WBD480 Audio Transcription

Truth, Energy, & Bitcoin with Marty Bent

Interview date: Friday 25th March

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Marty Bent. 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.

Marty Bent is the founder of the Bitcoin focused media company TFTC.io, Venture Partner at Ten31, and Director of Cathedra Bitcoin. In this interview, we discuss resisting centralised narratives around the Ukraine/Russia conflict and the push for ESG and renewable energy.

“Once you have international trade getting settled in Bitcoin instead of the dollar, I think that’s when you’ll know: alright, we’re under a Bitcoin standard. ”

— Marty Bent

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Marty.

Marty Bent: Peter.

Peter McCormack: How are you doing?

Marty Bent: Doing well.

Peter McCormack: Are you all settled here now?

Marty Bent: I am, I think I am.  It feels good to be here.  Moved here in October.  It's beginning of March, yeah, I think we're settled.  I'm trying to get my studio settled at the Bitcoin Commons.

Peter McCormack: At the Unchained place?

Marty Bent: Yes, there's a lot of supply chain issues.

Peter McCormack: Still going on?

Marty Bent: Still going on.  And a couch was supposed to be delivered last week.  They just emailed me, "It's going to be here in May".

Peter McCormack: Oh, fuck, man.  Because, you were talking about that with your dad, right, before, with the coffee.

Marty Bent: Oh, with the coffee, yeah.  Shoutout to House Cup Coffee.  They had supply chain issues with their plastic cups.  That started about the middle of last year.  They couldn't buy any more cups from China, they had to go to a supplier in New Hampshire, which was significantly more expensive just to get cups.  Then they negotiate annual bean deals for the coffee that they purchase, and prices were up anywhere from 25% to 40%, depending on the particular bean.

Peter McCormack: Holy shit!

Marty Bent: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Does that mean they've just had to up their prices 25% to 40% themselves?

Marty Bent: I don't know if they've done an exact 25% to 40% rise, but they did have to raise prices and communicate that with their clients.

Peter McCormack: You see, this is the weird thing with all of these inflation numbers, because nobody I'm speaking to is telling me, "Our stock prices are going up 5% [or] 7%", everyone's like 20%, 40%.  It's kind of bullshit.

Marty Bent: Yeah, it's scary what's going on right now, trying to control a complex system like an economy, and you have these negative externalities of prices going up because you've fucked up the supply chain.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, man.  Well, listen, thanks for coming on.  I pitched at you an idea for a show, I'm going to explain to the people listening.  We essentially have the same -- well, we've both got multiple jobs, because we're fucking idiot bitcoiners who just get ourselves super-busy.  But we have one job that's very similar: you have a podcast, I have a podcast, we're both bitcoiners, but I always feel like we approach things almost from the opposite sides.  And I thought that would be a useful thing to talk about, because I think one of the primary reasons is a cultural thing.

I'm from the UK, we're in Europe, we're very different from Americans, and for me it would be a useful way of trying to -- in talking it through with you, it also explains to the audience why I think that happens.  Does that make any sense?

Marty Bent: Yeah, it makes total sense.

Peter McCormack: And I think what it is, is in the UK and Europe, we're very collectivist.  And everything which is on the right in the UK is probably still centre, or considered left in a lot of parts of the US.  I think healthcare is a prime example, in that we have this National Health system that everyone loves, but we all pay into it.  I think these kinds of thing condition you as a British person, or a European, to kind of think more collectivist.

Marty Bent: I can see it.  It's starting to leak into American culture too.  I mean, our healthcare system is on the way to becoming completely nationalised.  I mean, you had the Obamacare Act, the Care Act.  It has brought some of that healthcare collectivism to the United States.  I don't think of it as a good thing.

Peter McCormack: You don't think it's a good thing?

Marty Bent: No, it just increased prices and reduces the quality of the service, in my opinion, from what I've seen, as an American who's seen the effects of that particular creep of collectivism in the healthcare system into our country.

Peter McCormack: I think you're right on the quality of service and, not just the day-to-day quality, but what you have access to.  It's like this thing in the UK whereby you'll see a fundraiser for a child who's got cancer, and they're always coming to the US for treatment, because we don't have the cancer treatment care that you have, or the highest quality.  So, that's something that's quite obvious; we always look to the US, "Oh, they have much better cancer care".  Our trade-off is you don't have that, but if you break your arm, you can phone up an ambulance, it picks you up, you get your arm fixed and you go home.  There's no bill and nobody's ever scared of a bill, and that's a weird trade-off.  I always think it probably depends sometimes financially where you are, whether you want that trade-off or not.

Marty Bent: Well, that's actually interesting, because when the Care Act got instituted here in the United States, the way it worked is, once you turned 26, if you're on your parents' healthcare, which I was, you get kicked off your parents' healthcare and had to fend for yourself.  And if you didn't sign up for the Care's healthcare, you got fined; I believe it was $1,200.  So, at that point in time, I was 26, got kicked off my parents' healthcare, and I was unemployed at that point in time, wasn't making too much money.  I was working some odd jobs and stuff like that, and I wanted to make the decision, willing to risk it, not having to pay for healthcare month-on-month now, because I don't have a steady stream of income, and I got fined $1,200, which at that point in my life was a material amount of money and I was like, "What the fuck?  I'm completely willing to take the risk of not having healthcare".

Peter McCormack: Did you know about this?  I've never heard of this.  Fuck.  And they fine you and then, what, they leave you alone for a year, or you have to get it?

Marty Bent: Yeah, that's the way I remember it.  By the time I'd turned 27, I'd gotten a job and was getting healthcare from my employer.  But at 26, when I was unemployed, I was thinking, "I don't really need healthcare" and I got fined for it.

Peter McCormack: Fuck!  So, when you look at something like the UK's health system, you've heard of the NHS, right?  Do you observe that and think, "I wouldn't agree with that", or do you think it's more like a transition from what you have here to what we have just doesn't work, because sometimes it's the transition which makes it difficult?

Marty Bent: Well, the thing is, I would take a step back and just look at healthcare in general, not even if it's nationalised or free market, which I would argue the American healthcare system hasn't really been too free market for quite a while, because bureaucracy and regulations have seeped in, which has created layers of red tape and inefficiencies that have led to a decrease in quality over time.  Likewise, in the UK, I think -- I mean, I can't really speak too much to the UK system, because I've never experienced going to an NHS-associated hospital or doctor's office, but I imagine the experience is somewhat similar, where you go into a hospital and it's just a bunch of white lights.

Peter McCormack: Four-hour wait.

Marty Bent: Four-hour wait, bunch of beeping noises and it's very hectic and chaotic and it's a very stressful situation in these hospitals, at least here in the United States like we have.  Even when my wife gave birth to our son, it's like she gave birth and then we can't even sleep, because they're coming in and just annoying us, because they have to do these check-ins and all that.  From that perspective, I think the experience of treating an individual, that being United States or the UK, has been pushed into this form-fitted framework of, "You need to use this equipment, your building needs to look this way using these lights", and it's just a very, almost dehumanising and brutalist experience from the design. 

If you go to a lot of the hospitals in the United States, there's no natural light coming in through the windows, or anything like that, just these very stuffy rooms.  I'm going down a tangent right now.  I'm just trying to paint the picture of bureaucracy creeping in and forcing these hospitals and these doctors' offices to look and feel a certain way, and for procedures to creep in that may not be necessary if the bureaucracy and the regulations were thrust on them by the federal government, which represents some form of collectivism.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so there's two observations I've had with it.  I didn't even realise we'd talk about healthcare, but two observations, one from the US and one from the UK.  We've got this parallel private system in the UK, because the NHS is creaking.  So, I phoned up to get a doctor's appointment for something that wasn't that serious, and it was a three-week wait for an appointment, which was like, "What the fuck?"  I'd probably be better in three weeks.  But we've got this private doctors that's opened up on the high street in Bedford, and you can get an appointment for the same day, but you pay £50, whereas in the doctors, it's free.  It's £50 and you get an appointment, get a full set of blood tests for like £120, they do all the COVID tests for when you're going away.

But this parallel system exists where if you're willing to pay that £50, you can get seen that day, which is great.  And then, we also have this private parallel insurance system, whereby I am fully covered, this will probably amaze you, I'm fully covered, both my kids are fully covered, the highest level cover you can have, full cancer care, so if you're diagnosed with cancer, they begin immediate treatment; whereas the NHS, there can be a three-, four-, five-month wait.  And I pay £180 a month, which compared to the US system, it's a lot cheaper.

Marty Bent: Oh, yeah.

Peter McCormack: And it's weird how that's come about, but I think it's part subsidised by the NHS, because it takes a bit of pressure off them.  Then, I've got this other observation from the US, being a private system, whereby I've noticed this thing, I've talked about it before, when I'm watching the TV in the US, the adverts, every third advert is for a drug for a condition I've never heard of.

Marty Bent: Yeah, I think we're the only country in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise the way they do, which is pretty disgusting.  I mean, I have a lot of qualms with big pharma and their incentive models, and whether or not they actually serve to heal people, or they view them as customers that revenue can be eked out of.

But to your point about that private medical system you get, it reminds me of what we call, what do we call them here?  Urgent Care, that's what it's called, Urgent Care medical providers, where you can go the same day, pay a flat fee for something.  That's something I prefer.  I think I've had to do that before, where I probably had to get a blood test or get prescribed an antibiotic or something like that.  I'll go to Urgent Care and just pay that.  But yeah, here in the United States, even though you pay for insurance, the deductibles are insane.

Peter McCormack: They're like $10,000, right, or something?

