Is Bitcoin Really a Tool for Peace?
What is the importance of Bitcoin in reuniting a deeply divided world?
Tomer Strolight is a Writer, thinker, learner who seeks to learn more about varied subjects, with his current focus centered around Bitcoin.
Summary:
In this discussion, Valerie and Tomer discuss various topics, including the broad spectrum of human energy and the role of money in civilization. They delve into the potential impact of technologies like Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and large language models (such as Chat GPT) on individual thinking and behavior. The conversation also touches upon the emergence of disruptive technologies like Bitcoin, the potential renaissance of the human spirit, and the importance of finding one's true self. The podcast explores the intersection of technology, individuality, and the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
Takeaway
* Human energy is diverse, with millions of different types, and money serves as a converter, allowing the exchange of various forms of energy.
* CBDCs and large language models may have long-term implications on individual thinking and autonomy, potentially leading to a homogenized world.
* The discussion extends to the impact of emerging technologies, such as AI and Bitcoin, on the future, with contrasting visions of a renaissance of human spirit or a homogenized world.
* The conversation shifts to the role of large language models in education, emphasizing the importance of original ideas and insights over regurgitating information.
* The potential consequences of relying too heavily on AI and technology, leading to a society that is idle, lazy, and unthinking, are explored.
* The podcast concludes with thoughts on the importance of confronting challenges, the potential consequences of an overly comfortable life, and the need to push against obstacles for personal and collective growth.
Chapters:
(00:00) : Introduction (Podcast introduction and topic).
(01:33) : Discussion on specialized work and human energy.
(05:09) : Exploring the role of money in converting human energy.
(09:48) : Highlighting Bitcoin's significance as energy-based money.
(13:40) : Discussion on Central Bank Digital Currencies, surveillance, and privacy.
(17:30) : Examining the implications of AI, especially large language models.
(23:58) : Challenges posed by disruptive technologies, uncertain future.
(32:59) : Contrasting visions of a Bitcoin-centric future and a centralized authority-dominated future.
(43:31) : Pitfalls of seeking an easy life and the importance of overcoming challenges.
(50:32) : Encouraging young people to find passion, take risks, and pursue meaningful goals.
(53:46) : Tomer's transformative experience with plant medicine and discovering his talent for writing.
(55:20) : Swan Bitcoin's mission, excitement about Bitcoin space, and closing thoughts on authenticity.
✅ FOLLOW OUR GUEST
► X - TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tomerstrolight
► YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@Swan_Bitcoin
► WEBSITE: https://www.swanbitcoin.com/
❤️ SUBSCRIBE to the SEXIEST Newsletter on Earth
https://djvalerieblove.com/sexynewsletter
🧡 SUPPORT THE SHOW WITH TIPS - Thank You!
https://getalby.com/p/djvalerie
https://geyser.fund/project/bitcoinforpeace
💛 SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST
FOUNTAIN.FM: https://fountain.fm/show/761jhxFiibErm7eZZdlt
APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-for-peace-dj-valerie-b-love-friends/id1441540841
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kZfzFZ3wKmWiljDajrJZ5?si=a9433473b06f464b
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@djvalerieblove
💚 FOLLOW DJ Valerie
X - TWITTER: https://twitter.com/djvalerieblove
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/djValerieBLove
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/djvalerieblove/
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dj-valerie-b-love/
NOSTR: npub184cwc849sejs5pr566zcg4pqn53zzk85q70gmwqx7qt77h3suansvet30s
🩵 DJ VALERIE’S FAVORITE TOOLS
COLDCARD Discount 5%- Promo Code “CKBTC” store.coinkite.com/promo/PEACE
SHAMORY - Have Fun Learn Bitcoin 10% Discount shamory.com/love
REAL MUSHROOMS - 25% Off 1st order https://shop.realmushrooms.com/?ref=1232
💙 DJ VALERIE’S FAVORITE EVENTS
BITCOIN ATLANTIS - Portugal - Get 10% Off with code “DJVLOVE” https://bitcoinatlantis.com/
BIT BLOCK BOOM Dallas - https://bitblockboom.com Code “love”
💜 BUY or TRADE BITCOIN
HODL HODL no KYC https://hodlhodl.com/join/NMKLQ
SWAN - Get $10 FREE Bitcoin - Dollar Cost Average - https://swanbitcoin.com/djvalerie
[00:00:31]
Unknown:
Hey. Aloha, love tribe. Welcome to Bitcoin for Peace. I have one of my dear, dear friends and cocreators and mission driven humans on the show. This is Tomer Strollite. Welcome, Tomer.
[00:00:44] Unknown:
Hi, Valerie. Very nice to be here.
[00:00:46] Unknown:
Tomer is so amazing. He's the editor in chief at Swan Bitcoin. He's written here, where are we? Why Bitcoin? Back up here. Created generational wealth, the film, and many other things, and we're gonna talk about Bitcoin reuniting a deeply divided world today, his most recent article,
[00:01:06] Unknown:
with Swan Bitcoin. Hey, Tomer. So so good to see you. Nice nice to see you too. Nice to be here. Nice to talk about peace and love, rather than,
[00:01:16] Unknown:
divisiveness in war that's not hiding the world right now. I know. It's really it's a tough one. Obviously, it's, a lot going on on planet Earth on in all all 4,000 corners. Right. You know? Tell why did you write this article, Tomer?
[00:01:34] Unknown:
I this article was sitting inside of me in a different way for a long period of time. I was, I had noticed in lots of discussions over the last few years how people who are often on seemingly, irreconcilable sides of an issue. When when they study Bitcoin, they actually agree That Bitcoin solves the problem that their irreconcilable differences are about. And I thought I was going to sit down and write an article That showed lots and lots of examples. My favorite example of this is there a couple years ago, there were these Twitter spaces or Clubhouse I can't remember which or maybe both, where it was socialists versus capitalists, and they would come and have a debate with each other. But in the context of Bitcoin And and after attending 2 or 3 of these things, the thing that most blew me away was was this. You know, the the socialist would come up and talk about how socialism is a cure all for everything, and the capitalist would laugh at them And say, that's not socialism.
Take a look at Venezuela. Take a look at Argentina. Take a look at the Soviet Union. That's socialism. And, of course, the socialist would just reply with, no. No. That's not real socialism. Real socialism has unfortunately never been tried anywhere. And the capitalist would laugh and say, I'm sorry to tell you that real socialism is the dystopia of Communist regimes we've seen all over the world. Mhmm. And then the socialist would turn the tables around and say, well, hold on a minute. Let's talk about capitalism. Right? The capitalism, I see all this cronyism, I see all Cronyism, I see all this corruption. I see all this stuff. And, of course, what would the capitalist resort with? It's like, well, that's not real capitalism. Real capitalism has never been tried, You know, except for perhaps this thing. And and what they would both actually agree on is they would both agree because they were informed about Bitcoin that Bitcoin solves the problem. Like, the the socialist would say, Bitcoin allows the workers to not be taken advantage of by the factory owners or the, you know, the the capital the capitalist class, and the the capitalist would say Bitcoin solves the problem. It prevents the government from taking advantage of Though, of the entrepreneur.
This is oversimplifying these things, but what what occurred to me is, like, Neither capitalism nor socialism work in practice. They're both these theoretical ideals that everyone ends up saying, well, if only we could somehow get The ideal, everything would be perfect, but we can never get to the ideal. Obviously I I shouldn't say obviously, but largely, You know, socialism goes off the rails much more quickly than attempted capitalism, but they both they both go off the rails, and we're living in a time when both are off Off the rails. So neither system works in practice. They're both good in theory, but a theory that's good in theory, but not in practice is actually a theory that's bad in theory.
And and yet they both agreed that Bitcoin, as it is, not some ideal that we'll get to some point in time in the future, Bitcoin as it is, satisfies the the main mission that they're after. And I've seen a lot of this in a lot of other categories. So I thought, oh, I'm gonna write list of examples and show how Bitcoin is actually uniting people. But when I started to set the stage for it, Like, the fact that we live in a deeply divided world and what has caused the deep divisions. I discovered something else about coined, as I was writing, and and I guess we can get into it kind of right away. It's We've we've we get you know, first of all, if you're divided and disagree on something, it's very hard to work together. It's very hard to collaborate, and The things we tend to disagree about are the things that we can, in fact, change or the things we can control.
We don't disagree about the fact that the grass is green. We don't disagree about the length of the year because we can't change those things. And this, I think, is where to really distill it down to a narrow point where Bitcoin comes in and says, I'm a thing that what acts as money that can't be changed. And you realize that, you know, you're just scrolling past this. Money is a great uniter of people. Right? 2 people who don't even speak the same language. Like, if you're in a foreign country and you have a piece of paper money or you have A credit card. You have money and someone is making a food you desire, you don't need much communication. You can point at the thing and you can hand them the money, and they'll give you a thing.
