YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Maier

lines on the record: 65
first: 2023-07-12
most recent: 2023-07-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I'll spare people the double angle formula. I'm already having trouble making friends in the Bitcoin space. Trig homework.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, yeah. I mean, I appreciate the chance to talk. I mean, it was great. I think that if you're looking for the book, you can find it on bitcoinprogressive.com is the website I set up for the book. And you can follow me on Twitter, cjason Mayer is a Twitter handle. And just appreciate the time and the support. Thank you, Preston.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And really, all you get to do is pick the flavor of what you're scared of. And so to your point, like when you're fearful of the other side or a fearful of your situation and feeling hopeless, you can't win no matter what and the game is rigged against you, then people like they don't, they're not their best selves, right? They're going to not engage in that conversation in good faith. They're going to try to win. They're not going to lose. And so it's just not a healthy place to, you know, I don't have any solutions to fixing the whole like media empire or how we manipulate people to be fearful, but at least recognize that's happening is really important. And it's not just one side, right? Like it's both sides happening at the same time, just different flavors of it.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not even Or Yeah. And I had this conversation with a colleague the other day where, like, I don't think everyone would have been able to see this without Bitcoin, right? Like seeing this world, right? But it's almost like so clear to me that That fear sells, getting people afraid is going to get you more clicks, get you more views, get you more viewership, like whatever. And so this is what we're seeing from the mainstream media. And right now, at least in America, you just get to pick what flavor of fear do you want, right? Like the left has their own media that they're going to make you afraid of these things and the right's going to make you afraid of these things.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's why you get people just sort of going to their own corners, right? Like, I'm just going to talk to people that agree with me about this because I don't want to have to fight with this other person about it. And so just in my own experience, like I said, I didn't, I haven't like removed myself from my echo chamber. I've just sort of added another one. And just kind of, I don't say unique, but it's a pretty rare experience for me to sort of be in like liberal politics echo chamber and then also bitcoin echo chamber and see like take a step back like wow you guys are awesome like sometimes you guys are saying the same thing and you're just fighting over it anyway yeah so it's just been an interesting sort of vantage point to say like i never expected myself to dive into the bitcoin rabbit hole or be part of like bitcoin twitter but you know that echo chamber is a different echo chamber than the one i'm used to and it's interesting to see the the dynamic relationship between those two things”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree. And I'll just add to it where in the best case, both people are having this conversation and they want to arrive to the truth or better understand, even if there is no truth, you know, capital Trying to understand. In the worst case, you just have two people who both want to win, right? And that's why they just want to win argument, right? And that's not helpful.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go and talk to somebody you don't agree with politically, you're going to have a better conversation than out in the rest of the world.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not trying to score a point with you or try to make fun of you or call you names, they're actually just trying to engage and understand better. And I've had countless conversations with people who don't agree with me politically. They agree with me on Bitcoin. And let's talk, here's another thing. I don't like how Democrats say this. And we actually have a conversation that actually gets somewhere and people understand maybe both sides a little bit better. That's a beautiful thing. I don't think there's hardly any of that going on now in our society. So I think Bitcoin offers that option for us to have better conversations with one another. That doesn't really answer your question, but that's something that I feel strongly about in terms of the opportunity Bitcoin provides for us, even within our community, even if you're onboarded to Bitcoin.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Within the community, Bitcoin offers, at least for me, a lot of opportunities to talk to people I don't agree with politically and then find common ground. And what I found fascinating about that is that if you have two people who are Bitcoiners, then they can have a conversation about even political issues, even touchy political issues, and that you can almost trust that the other person's going to come at it with good faith, that you're going to have a real meaningful conversation. And even if they say something you disagree with.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, of course. There's a lot of different directions I can go with that. I'm trying not to get canceled. Maybe we should. I think that in the general populace, just the definition of money. And what it means is a huge hurdle for a lot of people just starting. I think that that's probably like number one conversation. Like you don't know what money is and that's okay. Let's learn about it. I think within the Bitcoin community, what I get a lot is there's three kinds of people, people who agree with me politically and they're also into Bitcoin people who disagree with me politically, but they like what I'm doing because it means more people learn about Bitcoin and they're supportive of my idea and then people who disagree with me politically and just absolutely are rabid about like fighting me on Twitter or whatever. And what I get most often is sort of people defining for me what they think progressive means in this very extreme echo chamber way. And it paints me in a way that says, oh,”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Away from that tipping point. Let's see. This is a place where people can come together and actually have conversations and talk about, like you said, solutions instead of just problems. There's a lot of potential for that to happen. I guess the short answer is it's an asset like bipartisan approach to Bitcoin is an aspiration and it continues to be.