WBD434 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin & The Battle For The Fate Of Humanity with Mark Moss

Interview date: Wednesday 8th December

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Mark Moss. 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 the serial entrepreneur and market analyst Mark Moss. We discuss the rare confluence of multiple societal cycles, the pendulum of individualism and collectivism, and how Bitcoin could disrupt it all.

“From the beginning of time it’s been oppression, revolution, freedom, oppression, revolution, freedom; and I think the cycle that’s happened since the beginning of time is about to be broken, I think the battle that we’re facing right now is for the battle of humanity.”

— Mark Moss

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Mark.

Mark Moss: Yes, sir.

Peter McCormack: Thank you for coming and doing this, man.  Appreciate this, this is long fucking overdue.

Mark Moss: It is long overdue, I've been looking forward to it.

Peter McCormack: Well, I really appreciate it, and I think this is a good follow-up to my show with Quittem yesterday.  We revisited The Fourth Turning, covered a lot of stuff and when we were planning this show, we realised there are some similarities.  But obviously as you said, previous to recording, it's a small part of this whole thing you've been working on.  So my starting question for you is, I've seen your presentation talking about these cycles; is this built on other work, or is this all your own work?

Mark Moss: No, of course it's all built on other work, right.  I've never seen anybody put the three cycles together, so I would say that's my own work, but I'm referencing a lot of different people's work, I think, at this point in today's age, where we're all building off the shoulders of other people.  So, it's all work that I've done, I just have never seen anybody pull something from the financial side, the technological side, the political side and bring it all together.  So, I would say that part is my own work.

Peter McCormack: And realising it's all convergent.

Mark Moss: And realising it's all convergent, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Right, okay.  I don't normally do this anymore, but I think before we get into it, I think I want a bit of a back story.  I want to know, is this a recent thing for you?  Have you always been a rebel thinking about these ideas?  I don't know your back story, Mark.

Mark Moss: Yeah, so shoot; how far do we go back?  I would say, I guess, I'm just a freethinker.  I was raised a little bit different.  When I was growing up, my dad was a contractor, so kind of entrepreneur.  I was actually home-schooled for a few years when I was a kid, which wasn't a thing at that time.  And I think those things, my parents were very grassroots political, pretty active there, politics is still something that's discussed at our table on a regular basis; so I think all those things led me to see the world differently.

I graduated high school and at 18 years old, I bought a house, fixed it up, flipped it, made $30,000 and I was off to the races, and I've been a full-time investor, entrepreneur, business guy my whole life.  The thought of getting a job has never really crossed my mind, so I've just -- I think a little bit differently, I guess.

The one subject I did like in school was history, and I still love history, so I think it's just always been something I've been fascinated on.  I love going and see pyramids, or any type of history that I can see, so I've always loved that, I guess.  I was really good at making money; I made a lot of money.  And in 2008, I got wiped out and that sucked really bad, and I had to figure that out all over again.

Peter McCormack: Totally wiped out?

Mark Moss: Yeah, totally wiped out.  So, I bought my first piece of real estate at 18, 1995.  I made $30,000 off that first deal, rolled it in the next one, and by 2005, I was sitting on about $20 million in real estate and I had built two different businesses.  I started a high-tech business, I started an internet business, an ecommerce business, in 2001 at the bottom of the dotcom crash; I was selling motocross parts online.

At the time, I was the only dotcom in the magazine; everything else was still mail-order at the time.  It wasn't easy to build a website, there was no Shopify or nothing, and I went to these companies and said, "Hey, I've built this website, I want to sell your products", and they said, "That's a joke, no one's going to buy anything online, that's ridiculous!"  I said, "Well, I beg to differ and I've spent all this money and let me just buy your products and give you my money", and they said, "We don't even want our products sold on your website".  "All right, whatever, I'll just find other people".

So, I built that up, had a Fortune 500 exit on that business and so that was my first dip into the internet world.  So, I've been involved in the internet for a long time, and I still am today.  I had a high-tech medical equipment business that I sold off.  The problem is that I took all of that money and put it all into Southern California real estate and being a student of history, I looked and I said we had only had one real depression in California real estate history.  It dropped 30% in 4 years.  The worst 12-month drop was 6%.  Okay, what if it drops double that?  12%.  What if it's triple that, triple the worst in history?  18%.  I'm still good, I've got 30%, 40% equity, no big deal.

It dropped 60% in 12 months, 60%, and I wasn't prepared for that, nobody was, and I just couldn't carry the properties.  So, I went from having $20 million, $25 million in real estate to owing millions of dollars really quickly.  I'd just got married, just had my first kid, just built this sic custom house, six-car garage, elevator, ocean view; I was done, I was tapped out.  Then I went to the poorhouse, so that sucked.

It made me realise, "I'm pretty good at making money, but what is this financial casino that I don't know anything about?" and I grew up racing dirt bikes and surfing big waves, I still do, and I've got metal in all four of my limbs, I've broken pretty much every bone in my body, so I'm used to just dusting myself off and, "Let me just figure this out again.  I'll go hit that jump again, no big deal".

So, a lot of my friends got wiped out, never got back.  I said, "I'm going to go figure this thing out", and I vowed to myself and my family this will never happen again, never going to happen again, I'm going to figure this out.  So, I've spent the last 12, 13 years studying the financial system and figuring out what the heck's going on.

I became a gold bug, I figured that sound money was the key.  The problem was the fiat money system and I became a gold bug.  Then about 2013, I think, I started looking at Bitcoin a little bit and it was actually maybe 2011 when it was running up; it got to $1,000 then it crashed, I think, in 2012.  Then there was the election cycle here, and growing up political, paid attention to that a lot, and I just got so over the whole system, I was checked out.

I told my wife, "We're not connected enough to make it.  I don't want to be a freedom fighter.  I'm a strong Second Amendment supporter and I've got a bunch of guns, but I don't ever want to shoot one".  My grandfather was a World War II veteran, decorated; my father was a Vietnam Airforce Pilot in Vietnam; I grew up thinking I would go to war as well, but I realised I didn't want to.  I'm a surfer.  I'll be in Nicaragua on a hammock, fishing and surfing.  I'm checked out, right.

But then I started looking at Bitcoin and it came up and crashed.  I was really studying, I don't know if you've heard of Sovereign Man, Simon Black?  He talks about being a sovereign man, having multiple flags, flag theory, bank accounts in -- you wouldn't have all your money in one stock, why would you have all your life in one country?  It makes sense.  So, I was actually working on setting up a bank account in Panama, so I could work on a residency and a passport and all that.  This was in 2015.

I had an appointment with an attorney to do all this and I took another look at Bitcoin and I said, "Wait a minute, this is the same thing".  I get my money out of the banking system, perfect.  Put my money into Bitcoin.  Of course, once you put a little bit of skin in the game, you start paying attention and I said, "Wait a minute, this is the tool, this is how we win.  I don't need to go to Nicaragua, we can do something" and so I was like, "I've got to tell the whole word about it".  I've basically been banging the table on it ever since.

Peter McCormack: Yes, man.

Mark Moss: So anyway, I guess that's the short version of me and how I got here.  But yeah, I've always just had this thing about history.  So, in all of my videos that I do, I try to pull in this historical element, because I believe that history tells us how we got here, it tells us what's going on and even more importantly, if you study it right, it can tell you where we're going.

So, having this macro view, it's kind of like if you watch the movie where they go back in time, "Don't touch anything, because that could have a massive change in the future".

Peter McCormack: The Butterfly Effect.

Mark Moss: The Butterfly Effect.  So, when you study history, you can see how these one little things created these massive movements.  Then you can see how these little things that are happening today, where that will lead to.

Peter McCormack: Well, I mean I've read When Money Dies, I've read about the Weimar Republic and we know where that led, and you can't say whether World War II would or wouldn't have happened the way it did, but it started with the breakdown of the money in Germany.

Mark Moss: Well, I think you can, because it's not just the money though.  I think that's the piece that my thesis on these three revolutionary cycles is that when you're looking at finance, when you're looking at anything, you're looking for indicators.  So, When Money Dies, you're looking at the financial system and looking at indicators.  They were printing a bunch of money, obviously, and so that's an indicator.  If you print a bunch of fiat money, you're probably going to have that.

But the problem is with indicators is that there's never one indicator that's all conclusive; you're not going to trade of one indicator, you're going to look at a bunch of indicators.  So, a lot of people are looking at a bunch of financial indicators, but what about the technology side, or what about the political side?  And so, I think the political side is the bigger one.  So, if you look at the history of these revolutions that have been repeating since the beginning of time, you could have kind of told what happened in Germany.

Peter McCormack: Yes, I'm just not sure it would have played out exactly as it did.

Mark Moss: Or maybe we're back on the same path again.

Peter McCormack: Which is scary to think about because, Mark, everything's a bit fucking crazy and weird right now.

Mark Moss: It's very scary and weird.

Peter McCormack: Very scary and weird.

Mark Moss: It's scary, but it's not weird, it's actually normal.

Peter McCormack: It's normal if you've read up on history, of course, but it's scary and weird.  And what's weird is I think, on a personal level, lived for close to 40 years in relative stability, relative financial stability, a relatively stable world.  I know there's been wars and some shit, but relative stability.  My assumption was, that's just how life is, World Wars are a thing of the past, collapsing economies.  I never thought the UK economy could ever face collapse, but now we are seeing the signs.  We're seeing collapse in currency in Lebanon.  Okay, well that's not Venezuela, but now we're seeing Turkey.  I'm like, "Hold on, Turkey's a G20 nation", and we're seeing protest all around the world.

I know, with your work, the protests were starting even before COVID anyway.  Everything's getting a bit weird and I'm getting to the point where I'm mildly scared of where the world's going, especially with kids.  I am scared, I worry about what a global collapse, or the collapse of a massive western nation will mean; it does worry me, Mark.

Mark Moss: It should worry you, it worries me too.  I think I told you before we were recording, I just bought a ranch, and I think the probability -- a lot of people today, they don't have elastic thinking.  I know you see it, you battle it online all the time.  Everyone's so rigid in their thinking, but I like to think of things in terms of probabilities.  So, the probability of me having to go live on that ranch and be a prepper and live off the land is low.

But when I make decisions like, "What's the worst that might happen?  And if that happens, am I okay with it?" so it's a low probability, but if it does happen and I'm not prepared and I have a family, it's catastrophic, I'm not okay with that.  So, I've made some actions based off of that, because I'm scared too.  It's not good.

Peter McCormack: So, I've started prepping in a different way.  The UK isn't like the US, we've don’t have somewhere like Texas where you can go.  You're in the same position wherever you are in the country and we don't have First and Second Amendment.  We're not in a particularly great position should we see some catastrophic collapse, should we see some form of catastrophic war, which I think everything is on the table right now, and I don't say this just to be hyperbolic; I actually think we're at significant risk right now.  I mean, you've covered it in your work, the debt burden globally.

So, I am starting to think of prepping in a different way.  I spoke to Katie the Russian about getting another passport; I'm thinking, if I need to get into the US, can I get into the US?  The US feels like somewhere safer to be than the UK.  I mean, we've got a smaller army and we've got no First and Second Amendments, so I am thinking about these things.  But I'm also trying to say, "Am I just being a bit weird here?  Is everything going to be okay?"  I'm just not sure.

Mark Moss: I'm a little bit of the opposite where I, as an entrepreneur, am a permanent optimist.  You have to be as an entrepreneur, otherwise you'll never do anything.  So, I'm always an optimist and as humans, we're horrible investors because of our emotions.  So earlier, you were talking about, "For 40 years, everything's been this way, I thought it would always be that way", so that's normalcy bias, right, so that's one problem we have.

I'm always optimistic, and I think that it's going to be okay, but all the research tells me otherwise.  And I keep thinking, "It's going to be okay", but it's not what the data says".  So, I'm trying to check my own bias of optimism, when the reality is that it's showing me something different, "The storm's coming.  It's probably going to turn and miss the house; it's probably going to miss", and it usually does.