It's united with somebody to produce some work for you, to prepare food for you who you don't even speak the same language as them. You're from a different part of the world, and and you've had a peaceful interaction. You've united in a way That you both feel better about. You know? You wanted money for this pizza. You wanted pizza for your money. You got, what you're after. So you found you found unity. You found togetherness. And This, of course, scales up to a much, much greater scale than just 1 individual buying one thing from another individual. Entire civilizations are built on this.
The whole history of civilization has been a history of trade. The great trade routes of the Silk Road. Every every great empire is not just an empire by violent conquest. It actually becomes an empire of Significant trade. And it's money that allowed all these different cultures to be subsumed within what they what one would call a giant or, or peaceful, civil international civilization and empire. And what the big problem that we have in the world today, why it's so deeply divided Is in part because the money is broken, because the money is in the control of people, and there's a constant battle for control over the money. A politician running for office is running to be in control of fiscal policy, of how to spend money that Would otherwise not be spent in the way that they don't wanna spend it. So we we see politics destroyed by money and and divisiveness created. And and what is politics today, but divisiveness, trying to paint the other guy as the villain, supporting a corrupt regime, whereas you're gonna be the politician who fixes everything and brings about abundance and everything else.
And this is true across, you know, almost every aspect of our world. Everyone's trying to plea for the broken money that can be conjured out of thin air. So the fact that we can control fiat money, that we can change its supply, change its price, do all of these things, Leads people to playing the game of trying to do that, and that becomes a divisive game. And so our civilization is divided by our money Rather than united by money, which is what past civilizations have done. And and this leads me to the point of what how Bitcoin fixes this. And I think a lot of people Keep questioning is it's because it cannot be changed, and it's pointless to argue over the supply. Right? Like, nobody can run for office and say, I'm gonna produce 2,000,000 more Bitcoin out of thin air and give it to the people who vote for me and not the people who don't. It it ends that game And allows us to reunite again through money in the way that that we have before and takes the teeth out of all of the different things that cause us to be divided Because of broken money. So that's that's kind of the overarching explanation of what it is that that is happening here and why Bitcoin Allows people who maybe as philosophically divided as capitalist and socialist to actually find unity in something that they both accept Can't be changed, but has fair rules to begin with and rules that they can live with.
There you go. That's Oh, I can't hear you, Valerie.
[00:09:26] Unknown:
I look now? Good. Yes. Yes. I love what you said just about, you know, if you think about it. Right? Like, all politicians are doing is trying to see get voted in so that they can have control of a certain budget or a certain ability to go make decisions with money. It's not necessarily like, yeah. I'm gonna go get the consciousness of our humanity up leveled. They're out there looking for that that power play. And then, obviously, if they can get close to the money printers and and have access to that, that gives them even more power and more incentive to keep that that corrupt Kraken system as we like to call it in the cyber opera, alive. Like, I was listening to a podcast with, Peter McCormick and Jeff Booth and Alex Gladstein. There was I just listened to the same one too. Great. Right? And so Alex was talking about, you know, the most violent thing you can do to a country and its people is to debase the currency because every single one gets impacted versus here, I'm gonna go drop a bomb Yeah. On a couple locations. And so That was something really interesting to me because it does like, money touch no matter who you are, it doesn't matter what your religion is or what your political bend is, or what color your skin is, or who you pray to, or don't pray to, you have to use some form of money in on earth. You know? And if you're in a system where you're using a violent form of money, you are gonna be subject to, that vibration, like, living in that field. You know? And so how to me, Bitcoin see you know, obviously, we know each other well, talking a lot about peace and how Bitcoin is hope and all this. Like, can you help people get, like, why it is so It's life and death to separate money from state and why this can create a peaceful world and why the current system of this marriage with money and state is causing so much violence.
[00:11:29] Unknown:
Yeah. I've I've written other pieces that really talk about this, and how how important it is that like, it's a very unhealthy marriage, the marriage of state and money. And it and it's a marriage that has happened numerous times throughout history, and it's always led to catastrophe. And what Bitcoin does is It declares unilaterally a divorce. Right? It says, I am divorced from the state. I am money and I'm divorced from the state. And and so for people to start to choose it, they they they changed the nature of the state because the marriage of the union Of money and the state changed what the state was. It changed the state into this issuer of money, into this get bestower of Favor on some at the expense of others. That's really what, Alex, Gladstein points out significantly in in a lot of his but certainly in that podcast you were just referring to. And it gets so powerful that there are people who never get any of the benefits. The money is always only stealing from them. People in countries where there are corrupt regimes, and those countries are indebted to the IMF. It was in the, you know, Was indebted to the US dollar regime. So it just you know, and we in the west have really benefited from it, so we've been blind to a degree of how much We're taking from others at the continued expense of their quality of life.
But but the positive thing is This divorce of money and the state means that the state has to do what it meant to do in principle, Which is to protect the rights of individuals Mhmm. Help, you know, help enforce justice and and and proper things rather than Print money, you know, for themselves and ultimately become corrupted. And so it's this incorruptible nature, and and there's no way to get Bitcoin To comply. You know, there's no way to get Bitcoin to issue extra coins to some people, to undo the spending of some. Now some people find this scary, but it's not nearly as scary and terrible as a system that's fundamentally corruptible and over the years has become Deeply, deeply broken and deeply, deeply corrupted. So it's fixing all of these things. It's not it's not you know, the other thing that I have to point out always is people say, well, It's not utopia. There's still gonna be people who commit crimes. There's still gonna be people who cheat each other. Yes.
That like, Bitcoin doesn't take away the ability to tell a lie. It doesn't take away the ability to commit fraud. It doesn't take away the ability to be incompetent or to get lazy after you make a promise Somebody and then not fulfill your promise. Mhmm. But we're but there's a bigger problem. Right. Like and and the fact that we don't solve every problem in the world doesn't mean we don't go ahead and solve the biggest problems that we can. And this huge problem we have is that our System of money and our system of government have both become corrupted by becoming intertwined with one another. Government is like, government became money. It, You know, the whole purpose of government now is to write checks to do things that wouldn't be done by free people of their own choice, except for to do it by force. And that's you know, and so money's government's no longer about protecting people's free choice. It's about imposing other people's choice on, you know, some people's choice on other people.
That's not free choice. That's imposition. That's dictatorship. That's force. It's tyranny. It's it's all these terrible words that we've ascribed to government And we said we need to put a stop to, but then didn't put a stop to. Right? They came creeping back, and we have this new solution to Stop this. Like, the solution isn't elect somebody better because every time we try to elect somebody better, we end up with somebody worse. I mean, there's there's something in the momentum of The broken money system married to government that prevents it from getting better. It just keeps getting worse and worse. I mean, occasionally, there's some politician who gets elected Who does something that's better, but it's so rare. And we just keep seeing the in momentum, the inertia of corruption Spreading and spreading and spreading to the point where we've got high inflation. We've got a working class, middle class that's being eroded, that has to work twice as hard for Less wealth than it used to have. Just our civilization is eroding even in the west where where we are taking advantage of other nations all over the world, whose Civilization never even got a chance to come together in an industrial way.
[00:15:59] Unknown:
So there's a lot of different things. The the lyrics from the WHO song. Right? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Yeah. Right? And it it's just it won't get fooled again, but that's what I think Bitcoin is offering is this transparent opportunity for people to understand, like, hey. You can go look at all this stuff and see where these these funds go, and it's People have a misunderstanding of, oh, Bitcoin's for criminals. It's for terrorists and all this nonsense. And It's like the banking system is much more
[00:16:32] Unknown:
corrupt on every level. Yeah. Our our attempt to we've got a situation where the cure is far worse than the disease. Right. Like, the if the cure for money laundering is the fiat money system in which you have bankers stealing and taking advantage and everybody indebted up Their eyeballs and politicians are corrupted and wars are endless. It's like, what cure did we just anticipate put in place for Anti money laundering. Like, we we've created we we've created something far, far worse and far more magnified than That which we were trying to limit. So things got out of control, and we're and we're not recognizing it. Right? Like, I think for many people, the inability to see this Is part of the insidious nature of it because we're told it's good or we're told it's a solution. We thought we had it solved, and it turns out we didn't. Right? Like, we thought Western liberal democracies and their powerful governments hand in hand with some free markets was gonna be fine, But something went wrong repeatedly, and then, you know, you have you have cronyism, you have people from private industry going into government and vice versa so that The division isn't there any longer. The powers of laws like the Patriot Act and others have just eroded the the freedoms To the point where we're not nearly as free as we thought we were. We call them liberal democracies, but they're but liberal has taken on a different meaning than liberty. Liberate liberal is Particular political agenda from from one side of things, and so we're just we're nowhere near where we're we thought we would be, and we need a fix.
And and and as Jeff Booth says, he's reciting him, it's you cannot fix the system from inside the system when the system is broken. You cannot find a politician To elect who will make everything go right again. There's too you know, it's too big an institution now, the government, for them to even find 16 or 30 or 100 people who they need to replace with greater people than they are, who then would need to go and replace the millions of people who work for the government, who Are on on the pay of everything. So we need a different system, and and Bitcoin is looks really looks to be the the system because it's incorruptible by individuals.
