WBD437 Audio Transcription
Bitcoin and The American Dream with CJ Wilson & Amanda Cavaleri
Interview date: Wednesday 15th December
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with CJ Wilson & Amanda Cavaleri. 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 2 leaders of the Bitcoin Today Coalition: CJ Wilson and Amanda Cavaleri. We discuss educating the political class on Bitcoin and how it can make a strong America through strengthening energy grids, revitalizing rural economies, and giving those on the bottom economic rung equal access to a financial system.
“Bitcoin’s one of the most American innovations, maybe even since the constitution. It levels the playing fields completely. It’s ruled by rules not rulers… I think it really can be this glue that brings this divided country back together.”
— Amanda Cavaleri
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Morning, CJ.
CJ Wilson: Morning, Peter.
Peter McCormack: Good morning, Amanda.
Amanda Cavaleri: Good morning, Peter.
Peter McCormack: CJ, everybody knows you, you've been on before.
CJ Wilson: I got a lot of interesting replies from that one we did with HODL, that was great.
Peter McCormack: Really?
CJ Wilson: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Like, "What are you talking to that statist cuck for?"!
CJ Wilson: Well, it's funny, because HODL's been on your thing like six times, right?
Peter McCormack: Maybe more than that.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, so I benefitted a little bit, I got maybe a couple of extra followers as a result of that, so it was quite funny.
Peter McCormack: Nice, man. I never found your Earth Crisis walkout video.
CJ Wilson: I'll send it to you.
Peter McCormack: Yeah? I need to hear that.
CJ Wilson: Okay, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Amanda, welcome to the show, I love you.
Amanda Cavaleri: Thank you. Inaugural! Love you too.
Peter McCormack: We've been talking about doing this for a while. Introduce yourself to people, let them know who you are.
Amanda Cavaleri: Sure. Amanda Cavaleri, grew up in Colorado, in case that's relevant, worked quite a bit in healthcare machine learning, then got into privacy, because it was a little creepy what we were doing with some machine-learning technology. Then through privacy, got into Bitcoin and that's how I'm here. So now live in Jackson, Wyoming. If anyone's a skier, let me know.
Peter McCormack: You've just doxed yourself, come on. Be careful.
Amanda Cavaleri: I know. Well, it's already out there.
CJ Wilson: This is the biggest Bitcoin podcast in the world, you've got to be careful or you're going to have some stalkers.
Amanda Cavaleri: That's all right, it's on the internet already, they'll figure it out!
Peter McCormack: So, you guys just wrote a book in five days?
CJ Wilson: In five days, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Crazy fuckers!
CJ Wilson: Well, Jimmy Song, as the taskmaster, I guess you would say, he's got experience with these book sprints. So, we had talked about the policy thing and how we're doing things here where we are in DC, I don't want to spoil any future punchlines, but he said, "Let's get some people together". Then he assembled this entirely diverse cast. We had people from different walks of life, different ages, different experience levels and different sectors, and we literally, cats and dogs, fought it out for five days, from Post-it Notes on Monday night to a completed second draft on Saturday morning.
Peter McCormack: That's insane. How many hours a day were you doing?
CJ Wilson: 12 to 14 hours a day.
Amanda Cavaleri: No, he would go until 4.00am in the morning, Friday night.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, maybe 18 hours a day.
Peter McCormack: But you don't sleep?
CJ Wilson: I don't sleep anyway, so it was great, it was perfect for me. Everyone was like, "Are you guys not going to sleep?" and I was like, "Welcome to my game, motherfuckers!" It was great.
Amanda Cavaleri: He was bringing up the vibe. We were all getting tired and then CJ would come in with something and we'd be, "All right, we've got another half hour in us".
CJ Wilson: I was standing in the back of the room pacing, you know what I mean, like a captured animal, just stalking the couch, then I would just come up with ideas, and I was trying to pump myself up a little bit. But Jimmy had a really interesting theory, which is when you work out with other people, you vibe off of that thing, because it's a competitive deal for guys.
The funniest thing is we ate the same thing every day for lunch. We had brisket, ribs and sausage every day, and Jimmy would be --
Peter McCormack: Jimmy Song, I expect nothing less.
CJ Wilson: Exactly, he's like Mr Carnivore, right! He's like, "Well, this is nice, I really like the -- this one's a little more peppery", then the next day, "This one's a little more sweet". Then it was like, "Okay, it's the same".
Peter McCormack: The same fucking shit every day; I love Jimmy. Did he bring his ice cream?
CJ Wilson: No, he didn't, no. He gave this whole story about pemmican, which is basically like this carnivore survivalist thing, where you mix the buffalo meat and the fat of the buffalo, and it congeals and you carry it around in a bladder, and he's like, "And, that's how they got to the North Pole", and there's this whole Eskimo history thing. It was really interesting.
Peter McCormack: He makes ice cream out of, I don't know what it is, but it's carnivore ice cream.
CJ Wilson: It's like buffalo fat or something.
Peter McCormack: Urgh!
CJ Wilson: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: He's like, "This is the best ice cream", "Urgh!"
CJ Wilson: Well, when we were at the Beefsteak, right, so we did the Beefsteak thing, that was his element. So, Jimmy only eats meat.
Peter McCormack: I know, only meat.
CJ Wilson: We went to dinner in Miami at the conference and I had a salad and he goes, "You're getting a salad?" and I was like, "Am I not allowed to eat salad?" because I eat salad and meat. He's like, "Paleo's a halfway thing. Just go all the way, meat only".
Peter McCormack: Fucking salad, eating heathen.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, exactly.
Peter McCormack: So, when's the book out, when do we get to read it?
Amanda Cavaleri: January?
CJ Wilson: Well, I think we're going to do an official release. We want to do a kickstarter, I think, similar to what Vijay and Saife have done, mostly because it allows us to give it a little bit more time to create an experience around it. The book is written towards DC staffers and people, because here we are and this is a big deal. So, Amanda and Jimmy and I and a couple of other people formed the Bitcoin Today Coalition to educate people on Capitol Hill about Bitcoin, because we feel a lot of the information out there is just bad information, a lot of FUD and stuff like that.
So now, we're literally knocking on doors in the Senate, knocking on doors in Congress and saying, "Hey, this is what Bitcoin is", and now we can actually give them something and be self-referential to say, "Hey, there's this book written by these people", and Pete Rizzo's another one of the authors, and he's a fantastic writer.
Peter McCormack: He's amazing, he's so good.
CJ Wilson: And he's like a historian. So, he's got so many stories about what happened in all these different cycles and phases; whereas realistically, I came into Bitcoin in 2018, so I don't personally know any of these people from their earlier stories. I wasn't there. I can read it, but a lot of us are just reading it through his lens as a journalist.
Peter McCormack: Did he tell you why he's doing this historian thing?
Amanda Cavaleri: No, why?
Peter McCormack: So, when I interviewed him last time, he said he feels like in the future, decades ahead, if Bitcoin does what we think it might do, he said he feels like we're going to owe the world an explanation, because not everyone's going to be happy. There will be winners and losers from this. People who are used to their benefits or social security are going to be like, "Where did this all go; what happened?" He feels like people are going to need an explanation. So, he's trying to document everything that happened, the decisions that were made and why, and I think that's a noble cause.
CJ Wilson: Yeah. Him and I sat up really late one night talking. I kind of kept him past his bedtime, getting some of the stories! And one of the things that was really interesting was, he said there's so many times that it could have gone wrong, there's so many times that it could have bricked. He's got a whole narrative, I'm not going to spoil it.
Peter McCormack: It should not have survived.
CJ Wilson: But just like humanity, right. So, there's these things to say how gnarly a statistical chance are we here for? How many other planets are there that could theoretically sustain life? So, the people that have this, whether it's a creationist or an evolutionary argument, okay, there were asteroids and volcanoes and we have a molten core and we have an ozone layer and we have oxygen and we have the oceans; how many other places in the universe would theoretically have all of those things and be able to be a habitable temperature zone, or whatever?
