Me listening to this episode: "WAIT, WHAT!? I didn't know that!" (every 30 seconds)

I want Axel Gladstain and Simon Michaux to be on the same podcast and talk about bitcoin and energy/materials. Then we can have this triage that Nate is always talking about

Very interesting discussion! It was actually really refreshing, usually I agree with what your guests are saying from the start, but this one really challenged a lot of the opinions I had going into it. I appreciated the international perspective--this has been the first time someone has articulated a use case for Bitcoin that makes any sense at all to me. I'm still not completely convinced, but it definitely opened my eyes to a new perspective, so thank you for that!

Nice to have a guest with a different point of view (different from most guests). I think I disagreed with every point Alex Gladstein made except that the developed nations (especially the U.S.) are exploiting the less developed nations. Well of course that's true, it's a basic tenet of Capitalism that you increase profits by externalizing costs. Alex also said he was a big fan of Capitalism. He does realize Capitalism is 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮, right?

Correction, in the US, the real cost of food and shelter has gone up since 2000. Just check it, take median or mean hourly earnings and divide it by case Schiller index or Big Mac index and you’ll see you can afford less food and shelter over the last 20 years

This was an absolutely fascinating conversation

this guy was working with anti-Castro Cuban dissident groups straight after college? I know a spook when I see one. I didnt get far in this episode, does Nate challenge the Bitcoin fanaticism with questions about how energy intensive Bitcoin could possibly exist after The Great Simplification?

As a 74 year old techno-moron, I feel very vulnerable as a result of this conversation. Often, it seemed like I was listening to a foreign language, a language that I will never learn in my life time. Should I be concerned? Also, what happens when there is a glitch or disruption in the electronic "grid"?

I've been thinking about this conversation non-stop since I listened to it yesterday. I just read The Quest for Digital Cash by Mr. Gladstein for some historical reference about the concept of Bitcoin and the values behind it. Freedom. Perhaps it's not perfect, but I sense it's a viable rope to grab in an effort to escape the fire. I don't know much, but I will keep learning. Thank you both for your hard work & time.

If you have this guest back on in the future (or I see he's been in the comment section some, maybe he'll see this), I have a couple of questions: 1) Much of Nate's work and many of his guests' have shown quite convincingly that the six continent supply chain is not sustainable and will likely not survive a Great Simplification (and if it does, it will be greatly diminished). The future is likely much more regionally-based. On the other hand, the presumption of Bitcoin is a world that is more and more intertwined. A one-world currency only matters/makes sense when people from various countries are making a lot of transactions and have very intertwined economies. Would Bitcoin make sense in a less globalized world? 2) At 1:58:10, when discussing the Cantillon Effect, Alex makes an off-handed comment about how future taxes will need to be consumption taxes. In the context of wealth inequality, that's actually very concerning, as consumption taxes are quite regressive. This conversation has focused on individuals vs governments, and I'm surprised that companies/corporations didn't really factor in at all. The US may nominally be a democracy, but even more than that, it's an oligarchy. Wouldn't Bitcoin as currency just give corporations even more power? If, say, a company is paying their employees in Bitcoin, it's essentially the same as paying them under the table. It becomes impossible to know if the company is, say, paying their employees minimum wage. Companies would no longer be paying into workers comp or unemployment insurance. If Social Security and Medicare are suddenly funded by consumption taxes instead, that's vastly more regressive and really hurts the working class. So taking wages out from under government oversight has the strong potential to weaken labor protections and social programs, right? And wouldn't the combination of a more regressive tax structure and weaker labor protections/social programs increase wealth inequality rather than reduce it? Thank you for an interesting discussion!

This conversation reminds me of the phenomena you talk about where every advancement in "efficient" technology results in an increased consumption of scarce resources. Techno-optimism seems like a new-age "religion" based on narrow interests and naive optimism. I am admittedly a luddite, but the contemporary world is rife with presumptuous regrets. I hope this isn't another one.