[00:18:42] Unknown:
Well so in the interesting part is, obviously, it's sound money, but I was just I just had an interview, like, an hour ago, with Kasha and Sheila from the Bitcoin Film Fest and Open Dialogue Foundation, and they were talking also about, the film Immutable Democracy, what went on in Guatemala with the elections and how they're using the blockchain to do something with time stamps, and there's another project. And I'm not from I forget the name of it, but it's another thing about the fair elections and using Bitcoin. So I'm just curious. You know, I would love to see politicians go, yay. We wanna embrace this so that we can have fair and open, transparent elections.
Do you see that even, like, realistically happening in this next election cycle? Like, here in states, I know you're in Canada. Yeah. Not in the next election cycle, but I I think as
[00:19:33] Unknown:
As Bitcoin grows and, you know, as this money that's divorced from the state grows, the state has to do what the state Is supposed to do outside of that marriage. Right? And and so I think you will start to see when politicians no longer have the ability to win elections by Promising to print money out of thinner and give it to certain constituencies. Politicians will have to earn their votes on the basis of Impressing upon people that their lives will be better, not through a gift of money, but through living with principles that make their lives better. And I think that's that's what politics Was meant to be when these liberal democracies were instantiated, and there were a lot of long term principles that were held and And protected, and people who were drawn to government were drawn for various reasons, but including the the right protecting And preserving the right principles. I I just don't think any of today's major politicians come across in any significant way as being sincere. They feel like they're puppets, Or they feel like they're cynics or narcissists. It just you know, they they aren't great leaders. Now we we've seen a couple of potential standouts in, Central and South America when things got so bad in a nation, right, where, like, you could you almost couldn't even describe a nation as civilized any longer.
The El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world, and Yeah. The entire economy of, Argentina is in the state of Ongoing hyperinflation and collapse and all these kind of things. It that that's what seems to wake people up, to to take a leap on a politician like, the ones that we see, now in ruling those countries. But Is it, you know, is it going to be the fix in Argentina? We don't we don't yet know. Right? And what's actually I I haven't been To El Salvador yet myself, I'm very curious to go, but there's a lot of work to be done, and and there's a lot of work to be done over here. I think we've we've harmed a whole generation, Maybe 3 generations. It's just the the intensity of the harm has gotten worse with each subsequent generation since fiat money Became the form of money, and and now when you have you know, Alex Svetzke has this article about Bitcoin. This is it'll take 3 generations to work its way in. I think PHEAA took 3 generations to work its way in, right, in in the sense of completely eroding the values of hard work To earn money. And and now we have a generation that thinks that money should be handed out for free. We do. It's not your fault. It well and it's this I and you're in Canada.
[00:22:08] Unknown:
The is are they gonna be doing, like, $2,000 UBI for anybody who wants it? I just saw that last night because I I saw it I saw it too. I don't I I I I'm very skeptical of news that I read as to whether it's true or not, but sooner or later, some of these things do Everybody's scared. Yeah. Go inflate the money. Oh, look. We're gonna give you some more, and then we just inflated it again, just what they did during COVID. So people don't understand, like, the The the toxicity of the fiat mindset is the throwaway mindset. It's the easy credit, give it to me now, pay later kind of thing, like everything. We had even talked about this when we were, you know, just talking about how easy it is to create, you know, digital content and just everything can be sort of not very proof of work mindset. It's just proof of hurry up and get it done and ship it Right. Instead of let's take time, let's go deep dive, let's get in. And so that's Yeah. It's a whole consciousness shift coming out of Fiat and getting back into this, you know, put your hours in kinda thing, and I think Bitcoiners possess that as an ethos, obviously.
[00:23:16] Unknown:
This is where proof of work comes in. Right? Like, this this notion that everything should be easy comes It comes twofold. It comes 1 from all the great advances in industrial technology and electronic technology that makes things much easier to do. You know, you know, you don't have to lift Bricks. You've got forklifts. You don't have to you know, there's machinery and equipment and but increasingly so, if you don't have to think to have an opinion, Then your opinion can be removed from reality. And and easy money, the promise of easy money is fundamentally this disconnect between we have to do work And it might be hard in order to create great things and to have great things. Right? Like, if nobody is doing any work, your money is not gonna buy anything. And so if the government pays everybody to not work, Nothing's gonna be produced, and you can't buy anything when nothing is produced no matter how much fiat money you have printed. That's really this danger. And and the fact that people are naive to it, and aren't able to call it out because The short term temptation of receiving money from the government is such a great temptation. And and and there's also the game theory. Like, if I don't take the money, they're just gonna give it to somebody else who's not gonna work. So everyone's kind of it's this broken game. It's this tragedy of the commons where the money is creating the tragedy. And this is why Bitcoin is so important.
And and we may have to go through, you know, these hyperinflationary periods for these fiat currencies even in the west For people to say that was a scam. That was, you know, that didn't work. Not not working and getting money and thinking that I'm gonna get something someone else's work In exchange for doing no work myself. So this, you know, the work ethic, has to be reinstated stated and regrown. And it's not to say that nobody has it, but it's been a very confusing time to be alive between fiat money, which is money that's generated with no work, And real advances in productivity, which is more work done with less work and with done with energy. The fix it and and, you know, Bitcoin really aligns these things because Industrial technology uses energy to do work, so there's a recognition that the energy produces work.
And that you need energy. Again, another thing that Fiat has tried to mask away. Oh, we don't need gasoline. We don't need petrol. We don't need fossil fuels. Well, that's, Believe me, that's where all the work that you're getting done for for cheap, is coming from, and Bitcoin says the money is hard to produce as well. And what makes it hard to produce is it requires energy. It requires work to produce too, time and energy. So everything in the civilization that's powered by Bitcoin money Is aligned, right, with reality. Work. Work takes work to do. Productivity requires work. Money takes work To create. Money takes work. To spend, all of these things are actually advantages rather than disadvantages.
They may look on the surface. It's like, oh, you can't control the money supply. The money has got an expense associated with it to move. It takes time to move it. Yes. That's that makes the money just like anything else that's real in the in the real world. It takes real work to do. It costs energy to do to do it, And and energy is the real basic unit of account that comes that comes down to this. The next article I'm working on is trying is really trying to connect Bitcoin to work and seeing that human labor is very specialized.
It it's a special kind of work. A surgeon does surgical work. You and I don't know how to do surgical work no matter how hard we try, and and the surgeon needs the work of surgical instrument creators, which is a of work with the surgeon doesn't know how to do themselves. So there's all these human human work is so much broader than when we look at the world of energy and say, well, you know, there's Kinetic energy and potential energy and electric energy, you know, like 5 or 6 kinds of energy that we talk. But in human energy, there's Millions and millions of different types of human energy, and you need to access them all. And the only way to access them all to convert one form of energy, the kind you can expend. I'm a writer, so I I can produce writing energy, thinking energy, or philosophical energy.
And I need to exchange that for the surgeon's energy, and he needs to exchange that For the and it's money that does that. Money is the motive power that converts my kind of energy into somebody else's kind of energy that I need. And so our civilization can only exist through money, and we need it to be able to act as a converter. And, and again, This is where something like Bitcoin who that is energy based money really Shines and Shines is an example of the fact that money is not arbitrary. It's a measure of our work. It's a measure of our time, and and Bitcoin is a measure of work and time.
[00:28:05] Unknown:
Remarkably. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And and how do you feel like obviously, on the horizon, we've got CBDC, central bank digital currencies for folks listening. You know, in that, obviously, a whole can of worms, you know, in thinking of behavior modification, surveillance privacy, how to get people to, you know, think you're doing them a favor by giving them if they're gonna get some UBI on their the programmable, you know, CBDCs. And so I think that's gonna take it even a step twofold. This CBDCs. I think you're gonna take it a step further with the not working and getting something, and then, we've obviously got machines that are starting to do more thinking for us, all the AIs out there, which are exciting. Right? But they're also I think they're making us a little soggy, in our Yeah. Intellectual capabilities. I think they're fun tools, but they can also be too crutchy. Like, I know my children right now. You know?
That's what they use to write papers. My son's like, hey, mom. Check this out. And I'm like, so which Did you use chat gpt or a different one for this? And he's like, how'd you know? And I'm like, because this is not you, buddy. Like, I know. You know? But, like Yeah. We've got a whole generation of, people who can go put in 5, 10, 15, 20 words and then get a paper written, you know, that's decent enough that they can go in and do some editing. And so Yeah. What do you think about these 2 wonderful technologies? You know, but how are they gonna have long term implications on our our ability to think and speak up for ourselves, which will also push away the authoritarianism of a centralized
[00:29:54] Unknown:
authority? Yeah. It's a really tough question because it we have Multiple disruptive technologies playing out simultaneously. Mhmm. And so the interplay between them, you know, it's easy to say, well, here's the pros of The pros and cons of 1 technology. Right? And I think you've kind of nailed it with, like, with large language models. The pro is they can construct Grammatically correct, reasonably accurate essays upon an instruction, you know, a single line prompt. The con is, in a sense, the same thing. It they remove the requirement for Problem solving from the individual.