Peter McCormack: But you can be a prepared optimist?

Mark Moss: You can be a prepared optimist.

Peter McCormack: I want to be an optimist and I sometimes think, "Hold on, is it just the cohort that I'm in; is it this cohort, you and I and our friends?"

Mark Moss: The echo chamber.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I'm reticent to use echo chamber on this point, because what I'm thinking is that we're all seeing some signals and signs and we're discussing it, and we're trying to understand what it means.

Mark Moss: Let me tell you this.  I went to Austin a couple of weeks ago to meet up with a few different content creators/influencers from difference niches, to talk about the state of creating content in this environment and what we're going to do about it.  They had some Special Forces people there, and the Special Forces guys got up and talked to us. 

They said, "Our whole career has been being deployed to other countries and destabilising countries, that's what we do.  And we're telling you right now that the exact same playbook that we use to overthrow countries is the exact 100% same playbook that's happening in the United States right now.  And we can tell you where this goes, because this is what we do".  I left that meeting and I went and bought a ranch, and I'm a pretty level-headed guy.

Peter McCormack: So, the exact same playbook.  Is this an internal playbook; is it being destabilised internally, or is this external forces?

Mark Moss: Internally, yeah, internally.  It's a colour revolution, so if you look at what a colour revolution is, the key aspects would be (1) create internal protests and things like that; and then (2) the other big piece of the colour revolution is to create doubt about the election.  Every country that's had that, that's what they do.  They want to create something that makes the election look illegitimate, because they want you to doubt that.  So, those are the two big pillars of that.

Peter McCormack: But who wants this?

Mark Moss: Well, that's not in my research.  That's a whole other conversation.  I'm just saying, these are Special Forces guys, this is what they said.  I didn't go to Austin looking for a ranch, I went there as a business meeting.  And afterwards, I'm like, "Damn!"

Peter McCormack: The reason I ask is because I wonder if it is external, because I was listening to a podcast recently talking about technology, talking about the strong control that, say, China and Russia have over technology internally, and how they can also use bot farms to influence people in the US.  And this stat came out: something like 14 of the 15 biggest Christian Facebook groups were actually bot farms, which were disseminating disinformation.

Mark Moss: I think this is way bigger than China and Russia, this is like the GPCC.  What we're seeing, and this is what my research shows, is it's centralisation at a level we've never seen.  It's globalisation, and so it's above the WEF.  So, the WEF and the BIS are basically at the top of the heap, and then they use the local governments and then the police.  I don't know if you've seen that pyramid that's been going around on social media lately, but it kind of shows…

So, I think this is bigger than China, it's bigger than Russia; this is a globalist movement.

Peter McCormack: And is your belief that this is some coordinated action, or this is just the result of a whole number of different factors converging at the same time?  Is it organic?

Mark Moss: I think it's somewhat organic.  The way that I would say is, if you looked at a flock of birds flying together, they didn't sit down and, "Okay, Larry, you're going to be over there and Joe, you're over there".  No, they fly together and they move and they feed off of each other, and I think it's more like that.  I think there is some coordination up at the top, obviously, with Klaus Schwab and his buddies, and obviously they're doing some stuff.  But I think most of the other people are just moving and reacting with that as opposed to, I don't think the Rothschilds have been able to dream this masterplan up for 500 years.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, I'm going to go back to your work.  A lot of people think that the big protests we're seeing now, a lot of protests globally, mostly related to COVID, we've got them in the UK, they're in Australia, they're here in the US, they're in most countries in the world right now, down to small islands in the Caribbean.  I can't remember where I saw one recently; it was either Bermuda or Barbados. 

But in your work, you were researching, and you identified, that the protests were starting way before COVID, and I remember there were protests in Iraq, I remember there were massive protests in France.  I went to Chile when the protests were in Santiago, and the protests there were mainly to do with the growing wealth divide and the corruption within government there.  Can you talk to me about that, your research, what you found?

Mark Moss: You had the yellow jackets in France, you had obviously Hong Kong, which I know you covered quite a bit, Lebanon, Argentina, Chile.  There were ten countries with over a million people each that were protesting pre-COVID.  Hong Kong was escalating rapidly, and then overnight it was gone.

Peter McCormack: They lost.

Mark Moss: They didn't lose; all the protests went away.  How do ten countries with a million people each protesting go to zero instantly, and nobody's protesting anymore?

Peter McCormack: Okay, I think I know where you're going with this.

Mark Moss: Well, I'm not insinuating anything.  Just COVID happened and everyone got locked down and there was no more protesting.

Peter McCormack: I thought -- because, they'd got to the point where the protests were ending, and then they were --

Mark Moss: You were covering Hong Kong quite a bit, I remember.  It didn't just end.

Peter McCormack: I need to look into that.

Mark Moss: Fact-check it, yeah!

Peter McCormack: That's a tough thing to fact-check the detail of live, but they got to the point whereby they were actually starting to extradite people into mainland China from the Hong Kong courts.  I remember that's the last thing I seem to remember.  Okay.  I mean, the thing about conspiracies is you can make them sound right.  But if you don't know, you just don't know.

Mark Moss: And I think if you go back, again, and look at history, I think it makes things a lot clearer.  So, when you look at things right now, it's not clear, it's like, "What's going on?  Why is this happening?  Is this a conspiracy?" and there's all these questions because it's not clear, because you don't have a long enough lens in Bitcoin, when we say, "Zoom out".  So, if you're looking at the chart like this, you don't get it; but when you zoom out, you look at a log chart, it looks way more clear.

So, if we're just trying to look at the events that are happening today and try to make sense of it, it doesn't make sense, and then we start having these questions.  So, when you zoom out and you see the whole picture, I think it just becomes more clear.

Peter McCormack: So, are you saying you have a belief that the pandemic was manufactured to --

Mark Moss: No, I don't give in to that.  I don't see any reason to try to make a decision on that; it doesn't matter.  It is what it is at this point.  What I think it is, is that we're in a cycle of centralisation, of globalisation, and we're at a point right now where the entire world is rejecting globalisation.  It's Newton's Law of Physics that each force gets and equal and opposite reaction.  So, the more they squeeze, the more people push back.  Then, the more power they lose, the more they try to squeeze on and then the more people push back.  It's this thing, so it's a cycle.

If we go back since the beginning of time, it's cycles; and the reason it's cycles is because they're reactionary.  It's like, if we were bowling and we put the bumpers up and we put the ball in, it just pings down, hits side back to the other, so it's reactionary.  So, we can see all throughout time with the pendulum that swings back and forth from one extreme to another.  So, we're approaching, I think 2023, I think is peak globalisation, peak centralisation, which is easy to see.  And, we're also reaching the peak of people pushing back against that, which is why again today, we have millions of people all over the world marching and pushing back against that.

Peter McCormack: Because it's failing?

Mark Moss: Because they don't want that.  The world doesn't want to be governed harder.

Peter McCormack: And so the peak test of centralisation is, can you lock down a nation of people; and then can you mandate something such as separating those who are vaccinated from those who aren't, or cutting off the unvaccinated from society?

Mark Moss: Well, there's a couple of pieces to that.  So first off, the big problem that all nations are having right now is, how do we stop uprising; how do we stop revolution; how do we keep that at bay, because all the countries are having a big problem with that, obviously, as we're discussing that?  China right now has a massive problem on their hands.  They had a one-child policy since 1980, they have hundreds of millions of boys with no girls; that's not good.  They have a failing economy, they have debt sky-high, their real estate is so high no one can afford it, no one can start families.  What do 100 million boys 20 to 40 years old with no girls do?

Peter McCormack: Fight.

Mark Moss: Get into a lot of trouble.  So, they have all this problem now.  They're having energy crises, there's not enough energy, they can't afford real estate, so what do they do?  How do we squash that?  But the whole world is doing that, and it actually brings a great point, because in my research, the whole world has been one cycle from another.

From the beginning of time, it's been oppression, revolution, freedom, oppression, revolution, freedom, and I think the cycle that's happened since the beginning of time is about to be broken.  I think the battle that we're facing right now is for the battle of humanity.  I know that's a pretty big claim, but I think it's the battle for humanity.  And I think whichever way this happens, whatever way this unfolds maybe breaks that cycle that's been happening from the beginning of time. 

We either go to a world of totalitarianism that we may never escape from, because as you said, we're social distancing and with social media and AI and all those things, they could prevent any uprising from ever happening again; or, we win, we defeat that globalisation and they don't ever get that power again.

Peter McCormack: Can we, and when I say "we", collectively the people of the world, can we win and lose in different places?  For example, can China win and suddenly they have an uprising and it's an end to the autocratic leadership they have there; and, can the US lose and become more totalitarian?  And vice versa, can the US win and they become more free, or do you think this is just a global fight?

Mark Moss: Well, it's definitely a global fight, but it's easy to see the world's turning towards totalitarianism, anybody can see that; and technology's giving them the tools they need to have that perfect totalitarianism or authoritarianism world.  And what breaks that trend, you had mentioned earlier you're afraid there's a big war coming, I don't think there's a big war coming necessarily, not a war of guns and bullets anyway.  I think what breaks the trend of authoritarianism isn't war, it's competition.

We've seen, during the COVID lockdowns, California and New York both were trying to outcompete to be the most strict, and Florida and Texas outcompeted them.  Both governors found themselves on the chopping block, outcompeted, competition.  Now we have El Salvador outcompeting.  And I think El Salvador's going to say, "Hey, come move here, start up a business, we don't have any restrictions, no mandates, no taxes".  People are going to go there.  And when other nations see that, they're going to go, "Well, us too", and people are going to go there.  It's the Atlas Shrugged, Galt's Gulch, so to speak.  I think if enough people leave, then the nations are going to have to reconsider what they're doing.

Now, this is nothing new.  Growing up as a kid, I had plenty of friends that came from oppressive regimes.  One of my best friends came from South Africa.  When they came, they couldn't bring any money, no money, couldn't bring their real estate, couldn't carry their gold; they came penniless.  Iran, whatever, all the same, Afghanistan.  So, how much does it punish a country if you leave, but they keep all your wealth.

But what if I can take my wealth with me?  That competition all of a sudden escalates.  So, I think that's what breaks the trend of authoritarianism in the long run.  So, I think the whole world will be subject to that at some point.  And we know this; this is not speculation.  So, China, under Mao, became complete communist, they fell behind the world stage, they couldn't compete, there was communism, they had no creativity.  And so, in the 1980s, they had to open it up, open up some freeports and bring a little bit of capitalism.  Why?  Because they were forced to, because they couldn't compete on the global stage.

Peter McCormack: Harder for people to leave China though?

Mark Moss: It's harder for people to leave China, yeah.  But now, the United States, through their policies, have basically built China up.  We've given them all our dollars, allowed them to grow.

Peter McCormack: All your business, all your manufacturing.

Mark Moss: All your IP, all of those things.  China wouldn't be where they're at today if they hadn't been able to get all of that.

Peter McCormack: In return, they've given all the mining back!

Mark Moss: Yeah, good job!  I think that goes to another thing, but it's just under communism, this is probably going down the rabbit hole, but without freedom of speech, you have no way to discuss things properly, so you have no creativity.  And without creativity, you can't solve problems.  If we're all robots -- so the United States was built on individualism, and China's built on collectivism. 

In individualism, we're all different and that's a good thing, because you and I, we see different problems.  Even if we look at the same problem, we see different solutions.  And we need that, because we need as many people as possible solving as many problems as possible with as many solutions as possible; that's how you get creativity, that's how you get progression.  When you have collectivism, like in China, and there's no freedom of speech, there's no creativity, everyone's a robot saying the exact same thing, there's no progress, it'll never work.

Peter McCormack: But do you not think the US is sliding towards being collectivist, certainly in places in blue states?