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because they don't see any good option. They're just going to vote for Democrats and they don't know a lot about Bitcoin. It's pretty big. So I'm thinking like I'm hoping that if we get enough voters educated that pushes the politicians to a point where it actually is truly bipartisan. It's not a political wedge issue. It's not just used to divide or score political points. And I do think that there's still hope. I think that a lot of the people who are against Bitcoin are democratic people, but they're also older. And so I do think that there's an opportunity to sort of educate people about Bitcoin and its benefits before it reaches that tipping point of, you know, like a lot of the other political issues we have where you're never going to change your mind, right? There's just no way you're going to admit defeat on like, oh, I was wrong about abortion for the last 30 years. It's not going to happen. So like, I don't want that to happen with Bitcoin. And that's why I wrote the book. That's one of the main reasons I wrote the book. Let's keep getting.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I tried to describe it in the book as sort of aspirational. I wrote the book as quickly as I could in good conscience because I know that this is a thing, right? Like I think that my biggest fear is that Bitcoin becomes this political football that both sides are just using to fight against each other. And you see plenty of that right now, especially the loudest voices in Congress are doing this. And one of the hopes behind the book is to say, This might be one of the very few things where we don't need it to be a political wedge issue. We don't need to divide people on this. We can actually have people coming together with this issue. I think that the intention behind what I wrote and sort of my thinking now is sort of as aspirationally. Like the book is not written to change politicians' minds. It's written to educate voters. And so there's plenty of people like the addressable market of people who vote Democrats.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To keep it flowed, keep it floating for long enough to transition out of it. And I think you're right. Just saying, okay, well, we're going to save the system by just removing both of those things. No more QE, no more UBI. What that means is the whole thing just deteriorates. There's too much debt in the system for that to be sustainable. It just can't happen. So there's not really any good options, right? Except to just keep people educating people about Bitcoin and hope that we get a smooth transition to a new system.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it reminds me of this other point, which I think is important, which is there's a lot of people who are incentivized to keep us fighting left-right issues like blue and red, like, hey, this UBI shouldn't happen, this sort of welfare state shouldn't happen, whatever. But the truth is people are coming up with solutions because the world is broken in a fiat system. And if they don't understand Bitcoin or they're not really fully clued into how the system works, they just know it's broken. They're coming up with, in some cases, good faith solution attempts, right? Like we can't just let people starve to death. Like we need to do something. And kind of what you're saying. Like if you know the system is broken, we need to transition to a new one. And what do you do in the interim is really important because I don't think that you can let society unravel. I don't think that you can sort of like you said apocalyptic economic outcomes. I think that you need.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, yeah. I mean, you can see pretty quickly when people work really hard and they still can't feed their family, like how quickly society deteriorates. Civilization goes out the window pretty quickly. So I think that you're right”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hopefully, like I said, the transition is gradual. I do think like an abrupt transition to Bitcoin seems devastating to a lot of people on the planet, but a gradual one seems like we end up in a better spot for everybody. So keep on educating and then if people really need it, then you can help them. But you have to be really thoughtful about how you do that. You can't just send a check to everybody in the country and not expect prices to go up 12 months later. It doesn't make any sense.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Working paycheck Yeah, in the short term, they're absolutely right, right? Like it goes to the cantilon effect, right? You're not. People, if you do it the other way, then certainly the people who don't need any help are getting the help. And certainly there's something to be said about like, all right, during the pandemic, we're going to send out checks. Like, why don't we be a little bit more discriminatory about who's getting these checks instead of sending them to everybody? Because, you know, like you said, that person who says just give me the check, like they're a human being who needs to feed kids and needs to keep the lights on and they don't see a way out of that, right? Like this is help that they need and it's hard to tell somebody who doesn't have food on the table. Like you need to be thinking two or three steps ahead. Bitcoin is better option. You know, like forget just, you know, like bow out of the system.