Marty Bent: Yeah, it depends on what plan you have.  But yeah, to even reap the benefits of the insurance that you're paying into, you have to spend a shit ton of money upfront on top of your monthly payment you're already paying.  The healthcare system in the United States, even though compared to the UK is less socialised, it's still very socialised and very fucked up, in my opinion.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I understand the fears and issues with big pharma, and I always think about, if you didn't have state regulation, for example, would big pharma be worse or better?

Marty Bent: I don't know.

Peter McCormack: It's a tough one, because these incentive models of individuals or the greed unchecked could perhaps be even worse.

Marty Bent: Yeah, the pharmaceutical industries, Pfizer, and I think maybe the company behind Percocet, have paid the biggest fines in history for any industry ever.  But still, that wasn't even enough to deter them from still pushing dangerous things on the populace.  So, I think the incentive model needs to change from the perspective of reprimanding these companies when they do something wrong.  People need to go to jail.  The people who owned and pushed, I forget what the name of the family is, but they pushed opiates on the masses over the last two decades and it led to an epidemic.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, they've made a lot of money on the opioid crisis.

Marty Bent: Yeah, those people should be in jail.

Danny Knowles: Sackler.

Marty Bent: Yeah, the Sacklers, there we go.  Yeah, so the Sacklers made billions of dollars.  They did pay fines, but there was a cost of doing business and they're living a very cushy lifestyle after inducing an epidemic on many areas throughout the country, poor neighbourhoods, rich neighbourhoods and the incentives that we've set up in our judicial system are, "All right, you pay the fine, go about your life".  Those people should probably be in jail, then I think you'd see better actions from the industry, because they'd have that looming threat in their mind about, "If I mess up, it's possible I could get sent to prison.

Peter McCormack: It's a bit like the Financial Crisis.

Marty Bent: Exactly, yeah.

Peter McCormack: It's exactly the same scenario, and I think that's one of the differences.  Because the NHS struggles for money, the incentive model is to treat you as little as possible.  We have this thing called NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, and the decide the drug treatments they will give.  And every now and again, a new, amazing wonder drug comes on the market, and it might be a treatment for, I don't know, cancer for example, and they have to make a decision whether they're going to allow it, because it could be £1 million, £2 million, £3 million per treatment.  And sometimes they reject drugs, because they say the NHS can't afford it.

So, our model's very much, "What's the minimum we can treat people and get away with it?", and I feel like the US one is, "What's the maximum we can treat people?" and neither are right.

Marty Bent: Yeah, and again it's incentives driving all this.  There's a lot of money to be made, especially round medical patents.  That's another rabbit hole you can dive down, like are medical patents actually ethical if you have something that could save somebody's life?  Then you get into the old debate of, yes, they spend a lot of initial investment on their research, and it took a lot of money to get to the end product, so the company that took all that risk should be rewarded by it, but I think there's a happy middle somewhere where we can agree that if these drugs are lifesaving, we should figure out a way to get them to people as affordable as possible.

But even beyond that too, like you mentioned the commercials, like a bunch of SSRIs, "Are you depressed?  Can you not sleep?  Come take our pill, that will make you happier".  Number one, they don't even do that, and they'll list the side effects too like, "There's a potential that you might become suicidal and kill yourself, you'll have bleeding from your pancreas", whatever.  I don't think that's one!

Peter McCormack: Probably is!

Marty Bent: But there's minutes of side effects that are listed on these commercials and it's disgusting.  In American society, at this point in time, that's always the first option, "You have a problem?  Take a pill".  That's one thing that dismays me as an American, is that we don't really talk about preventative measures that can be taken like, "Why are you depressed?  Maybe it's your diet that's affecting you, maybe you're not working out enough".  We know that if you work out and you're fit, you have confidence, your serotonin levels are good, your testosterone levels are good.  If you're a male, you're well-balanced and you're less likely to get ailments that would require you to take a pill.

Peter McCormack: Marty, you don't make any money telling people how to live a good life.

Marty Bent: Exactly!

Peter McCormack: You just want them to eat shit and take a pill.

Marty Bent: Well, I mean, that's why we're into Bitcoin, right.  We hope that flipping that incentive system, worrying about quarterly returns and revenue and just having access to cheap debt that will allow you to do things, invest in things that probably aren't overall beneficial to society, but could be beneficial to your bottom line.

Peter McCormack: Let's talk about Bitcoin; that's what we're here for, dude.  Did you start your podcast about the same time as me, end of 2017, start of 2018?

Marty Bent: September 2017, I believe, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think I was November 2017?

Danny Knowles: Yeah, November, I think.

Peter McCormack: So, we've pretty much lived through the same experience.  How do you take it all in?  Because firstly, it's fucking wild seeing it all happen and being in the middle of it, it's just fucking wild.  The last week alone, we've seen an army raising money in Bitcoin, we've seen what's happened with the truckers, but there's just so much wild shit happening, and it seems to be like this hockey stick of activity around Bitcoin.  How do you take these last four years in?

Marty Bent: I mean, it's been a wild ride for me personally.  I mean, when I started the podcast, I was at Barstool Sports selling podcast advertisements across their suite of podcasts on their network.  At that point obviously, I was doing the newsletter and started the podcast and really wanted to get into Bitcoin full time, and was able to do that via Great American Mining in 2018, 2019.  Then got into the mining industry, and it's surreal to see what has happened since the summer, fall, winter of 2017, 2018, because bitcoiners have been talking about this happening forever; not forever, but since the network launched.

If you go back to bitcointalk.org, a lot of the scenarios that are played out in reality were discussed there.  Like, "Yeah, there will be a time where the central bank, after 2008, obviously they're printing a bunch of money, they're going to continue printing money" and of course, that's happened, "You're going to have increased friction on the international stage that's going to push people away from the dollar and towards Bitcoin", that's happening right now, "You're going to have politicians coming at Bitcoin, because it helps people evade sanctions and evade having to use the US dollar" and that's happening right now.

It's just funny seeing how prescient a lot of bitcoiners were in the early days, and how a lot of the things that people discussed for many years were laughed at for discussing are coming to fruition.

Peter McCormack: But I even doubted a lot of it myself.  When I read my first paper, I think it was on Nakamoto Institute, about hyperbitcoinisation, I was like, "Yeah, but come on.  I get it, Bitcoin's this amazing asset and yeah, we can send it around the world and yeah, it has all these benefits.  But really, hyperbitcoinisation?  Do you really believe this can happen?" because I had my doubts.  I don't know if you were a believer the whole time, but I just couldn't see it.  But now, it feels like it's kind of happening.

Marty Bent: Yeah, and going back to the Nakamoto Institute, I think the precursor to hyperbitcoinisation is a speculative attack, that piece that Pierre wrote, and we're witnessing speculative attacks happening, in many ways, whether it be El Salvador putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet and making it legal tender and going pretty all in; or, you see Michael Saylor and other CEOs now putting it on their balance sheet, issuing cheap dollar debt to buy Bitcoin to speculative attack; the dollar's inevitable debasement, that's coming to fruition as well.

I think, what's gone on in the last two weeks is, I think, going to accelerate things.  I don't think people really understand quite yet how quickly things can change once you have this bifurcation on the international level of monetary systems, because it seems like Russia, China, other countries are going to begin hedging their economies against the dollar system, seeing what's gone on with the sanctions.  I think the second half of 2022 is going to be wild in terms of what goes on on the international stage, and how Bitcoin performs in that environment.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's wild to see a country, first of all, get cancelled.

Marty Bent: What do you think about the Chelsea owner being forced to sell?

Peter McCormack: That's a really interesting question and as ever, I'm going to go straight down the middle and deviate to both sides, because there's lots of bits you can talk about with this, and I wonder where we agree or disagree on this stuff.  But firstly, I think the starting point has to be for me, to think about Roman Abramovich, I have to think about, why has this war happened and is there any justification?  Usually, I come to no, because I struggle to justify any war.  I mean, I think you can justify World War II, I think you can justify, was it Vietnam who went to Cambodia during Pol Pot, when he was basically murdering everyone; was that Vietnam?

Marty Bent: That wasn't Vietnam.

Peter McCormack: Not in the Vietnam War; who entered into Cambodia to defend -- I thought it was the Vietnamese who went in there.  But anyway, there are certain things you can go, "Okay, I understand that".  I used to think that the Balkans War, that was justified, but actually I think it was Scott Horton I heard talk about that and explain actually what was happening, and perhaps that should have been reconsidered.  I don't know enough to talk about it.

But when you start trying to dive into the weeds of why this has happened, you can kind of guess, or see there's different people explaining different reasons.  Is Putin trying to defend Russia from a Nazi battalion of about 800 people and demilitarise it; or, is it a justified defence of the borders by having a neutral country?  I don't know, but I struggle to ever justify a war.  And I didn't feel like we were at the point where a full invasion of a sovereign country was necessary.

So, if that's happening, is there a duty to protect Ukraine, is there a duty to get involved and if so, what duty?  I certainly think we might agree that the US and the UK getting involved in some kind of military conflict would be a terrible escalation.

Marty Bent: That would not be good.

Peter McCormack: So, we have to accept what's happening.  But should the West be doing anything?  I have to start from the point, do I think what Russia's doing is wrong?  And, I do.  I don't know if you do.

Marty Bent: Yeah.  Well, we had a little -- you responded to a tweet I sent last week where it was like, "People may not like to hear this, but Russia and China have been playing long-term games behind the scenes".

Peter McCormack: I disagreed with you, didn't I?