So, Bitcoin has sort of succeeded because it's had libertarians, politicians, entrepreneurs --
Peter McCormack: Cypherpunks.
CJ Wilson: Cypherpunks, coders, developers, open source so that you had a chance to have these almost competitions so that the best idea wins.
Peter McCormack: Podcasters!
CJ Wilson: Podcasters, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Baseball players.
CJ Wilson: Well, yeah, baseball players. But without having that information, that access to the information, someone like me that gets in in 2017/2018 can look back at all these things that were said, all these things that were written and I can grok it really fast, because if I want to binge watch Bitcoin, I can binge watch Bitcoin, I can catch up and do my initial block download with knowledge.
Peter McCormack: Amanda, we have a book title, we talked about this last night. Tell everyone the book title.
Amanda Cavaleri: Bitcoin and the American Dream.
Peter McCormack: Well, it's a very American idea, Bitcoin. I think it is.
Amanda Cavaleri: I agree.
CJ Wilson: No offence!
Peter McCormack: I mean, everything America does --
CJ Wilson: Remember we're writing it to DC people, so yeah.
Peter McCormack: But it's like, everything America does is basically downstream from Great Britain, from the UK, where I'm from, because we basically invented America, pretty much.
CJ Wilson: Sure; it was your idea to send all the colonists here, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. We came here, we created this beautiful country!
Amanda Cavaleri: What about the Dutch? There were some Dutch that showed up.
Peter McCormack: Where are they now? We created this country.
CJ Wilson: Well, van der Laan, I guess he's Dutch, right; is he Dutch?
Peter McCormack: We established this country. A little dispute over a tax on tea, you kick us out, and now look at the tax you're paying!
Amanda Cavaleri: Well, I think that's the thing, right.
CJ Wilson: And now we're friends again.
Peter McCormack: We're friends again, not with everyone. Okay, so it's good timing, because I was in DC anyway. I did an interesting interview yesterday with Matt Stoller opposite Peter Van Valkenburgh. It was originally meant to be Michael Casey. He got into a discussion with Matt Stoller about Bitcoin and it was a great conversation, because Michael Casey couldn't make it, but Peter came with his brain dump of history.
Amanda Cavaleri: He's brilliant.
Peter McCormack: He's just brilliant.
CJ Wilson: And he's passionate too, he gets fired up.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he gets very fired up. Matt Stoller believes Bitcoin should be banned, and I think we should talk to these people. I think rather than have these people on and the YouTubers go, "Fuck this guy", we should have these people on, we should understand their arguments, we can sharpen our tools, and we can also help educate them. It was a good session with him and Peter had to leave early, and I got another 15 minutes with Matt at the end.
Whilst he thinks Bitcoin should be banned, he definitely came round to some of the ideas, and he was totally sympathetic to the idea of why Bitcoin exists. His view is democracy is broken. We agreed on pretty much everything, democracy is broken. He thinks the way to fix democracy is not by subverting the state with Bitcoin. My belief is you can make democracy stronger with Bitcoin.
CJ Wilson: Agree.
Amanda Cavaleri: Agree.
Peter McCormack: So, I guess this is why you're working on the book. Some people will be saying, "Why the fuck are you even talking to politicians? We're trying to get rid of these people".
CJ Wilson: Right, and that's definitely been part of the narrative, is the anarcho-capitalist thing to say, "I'll just be in the woods, I'm going to do my thing, don't touch me". And it's funny, because one of the conversations we had internally with Annaliese, who was one of the other authors, she was like, "So, what quality of life do you have if you're 'living off the grid' in some hovel in the woods to hide from the government; that's not really a good future for somebody?" So, you're hyper wealthy because you have Bitcoin that's shot up in value, or something like that, but then you're literally living in a wood shack with --
Peter McCormack: Guns.
CJ Wilson: -- in a Faraday cage. That's not a high-quality life. So, our thought process is, and there is a reality; our base level reality is that we have politicians, there's layers of politics, there's Senate staffers, there's senators, there's all these different people that have access to it, and I got in a direct message, I don't want to say dispute, but a logical conversation with somebody recently and I said, "Do you think it's going to be easier to hyperbitcoinise and have the world adopt Bitcoin if we go out there and door-knock and get 2.5 billion people signed up, as a critical mass thing; or, can we get a critical IQ thing by getting 400 or 500 of the right people in DC on the Bitcoin train?"
You do the numbers on that, run the numbers. It's easier for us to go to people, like a Rand Paul, or somebody like that, and Lummis obviously, who's been a huge advocate for it; you take these people and you give them the tools to understand it, and then they see how it can benefit their state individually, then their state has a higher quality of life and there are opportunities there economically that didn't exist before, in any industry. It could be any industry, it just happens to be that Bitcoin is right place, right time for so many people, and it benefits all these other things.
So, we laid the book out in a sort of sequential order and say, "Who does it help? How does it help them? Main street, disenfranchised people, how does it play on the global stage?" and all these things, and we kind of go through all that and explain it. Because, we have to answer the same questions all the time. People ask all these questions, and we have a chance to really lay out a chronological, domino-effect argument, and that's much easier to understand.
So, there's something in the book for everybody, progressives and republicans or conservatives and full-on libertarians, but it comes down to, there is a political system in place, it exists. You're not going to have 30 cypherpunks overthrow that. And if you did, what would be the downstream effect, because if America breaks up and Balkanises, like some people think is a great idea, then you just have the authoritarian states, like Russia and China are just going to lick their chops and they're going to roll us.
Amanda Cavaleri: It's the divide and conquer, right, and that's already been going on.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, they would just roll us hard. So, a united America really does make more sense, but if Bitcoin unites more of America, then that's really our business case.
Peter McCormack: Well, this is what Matt was saying yesterday, is that it's important to have a strong America, whatever you think about America. It's very difficult to be the world's police and keep everybody happy, but a strong America's really important for the stability of the world, especially in the face of authoritarian states such as China or Russia, who have a very different view on the life, or the way life should be lived. So, a strong America's important, and Bitcoin can play a role in that.
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah, and that's why I think what you were saying earlier about Bitcoin and America going together, I think Bitcoin's one of the most American innovations, maybe even since the Constitution. It levels the playing field completely, it's ruled by rules not rulers, and this is something we haven't had with Big Tech, with the big banks, for a long time. And I think it's been hurting Americans for quite a while, so it's this miraculous innovation, or movement, whatever you want to call it, that brings both sides together in a way that's never happened before.
So, I really think it can be this glue that brings this divided country back together, and it's one person at a time, it's one orange pilling session at a time. So, while there are 46 million Americans that own Bitcoin, we basically crossed the chasm with the innovation bell curve, which is a good thing. So it means it's sticky here. Odds are it will then go to the early majority, then late adopters, then the luddites that will just be --
Peter McCormack: That's the Steve Blank book, Crossing the Chasm.
Amanda Cavaleri: Right, yeah. So, we've basically done that with the innovation bell curve with Bitcoin in the US with American adults. So now, as we move into the early majority, sharing these stories of just how relevant it is, and that's why the book, probably every chapter doesn't speak to every person, I think there are going to be some chapters that resonate more with others.
We go into mining and how that will revitalise the Rust Belt. That's a big deal, and how it is innovating the energy industry. So, whether it's IP that's created through emerging cooling, or it's helping us build and incentivise the buildout of nuclear energy, frankly.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, better grids and everything like that. I mean, there's been so many issues with energy, and I think there's this big FUD narrative about carbon and all these other things and energy usage, so we really try to get into that.
Peter McCormack: What, how Bitcoin mining can stabilise the grid?
CJ Wilson: Absolutely.
Peter McCormack: What's the grid, is it Austin or Texas, is it ERCOT?
CJ Wilson: ERCOT, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, there's a lot of talk about how Bitcoin mining will be able to stabilise the grid there, because obviously it went under a lot of strain and pressure, was it just last year?
CJ Wilson: Yeah. So, if everybody imagines that the grid is like a hotel, right?
Peter McCormack: Fuck, another hotel metaphor!