Mark Moss: Sure, 100% it is, the whole world is.  I don't like to look at, "Fascism's on the right and socialism's on the left and communism and capitalism"; I hate all that.  Republican, Democrat, left, right, I don't even know.  I just look at individualism and collectivism, and that's the way that I look at it.  And we've never really had a perfect one or the other, it's always a spectrum, it's always a blend, more on one side than the other.

Peter McCormack: Are you somebody who believes in democracy and agrees with democracy?  I always say I'm a reluctant statist because I don't see a better answer than democracy that isn't just an untested theory.

Mark Moss: I don't think democracy is the way to go, not in a country of 330 million people, that's just mob rule. 

Peter McCormack: Well at least here, you have the option to vote with your feet as well, you can move state.  That's something you have that we don't have in the UK and I'm infinitely jealous of it.

Mark Moss: Yeah, but the problem is is that the United States was set up as a republic, not democracy, and so each state was supposed to be independent.  But now, they've tried to make everything federal.  So, I should be able to go from one state to another, but now everything's federal, so you don't really have that option anymore.  You still kind of do and there are still state rights, don't get me wrong, and again it's a spectrum, it's going the other way.

But democracy is just mob rule and the statists got too big.  So, the state can take my money and if people can vote themselves more of my money, they're always going to do that.  So, in a democracy, the minority's always going to be oppressed by the majority, so the poor majority is always going to steal from the rich minority, right?  So, the republic, it's a representative government, so then they're protected under that system.

Peter McCormack: Right, let's go through these cycles.  For people listening, there are three specific cycles, I've got the notes here.  It's the political, social and cultural revolutions; we have tech cycles; and we also have the financial cycles, revolutions.  So, let's talk through these, because these are so fucking interesting, man.  So, talk to me about political, social and cultural?

Mark Moss: Yeah, so that's where it starts, so each one pours into the next.  Solutions are supposed to come to problems, and I say "supposed to", because today with central bank printing, we have money chasing problems that don't need to be solved.  So, in culture and politics, you have a problem and then technology will come along and solve that; then technology drives financial markets, so they all pour into each other.  That's why they're all kind of connected.

When you look at the political, social, cultural cycles, like of like we've already been talking about, it's reactionary.  So, things get so bad one way, you have the other.  Donald Trump comes along and he's so nationalist, he's wrapping himself in the American flag, he's pro free markets.  Then, you come get Biden who's the exact opposite, so it's like one to the other. 

So, we can look at these and we can trace them back through these cycles that happen, and there are 8-year cycles, there are 28-year cycles, and if you look at financial markets the same way, you typically see a bubble and a crash, a bigger bubble and crash, and then the third one is the big one.

Peter McCormack: Is that the Dalio short- and long-term cycles?

Mark Moss: Yeah, long-term chart you'll see that.  So, we have these 28-year cycles, three of those equals 84, and then there are three 84-year cycles that equals 252.  That 252 is the big one.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Hold on, are we at the end of a 252?

Mark Moss: We're at the end of a 252-year.

Peter McCormack: Damn!

Mark Moss: I think people expect that history moves linear, but really progress is exponential, we're changing.  But even though things are changing exponentially, there are cycles that just keep repeating in that, and that's because humans are the same and human nature is the same.

So, I would say if we just look at a couple really quickly, so we have the 84-year cycle, we'll start with that one first.  I know you talked to Brandon Quittem yesterday, there's The Fourth Turning, so it's an 80-year cycle, and that's like the four seasons, like summer, spring, winter, fall.  Again, that's reactionary, so what's popular from The Fourth Turning is that the bad times create strong men, strong men create good times, and that's reactionary. 

So, because of that good time, it creates the weak men, and the weak men make the bad times, so that's a reactionary cycle.  Let's call it generational theory.  Then, every 80 years, it starts over because the next generation takes over.

What's important about that cycle, I want to spend a lot of time on that, unless you have questions, because I know you talked to Brandon about it yesterday; but one thing that's important about that is we have natural law.  So, natural law is a priori truth, so things that are true, like gravity.  So, if I drop this, it's going to fall.  However, with enough money and technology, I could suspend gravity temporarily, but I'm still going to always have to be beholden to it.  And no matter how much money I have, if I fall off a frigging cliff, I'm going to die.  So, I can suspend gravity temporarily, but I have to be beholden to it.

There's another natural law, and that's the law of sowing and reaping.  I must sow before I reap; that's a natural law.  How can you consume before you produce?  You have to produce before you consume.

Peter McCormack: Proof of work.

Mark Moss: Proof of work.  So, when you look at this generational theory, where we're at in that cycle is violating natural law.  So, we have a group of people today that are consuming and they've never produced.  So, because the hard times created good men and good men created good times, those good times created enough wealth that the next generations could live without producing.  So, most of academia and politics today are people that have never produced anything.  They don't understand how the real world works at all, but they're the ones making the rules, but making the rules without any grounding in real-world facts.

Like suspending gravity temporarily, that wealth, with enough money and technology, they're able to consume without producing, but eventually that fails.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's a bit like COVID with lockdowns and the effect on business; a lot of small- and medium-sized businesses, they had to close, even with financial support.  I mean look, some maybe survived with loans, but it really affected people.  But everybody in government kept their job.  Maybe they worked from home, but nobody got fired from government.  They had no skin in the game.

Mark Moss: Yeah.  So, I love that generational theory in The Fourth Turning.  If I look at an 80-year cycle, what we typically see every 80 years is what's called a regime change or a populist uprising.  So, 80 years ago was the end of World War II.  That was Hitler, that was Mussolini.  In the US, we had FDR's new deal which turned the US into socialism.  84 years before that, we had Karl Marx, who wrote The Communist Manifesto, which led to the European Spring, which was the largest revolution in history.  And since every 84 years we see that, and of course three times 84 equals the 252, and every 252 years we see the big revolution cycle.

Peter McCormack: And would you therefore consider Trump and Brexit part of that?

Mark Moss: They're a big piece of that, yeah.  So, that's a big piece of it.  The one thing that we have to keep in mind is that, when we're looking at these cycles, like the four seasons on the calendar that we talked about, there's a day on the calendar where it changes from spring to summer, but it doesn't mean the weather changes that exact day; it's kind of plus or minus.  So, these cycles, it doesn't happen on an exact day, but it's within this 5-year period, things are starting to shift.

The other thing that I would say, there's another cycle that I really like that's called the pendulum.  So, these are pieces that I've got from other people's works, and there's a book written, called The Pendulum, it's a great book.  And it basically also breaks down the 80-year cycles.  It talks about this pendulum that swings back and forth, and it goes from a "we" cycle, so we is collectivism, to a "me" cycle, which is individualism.

What happens is, "I'm so tired of people telling me what to do and that we're all in this together, I just want to go and be an individual", so we start swinging that way.  We get to a good point, then we keep going, "Hey, this is really good", then it gets bad and everyone's out for themselves.  Then it swings back the other way and so it's just this constant back and forth. 

To give you a couple of ideas on that, we have a couple of dates on that.  So, the "we" cycles were 1783, 1863, 1943 and 2023.  It's an 80-year cycle.

Peter McCormack: Just after you kicked us out!

Mark Moss: Yeah!  So, it's an 80-year cycle, so you basically have the peak of we, of centralisation, and then it's 20 years back down to centre and then 20 years back up to the peak of the other one and 20 years back down.  So, it's 40 years in each cycle.

Peter McCormack: It never stays in the centre?

Mark Moss: It never stays in the centre, it just goes back and forth.

Peter McCormack: And is that politics-driven, because politicians recognise a problem and they drive an alternative opinion, and then they have to deliver that?

Mark Moss: I don't know if it's that, I think it's just people.  So, if we look at a couple of these, I have a couple of key dates.  In 1783, which was peak centralisation, the US won the Revolutionary War.  Then the next one, we had the Gettysburg Address, and that was, "All men are created equal".  That was the Statue of Liberty, "Everyone's welcome".  Those are collectivism ideas.  1943, Hitler, Stalin, the UN was formed, IMF started, Bretton Woods agreement, McCarthyism in the United States, those are all centralisation things that all happened at that time period.

Peter McCormack: And that's global centralisation as well?

Mark Moss: It's global, right.  Then we have 2023, which is the next peak cycle, and look what we have?  World Economic Forum, World Health Organisation, World Trade Organisation, World Meteorological Association.  We have the IMF, we have the UN.

Peter McCormack: A UN completely ineffective and nobody trusts any of the other institutions, so shit right now.

Mark Moss: Yeah.  But if that's not peak centralisation, I don't know what is.

Peter McCormack: Well, what's super interesting about that is, we're seeing President Bukele in El Salvador completely taking on the IMF and saying, "I don't need you".

Mark Moss: I love it.

Peter McCormack: "I can use decentralisation to avoid using you", so that's one of those first flags of somebody going against the centralisation saying, "We can do this different".  And I guess, and jumping ahead probably to some of your answers later on, but that could create a snowball effect for other people, "They've done it without the IMF, we can do it without the IMF"?

Mark Moss: Yeah.  So, as we're peaking out at centralisation, or globalisation, and the world is starting to reject it, so we have populist uprisings all around the world right now as we speak, and a President is also pushing back.  So, we're peaking out and it's starting to get the pushback and it's going to start swinging back the other way.

Peter McCormack: Interesting.

Mark Moss: So, the fact that the President of El Salvador is doing that is a sign of this exactly what I'm talking about happening.

Peter McCormack: Interesting.

Mark Moss: And then we have peak decentralisation cycles, where 1823, President James Monroe said, "The US is not subject to the EU powers anymore".  1903 -- well, 1983, you'll like this one, Michael Jackson, crazy costumes, total individual, single; Kiss, rock band Kiss, and those were individual.  People almost went overboard with costumes and to be different from everybody else.  Ronald Reagan said, "Gorbachev, tear down that wall!"  And 2063 will be the peak of the individual "me" cycle again, so in about 40 years from now.

Peter McCormack: I'll still be here!

Mark Moss: I think also, we see the rise of post-modernism, or Marxism.  So, there's an attack on free speech, "You don't have the right to say anything, you're not an individual".  It's we, we're all in this together.  They're attacking private property rights, "You don't have the right as an individual to have private property rights, it's a collective". 

So, you can see that with what happened in Kenosha with that kid, Rittenhouse.  He was there trying to help people defend their private property, and we saw all throughout when the riots were happening in Seattle and Portland, if anybody, any shop owner went to protect their shop, they would be attacked.  They'd be marching down the street and if they saw somebody try to protect their shop, they'd come and attack them because, "You don't have the right to defend your private property".  So, it's like an attack on individualism, because we're at peak centralisation right now.

Peter McCormack: Right, okay, I see what you're saying.  Okay.  Yeah, I'm following you.  So, we're in that period, peak centralisation, where other people are trying to be individuals and they're being prevented because -- right, I get it, I follow you.

Mark Moss: Because we're all in this together.

Peter McCormack: We're all in this together.

Mark Moss: "You're putting me at risk because your health isn't up and my health isn't up, and you're putting me at risk because we're all in this together now", type of thing.

Peter McCormack: And, people often refer right now, we're in a post-truth world, well it's very difficult to find the truth.  You mentioned earlier I get all the shit, but one thing I've always said, I'm always trying to find the truth, I'm always trying to be honest.  And if I make a mistake, it's because I'm wrong and I'll admit I'm wrong, but I'm always trying to find the truth.  And I find trying to find the truth, Mark, I find it so fucking hard for two reasons. 

Firstly, whatever topic is out there being discussed at the moment, it could be money, it could be COVID, it could be politics, there's always a counterargument to every argument.  But the bigger problem I've found is, if you're in a cohort and you're trying to find an answer to something and it's different from what the cohort thinks, there are threats to you by even just trying to figure it out.  I mentioned this on a show, maybe it was with Brandon; I was trying to figure out what was going on with the aboriginal communities in Australia, I was trying to find out the facts, what is really going on there.  And I've shared information on both sides.