Marty Bent: Yes, but I think after we disagreed in 280 characters, I think if we have a discussion about it, maybe we can come to an agreement where basically what I said, Russia and China are playing long-term games and they're beating the West.  The West, like here in the United States, we're worried about whether or not soldiers are putting genders in their bios and things, worrying about woke politics at the military level, and very distracted in focusing on things, whether it be in the military, or in the broader economy, that is being of significant detriment to, I would argue, the safety, security and ability for us to actually compete on the global scale.

Where, China and Russia are playing long-term games, China especially, but Russia has been playing a long-term game as well.  If you look at their gold stockpiles over the last two decades, they've actively been accumulating as much gold as possible, China similarly.  They've been dumping US Treasuries behind the scenes.  Both of them, even though China still has a lot of Treasuries, they have been hedging away from them, and this has been going on for decades.  I'm not saying that their long-term strategies are good for their citizens, or the world at large, but you have to recognise that they have been playing long-term games. 

Russia specifically has been playing a long-term game, where they've been accumulating gold, and they've been trying to shift the balance of power in their part of the world, by getting the western countries over in Europe, specifically the UK and some parts of the United States, dependent on their resources.  That's the thing, they've been playing long-term psychological operation games too.  They've invested in campaigns, media campaigns and NGO campaigns to besmirch natural gas and nuclear proliferation in Europe and in the West.  At the same time, they're drilling for natural gas and accumulating a lot of hard assets and commodities that the rest of the world is dependent on.

Over here in the West, we're wondering whether or not you should call somebody he, she, it or they, or just bickering amongst ourselves, while these two rising powers, China more specifically and more of a threat than Russia, I would argue, are playing these long-term games and positioning themselves to have a lot of leverage over the West, and they've successfully done that.  So, to your point, what can we do as the West, no, I don't think we should enter this conflict at all.  What we should do is recognise that we've been getting played like a fiddle by Russia and China in a lot of regards, and they've successfully convinced us to make our countries less secure, particularly via energy policy.

So, you could make a very strong argument, and I believe this wholeheartedly, if Russia didn't have as much control over Europe's fuel source with natural gas and their food source, via wheat and fertiliser being produced by natural gas by-products, then they probably wouldn't have had the confidence to invade Ukraine, because they wouldn't have had any leverage on the back end of that invasion.

Peter McCormack: And now we're seeing gas prices in Europe go through the roof.  I mean, my power bill came in one month, and it had tripled, it's fucking tripled!  I mean, I'm fine, I can afford it, but a lot of people are going to be looking at it going, "Holy shit, I can't heat my home".  Anyway, besides the point, I mean I completely agree with you on that.  But the point I get to is should the West do anything to defend the Ukraine?  Are any of the actions that they've taken to try and build leverage -- and I come at it like two different points: okay, perhaps they should, because they should help the Ukraine, they are a sovereign nation that's being attacked; but does it really harm the right people?  It doesn't make a difference.  We know with sanctions, they just never work, they just harm the people, they never harm the leaders.  So, is that worth doing?  I don't know.

The problem is, is the West has just typically gone completely fucking overboard with this.  I think forms of financial pressure, you can debate.  But when I see the Russian driver for the Haas F1 team removed from the team because he's Russian, I just see that as completely and utterly wrong.  He's a racing car driver, it's not his fucking fault.  And when I see a film festival ban Russian films, I just see that as cultural censorship and I don't think that achieves -- that flips me to want to defend Russia.  I'm saying, "This is bullshit".  It's like BLM.

Do you remember during the BLM protests, whereby the movement itself was kind of weird, but at the same time, it did make me want to research and understand if there are any ingrained unfair pressures on black communities, I wanted to learn about it?  But at the same time, the whole movement just became weird, and every day you would get five emails from people who you were on their mailing list, telling you their Black Lives Matter policy.  Now, it's like everyone's got their Russia policy, but it's a policy of just compete cancelling.

So, when we look at that, I go, "I don't agree with removing film festivals, I don't agree with removing a racing car driver.  Do I agree with certain financial pressures?  I think I do".  So then you say about Roman Abramovich, targeting the Oligarchs.  I mean, they're essentially just taking money from these people.  But then, the point of view I come up with the oligarchs, I think these are essentially a Mafia organisation, and the head of the Mafia is Putin, in one way.  And there's this really great podcast series on Audible about the background to the oligarchs, and they essentially pillaged the nation and took the money out of Russia, they haven't returned it to the Russian people.  So, is that ill-gotten gains?  Is it actually justified to seize this money?  I don't know.  I can see an argument for and an argument against.  But if you do seize it, are you going to return it to the Russians?

Marty Bent: Exactly!

Peter McCormack: Are you going to Robinhood this back as an Airdrop back to the Russians?  No.  So, I don't know, I'm split on it.  I think what it does, it highlights that -- for me, it's a very similar scenario to the Canadian truckers.  What we're getting are these different pockets around the world that are highlighting, it doesn't matter who you are or where you are, your assets can be seized, whether you're a Russian billionaire, a Canadian trucker, somebody just raising money for truckers; whoever you are, you can have your money seized at any point, and everybody should be scared of that.

Marty Bent: Yeah, I mean world capital is creeping into everything, even war now.

Peter McCormack: What do you think of sanctions, or the kinds of pressures that have been put on Russia and targeting oligarchs?  Do you fundamentally disagree with it, or do you see an argument for it?

Marty Bent: I think I fundamentally disagree because, just like you said, what are they going to do, seize the money and then airdrop it back to the Russian citizens?  No.  So I think what do we do going forward?  It's very hard to do.  Again, I'm not a geopolitical or political science expert, but if it were me, again I really like Jocko Willink's theory of extreme ownership, or his mantra of extreme ownership.

What we should do, I don't think we should do anything retroactively, we should just assess the situation as it is now.  Look, we've gotten to a point where, we antagonise Russia, we allow them to develop an insane amount of leverage by producing energy assets while convincing the West to not produce them.  We should recognise that we fucked up and try to de-escalate.  That was the thing that I think President Biden was completely irresponsible last week when he said, "You have two options: sanctions or World War III".

Peter McCormack: Hold on, there's a third one.

Marty Bent: Yeah, there's, "Let's meet at the table and, okay, even though we don't like you as an autocratic dictator, Vladimir Putin, we do recognise that you don't want military bases, United States, UN, NATO military bases right on your border with guns pointed at you and your people.  We will agree to back off and separate and not approach Ukraine to join NATO or the EU.  We will respect your wishes in that regard, and then you can de-escalate the situation".  Then from there, it's like, okay, we still don't like Putin, he's a dictator, he's an autocrat, he is jailing people, poisoning dissidents, poisoning political opponents.

Peter McCormack: Murdering journalists.

Marty Bent: Murdering journalists and stuff like that.  But to avoid direct conflict, we should reduce his leverage by making ourselves as energy-independent and secure as possible, and basically allowing free markets to solve the problem of the amount of leverage that has been thrown towards Russia and China's way.

I mean, that's the other thing too, if you get into an escalation, like China's going to get dragged in too, and that's a very scary proposition everybody should be actively and ardently trying to avoid.  But the sad thing is, I don't have faith that the US or European nations, the NATO nations are going to be able to do this.  These people, at the end of the day, whether it be the US Government, the French Government the UK Government, politicians, what we have is an extremely sad situation.  The people of Ukraine, the people of Russia and if we get dragged into this, the people of the West, the citizens, me and you, we're just pawns in a proxy war between sociopathic kleptocrats, who are just in a big dick-measuring contest.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's the thing about Russia as well.  It's like 144 million people have just seen their savings eviscerated over the last week.

Marty Bent: Yeah, it's an extremely slippery slope.  I mean, it may seem bombastic, you're watching the West turn into somewhat Nazis right now!  I saw videos of, in Germany, Germans throwing bricks through Russian supermarkets.

Peter McCormack: What does that remind you of?  That's like a call-back to pre-World War II, the Night of the Broken Glass.

Marty Bent: Yeah.  They were painting the Jews as dirty people and besmirching them.  Again, like average Russian citizens have nothing to do with this, like you said.  I just think it's extremely irresponsible, the response that the West has had to this particular situation.  It's all incredibly sad.  But again, the citizens, the Russian citizens, the Ukrainian citizens are all just bypassers in a proxy war of people who will never see the battlefield, who will never themselves pick up a gun and go to the frontlines.

Peter McCormack: They might have to.  I'm sure I saw a thing in Russia, if you are caught spreading misinformation, you have to go and join the army!  Is that true, Danny?

Marty Bent: Apparently, 50% of the Russian Army was conscripted recently.

Peter McCormack: I think that's why they've struggled with their invasion, it's not been the clean, easy take, because there are inexperienced soldiers on the frontline.

Danny Knowles: I mean, they say there's jail time if you --

Peter McCormack: Is it 15 years?

Danny Knowles: Yeah, but then I guess maybe they can then put incentive like, "You don't have to go to jail if you join the army".

Peter McCormack: Fuck, man, it's weird.  I'll tell you another thing that's come out of this whole situation, and I wonder how you feel about this, because I'm very quick to get an opinion on things and then usually have to walk them back.  And trying to find truth at the moment's really hard, and that's impacted me in a way, I don't know if it impacts you, in that I feel a sense of responsibility in the content we create, because I've been very critical of large media organisations, corporate media, in the way that they disseminate bullshit.  But at the same time, I'm also then like, "Fuck, am I doing the same sometimes?"  It really plays on me.

Marty Bent: Yeah, it's hard.  I mean, the Sovereign Individual thesis is playing out.  I guess as we get further into the digital age, it's going to be harder to discern the signal from the noise and you have to develop, as an individual, your own facilities to filter all the information and try define what is signal and noise for you.  So for me, in this particular situation, with Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world, it's going into it knowing that the mainstream media has their propaganda, Russia has their propaganda, and just trying the best I can to find individuals on the ground who are giving pure information and not trusting the information via the lens of the mainstream corporate media, or Russia's propaganda arms as well.