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Incinent rate, we say, like, a lot of people, it's all about derivatives, right? The inflation rate might be going back down, but it's still higher, right? The prices don't go back down. The prices still stay high. They're just increasing at a slower rate. That's all that means. And so that's hurting poor people, working people, like people who are struggling to make ends meet. And I think that there is an opportunity to educate people about, like, right, when we decide not to tax people and we're just going to pay for it through inflation, like who are the winners and who are the losers? Who are the losers and who are the bigger losers? And then have like a dialogue about that. And maybe you're right. Maybe we don't get to educate everybody in time or that we don't get that sort of tipping point into Bitcoin as sort of a savings technology. And we have to rely on the pain. I'm hoping that doesn't happen. I don't want that to happen, but it might.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think it's great. It's an opportunity to educate people too, right? Because as you're sort of implying, any inflation rate hurts poor people or people who are struggling to make ends meet are going to feel that much more than somebody who's more well off. And that just compounds over time.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tax is going to go before we elect you out. What are you spending the taxes on? Does that align with my priorities or not? And I think that there's a lot of room to sort of reimagine the relationship that a person has with the government or with taxation or with spending at the government level without saying that, okay, well, Bitcoin exists, therefore the government is going to cease to exist. I think that there's a lot of sort of options between those two options.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But they might be forced to, right? Like if enough people get behind it and we're self cussing and we're imposing our views, not imposing our views, but explaining our views about how this is better, like it will catch on. But the net benefit of that is to make government, it might make government smaller, that's fine. There's plenty of areas in which government can be smaller, but it will more importantly make it more efficient and transparent. So it doesn't, in my view, like Bitcoin doesn't spell the end of like taxation or the government. It just means that the government will have to communicate more clearly about this is why we're taxing you. This is why what we're spending the money on, be able to prove that they're spending the money on that, and then be able to be transparent about these are the goods and services that we usually used to provide and we're no longer doing that. And I think that there's things on both sides of the political spectrum that people aren't willing to get rid of, but that's why we're in a democracy so we get to decide what gets cut, like how high.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That the stance that I'm taking is essentially that an adoption of Bitcoin and it won't come from the politicians. It has to come from the people, from the ground up because as you see, there's no incentive from politicians to change their mind about this”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I talk about this in the book where the politically feasible thing to do is just sort of inflate the money so you don't need to raise taxes and you can just sort of go into debt. And obviously, if you get to print the money that you're using, then that's an advantage point of view to have. So what's interesting about what you said too is like in sort of standard political culture out in America, like people think, oh, Democrats tax and spend and Republicans or fiscally conservative, this is not by true by any stretch. And I think like, oh, when Democrats do it, it's called tax and spend. And when Republicans do it, it's called something else. But really, nobody's taxing. They're just spending, right? They're just like taxes are staying down. Nobody's raising taxes. It's just their spending. So I think it's important because this gets to the fundamental issue about like a person's relationship with their government and their government's ability to print money to do certain things or not.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Offers a different lens through that, right? Like, no matter where you're born, you get to use this, and a nation, no matter how economically or militarily powerful they are, like the United States, can't change the Bitcoin protocol and everybody's operating on an equal footing, that provides a lot of promise. Like it's hard to imagine what the world would look like after 20 years of that. I can't even try to imagine what it looks like, but I would imagine that's something that's an ambition we're striving for.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What it provides is an opportunity for people to be using money that's not controlled by any one government. It levels a playing field. So it's not just sort of like, oh, my money is being debased, so I'm going to use Bitcoin. But if everybody's using Bitcoin, then it levels the playing field. And it doesn't give one nation sort of the ability to print for free the world reserve currency when every other nation has to work, provide services, provide some sort of good to gain those dollars. Like it just sort of makes everything fair. Like if you're no matter what country you're from, no matter where you're born, you get to use Bitcoin and everybody else does too. It's a lot of privilege to be born as an American and say, oh, I get to use a dollar, right? Like it seems weird to say where you're born dictates what kind of money you can use. And most forms of money are really bad. Like the dollars bad, but like it's the best dirty, you know, it's cleanest, dirty shirt. And so Bitcoin.