Excellent talk. Booth challenges everything we think about in fiat. It’s healthy, optimistic and much needed.

Sweet. I love hearing Booth speak.

Great conversation. thank you both

🙏

Great as always! 💜🐴

Thank you!

Thanks Natalie and Jeff. Thought provoking discussion! I had to look up this quote: "Money is superordinate to laws... If this wasn't true then all nations with dictators would have the best laws, and it looks exactly the opposite around the world." - Jeff Booth #Bitcoin

Great episode! Thank you. Jeff, what I hear you say is that you’re skeptical about stablecoins. I suspect you’re referring to Tether on taproot-assets as that reinforces the system by increasing demand for US treasuries? What are your thoughts on DLC based stablecoins for Fedimint/Cashu? Aren’t emerging markets going to demand these until we’ve moved the majority of the 900T to a deflationary bitcoin standard where prices can fall in a less volatile way? I know you and I can use bitcoin on Lightning to pay for things now. But I struggle to see the majority of humanity adopt bitcoin as a MoE until USD/EUR inflation is in the double or tripple digits i.e. higher than bitcoin’s volatility.

Thanks Tankred and happy to connect anytime to go deeper. I agree that stable coins will be preferred (because most people don’t understand the game and will sacrifice short term for long term and the big money is in that game - so the incentives are too). That in itself - a stable coin is guaranteed to lose value to bitcoin at the same rate as currencies - will consolidate L2 and then provide an attack vector through a highly centralizing force with AI to essentially play the same game as humans have played throughout time. Prisoners dilemma through extraction and control. Could see the attack coming from a mile away because it was necessary to maintain the control structure. As store of value, Bitcoin would look like gold today, and then be suppressed through layer 2. In other words, for bitcoin to bring truth, hope and abundance to our world, it MUST also be used as a medium of exchange. That’s the game I’m playing and the stakes are very high!!

I would like to better understand this. I've heard a number of people say stablecoins can help prop up the dollar during the transition by continuing to purchase treasuries, but I am having a really hard time gaming that out mentally or what you wrote above for that matter. As with most things in bitcoin I find that I can't grasp the initial explanation fully, but as it seeps into the scene and I hear it explained several different ways it'll click.

1) If the free market is deflationary…..Ie - prices are supposed to fall…..then…what is a “stable” coin? 2) A “coin” that gains it “stability” by losing value at the exact same rate as a currency. 3) Which is by very definition, the system that we have today that stops the free market by manipulating money. Hope that helps.

Great interview, Natalie. I first heard the quote ““Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws” from this old documentary:

I’ve never heard it quite put the way you did. Thank you for the explanation!

Thanks, that part I understand totally. Stability is an illusion in a universe that's constantly in flux. What I can't quite see yet is how the transition will take place. Gradually vs suddenly or what the final warning signs will be. The gradual route seems more ideal/peaceful, but historically speaking technology is not adopted that way. Most days I am still shocked more people don't see it.

Absolutely brilliant conversation. Natalie is a natural interview. Jeff is a fascinating thinker.

Privileged take. People need stability, literally the core function of sound money. Most people just can't afford wild price swings, that's it, nothing to do with a lack of understanding game theory. Good MoE is stable, bitcoin is not stable. Build stablecoins on bitcoin that can easily be swapped in/out, and hope one day enough liquidity and commodity use cases exist that bitcoin becomes stable and can be used raw as MoE.

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the in-depth reply. Been giving this some thought. I want the same thing. Bitcoin for payments are desirable and inevitable. I think we just differ on timelines. I agree L2 will be attacked, LSPs in particular (independent of stablecoins). But perhaps I’m more optimistic that a permission-less network can route around censorship as anyone can spin up a Lightning node or a Fedimint. BOLT12 in particular makes attacks more difficult due to improved receiver privacy. Bitcoin is also far more portable than gold, which network participants can use to mitigate capture. The incentives are such that even the ETFs will likely offer in-kind redemption and the option to take self-custody over the coming years. I guess what I’m saying with all that is I believe the network can withstand the risks of stable-coins usage on top of it *if* we invest in making it resilient enough to attacks. It has to be, even if we skip the stablecoin step and move straight to bitcoin as a medium of exchange. And also happy to connect to discuss more in depth :)

Great chat! I'm not sure what I think of Saylor's advocacy of SOV for plebs and p2p only for corporations and governments. He seems pragmatic, shrewd even, and in face of certain annihilation if the rich turn against btc, SOV usage (or conceptualization) would seem much more likely to ensure btc's survival (as it doesn't challenge the current monetary slave system). Yet, while that approach might increase btc's chance of survival, it perhaps does it at the cost of decreasing the plebs' chance of survival. This is because they get separated from their bitcoin which is captured by the controllers of the controlling financial system. And then price manipulated, stolen via tax, confiscated, etc. As for hodl vs spend, given the low time preference, seams reasonable to hodl for twenty years, then retire early and start to spend, wealthy enough due to the hodling, to do things you want to do - it buys you your time/freedom. Of course, you can do both, hodl and spend. But depending of the tax implications, you might have to go live in another jurisdiction to really start spending in earnest. Perhaps this aligns with Jeff's idea of turning your back on the old slave system, and moving to the new liberating system - building on that?

You got a little Hodler with the same dress that you wear? 🤗

ok let's try this again.... had to "Re-Nostr" myself (not your keys...not your Nostr I guess) Great interview. Always enjoy hearing Jeff when you interview him. And GREAT job. You do SUCH a great job... keep in keeping on.

Great show @nat brunell ... @Jeff Booth is always one of my favourites, bringing positive solutions as well as articulating the problems! I'm no lover of big banks but Saylor and others (e.g. Peter Dunworth) do talk about BTC adoption as collateral, which really interests me and goes beyond passive store of value. Is there a case for BTC sitting as pristine collateral behind regulated institutional issuers of credit and media of exchange? Could a group of next-gen banks like Custodia form a "federation" that acts in a way like a fedimint at scale, while using some traditional rails? Might this be successful in trojan-horsing the financial system so no chancellor bailouts are needed😉🤞 Even if the medium of exchange/unit of account looks like a USD stablecoin, could the transparency of the BTC ledger and fixed supply sufficiently reduce the critical risk Jeff raises of suppression and manipulation...? If we accept BTC is vastly superior collateral to treasuries, oil, gold etc, over time it would become clear which banks and stable coins are properly backed... The market still wins even if the shift is coming from closer to the centre. Could something like this happen in parallel to decentralised community models in emerging markets (loved by many of us), and accelerate the transition to an honest system?

Amazing interview. Wow!