Peter McCormack: Have you found any good sources?  I got a Telegram group from a Miles Suter thread.

Marty Bent: Yeah, I don't know the exact name, but there's a Russian Telegram channel where they're giving their perspective, and that was actually pretty helpful the other night at the nuclear power facility, where Zelenskyy and everybody was like, "They're attacking a nuclear power facility", but in that Telegram group, they made it pretty apparent and obvious that the Ukrainian army retreated there, specifically to create a scene, and then they fired an RPG first, and there was a fire, but it was nowhere near the actual nuclear reactor, it was at a training facility on the property.

Peter McCormack: You see, that's a perfect example where I reacted quickly.  I take a Sky News headline and I'm like, "You bellends, what are you doing?"  Then I'm like, "Fuck, what have I done?"

Marty Bent: Yeah, I don't trust any of the corporate media anymore, especially after COVID.

Peter McCormack: Do you watch any of it though, or do you just ignore it?

Marty Bent: I ignore it.  I'll see clips on Twitter and watch those.  I was on Tucker Carlson the other week, it was funny.

Peter McCormack: With no shoes.

Marty Bent: No shoes, barefoot.  But yeah, I was in the production van I only watched 20 minutes of it.  It was like 10 minutes before, or 15 minutes before I went on, and then the 5 minutes I was on for that segment I was on.  But even just watching the 10 minutes before, I probably agree with Tucker on a lot of things and think he does better than some at giving a different perspective on that stage, but even so, just the whole format of that whole type of news people, it's like, "Oh my God, how do people watch this?"

Peter McCormack: That's why we've had the rise of independents.

Marty Bent: Yes, like yourself and myself.  That's where I think we can get better information, this long form.  I mean, Rogan obviously changed the game with the long-form stuff.

Peter McCormack: But even in some of that, I feel like audience capture and corporate media are two sides of the same coin.  I think Rogan's great, I think he tries to see both sides and admits when he's wrong, but I think there are people out there who are victims of audience capture; and to me, that's almost as big a problem as --

Marty Bent: What do you mean by audience capture?

Peter McCormack: Like putting things out that they know their audience will love, without thinking it through.

Marty Bent: Oh, yeah.

Peter McCormack: I think Tim Pool does it a lot.  And I think that it's not a balanced approach.  If I listen to you, I feel like I won't always agree with you, because of the reason why we're having this show, I come from a different perspective; but I believe you believe what you're saying.  But I think some people out there, they'll just constantly replay ideas just to keep getting the likes, the retweets, getting them on their show, because there's an economic benefit to growing your social media audience, because that sends them to your podcast or your YouTube, and that drives ads.

I think audience capture can be just as bad as corporate media, and that's what I worry about.

Marty Bent: Yeah, bad incentives sinking into media exist.  That's why again, I've got to give a shoutout to Adam Curry, what he's trying to bring to the market, what he has brought to the market with podcasting 2.0 and the value-for-value model.  I think that creates better aligned incentives and something I would like to transition to full time.

Peter McCormack: When I've tried to sell subscriptions or get people to pay for the podcast, it's a few dollars.  And I know long term, you want to get to there, but it's so far away.

Marty Bent: Yeah, I mean I'm set up on it.  You probably look at my phone, it's probably people streaming sats.  But compared to the ad revenue, it's a pittance at this point in time, and I think that's a product of just the stage of Bitcoin adoption that we're in, and awareness of the ability to do it, in and of itself.  I do think it could get there potentially in the future.  I mean, the No Agenda show has proven that it does work.

I do wonder, at scale, with many podcasts doing it, are people going to be paying value-for-value across all their content consumption.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, unless we get Spotify deals!  I'd love a $200 million Spotify deal!  Yeah, but that whole truth-finding, like I say, it's got both sides for me, Marty.  Not only am I constantly reflecting on stuff I put out there because I'm like, "Shit, am I part of the problem?" but I'm also having that difficulty in finding signal from noise and reacting too quick.

Marty Bent: Yeah, and I've always been a fan of, me personally, what I do with the newsletter or the podcast is just being upfront with the audience.  It's like, "Here's my biases, bullish on Bitcoin, I think we should be transitioning to a Bitcoin standard, so my content is going to highlight news and events that are getting us closer to that".  I like to be critical of Bitcoin too and highlight where pain points and inefficiencies and shortfalls exist.  I like to think that I'm not just a full-on Bitcoin cheerleader, but I'm realistic about what's going on.

Peter McCormack: Where are the pain points now for you?

Marty Bent: I mean, Bitcoin's most centralised at the ASIC chip level.  We can't have TSMC and Samsung, being particularly located in Taiwan and South Korea, being the only chip producers for the Bitcoin mining industry.  I do think that is getting more distributed and the prospect of foundries coming to Texas and Arizona is very encouraging.  Intel entering the game is very encouraging.

Peter McCormack: You're in the mining game more than me; how much do we know about the Intel chip?

Marty Bent: Just specs at this point.  I'm not sure -- so, they announced their specs last week at a conference.  We know that Block, formerly Square, has a big order with them; Griid just went public via a SPAC, they have a big order with them.  So, there are at least a couple of reputable companies out there that must feel confident enough that they're going to buy large amounts of these ASICs, and as they're being marketed as extremely more power efficient, and cheaper, so people are describing them as the Toyota Camry or the Honda Civic of the mining industry, where they may not be producing an insane amount of terahash per second, like the top-of-the-line Bitmains or MicroBTs, but they're extremely more efficient on the power draw and cheaper, so therefore more accessible to your average Joe.  But again, I'm always highly sceptical of pre-launch talk of these computers. 

Peter McCormack: Dude, I bought 70 DragonMints.  Fucking things!

Marty Bent: Yeah, right.  Delayed and then completely obsoleted.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what, at the same time, I bought 70 S9s, and then I ended up giving up mining, and they sat in a crate for two years.  Then I ended up selling the S9s.  I got something like $600, $700 an S9 at some point.

Marty Bent: That's a good price.

Peter McCormack: Well, it was when the Bitcoin price first went over $50,000.  And I think I got $30 each for the DragonMints!  Fucking piece of shit.  Let's talk about mining stuff actually, because there is an area that we definitely differ on, it's environmental concerns.  I think we differ here in that, I'm definitely in a space where I worry about the environment, I think there are problems.  I think you think they're overstated; am I right or am I wrong?

Marty Bent: Yes, I think we've been psyopped to believe that humans are bad and they shouldn't be using energy, where I think the exact opposite; humans are good and we should be using as much energy as possible.

Peter McCormack: I agree with that, it's more that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment.  And the reason I come from that point is I've spent a lot of time interviewing people who are environmental scientists and stuff, and every single one -- I did one yesterday.  Do you know Margot Paez?

Marty Bent: I don't think so.

Peter McCormack: I think you would differ from her even more than me.  She's pretty left, but she's the kind of scientist I've interviewed, Katharine Hayhoe in Lubbock here in Texas, they're all the same, they're like, "No, this is a problem".  My thing isn't that I think we need some big, centralised government response to this, which would be abused and probably dumb and would probably not work, because we know how bad governments are at these big problems, but I still think it's an issue. 

I don't know if we're in the world of considering mitigation for climate issues, like how we plan for it, or whether there does need to be something that does protect us from the environment, like investment in certain technologies.  But do you actually think there's no issue?  Do you think there's a climate issue, I mean?

Marty Bent: Well, that's the whole thing.  I mean, what is a climate?

Peter McCormack: A warming planet that has implications.

Marty Bent: Well, the climate isn't warming, the world is warming, we're also coming out of an ice age.  What you're find is that it's warming in the coldest spots, from what I understand, which is not necessarily a bad thing and helps green the earth.  Yeah, again, having done a bunch of research, having had climate scientists on myself, Steve Koonin being one of them, who dove into all the IPCC data.

Peter McCormack: Koonin, wasn't he the guy that was on Rogan recently?

Marty Bent: Yeah, he's a professor at NYU.  And, yeah, I just think there's a lot of data manipulation.  All the climate change stuff is based off forward-projecting models that have proven time and time again to be wrong.  So, that's why, again, just using heuristics, these people, in the 1970s, we were going into an ice age; in the 1980s, the ozone layer problem was going to destroy humanity; in the 1990s, acid rain was going to destroy the world; and then, in the 21st century, for the first two decades, climate change, global warming has been the big boogeyman and I just don't think it's happening, to the extent that I don't think there's going to be a catastrophe that wipes out humanity. 

Humans are extremely adaptable and we are part of nature and we've learned how to harness nature to protect ourselves against nature itself, which is an incredible feat for an animal to do on this planet, for a species, for a society to do.  And I think a lot of the problems that climate scientists in hysterics will point to, particularly around droughts and soil conditions, I don't think that has to do with climate problems, but just the way we're attacking those particular ecosystems, that we should really be getting into regenerative farming, grazing, roaming cattle, that help green the earth.  We should really be focusing on not creating monocultures in soil and make sure that we're replenishing and mixing in different crops and stuff like that, and creating ecosystems that create the capabilities for a vibrant ecosystem to thrive.

Peter McCormack: I think this is definitely the area we disagree on!  Okay, that's fair, I mean I'm not going to get into the debate.  But the global cooling stuff in the 1970s, that was the Michael Mann article that was based on; it all comes from that article.  And he's debunked that himself and said his model was wrong.

Marty Bent: The models, the models; the models are always wrong.