Alright? And and it's the same as like, well, any tool that you have that does work for you, You can say, well, it makes you physically weaker because you didn't have to do the physical work. And so, well, yes and no. Right? Like, we're able to do things with industrial technology No amount of human labor could ever do. No. We couldn't build a 60 story skyscraper with slaves, you know, mindlessly the work we need we need the equipment. We haven't figured out what it is that we can do with large language models or other AI things That people can't do yet, and we're still in the very earliest days. Right? Like like the earliest pieces of technology were just, like, Slightly better, except not requiring the human to do the work, letting something else do the work. So it may be that there are Skyscrapers of intellectual ability that can be constructed with AI that we are not able to construct without the benefit of AI.
At the same time, we have to be careful that, you know and this is an individual thing. It's not it's not something you can control for the whole universe, That you actually become lazy and stop using your mind. And I I do think that's a danger, whether it's for the younger generation or, you know, I I see I see people people are constantly pitching me on Ways to produce content with a, you know, with something that they've programmed and programmed. Right? Told Chad GPT to program within itself And and like you with your son's essay, I, like, I I read the 1st paragraph, and I'm like, okay, this was cons this this is not interesting. It was constructed with ChatGPT. It It's a very useful tool for helping you create a better outline than you could on your own.
It may be helpful in quite a few other things. It it's A good thesaurus. It's a good rewriter. It's a good proofreader. Like, it does a lot of things that are handy and accelerate your productivity, but it doesn't come up with original ideas and Right. And original insights, and that's that's what we need to dedicate our Thoughtfulness too. It's also an you know, it's a criticism of the education system that the assignments are assignments that don't require you to think original thoughts, And so it's easy to use ChatGPT to fulfill the requirements of the assignment, which are just regurgitate information that exists somewhere else an organized and grammatically correct manner. It's important to be able to do that, but it's not really adding a lot of value to our civilization at this point in time.
So we are confronted, you know, and that's just one of these disruptive technologies that we discussed. Right? We've got we've got Bitcoin. We've got CBDCs. We we've got all of the digital Internet technologies that continue to eat the world. So it's a very uncertain time. What what the future really looks like It's a little bit hard to predict. I think there's there's 2 broad polar opposites of the future. There's one where this Bitcoin breakthrough, This decentralized breakthrough, this independence breakthrough succeeds, and succeeds for a large portion of the world's population. And so I think in that case, you have This renaissance of the human spirit, this renaissance of the human experience, right, of just like what it means to be Human and alive and to, you know, and to not experience the world in exactly the same way as everybody else does, like a robot that's eating the same sandwich at the same time and watching the Same TV show that's like a a mass market consumer, but is actually an individual consumer of the things that one finds truly valuable and one charts their own path through this world.
And then and then you've got this other view, which is a very homogenized view of the world where, you know, everyone Everyone takes their share of what's produced by the centrally decided AI overlord, and, and who knows what that's like? It doesn't feel like a very experience. I mean, I think I'd rather die than have to live in that state, but I might not know that I'd rather die If I was living in that state, I might be so drugged and, you know, and and idle and unthinking That I wouldn't know it, and that that I think would be kind of this big tragedy for this whole planet if humans evolved on it and humans got to be here on it somehow And then just became inhuman, idle, fat, lazy, bored, unthinking creatures, You know, almost like plants, where there's so much beauty and potential in each and every single human being. And, I mean, that for me is the message that I feel Bitcoin delivered to me. It's like Everyone needs to find out who their own true self really is and be that person and find a way to be that person as much as they possibly can Through their lives, and that's and that's not easy. Right? Like, if someone else telling you what you need to be and it's the same as everybody else needs to be, that's an easy path, But it's also not rewarding, and it's not rewarding in the spiritual sense.
[00:35:25] Unknown:
Yeah. It's definitely not rewarding in the spiritual sense. Well, I think about, you know, in order for us to really develop into who we are individually in our own unique one self that There's never gonna be anybody like a Tomer or a Val ever again. It's just us now here forever. And, like, if we don't have, something to push against a little bit. Like, you're gonna just we're gonna be puddles, You know, if everything's given to us, if everything's too easy, you know, we think about our parenting styles. Right? You and I are both parents, and there's no one right or wrong way to parent. But If our kids don't have the opportunity to feel uncomfortable and feels like, woah, I'm stretching, they're not gonna have the chance to grow.
Right? And I think as humans, our human spirits, even though it's like, oh, this is kinda scary, it's like, I don't think we would last as a species with everything being too easy and not something to push up against. I think we would go crazy. I think most of us would. And and I think, obviously, our food supply, our media, The thing our consumption model currently is junk food. It's quick dopamine hits. It's not nourishing. It's not nutrient dense, you know, mentally, physically, or spiritually. And so I think by design, the system wants to keep us not in a state where we wanna push against the system, you know, and and it's it's it's a tough one, you know, because none of us wanna feel all this, it's so painful, but it's like, if we don't have that that push something to push on, we're gonna be to we're not gonna grow into these strong beings, these resilient creatures. You know? And so and and we won't be able to fully express ourselves because we're too afraid or we're too tired or too weak or too collapsed. Yeah.
You know what I mean?
[00:37:22] Unknown:
That's why I think the you know, when when you have an expectation of an easy life that that corrupts your your soul In making in making you unwilling and unable to confront challenges and to grow through confronting challenges. When you accept that there is gonna be hardship in life, when hardship hits you, you deal with it. Right? I mean, it may hurt. It may be heartbreaking, and there's all sorts of things. But you come out of it a enriched being, through through even the hardships. And you certainly Don't if you're living the easy life where everything is handed to you, you never experience the thrill and the joy of having accomplished something that was hard to do or having overcome A hard obstacle to overcome or being proud of what you've managed to think up and and invent. And so there's a whole Large array of some of the most positive human emotions that are never accessible to you if you don't if you're not confronted with challenge and difficulty Because it's the overcoming of challenge and difficulty that is where you're seeing your true sense of accomplishment, originality, pride come from. But if if instead you just typed something into an AI algorithm and it did all the work, I mean, you might be delusionally proud that you did something there, but But you didn't. Right? You did you didn't really accomplish anything dramatic.
[00:38:44] Unknown:
Yeah. It it's definitely it's I think it's something to be on the just to keep it on the radar of consciousness with with our younger generations and then the next younger generations that are gonna come up. You know? It's, You know, we always think about, you know, our I didn't get to know my grandfather. He died before I was born, but, you know, I think about the grandfathers and the generations that were ahead of us, and it's like they're always like, oh, this younger generation has got it so easy. They don't know and blah blah blah. And I feel like It's true in every generation, but it's like there's there's an exponential component to what we're dealing with right now with how quick Right. It is to make things so ridiculously easy that it's like, why bought I don't have to leave my house and grocery shop. They'll bring me Instacart. I don't have to prepare food. I just put it in the microwave for 2 seconds or every little thing that takes away from us having to do this work is like Yeah. Okay.
If you're saving all that time, that's kickass. Are you choosing to be creative and productive with all of that saved time, or are you just creating more consumption of, I'm sitting around watching Netflix or playing video games or Yeah. Smoking weed and not paying attention. You know what I mean? And it's, like, it's great to save that time if you're gonna translate it into something beautiful and productive and and useful and valuable for society to create a better world. But if you're just, I think, wasting the time to just,
[00:40:19] Unknown:
you know, speak around. Yeah. I I do. I I think it's sad, and and and it's also very tempting. Right? It's like, Oh, I had work to do. Now something can do the work for me. Now I can do nothing instead. And and that's an easy trap fall into because nothing is so easy to figure out how to do. It's not there's nothing and there's something. It's like Something is there's a 1000000,000,000 different things you can do other than nothing. Which one of them are you going to do? How hard are you gonna make it? What actually inspires you? How do you discover what inspires you? I I think this is this is part of the challenge of living like kings, which is what we all kings and queens, which we all do In the west, we have all this free time on our hands that we can watch Netflix or, you know, summon somebody, you know, summon somebody to bring our groceries to us, Some in this, some in that. Like, it it's all summonable, rather than we have to do the work for it. And so Mhmm. If we fall into that trap of not knowing what it is that we really love to do, then we just don't live our life doing what we love to do. It it's a very simple conclusion. And so if you live your life not loving What you do, your life just isn't as satisfying. Right?
And but finding finding and getting the Gusto and and and finding people to help you to find it is hard because many other people are like, well, I'm gonna do nothing instead of Helping other people find out what they wanna do with their lives. Right? It's easy to counsel someone, to guide them to say, Take it easy, chill out, do take the safe and well traveled course, and the government will take care of you either way. There's something really wrong in that instruction because it's not saying seize the day, suck the suck every, you know, Bit of juice out of life that you possibly can. And so people think that life isn't special and extraordinary and magical, but it can be, and it should be. At least that's my take.