"So the implication is that, in order to label ourselves as democracies, we have to be international authoritarians?"... thanks for asking this question Nate. I really struggled with your guest's politics and checked out shortly after this section. Enjoyed the postwar global economic timeline though. Would love a deeper dive on that stuff if anyone can recommend a YT or pod because my brain is bad at reading. 🙃

Our homeless (USA) are learning about the great simplification as we speak. I'm just one eviction away.

Let me start by saying Gladstein is incredibly intelligent and clearly well-versed in the monetary colonialism system; and I found myself agreeing with quite a bit of his perspective - but when he got to Bitcoin I had to pause. As a fellow analyst and options trader, Nate, I couldn’t let this one go without some serious critique. Some Critical Analysis While I agreed with his observation that many of the existing currencies are failing, he failed to mention the Petro Yuan and BRICS - both of which could completely disrupt dollar dominance and significantly aid in de-dollarization. BRICS is backed by gold and rare-earth minerals; these types of pegged-to-commodities-currencies stand a chance (and have proven so in the past) to stay grounded in some form of physical reality. Bitcoin, on the other hand, acts as a no limits instrument of Modern Monetary Theory - further detaching us from our ecological reality. His fantastical speculation that Bitcoin is emissions free literally had me pause the video and take a walk to get some air. Bitcoin is parasitic having double energy expenditures and siphoning from multiple systems without even the notion of any type of return to these systems. The hardware alone required (we will leave out the energy to power the computers for a moment) to “mine” requires the most complex of computer chips built using the most specialized and highest refinement of our ever-dwindling supply of minerals. Not forgoing the energy expenditure (diesel) to extract, distribute, refine (often nat gas or coal with massive amounts of water), then distribute further (using more diesel). On the energy to power this specialized hardware, many nations’ power grids are strained, breaking, or have already collapsed with examples of rolling blackouts, brownouts, and prioritization in places such as Puerto Rico, Texas, Shri Lanka, South Africa most recently, with many other countries across Africa and South and Southeast Asia. There is no excess energy. Though I did find the whataboustism with the cruise ship industry and air conditioners an entertaining way to deflect for the massive (nearly always overlooked) ecological cost of Bitcoin. But let’s suppose for a moment Bitcoin is and does all he says, the Lighting Network entirely and completely defeats Bitcoin’s original intent of transparency. These layered payment protocols are simply duplicating the existing tertiary wealth system we have now - just a digital version of our current petrodollar system experiment - just more claims on future energy we won’t have. Unfortunately, his energy and mineral blindness has prevented him from seeing this. In addition, there is no real anonymity or ability to secure or otherwise hide assets. Time and time again the US government has been able to easily recover most Bitcoin ransoms, though the price volatility will often cause the value or amount recovered to drop, despite the same number of Bitcoins being recovered. The reigning king of Bitcoin Sam Bankman-Fried of the spectacularly failed FTX flat out admitted on Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” Podcast that Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme; as does author Stephen Diehl, a Financial Technologist, on Bloomberg. Gladstein is right, Bitcoin isn’t a redistribution scheme, it’s a Ponzi Scheme. Its success is based solely on a belief or ideology and getting more people to put their beliefs, energy, and dollars into Bitcoin. In closing, I found Gladstein’s virtue signaling more of the same old hollow, hypocritical, western values coupled with a massive dose of Xenophobia & Sinophobia - that the Western way is the only way. Additionally, why must there always be this flat-earth and binary view of China? They are not our enemies, they are a 3,000-year-old civilization that, while we might not always agree with, we must work with. Non-interference and cooperation should be our goals in a globalized world, not othering each other because of our differences. From the perspective of the Global South, he is demonizing much of their population, their values, cultures, governments, and beliefs as less than, while openly admitting to giving dissidents guilt money funneled via Bitcoin to fund Color Revolutions in the most antithetical attempt to make up for exploitative Colonialism. This is not how we solve the problem. It’s just trying to change things via the backdoor. A more PR-friendly version of CIA coups that make you feel good. It will only create more sovereign interference, deaths, and dependence, which I suppose is the goal of Western imperialism anyways. Sovereign independence for the Global South will never be accomplished this way. It's just the global version of the failed American Dream. He kept repeating the word freedom, over and over, but can he define what it means and looks like in action? For the US, for each nation, country, and person? More importantly, why is your version of freedom the right one? And lastly, it is possible to believe that NATO not abiding by the Minsk Agreement is a factor that contributed to the war without being crazy or pro-Putin or pro-war crimes. It’s a double standard without acknowledging the massive war crimes of the US in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, plus those committed against the African Americans and Native Americans on your own soil. Gladstein states it himself when speaking of the Iraq invasion and oil dollars but fails to mention how many Iraqi citizens had to die for that (it is about a million). In the book, “Rising Out of Hatred” the grandson of David Duke didn’t change his white supremacist values and beliefs because he was ostracized and isolated by his fellow students at the liberal college he attended. Even though they disagreed with his belief system, he was welcomed and invited to join and work with them. He was able to see the humanity of the people he'd been trained to hate. This is what led to his evolution and change. The Western world needs to evolve as well by rethinking its values and belief systems. That is the only way to truly atone for the exploitation and deaths created by colonialism and US imperialism. As an American living the Global South, it is very clear, all they want the American bully to leave them alone. Any kind of interference, even with good intentions, is a net detriment. Just let them be. They’ll be fine without you, trust me.