CJ Wilson: A condo building, okay, there you go. So, if that condo building is empty, it doesn't mean the building is any less expensive to operate. You still need elevators and doormen and security and trash guys and all that stuff. So what happens is, it sort of helps amortise the cost, because you have a constant customer, a base customer that's never going to go away, it might even demand more energy. So, if you have consistency in demand, then it allows you to budget for a bigger buildout and be stronger.
The problem with energy grids in general, whether it's California or Texas or anywhere else, is there's only certain places you can actually put power-producing facilities. You can't put a powerplant in the middle of a city, because it's just aesthetically not pleasing. So, they have these adjunct grid things that attach to the cities. But then, if there's expansion, at what point is there a critical mass where they need to build a new one? Those things are very expensive. Who's incentivised to spend $1 billion on a new powerplant?
So, if Bitcoin is taking a certain amount of megawatts or gigawatts, or whatever, across the state, then it allows them to play it around a little bit, because you're creating such a density in that one spot, or maybe in a region where it's a mining area. And the worst thing in Texas specifically is that people are using the natural gas production from oil to mitigate flaring, which is environmentally pretty unfriendly. So, they're taking the CH4 methane and they're digesting that into CO2, which is a lot more stable, through an engine, just like a car. And because it runs through an engine, the way it burns, it's cleaner.
So, you're taking something that was just completely waste, and now there's people that are taking that sort of methodology, and they're running it off pig poop and cow poop and stuff like that, literally. They're taking products, kind of like what the ag industry does, where they're always looking to innovate so there's less and less waste. You want to use the bones for this and the skin for this, and using that kind of animal analogy again, and it allows for the grid to be built into, because you have people that are saying, "Hey, give me ten years of energy".
If you have a house, you're on a month-to-month contract effectively, whereas a Bitcoin mine, like what Riot's doing in Texas, they're spending crazy amounts of money to build a 200-megawatt facility, or whatever it is, so that's a big consistent thing. And it's also taking over for places that are depleted factories, or Rust Belt effectively, which is a factory that was booming at one point, a city was booming as a result. Everyone's gone, the industry's gone, and what are you going to put there? You're not going to build condos in the middle of nowhere, you're not going to put a sports team in the middle of nowhere, you're not going to build a mall in the middle of nowhere, and these people don't have any revenue.
So now they have revenue, and there's this whole cycle, where you're building in a grassroots way from the bottom up.
Peter McCormack: Amazing. I just want to go back a step. Amanda, you talked about ruled by rules, not rulers. So, do you see a lot of similarities between consensus rules and the Constitution?
Amanda Cavaleri: I mean, it was written with a group of individuals, it wasn't written in one person's mind. So, to get to that point, it took a lot of collaboration and work. And after this experience, I have a lot more respect for the process of writing the Constitution. I think it's an incredibly challenging task to please everyone, you just can't sometimes; but the way that the Constitution turned out is incredible, and the Bill of Rights. It covered so much with so few words, frankly. It's a lot like the whitepaper.
Peter McCormack: The whitepaper, nine pages. My brother works with me now, and we've gone through a very slow process of orange pilling him. He's historically a bit of a lefty. He'll be pissed off about me saying that, but he is, and he's definitely come to the centre. But he keeps coming back to me and saying, "I still can't get my head around the fact that the entire global financial system is being essentially rebuilt on a plan that was nine pages, of which one is citations". Nine pages to decide this.
Amanda Cavaleri: It's amazing, it's pretty miraculous. If we look at, for example, this Infrastructure Bill from the summer, 2,702 pages, right. So, it's nine pages; almost 3,000 pages; it's a very big difference, and I think that's what makes it so elegant, is that it was able to do that. That brain, or group of brains, is incredible.
CJ Wilson: But what's really weird though is, through the writing process, you develop a vocabulary that's more evocative so you're able to trim things. So, if I use the world "blizzard", it implies cold, snow, potentially whiteout conditions, maybe dangerous, hazardous. There's all these things. So, if you say "an avalanche", everybody has these strong words that they understand.
The problem with a lot of these bills is they use such plain language that in a way, they have to say 10 or 20 words to get the point across. So, when you have this time, or these other people to shape the words and condense it, then you can make better points more concise, more direct. And you might say something in six words or eight words that might usually require 40 or 100. And I think that's where you get into the sort of "a picture is worth a thousand words" sort of thing.
One of the reasons why Bitcoin is so strong, I think it's honestly because of memes, because if a picture is worth a thousand words, a meme's worth ten thousand, because it brings in cultural, social, humour, all these other things at the same time, so it's all that information. And we're using that to our advantage as we're communicating with each other worldwide. And I think the memes and all that type of stuff actually helps Bitcoin adoption in a lot of ways, because it keeps solidifying things.
Our book, I think we did a word count on the first draft and it was like 14,000 or 15,000 words. That's cool, but then we're, "Okay, can we shrink that down? How big does the book actually have to be to be valuable to the people, to our audience?" Those types of questions you have to answer in mass, where there's eight of us, so we had to shape that whole thing.
That was really interesting, because I'd never really thought about it like that before, but you can never be too clear when you're writing, you can never be too clear when you're trying to make a point. And for me, it's not really as much of an emotional argument, it's more of a logic argument, like dominoes; this happens, that happens, that happens. But some people don't connect with that. Some people do need an emotional component, they need that motivating weird joke. We're like, "We want people to read it at the conclusion to go, 'Amen'!" and we had some people that were able to create that with their words, and it was really interesting to see that.
Peter McCormack: And, who are you trying to get the book in the hands of; is it staffers?
CJ Wilson: Yeah. Staffers, senators, congressman, governors, anybody that has governmental ambitions, I would say.
Peter McCormack: But it's more likely a staffer's going to get hold of the book, read it and talk to the people they work with, less so than maybe a senator?
Amanda Cavaleri: Most likely.
CJ Wilson: Manage from the way up.
Amanda Cavaleri: Maybe a senator could, right? I think at a state level, it will be more the representatives and senators, we hope, that will read it directly, or listen to the audio book directly.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I mean, the game theory of it's good and super interesting. Neeraj mentioned yesterday, a lot of the staffers probably own, let's say crypto broadly, and if they're owning crypto, they're probably protective of Bitcoin as well. But a lot of them will be owning Bitcoin. It's also a super interesting lens for watching, like for me as somebody coming from the UK, seeing how this is playing out in a republic, because you have a different political system. You have the ability to vote at the ballot, but vote with your feet. As Balaji's often said, "The vote with the feet is more powerful".
CJ Wilson: Yeah, moving.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, moving is more powerful. But you have these incentive structures to support Bitcoin. There's no incentive in the UK. I've spoken to two politicians now and they're like, "There's no interest, we don't need to, we don't care", because they get to create a set of rules that the whole country follows. But you can have this position where, say for example, Texas can say, "We can be pro-Bitcoin. Miners, you're welcome here. Come here".
CJ Wilson: Yeah, the states' rights thing is a huge argument, and you see Warren Davidson and Cruz and Lummis and Rubio and Suarez --
Amanda Cavaleri: And we're trying to get Dems as well, right, that's another big piece.
Peter McCormack: Okay, I'm going to come to that, I've got a question on that. But for me, the game theory works out here, because you have the republic, because you have states' rights.
CJ Wilson: And they have different abilities to tax different things. For instance, Oregon doesn't have sales tax. If you buy a car in Oregon, you don't pay sales tax on that car. If you live in Nevada, you don't get income tax. If you live in Texas, you don't get income tax. From the state level, you're always going to pay federal tax, but you might pay a higher real estate tax or something like that. But you have a choice to rent or to own.
So, there's these freedom issues that come up as a view of states' rights, and so we see literally some states are going to take advantage of this and succeed, as a result of their either permissibility or their tax structures or their tax incentives to mining businesses or Bitcoin businesses; and then also, just frankly from a competitive standpoint, you have New York and California and Texas and Florida and a couple of other states, like Illinois and stuff like that, or Massachusetts, that generally lead some sort of discussion, because the population density allows them to have more congressional reps. Whereas, the Senate, there's two in every place, and they have a little bit more of an asymmetry in Congress versus the Senate.