At the point I shared an article from Quillette, which is a publication which is historically centre, will challenge both sides, was trying to say, "These are some of the facts on the ground in Australia", some of it didn't seem right, some of it did; but even just presenting that and saying, "Hey, listen, I found this, I'm not sure if it's all right, but here's some other information", it was attack, attack, attack.  It was this thing like, "Shit, maybe that's a threat on me for even trying to find that information", which was kind of weird.

I feel like there's not only that happening, like everything to do with gender at the moment, and I'm not a transphobic person or anything; but again, it's another example where language is being changed.  How does that play into this?

Mark Moss: So, the way that plays into it is morality is under attack.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Mark Moss: Morality.  And I think this is a key piece, I was actually thinking about this the other day.  I was making some different notes, working on some different content, but talking about morality being under attack, it was at the end of The Sovereign Individual they talk about this.  Morality is very important and morality can mean different things to different people.  Obviously, there's different religions and they believe in different things, but there's no denying the fact that any nation that's had shared values on morality has been able to succeed. 

So, whether you look at the Quakers or the Amish or the Mormons, or in the US there was the Protestants, there was the Catholics, it doesn't really matter; the Jews have to take the Sabbath day off.  Even if you don't agree with that, the fact that people have a shared set of values and morals brings cohesion and helps people to work together in advance.  So, all of our morals have been completely destroyed, all the value has been completely destroyed. 

Then also, everything that's true has been destroyed, so the relativism.  So, there's no such thing as male and female anymore; really?  Two plus two isn't four anymore; there's no such thing as maths anymore.  So, they've destroyed the morals, they've destroyed all the facts.

Peter McCormack: When we say "they", can you just define that for me?

Mark Moss: Again, I think it's like the flock of birds, it's organic.  So, it's Marxism that's come back.  I would say "they" being Marxists, so whoever believes in that ideology believes that they should push that ideology, that's they; not like a group of people that get together on Saturday night and discuss what they're going to do next week, but people that abide by that ideology.

Under Marxism, if you've taken the time, I had to go back and really study Marx, because I thought I understood it, but I had to go back and study him some more; if you go back and study who he was and what conditions he lived under and what time period he lived under and what his family conditions were and what drove him, etc.  But one of the things is that they believe that you should lie.  They believe that you should lie to other people to get what you want.  Even there's honour among thieves typically, but not under Marxism. 

So, people that believe in that ideology believe that they should push that, and they believe that they should break down the nuclear family.  They don't want the nuclear family, because they want people to be dependent on the state, for example.  So when I say "they" breaking down morality, breaking down those things, it's people that push that ideology.

Peter McCormack: Do you think they know they're Marxists?

Mark Moss: Well, some of them do.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course.  But do you think some of them are mindly Marxists?

Mark Moss: Oh yeah, most of them.  Most of them have no idea.

Peter McCormack: They don't understand the consequences of what they're saying?

Mark Moss: Yeah, they don't understand.  I mean, this is what they're taught in university.  If you think of the university, and politics, the university is socialism.  Think of a professor.  A professor goes and provides no real value, teaches stuff that's probably five or ten years old, he's there for a long enough time he gets tenure, he can never get fired.  He doesn't make a lot of money, but he's there for life.  It's like socialism.  It's not a meritocracy, he's not getting paid for the value he's providing. 

So, it's like a socialist system and they push socialist values on kids.  I'm not the only one saying, I mean listen to Jordan Peterson, he talks about it extensively.

Peter McCormack: Well I did, but I also heard him coming back and saying, "I can now teach online to millions of people from a computer and they can pay less".  And it was with Saifedean, he said, "The only value left is the accreditation".  That's what you're buying, you're paying accreditation, and for nothing else.

Mark Moss: I have a 17-year-old daughter, and so this is something I've been wrestling a lot with lately, and I don't want her to go to college.  I was listening, I think it was actually today, today or yesterday, I was listening to a little YouTube clip of Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager.  Dennis Prager asked Peterson, "Do you think, except for the stem", so the science, technology, right, except for if you want to be a doctor or attorney, "except for that, do you think it's worse off for kids not to go to college".  Peterson took a long time to come back and he said, "Yeah, I think it hurts kids, straight up". 

So, they're learning Marxism and to your point, they don't know it.  They're not being taught history, and this goes back to history.  I've had my daughter read The Case Against Socialism, which Rand Paul wrote, it was great.  I had her go back and read all these books.  I've had to pay her a lot of money to do it!

Peter McCormack: I know that bribe!

Mark Moss: I pay them a lot of money to read these books, but it's so worth it to me.  It's way cheaper than going to college, so she's read all the books on socialism, she's read all the books on economics and history and all those things.  So unfortunately, most people don't probably know.

Peter McCormack: Interesting, yeah.  When you talk about this flock of birds, it just makes me think of those videos during the BLM riots whereby, I support anyone's right to protest and I think they should be able to protest, but there were these little mob groups running around in front of restaurants, yelling at people eating dinner, running and attacking cars.

Mark Moss: Yeah, journalists and stuff.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, journalists.  And that, to me, was this organic mob of stupidity.  But this idea that they don't know that they're Marxists is super interesting.

Mark Moss: And it's just a sign of the times.  Marxism keeps coming back and I can explain that to you.

Peter McCormack: Dude, I was in El Salvador having dinner one night, I'm not going to tell you who I was with.  I was sat down with four people and there was one person there specifically said, she brought up that classic line, we were talking about Bitcoin and explaining why it's a benefit and she wasn't sure.  She said, "It sounds to me like it's another tool that keeps the rich rich and the poor poor".  I said, "Well, what's the answer?" and she said, "Well, Marxism.  Everything should be equal, everything should be fair".

I couldn't believe I was hearing this and I was like, "But you are aware of the failures of communism through history?" and she was like, "Yeah, but it's never been done right".  I was like, "How many fucking times have I heard that line?"!

Mark Moss: Yeah.  Did you see Wikipedia was changing that page, "How many people have died under communism?"  Wikipedia has taken that page down.

Peter McCormack: Why?

Mark Moss: Why do you think?  They don't want people to know that.

Peter McCormack: But it's fucking idiotic, because when you see that, you know your ideology is flawed.

Mark Moss: It's just a failure of the education.  I'm trying to think of the right words to even say.  It's like, I have a hard time understanding how anybody can see that, because there's no such thing as everybody equal.  The majority of people are equally poor, and then the smart minority are equally rich; there's no equality.  You're all equally poor, you all equally get one scoop of rice a day; sure, you're all equal, congrats, good job!

I think Marxism and Keynesians both have something in common, and what they both have in common is the opposite of Austrian Economics.  So, Austrian Economics is built on human action, psychology; Marxists and Keynesians both miss out on the big key piece, which is human motivation.  Back to Karl Marx, he was mad at the world, he hated the world, because he came from a rich family, his parents were attorneys, they wanted him to be an attorney.  He didn't want to be an attorney, he wanted to write poetry and philosophy.  But in the 1800s, nobody was going to pay you to write philosophy and poetry, so he couldn't feed his family doing what he wanted to do, and he was mad about that; he hated the world for that.

Peter McCormack: Do you believe his observations of capitalism were fair though?

Mark Moss: No, completely wrong.  Well, they might have been fair for the time he lived in, because it was the start of the Industrial Age.  So, he was witnessing going from the Agrarian Age into the Industrial Age, so it was the very beginning; it happened almost at the same time.  So, he was witnessing people going from the farms, where life is good, and moving into cities and working in factories, and I'm guessing it probably wasn't super good working in a factory in the very beginning.  They didn't even know what machines hardly were at the time and there were probably accidents and people were probably working too hard.  Kids worked on the farm. 

My dad grew up on a farm.  My dad grew up on a farm and my grandfather would loan him out to other farmers to help them bring in their fields, that's just what happens.  So, you had families growing up on a farm, I'm guessing families worked in the factories and things probably weren't ideal at the time, but that was his world view and I think it's important to understand that.

But the point that I want to make is that he wanted to write poetry, and he thought that the rich people should just give him…  "I just want to write poetry and I can't get paid.  So, Peter, you go work really hard and just share some of your money with me, and we'll all just be equal.  Doesn't that sound good?"  No, because you don't understand human motivation.  We're driven by self-determination and so, I want to get ahead so I'm going to work harder.  But if you're going to take away my upside, then why would I go work hard; what's my motivation?  So, Keynesians don't get that and Marxists don't get that either.

Peter McCormack: Interesting, okay.  Let's talk about tech cycles.  Are we done on that; I don't want to miss anything?

Mark Moss: Well, we talked BLM and Antifa; I think that's also showing this 80-year populist uprising cycle.  But I want to jump into real quick the 250-year cycle before we jump in, because that's the big one, right.  So, three times 84 is the 250.  I think what's important to understand about that is a couple of things. 

First off, there's the fate of empires that's been talked about, where no empire lasts more than 250 years.  There's also 250 years of democracy; it doesn't typically last more than 250 years.  What's important about that is they all follow the same pattern, because it's reactionary, just like the fourth turning, just like the strong men create good times, kind of thing.

What's interesting, if you look at this, you have the outburst, so the spring, new life is happening.  Then you have conquest, when people have gotten it figured out.  You have commerce, where business is finally getting set up and now things are starting to move pretty good.  Then you have affluence, now people have lots of money, things are going really good.  What comes after affluence is intellect, "Now we've made a bunch of money, let's all just go be in academics". 

After intellect comes decadence.  So, they worked really hard, they got the commerce going, they got affluence, money, they got rich; then they turned to intellect; then they went to decadence, like buying an NFT for $68 million!

Peter McCormack: Rock jpegs!

Mark Moss: And then, you have the decline and the eventual collapse.

Peter McCormack: Where does sex play a role in the decadence as well?

Mark Moss: I don't know where sex falls in the decadence.  I haven't put a lot of thought into where that fits into things.  Sex is on the decline big time in western nations.

Peter McCormack: I'm thinking more of the --

Mark Moss: Male/female?

Peter McCormack: I'm thinking more of the availability of sex, the breakdown of relationships.  I feel like also in society, I think with online dating, the swiping, we've handed the control -- men have got more control over relationships now, because before, you had to go up in a bar and chat to a girl and it's fucking scary.  God forbid she'd actually talk back, it was an amazing moment and if she dated you, I'd be like, "Fuck, I'd better stay with her, because I may never get laid again"!

But now we've got the ability for men to just swipe, swipe, swipe and it's awful for women, it's terrible, and this position's changed.

Mark Moss: You don't think women are swipe, swipe, swiping?

Peter McCormack: No, I think they are, but my experience of talking to my friends, guys are not settling down and girls can't find a boyfriend, they can't find someone to settle down.  I'm just wondering if this is playing a part in it at all?

Mark Moss: Well, I think it is in a sense where there's an attack.  Marxism is an attack on the nuclear family and they're trying to change the roles of people.  So again, back to morality, whether you agree with it or not, everyone abiding by a certain set of rules, people get along better.  I think when you turn everything upside down, nobody knows what role to play anymore.  There's a bunch of factors.  I don't know that that really falls into this though.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay.

Mark Moss: But going back to the 250-year cycle, then we have a couple of periods you go through.  So, you have faith, so we're starting out rebuilding; we have courage, so the Founding Fathers coming back after Germany.  We talked about Germany, I think before, was about the hyperinflation.  After, when Germany was coming out of World War II and they had their whole country bombed to crap and they had no money, they had to work their asses off to come out of that, right.  They had to have courage.  The hard times created strong men.  You're from Europe in the UK; Germany's been the production powerhouse of Europe.

Peter McCormack: Dude, it's what's kept the EU going.

Mark Moss: Right, because they came with that strong work ethic, right.  So, you have courage, then you have liberty, leads to abundance; abundance leads to selfishness, then it leads to complacency, apathy, then dependence, like UBI, anyone?  Then, after dependence, the final stage is bondage.  So, this is what's happening all throughout history, these are the cycles that we go through in that 250-year cycle.  It's easy to see the apathy, the dependence and the bondage.

