SUMMARY KEYWORDS
bitcoin, money, year, realise, chris, world, gold, bank, energy, print, people, talking, crypto, cryptocurrency, happening, beginning, gold standard, put, started, fiat currency
SPEAKERS
Martin O'Toole, Mangku Ketut, Chris Siracuse, Chris Plow
Martin O'Toole 00:25
yuo usually sing along Chris you know feeling like singing today.
Chris Siracuse 00:33
Not singing it this way
Martin O'Toole 00:36
or not do nothing is
Chris Siracuse 00:37
a great thing to do. I love it. That's, you just don't. I'm not gonna sing it. You don't feel like singing? Because I remember I think it was the second episode I said, we really should let go and sing that. Sorry,
Martin O'Toole 00:50
Dwayne. No, but
Chris Siracuse 00:52
it's actually kind of a nice way to do it. I just wanted to see your response.
Martin O'Toole 00:55
Yeah, I was like, like,
Chris Siracuse 00:56
how are you gonna deal with me? I'm
Martin O'Toole 00:58
out on my own. I'm
Chris Siracuse 00:59
gonna sing with you.
Martin O'Toole 01:00
Yeah, I'm, you know, showing my vulnerability. I'm singing alone, you know, in the corner here.
Chris Siracuse 01:05
Well, you have a nice voice. But it would have been one of the major harmonise with y'all. We'll do it next time.
Martin O'Toole 01:11
It is a wonderful song that we can agree on that
Chris Siracuse 01:13
it is no I'll do it with you next time. I just wanted to hear you sing it.
Martin O'Toole 01:17
Well, I have another song for you do too. You Money makes the world go around the world go around the world go around money makes the world go around. makes the world go round.
Chris Siracuse 01:28
If you could see my face right now, you will notice that I'm like doing this half laugh half
Martin O'Toole 01:34
eye roll. Like if this is awkward. When's he gonna? Is he gonna do all of it?
Chris Siracuse 01:38
Well, it's actually not really things aren't awkward between you and I. We have a nice dynamic. Yeah, it's a lot. It'd be awkward if there was someone else in the
Martin O'Toole 01:45
room. Yeah. All right. I had Liza Minnelli's kind of Cabaret garb on or something will always sing.
Chris Siracuse 01:51
Or if you were singing it to an audience of potential podcast listeners
Martin O'Toole 01:56
dama was
Chris Siracuse 01:59
but no, I don't know that
Martin O'Toole 02:00
sometimes. I forget that. It's not just you and I chatting in a room. Yeah, it's
Chris Siracuse 02:04
kind of nice, though. You know, it's got that. Hopefully that personal feel. We hope you're picking up on it.
Martin O'Toole 02:10
I hope so. And I hope nobody's offended by my constant break into song.
Chris Siracuse 02:15
No, you got a nice voice. So I'm down for it. But now get into the song. I don't know that song. But I imagine you're singing it for a reason.
Martin O'Toole 02:23
Yes, Chris. What reason? Do you think I am singing that particular song?
Chris Siracuse 02:30
I have a feeling that we're going to be talking about money. I don't have a feeling I know for a fact. Well, I'm gonna Yeah,
Martin O'Toole 02:35
because you were in the you're in the chat. You were there.
Chris Siracuse 02:40
I was in the chat. Yeah. And we were talking about money.
Martin O'Toole 02:43
We were so for episode four of the how to die happy podcast. We had, I would say a welcome shift in energetic terms, because we've we've, we've we've meandered, we've, we've danced, we've done a little tango in our first few episodes, haven't we? And our last episode, and the chinwag attached were were both pretty heavy. They were full on necessary discussions for Hawkman.
Chris Siracuse 03:10
German professor if you haven't listened to it yet. Ah, yeah, forgot about that. Yeah, we know that. That's what you
Martin O'Toole 03:16
were referencing while I was talking about the one before but Oh, all right. Yeah. Yeah, the German professor chair I was talking about the one about Macey dog stopping stopping me from killing myself but yeah, that was pretty hairy. The German professor chinwag well that's that's that's not been live for that long has it? So? Did you enjoy that? Hilarious. Well, it might be hilarious hearing about it. But try being the guy who's almost lost his digit. Yeah, as a as a result of an amorous expression,
Chris Siracuse 03:48
amorous expression what a nice way to put it anyway. I didn't mean to pull you off your throat. No, you're fine. You were saying that we were we're lightening it up a little bit. I don't know if lightening up is the right way to put it we're changing it up
Martin O'Toole 04:00
a change the change of direction which is which I think is one of the wonderful things about what this show ought to provide. And in that is a vast range of topics to discuss because we're not just when you say life, death, happiness and everything in between. Wow, that's a lot. Right. So that gives us that gives us a wide opportunity of things to discuss. But of course, as you and I know, and most people listening by now will know it's it's held together by the thread of the 10 common deathbed regrets and sovereignty and freedom are very much epi centric to this of course, which is why we had for the fourth episode, a wonderfully witty and very knowledgeable English chap on the show called Chris plough. And so you're about to hear us talking to Chris about not just about crypto currency. And I think that's probably an important thing to point out, isn't it?
Chris Siracuse 05:04
It is a very important thing to point out because we we really dug in Chris really dug in to the philosophy. I mean, we spent a good part of the episode talking about what money is. And Chris had probably as good of a breakdown, as I've heard. Yeah, articulate as well, very articulate. And he took, like, he says, In the episode, a giant step back, and started off the show by saying what is money, and really got us all on the same page about what money is. And then then we got into the conversation about fiat currency, and Bitcoin. But yes, to your point, Martin is not just about money, it is about freedom, it is about a fundamental change to how we look at the energy we put into the world and how that energy is reciprocated. Yeah, in the form of money. But as you'll you'll hear in the show, it is about much more than just money.
Martin O'Toole 05:58
Big time. And I have to say, I was I'm super excited after having that conversation with Chris because
Chris Siracuse 06:05
you're excited because he said Bitcoin was gonna be 300,000 by the end of the year. So we're excited IV. I'm excited. Oh,
Martin O'Toole 06:13
I might also be excited that he's predicted $6,000,000.20 25
Chris Siracuse 06:19
blew my mind. What? Yeah, yeah. And also excited about the potential I like he uses the analogy of a life raft. And he says that as Bitcoiners is people that are ardent Bitcoin advocates or Bitcoin practitioners, I know there's a lot of different words you can use to describe what it is that people do as it relates to Bitcoin. But to use the analogy, but like a life raft and saying, We don't want to just float off on this life raft on our own, we want to bring as many people on board. Yeah, because again, sticking with the life raft analogy, the ship and the ship, in this case, being the current financial system is sinking. And already hit the iceberg already. Yeah, right. Exactly. So anyway, I really appreciated that about him, because he seems like one of those people that is actually altruistic in a way that is rare. There is
Martin O'Toole 07:12
no doubt in my mind, and I. And that's how I came across Chris. And he's super altruistic. And he's he's have he's happened upon this, this entire understanding of the monetary system, the current economic meltdown, has been going on for for a while, and the evolution of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. And he's taken that knowledge and is decided, obviously, he's invested wisely, himself, but he's decided to to turn his energy and his attention to service to others. So all he's trying to do now is written this thing called the Bitcoin playbook. There's a link to the website through to his website, from our websites how to die happy podcast.com forward slash on the show. And you'll see Chris plough, click on that, and you'll find a link to his to the Bitcoin playbook. But he's all he's interested in doing now is just getting as many people to hear this as possible. And he's not even selling this thing is giving this information away. Because he just wants as many people as possible to get on the life raft.