So, if the states start competing with each other, the only people that are going to win are the residents and the participants in this game, because you're going to go to the place that makes the most sense for you to live. You're not going to lose if you keep chasing the best incentives. So, if everybody keeps raising their incentives, then more people win. Really, it's like an evolution.
Peter McCormack: Help me understand, as an external person, but my impression has been recently, the states' rights has been more at the forefront of discussion recently; am I right; is that observation right?
Amanda Cavaleri: You're right, and I think in this particular field, Wyoming's led the charge with a lot of the legislation, a lot of the Bitcoin digital asset legislation, and that has caused many more companies to at least register there, and that's part of why I moved there, for example, a few years ago. So, we're starting to see it in that. But I think what accelerated the states' rights and even county rights, COVID frankly, with restrictions and how folks were working around COVID mandates with masks and everything.
So, we've seen a lot of people in Wyoming, for example, moving from coastal states, because they want the space, they want freedom, frankly, to be able to not have to show a card going into a restaurant. And I think that's the interesting part about America. You can choose, do you want it, or do you not? And what you were saying, you can move with your feet.
So, there's been a mass exodus from these states, not just around COVID, but also around how much is their state focussing on economic development and industries that they're passionate about, so technology or energy, or whatever they're into. People are able to move, and now that especially we can work remotely, why would you live in San Francisco --
CJ Wilson: And pay crazy amounts of rent just to have a ceiling placed on your income.
Amanda Cavaleri: -- when you can go to Austin? Right, exactly.
Peter McCormack: Well, you have people shitting on your doorstep, and I just cannot get my head around all these videos of groups of kids just going into stores and ransacking them.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, that's been a big problem. In LA a couple of days ago, well I mean this is like, I guess we'll say, in December, there was a group of 14 people arrested in Los Angeles for doing smash-and-grab stuff, and they were released, most of them, with no bail the next day. So, there's no disincentives there, and that's a problem where you have a state like California that's got 40-plus million people, tons of revenue, tons of taxation, highest taxes, highest energy costs in the country, so what's the real incentive to stay there?
I have a brick-and-mortar business, I'm in a more rural area of California, so I'm not really exposed to that aspect of it. But there are people that are moving from, let's say, the Bay area or LA to more rural areas of California, because they do like maybe the weather or something like that, and they're saying, "Hey, you know what, I'll pay 7% more to have nice weather". Fine, that's okay, and that's a choice that you make.
But if you're experiencing heavier crime, then you don't want to live in that area. So in general, I would say there's this constant churn with the population, because it's been a generational thing. So you'd say, "Oh, my family grew up here, in Ohio [or] Illinois, and they moved to California", or something like that. So that's grandpa, mum. But for someone like me, I've lived in Florida, Texas, New York, Georgia, California, Arizona, all these different places, because of my previous career, and now it's like I'm looking at it again because of Bitcoin to say, "Well, if I'm going to be a Bitcoin person, where's the best place for me to be a bitcoiner?"
We want that to be America on a base level and not have people moving to Malta or Barbados or --
Peter McCormack: El Salvador.
CJ Wilson: El Salvador, whatever frankly, yeah; because if you lose those people, then you're losing that second and third generation of their intelligence, their economic viability, or their economic productivity, and we want to keep that here. We don't want to lose that.
Peter McCormack: But we're decentralising them.
CJ Wilson: What's that?
Peter McCormack: We're decentralising them, their knowledge and wealth base.
CJ Wilson: Well, what we are doing by decentralising them across America, as opposed to putting them all in Silicon Valley or New York City, that is very interesting to me. You see people moving from the Bay area to Texas, to Kentucky, to Wyoming, to Utah, to Colorado --
Amanda Cavaleri: To Tennessee.
CJ Wilson: -- to Tennessee, to Nashville. Nashville's been a really big one coming up. So, yeah, why wouldn't you want Nashville to win, if they're taking the bull by the horns. Austin's been winning for a couple of years now, because they did take the bull by the horns 15 years ago, or 20 years ago, with Dell and some of these other Big Tech companies, IBM or whatever, moving headquarters there.
So, there's billions and trillions of dollars on the line for all these people, these citizens. They should vote with their feet, and this is something that -- the first time I heard anybody say this, because it was before I read The Sovereign Individual, I saw Tim Draper talk at a conference and he's like, "You know, people are going to be moving with their feet and countries are going to be competing for the best citizens".
So I heard that and I was like, "Well, Facebook just bought Oculus, so at some point they're going to do this thing where you can work and drive a forklift virtually, but from the beach in Barbados or El Salvador or whatever, and you can live on the beach and drive a forklift and get paid. Why would you live in some place you don't want to live, in an undesirable place with high crime?" Then all of a sudden, now it's this metaverse thing, and I was like, "Hey, I was right about something. Yay!" and it feels good. But you can put the pieces together in that regard, because that will be happening.
We already have call centres that are offshore. Pretty soon, we're going to have manufacturing offshore. We're going to have virtual jobs offshore because of this Oculus thing. People are going to be able to log in through the metaverse thing, and Facebook is really going to try and commercialise that and running on that programme, and it's going to be good and bad.
Peter McCormack: It's called "Meta" now.
Amanda Cavaleri: Meta, sorry.
Peter McCormack: It's not Facebook.
CJ Wilson: The Oppressive Regime Formerly Known as Facebook!
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah. And I think the states' thing is really interesting too, because you look at the demographics and the spending. So, at the state level, about 30%-ish of the state budget goes to education; the second, which is just under 30%, is Medicaid. So, if you're bringing the best and brightest to your state, which I would say Bitcoin folks are oftentimes the best and brightest, you can attract them to your state and they're earning, they will be able to help care for an aging population as well.
The whole world's getting older, except Africa and a few other places. But you look at most of the US, most of the states are getting older, we're not having as many children, care is becoming more expensive, so it's projected that care of older adults will accelerate, go up 34% from 2020 to 2030. So, when you think about it at that level, if you're a governor at the state level, it makes a lot of sense to create economic development opportunities that bring high earners to your state.
Peter McCormack: Or we just let them all get COVID and wipe them out!
CJ Wilson: You statist cuck!
Peter McCormack: That's the plan!
CJ Wilson: That's a very good Bill Gates conspiracy theory there.
Peter McCormack: So, your timing's interesting, because it is a time when Bitcoin has a growing popularity amongst politicians. I'm not always sure whether they believe in it, or it's a hack, but either way who cares if the game theory plays out. You mentioned Senator Lummis, she's been supportive for a long time, Warren Davidson for a long time, Mayor Francis.
CJ Wilson: Eric Adams from New York?
Peter McCormack: Eric Adams, yeah.
CJ Wilson: And this whole one-upmanship with the mayors is really interesting too, where it's like, "I'm going to take a paycheque in Bitcoin". "That's cute. Three paycheques". So it's like, "My whole paycheque" and someone's like, "Damn it, why didn't I think of that"!
Peter McCormack: Well, look, New York's lost a lot of people to Miami, a lot of people during COVID got the fuck out of there and they have no need or incentive to go back.
CJ Wilson: Well, and New York's tough because of the BitLicense also.
Peter McCormack: BitLicense, COVID passports, mandates.
CJ Wilson: Energy costs, taxes.
Peter McCormack: Fucking cold this time of year, compared to the beach. There's a lot of reasons to move to Miami from New York. There's a lot of reasons not to move back.
CJ Wilson: Yeah. I mean, relatively speaking, I'm a warm-weather maxi. So, I've lived in California my whole life, I lived in New York over the winter and I was like, "I don't think this would be the place I would want to go", but I do see the appeal of New York as a city. It's a great city to go to, it's cultural, it's fun, it's energy, it's all that stuff. But you do pay the cost. So, it's your choice to pay those prices, or pay less and try to build a new version of whatever. I mean, Miami's a fun city. Obviously, Austin is a really fun city and Nashville's a really fun city.