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That chapter, by the way, was the hardest chapter to write. Like, I was just in a depressed state for two weeks while I was working deep in that chapter because you're not just talking about like, okay, you have the dollar and then these other currencies aren't as good and they're like they have really bad inflation or something. What you're talking about is a system where the United States is in a position of privilege because they have the world reserve currency and they can manipulate, lean on in other words, take advantage of other nations usually that are poor for the benefit of the United States, the benefit of maintaining dollar hegemony. So it's not just like, oh, we're going to fight a war or we're going to like assassinate a person elected government official to make more money. It's actually to preserve the definition of money, right? The dollar is the global dominant reserve currency. You need it for all trade that happens all over the world and we're going to preserve that stat.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People weren't forced to make sacrifices back home for either one of those conflicts. Nobody's standard of living went down. Nobody had a rather in their butter. Nobody's taxes went up. In fact, taxes went down. So the war just seemed detached. It happened someplace else. My representative didn't vote for it. My taxes aren't going up to pay for it. That doesn't seem like a healthy system. So Bitcoin offers at least an opportunity to rethink that and potentially improve it. So that's the premise, at least some of the premises behind the chapter.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the premise here is that by adopting a Bitcoin standard or some version where a dollar is backed by a Bitcoin or something like that, there's no way for you to actually fight a war that without engaging with the populace in a way that's meaningful, like have a discussion. How are we going to pay for it? We can't just print the money. So we have to borrow it and pay it back or we have to tax you for it or we have to make sacrifices somewhere else. It's not saying that war can't happen. And it's not saying that a country couldn't defend itself if it needed to. It's just saying like it needs to be really important and like really like the populace has to be behind it. And I think that's moving us in that direction has to be good. Having more buy-in from people about whether or not you fight a war, how long is it, how are you paying for all of that stuff in a democracy should be stuff the voting population has a say in and we just haven't. So Afghanistan and Iraq are examples where”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very quaint when you think okay, this is what happened in World War II, and we've all seen the movies, and we've read the books, and we kind of know what that must have felt like, or we kind of can imagine it. And it's literally the opposite end of the spectrum from what's happening now, right? Like there are no votes in Congress to actually declare war. The World War II was the last war that was declared by the United States Congress. There's no conversations about how we pay for the war. There's no conversations about, you know, like, is this something that the populace wants? And the only way, and this is one of the points that I make in the book, that you can have a 20 year war that is unpopular is because they're printing the money to pay for it, right? There is no way that, you know, in a liberal Western democracy, you can fight a war for 20 years that nobody wants to be fighting or is very unpopular without paying for it with printed made up money.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, this is an issue that's near and dear to a lot of people's hearts, right? Like, they really care a lot about it. And I think that, you know, one of the points that I try to make in that chapter is, like you said, the gradual shift away from sort of an armed conflict being tethered to a voting populace that's engaged in like civic discourse. So I provide this example of World War II, where not only do you have Congress voting to declare war, which is like the representatives of the people actually saying this is a war we need to fight in. We will fight it. But you also have the populace engaged in tax increases and rationing and buying war bonds and all of the things that you could do and actually fighting in the war, right? You have draft and people are like, you know, actually being drafted to fight in the war, volunteering to fight in the war, et cetera. And it seems.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“System. It's not going to be good for people. And just like you said, in that moment in 2008, you're not solving the underlying issue. Like, there's no way you could. You need to just solve the problem that's presented in front of you, just the way Jerome Powell is making decisions right now. And he's like, yeah, there's no good decisions. So, you know, there's nothing Jerome Powell's going to say that a Bitcoin is not going to criticize him for. So fixed the problems that he has in front of him. And it's a systems problem. It's not a symptom thing.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's funny because, as we know, like a lot of people give Jerome Powell a lot of a hard time about the decisions that he's making, I don't know, people have said this, like, I don't know what decision you do make, right? Like question is like, what's the system in place that's creating this problem? And, you know, in that moment in 2008, we had to solve the symptoms, right? Like we had to take care of what we saw on the surface and we weren't able to say, hey, what's the underlying systemic issues happening here that's allowing this problem to be created in the first place? So maybe, you know, like, you know, my view is like gradually over time, Bitcoin adoption goes up, understanding that Bitcoin goes up, understanding of the legacy financial system goes up, and we gradually transition to a new system that is built with more intention and sort of has an eye out for these problems. But you can't, well, you could or you could advocate for it. Like I'm not advocating for like a snap of the fingers overhaul of the whole.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is very skeptical of big banks and doesn't think that they're serving people that need to be served or that they're favoring wealthy clients or connected individuals. And all of that is true. And I'm just offering them to look at it through like a lens of Bitcoin instead of the lens of maybe some of the other left-wing politicians that they're listening to normally.