Chris Siracuse 08:24
Yeah, yeah. Love it. So what do you think we want to just jump in with Chris, I reckon, in the spirit of getting as many people on board as possible. Let's, I think Chris would want us to jump, jump, just jump. All right. Well, here we go. Here's our conversation with Chris Plow. What would what would you label Chris says, I don't like to label people too much. But just for the sake of people understanding what I would say is a Bitcoin advocate as a Bitcoin advocate consultants. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He's
Martin O'Toole 08:50
very, very skilled. The guy knows what he's talking about. And if you find if you go and check him out, you'll see that these he does all the charts and the predictions and you know, all the stuff that the majority of us have no clue about. So
Chris Siracuse 09:02
he's a smart dude very much and has intelligence and applied it to Bitcoin and understanding and helping people
Martin O'Toole 09:08
with no ego whatsoever, you know, a lot of these and all due respect and peace and love to all of the influencers out there in the world. You know, I love the fact that people are sharing all of their know how and yada yada. But he doesn't have any there's no presentation or ego about it, you're not presenting a brand. He's not trying to get 10 million followers, so you can make a fortune out of being a YouTuber. He just wants people to get on board with this so that they have some some stab at some significant financial freedom.
Chris Siracuse 09:40
Yeah, absolutely. So without further ado, without further ado, our conversation with Mr. Chris bow.
Martin O'Toole 09:53
Chris, did you have a piggy bank as a child is a
Chris Plow 10:00
great question. Yes, I did. I think that I've still got it to this day actually, it's at my parents house
Martin O'Toole 10:07
No way. What kind of piggy bank?
Chris Plow 10:10
It's a big can of baked beans.
Martin O'Toole 10:15
Did you have a piggy back? Other Chris
Chris Siracuse 10:17
No, I had a coin jar. So you could always see into it
Martin O'Toole 10:22
like a just a an old fashioned
Chris Siracuse 10:23
just a giant jar or you know what I did? Have I had a five gallon jar? Well, yeah, yeah, that's a lot of coins, five gallon jars. But essentially the same thing, essentially piggy bank,
Martin O'Toole 10:32
I used to bank with a bank called the Midland Bank, which was bought by the banking BM off HSBC. And the Midland Bank for every child opening an account, they will give you a free piggy bank. And I had one of them. Yeah, no. So
Chris Siracuse 10:54
the indoctrination starts early. It doesn't
Martin O'Toole 10:58
come to the bank and get a free piggy bank. Yeah, anyway. But you don't need a piggy bank with cryptocurrency, do you?
Chris Plow 11:09
Well, on your on your saying that that bank account when you were a child, did they tell you that the value of your savings was going to diminish by 10 to 15% per year?
Martin O'Toole 11:23
They told me I think I was like age nine or something. So had they told me I doubt I would remember. I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. But but it's it's a very valid point. I don't know. And of course, there is a question about honesty in banks, isn't that? Well, that leads me on to how we might start this conversation, Chris, because I was thinking we have a mixed audience. Some who understand a little bit about crypto some who possibly understand a lot, but I suspect we'll have a good lump of people listening who have who still have very little idea about what cryptocurrency is. And I wanted to start that conversation. Where should we begin? Should we talk about fiat currency? Before we get into digital?
Chris Plow 12:16
We we need to take another giant leap back and talk about what money is? Because only discuss what crypto and Bitcoin is from an understanding of what money is.
Martin O'Toole 12:31
Well, that makes perfect sense. I'm ready. I'm ready when you take me back.
Chris Plow 12:34
Me too. All right. All right. So the foundational layer, what is money, and what money truly is, is energy. And in fact, it is the most powerful form of energy that human beings can harness. And the reason for that is that it is the collective store of value and productivity of all of humanity. So that is everything that you've done in your life, but also everything that your parents and grandparents and all of your ancestors, every transaction, every every service, and that they delivered every good that they produced, it's all stored in the money. And therefore it is as organic as anything in the cosmos. When people say that money is evil, you know, that doesn't make sense. Money is just a form of energy. And energy can be used for for good or bad. So since the very beginning of time, or whenever humans woke up on this planet, we've had to find ways to survive and prosper. And at the beginning, that would have been, you know, digging out a cave or making shelter and then we'd start to collect food. And then very, very quickly, you get to the point where you want to start swapping, or transacting. And, you know, at the very beginning, I would have perhaps swapped some cows with you for some of your wheat or whatever it may have been.
Martin O'Toole 14:11
I'd actually like some I'd like some cushions for my cave.
Chris Plow 14:18
Yeah, of course. Elson straw, you may we may not have the cushions already, but yeah, of course Okay, all of these things, right, you survived is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, isn't it? First you want to survive, and then you want to be comfortable. But that's called the division of labour. In you know, at the beginning where you were trying to do everything yourself and you wouldn't get very far. You'd literally survive for as long as possible until the end of your life. As soon as you realise that you can specialise in creating some sort of good and then swap it with somebody else's creating a different good, then the quality of your life. can start moving forward at a much quicker rate. So, at the beginning, we would just be swapping those goods and services. That's very inefficient. Because Sif II, I'm swapping my cushions for your cattle? Well, we have to, you know, make sure that your cattle is ready when the cushions are ready. And we need to figure out how much of one is equivalent to the worth of the other one. And when we need to start crossing rivers and mountains, etc, becomes really hard. So, we quickly tried to find ways to make that more efficient, because the more efficient that we can become, the more prosperous we can become. And therefore we try to use certain elements or goods to act as that exchange, that exchange of value. And we tried many, many different things, such as calorie shells, or beads, or stones, etc. Many, many, many over 1000s 10s of 1000s, maybe hundreds of 1000s of years, to varying degrees of success. But each, you know, generally across time, we were continuing to improve, because that's what human beings do. And that's how, you know, we we started to build, you know, societies. Well, you know, if we fast forward all the way to the 1800s, which is not too long ago. At that point, the whole world essentially, had landed on using the best money that we had ever discovered up to that point. And that was gold. That's when the world was on a gold standard. And the reason why we ended up on gold, is because it is the best money, it has the best functions of money. So that is, it's easily divisible. You can melt it down into coins, bars, etc. It's basically indestructible. So you now if you haven't bit down to your children, grandchildren, still gonna be here in 1000 years. It's fungible. So I know that, you know, my piece of gold is essentially the same as your piece of gold, it has the same properties. But the main reason why we ended up on the gold standard, without any decree from a government or authority figure, human beings came up with this on our own, believe it or not, is because gold is relatively scarce. And that is all of the gold ever discovered ever mind can fit into two and a half Olympic sized swimming pools.