But what's interesting, I won't spend a lot of time here, but I do want to talk about four points just real quickly.  So, it's about 250, so 250 years ago was the American and French Revolution.  250 years before that was the Protestant Reformation.  What each of those represented was rejecting centralisation to go to decentralisation, and this is a key piece here.

Under the Protestant Reformation, the church and the state worked together and nobody had the bible, so the only way to get to God was through the church, it was centralised.  When everyone got the bible, they said, "We can have our own decentralised route to God".  Obviously, the American Revolution rejected the monarchy, the centralisation of the monarchy, and set up a decentralised government, a republic; rejected centralisation to move back to decentralisation.  I think that's a really key piece.

There's another key piece here.  If we're in a revolution year and we're facing peak centralisation and we're pushing back on centralisation to go to decentralisation, what happens on the other side of this?  So, there's another pendulum that seems to swing back and forth, and about every 250 years, we go from basically scientific, rational, mechanical to artistic, emotional, collaborative.  So, 250 years ago approximately was the Industrial Revolution, that was mechanical.  But before that, in 1550, 250 years before that, was the Renaissance.

What's interesting, as I'm sure you've probably heard the Renaissance 2.0 thesis, so what kicked off the renaissance, we had the Dark Ages for 1,000 years, or whatever.  Then the Renaissance started and what really got the Renaissance started was two things: one, the printing press, which decentralised information so everyone could have information; and, we got the florin, which was the longest-lasting coin, about 400 years without being debased.  So, having information decentralised and a currency that was globally recognised and couldn't be debased led to the greatest explosion we'd ever seen; that was the Renaissance.

250 years later, we had another one, but it went to the Industrial Revolution.  And now, we're about to have another one.  So this revolution, after this revolution, it should go back to the Renaissance 2.0 thesis.

Peter McCormack: And we have Bitcoin.

Mark Moss: And we have the internet.

Peter McCormack: And we have the internet.

Mark Moss: The internet is like the printing press.  It's decentralised information.

Peter McCormack: And Bitcoin is like the florin.

Mark Moss: And Bitcoin is like the florin.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Mark Moss: So, I see massive hope and prosperity ahead in the world.

Peter McCormack: We'll come to a solution.  Let me ask you one thing before I forget about it.  So interestingly, the EU is centralisation; Brexit is the start of decentralisation again.  The EU, as part of this, could break up potentially; not now, it doesn't feel like it's something now.

Mark Moss: Germany might decide to leave.

Peter McCormack: They're fucking fed up of paying for everyone.  But I also think the single currency, the euro itself, obviously is centralisation, but that's led to a lack of control for individual countries over there; they don't have a sovereign currency anymore, they have a European currency and a European central bank, which certainly puts them at a disadvantage. 

Mark Moss: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Mark Moss: So, we have these 80-year cycles and we can see we've gone through hundreds of years to show how they repeat, with three times 80 equals 250, so we can see that we're kind of at this peak centralisation, we can see that every 250 years it changes and we're about to change right now.  So, I think that helps us understand what's going on in the world today, in my opinion.  When we see the WEF and the WHO and they're trying to put these measures in place, I think it just makes things more clear when you understand it from that lens.

Peter McCormack: Because we're rejecting them.

Mark Moss: Because they're trying to squeeze harder and we're rejecting them at the same time.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Not enough people -- does it require a majority to reject it?

Mark Moss: No.

Peter McCormack: Because a revolution can be from a minority.

Mark Moss: 10% of the people.

Peter McCormack: Or 2 million of 7 million in Austria.

Mark Moss: If you studied Solzhenitsyn, he wrote The Gulag Archipelago.  He talked about how it was the writings that woke people up.  Have you seen the YouTube channel, Academy of Ideas?

Peter McCormack: No, I haven't.

Mark Moss: Oh, man.  I've sent it to a bunch of people, they're all hooked.  You'll binge watch all the videos.

Peter McCormack: Oh, man, I'm going to do it now.

Mark Moss: It's awesome.  I don't know the guy who's doing it, but he's really good.  Anyway, he talks a lot about this, but Solzhenitsyn, who wrote The Gulag Archipelago, talked about, you know, he started writing stories and it led to the downfall of Russia, the USSR.

Peter McCormack: "Free Minds for a Free Society".

Mark Moss: Yeah.  So, I think that's what's led us to here.  We can see that the world is rejecting that at the same time.  And then, what I would say is that what's interesting is that moves on a 250-year cycle.  Then, technological revolutions move on a 50-year cycle.

So, what's important to understand is, we went through all the political, social, cultural cycles and we know that solutions come to problems, because they're supposed to.  So, when we're talking about technological revolutions, we're not talking about new technologies.  So, we're not talking about iPhones, we're not talking about Uber, we're talking about things that are revolutions that change the way humanity works.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we discussed this earlier, because there's a book I often bring up on the podcast that you might like, if you haven't read it, it's called Engines That Move Markets.  That talks about big changes.  It's different from your list.  We tried to compare, but it does talk about the railroads, it talks about electricity, it talks about the light bulb, it talks about the telephone.  I keep saying, at some point they're going to do a new version where Bitcoin will be in it.

Mark Moss: Yeah, for sure.  So, they work on this 50-year timeframe.  If you look at the Industrial Revolution, which we already talked about with Marx, it brought people from the farms into cities and factories and then steam engines; and for all of humanity, people walked.  People had horsepower or manpower and that was it, now they had steam power.  They had steel, they could only really build two stories, now they could build skyscrapers.  These things change humanity; of course, electricity.

Of course, when you look at these things, electricity at the time was like a digital candle, "What do we need a digital candle for?  My candle's better, I can carry it around.  It's been light for 5,000 years, it's portable.  Why do I need all these frigging wires around?" if you think back.  Then we had obviously the age of oil, automobiles, things like that.  Then we had 1971, which was the age of the microprocessor, which led to personal computers and then the internet, telecommunications, all that, which was in 1971.  So, 1971 plus 50 years puts us right about here, 2021.

I think we're seeing the same thing.  Some of the characteristics of that is they're not --

Peter McCormack: Can I ask you a question there?  Are we talking about when this technology was invented, or are we talking about when it started to become used?  For example, I'm thinking Bitcoin, but it's 13 years old.  But really, it's going mainstream this year; do you understand the question?

Mark Moss: Yeah, and maybe it was even started sooner, because they were trying to solve digital cash even before Bitcoin.  But I think, yeah, these aren't exact days, these are ranges of things.  So, if you look at the printing press, the Industrial Revolution and steam engines, those weren't all exactly 50 years.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I get it, it's a range.

Mark Moss: Some were 57 years, some were 42, right.  It's about every 50 years.  But again, they're reactionary.  So, whatever was the problem at the time, it seemed to be solved.  So, as we're approaching peak centralisation, peak globalisation, it would make sense that we'd have a new technological revolution that would lead to decentralisation.  I think it's actually very interesting, because one moves on a 50-year timeframe, and one works on a 250-year timeframe, but they're both converging right now to give us exactly what we need.

Again, the solution comes with the problem, so I think it's very interesting that it's converging.  We get the tool to deliver us from the problems that we have today.

Peter McCormack: Are we just lucky; or again, is this a build-up of an organic reaction?  The cypherpunks foresaw problems and they've worked on this for years and finally Satoshi pulled the pieces of the jigsaw together, and is this almost like an immune response, or have we just got fucking lucky?!

Mark Moss: No, it's not lucky.  The solution came to the problem.  So, there was the problem and they found a solution for it.  We know Satoshi found a solution for the problem, because in the first line of code he wrote, "The banker is on the verge of a bailout".  So, it wasn't lucky at all.  They saw the problem, that was happening and they came up with the solution for it, just like all technological revolutions previous to that were solving problems.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Mark Moss: So, yeah, it wasn't just lucky, but it does line up pretty well.  So, I think that's one other piece.  And I think, when you look at the technology, if you look at the problems, and I think this is a bigger piece about the decentralised revolution overall that I think has to be understood, especially in the Bitcoin versus crypto debate, because again solutions come to problems.  Did the world need faster money?

Peter McCormack: Not essentially.

Mark Moss: I don't think so, because Venmo and Visa work pretty damn fast.  Is that a problem; was our money too slow?

Peter McCormack: I mean, you could argue some aspects of international transfer settlement, but yeah, I see your point.

Mark Moss: So, I think what the problems are is really just one: it's the money printer.  But if you think about it, we have centralisation of the government, centralisation of the power, centralisation of the money supply, we have an unlimited money supply, which is obviously causing all the problems that we have. 

We have a really big problem that we used to have a rule of common law from the UK and then we had a rule of law in the United States as well, and the Constitution was supposed to be easy to understand, we all should know what that means.  And I could set my life, I could plan my life, based off the law and you could plan your life based off the law.  But today, we're not ruled by law anymore; today, we're ruled by men, who change the rules arbitrarily whenever they want.

We were just talking, before we started recording, about potentially travel restrictions coming up.  I don't even know what the rules are going to be next month.  I just had a live conference in Miami two weeks ago.  I was going to do it after the 1st of the year, but I was afraid that we may not be able to travel after the 1st of the year.

Peter McCormack: It's a fair point.  We've got an active discussion.  Danny's based in Australia, I'm based in the UK, and we're trying to plan ahead in the future.  We don't know if he'll be able to leave Australia, I don't know if I'll be able to leave the UK.

Mark Moss: We can't have that, you can't live like that; we have to be able to plan.  How can we plan when we have people that arbitrarily change the rules?  "You can't eat inside your restaurant", so we set up outside.  "Now you can't eat outside, but you can inside with 30% plexiglass", so okay, I spend all the money on plexiglass, "Now you can do 50%".  You can't just change the rules whenever you want, we can't have that.  So, that's a big problem.

Peter McCormack: It needs to be a hard change to the rules, like with Bitcoin.

Mark Moss: Immutable laws.  And then we have a big problem with censorship; and not just censorship in what I can say on YouTube or Twitter, but even just censorship in the ability to hold my property.  So, they said, "With your real estate, you can't raise rents or evict people".

Peter McCormack: Quittem was in yesterday, he said they've just brought rent controls to Minneapolis.

Mark Moss: Right, so we're being censored with our own private property.  My wealth is being sold through inflation and I want to send it to you but they don't like you, then they stop it and block it.  We saw PayPal teamed up with the Anti-Defamation League a couple of months ago to make a list of all the people that shouldn't get money from PayPal, and then they were going to share that with all the other financial institutions.  That's a problem, a big problem.

So, I believe that those are the problems that we have, centralisation, unlimited money supply, censorship and rules by men.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so let's throw social media into the mix.  My question on social media, let me put it to you first: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, is that peak centralisation, and is that socialism?

Mark Moss: No.  I think it's -- well, I think it is peak centralisation, I guess, I would say.  I wouldn't call it socialism, but I think it is peak centralisation, because what we've seen is basically the government and the corporations are merging together.

Peter McCormack: Is it verging into Marxism?

Mark Moss: I think the people that are running them probably have Marxist ideas.

Peter McCormack: And perhaps Jack Dorsey leaving Twitter is because he can't deliver the product he wants to the audience he wants, so he's leaving to focus on Bitcoin and decentralised products, and maybe an alternative to Twitter, who knows?

Mark Moss: Yeah, I think so.  I mean, I don't know him personally, but what I hear from people that do know him and have talked to him, that seems to be the situation, that he was maybe trying to hold back the tide as best as he could while he was there, and we know that he's been working on other projects, so he wants to go do that full time.  Whether I would consider Twitter to be Marxist though, I don't know.  It's definitely peak centralisation, because we're seeing the government influence.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, look, I don't think it's Marxist, but what I'm getting at is, are there strands of Marxism in there, for example with the arbitrary choice of what is truth and what isn't, what can be said and what can't be said?

Mark Moss: There's the argument that Twitter's a private company and they can set the rules and stuff like that.  And there's the counterargument that they're the public town square and they have to allow free speech, and they're quasi government and the government's telling them what to do.  I mean, there's a lot of arguments, that's a whole conversation on its own.  It's definitely peak centralisation, because the government and Twitter are working together, I just don't know whether I'd consider that Marxism.  They're not pushing for equality.  I probably wouldn't put it there.