Peter McCormack: I agree with the idea that modelling this stuff is super-difficult, but I would be in defence of the ozone issue from the 1980s, because policy did change in terms of CFCs and fridges and aerosol cans, and policy change protected us from the ozone.  Don't give me that look; you're giving me that look!

Marty Bent: I mean, they can go back and retroactively be, "Look, we changed our policy and the thing changed", but I don't think that is the case.

Peter McCormack: Well, we can agree to disagree.  So, do you think there's no requirement to have -- I mean, I know you fucking hate the ESG stuff.

Marty Bent: I mean, ESG's communistic bullshit.

Peter McCormack: That's one of those things that's probably not going to go away.

Marty Bent: Oh no, we're going to destroy ESG.

Peter McCormack: Tell me how.

Marty Bent: I mean, it's led us to the situation we have right now.  I mean, you can argue that ESG mandates and investment styles have led us to a position where Russia is able to invade Ukraine, because we virtue-signalled and larped about the environment and shifted all the leverage over to Russia.  And then on top of that, ESG is trying to create a metric system for an amorphous landscape, which is subjective ideas on what is important in the world.  Different societies, different individuals have different perspectives on what is good for themselves, their local communities, their states, their countries. 

Trying to create a fine-fitted, metric system of ESG scores that define whether or not you're a good citizen or company is completely asinine and again, a lot of the problems that exist in this world today are the fact that you have centralised systems, which ESG is, via capital allocation trying to granularly control complex systems, like economies and environments, monetary systems, whatever it may be.

Peter McCormack: Who was that ESG guy, is it Larry Fink?  I just see it's just he's created this narrative that allows him to pick the next investment products to allocate the capital to.

Marty Bent: Yeah, BlackRock's the biggest asset manager on the planet, they have trillions of dollars under management, and they're leading this ESG charge.

Peter McCormack: But you say it will be destroyed, I don't see it going away yet.

Marty Bent: We're going to destroy ESG, don't worry, it's going to take time.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Marty Bent: But it's ridicule.  It is literally making humanity worse off, and it's hypocritical.  There was a Bloomberg article last week, "Are these arms dealers actually ESG for sending guns to Ukrainian citizens?" 

Peter McCormack: I saw that, dude.

Marty Bent: It's a clown-world concept.  It's completely asinine on its face because, again, you're trying to measure and create a metric system for subjective concepts, like what is good, what is moral, what is ethical throughout different societies, different economies, different localities, different companies, different industries, whatever it may be.

Peter McCormack: What do you think about investing in renewables as part of the mix?  Do you just think, use whichever energy is the cheapest, or do you think there is value in investing in wind, solar, hydro, even if it's maybe not as efficient, but it's greener; do you think that's something that should be done?

Marty Bent: Well that's that whole, again, what is green? 

Peter McCormack: Well, because there's two areas of green.  One is the production and waste that comes from it, that's a certain area which is bad for the environment.  Like, if you're creating these big wind farms that have a certain time period, and then you've got all this waste, I totally get that.  But then, if you are somebody that thinks there's an issue with burning fossil fuels and carbon in the atmosphere, and that's warming the planet, you might not but I do; if we're investing, we have that trade-off.  Okay, we have the e-waste that comes with this, but we do get to reduce carbons.  Is that a worthy investment?

Marty Bent: No, because it doesn't actually reduce carbon.  You can look into this.  Again, starting on the front end of the supply chain, to create solar panels or coal panels, you need coal.  The only thing you can get hot enough to create solar panels is coal, so you need to burn coal on the front of that supply chain.  Then, once you get the solar panel up, again it's intermittent, it is unreliable, so when the sun doesn't shine, it's not producing electricity, so to back that up, you typically need natural gas powerplants to supplement that solar energy when it's not producing electricity.

What you'll find is that turning those natural gas powerplants on and off is actually worse, producing more CO2 emissions, if you care about them, than just setting up a natural gas powerplant in and of itself and keeping it on 24/7.  So, supplementing that solar panel setup with a natural gas plant behind it and turning that natural gas plant on and off, when the solar panel isn't producing electricity, you turn it on; when it starts producing electricity, you turn it off; that turn-off, start-up mode actually produces a lot of CO2.

Then, on the back end of the supply chain, these things have very short useful lives, and then they need to be recycled and it takes some toxic chemicals to do so.  And then, going back to when it is up and running, these are massive structures.  The amount of land needed to produce the same amount of energy or electricity that could be produced by a natural gas well pad is significantly more vast.  Then you have the conversation about, you have these solar panels that are just thrust in these environments, and they're blocking the sun from getting to the ground and destroying the environment below that.  So, there are many intricacies.

Then, going back to the front of the supply chain, the polysilicon that allows us to create these solar panels, the cheapest polysilicon in the world is handcrafted by Uyghur slaves in China.  And so, what does that do for your ESG score?  You don't care about the slavery on the front end.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but they don't count, they're not Americans!

Marty Bent: Yeah.  And then you get into the wind turbines too.  They need a significant amount of cobalt, most of which is --

Peter McCormack: Mined by children.

Marty Bent: Yeah, mined by children in the Congo.  And then, it feels good, because it's "cleaner", when it's actually producing electricity, because you don't see all the stuff happening on the front and back of the supply chain, and then it's a worse product.  Humanity has only created step function improvements in our quality of life and our ability to create things and become more productive when we find denser, cheaper forms of energy.  Transition to wind, solar and hydro is a regression, because they're less dense and less reliable.  If we are going to progress, we should be going towards nuclear, and this is another thing.  These people don't care about the environment. 

Peter McCormack: I agree on nuclear.

Marty Bent: If they did, they would be pushing nuclear.  I wholeheartedly believe, if you think I'm crazy, a tinfoil-hat-wearing, conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones-like character, I completely believe that the whole climate hysteria is nothing more than a massive propaganda campaign to force us onto less reliable energy infrastructure, that allows the kleptocratic sociopaths that are getting us in this proxy war at the moment, to have more control over us.  If you have abundant, cheap, dense energy, people are able to do better things with their lives and support themselves.  They don't need the government, they don't need the state, they don't need the technocracy.

Peter McCormack: Would you say a good example of this is, we've had this massive rise in energy prices in the UK, and I saw recently in Scotland, can you look this up in Scotland, I'm pretty sure the Scottish Government is now having to subsidise people's energy bills? 

Marty Bent: Yeah, they're going to have to.

Danny Knowles: I think I saw that as well

Marty Bent: That's not going to work though, it's just going to create inflation, it's going to create more centralised control in the end.

Peter McCormack: Do you honestly believe it's this kind of -- these policy decisions are to create control, or do you think it's just more incompetence?

Marty Bent: It's probably a combination.

Peter McCormack: I struggle to think they're that coordinated, and I struggle to think there's a group of people sat round a table making -- I would always err on the side of, this is probably just fucking incompetence.

Marty Bent: I go back and forth.  It's probably a combination of both, is what I settle on, because you see things emanating from the World Economic Forum, like Build Back Better.  Then you see Macron, Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, even Donald Trump, Christine Lagarde, politicians, Jacinda, all saying, "Build Back Better", at the same time.  Then we had this Build Back Better Bill here in the United States.  There is some form of centralised messaging control that is emanating.  And what is the World Economic Forum's goal? 

Again, I do think they're incompetent, I think they're sloppy, I think they're going to lose, but I do think they had this intention.  They want you to own nothing and be happy with it, they want to control the way you live your life.  Again, the large lever to garner more control is making people less energy secure.

Peter McCormack: If you were in your most charitable opinion, what do you think the role of the World Economic Forum is?

Marty Bent: It's just circle jerk for rich people who are completely disconnected from --

Peter McCormack: And that's your most generous, charitable version!

Marty Bent: Yeah, honestly, it's just disconnected people, who are rich and therefore think that they know what's best for everybody in the world, even though probably a lot of them garnered their riches via luck and just riding an incredible trend in monetary policy and market structure, that really afforded them a bit of luck in terms of acquiring their riches.  But that's the most charitable.  I do think some of these people are legitimately evil and sociopathic and get pleasure out of making people eat bugs and wear masks and shit like that.

Peter McCormack: Charles Schwab!

Marty Bent: Yeah!

Peter McCormack: We should spend some time looking at that production of solar panels.

Danny Knowles: Yeah.  I did try.  I saw the most fucking stupid factcheck.  So, I looked at the coal needed to produce all the panels, and it was myth-busted; but the myth-bust was, "Yeah, but we might not need to use it in the future"!

Peter McCormack: That's not a myth-bust.

Danny Knowles: No, that's not a myth-bust, so it looks like that's true.

Peter McCormack: Okay, we should look into that.  And the reason we should look into that, I did this interview, do you know this guy, Troy Cross?

Marty Bent: Yes, we've gone back and forth on Twitter before.

Peter McCormack: Good, or…?

Marty Bent: We do not agree with each other.

Peter McCormack: You do not agree!  Because, I interviewed him, and he has this -- do you know his concept, his idea?

Marty Bent: I know he's a philosopher, really passionate about renewables.

Peter McCormack: Well, he wants to flip the ESG narrative by making investment in green mining.

Marty Bent: There's no such thing as green mining.

Peter McCormack: But there is in the eyes of the people who are pushing ESG.

Marty Bent: Yeah, and those people are dumb, and we should not cater to dumb people.  Again, they're trying to manipulate -- coming from the finance world, where you just have these buzzword portfolios, ESG is just another buzzword portfolio that people, middlemen, are trying to take advantage of.  It's nothing more than an investing meme that portfolio managers are trying to eke out more expenses from.  It does not lead to better investment, it does not lead to better outcomes, and it does not lead to a better world, and I will work my hardest to destroy ESG.  I'm sorry, Troy.