[00:42:16] Unknown:
I concur. Seize the day. Carpe diem, baby. That's, that's what I'm trying to do right now every single day. I think, you know, obviously, you're a prolific writer and creator, and somebody who I deeply admire on many levels, Tomer. Yeah. What would you say to young people right now who might be listening to this, who feel a little stuck and are concerned about, oh, AI is gonna take my job. What do I do? I wanna go make a difference. Like, What would you say to somebody who is listening who's who's who could use a little word of of wisdom and and support?
[00:42:53] Unknown:
Yeah. I I think, you know, the most important person to make a difference, whose life you need to make a difference in is yours, and And that's not a selfish statement. It's like there's nobody else to figure out what you love to do because only you experience the Emotion of I love this or I hate this or I kinda like this or it feels right, but it's not it's not perfect. So it's only you who can do that. And And so, you know, and this sounds tropey, but, you know, like, you have to follow your heart, and you have to you have to surrender into what you think You wanna do, and don't worry about what other people say. Right? You know, nobody's got good advice for you. Right? Somebody who tells you go study to be a doctor, well, AI might replace doctors. Someone tells you go, you know, study to be some other boring profession that, you know, if you're passionate about healing people, if you're passionate about understanding medicine and science, then Potentially go and study to be a doctor, but be careful because the education system that will teach you how to be a doctor is filled with All of these. You know, make it simple. Just write a prescription.
Send somebody to a specialist. Like, don't figure out the problem yourself. Don't solve the problem yourself. It's already, you know, just pull pull solutions off the shelf, but if if you can truly be passionate about what you're doing, you will find that Life is satisfying for you, and you're doing something to benefit the world because there are people coming to you for the benefits that you give them, so you get this Satisfaction that you wouldn't get by just being an idle consumer of things. So find your passion. It's okay if it changes. It's okay if you go down particular road and it doesn't satisfy you and you're just and your lesson is, well, that wasn't the thing. That's okay too. You don't have to be right about everything.
Sometimes you'll go down a road And it'll be really, really satisfying, and then suddenly it isn't. And that just means it's time to pivot, that you got everything that you could out of that thing, and you'll find that the next thing that you do, Actually, the things you've learned in your experience of going down the 1st road still come in, come in quite handy. So don't reject every you know, all your previous knowledge when you pivot and change I can change direction, but for god's sake, find a direction and go. Just go.
[00:44:57] Unknown:
I love it. And I I think about Nelson Mandela. He has a quote. He's like, I never lose. I either win or I learn. Mhmm. And it's like, go take a chance. Right? Like, it's okay. And I think a lot of people get caught up in like, oh, am I gonna be good enough? Is am I gonna make $1,000,000 or whatever it is? It's like especially young people. It's like, you know, obviously, things are are tough out there, but it's still like you have to get up every day and, like, do you do something that makes you wanna jump out of bed or makes you wanna pull the covers over your head. You know? There's a big difference. And and money can't buy that energy of wanting to get out of wanting to get out of bed and be like, woo hoo. I get to go do my jam today and be on my mission, whatever your mission might be. It's super duper great great words of wisdom, Tomer.
[00:45:45] Unknown:
Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Don't let yourself feel the other thing I was saying, like, don't don't let yourself Be judged by the standards that society has. Right? Like, are you are you successful in a traditional sense, Like, with respect to money, are you popular? Are you whatever those traditional senses are. Like, find what really matters to you. And then if you do that thing, it doesn't matter that other people Say that's a good thing or that's that's a bad thing. Like, when you find your thing, you're happy you're happy doing your thing, and you can find satisfaction that isn't Envy driven. Right? Like, you know, all of these all of these pushes by everyone to be financially successful is a is a great example Is is one where everyone's looking at everybody else, not saying what do I need, but what do they have, and how do why don't I have as much as they have? So it's How do I measure it? Second handed. Yeah. It's second handed rather than internal, and so look, you know, look within. The answers are the answers are within, And, I wrote I wrote 1 piece that I if if anyone's listening to this and interested in it, it really concretizes this as a short story called The lesson of the golden teacher.
And it's a story about, all sorts of people Being able to look inside themselves and realize what they truly wanna do rather than being told by, their teachers and Society, what they wanna do. It's a if you Google the lesson of the golden teacher, Tomer Shorlette, you'll find it. It's on the DM.
[00:47:12] Unknown:
And and Can I say about what that might also be about? Sure. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. Or, just you know? You know, you and I obviously talk a lot about, plant medicine and healing journeys and and transform transformative, experiences through this, and so, and I know we've we've we share a lot of views on just the just the power the power of the plants, you know, and the power of psychedelics and medicine. What, what do you see on the horizon with a lot of the legalization and everything with, like, mushrooms here in the States. I mean, something's going on in Canada. Right? Can you get mushrooms at, like, a dispensary?
[00:47:58] Unknown:
You can order them online and not have any issues as far as I'm aware. Uh-huh. That's this is not advice for people, and this is just my my awareness of Of things. There's a there's there's websites that will, deliver, deliver them to you, so they're they're available if not quite legal yet. But I I just I think that they're not being pursued in any kind of aggressive way by, by the government. Marijuana is legal everywhere in Canada. The government, you know, the government delivers it to your house here where I live if you deliver it. So it was a government run store and 30 minutes or less, Domino's You can order. Delivery. You can get same day delivery if you're in a hurry, but there's lots of There's dispensaries on every corner. What used to be coffee shops now are, mostly, weed shops, I guess. So it's it's widely available here. Again, I don't know exactly what impact that's having. I think, you know, to your broader question, plant medicine Is is a new path, that integrates, mental health, physical health Mhmm. Nutrition, and and potentially all sorts of other things like, you know, self discovery and and self awareness. And so for some people, this is this has been hugely helpful and eye eye opening or fact revealing or direction Setting. And for other people, it's it potentially has ruined us. You know, people who become, dependent on chemicals or think that chemicals Provide them with the answers to everything always may not may not have a particularly good goal of things. So This is stuff to be responsible with, just like everything else we talk about. Right? There's there's work, there's responsibility, there's self testing, there's learning about yourself and And being truthful to yourself about what experiences you're having if you're having experiences with these types of medicines, plants.
[00:49:57] Unknown:
Totally. And I know we're running on on time here. I wanna ask 2 more questions, like one still about this, but then another will talk about Swan and what's going on at Swan and all the good stuff you guys are up to. But I wanna tag on the end of your your comment, though. I I got to interview, Ione Appelberg. Yep. You know, Ione and we were talking about the white shaman, you know, because he's a medical doctor in talking about plant medicine and how western medicine is starting to at least wake up more, you know, to the understanding that, you know, MDMA or mushrooms are being used for end of life care and trauma, and, you know, obviously, Ibogaine. I did Ibogaine for, addiction. So there's a lot of transformational things that are starting to move forward, and thank goodness that the, You know, some mainstream medicine is starting to to catch on, you know, to these tools. How has What's the biggest that you've had from, you know, your your, adventures, experiences, your healing with medicine with plant medicine or any of these medicines. It doesn't have to be plant. Yeah. I I mean, for me, the fact that I'm a writer now Is
[00:51:13] Unknown:
is something that came from the result. They're like, I was always a writer, but I didn't know it. And plant medicine Showed me that at a time when I thought I was a failed businessman, that I was actually a gifted writer. And, and that was, You know? And that gave me the courage and the wherewithal to
[00:51:31] Unknown:
start writing, like the book that you've got there. The Why Bitcoin book? Anyway Yeah. Have you looking over my shoulder next to Alex and, and Gigi. Yeah. Just gonna
[00:51:42] Unknown:
Yeah. And And it it was amazing. Like, I went through my whole life writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, you know, business memos and this and that and the other Presentations, business cases, philosophical diatribes, but doing it as a businessman. And, and then when my business career Derailed in in part because of well, for lots of reasons, all all these kind of fiat and lockdown reasons. I started doing a little bit of writing, and I started reflecting on it while, while under the influence of some of this plant medicine, and it just gave me this A realization of the talent that I actually had that I could then dedicate, my energy to. And so mixing my energy and my talent together, Things things are working out, and they're not working out by the success measures that I would have had of myself as a businessman.
Mhmm. I'm not getting lots of options in a company. I'm not the president of a company. Like, these were these were lofty goals as a businessman, but I'm very satisfied as a content creator, a creative individual, who who is bringing ideas to people and helping share ideas and doing so in a way through a craft of communication. So I'm I'm judging myself by different standards on on a different talent that I have, and it feels actually a lot more natural. It's not that it doesn't come with its own pains. Right? It's like Being a very successful businessman was very rewarding financially compared to being a writer, but there's a different reward system here, and And I can't bring myself to being a pure businessman ever again. I don't think. It's just it's no long I've shed that part of me. It's no longer who I am. And yet I used to think that, like, I would introduce myself with my job title after afterwards for for the better part of a decade. So that's
[00:53:33] Unknown:
That's one example there. I love it. Well, it sounds like, you know, when we have an identity shift, you know, and we wanna resonate with, you know, this new identity, right, or this, you know, evolved identity. You know, it makes it easier to step in and take risks and do the things that might seem a little intimidating. You know? I always think about, like, you know, when I'm when I'm just Val, I'm like, oh, I'm Val. You know? But if I'm Valerie, the vibe goddess on stage, and I'm DJing. I get to step into that persona and deliver an experience and connect with the audience in a way that Mhmm.
