A Global Rise in Consciousness

Introduction

Joe Nakamoto: Hello everyone! Good afternoon! How are you all doing? Are you ready to have your faces melted by the Global Rise in Consciousness panel?? Now, we’re going to structure this as follows. We’re going to start off with some introductions. 

Joe: I’m going to try to play Devil’s Advocate about why Bitcoin might not be a change in consciousness or spirituality, or whatever it may be. And then we’re going to dive deeper into this topic. 

Joe: But to open up for a quick question, I’m going to ask my panel to do a raise of hands. Has your consciousness been altered by Bitcoin at any point? Just raise your hand. Okay, four from four. [To crowd:] What about you guys? Has your consciousness been altered at all by Bitcoin? Half the room maybe, half the room. Okay, we’re going to try for the other half today. 

How far deep down the rabbit hole are you?

Joe: My opening question for you guys is, I want you to introduce yourselves and then explain to me: if the Earth’s core was the depth of the rabbit hole where are you on that scale? For example, my name is Joe Nakamoto, I love to make Bitcoin content around the world and to challenge some of the notions about Bitcoin that we hear online. In terms of the rabbit hole, I’m probably sitting somewhere around the mantle of the Earth’s core. 

Joe: What about you, Erik? Where are you on the rabbit hole of this Earth’s core and could you please introduce yourself? 

Erik Cason: Hi my name is Erik Cason. I wrote a book called Crypto Sovereignty. I’ve been involved with Bitcoin for about 12 years. Some people would say that I’m quite deep down there. I don’t know because I don’t think it ends. I just know that I’ve been in the rabbit hole for long enough that I know it’s not going to end! And I’ve been here for so long that most people on their journey down seem to encounter me along the way. 

Joe: Erik is covered in magma in my view of this analogy. Take it away, Tomer. 

Tomer Strolight: Hi I’m Tomer, I’ve been involved in Bitcoin for about 11 years so not quite as long as Erik, but I’ve been tumbling down the rabbit hole ever since I first heard about Bitcoin. I feel like I’ve gone – it’s hard to say how deep down but I’ve gone so deep down that I lost sight of the normal world, and then come back up, and then gone back down in again. It’s been pretty hot, and I don’t recognize anything around me anymore.

Joe: Wow okay that’s deep. All right, Ella. 

Ella Hough: Hi, my name is Ella Hough. I am still in college. I’m a junior in college now studying Bitcoin which is very exciting. I’m going to get further down the rabbit hole over the next year and a half. I also work with Generation Bitcoin which helps students learn about Bitcoin. 

Ella: Where am I relative to the Earth’s core? I feel like one of the greatest gifts I’ve learned from Bitcoin is the knowledge and how every day I think I know less and I get further down. I was class of 2021 so still early. But yeah very grateful to keep going further and further. 

Joe: Fantastic. Any other class of 2021 here? Raise your hands. You’re in good hands, Ella. Fantastic. And finally of course John where are we in the Earth’s core?

John Vallis: Hi everyone my name is John Vallis. I podcast occasionally and I’m trying to write a book about all this stuff right now. My brain is very discombobulated for that very reason. The rabbit hole seems to have no end, so perhaps the analogy is not so great because the Earth’s surface and the Earth’s core gives you parameters to determine where you are. 

John: I think we’re all realizing that the rabbit hole is more like a wormhole. There’s no real end there’s just a shift to a different place. Jeff explained it so well in his recent talk. The further you go, the more it affects you, the more it impacts you, the more it changes you, and the more you have to reconstruct your perspective based on whatever Bitcoin might be as a constant in your consciousness. 

John: Where am I? I have no idea. But as I sit on this stage in front of all of you, I feel like I’m in the right place. 

Joe: Oh wonderful. I think you’re probably quite close to Tomer though, you can probably shout his name he’ll hear you. 

“Bitcoin is just Money – no rise in consciousness.” Counters?

Joe: Okay so I’m going to start off a little bit spicy here: Bitcoin is just money. There is no spiritual awakening. There is no rise in consciousness. Bitcoin is HODL technology that lets you get rich. That’s when you buy a Lambo. 

Joe: Then you buy expensive plane tickets to celebrate with your rich friends at Bitcoin conferences around the world such as this wonderful place we find ourselves in. It is just a financial awakening. There is nothing more to it than that. Would any of you like to try to counter my argument here? Tomer? 

Tomer: I’ll twist your words on you a little bit you said “Bitcoin is just money” and I agree as opposed to Fiat which is “unjust money.” And that makes all the difference because when the game of money, that we all live by, the very thing that we put our energy and work into, is an unjust system then we live in a world where injustice prevails, where the incentive is to be the cheater to do unto others before they do unto you. 

Tomer: That is really what’s wrong with the world right now. It is going to be so fundamentally different that it has Jeff Booth up here saying we can’t even imagine it! To think that we’ve grown up in a world where we can’t imagine what a just world actually looks like because we’ve all lived in fear of injustice. 

Tomer: We’ve either been ignorant of the injustice, or we’ve been hypocrites and perpetrators of the injustice. This is what I think you start to see that is so powerful about being around a group of Bitcoiners. People you can trust, people who aren’t in an unjust system. We’re building a system that is just and can love one another without fear of being betrayed. 

Joe: That’s a lovely lovely sentiment. I’m going to delegate to Erik here. Bitcoin is just money man. What are you talking about?

Erik: Well I’ll jump in and so you presented the whole number go up thing and I’m of the opinion, “Look, my number hasn’t gone up. One bitcoin is one bitcoin.” So if somebody’s looking to cash out, have their Lambo, go fly around to Bitcoin conferences then they’re still in the fiat world. They still see it as fiat!

Erik: What Tomer was pointing out is that this is about a fundamental shift in our understanding of what is money. It is just money. Just money. When we actually shift our consciousness to understanding that money is the fundamental object that connects all of us. And when we start to understand that when I engage and exchange with you there’s a secret third party that’s involved and that is Fiat. 