Peter McCormack: No; not pushing for equality?

Mark Moss: Well, I just wouldn't call it Marxist.

Peter McCormack: That's what I'm saying, I'm not saying it's Marxist but again, let me try and frame this in a better way.  Is it a useful platform for people with Marxist tendencies to push their agenda?

Mark Moss: Sure, yeah, and they do push their agenda versus allowing free, open discussions.  So, the Hunter Biden laptop was a perfect example of that.  As soon as anybody posted that, they instantly got their accounts banned.  Even retweeting from one of the oldest newspapers in the United States, they just retweeted and got their accounts banned.  So, they're obviously pushing one side of an agenda, for sure.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Mark Moss: But I would say again that the solution comes with the problems.  So, the problems that we have politically, socially, culturally are the centralisation, the ever-changing laws, the censorship, etc, so those are the solutions that we need.  Interestingly enough, then we have a technology that gives us all of those features.  And I think what's important to understand about that piece is, if you believe that those are the problems, like I do, that unlimited money supply, centralisation, censorship, changing laws, those are the problems, then what we need is decentralisation, fixed monetary supply, immutable law and censorship resistance.

If you think those are the solutions that we need, then you would go, "I think today, there's about 15,000 cryptocurrencies.  How many of them match all those attributes?"

Peter McCormack: One for sure.

Mark Moss: I would say one.

Peter McCormack: I could see people make an argument for maybe considering Monero or something, but one for sure, one clearly leading.  So, even if somebody makes a solid argument for the others, it doesn't matter.  Interesting.  And okay, this is really interesting because I've been having a conversation in the last 48 hours about how Bitcoin at the moment is kind of losing the popular war on narrative in cryptocurrencies, in that we have Crypto.com sponsoring Staples Center, we have FTX sponsoring Miami Heat, we have valid talk of Ethereum maybe flipping Bitcoin, it's totally possible, with their loose monetary policy helping them.  We have Solana absolutely flying.

I've been talking about this to people; we're losing that war on narrative.  But that doesn't matter, because the revolution can come from a minority.  And as long as we have enough people understand what is going on, this picture you're painting, understand why Bitcoin matters and defending that in the face of all the bullshit that we get for that.

Mark Moss: I would say that we are losing that narrative because we want to.  We're constantly saying, "Bitcoin, not crypto", at least I am. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Mark Moss: No, I am, we're talking about Bitcoin, not cryptocurrency.  So, we are losing that narrative, and I'm trying to drive that narrative, "No, we're talking about Bitcoin, not crypto".  The other thing I'd say that's interesting, going back to history, I don't have the exact stat in front of me, look it up; but I believe in 2000, at the height of the dotcom, 1999, 2000, I think there were four stadiums that were named for dotcom companies that were bankrupt within the next 24 months.

Peter McCormack: Interesting.

Mark Moss: So, that's a fun fact.  So, when you talk about Crypto.com and FTX, and so forth, we saw that same thing in 1999, 2000, and it didn't work out too well for them back then.  So, that was interesting.  But I think we are trying to push the narrative that Bitcoin is not crypto, but as far as losing the narrative, I mean, dude, El Salvador, they're using Bitcoin!

Peter McCormack: No, don't get me wrong --

Mark Moss: Fortune 500 companies are holding Bitcoin, right.

Peter McCormack: I mean, our narrative is fine, absolutely fine.  We're winning and we're having big wins.  What I mean is, the popular narrative when people are coming into cryptocurrency, some people are just missing Bitcoin and they're forgetting about it, they go into other things.  They're not seeing the big picture, the picture you're painting, they don't really understand money, they're in it for the quick gains, they're in it for the narrative their friends are telling them, that Bitcoin is boomer-tech, it's slow, and you need Solana, etc.

Mark Moss: Yeah, so this is a whole conversation actually I spent some time on earlier today talking about before I came over here.  It's really a sign of the times.  The problem is, we built a gambler society.  So typically, the way that I would earn money is by providing value to somebody, provide you a valuable good, a valuable service, and I would get money.  But the fiat money system has changed all of that, and so now today we have a gambler society.

I think about a month or maybe two months ago, options trading surpassed stock trading for the first time in history.  So, options trading is gambling, they're using Robinhood, they're doing options.  Stock trading typically means buying equity in a company, right, I'm an investor.  So now, the gambler, Robinhood traders, crypto trading.  What's interesting, well not interesting but bad about this, is that trading crypto assets or trading options makes US dollars, but it provides no value. 

I started out telling you my story, that I started with real estate.  When I started buying, I was buying bank-owned repos and these houses were thrashed.  The banks took them back, there were no kitchens, no floors, and the banks can't sell them because people can't get a loan.  No lender will loan you money, because there's no floor and no kitchen.  So, I would buy them, remodel them and then someone could get a loan on them.  I was providing value.  I would buy it and add value, right.

But today, people are trading options or trading crypto assets and they're not providing any value, but they're increasing their dollar stack.  Then, they take those dollars that they earned for providing no value to the world, and then they go take goods and services from you, or somebody who is providing value, so it's just a net drag on the world, and that's just the state of the world that we're in today.

So, Bitcoin is, "Go make your money and save it in Bitcoin".  Nobody wants to hear that.  Being a full life-time investor, I mean the stock market's averaged 6% or 8%.  I think bitcoin's got a 10X in front of it in the next five years.

Peter McCormack: Dude, 170% a year is not enough for some people.

Mark Moss: Yeah, maybe 20X in the next 90 days.  And that's just the state of the world that we're in today, and that's a big problem.

Peter McCormack: Well, so we come through that stronger?

Mark Moss: Well, we'll get through it.

Peter McCormack: As bitcoiners?

Mark Moss: Yeah.  So, I think that's part of the reason why the narrative, they want to chase, they need 20X in the next couple of weeks.  My 17-year-old daughter, her friends from high school are all trading options on Robinhood and trading meme stock, or meme assets, or whatever.

Peter McCormack: My son's friends, yeah, one of them specifically.  Hopefully he'll listen to this, I'm not going to call him by name, asking me if I had Shibu!  My sister has fucking Shibu.

Mark Moss: Yeah, my dad's been a bitcoiner and he's old, he's 75.  He's been a bitcoiner since 2017 and someone told me the other day, "You know your dad has other crypto besides Bitcoin, right?"  I'm like, "What?"  I have a 30-year-old brother and I think maybe that's what happened, and now I've got to go and find out!

Peter McCormack: He got in there.  Your dad's a shitcoiner!

Mark Moss: I hope not.  I've got to find out about that!

Peter McCormack: You've got to work on that, man.

Mark Moss: I've got to go work on that.  Someone told me that, so I've got to figure that out.  So, going back to the technological revolutions, the other thing that's important to understand about technological revolutions is that they always work about the same way.  So, even though they're different, we have steam engines or electricity or the internet, they're all different; and I think a couple of things that typically happen, and this also shows us where we're at in the cycle, is that when you had the automobile start, let's say in the early 1900s, very quickly people saw dollar signs and speculated and went out and built 250 automobile manufacturers.

But there were two problems.  One, there was no market, who was going to buy all those cars?  And even more importantly, number two, there's no infrastructure, there's no roads, no gas stations, no service stations, and so they all went out of business and three remained: Ford, Chrysler and GM.

Peter McCormack: Well, that was like the dotcom boom?

Mark Moss: That was exactly like the dotcom boom.  What's interesting about the dotcom boom is the same thing.  So, the first www went live in 1990, the first internet purchase happened in 1994, for the nerd's favourite food: pizza!  It shares that with Bitcoin.  1995 was the interesting point, because that's when the first IPO happened, Netscape, and that brought all the money in.  And so, then we had the IPO boom.

So, from 1995 to 2000, you had this dotcom everything, and the famous pets.com, webvan.com.   

Peter McCormack: Webvan, yeah, etoys.

Mark Moss: But the problem was the same two things.  One, there was no market.  By the year 2000, less than 10% of people had bought anything online. 

Peter McCormack: Well, the infrastructure as well.  We still had a lot of people on dialup.

Mark Moss: It was too slow.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, dialup or ISDN.

Mark Moss: It was too slow.  So, those were the two main things, so they all went out of business.

Peter McCormack: A few remained, Amazon.

Mark Moss: I think we see the same thing happening with Bitcoin, which is you had Bitcoin, Mastercoin, I think, and then Ethereum did the ICOs and it brought the money in, and then you had the ICO boom just like the IPO boom.  And now, you have a blockchain for everything, so we can manage lettuce on the supply chain now, whatever we're going to do, right, we've done everything!  And we're going to buy tickets online and all these things.

But I think the same two problems happen.  One, there's no market for it.  No one's buying frigging tickets on the blockchain; and two, the technology just wasn't there, the infrastructure wasn't there.  And I think the majority of them will go away, and now we're starting to see all that technology being built on top of Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: But maybe three will remain, or maybe just the one.  I think a couple will remain.  Blockchains are hard to kill, man.

Mark Moss: Lyn Alden just wrote this piece the other day, a couple of days ago, and it was PoW vs PoS.  Dude, it was like an hour read.  What was she doing?

Peter McCormack: Oh, she's helpful to me.  I've got a show with Lane Rettig in New York and he's an Ethereum guy, and we're doing a whole show on why he doesn't believe on proof of stake.

Mark Moss: Did you read that article she put together?  It's long, it's an hour.

Peter McCormack: I will do.

Mark Moss: But she did make a good point that I thought was interesting.  She said, "I think we'll have -- I look at Bitcoin as a protocol and maybe these other ones are more like platforms or databases".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's what they are, they're companies, kind of.

Mark Moss: Yeah.  Actually, she called it equity, not companies, yeah.  So, I think that was a good way to look at it.  But I think that kind of shows us.  Then another thing that's interesting is we can look at adoption curves, so we've seen diffusion of innovation, which is like an upside-down bell curve.  So, you have the visionaries, the innovators, and you have this chasm that has to be crossed.  You're a marketing guy, you know the chasm.

Peter McCormack: Who's the guy who wrote -- Steve Blank wrote Crossing the Chasm, was it, who wrote that?  It's a great book.

Mark Moss: It's Geoffrey Moore.

Peter McCormack: What did Steve Blank write?  Is it Black or Blank, Danny?

Mark Moss: So, you have the bell curve, the diffusion of innovation; and then you have an S-curve.  An S-curve is what we used to look at adoptions, so we can see how long it would take to get a new technology to reach adoption.  So typically, the way an S-curve works is that the time it takes to go from 0% to 10% adoption is the same time it goes from 10% to 90%.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, are we at 10% yet?

Mark Moss: I think we hit 10% in 2009, so that means in the next eight years, we should be around 90% adoption with Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Damn!  Hold on, 2009 we launched?

Mark Moss: I'm sorry, 2019.

Peter McCormack: Right, so the next ten years is not the time to sell. 

Mark Moss: It could be a parabolic run up to 90% adoption.  So, I think there's that, and I think the reason why it's important to understand that is that technological revolutions drive financial markets, which takes us to the third revolution.

So, if you look at it, the last technological revolution was the microprocessor, which led to the age of telecommunications and internet, so obviously that's what driven the entire financial market to this point, the FAANG stocks.  Before that was automobiles, GM, Ford, etc.  Before that was electricity and oil.  And it's different families that get rich all the time.  It's not the rich always staying rich, it's the Carnegies and the steel, and the Ford families in automobiles, then you will obviously have the microprocessor companies and the Bezos and all those companies.

Peter McCormack: The Saylors and the Bitcoin!

Mark Moss: Yeah, then we've got the Saylors and the Bitcoin!

