WBD558 Audio Transcription

Can Bitcoin Fix the Political System? With Logan Bolinger

Release date: Friday 23rd September

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Logan Bolinger. 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.

Logan Bolinger is a lawyer and writer of the Think Bitcoin newsletter. In this interview, we discuss how he became orange pilled after concluding trust in politics is an impossible dream. We talk about how Bitcoin can help fix the broken political system and the problems caused by fiat money.

“Is the world that we want to live in, one where we need to hyperfinancialize every aspect of an individual’s life because financial conditions on a macro level are such that you have to finacialize your whole being in order to keep up or get ahead? Is that truly a victory for democracy?”

— Logan Bolinger

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Have you connected with Jason Maier yet?

Logan Bolinger: On Twitter.  We haven't actually -- this is interesting hearing myself like this, but we were connected on Twitter.  We haven't actually spoken yet though, but a couple of people have put us in contact with each other and said, "Hey, you should --" but we haven't had a conversation yet.

Peter McCormack: I think he's going to get better and better.  I mean, for a first interview, he did very well.

Logan Bolinger: Agreed.

Peter McCormack: And observing him on Twitter's been interesting, because he's getting one in ten shitty comments, typical weak attempts at attacking a progressive, and he's not rising to the bait, which I think's very cool.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I think for me, I get a fair amount of that type of blowback as well, and I think initially you want to respond to every single person and wage this war with them, but then you just arrive at a point where you say this is completely useless almost.

Peter McCormack: Well, you're giving energy to people who won't change their mind.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, so much of it is I feel like baiting too.  So, I wrote a couple of pieces about my intellectual journey, going from being a Bernie Sanders supporter to being a bitcoiner, and how being a bitcoiner has changed the way I think about politics a lot, and made my view a little bit more nuanced about progressive stuff.  I had so many people come out and just say, "You lost me at Bernie", basically, "You said 'Bernie' and I'm out, you can't possibly have anything intelligent to say".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I mean that's also pretty naïve in that you're trying to tell somebody a journey you've gone on to get into Bitcoin, and as a bitcoiner, that's helpful for them to understand, unless they spend their entire life only mixing with people of the exact same attitude.  One of the interesting things about, say, a journey that you've had, if they have friends who are maybe progressive who don't understand Bitcoin, or maybe Bernie fans, you can say, "Oh, well, read this.  Understand how Logan built his new mental model around Bitcoin".

It's like last night, we were out with some friends, and I had a friend who just fully doesn't grok Bitcoin, very smart guy.  For us, he has not great arguments.  And for us, I enjoyed it, because I was like, "How do we get through to him; how do we navigate his objections to Bitcoin and give him the understanding of how we see Bitcoin?"  I think this is what I've been saying to people about Jason and supporting him; it's like, "Even if you completely disagree with him politically, you should absolutely support what he's doing, because you want Bitcoin to be a success, you believe it's for everybody, we have a lot of pretty bad FUD or misreporting that comes from the left.  Here's a guy going out there to defend Bitcoin and show progressives how they're wrong.  You should absolutely support this guy".

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I agree with your take on that entirely, 100%.  I think even myself, I have some, not reservations, I guess I have, I feel, a little bit of mixed feelings.  I have some ambivalence about the framing and the way that we sort of try to bring the capital-P Progressives, on board to Bitcoin.  But nevertheless, I think it's certainly something we should be doing.

Peter McCormack: What do you mean by, "Capital-P Progressives"?

Logan Bolinger: So, I'm sure that there's probably a more eloquent way that we can make this distinction, but recently I've been thinking a lot about, and I think it helps in my mind clarify for me why I think progressives struggle a little bit with Bitcoin, is because I've been drawing a distinction recently with what I would call lower-p progressivism, which is obviously just progressivism with just a lower-case p, and then capital-P Progressives.  Capital-P Progressives are kind of the formal, political identification, the affinity with that political party, versus progressivism with a lower p, which is in my mind like a set of ideas that would just be lower-case-p progressive, detached from and not necessarily married to a specific formal political affiliation.

I view lower-case-p progressivism as ideas first, ideas lead the bus or drive the bus, and the identity part of it is more secondary or tertiary; whereas capital-P Progressives, that to me, particularly in US politics, where we're so polarised, you know, the two-party system is very entrenched and ossified, for me I think of capital-P Progressives as identity first.  It's like you're identifying with this group, and you are not necessarily doing diligence on every issue that exists.  You're just saying, "Okay, well what is this identity group's lens, and I'm going to view it through that lens", which then allows for people like Elizabeth Warren to come out and say, "Here's what I think about Bitcoin".  Then you have everybody who associates or affiliates themselves with that formal political group merely say, "Oh, well then that's what I think about it".

So, I've been thinking a lot about this distinguishing between the two, because I think Bitcoin is very lower-case-p progressive; I think it's inarguably lower-case-p progressive.  I'm going to try to stop saying "lower case" and "capital".

Peter McCormack: But the distinction's helpful.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, and I also think it's really helpful, because one of the most interesting things that Bitcoin does politically is it's kind of like a truth serum.  It kind of reveals the incoherence of a certain slate of political platform beliefs.  It also reveals maybe internal contradictions in that set of beliefs.  For example, with progressives, progressives purportedly believe in a certain set of things, a certain set of ideas.  If Bitcoin advances those ideas, then progressives are anti-Bitcoin, and Bitcoin has revealed contradictions in the progressive platform.

Peter McCormack: Well, what is virtue and what is real?

Logan Bolinger: So, yeah.  How much of Progressives is just more reflexive identity, "I want to be of this group of people" versus, "I actually care about getting the issue right, getting the solutions correct?  I also don't think the incentives are always there, at least in US politics, but probably politics worldwide, to actually arrive at a solution.  I think the incentives, clearly in America at least, are get re-elected and score points with your political team.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well this is why I find it so interesting at the moment, because I think it's pretty clear that the history of Bitcoin, post cypherpunks, was very much a libertarian idea and seemed to fit nicely within the political framework of Conservatives, not just American Conservatives, but also British Conservatives.  I historically have been a Conservative voter, but UK Conservatives are not like Republican Conservatives.  We also have and share some progressive ideas, and both our parties are a lot more to the centre than I think US parties are. 

It's very easy for us to get people on the show who are libertarians, or people with conservative ideas, and we've had a lot of that.  But we've also had people writing in or leaving comments saying, "Your show is just filled with white, right-wing libertarians, so can we have some more diverse opinions".  That's why I put the shoutout.  We've had Troy Cross on, we've had Margot Paez on and we knew we were going to have Jason on, and I put the callout saying, "Let's have some more, let's unite around this.  Let's see where we agree and where we can work together".

You responding and agreeing to come all the way over to Bedford, which by the way thank you so much, because it's not a small journey, and also we're going to treat you to a game of football; but thank you for coming over for this, because there is some pushback against this when I talk about this and push Jason out there, or other people out there.  There is some pushback and I really want to get the idea to people that we are in this really shitty culture war at the moment, and we have this thing that we agree on and we can unite around, and we can possibly solve a number of societal problems, which are unique to our own identities, but help bring us together as a society.

