Lievergezond
Well-known member
Vanaf 7 minuten heb ik het interview ongeveer uitgeschreven:
Interviewer: So you don't think that they could potentially revalue the gold that the US currently has to today's market prices to maybe do an accounting trick essentially to address the deficit?
Ammous: no that doesn't make a difference.
I mean the items on the assets side of the US government balance sheet are essentially worthless.
It doesn't matter how many assets they have.
They just have a money printer.
And that is the only asset they need.
So it doesn't matter whether they can value the gold and the bitcoin at one dollar each and at a trillion dollar each.
It's all bellony on their ballance sheet.
Ultimately they got the money printer and as long as the money printer works then they don't need assets.
Interviewer: What is the biggest head win facing bitcoin right now since we do have a lot of positive momentum right now when it comes to the regulatory and the political forces but we are still… some people are disappointed that we haven't hit 200.000 dollar and that the early majority is reallynot there: what is preventing that for bitcoin?
Ammous: Yeah it's a good question.
I don't really think that there is any one particular thing that stands out as a head win.
Because it's hard to identify head wins on the fastest thing that has ever existed.
We never had any financial asset move as fast as bitcoin has.
I think the question is what are all the turbo chargers that are pushing it so quickly?
That's a more appropriate question.
But on the other hand you can kind of think once you get into bitcoin you get it.
That immediate feeling that it is going to do a 1000 X over the next week that everybody is going to find out because if I can get it then everybody can get it and everybody is going to do it.
And so that doesn't happen.
Everybody is going to lower their time preference and starts planting the garden of the bitcoin world that they want to see rather than just wanting it to materialize in a few minutes or hours or days or weeks.
So if I were to think of something I think sadly people aren't that bright and people are heavily propagandized to believe in government as the source of money.
And they are heavily propagandized to believe that the government dictates what money is and people love their chains.
People grow used to their chains.
And they cannot conceive of a world without chains.
And they rather laugh at the person who is telling them that they get rid of their chains than to actually move and realize that their chains are actually in their mind.
Because it is really actually very straightforward to get rid of your chains.
Since bitcoin is invented: that's it: it is actually very straightforward to get rid of your chains: you've got the key: just unlock them and go on with their life, but...
Interviewer: it is crazy to see the complacency: bitcoin is the best performing asset on Wall Street of the last decade and there are still firms that are so terrified to allocate to bitcoin: everyone is waiting for permission of Larry Fink and Blackrock: what is your take on the institutionalization of bitcoin? Do you think it's a good thing?
Ammous: There is no good and bad in bitcoin.
It's inevitable and also it's not up to me to decide what other people do with bitcoin.
I can't think of it as good or bad per se.
I have my own personal opinions which is I'd rather not have Wall Streets banks buying bitcoin as a matter of personal preference.
I'd rather a lot of other people around the world manage to get these cheap sub 100 K bitcoins but I can't decide who buys bitcoin.
Interviewer: what do you think about the corporate treasuries? I mean there is so many popping up. I am a little worried about the next bear market. I don't think all of that can survive and maybe some might take on too much leverage and that can be worrysome.
Ammous: All the leverage is building up just in time for the top and the bust.
I just hope my message is just out there for everybody who is into this business: business has done negative 70 and negative 80 before.
It can do it again.
If your business model can't handle a negative 80 percent bitcoin draw down rework your business model right now.
Because we are getting toward the very shaky ground of the top and the fall from it.
Historically this is usually the time we get the top: between one year and 18 months after the halving.
[...]
Interviewer: you don't think we might reach 200 k this year?
Ammous: we might.
There is a good chance we go over 200 K.
But I think we are going to the point that it's going to be very volatile both ways.
We are going to that vertical part of the curve where it goes up a lot and then it crashes.
[...]
Ultimately bitcoin marches to its own drumbeat. [...]
Interviewer: you wrote the Bitcoin Standard. That book really changed my life. You've sold a million copies. That's quite an accomplishment. You wrote the first big bitcoin book out there. How
does it feel to have sold a million copies?
Ammous: it feels great.
I did not expect it.
I was writing a book about bitcoin because I felt I needed to write it because otherwise I was just arguing on Facebook with people all the time.
And because I needed to keep my job as an academic.
And it definately blew up far further than I expected.
Interviewer: How do we get the early majority on board?
Ammous: I am going to start on a curriculum for school children.
I going to work on a simple guide for children so that a 14 or 17 year old child can learn from it.
Interviewer: On money and bitcoin?
Ammous: yes. I think the bitcoin standard is a little too heavy.
I know some 10 and 12 years olds who have read it but for the average 12 year old it is too heavy and too elaborate.
They don't need to know a lot about the details.
Interviewer: Bitcoin has evolved and reached the white house: how do you think about this?
Ammous: it's been surreal.
I did not expect governments and corporations to come in so early.
If you would have asked me what I would have expected 9 years ago for 2025:
I would have expected a more broad grass roots adoption.
More and more random normal people in the US, Venezuela and Lebanon and China and Germany and all over the world buying small amounts of bitcoin and stacking over time.
And not a lot of banks wall street and these things.
I would not have expected it this way but it seems to have gone the other way.
Large money is buying in quantities.