Peter McCormack: That book, by the way, is Four Steps to the Epiphany; that's the one I was thinking, that Steve Blank wrote.  Let me ask you one question before you get into that, just very quickly, where does the metaverse play in this, because that's feels like technology, but peak centralisation.  Well actually, interestingly, we might have that battle between, fucking amazing, the Winklevoss and their decentralised metaverse versus Mark Zuckerberg and his centralised bullshit!

Mark Moss: You know, he runs a really bad imagined future.  All we can do is imagine better versions of what we have today.  We have cars, we'll have flying cars.  We can't imagine something new.  So, for example, when the internet first came out in 1995, 1996, it was kind of the way to send electronic messages and we have these chat rooms.  And one day, we'll probably be able to buy stuff online.  We didn't know that our car would be hooked to something called the Cloud using something called social media to navigate us round traffic, because we didn't have any of those things.

So, trying to imagine what the metaverse is, it's something I'm sure we've all be spending a lot of time thinking about.  I don't know.

Peter McCormack: It's something I don't want my kids using, because it's probably going to be too much fun.

Mark Moss: What is the metaverse?  Are we technically in the metaverse now?  I mean, I probably spend 50% of my time on a screen, between my phone and my computer.

Peter McCormack: Actually, I think we're in the analogue metaverse right now.  But I think really, the goal of the metaverse is a peripheral vision through a headset.

Mark Moss: Sort of immersive?

Peter McCormack: Immersive, 3D world, where you can do what the fuck you want.  It's Ready Player One.

Mark Moss: I saw that movie, and I think that's kind of what I envisioned it to be.  I've never been a gamer, but my old business partner is a big-time gamer.  We went on a snowboarding trip to Canada, this was a couple of years ago, and the other guy we were there with is also a big gamer, and they were like, "Hey, there's this virtual reality arcade down the street, do you guys want to go?"  I was like, "Sure, I'll check it out". 

I don't know if you've ever been to one, but there were four rooms on each side, and they were an 8x8 room with pads on the walls and just one entrance and then the headset drops down and you hold the thing in your hand.  And, dude, it was a small room, I knew where the door was right there, but as soon as I put that headset on, I had no idea where I was, I didn't even know where the door was in the room anymore.

Peter McCormack: Dude, I've got an Oculus.  They've got this thing called Walk the Plank on it.  It's something like Steve's Walk the Plank.  But this thing, you put it on and you go in this elevator, you go up to the top floor and the door opens and you're at the top of a skyscraper and there is a plank in front of you.  I can look down my nose and I can see the floor, I can see the fucking floor.  Then I look forward and I step on to the plank and I'm on a plank, 40 floors up, looking down at the fucking ground, and I shit myself on it!  I can't jump off it.  My kids just walk off the end.  I cannot do it, I can't fucking do it!  It is interesting.

Mark Moss: A couple of days ago, I posted a thing on Instagram, I was down at the beach in Puerto Rico.  It's so frigging beautiful, the beaches and the ocean.  I was down there surfing and you park in the jungle, but you're round the beach.  And I had a little film and I just said, "I'm never going to live in the metaverse like, "Dude, look at this.  Really?  I'm going to go jump in the ocean and surf, never live in the metaverse".  But if you live in Mumbai in a shanty, or something like that, in Africa, maybe you do want to live in the metaverse.

Peter McCormack: Or if you're 15 years old and you live in Bedford and you got home from school and it's fucking cold and you go up into your bedroom and suddenly, you're in real Fortnite, running around with a gun, shooting people.

Mark Moss: I hate to think of that movie, Ready Player One, someone who can spend thousands of hours in a game, building out this life in a game.  Why not just go spend a thousand hours in the real world to build out the life that you want?

Peter McCormack: Because it's less work, most of the world's built out for you.  In this real world, you have to go out and you have to get a job and you have to start with that shit job, waiting tables or hammering handles on umbrellas like I fucking did, and you have to learn skills and work your way up and it takes years.

Mark Moss: Someone's still going to have to do all that.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but somebody's going to do that as their job and build that world, and you just walk straight into it and you're a racing car driver, and you get to drive a racing car at Silverstone and suddenly you're the best.  My biggest worry with it, Mark, there's two worries I have: mental health stuff, obviously; but people who so fucking love it in that world, they don't want to come out; they don't want to come out of that world, and then you can see the whole matrix.  It's like, "We don't come out, we'll just plug this thing in, we'll collect power off you to power the metaverse".

Mark Moss: Well also, in today's day and age, where people want to be bi, trans, whatever, I don't know, there they can be whatever; they can be an avatar, they can be a zombie, they can be an animal, they can be whatever, so I guess a lot of people want to be that.

Peter McCormack: Maybe that's good for them.

Mark Moss: Maybe.  I know I'll sound like a boomer; every generation thinks their kids' music's horrible and what they're into is horrible, but I think it's also because it is getting worse.

Peter McCormack: No, it is.  Music's terrible now.

Mark Moss: So, every generation has thought their kids' music and movies are worse, but I think it's because it is.

Peter McCormack: No, it is, it's definitely worse.  What was the last album you heard you think, "In ten years' time, that will make the top 100 albums of all time"?

Mark Moss: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: You don't get it.  You go to those top 100 albums of all time and it's still Guns N' Roses, it's still Rolling Stones, it's still Led Zeppelin.  I think the last great, truly great album, was Amy Winehouse's.  I don't think we've had a truly great album since.

Mark Moss: The other day, I was in the gym and some old music came up and I actually thought about you, I was going to ping you on Twitter on it, it was Ride the Lightning.

Peter McCormack: Oh, yes!

Mark Moss: And it was the intro.  The intro was so good to the song and I was like, "Is this the best intro to a song there's every been?"  But I saw something --

Peter McCormack: I challenge you.  The intro to Holy Wars… The Punishment Due by Megadeth.

Mark Moss: That's better?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's so special.  I'll play you it in a minute.

Mark Moss: Yeah.  Dave Mustaine.

Peter McCormack: Dave Mustaine, yeah.

Mark Moss: He's pretty good.  I saw this chart and it mapped out music and it had the beats and the melodies, and they showed how over the decades, how it started to centralise.  And you've had almost all the songs now follow the same beat and melody and you don't have the same variety that you had before.  I remember seeing something like that.

Peter McCormack: I think autotune has a lot to answer for as well.

Mark Moss: Probably.

Peter McCormack: There is hope.  My daughter sent me a message the other day, she's 11, she messages me and she's listened to Biohazard, which is this band I grew up on, New York Brooklyn hardcore band; she's listened to that.  So, we have some hope!

Mark Moss: Wow, yeah.  So, I don't know where the metaverse fits into this.  I think what is interesting though is I think, I mean we can get into this a little bit later when we go, "Where does all this go?"  I think I have a timeline of kind of what the next decade looks like.  But I think AI and Bitcoin sit on opposite spectrums. 

So, AI is the central planners' hope, I think, that AI will give them the tool they need to manage an economy, in the absence of a free market.  AI is central control, right, social credit score and all that.  And I think Bitcoin is the opposite of that.  So, you mentioned the metaverse and AI, and I think it's the opposite.  I don't think the metaverse is going to be stopped.  I mean, it's definitely going to be big, unfortunately.

Peter McCormack: Okay, let's talk about the financial cycles, the third one. 

Mark Moss: So, as we were saying, each technological revolution creates the financial cycle.

Peter McCormack: Because it creates the innovation, the reason to invest, the boom.

Mark Moss: Yeah, exactly.  So, new technologies, like an iPhone or Uber will extend and economy, but a technological revolution changes the economy, changes everything, changes humanity, the way humanity works.  And I think this, I kind of go into Ray Dalio's credit cycle, 80-year credit cycle. 

I think it's pretty evident to see that the financial system is on the rocks.  I mean, you talk to Lyn Alden and those people all the time, so we don't need to go super deep into that.  But I think it's easy to see that the central banks are driving the economy, obviously, and they have two tools.  So, one is interest rates; and two is monetary supply.  Interest rates are at zero, or negative, in most of the world, so that's tool gone.  So, they have money, and we have over $300 trillion of debt they've created in 50 years, so that's pretty much done.

If you and I were playing a game, a board game, and you were out of moves, what do you do?

Peter McCormack: You've lost, it's over.

Mark Moss: You reset the game.

Peter McCormack: Well, okay, The Great Reset.

Mark Moss: I mean, you reset the game, right.  What else are you going to do?

Peter McCormack: You're making all the conspiracies converge as well with this, a little bit.

Mark Moss: Well, I don't know what conspiracies we have.

Peter McCormack: Well, maybe they're truth and not conspiracies, I don't know.

Mark Moss: Well, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum wrote a book called, COVID-19: The Great Reset, so it's not really a conspiracy.  He wrote a book, I don't know if you've read it, I have.  He also wrote a book called The Fourth Industrial Revolution, and I've read it and you should read it too.  I take these people at their word.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Mark Moss: You've seen him all over TV saying, "We need to take this opportunity to have a great reset", I mean that's what he said, it's not really a conspiracy.  And to go on with that, these happen on 80-year cycles.  So, 80 years ago was the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Bretton Woods Agreement was what?  The entire financial system was reset.  We went onto a global monetary standard, a gold standard.  The US was pegged to gold and all the currencies were pegged to the dollar, so the whole world agreed to change the monetary system 80 years ago.

Today, well not today, but a few months ago, six months ago, Kristalina from the IMF says, "We need to have a Bretton Woods 2 moment".

Peter McCormack: Well, we're having it with Bitcoin.

Mark Moss: Right.  But she's saying that we need a Bretton Woods 2, which of course Bretton Woods 1 was when the whole world changed.  So, you call it a conspiracy.  Klaus Schwab wrote the book, The Great Reset, she's calling for a Bretton Woods 2 moment.  When you're out of moves, you have to reset the game, and it just is what it is.

I think it's led to the point where a lot of people are starting to go, "Well, what comes next?  Does the dollar remain the reserve currency of the world?"  A lot of people argue that.  Brent Johnson, the Dollar Milkshake Theory: the dollar's going to soak up all the liquidity of all the other currencies; maybe it will.  So, will the dollar remain the reserve currency; will we go back to a gold standard?  A lot of people think that when the currencies are destroyed, they'll have to bring back some gold.  A lot of people think that the IMF were going to start using their SDRs, and we'll probably have an SDR central bank digital currency.  I think that's possible.  We can talk about those different things.

But what I think they're all looking for is a centralised solution and an answer, but the future isn't centralised.

Peter McCormack: Because the cycles are all saying we're at peak centralisation.

Mark Moss: And the technology that we have.

Peter McCormack: And people are rejecting this.

Mark Moss: People are rejecting centralisation, and we have technology now to help us move away from that.  So what happens is you, I believe, have already changed your reserve to a Bitcoin standard?

Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, I'm on a Bitcoin standard, and I talked about this yesterday.

Mark Moss: I've changed to a Bitcoin standard, Michael Saylor's changed to a Bitcoin standard, El Salvador's changed to a Bitcoin standard.  So, it's already happening on a decentralised level.

Peter McCormack: Yes, because the gold standard required nations to be on a gold standard, so it was centralised.  But the great thing about a Bitcoin standard: I can be on a Bitcoin standard, you can, Jeremy can, Danny can, us four can be; everyone else in the street doesn't have to be, because it's personal, because it's all about the decisions we make. 

I literally explained it to Brandon Quittem yesterday.  I said, the time I knew I was on a Bitcoin standard wasn't -- I thought I was, I thought I was on a Bitcoin standard because I owned a lot of Bitcoin.  The moment I realised I was on a Bitcoin standard was, I'm trying to buy a new house, right.  Repeating what I said to Brandon, but historically, buying a new house, what's the shortest mortgage I can afford; what's the highest deposit I can pay and still get the lowest interest rate?  It's not now.  What's the lowest deposit I can pay; what's the longest mortgage I can get with the lowest interest rate, because I want to give them as little money as possible, because I want to keep everything in fucking Bitcoin?

The minute I started looking at that, I was like, "I am on a Bitcoin standard, because I know my Bitcoin on that long timeframe of a mortgage is going to be worth more and accumulate value, and I can trust more, than on a fiat standard".