So, I really do appreciate you coming over and doing this, and I hope to talk to a few more progressives about their ideas and what they're thinking, and what Bitcoin means to them.  And also, both parts of your From Bernie to Bitcoin were brilliant, and we're going to cover a lot of that today.  But I think it might be useful, just for those who don't know you, can you just introduce yourself, because there's quite a big audience now who might have not heard of you?

Logan Bolinger: Sure, yeah.  So, I'm currently a lawyer by day, that's my day job.  Back in the day, I was a high school teacher.  I've been practising law for, I guess, five years or so now.  I got into Bitcoin in 2017.  Originally, it didn't stick with me, I kind of needed multiple touchpoints, like I think most people do.  And 2020 rolls around, and that's kind of where I went deep down the rabbit hole, just a lot of things didn't make sense to me, and Bitcoin helped me make sense of the world and make sense of what was happening. 

Then, it's just been a journey from there, getting deeper and deeper into the space and talking to lots of people.  I started writing lots and I write a free newsletter now, called Think Bitcoin, and now I'm here, so thanks for having me, I really, really appreciate it, and very excited about the football game later!

Peter McCormack: I'm nervous and excited.  Obviously we got off to a great start, a perfect start to the season.

Logan Bolinger: Well, we're going to bring a lot of good energy.

Peter McCormack: Well, I hope so.  Fingers crossed that you'll be our good omen and we'll get three points.  Okay, so I want us to work our way to where you got to.  I'm going to quote you; this comes from the end of part one of your two articles, which again I say we will share in the show notes but, "The first major breakthrough for me on my journey from Bernie to Bitcoin was confronting the idea of trust in politics and wondering how Bitcoin's trustlessness could be leveraged towards a positive political end, via its potential to constrain lawmakers".

I've read that quote now probably about ten times this morning, I'm going over and over it in my head, and then I went back and read your analogy with doctors and cures, and then it started to resonate with me.  Danny was saying, "You're really going to love Logan.  You two are going to agree on a lot", and I think I know where I agree with you, is that I don't buy any of this, "Burn down the state"; I don't buy anarchism, it's not for me, but I appreciate a lot of their ideas; I do like the idea of a smaller state and I do like the idea of better responsibility within the state, and I like how Bitcoin can do that.  So, that really crystalised it for me.

But I think if we work through that journey, literally talk the audience through From Bernie to Bitcoin, I think we might help some other people crystalise what the problems are.  Because I don't want to burn things down, I want to make things better.  I don't want to say democracy is a terrible system and it should be replaced with something else.  I think it can be the best system, I don't want to say "great", the best system and it's better than a lot of the other systems people are living under.  So, how do we fix that and make it better?

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I would agree, I definitely agree with that, and it's something that I think about a lot with respect to libertarians and Bitcoin and the world view that I think exists; the folks who think, "We need to burn down the state".  I'm probably going to get torched for saying this, maybe from both sides, but I actually think there are some similarities philosophically between some folks on the left and libertarians, in the sense that I think there's a streak of utopianism that runs through both. 

For example, if you were a Marxist on the left and you believe that there's this natural progression of history, from feudalism to capitalism, and then of course naturally the workers get fed up and they rebel against unfair conditions, and then we get the worker state of socialism; and then eventually though, it all culminates in this Edenic, perfect state of communism, which is utopian, I mean that is a utopian view that we get there, and I think it sounds wonderful in theory and I think it's really alluring, but it obviously ignores a lot of variables.

I think for libertarians though, I think there are some of the folks in Bitcoin who want to burn down the state and live in this kind of anarcho-capitalistic state of nature thing; or, I guess maybe some of the folks now, the version of that that exists on the libertarian side of Bitcoin is, we're all going to live on our own farms, and the world is going to be just one big, organic farm and we're all going to live these bucolic lives.

Peter McCormack: Voluntary interactions.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah.  And I've seen a lot of stuff on that, and I think that's similarly utopian, and similarly probably, I hesitate to use the word "naïve", because it sounds so pejorative, but I do think it similarly ignores a lot of other variables.  So, I guess that there's some resonance between the left's vision of the future and the libertarians' vision of the future that just doesn't get talked about enough, because I think some of the pitfalls of both are similar as well.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I largely agree, and we will both get flamed for this.

Logan Bolinger: Totally.

Peter McCormack: But what I've come to appreciate is that when I've spent time with libertarians, actually people on the left, people on the right, anyone who cares so much about the system that we live within, they all seem to have a strong moral compass, they just have different things that they care about.  I think libertarians are ideologically right about a vast number of subjects.  I think the practical application of their ideas is where I struggle with it. 

But that's why I wish there was, and I've said this so many times on the show, I wish the libertarian parties were better politically, more successful politically, because I think they can deliver a number of the things that, especially the things that you've talked about in here though: a bit more constraint on the state; a bit more responsibility in terms of fiscal planning.  So, I like and I support and I just hope we see, I just think, a more libertarian influence on politics would be good.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I agree and I like your framing that you were just saying.  I think in theory, and ideologically, there are some similarities between the left and libertarians, but like you said, it's the practical applications.  I think there are problems with the practical applications from both sides, both from the left and from libertarians, so I like that.  And I also think I definitely agree that it would be useful in America, one of the biggest problems we have, in my opinion, is we're extraordinary polarised politically.  The two-party system I think is, to put it charitably, untenable and dysfunctional.

Peter McCormack: Did you see that recent chart that came out on the voting patterns over the years?

Logan Bolinger: Where it just kind of all converges, or hardens basically on each side?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Check out, I think it was Breedlove who shared it; I could be wrong, Danny.  Try and have a look for this chart.  But I think it was going back through the 1960s and 1970s, it was less partisan, and now it's just two solid blocks.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, there was a middle ground that you could walk, or at least there used to be.  But now, it's a total sorting process, where you're either on one side or you're on the other side, and it's like that for every single issue, which is why Bitcoin is so interesting in the way that it --

Danny Knowles: Was it this?

Peter McCormack: Yeah!  It's fascinating, but it's also scary.

Logan Bolinger: Oh, yeah, it's terrifying.  And I think the incentive structure for politicians in the US is just to get re-elected first and foremost, because we have no term limits, so there's nothing to constrain politicians for serving decades at a time, which is why the average age of an American Senator is 65 years old.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's to get elected and get paid.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, get elected, get paid and then just stay elected.  And in order to do that, you just have to score the right points with your political team, your tribe.  And there's less of an incentive to actually get the solutions correct, or to find the right answer, which is I think sometimes when we want to pitch Bitcoin to either political party, there's sort of inherent within that the presupposition that, "Well, if we just educate them, they'll want to do the right thing based on their knowledge".  I'm not sure that I think that that's 100% correct, because I think the incentive system is so poor that I wouldn't be confident in saying that, "Sure, if we educated every person in Congress in America about Bitcoin, they would all see the light and see this as a solution to certain problems", and start advancing it and proposing and passing appropriate legislation.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm trying to find one of your -- yeah, I think you quoted Ambrose Bierce, have I pronounced that correctly?

Logan Bolinger: You have.

Peter McCormack: And this is I think the problem with, what you said is, "A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles".

Logan Bolinger: Yes, I think that pretty much sums up American politics.

Peter McCormack: It did give me hope though when Senator Lummis and Senator Gillibrand actually came together and put forward a bill.  That's the promise of Bitcoin, is to unite, and that gave me a bit of hope.  We don't have the polarisation that you have here in the UK.  I mean, we have intense debates in Parliament, but there are things that parties unite on.  There wasn't a massive polarisation around COVID, the Shadow Cabinet pretty much supported the government with their decisions.  We don't need to debate whether it was right or wrong, I think we're way past that!  And they would challenge the government on their decisions, but they largely supported.

There is no different on Ukraine; both parties are largely agreed, but will challenge on ideas and policy.  We don't have that political division, and I've often wrestled with, "Why don't we have it?"  I actually think it comes down to the media.

Danny Knowles: I really think that.  Politicians go on media here, like they'll go on the BBC, and they'll be really challenged on either side, and I don't think you have that as much in the US.  Politicians stick to their -- like, Republicans will go on Fox.  I don't think they challenge each other nearly the same.

Peter McCormack: It feels like in the US, it's more like sports and teams, and you support your team; and if you go on Fox, it's a platform.  Whereas, in the UK, people will argue the political bent at the BBC or Sky News, but they're still fairly down the middle at times and they will speak to both parties and they will challenge them.  And I think that's why we don't have as much polarisation.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I definitely agree with your point, Danny.  And to that point, I saw a chart on Twitter the other day.  It was about the reading level of the average American, and the comprehension level of the average American was something around like a 6th- or a 7th-grade reading level, which affects --

Danny Knowles: Wait, of the average American?

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, the average American basically has -- I mean, it was a comprehension rate, the ability to -- I think the chart is from, I want to say Josh Wolf.  I saw it retweeted by a different account.  But basically, just the point being that the media is pretty well aware that, I mean it's a pretty obvious point, you're not going to get the amount of clicks and eyeballs that are necessary to make money by writing nuance, thoughtful, really deeply-researched pieces on various issues, and working through them in a rigorous way.  It's much more profitable, and it's going to reach more viewers, and where they are in terms of comprehension ability, to say inflammatory things.

Danny Knowles: I don't know if this is the thing that you were talking about, but it says here, yeah, "Reads at 7th- and 8th-grade level".

Logan Bolinger: Oh, yeah, it's a different chart but it's saying similar, which I think is really scary.

Peter McCormack: There's a similar thing with The Sun.  I mean, The Sun is an absolute shit rag tabloid here.  By the way, don't buy The Sun!  But they have a reading age that they write for, I can't remember what it is.

Danny Knowles: Is that true; I've not heard that?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, they do.  And when you understand, it's maybe like 10- or 12-year-olds; once you understand that and you read it, it kind of makes sense.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, that's what the chart was getting at, that I was referring to.  It's that people write to that, the media writes to that level.

Peter McCormack: Well it's why recently, I've gone kind of full circle on the BBC.  So, the BBC is challenging in that it's kind of state funded, but it isn't like a Russian state news channel.

Danny Knowles: It's not funded by the state.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's coordinated by the state, funded by the taxpayer.  It's not controlled by the government, but there's obviously influence.  When I first discovered Bitcoin, I came to think, "Fuck the BBC, it's state managed, state controlled, state coordinated, whatever you want.  We want fiercely independent journalism", etc.  But actually, one of the things I've come to realise is that because it is state controlled, it has a duty to try and give a fair representation of all parties.

They also have these onerous complaints procedures, where if it's felt that it's not been independent, they have to investigate.  And yes, it has its inherent flaws, but it also is a different way of being able to have the news represented to you than, say, something which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, which really is at the whims of what his objectives are.  I mean, I don't think there is a perfect model.

I think the best model now is independent journalists who are independently financed, who haven't been audience captured; that's to me the best.  But if you want to talk about mainstream, I think there are benefits to being able to look at the news through multiple lenses.  I will get flamed for this, but you defend it.

Danny Knowles: Yeah, I definitely defend it, and I'd actually push back that independent journalists, whatever you want to call them, are a stronger source of truth; I think that's probably not true.

Peter McCormack: No, what I mean is, not always, but they can be.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I think maybe to Danny's point, it might be a matter of you can have the cream of the crop of that, like the folks that you were saying, Pete; but also, because the barrier for entry for doing that is also so low that anybody can hop onto a Substack and do it, you actually have an ocean of noise around these very strong voices that are, I guess, signal.  But the amount of noise that is present then is perhaps even greater.

Danny Knowles: And it's not that the BBC are flawless, they're certainly not, but I think there are some really good journalists and some really good work, and by a lot of organisations, not just the BBC.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I'm a huge fan of John Simpson, I'm pretty sure he's head of news at the BBC.  I wrote to him when I was a 7-year-old and he wrote back to me, so I've always been a fan.  But I'm a huge fan of his as a journalist and as a historical war reporter; I think he's one of the best.  But then the BBC have historically had some great reporters.  It does have to play to the crowd, the latest cultural -- what is culturally acceptable; it definitely is a little bit more left than right, I think you would agree with that.

Danny Knowles: Yeah, I mean I think it's not far off being one of the most centrist outlets, but it probably does just lean a little bit left, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Just slightly left of centre.  I wonder what the bias-check websites would say about it.  I'd say it's left of centre, but equally to the other side you've got Sky News, which is right of centre, and Sky News, as a Murdoch-owned entity, is less propaganda-promoting than, say, Fox News.  So, I think you can get a good balance between the two of those, as long as you've got a lot of common sense with avoiding their bullshit.

Danny Knowles: That's where they put them.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so just left of centre.  What does it say for Sky News?

Danny Knowles: Who fact-checks these?

Peter McCormack: Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?  So, we're just looking at media bias fact-check, and it's got BBC just left. 

Danny Knowles: Interesting.

Peter McCormack: Interesting.  GB News must be the balance.  Yeah, that's interesting.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I'm trying to think what in America would be considered only slightly left of centre, or only slightly right of centre.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I was going to say, we're going to look at Fox News now.  Yeah, look at that!

Danny Knowles: So, for anyone listening, Fox News is considered right almost to extreme.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so the chart is "Least biased, right-centre, right, extreme; or, least biased, left-centre, left, extreme", and it's right of right, so it's approaching extreme right.  Factual reporting is stated as "mixed".  Actually, have a look at CNN, to be fair.  I actually think these websites are pretty good.