Echoes of ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ (John Perkins)

Wonderful conversation. Couple of things to clarify - bitcoin energy use is a function of energy availability. So in a future of less surplus energy, it will simply operate securely on less energy since the energy required to attack the network is also more scarce and expensive. Secondly, in theory, Bitcoin doesnt require the internet. It requires transmitters and receivers of short wave radio communications to send and receive the latest blocks. That technology has existed for 300 years. Calculations could be done by hand because of the difficulty adjustment. Energy use would be that which feeds the human brains of those doing the calculations.

Excellent content today. Alex Gladstein's case for Bitcoin is similar to that of Andreas M. Antonopoulos whose KZfaq channel is aantonop. The emphasis on democracy as critical for the people to have good money is reinforced in "The Dictator's Handbook" by Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. Left brain idealists of the right or left think a strong leader is needed for their big changes, but the bureaucratic mind doesn't produce that. Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and His Emissary" explains that issue, which is critical to the perspective Daniel Schmachtenberger provided. "The Dictator's Handbook" explains that Western countries like to deal with dictators because it is so much easier than dealing with a democracy where the people might have their own ideas. Alex Gladstein's suggestion for a show about the French Colonial Currency in Africa would be a great way to expose that game for its evil face and impact on people.

What a great podcast. Nate is well on his way to becoming a bitcoin advocate. Love the open mind and the questions he kept having. That was me 2 years ago and I spend about 3-5 hour s a day still trying to answer them. I recommend listening to Troy Cross to learn more about the energy side of bitcoin and understanding Jeff booths thesis *** cheers

Hey Nate, that Balaji 8 hour podcast wasn't with Tim Ferris, it was with Lex Friedman. It was a good show, I listened to the whole 8 hours. Insanity, for sure. I'm just starting to listen to this podcast, the first thing that strikes me is how this AI alignment "problem" will at least be democratic and won't unduly punish the poor - we'll all be dead. I'm curious right now about ways that Eliezer could be wrong. Listening to how humans treat each other, it's a hard argument to make.

Good dialogue, but what will keep Bitcoin from eventually being monitored and controlled by centralized authorities? Also, if the 7 billion more impoverished people of the world are happened to be empowered through Bitcoin, what guarantees are there that they won’t go from being planet nibblers to planet eaters? Also, why would more liberal democracies in the world be better? Aren’t the US and Europe historically(and currently) the biggest exploiters the planet has ever seen?