Peter McCormack: No, I mean I always want to know, because I'm --

Marty Bent: I pressed Troy on it, like what is green?  Again, it's a lot of propaganda.  Define green for me.

Peter McCormack: I think it's what's considered renewable.

Marty Bent: Well, what is renewable?  That is another thing, what is the definition of the word, renewable?  Words matter and definitions of words matter.

Peter McCormack: Does hydro count?

Marty Bent: No!

Peter McCormack: We can't even have hydro?

Marty Bent: No, because hydro, you need to destroy a whole environment to actually make it possible.

Peter McCormack: Well, we did the interview with Troy, and I also spoke to Nic Carter about it, and I know you like Nic.

Marty Bent: Yeah, Nic and I are good friends, but we also disagree on this.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you also disagree on this.  So, we've got Troy and Nic coming in to discuss it, so we're going to have to do our research on this and put it back at them, which I will do.  You probably want to, if you don't mind, send me some resources to help me plan for that, because as I said to you earlier, I'm really conscious of, am I putting out information that's bad?  And I'm not saying I agree with you, I'm just saying is, well, if what you're saying is right, it's like, "Oh, shit, maybe Marty is right".

Danny Knowles: What about Troy's idea, just to play within the framework of what corporations need to do right now, rather than buying shit carbon credits that don't do anything, is increasing Bitcoin mining not a better solution than that?

Marty Bent: Again, what do you mean by increasing Bitcoin --

Peter McCormack: His concept is bringing a bunch of ideas together in that, he used the Winklevosses as an example.  They wanted to offset their emissions, so they invested a bunch of money into some kind of carbon credit --

Danny Knowles: Which, to be fair, he said were very good credits.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, were good credits.  Yeah, I know, how do you define good credits!  And actually, Margot, who we had in here yesterday, is completely against the carbon system, the credit system, because all that does is allow people to export their higher emissions to other countries, it's just bullshit.

But his idea is that you can grow Bitcoin, you can grow Bitcoin awareness, you can bring a bunch of companies' money into Bitcoin by using ESG as a narrative for getting people to invest in green mining.  So, forget whether you agree with it or not for a second, Marty, but the idea being that all these companies who've got these trillions or billions of dollars locked up that goes into ESG, you could turn round to them and say, "Well, if you mine here with this what we call green mining, not only are you offsetting your emissions, but you're also getting a Bitcoin return for it".

Danny Knowles: He basically said, you figure out the percentage of Bitcoin that you own of the 21 million, and then you contribute that percentage of the hashrate using renewable energy.

Marty Bent: Go for it if you want to.  Don't force me to do it.

Peter McCormack: He doesn't want to force anyone.

Marty Bent: Well, I hope people go for that, because mining on solar and wind, again, these are intermittent energy sources.  As somebody who's going and buying natural gas wells around the country to mine Bitcoin with, I would love that, because it would make me better off with other miners using less reliable energy sources that makes their operations less reliable as a result.  But at the end of the day, again, Troy, what is green?  What is renewable?  I pressed you about this on Twitter and you failed to give me an actual response. 

Peter McCormack: I'm going to put your question to him.

Marty Bent: And this is all a massive larp, because as much as want to talk about wanting to use solar, wanting to use wind, and going down the clean and renewable path, when push comes to shove, when the Texas grid blacks out, when people's energy prices hit 50 cents a kWh, $1 a kWh soon in western Europe, they're going to want natural gas, and they're going to want reliable energy sources.  Germany has transitioned to renewables -- again, renewable is a propaganda term that doesn't make any sense -- over the last 20 years, and they have the highest electricity cost per kWh in the developed world.  And that is regressive tax on poor people. 

Think about what we're telling Africa and parts of South America, "We, the western world, have built ourselves up to these massive economies using petro, using hydrocarbons, but we've got to a point we're big, you know what, we're comfortable.  You're not allowed to use this because it's not ESG conscious, you're not allowed to pull yourself up out of poverty by leveraging coal, natural gas, oil.  Unfortunately, we need to solve this climate crisis that these models have told us is coming".  It's anti-human, it's actually anti-poor people, it's racist, and it's going to make the world worse off.

Peter McCormack: Well, I don't think what you're saying is conspiratorial.  If it's fact-based, it's just the facts.

Marty Bent: Well, let's get to the facts too.  People want to larp about this and want to opine about becoming cleaner, but California's a perfect example.  There's an incredible gentleman, maybe you should get him on the show, Mike Umbro.  He's an oil producer in California, and he's on -- I need him on TFTC first!

Peter McCormack: Hey, you know I'm loyal to chronology.  If somebody comes first, I never step in the way.

Marty Bent: I know.  But he's an oil producer in California, and he's been on this incredible campaign, he's got videos on LinkedIn and Twitter that basically highlight the hypocrisy of California in particular.  So, California is one of the largest economies in the world, separate from the United States, obviously one of the largest economies in the United States.  Maybe it's faltered in the last couple of years, because people have been exiting the state.  But I believe the demand for oil in California is like 600 million barrels a year, only increasing.

Despite that, the ability for California oil producers within the state to actually bring that supply to market is significantly hindered by government regulations who are like, "No, this is dirty oil, we're not going to let you extract it here in the State of California and deliver it to our market".  There are very tight restrictions on how much oil can be pulled out the ground in California.  Despite that, the demand for oil is still there.  So, what you see is that California oil producers, who produce arguably the cleanest barrel, there's the least likelihood for spills, the least likelihood for methane emissions via the natural gas side of things, they're not allowed to bring their relatively clean barrel of oil to market.

Yet, California still has the same amount of demand, and they import it from Russia, from Ecuador, and they import it on tankers that travel hundreds of miles across the sea, have a high likelihood for spills, use diesel fuel to make that journey.  They're virtue signalling that they don't want to produce oil in their state, but they still consume the same amount of oil, and they just import it from other countries that have worse regulations on the ground when they're pulling it out of the ground, putting it on ships, shipping it over using diesel fuel and increasing the likelihood of oil spills in the ocean.

Whereas, if they were to actually extract it in California and allow themselves to deliver it to their market and supply their own demand, it would go through a pipeline, it would be extracted in a way where people know people are being responsible, the producers are being responsible.  And yet, it's just not possible.

Peter McCormack: Danny, go and get him!  Don't tell Marty!  Okay, so I always like to take feedback, so I'm definitely going to be looking at the green energy, see if it exists.  You might be right, I'll go and dig, and I will reach out to you, you know, if I've got questions.  I still differ with you on whether the warming of the planet is a problem for the planet, I still believe it is, I do.

Marty Bent: I don't.

Peter McCormack: Well, we can differ there.  I mean, we said we were going to differ.  I still think it is, because I know there are impacts, I know there are impacts on like coffee producers in Africa, in that they may only have a decade left.  They could be wrong.

Marty Bent: Models, models.  The Maldives were supposed to be under water ten years ago, and they're just building new airports.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but they're also building up flood defences.  But the point being, this is where we come to is, is it real, is it not?  If it is, I don't believe policy can fix this.  So, that's the point.  We have a growing population, we have a growing need for energy.  Whether you're right or I'm right, if we are warming the planet by our actions, which there are people who believe we are, I believe we're moving into a world of mitigation and planning for that, rather than policy to try and reduce --

Marty Bent: Thank God we have Bitcoin, because it forces us to be as energy-efficient as possible.

Peter McCormack: That is very true, but we need to look up that stuff.  I might even reach out to you before the interview, and I'll tell Troy.  I'm like, "This is what Marty's put to you.  This is all well and good, but if our starting point is incorrect, if there is no green, then --", and Nic will be there as well, he can answer the questions as well.

Marty Bent: Yeah.  There's no green, even to the wind turbines as well.  There are a lot of studies being done on wind turbines.

Peter McCormack: They kill a lot of birds.

Marty Bent: They kill a lot of birds, but they drive people crazy.  If you look at suicide rates of people between the ages of 18 and 25 and then 60 and 75 in areas where wind turbines have been thrust on local communities, they increase significantly.

Peter McCormack: Why is that?

Marty Bent: Because the "woom, woom, woom" just drives people crazy.  And then, people don't want to look at them.  It's hilarious.  I believe it was up in Nantucket or Cape Cod, where all the rich larpers, who will fly their private jets over to Scotland for COP26 and tell the rest of us how we need to transition to these green renewables, somebody will try and put a windfarm off the coast of their island up there, and the rich people will throw a fit and say, "No, you can't do that, that's going to ruin our horizon view" and they neg it.

We're going to use more energy.  I hope this isn't -- I'm an environmentalist.  I surf, I own and live in houses on the coast.

Peter McCormack: Hey, you go and clean the beach, right?

Marty Bent: Yeah, I'm a big beach-cleaner.  I live on the coast for a significant portion of the year.  If anybody should be worried about something falling to the ocean, it's me.  I love the ocean, I love the environment, I love nature.  I just think that this whole planet hysteria is nothing more than that, nothing more than hysteria that is, again, forcing idiotic policy decisions and people -- and think about what we're doing to the children. 

Greta, when you're 30, when you're 28, when you were 16, you said we had 12 years before billions of deaths happen.  I want to talk to Greta when she's 28 and say, "Hey, do you think you were wrong with that statement?"  What do you think scaring a whole generation of kids is doing to them psychologically?  And again, how do you calibrate as you're going down this myth too?  Obama's energy advisor in 1985 said there would be a billion climate-related deaths by 2020.  Climate-related deaths between 1985 and 2020 fell by 98%, and that is because we were able to harness our environment and create things that protect us from the cold especially, and the heat as well, because there are more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths as well.