Val could, but it wouldn't be quite as Right. Lit up. You know? And so there's a permission slip there. Yeah. You know, once you say, hey. I'm now I'm a writer or I was a CEO or I was a founder or whatever it is Yeah. That this this iteration of your identity. Evolution will will and, you know, go on. You it's like, then you can wear it. It's like a cloak. You know? And you're like, do do do. Here I go. You know? And so you get to deliver more potent results. And I think, you know, psychedelics and plant medicine, and they they take away those inhibitions and the fear and the old programming that says, who are you to be a writer or who are you to be a DJ or who are you? You know? And it's like, I'm Tomer. I'm Vat, you know, and so I think there's something really powerful to be said as as, you know, collaborators.
Like, to me, they're collaborators on our transformational journey. You know? You don't wanna use them all the time, but I think it certainly impacted who I am and how I how I am on planet Earth here. So I love it. Yeah. K. So okay. So next question. I know we gotta hustle. Oh god. Yeah. Wait. Super sorry. It's 2 do you have to do you have 2 minute stop? I I yeah. I do I do have to stop in 2 minutes. So Okay. Cool. Let's let's make it quick. Okay. So 22 okay. Swan Bitcoin. What's happening with Swan? How can people get ahold of you over there? And, you know, a closing thought for for for the audience here. You know,
[00:55:49] Unknown:
I I I always feel a little bit uncomfortable plugging a company, but because I'm not a businessman anymore, but I I think I think Swan is, in a sense, more than a company. It's part it's part of the mission of Bitcoin, and and really the mission of the company is do what's right for Bitcoin and for Bitcoiners And and work hard at that, you know? And so it's like and and working hard is we I'll just tie in all the stuff that we we were talking about before in this In this podcast, working hard isn't easy. This is it's almost a different you know, the definition of hard is not easy, and and and There's a lot that needs to be done. Right? Bitcoin doesn't come to us as a in a finished state fully adopted.
There's a lot of work that needs to be done down a lot of different paths, and I'm really excited Swan is taking on as many of the things as it can possibly Get under its belt and bringing together mission driven people to help succeed with this with this mission. So I'm I'm just like, almost every single day, that I'm Interacting with my colleagues over there. Really, really thrilled, to be part of it because this is something that I wanted more than anything else. I didn't wanna be a businessman. I wanted to work in Bitcoin, and, I thought that was through, you know, bringing certain business skills of mine, but I'm I'm getting to work in Bitcoin in this philosophical Nature by producing content and collaborating with colleagues who are deeply involved in building things in Bitcoin, and, And it's thrilling. There's just an I don't wanna say endless, but there's a long pipeline of things that are being worked on and delivered by the company, And, and they're all they're all, super super exciting and and on mission. Right? We're not resisting or fighting The direction of Bitcoin, its decentralized nature, its random and chaotic growth patterns, and just Surrendering and going with the flow, like, it's is just is tremendous. So it's really nice to be able to, ride this wave.
[00:57:46] Unknown:
Yeah. I love it. And I know Swan is kicking so much booty. You guys are I love it. I'm so grateful that all the work you're all out there doing, all the education and just commitment to the mission. It's a big deal. You know? And I'm really, really grateful to get to, you know, have gotten to go to Pacific Bitcoin a couple of times. Oh my gosh. What an honor, and I can't wait to go again and keep supporting you guys. So, It's it's great stuff. Alright, Tomer. Where can everybody find you?
[00:58:18] Unknown:
Well, swan.com/blog is where my latest articles are. I tend to do, Twitter spaces. So if you follow me on Twitter, I, you know, I tend to tweet I try to tweet once a day just some thought about Bitcoin. So at Toomer Strohite on, on Twitter. There you go. You've got it up on the screen. That's probably the best place to follow me And keep keep tabs on what I'm up to. I'll try to keep every everyone up to date on that. Yay. Alright. Final word. Be yourself. Yes.
[00:58:50] Unknown:
Everyone else is speaking. Yeah. I love it. So good. So good to see you, my friend. I miss you, and I'm grateful for you. And it's thankful Thursday, so I'm thankful for Tomar coming on the show here and, doing these live stream. Yeah. Thank you so much. And, Yeah. Everybody, go check out Tomer Strollite on, X, Twitter, and Check out Swan if you guys wanna get some Bitcoin and dollar cost in or get your IRA set up. Swan's gonna help you out. And, Until next time, my friends, stay cool, and thanks for tuning in to Bitcoin for Peace. And peace, love, and warm aloha. Peace.
Thank you so much, Tomer.
Hey. Aloha, love tribe. Welcome to Bitcoin for Peace. I have one of my dear, dear friends and cocreators and mission driven humans on the show. This is Tomer Strollite. Welcome, Tomer.
[00:00:44] Unknown:
Hi, Valerie. Very nice to be here.
[00:00:46] Unknown:
Tomer is so amazing. He's the editor in chief at Swan Bitcoin. He's written here, where are we? Why Bitcoin? Back up here. Created generational wealth, the film, and many other things, and we're gonna talk about Bitcoin reuniting a deeply divided world today, his most recent article,
[00:01:06] Unknown:
with Swan Bitcoin. Hey, Tomer. So so good to see you. Nice nice to see you too. Nice to be here. Nice to talk about peace and love, rather than,
[00:01:16] Unknown:
divisiveness in war that's not hiding the world right now. I know. It's really it's a tough one. Obviously, it's, a lot going on on planet Earth on in all all 4,000 corners. Right. You know? Tell why did you write this article, Tomer?
[00:01:34] Unknown:
I this article was sitting inside of me in a different way for a long period of time. I was, I had noticed in lots of discussions over the last few years how people who are often on seemingly, irreconcilable sides of an issue. When when they study Bitcoin, they actually agree That Bitcoin solves the problem that their irreconcilable differences are about. And I thought I was going to sit down and write an article That showed lots and lots of examples. My favorite example of this is there a couple years ago, there were these Twitter spaces or Clubhouse I can't remember which or maybe both, where it was socialists versus capitalists, and they would come and have a debate with each other. But in the context of Bitcoin And and after attending 2 or 3 of these things, the thing that most blew me away was was this. You know, the the socialist would come up and talk about how socialism is a cure all for everything, and the capitalist would laugh at them And say, that's not socialism.
Take a look at Venezuela. Take a look at Argentina. Take a look at the Soviet Union. That's socialism. And, of course, the socialist would just reply with, no. No. That's not real socialism. Real socialism has unfortunately never been tried anywhere. And the capitalist would laugh and say, I'm sorry to tell you that real socialism is the dystopia of Communist regimes we've seen all over the world. Mhmm. And then the socialist would turn the tables around and say, well, hold on a minute. Let's talk about capitalism. Right? The capitalism, I see all this cronyism, I see all Cronyism, I see all this corruption. I see all this stuff. And, of course, what would the capitalist resort with? It's like, well, that's not real capitalism. Real capitalism has never been tried, You know, except for perhaps this thing. And and what they would both actually agree on is they would both agree because they were informed about Bitcoin that Bitcoin solves the problem. Like, the the socialist would say, Bitcoin allows the workers to not be taken advantage of by the factory owners or the, you know, the the capital the capitalist class, and the the capitalist would say Bitcoin solves the problem. It prevents the government from taking advantage of Though, of the entrepreneur.
This is oversimplifying these things, but what what occurred to me is, like, Neither capitalism nor socialism work in practice. They're both these theoretical ideals that everyone ends up saying, well, if only we could somehow get The ideal, everything would be perfect, but we can never get to the ideal. Obviously I I shouldn't say obviously, but largely, You know, socialism goes off the rails much more quickly than attempted capitalism, but they both they both go off the rails, and we're living in a time when both are off Off the rails. So neither system works in practice. They're both good in theory, but a theory that's good in theory, but not in practice is actually a theory that's bad in theory.
And and yet they both agreed that Bitcoin, as it is, not some ideal that we'll get to some point in time in the future, Bitcoin as it is, satisfies the the main mission that they're after. And I've seen a lot of this in a lot of other categories. So I thought, oh, I'm gonna write list of examples and show how Bitcoin is actually uniting people. But when I started to set the stage for it, Like, the fact that we live in a deeply divided world and what has caused the deep divisions. I discovered something else about coined, as I was writing, and and I guess we can get into it kind of right away. It's We've we've we get you know, first of all, if you're divided and disagree on something, it's very hard to work together. It's very hard to collaborate, and The things we tend to disagree about are the things that we can, in fact, change or the things we can control.