Peter McCormack: Nashville's great.
CJ Wilson: It's a great city. So, you have these people that are maybe, those are sort of second-tier cities to Chicago and LA and San Francisco and New York and stuff like that over the last couple of years. But as with anything else, you see this evolution as the population ages or the regulations change, and that's healthy though, that's the whole point. It's healthy to see that redistribution.
When people talk about population density problems, New York is the definition of that. It's like Tokyo or London, or whatever. It's like, "Okay, cool". Ruralising or industrialising maybe medium-tier cities is probably better, because then you're back to the decentralisation thing, which is a word in the vocabulary which was nobody's vocabulary 15 years ago. It's in everybody's vocabulary now, as a result of this, and Bitcoin actually brought that forward.
Peter McCormack: So, where I was going with this then, a point I did want to make, because I know you've covered this in the book where it's something you had to look at, is that it would be really sad for Bitcoin if it became a partisan issue, that's what we want to avoid, and America is very good, especially right now, at being partisan, "You like that? Well, I like this. You like coffee? Well, fuck you, I like tea", whatever it is, America will fight over it.
That's a really interesting thing to see, but that would be shit for Bitcoin, and there's definitely more Republicans come round to the idea of Bitcoin, which makes sense, because when I say Bitcoin's a very American idea, it's a very Republican idea too. I also think it should be a very Democrat idea, but for different reasons, and it just doesn't seem like Bitcoin has really captured the hearts and minds of Democrats yet.
CJ Wilson: Which is sad, because it is one of the few tools that scales on a small level. We have a whole thing in the book about that, basically saying, this is my hammering point, the bottom rung of the economic ladder is too slippery. It is very hard to multiply one times one and get anything out of it, since you're always doing your own thing, but bank fees, cost of living, all these things are a problem.
Bitcoin's like having the Spiderman gloves. You actually can grip onto the ladder now, because you have something that's outpacing inflation by a long shot, you can buy small amounts of it, you can get paid in small amounts of it, and you can convert yourself -- if you're a taxi driver or a barber, or traditionally a skilled profession, a niche profession, you can get little bits of Bitcoin and then benefit from it the same way Saylor does, in terms of you can sell your Bitcoin for the same price as he can sell his Bitcoin at, or whatever.
You can't do that, because housing is more expensive, all these other things, basically they're like a lid, an economic lid. And where we see, on the national level, the Democratic regime is like, "Oh, yeah, there's a lid on these people, but we need to worry about decapitating the top people first. Let's do this wealth tax thing", or whatever. Let's just take the lid off. Lower-income people pay more in bank fees than they get in interest.
So, Bitcoin has no carrying cost. It's the only real hi-tech thing that you can own that isn't special privileges, so we go into this whole thing about that, and that is a big issue. Typically, the Democrats are going after the marginalised in society, they're not going after the wealthiest. There is a sort of Bezos, Washington Post, kind of thing, where you do have these hyper-wealthy people who are putting stuff out there, but they are Democrats. Or, maybe they're anti-Republican, or something like that.
But I think the reason why the Republicans and the Conservatives have grasped onto it is because they see the financial responsibility angle for the country. They see the spending printing, Money Printer Go Brrr, that sort of thing, and they attach it to that and the freedom side to, "Hey, make your own choices", or whatever. Those things all go together, but the problem is, on the Democratic side, they have programmes they want to institute, they have programmes they want to bring forth, they want to help people. But their view on helping people is, "We need money to help people".
So, the case for when Andrew Yang or Aarika Rhodes or someone like that talks about UBI, their thing is, "If we give people the money at the right time directly, they'll be able to lift themselves up" and that's a completely different argument than printing money to create these programmes that effectively are helping things after they've already broken. I think the Bitcoin lifting narrative is very strong, I think it's a big deal.
Peter McCormack: I always bring this quote up, but it's a tweet from Parker Lewis, which I think is very interesting, and I love it. He says, "Liberals are going to love Bitcoin when they figure out what it can do for lower-income families, but Democrats will hate it. Conservatives will love Bitcoin when they figure out what it will do for the budget deficit, but Republicans will hate it", which I think is a really interesting point, because I think he's identified why Bitcoin can benefit you whether you're left or right, but where it affects --
CJ Wilson: Each side.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but he's basically identified why it isn't great for politicians.
Amanda Cavaleri: Well, that's where Lummis comes in. She's fascinating, because her husband was a Democrat. They both served in Wyoming.
Peter McCormack: I did not know that.
Amanda Cavaleri: I think that's why she so innately tries to be bipartisan.
Peter McCormack: So they're like Romeo and Juliet?
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah, beautiful story, really fascinating match.
Peter McCormack: Did they have a secret relationship, Democrat and Republican?!
Amanda Cavaleri: I don't know!
Peter McCormack: They literally crossed the aisle to go down the aisle!
Amanda Cavaleri: Isn't it adorable?
Peter McCormack: It's Romeo and Juliet!
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah, and we need more of that, so I think that's why she so naturally works with Wyden, for example, out of Oregon on these issues, and makes it bipartisan, some other folks that I think it makes a lot of sense for on the Dem side, understanding where the politicians are coming from. So, if they're an entrepreneur, like Hickenlooper, I think they'll get it, I think they're getting close.
As growing up in Colorado, I bring them up, because I'm fifth generation, so I have family all over the state, lot of entrepreneurs, from rural to urban. And Hickenlooper, I think, can actually get this at a very deep level. He's always been very pro-innovation, pro-small business and pro-energy innovation, so I think once he and his staff get it, someone like that would be brilliant to lead the charge with us.
Peter McCormack: We need to find some way of talking to him and his staff, like maybe where we had a book?
Amanda Cavaleri: Maybe if we had a book?
CJ Wilson: If we had a book to leave behind after a meeting?
Peter McCormack: Just to go, "Here you go".
CJ Wilson: Even make it required reading, or something like that?
Amanda Cavaleri: Well, yeah!
Peter McCormack: People keep bring up Wyden. I don't know a lot of US politics, I know a little bit, but people keep bringing him up. Is he our guy as well?
CJ Wilson: Well, I think this is where when you get into the conversations like a Svetski conversation, which is like, "We shouldn't even bother with politicians".
Peter McCormack: And I can empathise his point; I don't agree with it.
CJ Wilson: His point does make sense, which is the whole point of Bitcoin is to be an independent network. But when you look at it on the global stage, everybody's tied together. You have the oil trade in dollars, you have people travelling all over the place, you have digital nomads, or whatever that means, but there is a big tie, because you have the United Nations and things like that.
So, it's not necessarily the politicians individually that you're going after, but from a states' perspective, each state has, I would say, an identity. Colorado, for instance, it's like a hippy, liberal, you can smoke weed walking down the street, whatever.
Amanda Cavaleri: Live and let live, do your thing.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, live and let live.
Amanda Cavaleri: Just don't hurt anyone.
CJ Wilson: And Bitcoin very much is like that; that makes sense there. So, if you see the sort of states that, I would say have an outsized freedom perspective, because of some sort of thing that they have there, like you have the, "Don't tread on me", kind of vibe, then the states that are promoting individual rights should all be pro-Bitcoin, realistically.
Those state identities don't really change, maybe as often as the politicians do, so that's where it's a little bit complex, because we're talking to individual people in individual offices, so how do we make that a theme intergenerationally, or campaign after campaign? That's where we really do see this as a long-term, low-time preference deal. Because whether it's Wyden or Lummis or any of these people, you don't really want to pin your hopes on one person, because things happen, right, and people decide to walk away.
Some of the people that are pro-crypto in Congress, for instance, they're younger staffers or younger congressmen. But those people could get unelected, they could get bounced by somebody else. Then you have people like Aarika Rhodes, for instance, going after Brad Sherman, who's super anti-Bitcoin, so of course all the bitcoiners will like Aarika the best, and she's great, she's awesome. But she's not a career politician, she's a schoolteacher, a STEM educator, and stuff like that. So, her progressive thing is something that we can model to say, "If this is successful and she's mobilising people as a result of this, then who else around the country is looking at it this way?"