Peter McCormack: And again, do you bring this back to incompetence or back to control?

Marty Bent: A combination of both really.  And whacked incentives.  That's the other thing too with the green mining.  It only works via subsidies.  If there were no subsidies, it would be unprofitable.

Peter McCormack: That's like Tesla, right?

Marty Bent: Yeah, and I think a Bitcoin standard will completely obliterate subsidies.  So, if you want to build massive mining infrastructure on energy resources that would otherwise be unprofitable if there weren't subsidies, go ahead.  We're going to usher in a Bitcoin standard that's going to wipe out subsidies, and I'll be happy with my off-grid mining operations that are leveraging those unreliable and subsidised energy sources.

Peter McCormack: You obviously brought up, "When we get to a Bitcoin standard".  I had a question for somebody yesterday, it's like, "How do you know when we're there?"  I mean, I'm there personally, by holding a majority of money in Bitcoin.  I make my -- well, I knew I was definitely there, I just brought a new house, and my broker, I said to him, "I want the longest mortgage possible with the lowest possible deposit", which is my own speculative attack, right.

Marty Bent: Yes.

Peter McCormack: And I know I'm there, because the football team's on a Bitcoin standard, I'm on it, the podcast is.  The decisions are made of, "Are we buying now, or are we holding Bitcoin?"  So, I know I'm there.  But what's the tipping point where we are, maybe as a nation, or even the world?

Marty Bent: It all comes back to energy.  I think once you start denominating international energy trade in sats, that's when things really -- again, energy is the base of society and the most important commodities markets in the world, arguably, alongside the food markets.  So, once you have international trade getting settled in Bitcoin instead of the dollar, I think that's when you know that, all right, we're under a Bitcoin standard.

Peter McCormack: That's interesting, because do you believe the mining will drive that, because mining is now becoming intrinsically linked to energy production?  We're seeing what's happening here, I always get the name wrong, ERCART?

Marty Bent: ERCOT.

Peter McCormack: ERCOT.  I always say ERCART.  Was that the lady who flew the plane?  Fuck knows.  Anyway, ERCOT.

Marty Bent: Amelia Earhart.

Peter McCormack: Amelia Earhart, you see, I'm so bad with names.  This is an age thing.  I always forget, you're like 14 years younger than me or something.  I forget all names.  But the energy grid here is now intrinsically linked to Bitcoin, right?

Marty Bent: To a certain extent.

Peter McCormack: I mean, the starting point of it.

Marty Bent: There's another controversial take to the demand response in Texas.  Again, they're leveraging this demand response and they're overbuilding capacity of wind and solar specifically to create these demand response programmes for a lot of miners.  I just think, again, it's completely stupid.  You can build as much wind and solar capacity, you can build hundreds of gigawatts of capacity hypothetically, but that doesn't stop the wind from stopping to blow and the sun from not piercing the clouds.  You can't control the weather.

There was an instance here two weeks ago in Texas where it got really cold, and the wind production fell to zero, it wasn't producing any electricity.  So, while I do think the concept of demand response does make sense, I do think there a lot of miners here in Texas, and a lot of larpers around this demand response meme, that are basically creating a scenario where miners and the demand response programme in and of itself is going to look bad in the future, because again, you can build out as much wind as you want, but you can't make the wind blow. 

If you're going to do the demand response, I think you should be doing that by building something like a natural gas peaker plant, or expanding natural gas production or nuclear.  It should be nuclear but again, the political will to build these nuclear plants doesn't exist in the United States, because we have a regulatory body that won't okay any nuke construction.

Peter McCormack: Why is that; what are they saying?  Is it to do with the nuclear waste?

Marty Bent: Environment middle bullshit, I think.  It's pretty well-known at this point in time that the nuclear reactors, especially the small modular reactors, are significantly safer than anything that was being produced in the 1960s or 1970s.

Peter McCormack: That's the series IV ones?

Marty Bent: Yes.

Peter McCormack: Just going back to pricing energy in sats, you've been involved with mining companies.  Do they themselves operate on a Bitcoin standard, in that they're mining Bitcoin and they're considering the energy they buy, even though they probably have to pay dollars, but are they considering it being on a Bitcoin standard themselves?

Marty Bent: Some are.  I mean, I can't talk specifics about companies I'm working with, but they are talking -- I'll just say generally throughout the industry, people are having conversations, in oil and gas specifically, where all right, you can get your natural gas, whether it be flared or stranded, and turn it into sats, and get that previously wasted resource and turn it into significant revenue.  There are plenty of oil and gas companies, particularly more smaller, middle-sized producers, that want to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet, and they're doing that.

But I think that will accelerate and oil and gas specifically will drive the transition to a Bitcoin standard and start pricing their commodities in sats, because they're going to have that Bitcoin on their balance sheet, they're going to see it appreciate.  They're going to be, "Why would I ever sell my precious oil for dollars on the open market?  I want to be seeing what my sats production is doing for my balance sheet". 

On the natural gas side, I do want to begin selling oil in sats as well, and it will be funny to say, and I said this at the Houston Meetup a couple of months.  It will be really interesting to see, not funny to see, very interesting to see what happens.  Do Bitcoin miners become energy producers first, or do energy producers become massive Bitcoin miners first?  Who becomes who first?  That's what I think the biggest question in the emergency of the mining and energy sectors is right now.

Peter McCormack: Or is it just both and there'll be some mergers?

Marty Bent: There'll definitely be some mergers and acquisitions.  For me, the mining operations I'm involved with, I want to become an energy producer.  I want to own natural gas, I want to own oil wells and sell oil to market for sats, because you need to if you want to survive mining.  Mining again, it's an industry endeavour that demands you to vertically integrate as much as you can from the construction of where your miners sit, to the energy source that is used to convert it into electricity, to the thing that converts that thing to electricity.  And then beyond that, at a certain scale, you can create your own mining pool and you have hashrate derivatives.

I think miners are replacing central banks.  The energy sector, via mining, is going to replace the central banking system.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's a bit like exchanges; do they become banks, or banks become exchanges? 

Marty Bent: Well, that's another thing too.  When we're playing this out in 10, 20 years, do miners just become exchanges as well, because I think this is something that's not talked about a lot in the industry, but something I'm very, I don't know if "passionate" is the right word, but I have a very strong belief that at some point in the next ten years, as Bitcoin appreciates and people really begin to adopt Bitcoin en masse across the world, exchanges are going to have liquidity problems.  You're going to have problems finding liquidity to sell Bitcoin to people.

Eventually, exchanges won't even matter, because we'll be on a Bitcoin standard.  But if exchanges do want to persist and evolve, they're going to need access to liquidity and sats liquidity.  So, I actually think, if you're an exchange right now, you should be getting exposure to mining companies, because they're going to be liquidity providers for you in the future.  Like, the OTC desk, I can see drying up, and the only source of liquidity being mining entities.

So I think, thinking 10, 20 years ahead, if you're an exchange and you want to survive and thrive and evolve to what the market needs at that given point in time, getting ownership stake in a miner, or creating a forward contract market, where you can pre-buy Bitcoin via a miner by paying cash up front that allows them to expand their operations, then you can buy sats at a discount to market in the future, I think that part of the market needs to evolve.  I could be wrong, but I think structurally in my mind, seeing how this plays out, that's where it will go, as more people adopt Bitcoin and you have somewhat of a liquidity dry-up on the exchange side.

Peter McCormack: It's interesting, these markets that are propping up and the way you look at it in the future, that there's going to be markets for sats, there's going to be these new markets for energy, new markets for even hash power that are going to be traded.

Marty Bent: Yeah, and people discussing whether or not there'll be futures markets for fees, for block space.  We're at the very early days, that's why it's so exciting.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's kind of wild as well, because if you look back, what Satoshi tried to do is peer-to-peer money, and that's not a nod to Roger Ver, peer-to-peer money; but it's the ability to just transfer money around the world permissionlessly, and censorship resistant on a fixed limit of 21 million, this unique idea.  But I don't think he foresaw all these fucking things that are now moulded around it.  There's no way I think he could have foreseen the impact this was going to have on the energy market, or the way people were going to think about these future markets.

I mean, like you say, these futures for buying block space, it's kind of crazy the way it's come from the idea of a protocol to send money around the world, to all this new stuff.  And what's going to come that we've not even thought about?

Marty Bent: I mean, we can get cosmic here.

Peter McCormack: Cosmic?  Go, Marty!

Marty Bent: I mean, that's one of the theories of --

Peter McCormack: I can get you a whiskey if you want!

Marty Bent: No, I've got to help my brother move after this, believe it or not.  But is Bitcoin a great filter test for intergalactic species, where if humans successfully adopt a Bitcoin standard, is that the point at which people beyond Earth are like, "This is an advanced enough society, they can join our intergalactic --"

Peter McCormack: We've seen these recent videos of people coming to visit us, the Tic Tacs; are they coming to check we're advanced enough?

Marty Bent: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: "Leave those fucking idiots alone at the moment, they're still having wars".

Marty Bent: Yeah, exactly.

Peter McCormack: "Let them figure this shit out".

Marty Bent: Yeah, you can't fathom where this is going to take us.  I mean, just seeing it on the podcasting side, podcasting 2.0, the fact that you can put a Lightning Network public address in your RSS feed and people around the world can send me sats per minute they listen to my podcast.  I never would have thought that was possible five years ago, and it's possible now.  Just thinking about how this gets injected into every facet of our lives and every industry, again, we can't even fathom how it's going to affect things.

