: Nobody's going to pay him that much money in the US though.

Jason Williams: The lifestyle he'll have in LA will be amazing.

Peter McCormack: They can be clever with structuring contracts.

Jason Williams: And endorsements.  He may get there.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, he may get there. All right, guys. Well, listen, good to see you both. HODL, I'll see you in a few weeks. Jason, I'll come and find you 23 October; we'll watch that game. Love you both, appreciate everything you're doing. See you soon.