Mark Moss: Yeah, I'm buying that place in Texas as well, so I'm doing the same thing right now.  We're in escrow.  And I was just looking at, "If I put this much down, my rate's this; but if I put this much down --" and I was like, "I want the lowest rate, so I'd like to buy it down, but I'd rather just have the Bitcoin".

Peter McCormack: But that's the point, I realise, of a Bitcoin standard.  It doesn't require you to have all your money in Bitcoin and have a credit card that you can use that converts your Bitcoin to pay at the same time.  A Bitcoin standard's the point where you realise how you're going to make your purchases.

Mark Moss: Right, yeah.  And how you store your wealth, and all that.  So, I think everyone's looking for this centralised answer.

Peter McCormack: CBDCs?

Mark Moss: CBDCs, and they're certainly going to continue to do that, but the future's decentralised.  So, one by one, we're all switching our standard over and, like I said, we're seeing corporations do it and we're seeing nations do it as well.

I think what's important to understand too, kind of like we were talking about earlier, where we have this gamble economy, everyone's gambling these days.  The wealth of a nation has changed throughout history, right.  And so obviously, the UK used to be the world leader and the US has kind of taken that role over, and every few hundred years, it shifts.

But what's the wealth of a nation?  Wealth isn't money.  If you and I were on a deserted island and we had $1 billion of cash or $1 billion worth of gold, this is for Peter Schiff!  If we had $1 billion of gold that he says has intrinsic value --

Peter McCormack: Where is he?

Mark Moss: Yeah, where's the picture?

Peter McCormack: Where the fuck is he?  Get him Danny, he's in my bag, he's in the front.

Mark Moss: Where's the picture of Peter Schiff?

Peter McCormack: Fuck, we forgot it!

Mark Moss: So he argues intrinsic value.  But there is no such thing as intrinsic value.  And the reason why we can say that is because, if we were on a deserted island with $1 billion of gold -- there he is, Peter.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, Peter.  Oh, man, I missed you, dude!

Mark Moss: So, $1 billion of gold or $1 billion of cash, but we had no boat or no phone or no food or no water, that money, the cash or the gold is worthless, it's worth nothing, because we have no goods or services to spend it on.  If there was a guy with a coconut stand, he would be rich.  Last night, I had dinner and my leftovers that got thrown away, I didn't care for those leftovers, they were worth nothing to me.  But if I was on a deserted island, I would give every penny I had for those leftovers.  So, all value's subjective.

So, wealth is goods and services.  So, the United States used to create goods and services.

Peter McCormack: Gave it out to everyone else.

Mark Moss: We don't have any goods and services anymore, so there's no wealth here.  So, everything's being shifted, the whole world, the power balance is being shifted.  I think it's easy to see, like I said, the games of the central banks are pretty much over.  They have two tools: one of them's gone, the other one's pretty much gone.  We know that it's ready to reset, they're calling for a reset, we have the IMF calling for a Bretton Woods 2; and left to its own, it's crumbling, it can't go on much longer.

I just like to think of the Nietzsche quote that says, "That which is falling shall ye also push".  I think Bitcoin's doing the pushing.

Peter McCormack: So, the wealth is in China, because it has the productivity?

Mark Moss: They have the productivity, but they don't have the education or the creativity to build the wealth.

Peter McCormack: No, because they steal everything from everyone else, the motherfuckers!

Mark Moss: China's in bad shape; China has massive amounts of debt.  We talked about the populism uprising that they're trying to squash right now; they've got a massive energy crisis going on; China's in bad shape.  They've really expanded doing this whole Belt and Road Initiative, which a lot of people are really worried about, but that's backfired on them big time.

Peter McCormack: And Europe's just announced their competitor to the Belt and Road Initiative.

Mark Moss: Oh, really?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it came out this week.

Mark Moss: And a lot of these countries where China has done this, what's that book?  Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.  So, they're going in and loaning money and they're taking over assets, but some of these countries are like, "F you, you ain't taking nothing over, get out of here!" and China's being told to kick rocks.  I think there's a lot of international backlash against them.

It's interesting to see, if we want to project this out, does China have enough momentum to take over, or are they going to crumble before they get the chance?  I'm probably leaning more towards, they crumble before they get the chance to take over.

Peter McCormack: All roads lead to Bitcoin.

Mark Moss: I think all cycles lead to Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: All these cycles have led to Bitcoin now, so the question is, it's not inevitable that we come out of this how we hope.  I see your vision, I see your solution, I see your answer is Bitcoin.  It's decentralisation, it's Bitcoin.  But we have a tool and we have a chance, so what do we do, Mark?

Mark Moss: So, I think we're back to where we started, where I think that we are facing the battle for the fate of humanity.

Peter McCormack: That's a show title there!

Mark Moss: I'm being serious.  And I know that's hyperbolic, or whatever, but I think we're facing the battle for the fate of humanity.  So, either we're going to be locked down or we're going to be censored or we're going to be separated and they're going to change our social media feeds to train our brains and shut down the information and prevent us from ever uprising again and the cycles are broken, and my kids and my grandkids and your kids and grandkids are going to just live in the matrix for the rest of humanity, as long as they're good little kids, they're going to be okay.

Peter McCormack: Or we win.

Mark Moss: Or we win.  And, if we win, we also win for the rest of humanity.  Because, if we can take away the money printer -- if you remember in Star Wars, the original Star Wars, they were fighting back against the Empire and they had the Death Star.  And when they went in to attack the Death Star, there was one spot on the top that they had to get in.  If they could get that one spot --

Peter McCormack: Down in the valley.

Mark Moss: Down in the valley, they could get the one spot, then the Death Star falls apart and the whole Empire crumbles.  That one spot, that's the money printer.  If we can take that, the whole Empire crumbles, the resistance wins.

So, once that's taken away, it's over.  The money printer's gone.  Money, as we know it, is forever changed and I think the cycles break the other way.  They don't have the money to go create endless wars and endless prisons and tools to enslave us anymore.  Big government as we know it is over, the end of the giant nation state is over.  I think The Sovereign Individual thesis finally plays out, and I believe that's what happens. 

I believe history tells us that, I believe history tells us that humans' drive for freedom always wins.  The history of always winning the revolution I think shows out, I think we have the tool to do it.  I don't think AI's near as advanced, or will be near as advanced as they need it to be to win in the short enough period of time; I think we have too much of a head start.  They're crumbling too fast, and Bitcoin's growing too fast, and AI's not going to be there for them, it's not anywhere where it needs to be.

In my timeline, I see probably the next three to four years probably getting worse, probably more control.  What does that mean?  That means less choice, that means less travel, that means more restrictions, that means probably more uprisings.

Peter McCormack: Protests and revolutions.

Mark Moss: More revolutions, a lot of that.  I think, going back, if you study the revolutions, I'm hopeful, maybe optimistically hopeful, naïvely hopeful, I don't know if it's a shooting war; I think it's a war that's fought over information and money, and we got memes and we got Bitcoin.  They got nothing.

Peter McCormack: I'll tell you what, man, this is going to have a really profound effect on me, this interview.  I think there is a part two to this we need to do, because I think we need to talk about -- I want to get into your head about how we win.

Mark Moss: Something I've found a lot about.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think that's a separate other monster.  Maybe I'll come to you next time.

Mark Moss: Yeah, maybe I'll be in Texas.

Peter McCormack: Maybe in Texas, yeah.

Mark Moss: I'm actually sharing a stage with Ron Paul in January in Texas.

Peter McCormack: Hell, yeah!

Mark Moss: So, I'm working on a big piece of this that's going to go into that.

Peter McCormack: You should turn this into a book.  I would fucking buy it, I would read it, I would finance it.  This needs to be a book, because this is a book I would read.

Mark Moss: I've actually been talking to a company to put it into a book.  I agree it does need to be a book.

Peter McCormack: This needs to be a book, without fucking doubt.  You need to do this, dude.

Mark Moss: There's so much data and charts and facts that we can't go through here.  Yeah, it could easily be a book.  The guy who wrote The Pendulum, which I referenced, which is an amazing book, I've already been talking to him about helping me get it done.  So, I've just got to pull the trigger.

Peter McCormack: Well, anything I can ever do, let me know.  You have a permanent open invite to come on and talk about it whenever.  I've done 450 interviews, and there's some shit ones, there's some good ones, there's incredible ones.  There's one that have had a real profound effect on me.  This is one of those moments where I'm lost for words and things I want to think about.  I need to go back and watch your presentations, I probably need to relisten to this.  It's making me rethink my role in helping to make this happen.

There will be people who listen to this, Mark, who'll be like, "Really?  A battle for the fate of humanity?" and there's going to be other people who go, "Yes, there fucking is".  I don't want to be wrong on the wrong side of this. 

Mark Moss: I would just say, like I said, I take them at their word.  Mark Carney wrote a book called Value(s) that came out this year.  Go read it.

Peter McCormack: I'm going to read it.

Mark Moss: I mean, you know who Mark Carney is, most people don't.  Head of the Bank of England, Head of the Bank of Canada, Special Envoy to the UN with Climate and Finance, Special Advisor to the World Economic Forum, Special Advisor to Boris Johnson and Trudeau in Canada.  I mean, he's arguably the most influential guy in the world.  Read his frigging book, see what he has to say.  I take these people at their word.

Klaus Schwab wrote a book called The Fourth Industrial Revolution.  He believes that trans-humanism, that you don't know the difference where man and machine come together, and I know it sounds conspiratorial, but these are the guys that are writing policy, and they wrote the book to tell you what they're doing.

Peter McCormack: I need your book list, you need to send me the book list.

Mark Moss: Yeah, we can do that.  But I think back to your point, rethink what you're doing, I keep going back to think about what James Madison said which is, "Lighting brush fires, small brush fires, in the minds of men".  And you're doing it, we're doing it.  I mean, I said the war's going to be won over information and money, and you're providing the information, and information on money.  So, I think it's an active role, but I take it seriously.  The thing is, if you want to get into NFTs and all these things and metaverse and --

Peter McCormack: That's so irrelevant really to what we're talking about.

Mark Moss: Well, because all these people are like, "No, you don't know how much money I made".  I'm like, "We're not the same".

Peter McCormack: It's not how much money you make, it's whether you've separated that money from the state.

Mark Moss: And you know, it was really a big kick in the pants for me, I think it was March of this year, I was in Mexico, driving in my truck, listening to a podcast, and I was just thinking about how bad things are and I was just like, "Am I focusing on the bad things, or am I actively building the world that I want to see?"  Then I was just like, "No, I'm not".  And I was at that point, I just said, "At this point, the rest of my career, dedicated to make sure this doesn't happen".  If there's anything I can do to make sure the 2030 agenda doesn't happen, then I'm going to do it; I'm going to do everything I can.

Peter McCormack: I'm in, brother, I'm fucking in.  Okay, listen, we're going to do a follow-up and I want to plan it in advance with you.  I want to talk about how we make it not happen, I want to do that one with you.  Tell people where to go.  We'll put as much as we can in the show notes; tell people where to go.

Mark Moss: Yeah, man.  So, I do a couple of YouTube videos a week, where I break stuff down.  I have this really cool touch screen whiteboard, so just search Mark Moss on YouTube.  And then I have a new radio show on iHeartRADIO, so I do a radio show once a week, and then I have a podcast on iHeartRADIO as well, so you can just search Mark Moss on that, you'll find my podcast there.

Then, I'm pretty active on Twitter, too active on Twitter unfortunately.

Peter McCormack: All of us.

Mark Moss: Man, sometimes I've just got to delete that app, but I love it so much, but maybe they'll push us off soon enough.  But just @1markmoss on Twitter.

Peter McCormack: Thank you so much for coming in and doing this.  Look, it's well overdue, but maybe for a reason.  Let's go and have a whiskey and let's talk about this some more.

Mark Moss: Oh, we're going to have some fun, let's go do it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know.