We don't disagree about the fact that the grass is green. We don't disagree about the length of the year because we can't change those things. And this, I think, is where to really distill it down to a narrow point where Bitcoin comes in and says, I'm a thing that what acts as money that can't be changed. And you realize that, you know, you're just scrolling past this. Money is a great uniter of people. Right? 2 people who don't even speak the same language. Like, if you're in a foreign country and you have a piece of paper money or you have A credit card. You have money and someone is making a food you desire, you don't need much communication. You can point at the thing and you can hand them the money, and they'll give you a thing.
It's united with somebody to produce some work for you, to prepare food for you who you don't even speak the same language as them. You're from a different part of the world, and and you've had a peaceful interaction. You've united in a way That you both feel better about. You know? You wanted money for this pizza. You wanted pizza for your money. You got, what you're after. So you found you found unity. You found togetherness. And This, of course, scales up to a much, much greater scale than just 1 individual buying one thing from another individual. Entire civilizations are built on this.
The whole history of civilization has been a history of trade. The great trade routes of the Silk Road. Every every great empire is not just an empire by violent conquest. It actually becomes an empire of Significant trade. And it's money that allowed all these different cultures to be subsumed within what they what one would call a giant or, or peaceful, civil international civilization and empire. And what the big problem that we have in the world today, why it's so deeply divided Is in part because the money is broken, because the money is in the control of people, and there's a constant battle for control over the money. A politician running for office is running to be in control of fiscal policy, of how to spend money that Would otherwise not be spent in the way that they don't wanna spend it. So we we see politics destroyed by money and and divisiveness created. And and what is politics today, but divisiveness, trying to paint the other guy as the villain, supporting a corrupt regime, whereas you're gonna be the politician who fixes everything and brings about abundance and everything else.
And this is true across, you know, almost every aspect of our world. Everyone's trying to plea for the broken money that can be conjured out of thin air. So the fact that we can control fiat money, that we can change its supply, change its price, do all of these things, Leads people to playing the game of trying to do that, and that becomes a divisive game. And so our civilization is divided by our money Rather than united by money, which is what past civilizations have done. And and this leads me to the point of what how Bitcoin fixes this. And I think a lot of people Keep questioning is it's because it cannot be changed, and it's pointless to argue over the supply. Right? Like, nobody can run for office and say, I'm gonna produce 2,000,000 more Bitcoin out of thin air and give it to the people who vote for me and not the people who don't. It it ends that game And allows us to reunite again through money in the way that that we have before and takes the teeth out of all of the different things that cause us to be divided Because of broken money. So that's that's kind of the overarching explanation of what it is that that is happening here and why Bitcoin Allows people who maybe as philosophically divided as capitalist and socialist to actually find unity in something that they both accept Can't be changed, but has fair rules to begin with and rules that they can live with.
There you go. That's Oh, I can't hear you, Valerie.
[00:09:26] Unknown:
I look now? Good. Yes. Yes. I love what you said just about, you know, if you think about it. Right? Like, all politicians are doing is trying to see get voted in so that they can have control of a certain budget or a certain ability to go make decisions with money. It's not necessarily like, yeah. I'm gonna go get the consciousness of our humanity up leveled. They're out there looking for that that power play. And then, obviously, if they can get close to the money printers and and have access to that, that gives them even more power and more incentive to keep that that corrupt Kraken system as we like to call it in the cyber opera, alive. Like, I was listening to a podcast with, Peter McCormick and Jeff Booth and Alex Gladstein. There was I just listened to the same one too. Great. Right? And so Alex was talking about, you know, the most violent thing you can do to a country and its people is to debase the currency because every single one gets impacted versus here, I'm gonna go drop a bomb Yeah. On a couple locations. And so That was something really interesting to me because it does like, money touch no matter who you are, it doesn't matter what your religion is or what your political bend is, or what color your skin is, or who you pray to, or don't pray to, you have to use some form of money in on earth. You know? And if you're in a system where you're using a violent form of money, you are gonna be subject to, that vibration, like, living in that field. You know? And so how to me, Bitcoin see you know, obviously, we know each other well, talking a lot about peace and how Bitcoin is hope and all this. Like, can you help people get, like, why it is so It's life and death to separate money from state and why this can create a peaceful world and why the current system of this marriage with money and state is causing so much violence.
[00:11:29] Unknown:
Yeah. I've I've written other pieces that really talk about this, and how how important it is that like, it's a very unhealthy marriage, the marriage of state and money. And it and it's a marriage that has happened numerous times throughout history, and it's always led to catastrophe. And what Bitcoin does is It declares unilaterally a divorce. Right? It says, I am divorced from the state. I am money and I'm divorced from the state. And and so for people to start to choose it, they they they changed the nature of the state because the marriage of the union Of money and the state changed what the state was. It changed the state into this issuer of money, into this get bestower of Favor on some at the expense of others. That's really what, Alex, Gladstein points out significantly in in a lot of his but certainly in that podcast you were just referring to. And it gets so powerful that there are people who never get any of the benefits. The money is always only stealing from them. People in countries where there are corrupt regimes, and those countries are indebted to the IMF. It was in the, you know, Was indebted to the US dollar regime. So it just you know, and we in the west have really benefited from it, so we've been blind to a degree of how much We're taking from others at the continued expense of their quality of life.
But but the positive thing is This divorce of money and the state means that the state has to do what it meant to do in principle, Which is to protect the rights of individuals Mhmm. Help, you know, help enforce justice and and and proper things rather than Print money, you know, for themselves and ultimately become corrupted. And so it's this incorruptible nature, and and there's no way to get Bitcoin To comply. You know, there's no way to get Bitcoin to issue extra coins to some people, to undo the spending of some. Now some people find this scary, but it's not nearly as scary and terrible as a system that's fundamentally corruptible and over the years has become Deeply, deeply broken and deeply, deeply corrupted. So it's fixing all of these things. It's not it's not you know, the other thing that I have to point out always is people say, well, It's not utopia. There's still gonna be people who commit crimes. There's still gonna be people who cheat each other. Yes.
That like, Bitcoin doesn't take away the ability to tell a lie. It doesn't take away the ability to commit fraud. It doesn't take away the ability to be incompetent or to get lazy after you make a promise Somebody and then not fulfill your promise. Mhmm. But we're but there's a bigger problem. Right. Like and and the fact that we don't solve every problem in the world doesn't mean we don't go ahead and solve the biggest problems that we can. And this huge problem we have is that our System of money and our system of government have both become corrupted by becoming intertwined with one another. Government is like, government became money. It, You know, the whole purpose of government now is to write checks to do things that wouldn't be done by free people of their own choice, except for to do it by force. And that's you know, and so money's government's no longer about protecting people's free choice. It's about imposing other people's choice on, you know, some people's choice on other people.
That's not free choice. That's imposition. That's dictatorship. That's force. It's tyranny. It's it's all these terrible words that we've ascribed to government And we said we need to put a stop to, but then didn't put a stop to. Right? They came creeping back, and we have this new solution to Stop this. Like, the solution isn't elect somebody better because every time we try to elect somebody better, we end up with somebody worse. I mean, there's there's something in the momentum of The broken money system married to government that prevents it from getting better. It just keeps getting worse and worse. I mean, occasionally, there's some politician who gets elected Who does something that's better, but it's so rare. And we just keep seeing the in momentum, the inertia of corruption Spreading and spreading and spreading to the point where we've got high inflation. We've got a working class, middle class that's being eroded, that has to work twice as hard for Less wealth than it used to have. Just our civilization is eroding even in the west where where we are taking advantage of other nations all over the world, whose Civilization never even got a chance to come together in an industrial way.
[00:15:59] Unknown:
So there's a lot of different things. The the lyrics from the WHO song. Right? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Yeah. Right? And it it's just it won't get fooled again, but that's what I think Bitcoin is offering is this transparent opportunity for people to understand, like, hey. You can go look at all this stuff and see where these these funds go, and it's People have a misunderstanding of, oh, Bitcoin's for criminals. It's for terrorists and all this nonsense. And It's like the banking system is much more
[00:16:32] Unknown:
corrupt on every level. Yeah. Our our attempt to we've got a situation where the cure is far worse than the disease. Right. Like, the if the cure for money laundering is the fiat money system in which you have bankers stealing and taking advantage and everybody indebted up Their eyeballs and politicians are corrupted and wars are endless. It's like, what cure did we just anticipate put in place for Anti money laundering. Like, we we've created we we've created something far, far worse and far more magnified than That which we were trying to limit. So things got out of control, and we're and we're not recognizing it. Right? Like, I think for many people, the inability to see this Is part of the insidious nature of it because we're told it's good or we're told it's a solution. We thought we had it solved, and it turns out we didn't. Right? Like, we thought Western liberal democracies and their powerful governments hand in hand with some free markets was gonna be fine, But something went wrong repeatedly, and then, you know, you have you have cronyism, you have people from private industry going into government and vice versa so that The division isn't there any longer. The powers of laws like the Patriot Act and others have just eroded the the freedoms To the point where we're not nearly as free as we thought we were. We call them liberal democracies, but they're but liberal has taken on a different meaning than liberty. Liberate liberal is Particular political agenda from from one side of things, and so we're just we're nowhere near where we're we thought we would be, and we need a fix.