Growth is so central to our psychology, which is partly why I think we in the west/ global north tend to ignore the externalities of our chasing of growth both for us as individuals, and within our societies. Yes, we'd prefer not to essentially enslave people in the 3rd world, but we'll never rationalize not doing that because pragmatically I think we understand that our societies only work because people can pursue growth within our societies. When people can't grow, things become zero-sum, and the cost of maintaining high levels of complex organization fall apart. It's so fucked, but I don't think there's a way out of that need of ours. It's socially and game theoretically reinforced.

Does he know that the only reason the Cuban people were able to read the books he was smuggling in is that the Castro Government reduced illiteracy rates in Cuba from 40 percent or so to around 1 percent. Does he understand that when the Cuban people had private property rights, 90 percent of the people lived in abject poverty.

If goods were made in the United States, they would cost more, but then wouldn't those workers have more money to spend? It seems like a circular system to me, and that the decrease in price of goods manufactured in foreign labor markets is on only realized one time by domestic workers before their own wages stagnate and the cost relative to their wages rebalances back to where it started. In other words, it's a trick that must be repeated over and over again to sustain the gains made by the investors.

you know why I believe this guy when he says he's a liberal? he's like none of these people will ever suffer any consequences for anything we've done and we just have to accept that......DO WE????

Eye opening facts podcast And Bitcoin sounds like a Wise and Safe Currency for us All Thank you Mightily Alex 🕊🌏🙏🏼❤️

Wow, epic conversation. So revealing and insightful. Thank you Alex and Nate. Inspiring.

It would be interesting to hear Professor Richard Wolff's response to Gladstein's comments on FDR.

Wow, its a long time since I have had so many aha-moments in the bitcoin space. The way Alex is combining the human rights value propositions of Bitcoin with the actual work and projects being done in the real world as we speak is awesome! Protect Alex and these KZfaq videos at all cost :D

I just wanted to remind Nate or whoever monitors the comments about Alex Gladstein saying he would love to come back and talk about the Israeli/Palestine currency issue, where Palestine gave up their currency/monetary independence for political independence. Given how impossible it's been for them to get goods, energy, and food during the current military operations, this would be a very timely conversation. Given the widespread interest in the conflict, more people outside of your normal viewers would click on it and then get drawn into your wider conversation.

Utterly brilliant conversation. Thanks for introducing us to this amazing person

Bitcoin! This episode had me smiling because in other interviews, particularly the recent one on interest rates and debt with Edward Chancellor, it seemed like there was something important missing from the conversation. In the Chancellor episode, you actually did mention it, but you dismissed it as a waste of energy. If only there were a new money that was tied to energy... Glad you finally had this conversation! Alex did a wonderful job explaining it and it really cemented my feelings about it. When the CSO of the Human Rights Foundation is a Bitcoin advocate, that says something. PS I am also a reader of Lyn Alden

Nate's guest is almost apologetic in his recognition that Marxian critiques of capitalism along with more recent ecological economic analyses have largely been proven correct. Neo-liberalism, primarily driven by US far-right ideologues and enforced by US controlled institutions (the World Bank, IMF, CIA, military etc) has largely been prejudicial to the economic interests of much of the global south. This together with the dollar's reserve currency status - which as Charles De Gaulle put it, gave the US an exorbitant privilege - ensured an almost unrivalled high standard of living for US citizens during the second half of the 20th century. In addition, the US had massive oil reserves and was all but energy self-sufficient during most of the 20th century. Today, with dwindling crude oil reserves, a shale oil industry that is barely solvent, staggering levels of public and private debt, a looming bonds crisis and the increasing stridency of the BRICS+ economic bloc, the US empire looks to be in terminal decline. De Gaulle referred to only the one form of exorbitant privilege, that of owning the world's reserve currency, the 'petrodollar'. However the US enjoyed many other privileges during most of the last century. Unfortunately the US squandered its many privileges, just as it abused its economic and military power. Now, as Malcolm X predicted, the chickens are coming home to roost.