So, the game theory, back to that, where you have the mayors, it's jurisdictional competition, and that breeds further competition, because at some point there will be politicians that graft onto it to say, "We're pro-Bitcoin", because they're going to do the maths and say, "We have a million bitcoiners in the state and I want to win, so I want them on my side". The question is, is Bitcoin a big enough issue for those people to cross the aisle, if they're traditionally voting for D or R or I or L or whatever, or Forward Party, or something like that; are those people going to vote for the guy that basically puts his flag into Bitcoin first, or whatever?
That's the most interesting thing, because we really haven't seen that yet, because there's been this disengagement between the traditional, super libertarian Bitcoin elements and the "what's best for the country?" or whatever you want to call it, Bitcoin voters. So, the Bitcoin voter and the rise of the Bitcoin voter is thematically a really big deal.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, tens of millions of people now, and there to serve your constituents.
CJ Wilson: May or may not swing an election, right, and we're going to see that in 2022. We're going to see that definitely in 2024.
Peter McCormack: How so?
CJ Wilson: Well, okay, Bitcoin adoption increases over time. People get it, they orange pill over people. With COVID, there was this commentary early on with, "What's the R factor; how many people are you infecting?" Bitcoin's R factor is 15 or 20, on average. I don't think there's anybody that goes to work, has their Bitcoin and shuts up about it. It's like, how do you know someone's a vegan? They're going to tell you. Bitcoin people, even though it's maybe bad OPSEC, they're going to explain. You're proud of it. How could you not be proud to be a bitcoiner if you're early. It's a big deal.
Peter McCormack: It's vegan, CrossFit and Bitcoin, and if you've got all three, you're a dick!
CJ Wilson: You're insufferable! You're the worst person to sit next to on a plane, for sure.
Peter McCormack: I think you have to trade one out. I traded out vegan for Bitcoin. Fuck that stuff.
Amanda Cavaleri: There you go.
Peter McCormack: One of the interesting parts of the conversation I had with Matt Stoller yesterday, not that I wanted to trap him, but his main focus at work is monopoly, and I said, "Explain that to me". He just said, "Well, I'm just anti-monopolies. I think they are a threat to human liberty". I was like, "Okay, but what about the monopoly on issuance of currency?" and I think America is Land of the Free, Land of Liberty, but does have that monopoly on issuance, like every other country does. But again, it feels like a very American idea to break that monopoly on money.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, and you have effectively right now one person or two people or three people that really do control the lever, and they can either speed it up, slow it down, and that's a lot of power and responsibility. Just look at it from, take a step way back. Isn't that too much responsibility for one person?
Peter McCormack: Too much.
CJ Wilson: It's too much, right. It's also a burden to have that much responsibility.
Peter McCormack: It's also the top-down butterfly effect.
CJ Wilson: And what America does really does effect a lot of other countries internationally. And with El Salvador, the perfect example of that is, they're on the dollar and they're a foreign country. I mean, we're not even border to border with them, we're thousands of miles away from El Salvador. So at that point it's like, we have a dollar influence on them and a lot of Latin America as a result of this process, because when we print the money, that money goes towards building factories or paying for things, or giving loans or aid or whatever offshore, a lot of it does.
There was a commentary during PPP, or the original spending thing, or whatever, last year in 2020, that a lot of the money that we were printing was actually going offshore. So, $3 trillion got put into the money supply in a very short period of time. Parker does a great slide on this. It's really fundamental to my Bitcoin 101, but we injected $3 trillion, which is a really big word and an even bigger number. But if only $1 trillion of that stayed here onshore and $2 trillion left, what was that really buying?
That influence, and stuff like that, with the dollar is also a little bit outsized and a little bit unfair. It might have unintended consequences from a human rights' perspective, which is something that Gladstein writes about a lot, and he's one of the best people that I think writes in that regard, about the international effects of the dollar and what that's created.
Peter McCormack: Someone told me a great way of understanding numbers, it's brilliant. So, 1 billion in seconds, guess how long that is?
CJ Wilson: 1 billion seconds?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, 1 billion seconds.
CJ Wilson: I don't know, 1,000 years?
Peter McCormack: No, it's 31 years. But 1 trillion is 31,000 years.
Amanda Cavaleri: Okay, there we go, wow.
Peter McCormack: It gives you that concept in terms of time as to how fucking ridiculous these numbers are.
CJ Wilson: Yeah. Somebody did an infographic, and it was like, "Okay, here's $1 million".
Peter McCormack: Oh, yeah, the little square?
CJ Wilson: The little suitcase, yeah. And then, "Here's $1 billion and then here's $1 trillion". The guy went from looking like relatively like a person stacked size of money. A person and $1 billion were very close, it's like a refrigerator, or something like that. But then $1 trillion is like a stadium, or something.
Peter McCormack: But these numbers have lost all fucking meaning.
Amanda Cavaleri: It means nothing now. And I think that's the interesting part.
CJ Wilson: We have $30 trillion national debt, with obviously Senator Lummis had -- when she said, "Thank God for Bitcoin", in the argument she was having with, I believe it was Secretary Yellan, which is the person on the lever, her and Powell are really the two people that can pull the lever at this point; it was great to see her stand up and use Bitcoin as a tool to stand her argument up, which is to say, "We need to be fiscally responsible".
But it's the same argument in a lot of ways that Ron Paul made in 2001, or before that. And I think what happens is, the first person to the dance never wants to dance. The first person that dances on the dance floor always looks like a fool, and this is something that socially, people can understand.
Peter McCormack: What is it? First they laugh at you --
CJ Wilson: Yeah, that whole thing. First they laugh at you, then they make --
Peter McCormack: Fight you.
CJ Wilson: They fight you, and you eventually win, or whatever. But I think in this sense --
Amanda Cavaleri: Unless you're Tottenham!
CJ Wilson: Bitcoin is a great thing. So, the first people to Bitcoin were dancing all by themselves and no one else could hear the music.
Peter McCormack: Literally breakdancing, doing the running man.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, all by themselves, super excited about it. And then, the next generation of people, or the next group, because Bitcoin's so fast, this has all happened in 12 years. So, you have the initial cypherpunk movement, then you have the guys that are interested because they want the freedom side of it, then you have the VC/Number Go Up crowd, and now you have this whole -- so each of those things builds, and then they stay there.
So, there's still a cypherpunk movement, there's still a VC movement, there's still an entrepreneurial movement or a freedom movement or a libertarian movement. All of a sudden, everyone's at the party, "So, what are you in for? When did you come in?" and it's this funny thing. Now, it's the ultimate mixer, and you have people like boomers, the boomer crowd getting into Bitcoin which is sort of hilarious, because you think of an Adam Back, or someone like that, the cryptographer guy, and then you have this boomer business owner dude, "Hey, are you that Adam Back guy? I read about you. You're the proof-of-work guy, right?"
So, it's funny to see that evolution. And then eventually what happens is, you make the logical conclusion that we're all more alike than we are dissimilar, and that is really what we feel like Bitcoin is politically. There's a huge divide, because people come up with these little issues to fight over, like Romeo and Juliet style, and then it becomes tragic generation after generation. Eventually, people forget why they're fighting in the first place.
But then eventually, the grandkids fall in love with each other from these rival families, or whatever, and that's where we're at right now. We have the grandchildren of liberty, the grandchildren of the baby boomers, the greatest generation, whatever. Those people are all now active. We're coming into our own financially; where our businesses now have excess cash, we have a choice. Do I want to risk this or do I want to risk that; and we see Bitcoin as a better risk, because of the asymmetry. And we see inflation as reality. Costs have gone up, so what are you going to do if your savings are melting? You don't have that many choices, especially if you're lower income.