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Party risks so that if one of them goes down, then it causes trouble for everybody in the world. Like, that doesn't seem like a good system. So really what I tried to do in the book is just outline for a novice who hasn't thought about it a lot. Like Bitcoin provides an option for becoming your own bank. And like the things that you have like in your bank account right now, like a savings account and a checking account and a credit card, like Bitcoin replaces all of those things in different ways. We can not only reduce our reliance on these huge institutions that sort of control way more than they probably should, but we can also sort of change the dynamic between the banks and the government in a way by taking the power away, taking that monetary energy away from those institutions and putting them in the hands of people is all sort of a step in the right direction. So I think that the intention behind that is to, again, like there's a target audience from my book out there that thinks like,”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a lot of angst and sort of umbrage taken, especially on the left, but probably with a lot of people about this idea that the banks were bailed out in the 2008 financial crisis. Nobody really heard of too big to fail at that point. It's really just a matter of the counterparty risk and sort of like when one bank fails, then a bunch of others are going to fail. We saw it starting to happen. The government stepped in as a backstop back during that financial crisis. And just from a political standpoint, like people were upset by this, right? Like they're bailing out these banks to make sure that the banks are solvent, but these people are losing their homes. Obviously, it's a little bit more complicated, right? Like if the banks fail, then the whole economy crashes and you end up with like a much worse situation. And the whole idea is like, well, how do we get to that point? Like, how do we get to the point where the banks had that much power, that much interconnectedness, that much sort of counterfeit?”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bitcoin provides solutions that a lot of people on the left side of the political spectrum haven't really thought deeply about. And that's why I'm excited to share it with people.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think there's some value in sort of the expression that I'm angry about this problem that I see in the world, right? If you feel like maybe not everybody sees that problem, like I get that, but I think what you're saying is right, then what are the solutions? Like what are the effective solutions? And in my mind, I'm biased, but I don't think that there's a person who really believes in sort of the fundamental issues behind Occupy Wall Street that shouldn't be supporting Bitcoin because it's, like I said, it's the effective way to accomplish some of the same things that you're trying to accomplish. And Bitcoin, one of the themes throughout the book is Bitcoin provides a new lens on the problems because there's plenty of people left the center, progressive people. Look at the world. They see lots of problems. They see things going wrong. You know, that's true for everybody, right? But that's certainly true for people on the left. But Bitcoin provides a new lens to look at those problems and a new lens to look at the solutions, right?”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of mission aligned, as I said, but like Bitcoin provides an actual efficient effective tool to do some of the things that Occupy Wall Street was trying to do. That's super good feedback, right? If somebody's actually there in the description and the analog speaks to them, that's high praise.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Protocol where all the people are peers and you're interacting on a voluntary basis, there's a lot of aspects about Occupy Wall Street that were the same, right? It was sort of a leaderless thing. There wasn't so many in charge of it. There was no centralized entity. It was sort of people getting together on a peer-to-peer basis, like protesting. And so I draw an analog between that and the Bitcoin network in a way to illustrate it. But what's fascinating is that we all saw Occupy Wall Street happen and we probably saw that before we heard about Bitcoin for most people. And as the book went out, I got more than one person reach out to me and say that they were like, I wasn't at the Occupy Wall Street protest, but there's plenty of people who reached out to me say they were. And when they read the book and they read that chapter that you're talking about, you know, there's one person who wrote to me and said, like, just the way you described it brought me to tears because it brought me back to that moment. And not only is it...”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think that you're dead on, right? Like there's no way for me to not think of Occupy Wall Street and Bitcoin as just mission aligned, right? They're trying to do the same thing except one is more effective. And I think that's particularly for my audience, right? Like my audience is skeptical of Big Banks, right? And they're maybe a little bit less skeptical about the relationship between big banks and government, but they don't like that either. And so like this is not like this is not rocket science. Like if you are down with Occupy Wall Street, you think the system is rigged and unfair. You think the rich people are getting favorable treatment and you're okay sitting in a tent and occupying Wall Street, then you're really going to like Bitcoin. And I think that what you just described is absolutely right. Like those two things are mission aligned. And what I describe in the book is actually a little bit more detail, which is to say Bitcoin is a flat open, like.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Driving them to say, oh, I need to buy the new TV, or I need to get a new car right now instead of thinking about that differently, the opposite will happen too as people started adopting Bitcoin. I'm excited about that.