It's very encouraging to hear a younger person understanding the situation with such scope. On the other hand, it's worrisome to hear how long it's taking for the info to reach the public. I got my bfa in 2006 at an **arts university** in Toronto (OCADU). We were taught about the exploitative actions of the IMF back then! We watched the 2001 documentary, **Life and Debt**. We learned about the Cochabamba Water War. - Again, there was no economics, or political sciences departments at OCADU. I majored in drawing and painting and took some classes in cultural theory and psychology. This an art school in Canada, yet almost 20 years ago, we were taught many of the very things being discussed here. My point: This information must be more widely disseminated. P.s. As Canadians, we also freely discussed American "Cultural Imperialism".

Great guest, didn't convince me on Bitcoin.

Thank you Alex & Nate, several revelations (for me) in your discussion. Much appreciated.

1:30:09 - 1:31:10 Flawed premise. The thing is a virtual asset while its adopters aspire to make it ascend to currency status. A cloud based apparatus will never be more "tied to the real world" than what we have now because everything is ultimately tied to r e l a t i v e v a l u a t i o n. Relative valuation as in 2:07:31 - 2:08:00 And ultimately, it all comes down to the political economy or else why 2:07:06 ? ;-) 2:09:10 * We're undergoing energetic and resource pool atrophy; no currency will ever buy more than what it is now on a sustained basis. 2:09:27 - 2:09:41 * lol " ...impractical... " 1:58:53 * Short answer is yes. *Its a nifty little trick with some good incidences in marginal use cases(for now), but there are still many unexamined points on the operational level as well as on the philosophical level. The one that comes immediately to mind is that from what I understand, the amount of bitcoin operating and circulating in the system will actually d e c r e a s e over time as people die, get killed, lose ...or forget their keys (...). The plumbing side of something that has a pretense to such ambitions warrants a lot of scrutiny; understanding that how it was designed has ramifications that you have to consider could evolve with wider adoption.... It's an experiment with money as a stored password, but it won't change human nature nor the conditions of our predicament.

This was excellent. I learned so much about things I didn't know about money, and now I want to learn more about it. As far as Bitcoin, I was aware of the financial freedom it provides to people in Global South, but I had no idea about the cheap energy it seeks. OTEC and Gridless give me hope about mining energy consumption. A universal cryptocurrency is in the cards for humanity!

Very interesting podcast. I learned a lot, thanks

Great discussion... many thanks 🙏 I have followed both you and Alex for a few years and have learned a lot... it is great to see your paths coincide.

Over the top excellent Nate. Thank you and please keep going.

Thank you so much, Mr Hagen. Jeff Booth and Jason Lowrey would be good guests to round out your bitcoin inquiry.

Looking forward to this. Ive long since pointed out how the monetary system turbo charged overshoot, and how BTC at a minimum provides a model of a more sustainable money. For anyone interested, I wrote an essay on the topic. Essay discusses: - A combination of debt based money, untethering money creation from the physical world, and the need for intermediaries turbo-charged climate change and overshoot. - Unconstrained money creation facilitated exponential growth. - Neoclassical economists have it the wrong way round: they believe once there is money, energy and resources will magically appear - this inversion is at the heart of ecological overshoot - Bitcoin is an old idea, a money whose scarcity is enforced by tethering it to the physical world via electricity, just like all the old moneys such as rai stones, sea shells, goldl etc. Bitcoin isnt the experiment - fiat is. - Since money is a claim on energy and resources, and measuring a region's surplus energy is a good proxy for its resource richness, Bitcoin mining could achieves this since it measures surplus energy. - A money that holds its value over time addresses the problem of planned obsolescence as companies prioirtise product longevity and durability over short-term spin-offs of existing products since consumers are more likely to think twice before making a purchase. Link: docs.google.com/document/d/1essV0yMPSt7RVC0ZQk6oUK-1QDWfN3OY33xpDvwg8yM/edit

Thank you for such a high quality podcast

After the JFK assassination, The MIC knew Johnson was a pushover so it wasn’t “REALLY” about the Vietnam War, it was about every military contractor becoming obscenely rich. You forgot to mention NASA & the space program. And thank God we did. It makes this conversation possible today.