People like Saylor and corporations, banks blackrock.
It is really wild.
Interviewer: do you think concentration will decrease under a bitcoin standard? We don't have a meritocracy.
Ammous: it's a difficult question.
I think the term equality mathematically: there is many different ways of measuring it.
I don't think any of them is valid.
You can quantify the top 10 percent measuring against the lowest 10 percent.
Each of them gives a different emphasis to the question.
But there is no correct of objective way of answering the question because it plays out in many different ways. It's not obvious which would be the best measure for this.
In a sense I don't think it matters.
The question of will bitcoin be more unequal or not: it's difficult to answer because it could be more unequal in the sense that there is a small little point one percent who control an enormous junk of the bitcoin, but outside of that point one percent the society might be more similar and less unequal I would say and of a similar income profile better than in fiat.
So, which one is more unequal in this regard even if you include the one point percent?
It is difficult to predict this but even if we were able to predict this: it is difficult to compare these distributions of income to be able to estimate which one would be more equal or unequal.
For me ultimately it doesn't even matter.
I don't think it is an interesting question.
Intellectually, politically or morally.
I don't think this is a good thing for people to be doing.
Try to think how much money people have compared to other people.
It's something you see in children.
Well raised children are raised to stop doing that.
At a certain point some time when you are seven.
Between 7 and 14 I would imagine: you need to be taught to stop comparing yourself to others.
Stop wanting the toys that other kids have.
Focus on your own toys.
If you learn that, it doesn't matter what toys others have and you will be happy.
If you don't learn that it doesn't matter how many toys you have you will be unhappy.
You will always be looking at the toys of other kids you do not have.
No matter how many toys your parents bought to you.
So you will always be miserable.
On the other hand if you are happy with what you have and be able to focus on what you have you are making the most of what you have.
You can get an empty box and you will be happy with all the toys you can make out of it.
Interviewer: [...] Why is a finite scarce amount of money good for society? Is bitcoin infinitely divisible? Is it able to fit the needs of society no matter how large the need for money grows?
Ammous: the first question is the most important question asked.
It first clicked for me when I was reading a paper written by Murray N. Rothbard called
''The Austrian Theory of Money'': https://cdn.mises.org/Austrian Theory of Money_2.pdf .
It's a short paper of 20 or 30 pages or so.
But it might be the best summary of money of the Austrian School of Economics Perspective, which for me is the best treatment of money. Full stop.
It's a great, great article.
And he goes over the main ideas in the Austrian tradition.
It concludes with saying: any supply of money is enough because money is acquired for its purchasing power, not for its quantity of money, not for its objective usage.
So it is a thing that it is a unique means: it's called a ''sui generis-good'' : it's a good unlike others, there is no other good like money.
With any other good you derive some benefit, some utility from the good itself in whatever form or shape it takes.
Whereas with money the good itself, its physical manifestation is almost immaterial in its ability to fulfill its function.
What matters is its purchasing power: how much can I exchange it for?
Money is something you acquire for exchange.
It's a medium of exchange you acquire for only so you can exchange it.
So therefore what matters is how you exchange it.
And how much you can exchange it for.
Therefore you don't need to increase the quantity of money.
You can just increase the purchasing power of the existing money for meeting the demands for more needs for more people.
So any quantity of money can be enough because you can always pump more purchasing power into it. That's ultimately the key idea.
That's how it fundamentally works.
If the demand for any good increases the demand is increasing for the good itself for its ability to perform it function.
So if you want water, if you want a car, if you want a table.
People want those tables to do those functions.
As the demand for them increases you need to produce more tables.
With money you do not need to generate more.
All you need to do is to have the purchasing power rise.
As the demand increases the market value increases.
And so any quantity of demand can be met as the value of the currency appreciates over time.
As to the division issue: there is some physical limit at a certain point when physical money isn't divisible anymore nor convenient for most transactions.
That happened with gold.
The reason that silver maintained a monetary role is because gold could not be divided anymore into smaller pieces.
Silver had a worth of a 12th / 15th part of the value of gold.
So it meant you needed a 12th of the weight so you could make easier denominations.
Part of the reason gold was centralized was because for smaller denominations you needed papers or fiat coins of cheap metals that were redeemable for first metals.
So essentially part of the reason why we ended up money subsitutes rather than money is because of the inability of gold to scale downward.
You can't endlessly divide gold into pieces.
With bitcoin there is a potential hurdle down the road that a satoshi becomes too valuable.
Currently one dollar is thousand satoshis.
When we hit one million dollars : one satoshi will be one cent.
At that point they are going to put cents out of the commission.
The penny is going to be out of use. When bitcoin hits a million pennies are going to be less and less worth.
When satoshis hit a penny it's not going to be a problem.
But when satoshis hit a dime: maybe by the time they hit a dime it won't be a problem.
But when satoshis hit a dollar: yeah that will be a problem.
I have heard different things from different people.
Some people say it can be implemented on chain.
Some people say it can be implemented on a second layer solution at a decimal point they start adding more zeroes.
I do not know but by the time one satoshi is one dollar I am going to confront such a question.
Interviewer: what is a dream bitcoin has alllowed you to have come true?
Ammous: to provide for my family and teach things that are valued by others. I feel blessed.
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