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you feel in the ether, right? And I think it's great because the opposite is also true, right? Like people don't need to understand every nuance about Bitcoin to understand that it's better money, right? They'll just feel that it preserves their purchasing power over time better and it allows them to interact with people as adoption grows. It allows that to happen more efficiently. So people like just the same way people don't need to understand like the mathematical equations behind inflation for that to influence their behavior. The same is true on the other end, right? People don't need to understand every single thing about Bitcoin to just understand that it's better money. And I think that's like really a boon to my outlook on the world, which is like Bitcoin adoption will grow because people will sort of feel and understand that it's better money, even if they haven't sort of sat down and like read all the books or understand all of the background information. And that's the hope, right? The same thing that's.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think you're right because I think what you said was that the person feels like they have to spend it because this is not like, you know, the average consumer is not running the equations and saying, oh, I better go buy the new thing, right?”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This needs to happen? Do I need to replace this? Is this version that I have good enough? Like all of those things that I don't think I was thinking about with the same intentionality before I got into Bitcoin. And I'm hoping for other people to have that same sort of epiphany.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the world, but not a lot of people are thinking about it through sort of like what's the financial system that incentivizes this behavior? What's incentivizing companies to do this? What's incentivizing consumers to do this? And so for a lot of people, this might be the first sort of like touch point to say like, oh, well, I was always taught in economics class that we need inflation, but like look at some of the second order effects of that, right? It's people are just buying a bunch of plastic stuff. things are breaking all the time. This is doing untold damage to the environment, right? I put it in the environment chapter because that's exactly what it is, right? Like we're just consuming things and we're incentivized to do so. Now that's not the whole picture, but it's a pretty important part of it. So I think that that's for me personally, like once I got into Bitcoin, I changed completely my consuming patterns, right? Like I'm thinking about every purchase differently. I'm thinking about like”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that's sort of there's a big overlap in the target audience of people like who, oh, I'm a liberal progressive, leftist center person, and also I'm really disgusted by the amount of consumerism that's going on in the world and people are just buying cheap stuff all and people have a problem with that, right? for lots of good reasons. I don't think a lot of people on the left who have really thought through sort of how fiat money in an inflationary monetary environment contributes to that consumerism. It's not just that people are greedy or impatient or always want more. It's like your money is melting away, right? You're actually incentivized to keep buying more and keep buying different things. And companies are incentivized to sell you something that's going to break in a couple of years. So you have to buy a new one. And so all of these things, like really great against most people that sit down to think about them for a little bit because it doesn't feel right. Like it feels like one of the things that's broken.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think what most people understand is that the hash rate's going up, right? Anybody who's ever bought a miner knows like, oh, six months, like, oh, I could have had 140 terahash per second. That's not the issue, right? The issue is like, what's the, what is the hash rate per joule of energy use? That's improving tremendously. Like, I forget what the numbers are, but they're in the book, like 50-fold, 50 million fold, like, you know, improvement over the energy efficiency to do the same number of hashes. I think it's critically important to just sort of highlight that for people who haven't really thought about it a lot.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those are pretty powerful arguments, I think, for people who are just starting to grapple with this idea of, wow, I thought that energy use was bad because that's what the politicians were telling me. And I always felt guilty about it. And now I'm thinking about it in a more nuanced way. I think it's just all part of the same conversation.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shouldn't demonize the electricity use, but we should be open to saying, hey, can I do this same job more efficiently? Can I use less electricity to do the same job, for example? And if people are willing to say, oh, I should be able to do that with my car or my TV or my refrigerator, that's already happening with Bitcoin miners. And it's not a matter of like some government regulation to say your car needs to be this efficient. And so does your Bitcoin miner. It's actually built into the incentives are built in because Bitcoin minings are really low margin proposition, right? So like it doesn't help you to have not the most efficient machine. I think that section is important just to help people understand like this is going to trend more efficient over time. And also paired with this idea that it's like a non-rival use of energy, right? So like if energy prices go up because demand is up, then we're powering down. So exactly what we're talking about before. So in conjunction.”
2023-07-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC138: A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin w/ Jason Maier (Bitcoin Podast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT