[00:03:28] Will Cole: Yeah. Apparently he already has haters, but so don’t listen to the haters, but really, first of all, I mean, like, This is why most of the high integrity people I know in the space have always said, focus on Bitcoin and don’t focus on the rest. It’s the catch all cure to protecting yourself from 90 percent of the, 95 percent of the grifters and scammers out there.

[00:03:50] Will Cole: It’ll keep you focused. Now there’s still some in the Bitcoin world as well. We have our own NFT scammers running about. Not necessarily, you know, showing off their homes and things like that. But if you stick to Bitcoin, then you’ll avoid 95 percent of it.

[00:04:04] Parker Lewis: And then what I would add is I think that so much of this is human psychology.

[00:04:09] Parker Lewis: People, Bitcoin’s hard to understand. And on top of it being hard to understand, people late. And then if they’re told a story about art or digital or in it and it’s, and it’s easier for their mind to map to it, then they can try to play catch up, essentially. They want to you know, they’re being told a story about how this is going to be better than Bitcoin, and they can use these things to actually earn more Bitcoin.

[00:04:38] Parker Lewis: That it starts from a position of fear that you’re late, and that this is somehow a way to catch up, and in reality it’s going to be a way to impoverish yourself. And that it’s not just stick to Bitcoin, it’s actually study it and learn it, because it’s not rocket science. It really isn’t. And it’s pick up a book, Will had a great comment when we used to be at Unchained where he was talking about holding keys and saying, you know, it’s not really harder than driving a car, but if you don’t know how to drive a car and get behind the wheel, you could do a lot of damage to yourself.

[00:05:10] Parker Lewis: Bitcoin is not the most complex thing in the world. It’s also not easy to understand. It just needs some dedicated attention and intentionality. And so, don’t feel late, because if you poll the world, there is no way that one in a hundred people understands Bitcoin. And if you start to survey the people around you in your own life and you feel late And then you accept that fact that no fewer than one in a hundred people actually get what’s happening here.

[00:05:34] Parker Lewis: You’re not late. And if you study Bitcoin, you’re going to find the signal. But if you skip right past that to take what some alchemist is selling you and, and selling you something that is too good to be true, then you’re going to set yourself back and you won’t just lose money. It’ll probably further impair your ability to want to jump in and understand Bitcoin.

[00:05:54] Preston Pysh: People will hear that and they’ll see the price of 72, 000 per Bitcoin and say, how can you say I’m not late? Cause they’re, they’re looking at that sum of money and it maybe exceeds their entire life savings. And they’re saying, I’m very late. Like how much higher can it go? And I think that that’s a very fundamental missing piece. They don’t understand the problem, first of all. And then they don’t understand how the, how the problem is actually going to resolve itself through this appreciation of Bitcoin. And so help people understand in your framing like, where is 72, 000 per Bitcoin in this timeline or this adoption curve from your point of view?

[00:06:34] Parker Lewis: So I’ll give my perspective and then maybe we can add his. I really want the dollar is our unit of account. While, I’m not going to say a number of dollars that it’s going to be worth in the future, but the dollar price of Bitcoin is an output of people adopting it as either property or money. And that really re-anchor on the, the idea that if an adoption wave of Bitcoin happens and say 10X the number of people start demanding Bitcoin as property or money, and you can’t create any more of it if there will only ever be 21 million, then you have to bid the price up in order to deliver value to an existing hold of the currency to then get your X percentage of, of the pie.

[00:07:17] Parker Lewis: When I talk about why 72, 000 is still very early, it’s that they’re printing trillions upon trillions of dollars, and only 1 percent of the population at best understands this, and literally those other 99 are the ones that are still yet to adopt it as money. And so it really is the best anchor point to understand how early it is and is to index your own population or group of people around you.

[00:07:47] Parker Lewis: Because if you’re the person that you think is probably most in the know, but you still don’t get it. And then you look at your parents and your extended family and then go to work and just see what the, you know, the poll test is. That it’s very obvious that very few people get this and then, and then if you compare it in the relative side of saying Bitcoin’s just worth over a trillion dollars, but the Federal Reserve printed 5 trillion between 2019 and 2021 in aggregate, I believe central bank, global central banks increase their balance sheets by over 12 trillion of base money.

[00:08:13] Parker Lewis: I think the total number of broad money is 80 trillion. The total credit sys global credit system is 400 trillion that Bitcoin is a new form of money. That’s replacing all other forms of money.

[00:08:32] Parker Lewis: And very few people understand that you can experience that your own life. And 72, 000 is a very small number. It’s even smaller than 21 million, but 21 million of the total Bitcoin that will ever exist is incredibly infinitesimal relative to the 400 trillion global credit market. And that’s the thing that’s collapsing.

[00:08:52] Will Cole: Just to piggyback on that, it’s just giving someone a sense of scale. And I think that’s the hard thing to do, right? Bitcoin at a trillion dollar market cap. What does that mean for other assets, other monies for the economy in general? It’s only very recently that anyone dared utter the, the T word, trillion, that wasn’t part of the way we talked about money in 2008 when Bitcoin, 2009, when Bitcoin was first coming out, the original tarps were 600, 800 billion, something like that.

[00:09:23] Will Cole: There were still under, no one would say the T word. So giving them a sense of scale that 1 trillion is actually on the global scheme of things fairly early. I mean, we’re still talking about gold at what? 12, 13. Now. Yeah. It’s a very small part of the financial world in this moment. So small that there are many use cases that it can’t serve right now.

[00:09:46] Will Cole: And if you think that Bitcoin is ultimately going to serve some of those use cases like other companies, other than MicroStrategy holding, exposing themselves to Bitcoin on the balance sheet. If this price point is not even useful to a company like Apple with hundreds of billions of dollars.

[00:10:02] Preston Pysh: Yeah. Which is mind blowing to think.

[00:10:06] Parker Lewis: Also, that was a good point. I mean, I liked, I was somebody who had to understand why gold was money. In order to then understand why Bitcoin was money and the, the properties that were inherent in it, that, that are now inherent in Bitcoin that are, that are causing global adoption of Bitcoin. But people don’t have to understand gold in order to understand Bitcoin.

[00:10:23] Parker Lewis: So I did personally, but if you think about like this question of how early it is, someone doesn’t have to understand why gold has emerged as money, but they generally know that it did. They’re familiar with the gold standard. And the reality is that gold emerged as money over thousands of years. And this is year 15 of Bitcoin.

[00:10:40] Parker Lewis: So, the amount of time, where it is today versus where it was at inception, and then the relative few number of people that actually get what’s happening, and you can test that in your own environment, and then the, it costs nothing to print a trillion dollars. It costs nothing to print five trillion, and that’s really the problem that we’re, we’re here solving.

[00:11:03] Preston Pysh: Recently, we had a Bill Ackman for people that aren’t familiar, very famous value investor. He tweeted and is now talking about Bitcoin all of a sudden. I’m going to read this tweet It’s a little long, but I’m going to read what he said I’m looking for your feedback and your thoughts on on the comment. He says Bitcoin price rise leads to increased mining and greater energy use driving up the cost of energy causing inflation to rise in the dollar to decline driving demand for Bitcoin and increased mining driving demand for energy in the cycle continues Bitcoin goes to infinity, energy prices skyrocket, and the economy collapses, maybe I should buy some Bitcoin.

[00:11:42] Preston Pysh: Some serious tongue in cheek, what are your thoughts on this comment?

[00:11:47] Will Cole: I mean, Bill seems to be waking up to quite a few things recently. Not just Bitcoin, but he’s learning a lot about the world. This is like a coming of age moment for Bill Ackman. I know he’s a lot smarter than me. In a lot of ways, but it’s very encouraging and everyone goes through their own path, but No, what I would encourage them to do, and I know several people reached out to him on Twitter, but if, in case he listens to this, is to actually listen to the heads of the grid systems in the United States those like TVA and ERCOT, where the presidents of those, like, critical infrastructure.

[00:12:18] Will Cole: have talked about the fact that Bitcoin is helping them not just stabilize the grid, but lower energy costs. Now, his ultimate conclusion there is correct, that he should be buying Bitcoin, but not necessarily for the reasons that he stated, namely that, you know, Bitcoin’s interplay into the energy markets is actually one that to date and probably for the foreseeable future, we’ll be drastically lowering the price of, of electricity, which again, the biggest operators of the largest grids in the United States are already recognizing and sort of competing over getting that business.

[00:12:50] Parker Lewis: I’d say like, Bill is just lost in a very scary fiat world and he’s just, he’s kind of, he’s, he’s very fiat minded. You know, it’s hard to get out of that, that fiat mindset when, when that is your life. But that point that, that Will made, I’ll make it slightly different, that end about like, Bitcoin driving the price of electricity down.

[00:13:08] Parker Lewis: And everybody has this idea of the dollar price for electricity. Well, if you’re a Bitcoin holder and the price of Bitcoin is going up, what is getting less expensive? Not only everything, but particularly electricity, the value of the currency is buying more and more electricity. So without even having to make an argument about what Bitcoin mining will do for energy, it’s just this, this fact that if you are a holder of Bitcoin, you are buying the currency.

[00:13:35] Parker Lewis: The price of your electricity in the Bitcoin denominated world continues to go down, down, down. The other thing that he just missed about economy, or the ways that quote, economy works and doesn’t collapse, is that he’s right that a rise in the price of Bitcoin will result in an increased demand to mine Bitcoin, which will increase the demand for power.

[00:13:56] Parker Lewis: The, the massive thing that this Wall Street genius just missed was in result of a rise in prices. does come supply. So if there’s this resource power and there, and there, and on a relative basis, there’s, there’s a bid for it. And what do people do? They build more power. That’s the way that money works. So it’s, Hey, you use money, you turn it into, you know, you trade it for resources, you then sell whatever you created for more money and that what we’re actively seeing happen, you know, here in the state of Texas, where there’s a lot of mining, there’s more demand for power.

[00:14:34] Parker Lewis: And just in the last two weeks, there’s been an announcement of a 1. 5 gigawatt facility and a 900 megawatt facility. So in Ackman’s like circular thought process of like, higher price of Bitcoin, more mining he didn’t think about. Well, what about supply? You know, what about supply for power? And he also I don’t think, or at least he didn’t intimated the understanding of the power problem, the duck curve and Bitcoin.

[00:15:01] Parker Lewis: And to Will’s point about the CEO of ERCOT, the president of TVA, understanding just how valuable a large, flexible load is. And so, it is that Bitcoin is perfectly complementary to grids. It actually solves a problem for grids. That’s why, on a fundamental level, it will drive down the cost of power. Second thing is, as the price of Bitcoin goes up, your power costs go down if you’re a Bitcoin holder.

[00:15:22] Parker Lewis: That’s a good thing for you. And then the third thing is that the actual increase in demand for power drives increase of supply money is the one thing that cannot have this or if you have good money like Bitcoin does not have a supply response because it is finitely scarce or in other forms of money in terms of gold, it was relatively scarce, but it was also relatively harder to go get more gold out of the ground relative to producing other things that were more readily available or could be produced.

[00:15:50] Parker Lewis: from more readily available resources. So supply is the key in this equation bill. We can turn on tens and tens of gigawatts of power and it’s going to be great for everybody.

[00:16:00] Will Cole: I’d thrown one more piece of advice for a bill here, which is like, I don’t know if there’s a word for it, like an anti appeal to authority, which is, you know, all those professors and administrators that you just found out know nothing about the world and in fact are infecting people’s brains at Harvard.

[00:16:15] Will Cole: Specifically your kids, they all think Bitcoin mining’s terrible running up energy prices. And so that’s a counter signal to you.

[00:16:23] Parker Lewis: Yeah. We’ll have to get them a, we screened a copy of Alana Mediavilla’s stranded documentary, which is a, a short of her dirty coin, so we’ll have to, we’ll have to see if we can’t get old.

[00:16:35] Parker Lewis: Bill Ackman a, a pre-screening of that. I’ll call in a favor for him.

[00:16:39] Preston Pysh: One of the other things that I think isn’t even being discussed in both of your salient points is we’re incentivizing energy infrastructure, the cheapest that we can build it, right? It’s, it’s being built in areas that incentivize four cents or between four or five cents per kilowatt hour in today’s prices.

[00:17:01] Preston Pysh: So like, that’s the part that I just find miraculous that, that, people can’t piece it together that you’re creating this incentive structure of the most ESG friendly thing that that’s ever been done without public policy playing a role in trying to build more energy. It’s not me saying this anymore and another Bitcoin are saying this anymore.

[00:17:21] Preston Pysh: You literally have BlackRock putting on these large summits in the past month and they had an entire section. For wall street banks that they’re, that they’re providing this for, that they’re saying Bitcoin is ESG friendly and they’re having speakers of people within the Bitcoin space that I know up there literally talking these points to Troy Cross being one of them.

[00:17:45] Preston Pysh: If you would have told me this three months ago, I would not have believed you for a second that you would have an entity like BlackRock basically propagating these true messages that have been so lost on everybody for so long. So like, what do you guys take away from something like that? Is this I mean, this is good, right?

[00:18:05] Preston Pysh: I don’t really know what to say, but I’m just blown away by it.

[00:18:09] Parker Lewis: My view is, I completely agree. One, if somebody gets one layer down of Bitcoin mining, they will begin to understand that, that Bitcoin miners have every incentive to go find the cheapest sources of power. And then the next layer down, you’ll figure out that the cheapest source of power is closest to the fuel, functionally. Now, there are other reasons strategically why it might not be closest to the fuel in terms of acting as a balancing effect to large city centers. And so to that, that point is right. It’s just that for me, the key of this, and I do think it, it’s not curious that Blackrock, once they got into the Bitcoin ETF game, that they would change their tune on what is and isn’t ESG. I think that there was like, like weapons of mass destruction can be ESG, depending on, you know Oh sure, who owns the company. And so I think what happened first was they figured out that there was an incentive to make money issuing a bitcoin ETF.

[00:19:06] Parker Lewis: If they didn’t do it, someone else was going to do it. And, the next part of that was well, we can’t keep parroting these ESG things because this, you know, we’ve been saying that bitcoin’s bad for the environment for so long. But, but us, as Blackrock we want to make money. So, now we’re going to drop the term ESG, which Larry Finck said that they would do in June of last year.

[00:19:25] Parker Lewis: And now it’s not curious that they’ve shifted around to now explain that it’s actually good because it aligns with the profit. incentive. And so I think all of that perfectly maps. It’s just in order to understand why Bitcoin goes out and seeks the lowest cost power. You got to understand something fundamentally about Bitcoin and energy.

[00:19:42] Parker Lewis: I wasn’t using that as an explanation because it was just this more broad economic fact that as you bid the price up of something, people supply more of it, particularly in the context of power, then that actually drives down the resource. The more that you can deliver of it, you know, drives economies of scale, drives costs down.

[00:19:59] Parker Lewis: And that’s, that is what is going to happen in Bitcoin mining. In Texas, to give you an understanding, I think the peak demand last year, which was a peak ever, was about 85 gigawatts. The average demand is 40 gigawatts. And that difference between 80 and 40 or 85 and 40 causes real havoc for reliability, particularly in certain parts of the year, where the type of things can swing from, from day to night.

[00:20:21] Parker Lewis: And, Bitcoin mining is going to incentivize 40 more gigawatts of power to be online. That creates economic incentives for the power companies to lower the cost broadly. But then in addition to that, we’re probably going to build another 80 gigawatts in Texas to support not just Bitcoin mining, but other economic or sources of demand that generate real economic activity.

[00:20:41] Parker Lewis: And so, I think it’s great that BlackRock is now recognizing all of the great benefits for the world and sustainability that come with Bitcoin. I happen to believe that their number one motive is profit.

[00:20:56] Will Cole: Yeah, and Preston, it’s going to be hard. I mean, I do agree with the premise of your comment. However, it’s going to be hard to get me too excited over, you know, the idea that Bitcoin being ESG friendly is a good thing for the world or, or that notion is a good thing for the world, given that the premise of ESG is completely ridiculous on its face.

[00:21:17] Will Cole: However, I do get your point that like the gatekeepers that there are on Wall Street and in the world financial markets saying Bitcoin is good for the environment is probably good for us.

[00:21:27] Preston Pysh: Yeah, I love your point, Will, because it’s like you’re, you’re almost playing into their hand by, by even saying ESG and talk about it as, as being a valid objective talking point.

[00:21:38] Preston Pysh: But yeah, I just find it quite miraculous that they’re like totally leaning into what are very valid and true. Like if you sit down with somebody who deeply understands this. And you go very deep on the facts around it. It’s a little refreshing to see some of the legacy talking heads really start to embrace these ideas that we know are true and valid.

[00:22:00] Will Cole: I mean, Preston, I don’t know what you think, but I thought what was more remarkable about Larry Fink’s comments was not the ESG side, but the fact that he came out and said, if you’re worried about your government. If you’re scared of your government, if you’re scared of money printing in the jurisdiction that you live in, like, that’s not someone who’s gone halfway down the rabbit hole.

[00:22:21] Will Cole: No, you’re right. That’s a pretty advanced understanding of the value proposition of Bitcoin.

[00:22:26] Preston Pysh: Just when he started, this was I think in the summer time frame, when he started saying the word hope in the same sentences. I was like, okay, Michael Saylor has a website that’s literally hope. com and like all this stuff’s laid out there.

[00:22:38] Preston Pysh: It seems like he was binge watching the breed love sailor series and like whatever else, right? Anyway, speaking of Michael, so he was on CNBC today, purchased another 12, 000 BTC for 821. 7 million U. S. dollars. They now have 205, 000 Bitcoin.

[00:22:59] Will Cole: Wow, that’s more than me.

[00:23:00] Preston Pysh: Nah, no way. 205, 000 Bitcoin at a basis of 33, 706, which we’re more than double that now.

[00:23:12] Preston Pysh: This is crazy. This is crazy. But the part that I found really interesting, and I think that what you two are building really kind of plays into is a little contra to, to maybe what Michael was saying in this interview. It was like, I don’t know how long, maybe seven. No, it was like 12 minutes long. This, this clip, he was really delineating the difference between Bitcoin as a property and Bitcoin as a currency.

[00:23:37] Preston Pysh: He’s been kind of beating this drum for years now. And one of the key talking points that he said in the, in the video and the clip, he says, medium of exchange is only worth a trillion dollars. Whereas property makes Bitcoin worth a hundred trillion dollars. And it’s almost like anytime Bitcoin is brought up as a currency, he is really pushing back and saying, no, no, no, no, this is a savings technology that you got to treat it like property on fifth Avenue.

[00:24:02] Preston Pysh: Hold on. I got another quote here. No, this is a quote that he said during the interview. He said, no one is trying to buy coffee with the equity that they hold from a building on fifth Avenue to reinforce this idea that he thinks Bitcoin should be viewed as property. What are your thoughts on this? Is this constructive?

[00:24:19] Preston Pysh: Is this I think this is the real question I have. Is this a G7 in a very developed economy talking point versus maybe how the rest of the world sees Bitcoin? What are your thoughts on some of this stuff between property and currency?

[00:24:33] Parker Lewis: Well, one, I guess, first we’re building a company for Bitcoin payments.

[00:24:37] Parker Lewis: Yes. Previously worked on Bitcoin custody and kind of understand long term store of value premise and rationale for Bitcoin. But also where we’re coming from is we’re building a Bitcoin payments company because we believe that it’s important to do and take that with, with an inherent bias that exists.

[00:24:55] Parker Lewis: Also that I personally won’t speak for Will, but know he shares a great degree of respect and appreciation for both Michael Saylor personally, as well as MicroStrategy as a company. and that what they’re doing both for Bitcoin, but then also strategically, you know, in terms of the corporate strategy and the results that it’s having for their shareholders is quite smart.

[00:25:17] Preston Pysh: I’m a shareholder. Let me tell you, I’m very, very happy. I’m a very happy camper.

[00:25:23] Parker Lewis: I don’t own any public equities or any securities that aren’t equity in businesses that I’ve helped run. But if I did, the only one would probably be MicroStrategy. Yeah. And that I think that my personal perspective is that if it comes to owning Bitcoin through a security that MicroStrategy would be better than owning an ETF because he’s actually trying to generate more Bitcoin per share.

[00:25:45] Parker Lewis: That being said, we’re going to have an inherent disagreement about, you know, his opinion of, of Bitcoin as property or money. And that, you know, he made the comment about, you know, there’s no one who’s trying to buy a cup of coffee with a fraction of the equity of their 5th Avenue building. And I think the point is that it’s because building isn’t, isn’t money.

[00:26:07] Parker Lewis: And the thing that he didn’t distinguish is that money is property, but not all property is money. And, and he was using the analogies of, of real property in the case of real estate, but, but for the same reason that real estate can’t facilitate the purchase of your cup of coffee or the purchasing of software as a service, or purchasing of a building is the same reason that Bitcoin can and the distinction between money and property.

[00:26:34] Parker Lewis: And so the same reason that real estate can’t serve as money is the reason why Bitcoin is emerging as property. It can be easily transferred. It can facilitate transactions large or small for a cup of coffee or a building. And I also think that there really isn’t a distinction between a store of value and a medium of exchange.

[00:26:52] Parker Lewis: Money does both. And even Michael Saylor. is, is intermediating a series of, of exchanges and storing his value in Bitcoin. He, you know, just today converted dollars into Bitcoin and he’s going to hold those Bitcoin, hopefully a hundred years, but then he’s going to exchange it at some future point in time.

[00:27:08] Parker Lewis: And so really what he’s talking about is the, is the difference of time horizon and the type of transactions. But the mere fact that Bitcoin can do that is why it’s such a good form of money.

[00:27:17] Will Cole: Yeah, I mean, I’m not a mind reader, but I can try to put myself in Michael Saylor’s shoes on this and like, Parker, I have a lot of respect for him but if I’m operating a public company and I’ve just pulled off one of the greatest speculative attacks of all time ever ever stacking stacking stats the way he has been I’d want to portray myself as the least threatening way possible to regulators and to the jurisdiction that I operate my business in.

[00:27:46] Will Cole: And so again, I have no reason to believe he’s not saying exactly what he thinks, but if I were in that position, I would portray that is what I think about Bitcoin because it makes me less threatening. It does not challenge the ultimate status quo, which is, you know, the US dollar. And there’s no reason to rock that boat.

[00:28:03] Will Cole: If I’m Michael Saylor, I’m perfectly happy portraying Bitcoin as a skyscraper on 5th Avenue. And that’s okay, but we don’t have to view it that way. And I don’t think most people that have Bitcoin or, you know, have knowledge about Bitcoin, think of Bitcoin outside of this, you know, monetary use use cases.

[00:28:22] Preston Pysh: I totally agree with your point there. And I’ve always kind of felt like that might be the reason why he kind of goes about it and talking about it in those terms. But I think for people that deeply understand Bitcoin especially when you look at it from outside of a G7 country, like if I’m out of the United States and I take myself to some other developing nation state and I’m dealing with a local currency that’s getting debased by 70 or a hundred percent a year and I can’t get access to a bank account and all of those types of things, I’m looking at Bitcoin, I can see layer two, I can immediately settle and I can conduct payments and I’m saying, how in the world is this not the currency?

[00:29:00] Preston Pysh: Bitcoin as a currency. It can be property and currency. Parker’s very thoughtful point. How in the world am I not saying, and if somebody comes to my store, let’s say I’m a store and I’m a vendor, like I’m looking at them like, you can pay in Bitcoin and take that, that Coke or that coffee or whatever it is, or else you can just leave.

[00:29:20] Preston Pysh: And I’m not going to give you this proof of work thing that is sitting in my store. Because I’m not accepting the worthless currency that’s debasing at a hundred percent a year. Like, I’m sorry. That’s just, I think that’s where the world is moving very quickly, especially in developing nations. And hey, maybe 10 years from now, 15, 20 years from now, it’s a, it’s a way bigger payment role in developing nation states, but I guess I can’t understand how somebody couldn’t see it that way right now.

[00:29:46] Will Cole: I honestly thought at the beginning of that interview that he was going to sort of change his tune because he’s, he’s been saying mostly this for at least a year, if not a year and a half now. around this like Bitcoin as property type thing. But when he was comparing Bitcoin to gold and talking about Bitcoin, overtaking, eating up gold’s market cap.

[00:30:06] Will Cole: He was mentioning, you know, you know, what if you had gold that you could send to Japan and a matter of minutes, you know, teleport to Japan and a matter of minutes from the United States, which again was, I was like, oh wow, he’s going to go on that angle, which is basically talking about, you know, it’s monetary qualities as a medium of an exchange, at least part, partly.

[00:30:24] Will Cole: So I think that there’s a little bit of the use cases that will help Bitcoin overtake gold or also why it’s a better money to any other commodity or property. But yeah, I just thought that was interesting.

[00:30:37] Parker Lewis: Yeah. And I think I really personally don’t distinguish between, and I understand the places are different.

[00:30:43] Parker Lewis: You know, he, like he uses the example, even to your question, there’s a lot of the world that doesn’t even have access to the dollar as you know, from a store value perspective, as bad as the dollar is, but it’s functioning and it buys you a lot of things. So it is. Far more functional than, than a form of money that doesn’t even do that.

[00:31:03] Parker Lewis: And that could be in Africa, or it could be literally anywhere that’s either experiencing hyperinflation today in some country, or just doesn’t have access to form of money that the rest of the world will readily accept. But he made the comment, I believe something like, you know, if you’re in Africa, what would you buy?

[00:31:21] Parker Lewis: Like, you know, real estate or a house or sorry, or Bitcoin. But if you flip it around, it’s really the same thing if you’re selling goods or services. So like, what are you saying? You should, you know, if you’re in the U S you should sell goods and services 4 and then turn around and sell those dollars to then get Bitcoin to do what he’s doing.

[00:31:38] Parker Lewis: Or why not take out the very costly step? You know, Bitcoin’s gone up by 20 percent over the last week. It’s like, if you’re, you’re just taking out an unnecessary step if you actually want the Bitcoin, right? If I, I could take dollars, which I do in my business, but I also take Bitcoin, but the dollars that I do get, I then convert to Bitcoin.

[00:31:56] Parker Lewis: The same thing that he’s doing for his business. So, the point is, why not just do that on a direct basis? My number one point is at some point your form of money is not going to, it’s going to stop working and I get that that’s controversial to say, but the fact that it’s controversial doesn’t change the fact that it’s also the reality of printing a lot of money.

[00:32:17] Parker Lewis: And that you really…

[00:32:19] Will Cole: Is one trillion every 90 days printing a lot of money?

[00:32:23] Parker Lewis: That’s a lot. That’s a lot of money. Well, it’s actually, it’s actually too much. It’s so much that the human brain cannot even conceive what it represents in terms of some, some tangible value. And so when you start to realize that it’s like we actually have the same problem, everybody else in the world has, regardless of if we’re in a G7 country and we have the global reserve currency, the problem is that our values are being debased and that our currency is being destroyed.

[00:32:48] Parker Lewis: And we need to solve both of those things. We have to find a better form of money that stores value, but it’s part and parcel, if it’s not easy to exchange. then it’s not going to store value. It’s going to store value because it’s going to be easily exchangeable with eight billion people who all have first probably bought Bitcoin on their balance sheets and then figure it out at a later point in time that if they want to acquire the Bitcoin most efficiently, they can because unlike a building, it’s actually possible to, to transfer it.

[00:33:17] Parker Lewis: In this case, in Bitcoin, it’s possible to do over a communication channel. But then also, like there’s a reason why you can’t go into your grocery store and buy, buy groceries with a treasury bond or a security or a security like MicroStrategy, you can do that with Bitcoin because of its properties.

[00:33:32] Parker Lewis: Not just that it has a fixed supply, but you can transfer it without counterparty risk. You can transfer it with counterparty risk too, but stock or bond is not capable of being transferred without a counterparty risk because trust is core to the nature of a security. And the trustless nature of Bitcoin is, or to its ability to function as both a store of value and an ability to exchange it in return for real goods and services or dollars.

[00:34:00] Will Cole: Let’s not miss two very obvious points as well. One is Bitcoin is literally money. I mean, it’s legal in at least one country. That’s a good point. Right. And it’s used to the tune of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars every single day as a medium of exchange. Right now, today, even in its infancy.

[00:34:18] Will Cole: Number two, though, is like, not everyone has the same sort of, not everyone has the balance sheet or the savings that Michael Saylor has to buy Bitcoin the way, the way that he’s doing right now. And if they want to obtain Bitcoin, one of the best ways to do it is just to sell a good or service or your time, receive it as payment.

[00:34:37] Will Cole: Instead of receiving dollars, taking the counterparty risk, the fees involved with, with exchanging, you know, being a Forex trader, you just take Bitcoin on a principal basis for your time or for your goods.

[00:34:48] Parker Lewis: Yeah, because you can.

[00:34:50] Preston Pysh: I had mentioned earlier that in some of these developing nations that have like really bad currencies with a lot of inflation that the store owner would just say, hey, you’re either paying with Bitcoin or you’re going to get out.

[00:35:01] Preston Pysh: But Ben Perrin, when I was over in Madeira, him and I were having a conversation and he had just recently. He has this amazing video, by the way, for people listening, if you want to see how Zaprite with Peter and Will have built.

[00:35:14] Preston Pysh: He has this amazing video that Parker and Will have built with Zaprite that you can see how, how to use it how the API works for people that are trying to integrate it.

[00:35:28] Preston Pysh: But one of the things that he said to me when, when we were over there was he’s like, Preston, there’s this really important, like mental breakthrough for me when I was setting this up that if I’m selling a good or service and the price is X. I have another price that’s in fiat that is 20 percent higher than x for anybody that wants to pay in fiat instead of Bitcoin.

[00:35:52] Preston Pysh: And he’s like, it sounds so simple and just so like, like it’s almost like it’s not anything, but he’s like, I think it’s a really big jump because instead of it being a discount. So I think that’s If you pay in Bitcoin, he’s like, I think people just mentally are looking at it and say, well, of course I want to play it, pay the lower price.

[00:36:09] Preston Pysh: I don’t want to pay 20 percent more. And he’s like, it’s a really big deal. And it struck me. And I was just, I just kept thinking about it. And this is kudos to you guys for implementing this. And, but going back to the store owner, I don’t think it’s going to be this leap from you go into that store one day and they’re accepting both their legacy currency and Bitcoin.

[00:36:31] Preston Pysh: I think it’s going to be almost like a checkout or like a mobile phone. And it’s like, here it is. You can pay in Bitcoin for this price. And if you’re paying me with this really terrible currency, I’m just slapping a 40 percent additional fee on top of it. Cause I don’t want that. Like I’ll take it, but I don’t want it.

[00:36:46] Preston Pysh: And this is the, I think that’s how it’s going to slowly progress and take hold all around the world is you’re going to see this, this model that you guys so thoughtfully constructed play out. So I don’t know if there’s a question in there or that you guys have anything else that you want to add, but.

[00:37:02] Will Cole: No, it resonates a lot. I mean, like it was very intentional to frame it as a premium. I think that was Parker’s brainchild, actually. Although who knows at this point, we just sit together all day talking. So, I can’t come up with these stupid ideas. Yeah, I think it was Parker’s brainchild, but really it’s about, you know, signaling preference, right?

[00:37:19] Will Cole: And that if you own a store, if you’re selling something online, or if you’re a dentist that owns their own dental practice or lawyer or something like that, you have unilateral control over how you bill your customers in charge for your products. And when you show a preference like that, like you’re, you’re likely to get what you want.

[00:37:38] Will Cole: And if you want Bitcoin, there’s probably not a better way to signal that preference than Parker always distinguishes between Bitcoin accepted here and Bitcoin preferred here. And now you’re saying Bitcoin, I prefer you pay me in Bitcoin. In fact, I will give you a discount if you pay, or you’ll have to pay a premium if you pay in a fiat.

[00:37:57] Will Cole: One company I like a lot that’s been doing this for a long time is Mullvad VPN, is that they’ve had Bitcoin as an option for years, and they’ve always, always, always given a discount if you paid in Bitcoin. Now it’s framed differently, but the signaling of preference is the same, and I’m pretty sure they’ve stacked quite a few stats through that.

[00:38:15] Parker Lewis: Do you think the framing is important? I use it with my book and I can just tell you that when I put a 10 percent premium on my book, people want to pay in fiat. My view of it, and I’ll talk about it in the broader context of the importance of Bitcoin payments, is that there’s a cost, it’s like, Bitcoin is a better form of money.

[00:38:34] Parker Lewis: It’s a better form of money because it allows you to store value better, but also there’s not a single point of failure in terms of how you are receiving it or that doesn’t have to be. And that if you’re getting paid directly from your customers, you have not only a more liquid form of currency, but you also have a more diversity of your liquidity, which is important.

[00:38:54] Parker Lewis: And that when I put a 10 percent premium on price communicates information. So the price of any good is a communication of information. If you say, hey, it costs 10 percent more, the book costs 30, but if you want to pay me in dollars, it costs 33. I don’t actually have to have a conversation with the person.

[00:39:11] Parker Lewis: I can communicate information about the cost of the thing. And it doesn’t make sense to me to say, if you want to give me the better form of money, you can actually pay less. It’s that. If you want to give me the worst form of money, you’re going to have to pay me more because there’s a cost associated with it.

[00:39:26] Parker Lewis: And then, in both the way that it’s a debt based currency that has a ton of counterparty risk that introduces all this cost, that someone’s got to pay for it, and if you want it to be me, I’m actually going to say, nope, it needs to be you. And then, In addition to that is the volatility. So if a lot of merchant processing takes 10, 15, 20 days to send to you, there’s the risk of chargebacks.

[00:39:49] Parker Lewis: If Bitcoin’s appreciating on average over the last 10 years by 1 percent a day or whatever it is, then if I’m having to wait into perpetuity 20 days to convert my dollars to Bitcoin, that I’m earning through my business, that’s another cost in addition to just the processing fees. But on a broader standpoint, the way that we think about it is Bitcoin is a new form of money.

[00:40:10] Parker Lewis: People are adopting it for the first time. It’s not like buying a different car or buying a different building or buying something else that’s marginally different than something you’ve bought several times in your life. People have to, first the tools to secure Bitcoin had to be built in order to allow people to adequately know that they could hold it without losing it.

[00:40:29] Parker Lewis: That’s what improved the store of value property, improved methods to custody of Bitcoin. That’s what we worked at at Unchained. But, the point is that in order for people to accept Bitcoin as payment, you have to build the tools. They’ve never existed before. You can plug the Euro into the dollar system, and the Yen into the dollar system, because they’re functionally the same as a trust based system.

[00:40:49] Parker Lewis: Bitcoin is a new form of money, and in order for businesses to be able to receive Bitcoin as payment, like there’s many different types of transactions that require different products, and so we’re not just building a quote Bitcoin payments company, we’re building something specific for a certain type of customer based on certain types of payments. And the product has to be the right product and it has to be dead simple and the product being the right product is being able to build features like what Ben mentioned to you of things that people actually value that actually incentivize The payer to pay in Bitcoin, but in addition to that, a big part of our philosophy of making it dead simple and reducing the burden on the business is that it does need to be, you can receive Bitcoin side by side with fiat because both exist today, and businesses need actually to survive on both for some foreseeable future.

[00:41:41] Parker Lewis: So, that’s another thing that’s core to Zaprite. We make it Really easy to receive Bitcoin and Lightning on chain and Lightning side by side with fiat such that the business when they’re thinking about that decision point, it’s marginal. It’s do I want to give Bitcoin as an option because if you’re going to make me go through an entirely different process, I’m not going to do it.

[00:42:01] Parker Lewis: I’ll just take the Bitcoin and convert it to, or the fiat and convert it to Bitcoin. And so we think about all those things. How do we lower the bar such that the number of businesses that actually accepted this payment is 10x, 100x, 1000x. And I’m pretty sure selling software internationally is going to be a great application to get more Bitcoin pound for pound than if you took an Argentine peso and then converted it to a dollar and then converted it to Bitcoin.

[00:42:27] Will Cole: I mean, I would add in there that it’s not just the merchant preference that we’re focused on, although we do focus on that side of the equation for the most part, but we’re also making a deal with the merchant, like we’re going to deliver your customers an easier way to pay, not just with Bitcoin, just an easier way to pay in general, and that if it’s not easier to buy something online with Bitcoin than it is with dollars, I anticipate those customers are going to gravitate towards paying with dollars because it’s simpler.

[00:42:55] Will Cole: So not only are we trying to like, highlight the fact that the merchant can pay with a better form of money and recognize their preference for that, we have to treat their customers to a better experience. And honestly, we have all the tools we need. I would say we’re about even right now. If not slightly better than taking fiat payments, but we’re going to be way better.

[00:43:15] Will Cole: It’s going to be so much simpler regardless of whether you’re using custodial or non custodial methods of payment. It’s going to be way simpler, already is about as simple to pay with Bitcoin rather than fiat.

[00:43:28] Preston Pysh: I’ll just say I’ve used the Zaprite service whenever I ordered Parker’s book. It was phenomenal.

[00:43:33] Preston Pysh: It couldn’t have been any easier. It was super clean. But when I’m looking at, I guess this has been my talking point for the last year and a half, two years is you don’t have this natural demand signal that’s really kind of incentivizing payments quite yet. And what I was saying that I think is going to really help boost that incentive, that natural incentive is once Bitcoin makes a new all time high, because when you look all around the world, everybody’s saying, Oh, the dollar has done so much better when Bitcoin was at 16, 000, a coin after going to call it 69, 000, They’re looking at that and they’re saying, yeah, yeah, I’m not going to, I’m kind of forgetting about Bitcoin at that point because in dollar terms, it’s way off of where it was.

[00:44:13] Preston Pysh: Now we’re at a very, very interesting point in time because we just made a new all time high. I think everybody around the world is starting to look at this thing in their own local currency or even the dollar terms. And they’re saying, this is the fourth time that it supposedly died three or four times at this point.

[00:44:30] Preston Pysh: And now it’s back. It’s rebirthed itself again. And I think you’re going to start getting vendors that are saying, you got a turnkey API that’s going to allow me to accept payments. Yeah, I might only have one out of a hundred people that come through the door willing to pay at a discount to the fiat price.

[00:44:45] Preston Pysh: But if it’s really simple and really easy to do, and they are wanting to receive this superior form of money, I think things really start to change in the coming two years from a demand, a natural demand signal for, for Bitcoin payments. I’m assuming you guys agree with that, but what kind of thoughts do you guys have around the demand, the natural market demand for payments picking up?

[00:45:07] Will Cole: I agree with your statement. I would say that’s also a really rational way to think about it, right, is like every four years we keep on hitting new all time highs. That just builds up credibility over time. Bitcoin, every day it doesn’t die, builds up a little bit more credibility over time. I agree that like these types of signals, there’s moments in Bitcoin’s history that lend it credibility.

[00:45:29] Will Cole: You know, when the Silk Road coins are seized and then they’re auctioned off and not destroyed, that’s a moment of credibility. When the first public company adds it to its balance sheet, that’s a moment of credibility. When it survives internal strife and struggle in 2017, that’s a moment of credibility.

[00:45:45] Will Cole: And every time you see it surpassing all time highs in conversion to US dollars, that’s a moment of credibility. So Yeah, I think this one is going to get a lot of attention. I think it’s one of those things that makes people think I have to get more of this or I’m not exposing my business to something weird or scary or something like that.

[00:46:05] Will Cole: And yeah, in terms of like the driver, it’s all time high helps, but it’s really just about people. Same way individuals make the decision. I want to hold Bitcoin businesses are going to make those same decisions as well. And they’re just run by the same people. I do see that, you know, in our client base would bear this out that it’s easier for companies that are independently owned, you know, sole proprietors to make that unilateral decision to accept Bitcoin.

[00:46:34] Will Cole: We’re going to see a lot of lawyers, a lot of dentists, things like that, that own their own businesses, but more and more, it’s going to become untenable for people sitting on the boards of bigger businesses to say, well, I do this for myself, but I don’t do this for my business. Right. Whether that’s. You know holding bitcoin on the balance sheet for treasury purposes or having the superior payment structure, you know, set up for your customers.

[00:47:00] Will Cole: So, yeah, you know, the all time high helps there. So, you know all these other credibility lending, you know, ETF moments. And then it’s it’s just a series of those independent decisions that are being made. That ultimately leads us to a big marketplace of people accepting Bitcoin.

[00:47:15] Parker Lewis: It’s also very organic. So, one of the things I think, Preston, you and I might have talked about this a few days ago when we were together at the summit, but if Bitcoin, whatever it is today, it’s over a trillion dollars.

[00:47:26] Parker Lewis: I don’t know what, this is like 1. 2 trillion or 1. 3?

[00:47:30] Preston Pysh: Yeah, 2 or 3.

[00:47:31] Parker Lewis: That’s a lot of purchasing power. And so if we’re just thinking one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin terms, we’re building a Bitcoin payments company. And we’re specifically building it because we recognize that orders of magnitude more people are going to demand Bitcoin to hold it as a property or money, however you want to define it.

[00:47:48] Parker Lewis: And that, that is going to result in orders of magnitude more people demanding Bitcoin payments. We’re delivering a service that the people that are holding the 21 million supply are currently, it’s like 19. 6 million, say, okay, we need to, we need to find a way that the, something that the holders of the value, or the holders of the currency value, so that they can then pay us.

[00:48:08] Parker Lewis: And that, as that number gets larger in real purchasing power, it becomes more relevant to more business owners. saying like, Hey, if you start to look and see that bitcoin is on what some metric or the other, the sixth largest currency in the world. Are they 11th largest currency in the world. You want to sell to those people.

[00:48:28] Parker Lewis: You want to sell your goods and services. It’s also so that’s the macro that as Bitcoin becomes more of value by more people It is a more significant opportunity for people selling goods and services, and it’s harder for them to ignore. If you think about Apple, as an example, like, Will makes a good point that I agree with, is like, Apple, the company, market cap is still bigger than Bitcoin, it’s hard to store value in something that you’re bigger than.

[00:48:56] Parker Lewis: Now, that will flip, too. Apple will be probably the last company that gets flipped by Bitcoin. But, if you think about it relative to currencies, they’re selling phones to people in more than just 7 currencies in the world that Bitcoin as a purchasing power aggregate entity is larger than practically any other economy that could possibly sell to.

[00:49:17] Parker Lewis: That is a hard economic fact that is difficult to ignore, and particularly as Bitcoin gets larger. At the same time, it is an individual decision, and that’s why we’re really focused on, it’s the merchant, it’s like, there is a derivative rationale to paying a business in Bitcoin that you want to be around and the example of that is like, I want my rancher to be around.

[00:49:37] Parker Lewis: He wants to be paid in Bitcoin. I pay him in Bitcoin, but at the same time, it really is an individual decision. So while that’s the macro that’s driving the driving force, the individual is the one who is in most control of particularly an individual who’s a business owner to say, what do they want in terms of a currency to be paid in?

[00:49:56] Parker Lewis: And, and that’s really where we focus. There is also the rationale from the, the payer side. I think it’s more derivative. The example is, I want my rancher to be around and selling me beef and he wants to be paid in Bitcoin, so I pay him in Bitcoin. I value my doctor if she wants to be paid in Bitcoin, and I know that she’s more likely to be around if she has Bitcoin, so if she wants to be paid in Bitcoin, I’ll pay her in Bitcoin.

[00:50:16] Parker Lewis: The driving force is the merchant saying, I understand why Bitcoin stores value. And therefore, it’s rational for me to accept Bitcoin as payment because it’s the most efficient way to get. And so, we really view it as, it is something that is dynamic between buyer and seller. The seller is the one in control and as more sellers understand why Bitcoin is of value to the world, it just becomes the rational thing for them to do to drive the shift to say, I’m going to give you the option to pay me in Bitcoin.

[00:50:46] Parker Lewis: I’m not going to cut off my nose despite my face and say, I’m not going to accept fiat, even though for businesses that do that more power to them, you know, a few businesses will be able to dictate those types of terms, but starting with an option is the most rational thing to do for a business owner that understand why it stores value.

[00:51:05] Parker Lewis: And if you just multiply the number of people that understand Bitcoin by 10 or a hundred, then there’s more people who are also going to figure out why it’s most efficient to just open it up as an option to be paid that way.

[00:51:17] Will Cole: A little inside baseball for your listeners, Preston here, if they’ve ever worked in software development or built a company, a software company, a lot of times entrepreneurs, they’ll avoid two sided markets.

[00:51:28] Will Cole: They’re very difficult to build. I built one before at Stack Overflow. We had a recruiting site where you have employers and then you have employees or prospective employees, applicants, and you build that and you’re like, what do we focus on? Do we focus on, you know, the employer side of it? Or do we focus on, you know, the developers over here in the Stack Overflow world that are trying to get jobs?

[00:51:49] Will Cole: And I always go back to the original two sided marketplace on the internet, which is online dating. And for the heterosexual marketplace out there, you know, it’s very obvious you have a two sided market and only one side matters. If you have hot girls, then you have a dating app. And if you don’t have hot girls, then you don’t have a dating app.

[00:52:07] Will Cole: And so whenever you’re building a two sided marketplace, it’s a good idea to ask yourself, Who are the hot girls in this two sided duplicate place, right? It’s an easy sort of heuristic to go through. In this case, it’s obviously the merchants, right? If the only way or if the discounted way to get their services or their products is to pay in Bitcoin, then people are going to pay you in Bitcoin.

[00:52:27] Will Cole: They’re the hot girls. That’s what we’re optimizing Zaprite for.

[00:52:31] Parker Lewis: Yeah, I like to think about it. I use the example a lot, not the dating app one, but I’ll pay the gas station. In dollars so long as they’re willing to take my dollars. But if they open up the opportunity and they, and they create an incentive for me to pay in Bitcoin, I’m going to pay in Bitcoin.

[00:52:45] Parker Lewis: Yeah. But that’s why it’s a, a seller or merchant driven shift. The other thing though is as Bitcoin increases in purchase of power, this is just something for people that are new that’s going to happen to you and you just kind of have to accept it, is you’re going to put like 1% of your money in Bitcoin and then Bitcoin’s going to go up 10 times and a hundred times.

[00:53:06] Parker Lewis: And it’s going to go from like 10 percent to 90 percent of your savings. And once you get into a position where Bitcoin represents pretty much all of your savings, like someone like myself or someone like Will or increasingly a lot of people that have held Bitcoin for a long time, you actually want those outlets.

[00:53:24] Parker Lewis: Like someone would say, well, it’s not rational to spend their Bitcoin because it’s, you know, going up X percent a year, but if it’s, if you have 100 percent of your money or close to it in the better form of money that has appreciated over time, you actually want your liquidity to be more diverse than just somebody that allows you to convert it back into dollars.

[00:53:45] Parker Lewis: You’re, you’re actively looking for those businesses and that’s what a lot of our merchants have found is they actually say, like, and we have, we use this example because it’s kind of random, but it seems to be happening more and more frequently. We have dentists on the platform. Dentists say, I’m going to, I want to accept Bitcoin as money and I’m going to make this part of my strategy.

[00:54:04] Parker Lewis: And they put a bat signal out to the people in their area that they accept Bitcoin. The Bitcoiners everywhere. And then they start getting new customers. If you build it into the strategy, it makes sense. But there is also this reality that there’s a lot of people that are having the vast majority of all their savings in Bitcoin and those people need to spend it every day to survive and to better their lives.

[00:54:24] Parker Lewis: And so that is not as intuitive to somebody that only has 1 percent of their money in Bitcoin, but that’s not them for a few more years.

[00:54:32] Preston Pysh: Fascinating. I want to change just one final question before we wrap things up. And it’s, it’s off topic from the payment stuff we were just talking about. It seems to me like from a policy standpoint, things are really heating up from like a global competition standpoint.

[00:54:49] Preston Pysh: I’m curious if you guys see it the same. And just, I guess, any thoughts that you have on, on that particular talking point?

[00:54:55] Will Cole: Yeah. I mean, I worry about this, you know, frequently being a United States citizen and, you know, wanting, I consider myself a patriot. I like the United States. I would like the United States to take a pro Bitcoin stance because I think it’s a vital for the future.

[00:55:10] Preston Pysh: Amen.

[00:55:12] Will Cole: Our country. Yeah, I think we have a huge outsize, outsized advantage compared to other countries in that, you know, we have a strong history of federalism in the 10th Amendment and that we have, you know, 50 sovereign states that are going to try to out-compete themselves on being a good jurisdiction for Bitcoin to operate in, whether it’s for businesses or for payments or you know, whatever it is that they’re going to be competing over that, but.

[00:55:37] Will Cole: There are smaller countries out there that can be a little bit more nimble and have been to date, like El Salvador. However, you know, that global competition that you talk about, like, I ultimately think the United States is well poised for two reasons. One is we already have a lot of money, right? And we’re talking about money and we produce a lot.

[00:55:55] Will Cole: And so that to the extent that the citizens of the United States and therefore the government, you know, obtains Bitcoin, we have a headstart. And two is every Bitcoin maximalist should be a 10th amendment maximalist because the states themselves, I think recently in the last couple of years are getting more comfortable flexing their sovereign muscles and proving that they can make independent sovereign decisions.

[00:56:17] Will Cole: And whether it’s Bitcoin or otherwise. And they’re doing it and a lot of it is to the benefit of Bitcoin.

[00:56:24] Parker Lewis: Yeah, and then what I’d add is, I think, you know, one of the things that Saylor said that I think is right, he pointed out that there’s something controversial about Bitcoin as a medium exchange and there’s something that’s not controversial about Madison Avenue real estate.

[00:56:38] Parker Lewis: If it’s controversial that Bitcoin is money and that it’s going to be used to facilitate payments, It’s like, that is a reality. It’s not that, I don’t think, we’re not naive in that respect, but, but I also think that it’s even more controversial that it’s a store of value. You know, I think that the heat that comes is the only way through the fire, essentially.

[00:56:59] Parker Lewis: And that governments need money too, and they’re going to figure that out. many are already. And that with whether it’s global competition on hashrate or it’s the world seems to be a little bit volatile beyond, you know, the price of any financial asset, just in terms of what’s happening, you know, in terms of global conflict, right?

[00:57:23] Parker Lewis: But that It’s actually Bitcoin or it’s a good form of money that everyone can trade that creates and aligns economic incentives and that economic incentive is maximal to the most amount of people and so everyone has an incentive to mine Bitcoin across the world and even though there’s some governments that will be more restrictive to it in the short term as Bitcoin rises and as Bitcoin presents a more competitive, I think this is the direction you were talking about, providing more competitive pressure to the dollar.

[00:57:53] Parker Lewis: It doesn’t mean that any country in the world, regardless of who they are, is necessarily going to want to give up the power that they extract through their currency. And globally, that could be the dollar or the euro or the yen, but then also internal to the country, it’s something like Russia. Like, they don’t want to give control of the ruble to Bitcoin.

[00:58:13] Parker Lewis: And Bitcoin’s like water moving downhill. It’s going to find the most efficient path, but it’s moving downhill. And ultimately, as people figure it out, whether it’s a nation state, a corporation, an individual, state, local, community they’re all going to figure out that it’s in their best interest to participate rather than not.

[00:58:35] Parker Lewis: And then once they’re participating, they’re part of this global trading network and there’s an incentive to cooperate rather than, than being adversarial. It’s not necessarily going to immediately result in world peace, but it’s going to be the thing that aligns economic incentives to steer the world back in that direction.

[00:58:53] Parker Lewis: And I think that that is at the most macro level, the very positive thing. And then it does the same thing for every micro individual and every economic decision to allow each individual separate from that kind of the global backdrop and Bitcoin’s position in its very competitive dynamic for, for world money.

[00:59:14] Parker Lewis: It gives everybody a tool individually to just get up in the morning, produce value for other human beings around them and store that value for the benefit of their family and for the people in their direct vicinity. And I think that the more people that are building toward that future, the least amount of pain that’s going to be felt between here and there.

[00:59:32] Preston Pysh: All right, guys, give the audience a handoff to the things you guys are working on.

[00:59:38] Will Cole: Yeah, come check us out at zaprite.com. You can get a 30 day free trial and you can find me on Twitter at Will Cole or Nostr. I can’t recite my MPUB, but you can find me there.

[00:59:50] Parker Lewis: Yeah, and it’s zaprite, Z A P R I T E. If you are a business or individual that’s either issuing invoices, payment links on a website, a more complicated web store, we’re really focused on those specific types of payments today rather than something like a point of sale, but we can help support point of sale.

[01:00:08] Parker Lewis: But if you run a business, you’re a Bitcoiner, you understand why Bitcoin stores value, and you’re thinking that, hey, it might make a lot of sense to accept Bitcoin and reach out to us. We’ll help deal with you directly and get you onboarded to the vanguard of Bitcoin payments. And then for me, you can find my book Gradually Then Suddenly.

[01:00:23] Parker Lewis: If you’re still trying to figure out why Bitcoin is obsoleting all other money you can find that at thesaifhouse.com/gradually. And then safe is spelled S A I F, thesaifhouse.com/gradually. All right, Preston. Appreciate you having us on.

[01:00:39] Will Cole: Thanks Preston.

[01:00:39] Preston Pysh: Yeah, we’ll have links to all that in the show notes and we’ll catch you guys next week.

[01:00:44] Preston Pysh: If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for, We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin specific shows come out every Wednesday, and I’d love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. And it’s something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate. And with that, thanks for listening and I’ll catch you again next week.

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