Martin O'Toole 17:52
Yeah, that's a crazy fact, isn't it? I've heard that a few times. And I've always thought really, but then I suppose an Olympic swimming pool is actually quite big.
Chris Plow 18:00
Yeah, very big. And that, that gold would be worth $10 trillion whales, it's now when something is scarce, such as gold, it's very hard to get out the ground, then it is a good store of value. Because they can't make loads more of it. So we create, we mined about one and a half percent more gold per year. But it is a very small amount compared to what already exists. Those that know a bit about Bitcoin may be starting to think about stock to flow, which we won't go into detail. But when money has a high, sorry, a low stock to flow, sorry, a high stock to flow. That means the stock is what already exists. And the flow is the new supply coming into the market. So gold has a very high stock to flow. When money has a high stock to flow, that means that it's going to be a good store of value. Now, gold, like I said relatively scarce one and a half percent more per year. If the price of gold went up a lot, then we could make a bit more of it, we could because we would put more energy and capital expenditure into creating new mining operations and getting more out the ground. We could create potentially two or 3% more for you, but it will be limited by what we can find in the so this is and this is why gold ended up as the best money. You knew that if you're getting paid in gold for your goods and services that that gold would be worth roughly the same tomorrow, and then a year and in 10 years, etc, etc. And what that led to was the 1800s was the greatest leap forward in terms of humanity and society. Have, we had the biggest increase in life expectancy, health, art culture business, the 18th. And the 1800s was the most peaceful sanctuary that we've had. There was very, very little warfare. And the reason for that is because whoever the authority figures were, they were accountable to the gold standard, they could only spend what they had in their reserves. Otherwise, if you wanted to go to war, and you didn't have the gold to pay for it, you would have to ask your citizens to pay taxes. So you would have to justify going to war. And of course, if the citizens believed that the war was just, then they would absolutely pay some taxes for you to go and win that war. But those wars were few and far between. And they were short, because you knew if you were going in, you had to have a very, very clear mission, why are you doing it, you're going to take that land or that resource or kill that king, or whatever. So the mission was clear, you went in, whoever had the best army one, it happened quickly, you took the land, you took the women, and it was over.
Martin O'Toole 21:22
And perhaps it's worth at this point, just discussing, who was lending the money to the government and to the countries to have these walls.
Chris Plow 21:34
That was the people. Because gold as it were, or there's not no banks, there wasn't really any reason for banks. So banks would just be to hold your gold reserves. So of course, you know that that and that was initially done by Goldsmith's, which then turned into banks. So you would it all it would be was for protection, because he didn't want the year gold stolen. So you would keep it in a bank, and the bank would give you a deposit. And that deposit would be would be backed by gold, you'd have a paper note. And then you could trade those papers. But those papers were the equivalent of gold phosphor forward to 1913. And we had the crash creation of the Federal Reserve, which was the central bank in the United States, we'd have other central banks before that. But this was really, you know, the US was becoming one of the most powerful forces in the world. And the Federal Reserve was destined to become one of the most powerful entities in the world. It was a very corrupt process, you know, even related to the Titanic were some very influential people and billionaires who were opposed to the creation of Federal Reserve were on the ship, and the ship conveniently sank,
Martin O'Toole 23:09
hit an iceberg, conveniently.
Chris Plow 23:15
And they passed it through on a Sunday when there was hardly any congress people there. And they'd been actually trying to do it for decades, it would be had been resisted for so long, because in those times, there were actually politicians that cared. And many of them were forward thinking, and they realised that if this Federal Reserve bill passed, then that would most likely lead to the end of the gold standard and the creation of fiat currency.
Martin O'Toole 23:46
And, and it was also a very quiet day in Congress. So understand, on the day,
Chris Plow 23:53
Sunday night. I think nobody was working four or five people in here. And so that was 1913. And then, believe it or not, in 1914, we had the beginning of World War One. So World War One, again, we were told a story about Franz Ferdinand being assassinated, and then the whole world went to war because of it, which makes zero sense. And what you actually found is that the central bankers, the Federal Reserve, had been plotting and began to fund bowfin all sides of the wall. And in order to do this, almost in lockstep, most governments around the world and most central banks around the world, left their respective gold standard, and started printing paper money. So their justification was that we have we're now at war. It's a world war. It's going to be the worst war ever. We need to protect ourselves, we need to defeat the bad guys. Of course, all signs were saying that. And in order to do so, we need to print all of this money in order to fund it, because hey, that's better than asking you for more taxes, right. But of course, it's not better than asking for more taxes, it's worse. And I think we should come to that in a second. And so World War One quickly led into World War Two into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, war on terror, war on viruses, etc, ongoing warfare, essentially, for the past war on drugs, war on drugs, exactly 108 years. And, as we were saying, before war used to be shots, it's gonna say short and sweet, it certainly wasn't sweet. It was horrific, but shot. And now, war is supposed to be continuous. And the reason why it's supposed to be continuous is because the mission, or the reason for this war, is to index the world is for central bankers to print and lend as much paper currency as possible. paper currency is fiat currency, Fiat means not backed. So since we left the gold standard, we're with the world is on fiat currency. And because it's not backed by anything, whoever is in control of the printer, which used to be paper money literally on being printed, and now it's pressing keys on the keyboard, whoever's in control of that, they, you know, they cannot keep their finger off the button. Because it makes them extremely rich and makes their front extremely rich. The reason for that is they already own most of the assets, and they get first access to all of this free paper money. So they get it, and then they buy more assets. That are and I'm
Martin O'Toole 27:09
sorry to interrupt, am I right in saying that, around 35% of US dollars, currently in circulation have been printed in the last 18 months?
Chris Plow 27:21
Yeah. And I've read 40% of all of the world's money has been printed on state tournaments. So whichever number Yeah, it's, it's massive.
Martin O'Toole 27:30
It's still a lot and it leads to hyperinflation, of course.
Chris Plow 27:34
Well, it's, it's because it is exponential. So as soon as you go down this path, then the next time you print money, you have to do more, and then the next time you have to do more, it started with millions and became billions. Now we're on trillions. And when you print this new money, now, the value of each unit is far less than it was before.
Martin O'Toole 28:06
Yeah, so notwithstanding the fact that it's it's no longer backed by anything, namely, gold, it's its paper, it's losing its value as a piece of paper.
Chris Plow 28:17
Exactly. Because this is the impact of money printing is inflation. In fact, the definition of inflation, people believe that it is an increase in the prices of goods and services. And it's not the original definition of inflation, is to inflate the money supply. prices of goods and services go up or down, they don't inflate what inflates is the money supply. So when you print money, you inflate the money supply, you create inflation, a byproduct of inflation is that the prices of goods and services go up. So for those that hold their, their net worth in cash, which I guess is going all the way back to what you're saying at the beginning about your piggy bank, most people we are taught to save to save money to corrupt to create a nest egg to see that number in your bank account going up means you're getting richer, or at least that's what we're told, because it's not true. The real we're told the rate of inflation is one to 2% the real rate of inflation for the past decade has been 10%. And with all of the money that they're printing, now, we're moving past 15% We'll probably be at 20% soon. So even if you just take the 10% number. You know if you do really really really well. And you saved that say 100,000 pounds or dollars in your account. Well, in one in only one year you've lost To 10,000 And the reason for that is the goods and services that you wanted to buy, no longer cost 200,000, they cost 210,000.
Martin O'Toole 30:09
They've increased wealth in value whilst your, your currencies decreased. Okay, so just to recap on what you see, so far, we've Central Bank's print printing money, as much money as they like. It's not backed by gold. So essentially, it is, it's worthless, they don't actually even have to prove that they have it, because of course, it's not all printed, some of it's just transferred via digital transfer. And they're lending money to governments on a large scale. The government's are, of course indebted, and are ongoing, indebted to the central banks, and then the government's have to get their money somehow. So presumably, they're increasing and creating more taxes is about the size of it, and that's about it, then the money ultimately goes back to the government through the taxes, and then they pay off the interest back to the central banks. Everybody's happy, apart from us with our piggy bank, with money that's losing value, which was actually worth nothing anyway. And we're paying higher taxes, and so on and so forth,
Chris Plow 31:15
are just the tariffs just are just adjust that a little bit, because I think you made a mistake that most people make, which is they try and sort of balance the books for the government. So let me just rephrase what you just said, Well, when we're in a fiat currency system, the government doesn't need to collect as much taxes as they spend, because this is why you hear about them continually running larger and larger deficits. Or, pretty much all governments around the world spend way more than they bring in. And this is enabled by central banks who lent them money. And everybody knows, it's never gonna get paid back. The US is $30 trillion in debt, they're not going to start saving soon and start paying it down. So this, this is what I mean about the problem becomes exponential. And the side, their governments have no accountability anymore, they can spend as much as they like, with no repercussions, of course, there are repercussions, which we'll come to in one second. But when you're when you're a politician, and you're in, you're in office for four years, or five years, and, you know, essentially that you can spend as much money as you like, then what do you do? Well, you promise your people, or the people, all of these free gifts right now is actually free money, literally will give you will give you loads of free money. And it's an exchange vote for me. And this repeats on a cycle every four to five years. And it's never ending. And what it means is that they just continue running higher and higher deficits. And to fund those deficits, they print more and more money, the only real impact on the people is higher and higher inflation, because taxes reach a limit, like when it gets to 40 50%, you can't raise them much more without a revolt, and they don't want to revolt. So they just want to keep it at that level, where people are getting a bit poor every day. But they don't feel like they're ready to go to the palace or what, and drag them out by their necks, right? And that's where we're at at the moment. So they say, Hey, we're gonna be even say, Hey, we're gonna cut taxes for most people. But what they're actually doing to therefore get the money to spend is they're printing it. Now, that's why they call inflation, the stealth tax. Because when inflation is 15% per year, well, you just need to add that on to whatever you're paying in taxes is a tax. They're gonna be they're gonna continue to do that until it's 20% 25% 30%. Because the stealth tax is much harder for the common person to quantify, then the tax that directly leaves their account. And this is why, you know, this is why they left the gold standard, because at that point, you didn't have to ask for taxes to fund the programmes that you are promising in your election campaign, you can just print the money instead.
Martin O'Toole 34:51
So this leads on to something we're going to talk about a little later on in the session, but just To be clear, this has been going on for years. Right? And am I right in saying this predates the invention and development and rollout of any cryptocurrencies?
Chris Plow 35:11
Yeah, well, that this is why we started in 1913. Because I believe that's yeah, that's the real beginning of this cycle, you know that we're basically coming to the end of 100 plus year cycle, where we went on to fiat currency, we started creating inordinate amounts of debt. That is, as everybody feels or knows, deep down is unsustainable. But we are reaching some sort of end game, we know we're reaching some sort of end game, because we just said at the beginning that they printed 40% Of all the currency in circulation. So whenever that's happened before, it has been the end of the monetary system. It's happened in the Weimar Republic, it happened in France in the 1700s. It happens in Argentina and Venezuela more recently. So there is a long history, every fiat currency that's ever existed has gone to zero. This time is very interesting, because now we're essentially talking about the whole world all at once. And therefore, what we can't predict exactly how this end game is going to play out, or how long it's going to take. But what we can say for sure, is it showing all the hallmarks of being in the final froze over that's in the next year, five years? 10 years? That's what we remains to be seen.
Martin O'Toole 36:38
Okay, well, you've just inspired me to read a few headlines to you, which I think is in line with where this conversation is going. So this isn't the 13th of October, the British newspaper The Guardian, Bitcoin could trigger financial meltdown warns Bank of England deputy and the subline is Sir John cliff. Cunliffe. conliffe likens danger to 2008 crash and calls for tough regulation on cryptocurrencies. Second headline 14th of October, CNBC, crypto could cause 2008 level meltdown Bank of England official warns next newspaper, The Daily Express, Bank of England warning Bitcoin and crypto could lead to 2011 Eight level recession. And then October 13, FN london.com, Bank of England warns crypto system could threaten financial stability. Before I allow you to weighed in, I then found another amusing headline from actually mark March 2016. That says Bank of England developing cryptocurrency. So the Bank of England are developing the central bank digital currency cbdc. And so I understand there another 80% of the central banks. So this begs the question, why, on the one hand of the banks and governments scare mongering about crypto and terrifying people, frankly, suggesting there's going to be another meltdown, the same level as 2008, which we know is a global financial crisis. And on the other hand, 80% of these central banks are in the throes of developing their own cryptocurrency.
Chris Plow 38:28
Yeah, I love today's headlines from the Bank of England, because it's probably the first time that they're being honest. And what I mean by that, I'm interested in this, what John from the Bank of England is saying that Bitcoin will trigger a financial meltdown is exactly what Bitcoin was
Martin O'Toole 38:50
designed to do. Yeah.
Chris Plow 38:55
So Bitcoin was discovered in 2009, after the last financial crisis, and it was designed in order to be the antithesis of everything that we just talked about over the last half an hour. So in two main ways, really, number one, it's a peer to peer decentralised network, so there is no bank or payment intermediary in the middle. This is a purely you know, person to person, exchange of value. I can send anybody in the world $10 worth of bitcoin with the click of a button is very, very hard for me to send $10 to Venezuela right now, you know, I'm sure you've tried it in the past. Number one, the fees but number two, your bank asking you what you're doing, like trying to tell you where you can and can't spend or send your money so It's completely peer to peer, which means essentially, we don't need a banking system anymore when we move on to the Bitcoin standard. So that is what John is scared about. And he should be because he's going to be out of a job. The global financial system, I don't know what it's worth, but it is probably more tea, quadrillions. And the vast majority of it becomes completely redundant when we move on to a Bitcoin standard. Then number two, we talked about gold, we talked about the properties of gold, and Bitcoin improves upon gold in a number of ways. It's more easily divisible. Which means it's, you know, far easier to run a global economy on a Bitcoin standard than the gold standard. We wouldn't need those Goldsmith's or banks in the middle of creating those paper notes. It's far easier to send across borders. So it's hard for me to send a million dollars worth of gold somewhere, you know, I'd have to hire security guards and planes, etc. But I can send a million dollars worth of bitcoin very, very easily. But the most important aspect of this is the reason why I said that gold is relatively scarce, we create one and a half percent more per year. Now, Bitcoin is absolutely scouts, there are only 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist, it is pre programmed into the code, it is a fixed supply. And this is, essentially we have solved money, because gold was the best money up until now. But the fact that we could create a bit more of it, and we didn't know how much was in the ground, was a something that can be improved upon. And Bitcoin has solved that it's in fact, the first time that human beings have really solved the scarcity. Because pretty much everything in this world and everything that we can create is abundant. It just depends upon how much energy and resources we want to put into it. With Bitcoin, we've fixed it, we've solved it. Bitcoin is absolutely scarce 21 million for stop, no negotiation, nobody can change that nobody can manipulate it. And what it means is, everybody in the world who's on who owns bitcoin is using Bitcoin knows that supply, and they know however many bitcoins they hold, they will always own that percentage of the total supply. When you have solved for scarcity like this, then Bitcoin becomes the greatest store of value ever known to man, we're seeing that play out already. The reason why Bitcoin is appreciating at 200% per year, is because there will only ever be 21 million that ever exist. So as people wake up to this fact, and there are, it's we have 2% global adoption at the moment. So there's another 98% of people to realise that Bitcoin is pre programmed and money, and it's math. And if there's 21 million in the seven and a half billion people in the world, then what is going to happen over the coming years is the vast majority of the world to wealth, whether that is cash, stocks, bonds, property, etc, wherever people are holding their wealth is going to move into Bitcoin, those that realise it early, or gain the most, they'll be on the right end of the wealth transfer. Currently, most of most of us normal people have been on the wrong end of the wealth transfer because since they printed paper money, the value of our cash was being destroyed and the value of their assets was being was appreciating. Now the wealth transfer is happening in the opposite direction, because Bitcoin is a fair, transparent public system. And we all have an opportunity as normal people to be early like I said, 2% adoption. And that means when as that wealth transfer is taking place, which has been for the past 12 years, than those that own Bitcoin early again, to be on the right side of that,
Martin O'Toole 44:36
but a transference of wealth along this line is pretty amazing for most most of us regular people, isn't it?
Chris Plow 44:47
It can be if we take the time to understand what is happening. And most people unfortunately don't have the information available to them or They are so busy in their everyday lives, that they literally don't feel that they have the time to understand that. So for all of those people, what they're going to continue doing is be on this hamster wheel, where they know deep down that the game is rigged against them. But they don't know why. And they feel themselves getting poor and poor, or working harder and harder and not moving forwards. And what most of those people end up realising is that they get to retirement age and broke, or they can afford very little compared to what they thought they could compare, afford, maybe they have saved a quarter of a million pounds. And you know, that was always their dream. And then they essentially have to ration for the next 1020 years. Because what they what they believe they could afford on a quarter of a million pounds now costs 5 million pounds, right?
Martin O'Toole 46:05
Yeah, and of course, what so one of the, one of the main, one of the threads of of the how to die happy podcast is around freedom. And because what you're talking about here is financial freedom. And I go so far as to say it's a God given right to have financial freedom for anyone who's who's worked their whole lives, or whose parents worked and passed on their wealth. So to intuit a tricky situation here, aren't we where it seems to me from what you're saying that there is a there is an opportunity for the whole table to turn around, where hard working honest, people have an opportunity suddenly to be ahead of the game for for a change. And to turn that, that hard work, that stored energy into something actually worth a significant amount of money.
Chris Plow 47:02
Yeah, I believe freedom is a God given right as well. And I like to make the analogy of Bitcoin being a gift from God, in order to help us achieve that, because we don't know where it came from. And it had to essentially an immaculate conception, there is no founder or no company that sits in the middle of it. And therefore you can compare it to Jesus Christ with that Immaculate Conception. So there's a lot of parallels for me. I do believe it's a gift from God, I believe that those that choose to accept it will begin that path to, of course, financial freedom, yes. But it's much bigger than financial freedom, because financial freedom unlocks time, freedom, not having to work every hour of every day until you're 6065 years old. Right now, you know, if you're saying that in a relationship, you have the husband and the wife, essentially working eight until six or seven, five days a week for most of their lives until they're 6065 years old, just so they can save enough to retire. Before all of this happened. You know, before I live, this inflation happens, let's say in the 1920s, when we're just coming out of the last hard money system, which was gold, when things were still good. Well, you had the usually the month, almost always the month, who was working a labour job, maybe it's down the mine or something along those lines, working nine until four, and the woman stayed at home and raise the family. And he would make enough to support the wife and the family and to save money and to buy a house and to go on holiday and have enough to support in his and her retirement age. So you can see how times have changed as we moved on to a fiat currency system. And what Bitcoin promises is a return to a hard sound money system. And with that comes the freedom of time. With that comes the freedom of being able to spend money or time on the things that you actually want to do and want to enjoy. Spend time with your family rather than having to work every hour of every day. And of course, Bitcoin allows you to be your own bank, as we discussed before. And it also allows you to sit outside of the political system. So if you do not need to rely on any third party or any intermediary where you can just support yourself and your family. Then you achieve political freedom, freedom movements, etc, etc.
Martin O'Toole 50:02
And this is one of the many reasons why we were so excited to talk to you on the podcast because I think and how you've you phrase that is beautiful, because we're not just talking about money, we're not talking about an investment class. We're not talking about pounds dollars, fiat currency versus cryptocurrency, we're talking about a complete and utter evolution, evolutionary opportunity for society. And, and of course, with this financial freedom, it comes this ability to, to do all of the things that this podcast is encouraging people to do, to take more time, spend more time with family to spend more time with introspection to spend more time and effort with healers to help you overcome the emotional triggers that you've grown up with all of these all of these years, which unfortunately, unfortunately, now lead to regular conflicts with your fellow brothers and sisters. So and many, many, many more opportunities to essentially have a better life. And, and, and as you rightly said, at the beginning of this session, money is energy, it's stored energy. And and I think we all need to reframe our perspective on what energy is and what money therefore is, and how this can get us off that. hamster wheel? I had the sorry.
Chris Plow 51:34
Yeah, please. Interesting at the beginning of that, you said, we're not talking about just money? Well, you know, that kind of, I think what we tend to do in society now because the money is broken, is we try and downplay the importance of it. There is almost nothing as important as money. And it's funny that you said just money. Well, you know, in the Bible, they talk about just money a lot. And just, of course, has a double meaning just means justice. And if you have just money is money that is justified. And it is money that is moral and virtuous. And of course, that is not the money that we have nowadays. But that is exactly what Bitcoin is. And that's why we say, fix the money fix the world. Because if we managed to fix the money, everything else will take care of itself, the downstream impacts are absolutely enormous money is the foundational layer of society has been since we were swapping our cushions for our capital. And if we managed, and if we managed to fix that, and by the way, it is being fixed, Bitcoin will fix it, it is an all powerful force that is taking over the world. So it is happening, then you're going to see some incredible changes in the way that society works in the way that we act towards our brothers and sisters, as you said, and it's going to be quite magical.
Martin O'Toole 53:07
Well, that's why I love the way you you started this conversation and I use the word just deliberately because we've we've been led to feel that money is just a part of our problems. And we've also been led to believe that we have very little control over this, this asset. And I think as you've rightly identified, it is everything. It's not evil, money isn't evil. It's energy is the expression it's how people choose to spend it or use it, of course could be evil, but the same could be said of any other direction of energy. So I think it's a it's a wonderful way that you frame this whole story. At no point have we discussed the price of Bitcoin in 2010 versus what it's going to be worth by the end of the year, although incidentally, everybody bitcoins 62 and a half $1,000 at the moment. So for the naysayers, perhaps you want to go off and do some more research. But I love I love the way you're you're positioning this whole thing. And I should add that this is the this is the work you do now, isn't it right? You're consulting people to tell them this story, and then to explain to them what how they can get into Bitcoin, or cryptocurrency.
Chris Plow 54:26
I was watching a talk from Jack Dorsey at Twitter. And he said, find the most important thing in the world and then work on that. So that is my full focus now is to help as many people onto this life raft as possible. The Titanic is going down. That is the fiat currency system. 98% of people are still on the Titanic. They're all at various levels of awareness. Some are still you know, on deck drinking gin and tonics listening to the music And funny just yesterday, I was listening to a podcast with Max Keiser, and he was talking about this analogy. Apparently, I haven't watched it. But apparently there is a video on YouTube, which is a demonstration of the Titanic going down, and it lasts two and a half hours. And for the first two and a quarter hours, nobody really knows what's happening. In fact, most people are just still, like I said, dancing and drinking their gin and tonics, etc. It's only the last 15 minutes or so, when the middle starts cracking in half, that they realise it's going down. Well, we are right on the precipice of most people realising that it's going down. And still, lots of people are there, enjoying the music, enjoying their free money, that it's been deposited into their bank accounts, enjoying buying all of their products and services, which not really adding much value in joining in all that junk food, etc. But more and more of us are realising that it's going down 2% of us are now next door on the life raft, and Bitcoiners the Bitcoin community is we care so much about humanity. And we care so much about the future, we want to leave this place better, and we want to create a world for our children and grandchildren. So we're not sailing off on the life raft off to, you know, get rich of our Bitcoin. We're trying to get as many people on here as possible before it's too late, because there will be a point where it's too late. As the Titanic goes down, if you haven't jumped off, then it's too late. So we're trying to make as many people as possible.
Martin O'Toole 56:51
Nice. Okay, well, we'll whatever I think we'll just interject with our conversation for a moment just to play our regular thought from kitten. So what do we ask kids? This week? Chris?
Chris Siracuse 57:08
We asked him, What would you say to someone who's had problems with money or is currently having problems with money, and the theme that we gave them inspired by you, Chris was money is energy. And here's here's his response. Thoughts
Mangku Ketut 57:30
as you said, money is energy. So if they lost the money, or they want the money, first of all is, Phil you you have energy or not, you know, if you want something big, and then you have to have the energy, the big energy to have something big. So it's like a mirroring. It's not like the outside giving something, no, you creating the outside because of your energy is like reflection from you, you are the creator. Like we said the beginning, we are the creator. So we are creating by our energy. And the money is just again, it's just a form from that energy. Without money, we still can be happy. And without money, we still can have a big energy, but the money will come to you like a magnet. Because the simpler Quincy to bring you more energy, because that's the money only one as a lot of thing like feeling love and have a good relationship. Also, sometimes when you fall in love, you're not even thinking about the food because you already full bring the energy to take care of yourself and take care of your energy first
Martin O'Toole 58:56
profound sometimes you have to sort of listen crawl through what what gets seen to see the key and he does like to talk about food a lot as well which is which is epic, but interesting what he says so I one of the things I picked up from that was what you what you put in you can take out it's it's the it's that energetic exchange, isn't it? I think which which reflects exactly what you said, Chris?
Chris Plow 59:25
Yeah. You know, once you start down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, you want to put the energy into learning as much as possible about what Bitcoin is, but also about economics and economic history. And then you want to put lots of energy into educating others because you realise that it's going to help them so you become out of service.
Martin O'Toole 59:49
So, just tell us a little bit about your journey. Then, since you began talking to people about Bitcoin and cracking this stuff. very wide open, what? What's your process? How are you going about doing this and helping people to understand? What's happening with the monetary system? what Bitcoin is what cryptocurrency is? Because of course there's a lot of FUD isn't the FUD. And I use the expression, the acronym for getting what it stands for
Chris Siracuse 1:00:20
fear, uncertainty and doubt or death.
Martin O'Toole 1:00:23
doubt, doubt. Thank you, Chris. Perfect. So there's a lot of foot around, which I'm sure we can talk about in a moment. But what's the process for you? How do you how do you how do you help people get on this ladder?
Chris Plow 1:00:36
Well, I went down the same path as pretty much everybody else in you buy bitcoin initially, without knowing what it is, because you see the price going up, and you believe that you're going to make money? That is a genius design from Satoshi the creator of Bitcoin. Because we call it number go up technology. It's great. It's complex. Very, I like I like it. Yeah. So you know, Bitcoin is designed for the number in terms of fiat currency, you talked about per Bitcoin being 62 and a half $1,000, it will essentially go up forever, you know, and the reason for that is, there's only 21 million, but there's an infinite amount of potential units of currency, units of dollars. So as adoption increases, price is only an indicator indicator of adoption. So as long as you believe that more and more people are going to realise what we're talking about today, then you're going to see the price go up. But it is quite rare, it's very volatile. And that's because Bitcoin is on the front line fighting the current financial and political system. So you see these massive swings, you know, and it actually works in four year cycles of which we're in the fourth year of third fourth year cycle right now. And as many will know, or listening to that, that means the price is going up a lot. So when the price goes up, it draws people in, and it plays on that human emotion of greed. And we absolutely need to be played on that emotion, because fiat currency has created a layer of greed across society. So it draws in so many of those people, including myself originally. And of course, you buy it, and the price may go up or down, who knows in the short term, but as soon as you bought it, then emotionally invested. And you start to learn whether you know that through articles, videos, books, Twitter, etc. And you start down the Bitcoin rabbit hole as we, as we like to frame it. And, you know, 99% of people who begin down the rabbit hole, don't come back, because she started to uncover all of this amazing knowledge, and you start to connect the dots, and you start to realise this is about much more than you putting in a certain amount of money and seeing it go up by a certain percentage. So you begin down that rabbit hole. Yes, almost everybody at a certain point gets distracted with all of these other cryptocurrencies, which is more like going to the casino, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And then, you know, as you continue through your process, you are, again, most people, you're brought back into the reality of what's important. And what is important is what Bitcoin is set up to do. And the fact that it has for the past 12 years, achieved all of its goals, and is continuing to achieve all of it scholars. And what that means is the future is very, very, very exciting.
Martin O'Toole 1:04:00
Big time. So you mentioned other other coins, and it's probably a good time, just to what I'm really keen to do throughout this interview is just to try and clue people up and and to help people who have only have a little bit of information, because I think just just a backpedal a moment. What what's occurred to me is that we as a society have stepped back from the the economic system, we actually don't know enough about it, I suspect. I mean, obviously, I'm not suggesting that we're all the same, but it feels to me like a great swathe of us don't really have a full understanding of of economics and fiat currencies and the story that we've discussed in the first half of this, of this episode. So we've we've almost for whatever reason, we've we've We've given our financial sovereignty away to the authorities. Now that's either because we were too complacent or too confused, or too trusting. But either way, we gave that away. And what this whole evolution of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin allows us to do is to take our sovereignty back. And not only that, it enables us to remove a fat layer of I'm going to say middlemen for want of a better word, a fat layer of infrastructure that we quite clearly don't need, when we can pay lend borrow peer to peer from one person to another via a trusted decentralised system. That's about right. Is that about right? Yeah, pretty
Chris Plow 1:05:53
much. I mean, all those people in the middle can also be called rent seekers. And that's just a term, which means that they're adding no value to society and just trying to skim as much off the top as possible. And of course, when there is so many people in organisations and governments doing that, it means that for most of us, we become poorer. You are right, most people haven't been paying attention to what is happening in the economy. In the political systems, and they don't want you paying attention. They purposely numb you with reality TV, and, you know, fast food and propaganda, etcetera, fear around what could happen potentially, in the future. And it's all designed to distract you from you know, what is really happening. And what's really been happening is your your wealth and the wealth of your children and grandchildren has been stolen. And it's been stolen at a dramatic rate.
Martin O'Toole 1:07:04
And you mentioned distractions, of course, there is an awful lot of negative PR around why bitcoins so bad. Obviously, we discuss some of the headlines around it causing a financial meltdown. But it's also allegedly responsible for climate change, and funding terrorism and, and trafficking and so on and so forth. So, so what would you say to someone who is only seeing and hearing this kind of news and then forming, forming an opinion about cryptocurrency slash Bitcoin based on that?
Chris Plow 1:07:42
I would ask them if, particularly over the past two years without getting into the details, but you could go back over the past few decades. Do you believe that the governments and media organisations are generally telling you the truth and looking after your best interests or not? And I think for most people, they are at least on the journey of realising that the answer is they are not. You know, which is very unsurprising and absolutely expected that the biggest threat to the current financial and political system would be demonised by the system that is disempowering.
Martin O'Toole 1:08:36
of you as a matter of interest. It's it's on record. I'm sure that the there's been the most profound amount of censorship. You with the social media and, and other big tech firms in the last couple of years. Have you experienced any censorship in the crypto space?
Chris Plow 1:08:59
Yes, yes. And no, I mean, I don't I haven't really been targeted yet, but I know there are some like YouTube have been taken down some bitcoin and crypto pages. Yeah, it's not as bad as some of our areas like health. They're genuine. They're genuinely trying to do it through the media headlines as you were talking about before. But it wouldn't surprise me if that was coming down the pipe.
Martin O'Toole 1:09:33
But they are genuinely scary headlines. If my 73 year old dad opens a newspaper bearing in mind he has no real comprehension of what cryptocurrency is, he trusts his government. He trusts. He trusts his bank, he trusts the banking system. And then he reads a headline a front page headline that says bitcoin is going to bring down the the entire financial system just like it did in 2008. I mean, that's that's terrifying. stuff, right?
Chris Plow 1:10:01
Yeah, and it's probably gonna get worse. So that's why it's upon it's all of our duties in order to educate those around us, they're not going to get the right information from their usual sources. So, you know, for somebody like your grandparents, it's outrageous just be showing them the math, you know, their 10,000 pounds in their account is losing 15 15% per year 10,000 pounds in Bitcoin is appreciating by 200% per year. That's a simple, simple comparison.
Martin O'Toole 1:10:35
Really simple maths. Well, on the on the subject of, of helping people awaken one by one, we do actually have an audience question for you. So I'm just going to play that now.
1:10:50
Rose 1:11:07
Hey, so I am totally new to crypto. And actually, I find it all pretty scary. I was wondering how you think I should first start diving into this world without getting too overwhelmed.
Martin O'Toole 1:11:24
Thank you Rose from London, what you got?
Chris Plow 1:11:29
Well, step one, is buy some bitcoin. And it can be a very, very small amount.
Martin O'Toole 1:11:35
I wasn't expecting that, Chris.
Chris Plow 1:11:39
Well, some people don't expect it, because they would expect me to say learn about it, first, they get a little bit of skin in the game really, really helps give you the energy to start learning about it. So just backed by a little bit, you know, whatever, it's whatever the little bit for you, everyone makes that decision themselves. And then you'll start down the rabbit hole, the best book I can recommend is the Bitcoin standard by sayfudine, which is essentially the Bible for Bitcoiners. And it's quite easy to read breaks down economic history, as we were talking about before, but very, very easy to understand. So I'd do that. And then of course, I would go and download my free cos in 2021 Bitcoin playbook.
Martin O'Toole 1:12:29
And you want to talk about a little bit more about that, because I'm more than happy for our audience members to hear about what yeah, what you formulated.
Chris Plow 1:12:38
Yeah, it's free. So I'm not trying to make any money off anybody. And I put it together at the beginning of the year, to help as many people get positioned as early as possible. So the beginning of this year, or Bitcoin was about $20,000. And now we're at $62,000. Oops. So the cost essentially just explained to everybody what was most likely going to happen to adoption in price over the coming year. And so far, that has proved to be accurate, we still have a couple of months left, where we're expecting even bigger things. But that course will really help you understand what Bitcoin is and why the price is going up. It will help you realise it will help you understand why I could say a year ago that the price was going to go up. None of this is guesswork. And then this is a never ending journey. So there'll be a 2022 Bitcoin Blue Book, which is not released yet. But if you're following me, then of course, you'll get the notifications. And that will explain what's going to happen next year, and so on and so forth. It's about they say you you get the Bitcoin you get your Bitcoin at the price you deserve. So we're just trying to help as many people realise as quickly as possible so they can get on board as early as possible.
Martin O'Toole 1:14:08
Well, that makes perfect sense. So and we will make will make links to to the Bitcoin playbook website available from our website. And that'll be easy enough for you guys to find if you just go on how to die happy podcast.com forward slash on the show. And you can find Chris's profile in there with a link to Chris's website. So the big question that everybody will want to know across Chris is what's next for Bitcoin? What's going to happen in the next couple of months? And when's it going to be worth half a million dollars, please?
Chris Plow 1:14:47
Wow. Instead definitely an interesting time. Bitcoin works in four year cycles. We had a peak in 2013 in 2017. We expect Same one towards the end of this year. You know what that means is at the end of the four year cycle, the price goes up very quickly. So that's when there's a lot of media attention. Lots of people who weren't sure about Bitcoin end up jumping in. And the price goes up very, very quickly, which, like I said, is an indicator of adoption means more and more people are realising all of the things that we talked about in this podcast. So as far as I see it, we're a couple of months out from that peak, we're at $60,000, I'm expecting the price to go up to around $300,000 By the end of the year. Nice. I've got I mean, it's, you know, it seems that seems crazy to a lot of people. But I started teaching when Bitcoin was about $7,000. And I was explaining that we are very quickly going to 50,000 people fireworks crazy them. And now we're so this is the number go technology. This will be the next few months will draw a lot of new participants in as it did in 2017, and 2013, the price will go up really quickly. What goes up must come down it, like I said, it's very volatile. So once we have that peak, we will have about a year of the price going down call that the bear market. But then we move into the next cycle. And by 2025, we'll have another peak, etc. So, for example, by the peak in 2025, I would expect the price per Bitcoin to be about $6 million. And this is important because everybody feels that they're too late and they're buying at the top. That couldn't be further from the truth. Bitcoin will continue to appreciate forever. It's just about really realising that as early as possible.
Martin O'Toole 1:17:06
Wales's trousers, yeah, and I suppose, when people who aren't familiar at all with what we're talking about, and obviously, they're interested enough to listen to an hour and a half, long podcast about it, but and you say, I suggest it might be worth $6 million. I think it's worth just reminding people again, that when you were telling people, it was going to be worth $50,000, they all laughed you out of the out of the room. So it, I think it's safe to say that, and I've I've follow quite a few people talking about Bitcoin. And it's not to not to inflate your ego, when you don't already have one as we know, but I've been super impressed with the way you talk about this the way you advise people about it. And your predictions, because it seems to me as you, as you said, very humbly, I might add, you said and so far, I've been quite accurate. Well, I'd say I'd say even more than that. So I think I think for anybody in a situation right now who's who's going, okay. All right. I'm genuinely interested. Obviously, always go and do your own research. Obviously, always go and do your own homework. Don't just believe Chris, don't just believe like two people, do your homework and understand what's going on with this stuff. But I think as as you rightly identify, Chris, people are going to be more interested in learning about Bitcoin once they've got skin in the game. So there's a lengthy precis to a simple question. How for people who see a Bitcoin priced at $62,500 and think, Well, there's no point in me buying Bitcoin because it's, it's too late. It's $62,500. I can't own one of those. What would you say?
Chris Plow 1:19:02
Yeah, well, I've just to cover another point that you made, don't trust verify. That's one of the strap lines of Bitcoin, always verify the information. There's a lot of people out there saying a lot of things. So do do the work, do the research, because it's really, really important. Price is an indicator of adoption. We have 2% global adoption. 2% adoption, is the same as the internet in 1997. So
Martin O'Toole 1:19:34
if we, that will never take off.
Chris Plow 1:19:39
If we were doing this podcast and 99, seven ACOs. We didn't even have the facilities to do so. But we'd be doing it via a carrier pigeon. Hypothetically, we would have been ruminating on whether the internet is going to get big or you know, reach global scale like it has today. Some people would have said no some people would have said it's a passing trend. And we're going to go back to writing letters and reading physical papers and magazines. And some people would have seen the future, and would have realised that the internet is an exponential asset technology is exponential. And those that realised they would have put a chunk of their money or all of their money in internet stocks, that would have been the investment. And if they'd have done that, they would be financially free by now. And then some. So you have to ask yourself, everybody needs to ask us their selves to present Bitcoin adoption? Is that going to follow a similar path to the internet, as it has been doing so far? Or do you expect it to plateau? Slow down and go to zero, etc, depending on your level of conviction, will depend on what amount of your net worth you feel is appropriate to hold in Bitcoin, the best performing asset of all time, the greatest store of value of all time, if you are fully convicted, that may be 100%. Right? There's none of this is financial advice. But what you're saying, If you putting 100% of your net worth into Bitcoin, is that Bitcoin is now your savings, that's your unit of account. It's how you hold your wealth, like a lot of people hold 100% of their wealth in pounds dollars euros, and they think it's safe when it's losing 15% per year. So that would be the equivalent. Now, of course, I'm not expecting most people to have that level of conviction, and that's absolutely fine. So, at that point, what you do is you figure out the percentage, is it 50%? Is it 20%? Is it 1%? But the only thing I would say for sure, is that for nobody, it should be 0%. Because bitcoin is the greatest asymmetric bet of all time. What that means is, yes, of course, there is a tiny chance of it going to zero. But there is, in my opinion, a much larger chance of it getting to 1,000,005 million 10 million, because that's what it's been doing for 12 years. And that's what it's designed to do.
Martin O'Toole 1:22:18
Thanks, Chris. And of course, it goes without saying anybody who, who sees what's happening now and invest in any way shape or form in Bitcoin, following what we've discussed, could well find themselves experiencing some significant financial freedom. Well, listen, I could talk to you about this until Christmas 2025, especially if bitcoin was worth $6 million at that point. In fact, we'd fly you over instead of having to do this, or perhaps put you on a yacht, and you can have a lazy cruise over. But we'd certainly love to get you back. If you'll have us, because this is obviously as you said at the beginning of the conversation, it's an organic situation, and it's going to be a very interesting story to follow as it unfolds.
Chris Plow 1:23:12
Yeah. 100% Thank you for having me.
Martin O'Toole 1:23:15
Thank you, Chris. We really appreciate it. And we will, hopefully speak to you again. Thank you.
Chris Plow 1:23:22
Amazing. Thank you so much.