Danny Knowles: I mean, it just gives you a bit of a lens.

Peter McCormack: Again, CNN is also mixed on factual reporting.

Logan Bolinger: It's a mirror image just to the left.

Peter McCormack: God, it's definitely left.

Danny Knowles: Well, that's very left, yeah.  That would probably be our most left-wing outlet, do you think, in the UK?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, probably.  And it still has some good reporting.

Danny Knowles: It has some terrible reporting on Bitcoin though.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it has some good reporting.  So, what you notice there is, as somebody who travels back and forth between the US and the UK, is I see this extreme polarisation, and then you have these extreme biases in the news.  And I find coming back here, we don't have this extreme polarisation.  The debate, I think, is a lot more civil and I think people are a lot more willing to give up on certain ideas, or concede, and I think our news is a lot more balanced.  I don't know how you solve that.  I mean, bring back the fairness doctrine?

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I don't know.  I think the media question is really thorny.  I'm not sure I have any good solutions to that problem.  I think, just from the political angle to me, an obvious thing that would help would just be to introduce term limits.  I think that's glaringly obvious.  I don't think it solves everything, I don't think it's a magic cure or panacea or anything, but I do think anything that we can do to reorient the incentive structure would be helpful, and I think term limits would certainly do some significant clean-up of some of the incentives that currently exist.

Peter McCormack: Is there any appetite for that.

Logan Bolinger: There actually is.  Interestingly enough I think, maybe we could check this, but I'm pretty sure that both AOC and Ted Cruz, interestingly enough, both agree on that.  I want to say I vaguely recall a tweet from Ted Cruz that was a quote tweet of AOC, in which he said, "I actually agree with you on this.  Let's do something about it".  I could be wrong, but I do think there's some appetite for it, obviously not significant enough that we've had any meaningful traction on it thus far.

Peter McCormack: I think that one, and just a completely separate point, not allowing people in Congress to be trading on the stock market.  I think that's another one.

Logan Bolinger: Also seems obvious, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Shoutout to Nancy Pelosi, absolutely crushing it!  Yeah, we went on a bit of a detour there, so yeah, let's bring it back.  So, tell a bit of the story.  You were a Bernie supporter.  I don't mind Bernie.  Well, I'll tell you what I like about Bernie is his consistency.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, that's how I felt; I still feel that way.  I mean, I don't consider myself a Bernie Sanders political supporter right now, but I do have respect for Bernie, certainly for his consistency.  He doesn't seem to me as compromised or captured as most other politicians, which I very much appreciate, and I think Bernie has pretty much nailed the fact that obviously there is an enormous problem.  I just think the solutions -- I think he's treating the symptoms, or trying to treat the symptoms, instead of treating the source of the problem.  But I do think that he's spot on that we have this major issue around wealth inequality in America, among other things.  So, I think he's worth respecting for a number of reasons.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, his consistency was something I -- I mean, if I was American, I don't think I could vote for him, but I did like his consistency.  He just seems to want to give too much away for free, like free education, free healthcare.  I admire it, as somebody who has a healthcare system here that is a healthcare system that I think is great, but there seems to be a lot of things: free childcare, free healthcare, free education, free higher education; there was a lot.

So, as somebody who doesn't fully understand politics, my understanding is that the DNC blocks him running, having the opportunity to become President.  Is that true?

Logan Bolinger: Oh, in 2016, that stuff with Hillary?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I mean my understanding of the DNC, and I don't think this is a perfect understanding, but it seemed obvious that the "establishment Democrats", their desired candidate was obviously Hillary Clinton.  My understanding of it is that there was certainly some behind-closed-doors influence campaign to ensure that this upstart, Bernie Sanders, that nobody saw coming in 2016, when everybody thought Hillary was just going to cruise to the nomination, to prevent him from winning and taking it from Hillary at the end.  But I'm not sure of all the details of what happened there; I'm not sure I want to know all the details of what happened there!

Peter McCormack: Okay, well listen, let's get into this.  I'm taking a lot of quotes out from you, but let's talk about this trust idea.  If you can explain, because you said part of your journey was confronting the idea of trust in politics, and that's something similar that I've had to do, because going into this Bitcoin world as somebody who vocally defends and champions democracy, that comes with certain criticisms.  So, I've had to reflect on that myself, and in reflecting on that, I've realised actually there's a lot wrong with politics.  Can you talk to me about that journey you went on with this?

Logan Bolinger: Sure.  I think, we respect to trust, for me personally for the longest time politically, my view and I think a lot of people who would consider themselves liberal or democrats or progressives, or whatever version of that in the US, would probably agree that I always thought that it was a personnel issue, that if you could just get the right person, the right human being into office, that you could then trust that person then to make all of the correct decisions, or the decisions that were aligned with the policies that you wanted to see enacted. 

The more, the deeper that I got into Bitcoin, when I started to develop different opinions as to where I thought that source of a lot of our problems was, and how most politicians were mislocating the source of the problems, and I think if you're somebody who starts from a different political inclination of perspective, this might be more obvious to you from the outset; but it started to become very obvious to me that it's certainly a mistake, I think, to put all of your trust into, "Let's just change the personnel", because the personnel's always going to be changing.  So, this is what goes on now.  The Republicans go in for four, eight years, and they do some stuff; then the Democrats go in, undo all that, do some stuff; the Republicans go in and undo all that, and it's like putting blocks on the board and taking them off.

But also, I just think the surface area for human error to occur when it comes to policy, particularly monetary policy, is so expansive and so large that I think Bitcoin shrinking that and making it so that you don't have to trust the decision-making of human beings as much, on at least this one particular issue of the structure of the monetary system itself, I think is useful, let's say, as a tool, I think.  Again, I don't think it's a solution to everything, but I think it's potentially helpful. 

I mean, I get a lot of pushback from that, what's his name, Rohan Grey, or whatever, the Willamette Law guy who was before Congress.  He accused me of basically being a fascist, or he said that I had taken a hard right turn, which I thought was interesting, so did my wife.

Peter McCormack: Why?

Logan Bolinger: I think it's because, I mean I know there's some criticism from the left.  If you basically remove the ability to manipulate the money, basically you remove the rescue function, the rescue button.  If you take that button away, regardless of the long-term harm that using that button repeatedly over and over again and more and more frequently, the harm that can cause long term, that if you remove it altogether that you're dooming people to bad outcomes ultimately.

Peter McCormack: Well, the rescue button has been abused --

Logan Bolinger: Yes.

Peter McCormack: -- and the balance of the surplus and deficits has become just a case of deficit and more deficit.  I think that is one of the major issues, that if it was a rescue button, if it was Katrina and we need to rebuild New Orleans; if it was COVID, and again I'm not debating the rights and wrongs of COVID, but if it was COVID, it should be there to support and rescue people at times of hardship; it's a rainy-day fund.  We all have it, but it's become a keep-yourself-elected fund.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I certainly agree.  It's absolutely been overused.  I've been thinking about this a little bit.  I do think there are probably ways to -- I don't think the only way to step in and do "rescue stuff" is the way that we've been doing it.  I mean, I think that there are ways that you can have money set aside perhaps, and creative ways that you could have some resources available, or just be more prepared generally, such that you don't have to hit the button the way that we've been doing it.

So, I think people like Rohan or other people like him would say that the only way that we can do this is the way that we've been doing it historically, which is just to expand the money supply and helicopter money, stuff like that.  But I'm confident that there are other, more creative ways, to not allow, or to be able to provide resources when it is necessary that doesn't also necessarily involve expanding the money supply, which of course is just going to make it worse.

Peter McCormack: Compound the problems.  Do you know Avik Roy?

Logan Bolinger: Yes, I do.

Peter McCormack: Did you listen to my show with him?

Logan Bolinger: I did, that was a great show.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so for someone like Rohan Grey, I would forward him Avik's article, and maybe Avik's interview, and say, "I fully understand why you think you need this rescue button, but now you need to understand that this has a compounding impact on the people you think you're helping.  And if you continually use this, you're going to continue to widen the wealth gap".

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I view the rescue button as, I think I've probably written this somewhere, I view it as the painkiller way to address problems.  Whereas, if I had a health issue and you just pharmacologically intervened, that would alleviate my symptoms for a period of time and I would probably feel better; but if you don't actually cure the disease or treat the bacteria, or you don't more holistically improve my lifestyle and my environment such that I actually get healthier, instead of feel sick less, then you're not really solving the problem.  I think you're just delaying it and just kicking the consequences down the road farther, and then it's a much larger problem down the road that maybe the intervention required is obviously much greater; and we all know where that ends.  I think that's where my big pharma comparison is, that's what I was thinking there.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and one of the things I was trying to wonder with politics trying to fix the problem of poor fiscal policy or poor monetary policy, would be to tie the use of the budget and the spend of the party to snap elections.  So, if you were to go over budget, you would be required to face a snap general election.  And I may be trying to simplify something that shouldn't be simplified, but I think of it both in terms of my company and my home life.

I have a mortgage, I have bills to pay, I have food to buy, my set of bills; and then I earn money.  And if I have extra money, I can go on holiday and if I don't, my option is to get a loan, but I have to pay back that loan or I lose my house.  The same with the business.  I have staff to pay, costs to pay.  If I want to expand the business, I take a loan; if I don't pay that back, I lose my business.  If you offered me a loan facility which I never have to pay back and I can use whenever I want, I'm going to live in the best house, I'm going to get my football team in the Premier League, and I'm going to drive a Lamborghini; I can just do that.

The problem with politicians is they have access to an infinite loan facility, of which other people pay the consequences much further down the line.  So, I would absolutely support a political system where the government has a budget and if they go over the budget, they face a snap election, and we get to decide whether we want to continue with this; and it puts some responsibility on them.  Or maybe other ways.  I think people need to face the consequences of overspending as a political party.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I definitely agree.  There's a certain level of transparency, I think, monetarily that we in our personal lives are able to exercise.  You said in your personal life, in your business, it's all very transparent and you face those consequences immediately.  If you don't have the money to pay Danny, Danny's probably going to let you know about it.  If you default on your mortgage, then your bank's going to let you know about it, and there are immediate consequences there.  Gladstein has written about this with respect to conflict and war and stuff like that, where if you just remove the accountability component, you remove the transparency, then you pay for anything and there's just a moral hazard there.

Peter McCormack: This is where it's the choice between war bonds or money printing, right?  If you create the war bonds, "Well, we don't want to pay those war bonds".

Logan Bolinger: Maybe not, yeah.

Peter McCormack: No, I completely agree.  I've got so many of your quotes!  This one, I wrote, "Wow, wow, wow!" I think mainly because of the length of the sentence as well!  I want to read this one back to you.  Let's see if I can do this without making a mistake, "We should also be cognisant of the lasting, potentially irreversible harms that can be wrought by entrusting control over the money supply to the vicissitudes of short-sighted, partisan manipulations and/or hasty, ill-conceived and sometimes dubiously motivated law-making, undertaken by those whose knowledge of elementary monetary concepts is often not obviously more advanced than that of the average high school undergraduate student".  Apart from suggesting a bit more grammar, I fucking love that!  I mean, that is a takedown.

Logan Bolinger: I'm under strict instructions from my wife, Pete, to not be too long-winded today.  So, I'll try and put it in more concise terms!

Peter McCormack: "Let's stop letting idiots make decisions about money"?

Logan Bolinger: Yes!  Or, I think the monetary system is so fundamental to everything, and I just think again the incentive structure of politicians making these decisions is so bad, and the issue is just so important, that I think the motivations --

Danny Knowles: It kind of comes back to this really.

Logan Bolinger: Oh, yeah.

Danny Knowles: This was a poll in 2017 that showed that 85% of MPs in the UK don't know where money comes from.

Peter McCormack: "The results of a new poll of MPs reveal a worrying lack of understanding of the UK's money and banking system across the House of Commons.  The poll finds that only 15% of MPs are aware of how most money is created in the modern economy.  Only 15% of MPs were aware that new money is created when banks make loans, and existing money is destroyed when members of the public repay loans".

Logan Bolinger: I would imagine this is probably similar in the US as well.  If you just listen to most politicians speak publicly about this sort of thing, it's pretty obvious that they're not spending a ton of time digging into that, but it's an issue that's so fundamentally important, and has so many reverberations across every aspect of our lives, especially looking long term.  I mean, this is the type of thing that if done incorrectly, destroys societies entirely, historically speaking.

So, I think entrusting that to -- we should at least be asking questions about the wisdom of entrusting that to human beings who are on this very short-term cycle of just wanting to get re-elected every two years, every six years, or every four years, if you're the President, and whether the motivations of those individuals align with long term what we as citizens for ourselves, for our children and for our grandchildren, how we would like to see things play out, and the world that we would like to live in, and the health and sustainability of that world.

Peter McCormack: Well, this is where I'm going to probably contradict myself, because as somebody who supports democracy, I also recognise, as you have here, that we're entrusting really important decisions to people who have no experience in making some of these decisions; and the compound effect can be huge.  I mean, we've seen that with countries that have been destroyed and lives have been destroyed through bad decisions, sometimes just a few small bad decisions.

We don't allow this with the engineering of aeroplanes, or the piloting of aeroplanes; we don't entrust people in terms of childcare who don't have the experience of childcare.  We want the people who understand what they're doing in all these fields of responsibility.  But then, in the area of politics, we sometimes are picking based on personality, less so experience.  And then when you think about it, it's kind of strange; like, how do we get more experienced people into these roles?

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, it's kind of a complex problem.  I think there's certainly an expertise issue.  At the same time, I think I wrote about this a little bit too, I think the amount of topics that we expect our representatives to have a competent command of is kind of astronomical at this point.  I think the same is true for the Executive Branch, for the President as well, that the sheer amount of responsibilities, and the different areas that we demand a certain level of competence and expertise is almost impossible.