Amanda Cavaleri: Or on a fixed income, right? So, older adults, fixed income. You look at the care of nursing homes, it's well over, I think, $140,000 a year right now; homecare may be $50,000, $70,000; assisted living… These numbers don't add up for how people have saved, and so that's why it's going to become --
Peter McCormack: Pensions are going to get decimated.
Amanda Cavaleri: Exactly. So, there's actually a really cool story of a group of firemen in Boulder, Colorado, a very progressive region. They got together, started learning about Bitcoin, because they're in the firehouse all the time, and they orange pilled basically an entire fire station. Now, it's trickling out.
Peter McCormack: Really? Holy shit, I need to go and meet these guys.
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah. I went to the Bitcoin Meetup in Boulder and met one of these firemen, and he's been on some of the calls with us. He was on the Neguse call that we did to talk to the staffer, and they're like, "There's a group of firemen that are doing this and they're our constituents", and it's just a really cool story. When you're telling things, people learn through stories more than facts alone, and I love bitcoiners. I think one of the things we miss is telling these stories. You remember stories much more, it becomes much more tangible, more relatable.
Everyone knows a fireman, right? We all know they're usually good, decent people. They're doing it because they want to contribute to their community. They're usually funny people, so you instantly see that person in your head. So, that's why we need to tell more of these stories.
Peter McCormack: Well, because it keeps happening. We keep getting in these use cases of people moving to a Bitcoin standard and it's changing theirs or other people's lives, and it's not just the firemen; it's what MicroStrategy has done, which is a Bitcoin standard, which El Salvador is kind of moving to a Bitcoin standard.
CJ Wilson: In the memes again, it's like when Bukele, he did the stonks meme and all this.
Peter McCormack: Did you see the phone one?
CJ Wilson: The phone one? No, I didn't see that.
Peter McCormack: This one is like Bukele's just buying the dip. Bukele's just sat there on his laptop buying the dip, or whatever, and he just replied, "Phone"!
CJ Wilson: Yeah, that's good!
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah, I think that's one of the interesting parts about this, is this geopolitical aspect to Bitcoin and to payments and to the ability to -- even freedom of speech around the world, and that's where this becomes really fascinating. If we look at El Salvador, for example, I think 30% of their import and/or exports are done with the US, so they're kind of detethering. And we're going to see something else happen at the same time with China's central bank digital currency. China's already, with WeChat and Alipay.
One thing about WeChat that's fascinating: Tencent, the parent company, one of their biggest investors was a South African telecom company.
Peter McCormack: Really?
Amanda Cavaleri: Really. So, you look at what is China's end goal? I think they trade with 128 more countries than the US trades with, in volume, so they're already winning on the trade war. So, what's going to happen when they make all these countries settle on their CBDC. They've already, with WeChat and Alipay, been moving --
Peter McCormack: We fight this.
Amanda Cavaleri: They've been moving into merchant payments around the world in other countries, and those are basically state-owned entities now that are probably, I don't know, theoretically might go onto the CBDC. So, we look at what's happening around the world, the US is in a very precarious situation where they're losing their stronghold very quickly.
So, what's going to take place of that is probably a country like China. So, when they're moving into Africa, South America, that becomes a really different national security and geopolitical issue. So we have to think, okay, people aren't going for the dollar; their other option is the CBDC. Let's give them a Bitcoin option as well, at least at the community level. So, I think that's a really important thing to consider as we move through all of this, is it's not Bitcoin or the US dollar, I think it's Bitcoin and the US dollar, and then these other entities.
CJ Wilson: And if those are the two rails, that's a better thing for America, realistically, and for some of these other countries, because default risk is the biggest problem in any kind of lending issue. So recently, and what China's been really good at, is when they buy our Treasury bills, they have exposure to US dollars, they turn right around and use those US dollars to buy assets, strategic assets. Or they lend that money, and then they basically lend at a higher rate than they're paying us.
So, we give them a note at 2%; they turn around and give the Ugandan Airport Commission a 6% loan, or something like that. The Ugandan Airport Commission can't fulfil their things, and now China says, "Thank you".
Peter McCormack: "We own that".
CJ Wilson: "Now we own your airport".
Amanda Cavaleri: And ports…
Peter McCormack: Belt and Road.
CJ Wilson: But owning an airport is really interesting, because you can land things that you own at your own airport. So, in the same way that we've had strategic airports in various theatres around the world, and that's really what's given us, as a military power, first-strike capabilities. So, if China suddenly has a Ugandan airport, where's the range for that Ugandan airport?
Then, if that allows them to get a Moroccan airport, or whatever, then eventually are they going to have a Portuguese airport? This is a big problem, and this is where Bitcoin allows African nations specifically, if they get with it, then they can say no to the cheap loans, because just like El Salvador, they could turn around and say, "You know what? We've got a waterfall. We'll do waterfall mining. If they've got a volcano node, we'll do a waterfall node", or whatever, and they can mine there, and there's no reason why they shouldn't.
That's one of the biggest arguments, is that if everybody is participating in that, then all it does is -- it doesn't mean that one country is suddenly going to be the new richest country in the world. But what it does mean is that every country's base level of wealth goes up, then they won't be so reliant on tyrannical regimes, or some sort of predatory lending. I mean effectively, when you take a loan from China for infrastructure, as an African country, it's like a pay-day loan. You're not going to be able to pay that back.
Peter McCormack: Of course, they know that.
CJ Wilson: But they're so desperate for a high time preference result, and that's the problem. So, Bitcoin is the opposite of that, and if you coach them through that, then you can see them looking at -- "them" meaning the rulers of the banking regimes in these different areas. And if they have a populace, like Nigeria does, that is very bitcoinised, then they cannot effectively isolate that class, if that class is a majority inside the nation, because there will be a consequence.
Peter McCormack: But we're in a high time preference world. Everything is high time preference and we're gradually seeing people win by moving to a low time preference. MicroStrategy has won.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, and he's literally used all the levers of the traditional financial system to make himself wealthier than he ever would have been using the traditional finance system, because he's had Bitcoin as the extra catapult to get up that extra plateau. Then, once you get to that plateau, even a small business like my business, we've been buying Bitcoin, we buy the dip and all that other stuff, so if Bitcoin goes up in value, then eventually I could re-collateralise my Bitcoin, I could take a loan against my Bitcoin, not sell it, and then either get more Bitcoin, or pay down other debts, or whatever else and then, getting back to this conversation we were having offline, if you can avoid debt, avoid going into debt in the first place, then that's a huge victory.
So you have these guys, like Dave Ramsey, or whatever, who's a big podcaster guy in America.
Peter McCormack: Number one investment podcast in the USA.
CJ Wilson: Right, and he's like, "Don't buy Bitcoin, don't buy individual stocks, don't buy this other stuff", and it's like, well that might have worked 30 years ago, because it didn't exist.
Peter McCormack: Not now, Dave.
CJ Wilson: Not now, Dave. Sorry, Dave.
Peter McCormack: Shut the fuck up, Dave.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, exactly. Let people buy Bitcoin, because literally the DCA thing, and this is where Swan does such a great job, now they have a calculator in the front of their website. So they're like, "Hey, for the past two years, if you would have put $10 in a week, this is what would happen".
Peter McCormack: You'd have £17 gazillion!
CJ Wilson: Correct, yeah, exactly. I mean, Bitcoin's such a romantic idea in a lot of ways, and that's, I think, one of the reasons why politicians sort of sweep it away, because they're like, "Oh, that's cute, dreamers, your little Austrian Economics", and stuff like that, "but we've got real-world crises that we've got to fix". And it's like, "You have those because of the stupid printing of the money and these other things that we've done". The mistakes we've made have led us to the bigger mistakes.
Peter McCormack: The more case studies and examples we can build of strong companies and institutions, or even individuals, just because they change their time preference, the better it is. I was talking to Nic Carter about this the other day and talking about the moment I realised -- I think it was Nic, or it may have been Brandon Quittem, or maybe both; but that moment where you realise you're on a Bitcoin standard. Everyone's different, but it wasn't because you own a certain amount of Bitcoin, or even 95% of your wealth in Bitcoin, that wasn't the moment.