Exceptionally good podcast

I need a more in depth look into how exactly bitcoin works. From start to finish.

Amazing guest Nate. What an interview. Well done on the choice and the execution, thx. Not something, absent your input, I would have exposed myself to, and was surprised at a couple three bits I learned covering knowledge I thought I had covered well previously. Luv when that happens.Thx again.

This was one of my favorite episodes. So much I never knew about. Great guest .

Iam a Boomer HODler & learned alot from you 2. Its not just about US economies but positive global impact Bitcoin it has.

How many bitcoins does this guy have?

This was one HECK of a convo guys - 3rd time listening, wow.

Very interesting episode!

How do we stop the most basic human trait... Desire to dominate and enjoying the benefits of dominance. When i push people on this point, it comes down to, it's better we are dominant than being dominated.... And this is the absolute ground floor no one is willing to give up the relative benefits we all enjoy...

1) Tying digital currency to a physical constraint makes sense, in this case energy with Bitcoin. I've heard an idea talked about that I like even better. It would be a new currency backed by the world's major countries, based on carbon sequestration. To make a new unit of currency, you have to sequester a ton of carbon. This would also tie to the physical, but also motivate people in a helpful direction. In this scheme, I would not only include sequestration by carbon-sucking machines, but also restoring nature, soil-sequestering farming practices, etc. 2) Amazing coverage here of the world's unfair rich vs. poor currency and economics. Another great resource in this area is Jason Hickel. I highly recommend his book The Divide, about all this. He has also done great work on Degrowth economics. He'd be an outstanding guest on your show.

I tuned out as soon as your guest started disparaging President Putin.

Fabulous discussion!

Nate are there any plans to cover the three topics Alex brought up at the end of the episode? It all sounds incredibly important. I’m going to start reading his book in the next few days. Other the The Great Simplification, what other published material have you penned? I’d love to read anything else you have done.

Do we really have to report crypto currency holdings to the IRS, or is that just something H&R Block implies to collect info when you use their tools to file tax returns? Why is it the IRS's business whether we hold crypto or not? I'm afraid to hold any because when I file my tax returns using H&R Block, it asks if I have any crypto holdings.

Great podcast

Great interview Nate. Thank you sir

What I’m taking from the conversation is freedom is going to die with the carbon pulse

Is the BTC networks energy cost even relevant in light of all that debt by governments for large scale kinetic military action and the fact some people never get to build up savings even today despite all the technological progress? A decentralized layer of trust and the option to exchange value as one pillar of our civilization could maybe shift the time preference of consumption towards the long-term approach. Im just a dreamer 😉

Just wow. A complete new insight on history foe me. Wow. Great interview/conversation.

A wonderful discussion (as always"the time flew by")....can folks suggest just where I start my 'education regarding Bitcoin (usage)'? Thanks to you both for your work.

48:38 Thank you for getting specific about who’s fault it is.

Alex & Nate, what are the chances that we get ya’all and Jeff booth and Michael Sawyer all on a panel to discuss all of this?!?!

Fascinating.

So glad i found your podcast through this interview. I am a big Gladstein fan through his human rights work. I see you've got a lot of other really fascinating sounding interviews as well. I look forward to watching them.