Peter McCormack: Man.  Well, this isn't the show I thought we would make!  I thought I was going to talk about all our differences, but now I've got like, "Shit, we've got new energy stuff to research and prepare for Troy, man".  The only other thing I wanted to talk to you about was a bit about governance, but on a political level, because we've got a lot of politicians getting involved in Bitcoin, I'm sure you've had a few write to you and say, "Can I come on your show?"  It's easy to reject them, because they don't really -- I was talking about it yesterday.  If them coming on the show is good for Bitcoin, I would consider it; but if it's mainly good for them, I won't.  And I think a lot of them are seeing the Bitcoin hack.

Marty Bent: Yes, which I think is good.  I think we should leverage that hack.

Peter McCormack: We should, but I'm just not having six a month on this show talking about it.  But on a governance level, you're obviously very cynical about the state, very critical.  What direction do you think we're heading, because I'm not in that place where I think even on a Bitcoin standard, we don't have some form of sovereign currency, certainly not in the short term.  Even if the dollar fails, I think it will be replaced by a new dollar; if the pound fails, it will be replaced by a new pound.  Or, it will fail and it will just be debased further.  But I'm not at that place where I think we only have Bitcoin, just yet, or certainly not at least for multiple decades.

We are in this weird place where states are getting more authoritarian.  We recognise it, you recognise it, we've all seen what's happened in Canada, but I always struggle to see a world without the state, I'm not one of those people.  I know you're very critical, but I don't know your position on a lot of this.

Marty Bent: I think the federal government's incompetent, evil and should be abolished, particularly here in the United States.  They're inefficient and it doesn't make anybody's life better off.  Again, it's a very centralised system with perverse incentives, trying to control complex systems, and I just don't think that's viable, number one, or beneficial, number two, and I think we're seeing the products of that play out.

Peter McCormack: But state government?

Marty Bent: Yeah, so that's where I think the silver lining of COVID, the lockdowns and everything that unfolded over the last two years is this reassertion of state autonomy and state's rights, particularly Florida and Texas are the two most popular examples that people get, but there are many other states across the United States that did not go along with federal government recommendations and mandates, and I think that's only going to continue moving forward.

I think the federal government is completely bloated, I think we need to continue this trend of emboldening states and making it so we have a republic of autonomous states, which was what this country was supposed to be when it was founded, and got completely bastardised over the last two centuries, two and a half centuries.

Peter McCormack: How does that coordinate if you have no federal government and you essentially just have 52 small federal governments?

Marty Bent: Yeah, better competition.

Peter McCormack: But don't you have to have something that centrally arranges -- or, does it just become 52 countries that you can --

Marty Bent: Yeah, I think if anything, we should see a balkanisation of everything.  Again, information, that's the problem with the federal government.  You have a bunch of individuals in a central location in DC who are so disconnected from the sources of information necessary to make educated decisions and correct decisions for localities, it literally doesn't make sense from an information dispersion perspective.  They are literally so disconnected from…

So, you have somebody in some small town in Louisiana, they have a road that needs to be fixed, and they have very specific healthcare problems in their local community that needs certain revenues, and you have a broad brush from DC trying to basically solve this problem, not knowing the granular information on the ground.  And I think the best people to make those decisions are in that local community, that county, that state, that city, whatever it be, and I think we should be emboldening those entities at the grass roots level and I think we'll get better results.

People's tax dollars shouldn't be -- half of them shouldn't be -- the same amount of tax revenue should not be directed to DC where they just completely waste the money in rich contractors and the war machine, with little benefit coming back to the little guy in the small town.  I think taxes, if there are going to be taxes, should be insulated to your local community, your state at the highest level.

Peter McCormack: You're not anti-tax?

Marty Bent: I think, I mean I am, but I recognise that if they are going to be levied, I would like them to be insulated at the local level, at the state level.

Peter McCormack: And it's one step forward away from federal government, and it's one thing I really like, I always talk about.  I envy the US so much that you have a republic, that you have states.  We don't have it.  It doesn't matter whether you live in Cornwall in the South of England, or you move to Manchester, it's exactly the same set of rules, there's no incentive locally for governance to improve.  You just don't have that.

Danny Knowles: And even to add to that, the local politicians have no power in the UK.  Very little happens on a local level.

Peter McCormack: And nobody cares.  I've never voted in a local election ever, never.  And if I have, I've only done it because I've gone to vote in the national election and by virtue of that, I'm voting locally.  But there's no interest, you don't care, you don't know who they are, you don't know what they're doing.  It's not like here where you have Governor Abbott very out there, very public, very vocal.  You have a bunch of very vocal, high-profile people creating policy locally.  We just don't have that.

There's been a little bit of devolution across the UK between Northern Ireland and Scotland and Wales and they have control of a certain policy, like health policy or education policy.  But it's very, very miniscule and it's just shit.

Marty Bent: Yeah, and it's getting better here in the United States, but it's shit.  I mean, just look at the goddam State of the Union Address that was going on last night.  Biden was calling Ukrainians "Uranians", you had Nancy Pelosi looking like a deranged clown.  These are the people making the decisions for 330 million people across the US.  Literally, it feels like we're living in a Truman show, like clown show.  How have we gotten to this point where -- we wouldn't allow these people to drive cars.  Biden would not be allowed to drive a car, Nancy Pelosi wouldn't be allowed to drive a car, and we're letting them run the country.

That's why, you'll probably see it on Twitter and my newsletter, I've been vehemently pushing, "All right, we need to embolden states, so I'm very happy Texas, Florida, Wyoming, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kentucky, many other states.  They have stood up last year, 'We're not going along with this'".  Florida went so far as, Biden requested from Florida that they send up some of their state coastguard soldiers, or military men, to go and protect DC during the State of the Union.  It's like, "No, I'm not sending them up for you". 

I want to see more of that, I want to see Bitcoin mining permanent funds in states that have rich energy abundance and a lot of energy sources under their land.  I think Wyoming, if you're watching, if you're listening, I've been trying to meme the Wyoming Bitcoin Mining permanent fund.  I think they should issue bonds that take advantage of a low-interest rate market, issue bonds, invest that money in mining infrastructure, tap open some orphan wells that exist, and then roll some of that revenue into a Bitcoin permanent fund.  You'll take advantage of Bitcoin's price appreciation but then on top of that, you are empowered against the federal government.

The federal government holds a lot of its power over individual states by saying, "If you want money from the taxes that we've acquired this year, you have to do this, that and the other".  If you have a Bitcoin Mining permanent fund, it allows you (1) to lower state taxes, but (2) gives you leverage against the federal government versus "Thanks, but not thanks, we're good".  It's totally possible, I think.  Bitcoiners may get mad if you're telling the state to get into Bitcoin mining, but I'm not saying "the state", I'm saying individual states.  I think it makes sense for them, and only if it's used for the public good to reduce taxes.

In Wyoming, after Biden came in and immediately shut down new mineral leases on federal lands, which Wyoming has a lot of federal land, and it's where a lot of their oil and gas industry is focused, Biden came in day one, signed an order that didn't allow them to actually facilitate their oil and gas industry in the state, and then wiped out their tax revenue.  Wyoming is very conservative and they were put in this position, "Do we raise taxes, or do we fire teachers?" and they were never going to raise taxes, so they fired a bunch of teachers.  If they had a Bitcoin Mining permanent fund, who's to say that would even have to be put in that situation.

Peter McCormack: It's fascinating.  Well, Marty, thanks for coming on.

Marty Bent: Thanks, I'm sorry I've been rambling!

Peter McCormack: No, this is good.  I always want to talk to you, because you always make me reconsider things.  When I sit and talk to people I agree with, I don't learn anything.  I was saying yesterday, chatting on Twitter, "I always want to talk to people I disagree with or think about things differently, because that's when you learn".  If you always talk to people you agree with, your position never changes, you're never challenged.

Marty Bent: And one thing I think we need more of in modern society too is civil discussion.  People can recognise that we can disagree, we don't have to fucking give each other the finger and be uncivil about things.  We need to bring back civility to these types of conversations, we need to -- because again, that's part of there's so much division in society, you can't even have a productive conversation in a lot of cases, just because people come in with -- others are created and it's like, again, via the propaganda machine, people are labelled as "others" and you're not supposed to be able to approach them to have a conversation.

Peter McCormack: I think there's another part that goes with that; that ability or willingness to know you might be wrong.  You know my position on the environment, I've been very clear about it, but I could be wrong on some of this, or I could be right, but the incentives can't be solved.  I don't know, but if I only spoke to people who were environmentalists, who are climate scientists who agree with me, I'm going to continue to repeat what they've said.  Today, I've told you my opinion based on those people I've talked to, but shit, me and Danny have got some work to do. 

If we do our digging and we're like, "Okay, Marty's right [or] Marty's got some good points here", and when I sit and talk to Troy and I sit and talk to Nic, I'm going to say, "This is all well and good, but what about the issues with the production of solar panels?  What about the issues with the production of windfarms?  What about these issues?" and that only happens by talking to someone who comes from a different point of view.  So, I always like sitting down and talking to you, Marty.

Marty Bent: It's always a pleasure for me too, Peter.  I mean, there's like a quiet brotherhood between Bitcoin podcasters that people don't know about.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, man.  Little secret conversations offline!  But no, it's great to see you crushing it again, man, all the things you're doing.  I love The Bent, you know how much I love The Bent, I share it out, and me and Danny were looking forward to this, so I appreciate you coming on.  Keep crushing it.  I'm here for two weeks, we've got to get a steak.

Marty Bent: Yeah, we'll definitely get many steaks, and congrats on the win today.  Thank you for having me.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, come on, Bedford. All right, man. Well, listen, good to see you, man.