So, I think if there are ways to, for lack of a better word, outsource some of those a little bit in order to, as I said earlier, reduce that surface area on which human error can play and wreak havoc, I think it's worth asking the question of whether that would be something that would be useful.  And I think Bitcoin is unique, because it's not like you're offloading it or outsourcing it to a different group of people, who are maybe similarly compromised or have their own set of issues; it's to a protocol that doesn't really have those issues, which is one of the things that makes Bitcoin so unique.  I think the way that Bitcoin has all these interesting interplays with our current political system is just endlessly fascinating to me.

Peter McCormack: Well, it forces bottom-up thinking.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I think it certainly does.  And it sort of reveals, like I was saying earlier, the incoherence of the way that we currently think about politics.  I think it's our last best chance, probably.  There are a lot of people who talk about wanting to transcend the two-party system, I know that Andrew Yang talks about that all the time now, which I think is useful.  But I think, like you were saying, you almost have to force that from the bottom up, you can't just implement that from the top down and just say, "Hey, we're starting a third party".  The energy for that, there needs to be a groundswell from the bottom, and I think that Bitcoin is probably, at least in my lifetime by far, the most interesting and promising way to potentially do that. 

I'm kind of of the view where I'm not particularly optimistic about us solving a lot of major problems, as long as we continue to be constrained by the two-party system as it currently exists.  So, anything that meaningfully challenges that, I think we should be spending time with and looking at, and I think Bitcoin is that.

Peter McCormack: It's like Nic Carter said, it's like this peaceful revolution.

Logan Bolinger: Exactly, and that's a great piece.  And, yeah, I would agree with that entirely.

Peter McCormack: We had Matthew Mežinskis in here a few days ago, and he's based out in Eastern Europe, he's an American Latvian, and he wanted to talk a lot about what's happening in Russia and Ukraine.  One of the things that really stuck with me is his view in very much supporting sanctions and supporting the high levels of pressure that have been put on Russia, because it is a gangster state with a psychopathic dictator attacking a sovereign country.

He said that one of the only ways that you will get change is if you can force for revolution from within.  And the only way that Russians can do that is if they have the world close to them, because of decisions by Putin, and that's the revolution there.  Our revolution is this; it's this, "We're just going to use a different form of money.  We're going to adopt this and hopefully bring more and more people into it with these fairer rules".  And hopefully with that…

We're kind of seeing, not so much in the UK, there's a couple of signals; but we've seen the shoots of promise with politics in the US in that people are genuinely starting to care about Bitcoin.  I know there are some who are just saying it because it's a hack, but there are some politicians who genuinely seem to care about Bitcoin and see the benefit it brings.  So, the shoots of promise, we're starting to see it.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I definitely think there are some heartening signs and I do think politicians are incentivised, almost on a time lag, where you don't have as much incentive to change your mind quickly.  But if you were receiving all kinds of calls and interest from your constituents about something like Bitcoin, then that's when maybe you're more incentivised to take a look at it.  But I think that occurs on a lag, because it takes time for the general populace to get onboard with Bitcoin as well, or to become just increasingly educated about Bitcoin.

So, I think there are heartening signs, I do think that the Lummis/Gillibrand thing is heartening, particularly for Gillibrand, where there's more risk for her, because the FUD around Bitcoin is much more.  I mean, if you're a Republican, the environmental FUD you don't really care, so there's not really a lot of risk for you to be, "Yeah, sure, Bitcoin's great".  But for somebody like Gillibrand, there's more risk there, so I applaud her for being willing to undertake that.

Peter McCormack: When you started thinking about how you've got to treat the root cause of the problem, that flip you had, and how Bitcoin can do that, have you practically thought about the reality of that, what that actually means; and how integrated Bitcoin needs to become within the system?  Do you see it as a check and a balance; do you see it operating alongside the dollar; do you think long term, it is the only form of money?  They're some of the bigger, more interesting questions that I'm trying to work through at the moment, because I'm not sure I see a world of just hyperbitcoinisation, where we have this thing called hard currency.  I see, well certainly in my lifetime and maybe a few lifetimes, we have both a hard and soft currency working together.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah.  I do think about this a lot, but I don't think anybody ultimately knows how this is going to play out.  But I think I agree with you, I think there will probably be a combination of hard and soft money, and I think the hard money will kind of check the soft money.  I think it does operate in a kind of checks and balances way, where basically if the soft money goes off the rails, there will be a check there, and currencies will fail if they just go nuts.  But it is admittedly difficult for me to envision a world where it is just Bitcoin.

I'm very much willing to admit I could absolutely be wrong there.  I think everybody is speculating in terms of this discussion, but it is difficult.  Some of the hyperbitcoinisation arguments to me are just utopian and, at times, so glaringly obviously utopian as to be totally, wilfully blind to I think a lot of other variables.

Peter McCormack: And possibly also, take too many jumps at once.

Logan Bolinger: Yes.

Peter McCormack: I mean, even if you're right, even if we have hyperbitcoinisation, there are a lot of steps between now and then, and on that journey there's implications for people of that happening, and we don't know if it's currency collapses.  I wrestle with this, I wrestle with the implications of a transition to Bitcoin and knowing there will be negative externalities to some people.

Logan Bolinger: Certainly.

Peter McCormack: It may lead to a different type of wealth inequality, it may lead to conflict, it may lead to quite a lot of mess, and I think it's quite important to think through these steps, not just allow these things, just wait and see what happens.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I agree.  One of the things that actually annoys me a lot, and I would expect to be torched for this as well, is some of the --

Peter McCormack: We're going to be burning down in flames when this comes out, you and I!

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, it's going to be bad!

Danny Knowles: I talked about the BBC, so I'm fucked!

Peter McCormack: We're all fucked.

Logan Bolinger: But I think sometimes, when you were saying, Peter, about the leaps that get taken all at once, I mean I think when people say things, I wrote something about this a little while ago, that when people say things like, "It's just game theory.  Let's just assume, working under the assumption that Bitcoin is obviously going to take over the world and be the only currency", etc, and just going from there and taking that as an unchallenged premise, I think is a little nuts.

Again, it reminds me, because it is very seductive in theory, and it's kind of an elegant theory to say, "Well, if this domino falls, then this one will and this game theory will just play out.  It works on paper".  But again, so does Marxist theory of history, basically, on paper, and there are students on college campuses right now who are basically saying, "Soon, there'll be an uprising and we'll all realise that capitalism doesn't work".  That's not that far from what Bernie Sanders' campaign was, and it makes sense, it resonates a lot, because there's a lot of truth in the diagnoses there.