Austerity for the global south and austerity for the majority of people in the rich countries are not competing options, but two sides of the same coin. Once there has been the resource transfer from the global south there is the question of how these are distributed within the rich countries. We're told by Alex that the wider adoption of bitcoin he foresees will erode the tax base and necessitate the switch of taxation from income (and presumably capital gains) to consumption. No doubt the beneficiaries of this process will still want their property rights enforced by government and for the countries in which they operate to by a favourable environment to operate. It seems to me that that needs to be contended. The switch to taxes on consumption may herald a more regressive system of government tax an and spending depending upon which government programmes continue to be funded and those which are not.

Excellent!!

Had my attention until "... and therefore, Bitcoin!!" Oh, fer chrissakes....

1:19:40 Are 18% of argentinians using Bitcoin ? I'm argentinian and I only know a friend of a friend who have bitcoins. I never know of any transaction made by Bitcoin. And we have an inflation of 10 % by MONTH.

hey nate, i have an interesting proposal to shift how humans are living on a daily basis. where can i contact you?

His sales pitch on Bitcoin is unconvincing. He will string you along and mesmerize you, but it is just a veneer.

Thank you Nate so much for bringing up how much energy the US Dollar takes to manage. It is never touched on in these conversations, even when the cost of bitcoin is brought up. Blew my mind!

So glad i found this channel. Thanks algorithm wait wut

52:21 it’s all of us. Time for a system upgrade or reboot. ❤ thank you again for doing this

If people can't use Bitcoin for daily currency, how can people use Bitcoin?

freedom of information, is as important as clean water, clean air and free trade.

G'dammit, I think I need a cocktail...

When this guy brought up Kasparov and Maidan, it told me everything I needed to know. Be very skeptical of these NGO's, their names usually mean the exact opposite. Next time ask him what Human Rights Foundation thinks of Bukele.🤔😆

While at home homeless soaring. Gun deaths out of sight. 78 million no health insurance. $32 trillion debt. Spending more on military than next ten nations combined. Great interview, thanks

I wonder if he works in the US of human rights now that we live in a authoritarian regime - no fair elections, J6 political prisoners, limited free speech/censorship,....

If buying oil in US dollars is a monetary system advantage to the USA why would the USA want to decarbonize the world energy economy?

The argument that BitCoin has a greener portfolio of energy than cars is irrelevant. If it is using green energy, than it is displacing that energy from another use. This is the same argument that supporters of Carbon Capture plants use: they will run on green energy! But this means less green energy for other uses, so in the end, it still increases the use of fossil fuels, at least until the grid is fully powered by renewable energy.

The fact that bitcoin uses less energy than the cruise ship industry is no way an argument FOR bitcoin, on the contrary. The entire concept of mining and scarcity of bitcoin is stupid. We can have a decentralized currency without mining, and with privacy. Alternative local currencies are the solution, not an oligarchic system like bitcoin. And why is bitcoin tradable in dollars? Another major flaw.

Very key how, when you lose control over energy production, your currency goes down and becomes worth much less.

1:02:22 yeah the cold war proxy wars bankrupted the usa, killed millions for the banksters this guest likely decries, and lead to massive inflation of the 70s, eventually to the neoliberal hellscape, which yet again killed millions more for "freedom". Oh but it was a "good" to wage cold war based on the BS domino theory for "freedom"?. This is reductionist and not the reason the cold war was waged.

What does Alex believe could become a new reserve currency? Nate asked a question and he didnt finish his answer unfortunately. Great talk anyway but this would be good to understand.

Hey Nate. Please consider : Russell-Jay: Gould. On the show!!!!!

Does the guest really think the cold war, which was a bankers war, was a net positive? Lead to massive death in global south and massive inflation in the west, as well as correlated with destruction of labor via unions as unipolar moment ushered in neoliberalism in full force.