Erik: Fiat has the classic Latin root of “by decree”; that’s what it is. In the exchange by decree, our governments involve themselves as a third party in all transactions and shave off a small sliver of that. They utilize that small sliver that they shave off to then to perpetuate their endless wars, to create their borders, to create their surveillance, and to engage in a global process of abuse of all of humanity. 

Erik: To say that you don’t deserve privacy, you don’t deserve freedom, you don’t deserve liberty, you must live inside of our system that we give to you by the decree, that we choose to have you live. 

Erik: I think it’s very important to understand that this shift in understanding, what money is, is quintessential and important because most people have never actually taken the time to sit down and think what is the difference between just money and unjust money. And how Bitcoin bridges the gap between those two. 

Joe: Okay, it’s a very good point again. I want to dig deeper into this point though. Would either of you like to rebut my arguments a little bit more or can I try a different tack?

Ella: I wanted to add a little bit more because I’ve been talking or thinking about this a lot now that I’m talking to my peers and other students about what is Bitcoin. I think a lot of us are probably familiar with the diagram that it takes 10,000 hours to understand Bitcoin. I calculated I think I’m at 6,000, but I think it’s probably more than that. 

Ella: I think it’s okay if Bitcoin is just money for you. Not just in that sense but how I’ve been increasingly thinking about money as sovereignty capital. I think we can talk about this later on, but I just wanted to preface that I do think it’s okay if for some people it is just money over time. 

This brings up the whole idea of lowercase “b” bitcoin versus uppercase “B” Bitcoin. If you come in and it’s just money for you, just lowercase “b” bitcoin, i.e., the asset, I think over time, and we’re talking about consciousness here, you experience unlocking the treasure journey. You experience this rise in consciousness, and you begin to appreciate upper “B” Bitcoin, i.e., the network, and it becomes so much more.

Joe: I love that. I’ve got a lot of friends who are lowercase “b” Bitcoiners and then a lot of friends like my peers on stage who are uppercase “B” Bitcoiners who have that sort of higher range of consciousness. 

Joe: One common trait I’ve noticed among Bitcoiners is the ability to speak more freely and more honestly about spirituality, about psychedelics. It might be an openness to discussing feelings and emotions which is quite strange when fundamentally this space is a ‘nerd’ space. 

Joe: We’re getting excited about some lines of code on a computer screen, but within that, there comes this almost kooky-ness, or strangeness to the Bitcoin space. You were just talking there about how you discuss with your friends, is there a risk that you need to be a little bit weird, a little bit off the wall to really grok and really understand Bitcoin? 

Joe: If so, then to what extent do we alienate people who aren’t a bit off the wall and aren’t happy to wear loud shirts and talk about spirituality in open spaces? Quite a long question. Do you want me to reiterate it or have you got it? 

Erik: Well I actually want to point out that the off-the-wall and wacky idea is what the normal world has given us. That we are supposed to tolerate indefinite taxation and theft to perpetuate endless wars. We bring up the idea of, “Hey maybe we shouldn’t be engaged in systematic theft that allows for the fundamental human rights abuses that allow for …”

Erik: I’m American. My countrymen and my country have funded a transglobal war against 52 different nations over the course of the last 70 years. We’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people and all of this has been done illegally and unconstitutionally. When you bring that out in the normal world, but that is the radical truth that’s going on. 

Erik: That’s the weird freakish thing that we have normalized in such a way that we don’t have a very serious and real conversation about what it means that we are a globalized society now, that has the opportunity to use a new form of money that nobody else can control. That we can use to give self-sovereignty to all people if they choose to have that. 

Erik: We can actually fundamentally change the concourse of the direction of humanity so that we no longer have to use a form of money that perpetuates infinite wars.  That enrich a small class of individuals at the expense of all humanity. That’s the weird and freakish thing. 

Joe: You’re all fired up already; this is great. Would you say that fiat has given a global rise in unconsciousness then? 

Tomer: That to me is where I was going to go with this issue of awareness. The awakening and the reason it’s called an awakening is because the fiat world has deemed as normal that we’re all the same, we are all obedient, and we all obey the fiat decrees that exist. 

Tomer: The normal condition is for every human being to be very different from one another. In being different from one another we’re all weird relative to one another. Realizing that you’re different from somebody else and expressing your originality, your uniqueness is this awakening. 

Tomer: Of course, the earliest people to behave differently from the homogeneity of everybody else will seem weird in contrast, but what’s weird is everyone behaving the same way when they are actually all really different people. What’s normal is everyone behaving the way that they truly are which is very different from everybody else. 

Joe: Okay I’m going to switch to John now. In your appearance on What Bitcoin Did they actually titled it ‘The Bitcoin Awakening’. Ella actually quoted your piece in Notes on Truth and Freedom as part of this research. 

Joe: So you’ve affected and you’ve influenced other Bitcoiners with your own awakening. But can I ask a personal question: how did the pre-coiner John perceive himself and how does Bitcoiner John perceive himself? 

John: It’s a good question. First, I just want to touch on your initial question very briefly. A lot of people say, even people in Bitcoin, “Bitcoin is just money. Settle down,” particularly to us philosophers in Bitcoin if you can call us that. 

John: My rebuttal to that is always, “Nothing is just anything. If you find something useful that means that it’s useful to you to move towards something that’s valuable.” So implicit in every single thing that we find valuable is our ideal. Where do we want to go? Who do we want to become? What kind of life do we want to have? 

John: We might look at the plunger in the bathroom and say okay that doesn’t have much capacity to move us forward. We want it because if the toilet backs up we don’t want that to disrupt our day. We want to plunge it out and move forward. Everything is either something that prohibits us or empowers us to move toward what we deem to be most valuable. 

John: That is always a perception of ourselves in the future and the people that we share this environment with. To touch on another one of your questions, is it offputting sometimes if we’re so crazy about Bitcoin? What I think is so profound about Bitcoin is that it works on every level. It speaks to that implicit ideal we find valuable no matter where you are on that proverbial rabbit hole.

John: You may be at the very top and Bitcoin may just be money, but as has been said that’s no small thing in the world today because money is so broken. It’s not performing what it’s supposed to, it is supposed to give you optionality, to move you through the world towards that ideal, now and into the future. 

John: When that stops working we are not able to move toward the ideal, we are not able to actualize ourselves the way that we want to and the way we should be able to. Then you go down further and you keep asking, “Okay the plunger only has one real utility. What is the full utility of Bitcoin?” 

John: It’s money. It helps us move through the world, plan for the future better, secure our future. Then we go down a little bit further and in trying to contextualize and understand this thing we wind up in these fundamental questions of truth, freedom, and sovereignty. What do these things mean to us, and what do they mean for our own conception of ourselves in the future? 

John: To your most recent question, well before I looked out on the world, I saw a lot of things were messed up. I became very despondent about that. I didn’t see an easy way for all that to be turned around, not even an easy way, I didn’t see a way for that to be turned around. 

John: You have the military-industrial complex, you have corrupt politicians, you have broken systems of government, broken systems of money, broken financial systems, the pharmaceutical industry, blah, blah, blah, all the way down. Everything is corrupt, and I didn’t see how the Titanic could be turned around. 

John: So I became a gold bug, which is a very depressing thing to be because gold has already failed. We know that story, and so the punchline was you’re just hoping for armageddon and that you can exchange a chip of gold for a piece of bread.

John: That’s not a very hopeful vision for the future and so even though I tried to be the best person I could be, when you don’t have hope for the future, when you can’t see that idealized version of yourself in that future, the world gets darker. It gets smaller, you get smaller, you become less ambitious, you don’t treat yourself in a manner that is moving toward the very best version that you think you could be. 

John: I know it’s cliche, but if we’re not trying to do that then what are we trying to do here? Bitcoin, in attempting to understand it, sends you down that rabbit hole. In order to understand Bitcoin, you have to consult all these other areas right? Philosophy, economics, monetary history, history, to really get a grasp on it. 

John: That process alone develops you personally, it expands your perspective, it gives you a better view of the world. I would say that my interaction with Bitcoin has given me both the intellectual firepower (it’s sent me down these intellectual rabbit holes) and has given me the courage to actually speculate/wonder/investigate who it is I want to be in this world, connect with others who are doing the same. To really attempt to make it my own responsibility for who I’m becoming, be the thing that I contribute to turning around that Titanic. 

John: We can’t all have the outsize impact that some of the people on this stage during this conference have had. But we can try to be the best that we can be and connect with others doing the same. I think as this is showing as you walk around and speak to people that’s a powerful thing. 

John: As Jeff said, I think we’re in the future already. People always ask when is it happening. I think we’re there. We just have to keep expanding this out and doing our own job, to move toward our own ideal as expediently as we can. 

Joe: I like bitcoiner John more than pre-coiner John. 

John: I like him way more too. 

Joe: Any gold bugs in the house today? One. Good on you man, but you’re at the Bitcoin conference so you’re in the right place. 

Communicating Bitcoin to a Younger Audience

Joe: Now, Ella. When I was 19 or 20 years old I was actually using Bitcoin but probably not the way that you’re using Bitcoin right now. Nineteen-year-old Joe was on Silk Road trying to raise his consciousness thanks to this wonderful tool. But as the young person on this panel, (I’m actually really jealous because I’m usually the young person on the panel) to what extent do these kinds of ideas resonate with a Gen Z audience? 

Joe: Do you find you sometimes struggle with them? It kind of ties into what you were saying earlier about the little B and the big B thing. How do you effectively communicate these kinds of ideas to a younger audience? 

Ella: I think part of it is not verbal communication, it’s through action. How I sometimes frame it, and maybe this is my own personal Bitcoin thesis, is I think the 21 million Bitcoin are tools for the 21st century. I think all eight billion people can use that tool in a different way. 

Ella: When I talk to my friends I don’t really start at this point of Bitcoin’s going to lead to a rise in your personal consciousness because when I found Bitcoin in 2020/21ish, it went completely over my head. I wouldn’t have said I’m unconscious. If someone looked at me and said, “Oh you’re unconscious. This tool is going to help you be more conscious.” That would have turned me away, so I don’t go there. 

Ella: Also, when you’re young people look at you and they ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I don’t think that’s the right question to ask. You don’t need to know what you’re going to be, what role you’re going to have, how you’re going to do it, when you’re going to do it, where you’re going to do it. 

Ella: I think the better question is “Why?” What are your personal values, to what John was saying? Who is the type of person you want to be?  I think that’s more important. Maybe we’ll get there but I never start with all of this. It comes later.

Joe: Totally get it and for the record, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. 

Ella: And that’s good! I think it’s good! I think we’ll have many different careers. I love the term multi-potential. I never could have asked, I never could have predicted years ago that I would be here. 

Joe: And look at you now. This is Bitcoin proof that it changes you and elevates you and it does lead to that rising consciousness. 

Ella: Also, just a quick point to add because we were both discussing this earlier, right now we have a base layer in society that is full of dishonesty and kind of contributes to an unconscious nature. I think if we’re building a world that has a bedrock, a base layer of honesty and truth, my opinion is that it’s inevitable that it will lead to a greater rise in consciousness. We will get that. 

Purified Money

Joe: Yeah and actually that’s a really good segue. Thank you very much. A question for Tomer about your article the Legendary Treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto. Oh, we’ve got a few fans in the house – wonderful! Now in this essay, I’m going to have to read here because I wrote down way too long a question (sorry in advance). 

Joe: So you make the case that Bitcoin, beyond being a digital currency, initiates a profound spiritual awakening for many challenging conventional beliefs about money, power, and identity. Before we get to the idea of this awakening, please can you talk us through this idea that you’re sobering up in the text, about purified money. 

Tomer: I make the case that Bitcoin, the study of Bitcoin, going down the rabbit hole, gets us to ask the question “What is money? What exactly is money?” In asking that question and seeing Bitcoin as an alternative to what we’ve been told is money our whole life, we get to see that money isn’t what we thought it was. 

Tomer: Money isn’t something that is issued by the government. It isn’t something that is decreed to us. It isn’t pieces of paper. It isn’t even tangible right? It could be anything. We have to ask ourselves, “What is pure money?” Bitcoin presents itself as this candidate for being pure money, money purified, money extricated from all these contaminants (central banks, governments, corporations). 

Tomer: It is issued by nobody. It is in control by nobody. It is pure money. When you get to see what pure money is, I think for many of us the conclusion is well money that we thought was evil or tied to greed or tied to selfishness is actually just this instrument that honest people can use to mutually trade their time and their energy for the efforts of other people’s time and energy. 

Tomer: We find that money is in fact good. Once we purify it from all these contaminants, we see that it’s a good thing. We feel this, and to me, the enlightenment that it brings is the enlightenment that so many other things that we think are evil or distorted however when you purify them you see that they are okay. 

Tomer: Like education isn’t the degree-granting institutions and curriculums mandated by a central authority. Education is learning what you’re passionate about. Health isn’t eating the food pyramid and popping the pills that you’re told to take. It is figuring out for yourself what you uniquely have, what uniquely makes you feel well and adds to your longevity. 

Tomer: This goes on and on and on and because we live in a world where all of these things, all of these important ideas, are completely tainted by things that have their arms, their tentacles wrapped around them. When we purify them, we can pursue real education, we can pursue real health care, we can use real money, pure money.  

Tomer: That’s where that notion of purification comes in. I think that’s a big part of the spiritual awakening when you realize this world I live in is not is not the pure world, and the pure world is actually a good world, and I can extricate myself from all this evil.

Joe: You can. You can opt-out. You can now. There’s an interesting thread of individualism coming through there in the way you explain things and the idea that it’s what you find is best for you and the passion that you can then apply that to.

What is pure?

Joe: To what extent is this global rise in consciousness affected by Bitcoin which tends to favor individualism in the positive sense of the word, not in the negative sense? Within that how can you have a collective rise when fundamentally Bitcoin makes you … 

Joe: Bitcoin made John more John. Bitcoin made Ella more Ella. How are we going to get a global collective movement when fundamentally we’re doing what we think is best for ourselves in this new system?

Tomer: Yeah maybe I’ll just finish on my point on this pursuit of Purity. You ask what pure money is, what pure education is, and you eventually get to the end of the road which says “What is purity?” And that’s a question that only you can ask. 

Tomer: I’ll give away for those of you who haven’t read it that is the true legendary treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto.  It is the ability to go through this thought process to discover what the pure you is, and be the pure you like. That is different from what pure education because we may all agree on that, but what the pure me is, is not what the pure Eric is, is not what the pure Ella is. 

Tomer: We each have to discover our own selves, and that’s the greatest treasure you will ever know. It’s who you truly are and then being able to be who you purely and truly are. That’s the treasure. 

Joe: That’s fantastic. Are you pure, Erik?

Erik: Well I think connecting individuality to global consciousness is what Tomer is talking about, this process of purity. It all begins with the process of questioning. Even if it’s as simple as the question of “What is money?” That’s a fundamental shift from being told what is money.

Erik: In the same way that you’re being told that you are this individual, you are your career, you are the son of your parents or whoever. It is so important that through this process of questioning, we actually begin the process of purification that can only be done through proof of work. 

Erik: The total other perspective is a proof of stake, one where other people tell you how the world is supposed to be, they tell you how you’re supposed to be, they tell you what is normal, they tell you what is successful, they tell you how the world is supposed to be. 

Erik: Whereas we’re asking you to question what the world is supposed to be, question who you’re supposed to be, question what is wealth, because through that process you will begin the proof of work to actually start purifying yourself. You realize that these are the same questions that actually connect us to a much larger global consciousness.

Erik: That’s part of the deep hunger that everybody has. They experience the depth of the deadness of nihilism in this world, that inability for you to truly seek out the mystery of what it means to live and exist. You’re told don’t ask these questions, work your job, go home, have your kids, go to school, do all the right things, and that’s supposed to make you happy. 

Erik: And yet so many of us are absolutely miserable. In the United States, the only thing that kills more people than suicide is drug overdose. Think of how much we must be suffering as a people and this is the world that we have been told. Maybe what we need to do is actually question this world and how about we question the entire operation of how our society operates together? 

Erik: And that is money, that is the thing that connects all of us more than anything. When we can start actually questioning what that is, we can start questioning who we are in this society too. In that questioning we not only discover more about ourselves, but the extraordinary thing is, we start to discover that other people have this yearning to know who they are. 

Erik: Who could I truly be if I was free from needing to go to the Fiat mines and try to make money so that I can just survive? What if I truly actually had a deflationary money that accrued true savings over time? What could I do if I didn’t have to work my 9 to 5? Who could I be? How would I want to show up for my world and my community? I think that through this process, we truly begin the process of purifying ourselves and cleansing ourselves from the fiat world that has told us who we’re supposed to be. To start discovering who we want to become. 

Erik: For me with Bitcoin, I’ve transformed form myself from somebody who was scared, alone, nihilistic, and suicidal into somebody that I’m becoming bigger than I could ever have thought. And my truth is that it’s not me as an individual, but it is who I get reflected from all of the individuals here. 

Erik: So when they come up and say “thank you for saying these things that you did please keep saying what you’re saying”, it allows for me to become braver and more conscious about who I want to be and allows for me to put that courage out there. 

Joe: I hope you are asking yourselves these questions. Ask yourself now what is the purest version of me? What is pure me? Can I be like pure Eric? Not like Eric but like your own version. Don’t be like Eric. He is his own pure self. 

Individualism and collectivism

Joe: Okay I want to kick on a bit more with this individualism versus collectivism thought and forgive me in advance I’m going to be a bit pro-state here, but it’s for the purpose of discussion. So with us becoming more pure individuals and all being the best version of ourselves, to some extent it erodes the states and the utilitarian nature of the state. 

Joe: I often debate with my 18-year-old brother, who is far smarter than me and he will always take the contrarian argument to whatever I say. He’s not at all orange-pilled but of course, I buy Bitcoin for him. He thinks that if we carry on with this Bitcoin path we’re going to end up with all these empowered financially rich individuals who might have the power to usurp and dismantle these institutions. 

Joe: The second point to this is that we’ve been coached to some extent by the fiat system. When large events such as the pandemic take place we are not only coached but we’re instructed how to behave for a period of two years. For two years in the UK, where I’m from, it was hands-face-space, it was follow these arrows, follow those arrows, it was this is how you behave in public. 

Joe: Some people are still shaken by this experience. The state also has some good stuff about it … it has some good stuff about it … someone help me out. Point being: individualism versus collectivism what does it mean say 10 years and 15 years from now when we have all these empowered awakened individuals who are economically and mentally free mingling around are we going to see less of a state and is that a risk, is that a bad thing? When the next pandemic comes along … someone help out here. 

Erik: I just got to interject here. We’re thinking in old and classic terms of these ‘-isms’ that don’t exist anymore. If you go back 50 years and ask somebody hey we’re going to have this internet thing, everybody’s going to connect to so they all can communicate, they’re like, “What kind of crack did you smoke? That can’t exist.” 

Erik: It’s really important to understand that what’s going on is truly transformational because Bitcoin embodies this radical individualism where if I have my private keys, secured correctly, you can never get my Bitcoin period. But at the same time, it is the totality of the network that is collectively enforcing the ability for that. 

Erik: What I see is in philosophy there is a Hegelian synthesis of these two extreme tensions that are now being synthesized into something new. It’s so important for us to abandon these old perspectives and ideas of what statism is, to see that this is a chain that holds us to an old world. in the same way that the chains of monarchism held back the world before the Revolution. 

Erik: In the same way that the American Revolution was individual men who were empowered and decided to say this old system no longer serves for our new world that we have discovered. We must break the chains of bondage and choose to create a new form of collectivism that works better for the people. 

Erik: I think we’re on the precipice of this move but it demands that we actually utilize Bitcoin, the internet and cryptography in a thoughtful and sophisticated way. To start building the political systems of the future that will abandon these ones of the past. 

Erik: That will look radically different from anything else that we have seen before. It’s no longer about a debate between individualism or collectivism, but it’s a debate about the old world versus the new world. 

John: If I could say two things about that. The first: in so many of your questions because we’ve been wrapped up in this conference the last two days I relate to my most recent experiences here. The first is when you say individualism, people sometimes think of isolationism. 

John: That’s not at all the case, I think individualism is becoming as strong as sovereign, as secure as confident, as integrated as you possibly can as an individual, so that you’re more available for all of the things that you can contribute to your community, your family, your group of people that you most relate to. 

John: Again this is such a great example because when I meet so many people around here. First of all, it’s a giant hugfest, all the time, right? So it’s not people that are looking for things from you, we’re not dependent upon each other, we can really meet each other as we are. We can talk about big ideas. We can enjoy each other’s company. 

John: We can do all those things because we are not so co-dependent. We can choose to be selective if we want to work on a business together, if we want to work on a project together, but the necessity is not there. I think that’s because we’re so secure/sovereign. We put so much thought into this ourselves that it makes us more available to hang out with each other, to build relationships with each other, and so much more. 

John: I think that’s one of the big differences between individualism – I don’t think it’s isolationism. I think that’s a thing that gets mistaken a lot in the world today.

Joe: Big ups to that and also who has hugged John today? Has anyone hugged John today? A few hands go up. It is a hugfest. I really like the idea of stealing your phrase radical individualism through community. 

John: Right. The last thing I wanted to say is, libertarians were the first kind of cohort to really grok Bitcoin and we hear a lot about socialism versus capitalism versus communism. What we have to first understand is that none of these things are out in the world today, even in their theoretical form. 

John: People say, “Oh, America’s capitalistic.” Really? With a fiat currency and a government that employs 30% of the population or whatever it is. We don’t have those things. I don’t think it’s good to make those ideas the basis of how we talk about these things. I think that the more we take responsibility for ourselves, the more we establish freedom for ourselves, the less we allow others to steal from us, as Jeff mentioned in his talk, that just means the system that is unjust, that is doing those things, that is perpetrating those things atrophies. 

John: Maybe not on the timeline that we want, this is all probably going to take longer to effectuate on a mass scale. Again we have to recognize that we can do it in our own lives and in our own community much quicker. But I don’t get bogged down in these debates of anarcho-capitalism versus socialism versus collectivism. I think if we engage in the solutions of freedom, if we engage in just technologies that will allow us to take more responsibility for ourselves and establish more freedom in our lives, then the institutions that seek to violate our sovereignty and freedom, they atrophy. 

John: And they’ll find their level. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know how big the state should be. I don’t know what responsibilities it should have. I understand the arguments from the anarcho-capitalist perspective and the socialist perspective and the communist perspective, but I don’t know what it should be. 

John: There are so many variables involved, I just know that if we’re able to live as just lives as we can and we’re able to secure what we think is most valuable and we’re able to say “No!” to anyone who wishes to violate the things that we think are most important to us, then we’re in the best situation possible to not contribute to the sustenance, the persistence, and the growth of those things. 

John: In fact, I think in the case of Bitcoin because governments are the size they are today, because of the theft they’re able to perpetrate, I think it will simply atrophy.  It’ll just continue to find its level with the more people who opt into the solution that is Bitcoin.

Joe: Yeah, it already feels like it is atrophying to some extent. Just to play on what you were saying about the different groups within Bitcoin, it is already a broad church and it’s just getting bigger. 

Joe: We had a book last year called A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin. I know that Knut Svanholm is now working on the Fascist’s Case for Bitcoin. I think he was joking by the way. At least I kind of hope he was. Tomer, you wanted to come in there on what Eric was saying. 

Tomer: Yeah, I think what I’ll use is a couple of examples here to make a broader point than I was going to. I think the other point was made it’s like when we are presented with the choice of individualism versus collectivism, or socialism versus capitalism, these are very often what are best referred to as false dichotomies. 

Tomer: “It’s either this or that and that those are your only two choices,” and the reality is that there’s often a third choice, or a fourth, or fifth choice, and these two choices are presented as bad choices. The notion of individualism as selfishness (you care only for yourself, you don’t worry about others) versus collectivism (somebody else cares, takes care of everybody else) eliminates the choice for you realizing that the best way to take care of yourself and everyone else is through cooperation/collaboration. 

Tomer: I think Bitcoin casts aside a lot of these false dichotomies by presenting something that works in practice. I’ve attended so many debates between capitalists and socialists and they always go: socialists make the case for socialism; capitalists laugh at them. They say don’t you see socialism everywhere it’s been implemented has led to poverty and ruin and the Socialists say well that wasn’t real socialism. 

Tomer: And then the capitalists say, “Capitalism look at how great it is!” And the Socialists say, “Well take a look at all the cronyism and corruption.” And the capitalists say, “Well that isn’t real capitalism.” 

Tomer: So what we have is both sides saying “In an Ideal world my system is terrific, in practice I admit it is never implementable”. So we have these ideals that can’t be put together in practice. But when you have bitcoiners talk about it, bitcoiners aren’t like “At some point, we will have the ideal version of Bitcoin, we agree Bitcoin isn’t Bitcoin, doesn’t work today, but Bitcoin hasn’t really been tried”. We believe in Bitcoin the way it is and leave it the way it is. 

Tomer: I’ve seen debates between socialists and capitalists who are talking and debating about Bitcoin and they ultimately both come to this agreement: Bitcoin is fine the way it is. We think it supports socialism because we love it, or we think it supports capitalism because we love it, it is a system that works in practice. 

Tomer: You can see it working in practice; it may be ugly and it may be confusing, but it actually works, and I think that it drives through and breaks down these false dichotomies that we’re constantly presented with. 

What does the world look like in 2048?

Joe: Exactly and whether you’re a socialist and your toilet is broken, or you’re a fascist or a capitalist and your toilet is broken, Bitcoin is the plunger that will help you out there. So we’re now in the year 2048. Ella is still a young lady. We are getting our brains cryogenically frozen. What does this world look like? Have we achieved this global rise in consciousness, to address the title of this panel today? Big deep breath from Erik. 

Erik: So this is like as if I wake up in the year 2048 Bitcoin has been successful? 

Joe: Yes.

Erik: The world’s radically different. We all have self-sovereign LLMs that we keep. Our Bitcoin private keys are part of the same system that operates these. We have

sovereign algorithms that seek out information for us. Quick cost of production from the perspective of Jeff Booth’s world. 

Erik: It’s a pretty free global society but also cost of transportation has been so thoroughly lowered I can get from Tokyo to London in three hours. Most people are highly mobile. Some people are Android; some people are cyborg; some people upload themselves into cyberspace. We have a colony on the moon. 

Erik: We’re working on transit between Mars. The Martians are pissed, right. This is important to understand, Bitcoin cannot operate on Mars, so they are angry. That’s going to become kind of the interplanetary conflict that we have to deal with. There is a hash horizon that is 10 minutes light speed outside of Earth, that can never reach Mars, so Martians do not get Bitcoin. They find this highly bigoted and it’s going to become very problematic. 

Erik: But here on Earth like stuff’s pretty great. Everybody has resources. It’s pretty peaceful. Think of The Expanse reality. It’s just like a big wheel. Even though there is going to be a rise in global consciousness, we are going to become more free, we are going to lower the cost of productivity across the board. 

Erik: Food will become more profound and available for everybody. We will be at a population of 30 billion. Stuff will be pretty good here on Earth. We run into a lot of the same conflicts out in space. Then we’ll solve that on Mars and the same thing will happen in the outer planets. We’ll solve in the outer planets. Same thing’s going to happen at Alpha Centauri. It’s just going to go on and on until we get to the end of entropy. 

Ella: Can I chime in for a second? 

Joe: You absolutely can. Bring us back down to Earth please Ella. 

Ella: No, I try to be very, very optimistic and so I’m going to go a little off-brand here and maybe be a little pessimistic. I have looked at the cycles of global reserve currencies and past financial crises. They were kind of overlapping around 2049, so I get the question. 

Ella: But I don’t think 2048 is … I think it’s further out where we start to see a lot of what Eric was just describing. So that’s my pessimism bit. But what I think is really hopeful about Bitcoin is that it restores your agency to think and to focus on the hard problems. When we get into further past 2048 we will have the ability to focus on the hard problems that really matter in life. 

Ella: So I would be 45 then. I don’t think just like we don’t have dollar conferences today; people have talked about this. I think in the future it allows you to think about everything else that’s not just Bitcoin. My whole life probably will not be just on Bitcoin, and that’s a gift that we can think about other topics and other areas as well. 

Joe: Why will it not be 2048? Why will it be later than that?

Ella: I’m going off memory because I did this a while ago. I was looking and about every hundred years we have a new world reserve currency. It depends when you define the start of the dollar. Then when I was looking at also, at least in the US, the past financial crises they cycled in about 40-year periods. When I was mapping those it was around 2049. Who knows – this is like past performance doesn’t imply –

Joe: Bitcoin’s going to break all your models. 

Ella: It is exactly but I just think 2048 maybe is a little early for what we really hope and what is coming. But I think it’s coming, and that’s hopeful. 

Joe: No, I like that. I wanted to actually segue into talking about some doubts. Because we have been very optimistic. We have been very forward-thinking, and it’s one of the reasons I love the Bitcoin space. It’s full of optimists who genuinely think we can build a better future, and we’re doing our best to do so right now. 

Joe: But surely you must have doubts sometimes. I’m constantly trying to test these Bitcoin mantras and to not trust but verify all this stuff we talk about in conferences and to actually see it in the real world. Let’s be real. Very few people grok Bitcoin. A bit more are familiar with it. A bit more still recognize the Bitcoin “B.” 

Joe: But then there’s a large swath of people, and I’ve got the receipts to prove it in terms of video evidence, of people that can’t pronounce the word Bitcoin, don’t know what the Bitcoin B is, and they certainly have never considered ‘what is money?’  One of my doubts is that we’re nowhere near where we think we are in terms of awareness and understanding of Bitcoin but what about you guys? Surely you have these doubts and these thoughts at the back of your mind. 

Erik: I’m going to push back. I don’t! The reason why is it’s not because of Bitcoin. It’s because of the question of ‘what is bitcoin?’ This is all a grandiose thought experiment that has given rise to a new form of consciousness because we have solved a

very difficult seemingly unsolvable problem through a “sly roundabout way” using cryptography. 

Erik: This is why my book is called Crypto Sovereignty, and why I focus so deeply on philosophy is that this is a fundamental advancement in philosophical thought that allows for us to solve the most endemic problem that humanity has ever had. How do we have economic exchange where violence is not an implicit part of that? 

Erik: That has been solved in the same way that we solved it through other technological advancements like the wheel. Once it turned out that we can roll shit on carts it makes transporting stuff way easier. What Satoshi Nakamoto gave to the world (even if it turns out that there are fundamental flaws in SHA256 that allows for it to be cracked by say, quantum computing) we [humanity] have still figured out the technique of applying cryptography in a thoughtful way allowing for us to solve the Byzantines general problem. 

Erik: To be clear while it’s a computer science problem’ it is also a problem of war. To me, this is what it is all about. We have finally solved the paradigm of how to break the idea of money’s relationship to violence, and that relationship to economics. That is something that we can’t roll back in the same way that we figured out with language that we can actually construct meaningful phrases with each other, because this is all a linguistic thing that is happening. 

Erik: With cryptography, we now have a super language that allows for us to be able to verify things in a binary way, that we can say with absolute certainty, we know what’s true or with absolute certainty we know what’s false. To me that’s why even if Bitcoin fails, we still have the form of thought solved, that is so quintessential and important to the problem, that I don’t frankly care if Bitcoin fails.

Erik: What I care about is that we have solved this intellectual problem that has haunted humanity for so long. That’s why also in my book I say that Bitcoin is messianic because if we can truly grok the fact that this solves the problem between violence and money in a way that has never been solved before, it fundamentally transforms the entire scope of what is possible for humanity. That transforms our consciousness as well. 

Joe: A compelling point well made. John, doubts surely. Surely there are some doubts.

John: I’m afraid I’m going to have to give a similar answer to Erik, but not for the same reason. Bitcoin has given me an insight on what it means to expect or believe in something. The premise of your question is almost, no disrespect, but it’s highly materialistic. 

John: We’ll say just step back and things are either going to happen or not maybe it’s fatalistic in a sense. I think the more time you spend in Bitcoin, the more insight, the more you participate, acting as if something truly matters. I think we could all probably find a very simple example in all of our lives related to Bitcoin. 

John: We did a documentary with the guys at Bitcoin Beach. We told that story and when you act as if the world could be better, when you act as if there is good in the world and good in people, when you act as if truth is real.  Whatever your religious sensibilities might be, when you act as if God is real, how does that influence your behavior and how does that change behavior, actually tip or bend reality towards it? 

John: I think if all of us stopped acting tomorrow nothing would happen. It’s really consequential. What is it that we believe? And as a result what behaviors are going to stem from that? And how much does it tilt reality in one direction or another? 

John: As it relates to Bitcoin, I’m a believer I guess you would say. I’m all-in. I’m here for the cause. I’m acting as if it’s going to succeed. We’re going to build a better world; we can have a better future; we can have healthier families; we can have peace in the world. 

John: All of those things, I’m acting as if that were true. My faith, I suppose you would call it, is that in acting in that way I tilt the scales a little bit toward that reality being true. I think that’s the only way I can answer that question. 

Joe: I’m going to shill the documentary as well. It’s called Dare To Dream (Trailer), and it’s well worth watching. John of course features in the documentary. But please surely some of you are losing sleep over this I know. 

Joe: I am of course, I’m a Bitcoin Advocate, a Bitcoin believer myself, but for the sake of argument here, is there something that – Ella, you’ve been in this space since 2021, your resolve must have been tested a few times in this cycle. You’re perhaps not in the Earth’s core the way that Erik is or in the outer core the way that Tomer and John are. What is it that concerns you about the future of Bitcoin and this pursuit of this global rise in consciousness? 

Ella: I think I’ll preface that when I learned about Bitcoin, I also had to learn about money and energy and all of the other topics. I got in when I was just learning about how the world works. I feel grateful that I had Bitcoin early on [to help] when figuring out these other topics. 

Ella: On the language point, I think language is something that I’m really interested in. I took a class on linguistics last year and another one this year. This is a longer topic but I think Bitcoin can go further and transmitting meaning that language itself can’t. 

Ella: This isn’t my concern that I thought of myself, I was talking with someone the other day about seed phrases and how they are written (in English).” I think that is a concern, Bitcoin is for everyone but not everyone knows English, or how to write, or how to read. That’s a concern that I would like to see addressed going forward as well. 

Joe: I’ve seen that firsthand. Illiterate people will not get Bitcoin until we solve literacy or we get better solutions. 

Erik: Cryptography can be implemented with sound, with color cryptography, it’s about pattern recognition and so there are multiple methodologies. I do hope in time we will actually have Braille cryptography that will be able to help people in this way. So I just need to point out it’s possible to be solved. 

Joe: Good. Ever the optimist. Tomer before we get to the last closing comments. 

Tomer: I’m gonna give the most optimistic answer of all of these. I have no concern at all about the future of Bitcoin and the concerns that are raised. There are still so many people who aren’t aware of it. There are people who can’t pronounce it. There are people who are skeptics. 

Tomer: Zoom out. Roll the clock back 15 years ago nobody knew about Bitcoin because it didn’t exist. If you’re thinking back to Michael Saylor’s presentation a couple of days ago, and you were here, he talked about the process that people go through spiritually and financially of going through it. 

Tomer: Bitcoin doesn’t spread in a linear way it spreads in an exponential way. I tell 10 people. Five of them tell me I’m crazy. Three of them buy a little bit of Bitcoin. Two of them are on the fence. The three who bought Bitcoin they end up telling ten people and so you get this exponential growth because once you go through five or six generations of that you’re at this huge huge scale because it’s grown exponentially. 