But as I think we saw with the Bernie Sanders' campaign, and its inability to ultimately win, for a number of different reasons, there were a bunch of other variables that came into play there.  And I also think for every country who's experimented with some version of socialism or communism, or whatever, a lot of other variables, most of them very human variables, come into play.  And I think the same thing, why we wouldn't expect a "road to hyperbitcoinisation" to include similar variables; not expecting those along the way, I think is naïve, I guess, to put it probably charitably.

Peter McCormack: You obviously mix in different circles, have you been testing your ideas; have you been talking about this with other friends who may be on the more progressive side?  And, have you orange pilled some?

Logan Bolinger: I've orange pilled a few people close to me; working on others.  It's kind of an ongoing process that you just do person to person.  I'm very lucky, because my wife and I are totally onboard together.

Peter McCormack: Who was first?

Logan Bolinger: I was first.  She was not too far behind me though, so that's great.  So, we get to discuss it all the time.

Peter McCormack: And there's no point she's like, "Okay, shut up about Bitcoin now!"

Logan Bolinger: She is a great human being, so if she thinks that, which I'm sure that she does at certain points, she doesn't verbalise it!

Peter McCormack: What does she think of you flying out here to do an interview?

Logan Bolinger: She thought it was incredible.  She was very, very supportive, and she's a fan of your show as well.

Peter McCormack: Well, next time around, we'll try and meet up with her.  Yeah, so testing with some of your friends?

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, some.  I think Jason Maier was talking about this a little bit.  I mean, for some of my friends, it's challenging with the environmental piece.  And I think it's challenging, because that's just a longer conversation and it's a more nuanced conversation that is required to convey the ways in which Bitcoin is potentially actually quite useful for addressing issues with the climate.  There's not, I guess, a pithy way to convey that.  You have to sit down with them over a drink or a meal or something and say, "I need an hour of your time, probably, maybe to talk more than others".  But it takes a while to get into the details of it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  The climate one is particularly tricky for a couple of reasons, because there are other cryptocurrencies that are actively using this to win favour with people, which is particularly challenging.  I also think there's been some self-owns on the climate side of things, where people haven't properly thought through some ideas.

We had Alex Epstein on the show, who I disagree with on a huge amount of things, but there are some important issues that he raises with regard to consideration for human flourishing and the impact of reducing energy supplies for people.  It's just in the news this week talking about blackouts in the UK, this is an issue; we've talked about blackouts in Germany, this is an issue; Sri Lanka's absolutely fucked.  So, I think there's been some self-owns that haven't particularly helped.

Logan Bolinger: I would 100% agree with that.  There hasn't been as much, despite I think some people would disagree with me here, but I don't actually think there's been a ton of space in the more progressive, or I guess the Democrat side, for trying to figure out how to walk that balance of it's actually a geopolitical issue; energy security is kind of an issue.  There are a lot of geopolitical implications there, there are a lot of potential national security implications there, and we've seen the sort of grip that Putin has because of energy over most of Europe. 

So the problem you have, like Germany, because they're not using nuclear, they're now firing up the coal plants again, and I guess there are some issues that should be talked about more in terms of obviously, we want to transition to a more renewable future.  I think most people agree -- well, I guess most people probably maybe don't agree; but a lot of people would probably say, "Yeah, sure, it's probably a net positive for us to --" I'm putting this as conservatively as I can, "for us to move to a more renewable state of things".  But the transition has to be orchestrated in a way that is not suicidal, in terms of you don't want to introduce just massive national security issues, or grant geopolitical power to actors that are not great people with great intentions.

Some of the most energy-rich places don't have the best leaders who care about stewarding global peace and stuff like that.  And I do think that the way that the left in America talks about energy, it's pretty much like, "Let's end all fossil fuels yesterday, and transition to renewables 100% in one hour", and there are some major challenges to that.  I don't think the response is saying, "Oh, let's just use fossil fuels forever", but there's sure a better, more intelligent, thoughtful way to transition than what I think most of the West is currently doing.

Peter McCormack: In terms of your legal work, I actually don't know your area of specialism?

Logan Bolinger: Sure, I was telling Danny before we started.  Currently, I represent injured workers pretty exclusively, so workers who get injured at work and their companies, and their companies' insurance companies don't want to pay them when they're off work and don't want to pay for their medical bills.  I make sure that they're able to get treatment and able to get their lost wages until they're healed and able to go back to work.

Peter McCormack: Good man.  So, what are you working on now?

Logan Bolinger: So, I'm still working very hard on the newsletter.

Peter McCormack: But are you working on any more long-form articles?

Logan Bolinger: I'm writing one now about Bitcoin versus Web3 --

Peter McCormack: Hello!

Logan Bolinger: But it's not about -- because I think normally the line of argument here is, "Everything Web3 is just a Ponzi or a scam", or whatever, and I do think having some regulation in place to prevent people from just getting outright scammed, I think, is important.  But I also think there's a balance between that and just inviting Gary Gensler to come in and just have his way, because I think that's a little bit like inviting the fox into the henhouse and expecting that to go well.  But anyway, that's not the angle that I'm taking, that I'm writing about. 

But to me, one of the most compelling things about Bitcoin and I think the thing that I love about it the most is, I think we're living in a world of Bitcoin's aim is to kind of de-financialise a lot of stuff, whereas Web3 seems like it's about hyper-financialising things, which again we're back to the issue of whether you're addressing sources or symptoms of problems; because I think most proponents of Web3 would suggest that, "What we're really doing is just democratising the ways in which people can accrue value or make money, and isn't that a great, wonderful thing, because everybody gets to own things and there are communities and everything is a liquid market".

I'm more interested in asking the question, "Is the world that we want to live in one where we need to hyper-financialise every aspect of an individual's life, because financial conditions on a macro level are such that you have to financialise your whole being in order to keep up or get ahead?"  Is that truly a victory for democracy and just for the psychospiritual wellbeing of all of us, and the lives that we want to live versus something like Bitcoin, that is a de-financialising force that basically says, "Because we think a world might be better where you're actually able to save money and you don't just have to spend it or go invest or speculate on some stuff, would that unlock ways for you to feel more fulfilled or satisfied as a person?  Would you then be able to pursue other things?"

I think ultimately, the end of Bitcoin is that we all think collectively less about money, and more about other things that we're interested in.  For me, which I think is, yeah, I don't want to sort of write the article on here, but that's what I'm fascinated by, because I think I'm interested in Bitcoin because I'm interested in so many other things, and that I want to pursue other things.  Our current economic environment is such that, because we can't save money, everybody has to be a full-time investor, or a full-time speculator, or just spending all your money all the time, such that something is lost in the human experience, I think, when that is what you're forced to do. 

I think the promise of Bitcoin is saying, "Let's deflate that balloon a little bit, so that we can all focus maybe on more long-term things that we're interested in, things that we think are useful, that we would like to build or pursue".  I think the downstream effects of that shift, I think that's the societally transformative stuff.

Peter McCormack: I was going to say, sorry to interrupt, that echoes what Anita Posch was saying the other day.  So, do you know Anita?