📍1:41:36

its crazy. many people already know this story. we have heard this story before. but continually we get caught up in the bullshit

As correct as it all is, I always shake my head on Americans bragging about their values from the founding fathers .... after the genocide on the American natives

How are we going to finance redistribution in society if the only tax possible is VAT type tax as you mention , which is famously favorable to higher earners? Or is it just part of all bitcoiners aim to get rid of that concept perhaps under the banner of "freedom fighting"

Thank you for this uploaded discussion/interview. While watching I couldn't help but raise some questions. 1) All Bitcoin transactions depend on energy and an infrastructure that can only be financed by government issued currency and debt and also maintained by staff paid in the same currency(think IMF and World Bank). All users and consumers of energy and infrastructure will be expected to share the cost normally referred to as tax which a government can specify the currency of payment. If Bitcoin is a government hands off currency, are Bitcoin users expecting to be free-loaders in this scenario and not carry their fair share in paying such taxes? 2) Computer programming started by simply using bits and bytes that has become a plethora of programming languages marketed as specific technologies to address particular short-comings of previous languages. Similarly Bitcoin is presented as another technology to 'solve' a particular problem. Isn't Bitcoin simply another technology of the western mind that objectifies problems as external and that can only be solved by an objectified external technology? 3) Bitcoin's objectives are as if the fish thought it was in water but since the fish perceives itself out of water it invents bitcoin to achieve integration with the water consuming resources to do so. Similarly energy is objectified as external to the human being instilling the sense of separation but the Universe is an ocean of energy of which human beings are an unseparated part. All energy that makes and binds the universe is the product of useful work, work that is both made and consumed by all in relationship to sustain and serve the Universe. Earth is part of this working relationship as is the work made and consumed on Earth by the biosphere. Bitcoin certainly consumes work(energy) but does it contribute to making useful work in return to restore the consumed work in order to preserve the relationship to sustain and serve Earth or is it just another high entropy generating technology? Human relations and the perception humans and human societies have of themselves on Earth is deeply flawed and this has been assisted by the "soft systems" that have been developed based on these perceptions. The most divisive of these systems are law and accountancy which are the primary systems of relationship applied by all organizations utilizing the "soft technologies" of language and mathematics respectively to build and apply them. These systems and technologies are heavily influenced by the western mind as eloquently explained by Vandana Shiva at the recent Beyond Growth conference in the EU Parliament, Brussels www.beyond-growth-2023.eu/lecture/focus-panel-13/. Thank you again for a stimulating discussion 👏✊❤🙏

Just so we are clear, American values have never NOT BEEN imperial EVEN IN THE BEGINNING. Check the history of Native Americans and African Americans and the U.S. policy toward those two groups alone to prove that point. It has ALWAYS been a grift from the VERY beginning.

Very informative, thank you. However, one thing about the Human Rights Foundation that Alex works for: the cynic can say "As your website says that you only focus on closed societies and dictatorships, what about the VERY REAL human rights issues in so-called free countries like the USA? And is the HRF little more than an effort by American capitalists to break into closed societies so their industries can pillage, as they have done all over the world?" I find Alex's cheerleading for capitalism a bit tone deaf. Clearly, he is committed to freedom and is critical of his own country as well, bravo, but... maybe not enough. What I would like to hear him do is defend capitalism in the face of one of its biggest offspring: global warming. GW was born of capitalism and the desire to put profits above all other considerations. Yes, arrogance and nationalism are also responsible for GW, but capitalism is the tool. I will check out Alex's other talks and his books and hopefully will be pleasantly surprised.

Ive heard of bitcoin miners buying huge generators that run on natural gas and set up shop in the permian to tap into the orphaned gas.

The 40's until the 70's was America's golden era, America became the most powerful empire the Earth ever seen and America was number one in the world in the standard of living/life expectancy/education/infant mortality/ manufacturing/ largest economy and military, so I fail to see how FDR's policies had any ill effects..America is no longer number one in any of these statistics, except the military..America is now the only industrialized nation on Earth with a dropping life expectancy.. So, I would say politicians since 1980 going forward has put us where we are now..Neoliberalism which is a veiled term for classical economics or robber baron economics.