Tomer: We are now at a stage where Bitcoin for many people who have a long time they discovered it at Occupy Wall Street. Today Wall Street has been occupied by Bitcoin. Wall Street is on board. Wall Street’s biggest firms are all selling Bitcoin to everybody on Main Street, and that’s just something that’s happened in the last two months. 

Tomer: What’s going to be the next cycle? Where is it going to go, it is expanding exponentially and as it does it changes, and aligns, and wakens, and transforms everything that it touches. I think this is part of what Michael was trying to get across in his presentation. 

Tomer: I may state it explicitly; the transformation, the awakening, that we’re talking about that is happening to us as individuals, is going to transform all these other institutions because it’s going to transform all the people in those institutions to become awakened as well.

Joe: Yeah and it’s well on course. We’re coming to our last five minutes here. I just want to check in with you all has your consciousness risen during this talk? Nodding, clapping, whooping, smiling. Right well well done guys. We’re globally rising the consciousness together. 

Joe: Before I turned up at the conference this morning wearing just a regular white t-shirt I thought ahead to my panel this afternoon and thought no I need some the jazziest most psychedelic thing I can wear. 

Takeaways

Joe: But anyway, last five minutes, I would love it if you could share with the audience something that they can take home with them that will make them think, make them perhaps reflect on this idea of a rise in consciousness. Eric, you are primed. Let’s go.

Erik: Look there’s a very special opportunity for every single person in the audience here, particularly if on the fence. You can choose to take the orange pill and go down the rabbit hole and do the work to see where this goes. Take it very seriously that maybe there is an opportunity to radically change consciousness in the most meaningful way. 

Erik: But it’s going to be very, very difficult, and hard, and very trying at certain points in time because you will come headlong into your own nihilism and trying to understand why this darkness exists. How can we change it? Why is Bitcoin the solution? Each and every question you have there is an answer but it requires you to do the very real work and take each question very seriously. 

Erik: Or you can take the black pill. You can go back into that world where they tell you who you are, what you’re supposed to do, work at your job, put money in your 401k, pray that it’s there when you’re 65, hopefully retire, and well fuck your kids because there’s nothing left for them or any Social Security. 

Erik: These are two options that you have, and they’re the only two paths forward. I highly implore you to take the orange pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. But we only offer truth, nothing else. 

Joe: Tomer, what takeaways? 

Tomer: Well with a little less intensity it’s the same. Bitcoin is the first step that allows for the redemption and salvation of humanity. In that each and every one of you can be redeemed and saved through experiencing it yourself. 

Tomer: I don’t really know what more to say about it other than surrender into this movement that leads to your awakening and discovery of your true self. Know that it is something that when as you, and other people around you become true, you witness humanity at its fullest potential. 

Joe: I really like that. Yeah, it ties in to what we were saying earlier. What is the purest form of you? What is the pure you? Find out who that is and elevate yourself to that level. Okay, so we’ve got take the orange pill, perhaps forcibly. We’ve got be the purest version.

Tomer: Once you take it, trust, surrender, and receive the effects of the orange pill. Don’t resist! 

Joe: Fantastic. Ella.

Ella: Maybe my answer won’t really talk about Bitcoin, but I’ll share just a very brief story. When I was in my freshman year of college, to bring up the concept of isolation, I was living by myself, I was physically alone and I was watching a TED Talk. It was why 30 is not the new 20 by Meg Jay. 

Ella: She laid out at the end some points, when you’re young you think, “Oh I have another 10 years until I need to start acting or doing.” But she says, “No it’s so important when you’re young, go out and get some identity capital. Don’t worry about having an identity crisis. Use the weak ties in your network and just start. Don’t worry about what you haven’t done or what you will do.” 

Ella: So I think for people my age, and younger, community is everything and just start doing something, figuring out what it is you value in life, what type of person do you want to be, and I think if you can do that, the rest will really fall into place and you’ll you’ll get this increase in consciousness later on. 

Joe: I wish I’d watched that video when I was 20 years old. I really needed that, the 20-year-old me needed that and needed to get off Silk Road. John. 

John: I guess one of my observations from doing that documentary about the El Zonte, El Salvador story. The three guys were in El Zonte, which if you don’t know it’s like a place that time forgot, a little beach town in El Salvador. Nobody gave a shit about El Salvador until very recently. 

John: They just decided despite the violence, the murder, the war, they wanted to stay and dream again, and they wanted to allow others to dream in their community. For years and years they did these social programs. They would teach five kids how to speak English. They would give surfing lessons to eight kids. They did this selflessly with humility and weren’t looking for anything in return. 

John: Then someone came along one day and sprinkled a little Bitcoin on that. So there are a couple of insights I derive from that. One: there’s a quote I think it’s Shakespearean, but I remember it from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it’s at the end when Charlie has the Everlasting Gobstopper and instead of selling it to the bad guy, he gives it back to Willy Wonka and he grabs it and he says, “So shines a good deed in a weary world.” 

John: I think Bitcoin is … it’s kind of like the good guys are coming back. It’s the return of the good. It’s the return of the Truth. What I think the El Zonte example reveals is that if you just do a little good if you do a little truth for the right reasons, in the right way, you will attract that big force of good that’s emerging in the world as represented and tethered by Bitcoin. 

John: As expressed, and held, and shared, and distributed, and paid for by all of us. You will attract that to it. I guess my advice or the insight I’d leave you with is: take hope! Good and Truth are real things, and they’re re-emerging in the world today and Bitcoin is a massive part of that, so let that orient and inspire your actions. That is what I would say. 

Joe: So there you have it, everyone. I really hope these messages have resonated with you and that you go home, you ruminate on them, and you let them percolate over the next few days. 

Joe: These are four of the brightest minds in Bitcoin and me. It’s been an absolute pleasure and privilege to share this time with you all. Please do think about what they said and please do give it up for John, for Ella, for Tomer, and for Erik! 

Joe: Have a lovely rest of your day!

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Also read: The Honest Path Forward by Jeff Booth

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