Logan Bolinger: I do, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so she spends a lot of time working out in Africa, and she was explaining some of the issues that people have because of the dire state of the money system.  She says that one of the biggest problems is, money is all that you think about, because you wake up every day and not only have you got to figure out how you can earn money so you can live and feed and survive with your family; but when you've got money, you've got to spend it as quickly as possible, if you're under massively high inflation, because it's going to buy you less shit at the end of the week.

She said it just becomes this thing, that's all you do, all you think about, day in, day out, money, money, money, and that does take away from the human experience.  This is why, by the way, I agree with a lot of the libertarians as well; we need to all slow down.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah.  And I think even in western countries, where the money is I guess comparatively stable and it's not a brutal authoritarian regime, even some of the more western maladies that afflict so many people here I think would be addressed if we could make it so that you didn't have to think about money every second of the day.  I think things like depression, belonging, boredom, fulfilment, I think about these from the perspective of somebody who, I also spent most of my youth wanting to be an English professor and talk about books and ideas and things like that.

I also think that I wonder about the implications if we were to take steps towards fixing the money and de-financialising things, the implications for education and the implications for art and the types of intellectual discourse that we have in the country.  And if we just make everything a little bit less short-term, how would that change how we interact with each other, what we talk about and what we value and care about; and would that then trickle up instead of down, trickle up into policymakers?  That might be a way of almost reverse engineering or backdooring a world where more human fulfilment, more aggregate human fulfilment is possible.

Peter McCormack: I like it.

Logan Bolinger: I might be overly optimistic, but that's where my head's at.

Peter McCormack: It's this time preference thing.

Logan Bolinger: It is.  And I really think if you sit and think about the time preference thing, I think it's hard to overstate the implications of adjusting that down.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I'm aware of it more than I've allowed it to actually change my life.  It has to some extent.  I don't work the hours I used to work and if I do, I work on what I want to work on.  And I've definitely seen I can do a better job, I'm on a journey.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, we all are.

Peter McCormack: But I definitely appreciate that idea of just consideration of time itself anyway.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, totally.  So, I'm writing about that, I have a lot to say about that.  Also, it occurred to me, there are some educational holes in different demographics that we could be educating about, about Bitcoin, so I'm also working on creating some things for some different groups of people who I think would benefit from knowing more about Bitcoin.  But largely, just trying to take this whole Think Bitcoin thing more full time and trying to work myself into the space on a full-time basis.

Peter McCormack: I was just trying to say that!  Do you know what, this isn't related to you, but one of the things that we take pleasure in, and we also feel a sense of responsibility, is that we can help people with their desire to work in Bitcoin.  So, Troy Cross has been on the show.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, I love Troy.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we love Troy, and just seeing what's happened with his life and career has been amazing.

Danny Knowles: Has he left teaching yet?

Peter McCormack: I don't know.

Danny Knowles: He was taking a year out.

Logan Bolinger: I think he was taking some time, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, a sabbatical of some kind.  But when Jason reached out to us, saying he just had this idea for a book and he had like 30 followers on Twitter, he wrote me a really great email.  I'm pretty sure he sent me his folder structure on his work.  I was like, "This book's needed, this is great.  I'll tell you what, why don't you come on the show?" and he was a bit nervous.  I said, "Just come on the show".  We were in Miami and we flew him down and spent some time with him, and he's great.  Now he's got his book funded, he's got all these followers on Twitter, and there may be a chance that he transitions out of teaching, which I kind of hope not, because I think he likes it, but he might do this full time.

Logan Bolinger: I'm sure he's a great teacher too.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that was the thing I was saying to you.  I kind of got this sense, as this interview went on, that are you feeling that pull just to want to work on Bitcoin full time?

Logan Bolinger: I am absolutely feeling that pull.  It really aligns so many of the things that I feel like I've been passionate about for most of my adult life.  Obviously, I think I've always felt somewhat vocationally like a teacher.  That was probably one of my most satisfying jobs I ever had, was teaching high school.

Peter McCormack: Why did you stop?

Logan Bolinger: I mean, that's a really -- it would probably take us a while to answer that question, Pete.

Peter McCormack: Oh, okay.  Do it over a whiskey then.

Logan Bolinger: Yeah, we can talk later over some beers about it.  But yeah, then these sort of issues that we're touching on, I think the books that I was most passionate about in my own educational background were talking about things like human happiness and fulfilment, and how you find meaning as an impermanent creature; how do you find something permanent and meaningful in this world of impermanence, and asking those deep, philosophical questions.  This is why I like listening to Troy talk, obviously, someone with a philosophical background like that.

But I consider myself a pretty interdisciplinary person too.  I like how a lot of different fields of inquiry interact, and Bitcoin is probably the most interdisciplinary thing I've come across, which is endlessly exhilarating from that perspective.  But I also just think there's so much work to be done on the education front that I'm certainly open to maybe use that, maybe combine my legal skills.  But I think so many of us, I know a bunch of people also, who are feeling the pull.  You start to feel it and then you start to really feel it.  I feel like a person split down the middle right now.

I think there's a tipping point you get, where you just can't exist as two entirely discrete humans within one, so I'm probably approaching that and approaching it more quickly than I initially thought that I would.  This has been an incredible journey so far.  I mean, a year ago, if you told me I'd be talking to you, I'm not sure if I would have believed that the journey would have been that quick, but it's been fantastic.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you.  Danny said to me, "You're going to love Logan", and I really enjoyed your piece on Bernie, I'm going to put it there.  I think I share a lot of ideas with you, and I think a lot of the ways I'm imaging what Bitcoin can do with democracy is very similar, so it's been great to talk to you and absolutely loved having you here.  I'm going to take you now for your first game of football.

Logan Bolinger: I cannot wait!

Peter McCormack: Three points, please, fingers crossed!  Tell people where to go to find out more, check out Think Bitcoin, where do they go, man?

Logan Bolinger: Sure, so Think Bitcoin is my Substack newsletter.  It's at thinkbitcoin.substack.com.  It's free, so if you subscribe, you will receive essays from me and some other stuff.  I'm on Twitter pretty regularly.  My handle is @TheWhyOfFi.  Yeah, so…

Peter McCormack: What's the background to that?

Logan Bolinger: Oh, man, I kind of came into Bitcoin from a more I guess personal finance type of background, so that's kind of a financial independence background and I've sort of turned on that community somewhat epically; but that's a whole other can of worms!  But the handle has remained, so that's the handle under which all of my Bitcoin stuff has happened.

Peter McCormack: All right, well we've got a couple of topics for the next time we do this.  Okay man, listen, thanks for coming in, this was an absolute pleasure.  Please do go and check out Logan.  I hope we do this again, man, it was amazing.  And, yeah, let's go and watch some football.  Are you ready, Danny?

Danny Knowles: I'm ready.

Peter McCormack: Let's go, man.

Logan Bolinger: All right, sounds good, thanks, Pete.