I'm looking to buy a new house and historically it would be, "What's the biggest deposit I can put down; what's the lowest interest rate; and, when can I pay this mortgage off by?" Now it's not. It's, "What's the smallest deposit I can put down; what's the longest mortgage I can get at the lowest interest rate?" because I want to have that all in Bitcoin. My mortgage is a speculative attack against the pound.
CJ Wilson: Right.
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah.
CJ Wilson: And then, what's the inflation rate of the house, pricewise, what's the value inflation proposition over the next 10 or 15 years of the house versus the pound versus Bitcoin? So, you really have three elements now dictating every decision you make. Every purchase decision is, what does it cost me today in Bitcoin? What's that going to cost me in the future? And then, what's the good going to cost me in the future in pounds? What's the good going to cost me in Bitcoin? What's the purchase going to cost me in Bitcoin in opportunity cost?
So, you're educating people, which is the firmest, strongest word that everybody can agree on. The more educated the populace is, the better decisions they're going to make, because you start to make more logical decisions instead of desperate decisions. When people are desperate, they make terrible decisions. They make terrible decisions when they're desperate, and so when you have this other element that allows you to slow down, low time preference, take a better look at things and have a more cohesive world view, as a result of the fact of the fact that you're not in such a panic, because you're like, "Okay, I've been buying Bitcoin for however many years", or whatever, because five years from now, the people that got in this year, even if they got in at $50,000, they'll be sitting a lot prettier.
Peter McCormack: They'll have done their tour of service, tour of duty.
Amanda Cavaleri: Exactly. You get your battle wounds.
CJ Wilson: Yeah, and that's hard to relate to people though that are new to it. But when people have been it for, even I'd say three to six months, and they've seen that volatility ride around and they're like, "Okay, I'm just accepting this", then they're able to get through it.
Peter McCormack: Well, listen, it's a tough sell to say, "Just give it four years; you'll get it". They're like "What do you mean four years? What the fuck?"!
Amanda Cavaleri: That's trying to think of Bitcoin as a savings technology for early people. Okay, fine, you keep cash in a savings account. Well, that's not doing anything for you, so at least take a percentage of that savings, or all of that savings if you're feeling brave and you don't have the same responsibilities as maybe others, you have a higher risk tolerance, and maybe think about putting that into Bitcoin.
So, it's thinking first, I think, savings and then once you get it, and I think you start getting it, I think pain is a big teacher, so these ups and downs. If you can stomach that and you can ride the waves, it pays off in the end. But humans don't generally learn without pain, in some way. So, I think that's the interesting part about this. So many Americans are in so much pain right now. I think the cost of things are going up; their kids, it's been tough schooling kids at home for a year; you've lost probably older relatives, someone's passed away in your family. There's been a lot of emotional, real pain.
So, if you can transfer that into something so that you're part of something bigger than yourself as well, I think that's why we get so excited about this, because this is so much bigger than just you. It's like when I go hiking in the mountains, it's a very humbling experience. You're up there, if a storm comes in, you get struck by lightning, that's it.
Peter McCormack: You're gone.
Amanda Cavaleri: You're gone.
Peter McCormack: Bye bye.
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah, maybe, or you have superpowers, I don't know.
CJ Wilson: Jury's out.
Peter McCormack: Jury's out.
Amanda Cavaleri: Maybe you've been struck by lightning.
CJ Wilson: That's why I don't sleep! But it is cool and I think the quote is, I believe, "Come to get rich, stay for the revolution".
Peter McCormack: "Came for the gain, stayed for the revolution".
CJ Wilson: Yeah, exactly. And I think once you've been in it long enough, then you've met your critical mass of Bitcoin people in the social network. Then, those freedom narratives start to go around a lot more.
Amanda Cavaleri: And equality, right. The levelling of the playing field, the stories that we were hearing from people that didn't look like me, frankly, that we were writing this book with, some of the stories that they're getting are totally different from the stories that I'm getting. So your communities are so different, and just the way that it empowers people. And we went over everything from people of colour to domestic violence. We touched a lot of these issues that was hard, helping to edit or write some of these things, because it's like, "This is heavy".
It is heavy, and it is actually a really useful tool for people. Why wouldn't you want people to know how to use these things to their benefit, especially if they're born into a situation, or they found themselves in a situation that's much less than the American dream.
Peter McCormack: Well, we need to get this book out, in front of a lot of people, not let the politicians fuck this up for us, because they are the threat.
CJ Wilson: They are a threat, and I think their ambition is a threat, that's the issue. So, it's on both sides of the coin, because you have some that could maybe bastardise it by taking it the wrong way, then you have other people that want to oppress it outright, because it limits their ability to oppress.
Peter McCormack: Fuck you, Brad Sherman!
Amanda Cavaleri: At the same time, you have these staffers that are trying to make a name for themselves, and I think most staffers don't move here, because they want to make the country a worse place. They have ideals and beliefs and they're here to add value in their way.
Peter McCormack: They're so cute and naïve!
Amanda Cavaleri: I know! And when you give them the tools to be able to do that and you can speak their language and help them have these stories, or these talking points, or these numbers, and really put their head around it, it enables them to communicate it in a different way, where maybe they didn't have this little tool set before. And I think if it were easy, someone else would have done it.
So I fully expect some people not to like this book and be upset about it, but it needs to be done and I hope it motivates people that aren't happy with it to write other books, keep going. This was because we were coming to DC and getting asked these questions nonstop, so we're trying to address the biggest FUD issues, the biggest misconceptions, and so there's a real reason why we wrote the chapters the way we did, and definitely won't resonate, not every chapter's going to resonate with everyone, and not everyone's going to resonate with domestic abuse, for example. But some people might and they'll be like, "Oh my God, I never thought of that".
So, that's the point. There's a little bit of something for everyone, we hope, and definitely looking forward to getting it out in the world and seeing what happens, and I really hope that not just we, in DC, make an impact with this, but also at the state level, and maybe even at the international level, especially in these developing countries, where maybe the CBDC's coming in. That's a big deal too.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so listen, if people want to get this, how are they going to be able to get it; Have you got somewhere they can register yet?
CJ Wilson: Yeah, so what we're going to do is we're going to do a kickstarter, and then we're going to have some packages and stuff like that, whether it's the Bitcoin Conference, or our book-release party and some experiences tied to that. I think you're going to do the Metallica concert, is that right? No, I'm just kidding! So, there's some ideas around that we haven't fully developed, because we were just focused on the book, but we do have a Twitter account, I guess. It's @BTC_coalition, and that's where Amanda, Jimmy and I work, as the nonprofit, to educate the politicians. Our website is live now, it should be live.
Amanda Cavaleri: Yeah, I think it's bitcointodaycoalition.org.
Peter McCormack: Well, everyone knows CJ, he's been on before; but Amanda, if they want to follow you also, where do they find you?
Amanda Cavaleri: Twitter's probably easiest, or LinkedIn, if it's more business oriented, @Amanda_Cavaleri.
Peter McCormack: We will put that in the show notes. Thanks for coming on, Amanda, it was great to have you here.
Amanda Cavaleri: Good to see you.
Peter McCormack: Good to see you, CJ.
CJ Wilson: Good to see you, man.
Peter McCormack: I've got to head to New York.
Amanda Cavaleri: Maybe I'll see you up there?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, in a few days. I love you both.
CJ Wilson: Orange pill some New Yorkers, man, they're tough.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, they need it.
Amanda Cavaleri: They do!
CJ Wilson: They do, with those rising rent costs.
Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, I'd probably have to show them my vaccine passport first, "Can I talk to you about Bitcoin?" "Where's your passport?"
CJ Wilson: Well, the world's a very connected place, right, and if Bitcoin connects more of the world, more people benefit. So, whether that's New York or Jamaica, or whatever, it doesn't matter. Hopefully this creates, like Amanda said, some pain and some friction and some resistance and some reaction. That's it.
Peter McCormack: Let's do it. Laters, love you both.