And and and as Jeff Booth says, he's reciting him, it's you cannot fix the system from inside the system when the system is broken. You cannot find a politician To elect who will make everything go right again. There's too you know, it's too big an institution now, the government, for them to even find 16 or 30 or 100 people who they need to replace with greater people than they are, who then would need to go and replace the millions of people who work for the government, who Are on on the pay of everything. So we need a different system, and and Bitcoin is looks really looks to be the the system because it's incorruptible by individuals.
[00:18:42] Unknown:
Well so in the interesting part is, obviously, it's sound money, but I was just I just had an interview, like, an hour ago, with Kasha and Sheila from the Bitcoin Film Fest and Open Dialogue Foundation, and they were talking also about, the film Immutable Democracy, what went on in Guatemala with the elections and how they're using the blockchain to do something with time stamps, and there's another project. And I'm not from I forget the name of it, but it's another thing about the fair elections and using Bitcoin. So I'm just curious. You know, I would love to see politicians go, yay. We wanna embrace this so that we can have fair and open, transparent elections.
Do you see that even, like, realistically happening in this next election cycle? Like, here in states, I know you're in Canada. Yeah. Not in the next election cycle, but I I think as
[00:19:33] Unknown:
As Bitcoin grows and, you know, as this money that's divorced from the state grows, the state has to do what the state Is supposed to do outside of that marriage. Right? And and so I think you will start to see when politicians no longer have the ability to win elections by Promising to print money out of thinner and give it to certain constituencies. Politicians will have to earn their votes on the basis of Impressing upon people that their lives will be better, not through a gift of money, but through living with principles that make their lives better. And I think that's that's what politics Was meant to be when these liberal democracies were instantiated, and there were a lot of long term principles that were held and And protected, and people who were drawn to government were drawn for various reasons, but including the the right protecting And preserving the right principles. I I just don't think any of today's major politicians come across in any significant way as being sincere. They feel like they're puppets, Or they feel like they're cynics or narcissists. It just you know, they they aren't great leaders. Now we we've seen a couple of potential standouts in, Central and South America when things got so bad in a nation, right, where, like, you could you almost couldn't even describe a nation as civilized any longer.
The El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world, and Yeah. The entire economy of, Argentina is in the state of Ongoing hyperinflation and collapse and all these kind of things. It that that's what seems to wake people up, to to take a leap on a politician like, the ones that we see, now in ruling those countries. But Is it, you know, is it going to be the fix in Argentina? We don't we don't yet know. Right? And what's actually I I haven't been To El Salvador yet myself, I'm very curious to go, but there's a lot of work to be done, and and there's a lot of work to be done over here. I think we've we've harmed a whole generation, Maybe 3 generations. It's just the the intensity of the harm has gotten worse with each subsequent generation since fiat money Became the form of money, and and now when you have you know, Alex Svetzke has this article about Bitcoin. This is it'll take 3 generations to work its way in. I think PHEAA took 3 generations to work its way in, right, in in the sense of completely eroding the values of hard work To earn money. And and now we have a generation that thinks that money should be handed out for free. We do. It's not your fault. It well and it's this I and you're in Canada.
[00:22:08] Unknown:
The is are they gonna be doing, like, $2,000 UBI for anybody who wants it? I just saw that last night because I I saw it I saw it too. I don't I I I I'm very skeptical of news that I read as to whether it's true or not, but sooner or later, some of these things do Everybody's scared. Yeah. Go inflate the money. Oh, look. We're gonna give you some more, and then we just inflated it again, just what they did during COVID. So people don't understand, like, the The the toxicity of the fiat mindset is the throwaway mindset. It's the easy credit, give it to me now, pay later kind of thing, like everything. We had even talked about this when we were, you know, just talking about how easy it is to create, you know, digital content and just everything can be sort of not very proof of work mindset. It's just proof of hurry up and get it done and ship it Right. Instead of let's take time, let's go deep dive, let's get in. And so that's Yeah. It's a whole consciousness shift coming out of Fiat and getting back into this, you know, put your hours in kinda thing, and I think Bitcoiners possess that as an ethos, obviously.
[00:23:16] Unknown:
This is where proof of work comes in. Right? Like, this this notion that everything should be easy comes It comes twofold. It comes 1 from all the great advances in industrial technology and electronic technology that makes things much easier to do. You know, you know, you don't have to lift Bricks. You've got forklifts. You don't have to you know, there's machinery and equipment and but increasingly so, if you don't have to think to have an opinion, Then your opinion can be removed from reality. And and easy money, the promise of easy money is fundamentally this disconnect between we have to do work And it might be hard in order to create great things and to have great things. Right? Like, if nobody is doing any work, your money is not gonna buy anything. And so if the government pays everybody to not work, Nothing's gonna be produced, and you can't buy anything when nothing is produced no matter how much fiat money you have printed. That's really this danger. And and the fact that people are naive to it, and aren't able to call it out because The short term temptation of receiving money from the government is such a great temptation. And and and there's also the game theory. Like, if I don't take the money, they're just gonna give it to somebody else who's not gonna work. So everyone's kind of it's this broken game. It's this tragedy of the commons where the money is creating the tragedy. And this is why Bitcoin is so important.
And and we may have to go through, you know, these hyperinflationary periods for these fiat currencies even in the west For people to say that was a scam. That was, you know, that didn't work. Not not working and getting money and thinking that I'm gonna get something someone else's work In exchange for doing no work myself. So this, you know, the work ethic, has to be reinstated stated and regrown. And it's not to say that nobody has it, but it's been a very confusing time to be alive between fiat money, which is money that's generated with no work, And real advances in productivity, which is more work done with less work and with done with energy. The fix it and and, you know, Bitcoin really aligns these things because Industrial technology uses energy to do work, so there's a recognition that the energy produces work.
And that you need energy. Again, another thing that Fiat has tried to mask away. Oh, we don't need gasoline. We don't need petrol. We don't need fossil fuels. Well, that's, Believe me, that's where all the work that you're getting done for for cheap, is coming from, and Bitcoin says the money is hard to produce as well. And what makes it hard to produce is it requires energy. It requires work to produce too, time and energy. So everything in the civilization that's powered by Bitcoin money Is aligned, right, with reality. Work. Work takes work to do. Productivity requires work. Money takes work To create. Money takes work. To spend, all of these things are actually advantages rather than disadvantages.
They may look on the surface. It's like, oh, you can't control the money supply. The money has got an expense associated with it to move. It takes time to move it. Yes. That's that makes the money just like anything else that's real in the in the real world. It takes real work to do. It costs energy to do to do it, And and energy is the real basic unit of account that comes that comes down to this. The next article I'm working on is trying is really trying to connect Bitcoin to work and seeing that human labor is very specialized.
It it's a special kind of work. A surgeon does surgical work. You and I don't know how to do surgical work no matter how hard we try, and and the surgeon needs the work of surgical instrument creators, which is a of work with the surgeon doesn't know how to do themselves. So there's all these human human work is so much broader than when we look at the world of energy and say, well, you know, there's Kinetic energy and potential energy and electric energy, you know, like 5 or 6 kinds of energy that we talk. But in human energy, there's Millions and millions of different types of human energy, and you need to access them all. And the only way to access them all to convert one form of energy, the kind you can expend. I'm a writer, so I I can produce writing energy, thinking energy, or philosophical energy.
And I need to exchange that for the surgeon's energy, and he needs to exchange that For the and it's money that does that. Money is the motive power that converts my kind of energy into somebody else's kind of energy that I need. And so our civilization can only exist through money, and we need it to be able to act as a converter. And, and again, This is where something like Bitcoin who that is energy based money really Shines and Shines is an example of the fact that money is not arbitrary. It's a measure of our work. It's a measure of our time, and and Bitcoin is a measure of work and time.
[00:28:05] Unknown:
Remarkably. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And and how do you feel like obviously, on the horizon, we've got CBDC, central bank digital currencies for folks listening. You know, in that, obviously, a whole can of worms, you know, in thinking of behavior modification, surveillance privacy, how to get people to, you know, think you're doing them a favor by giving them if they're gonna get some UBI on their the programmable, you know, CBDCs. And so I think that's gonna take it even a step twofold. This CBDCs. I think you're gonna take it a step further with the not working and getting something, and then, we've obviously got machines that are starting to do more thinking for us, all the AIs out there, which are exciting. Right? But they're also I think they're making us a little soggy, in our Yeah. Intellectual capabilities. I think they're fun tools, but they can also be too crutchy. Like, I know my children right now. You know?
That's what they use to write papers. My son's like, hey, mom. Check this out. And I'm like, so which Did you use chat gpt or a different one for this? And he's like, how'd you know? And I'm like, because this is not you, buddy. Like, I know. You know? But, like Yeah. We've got a whole generation of, people who can go put in 5, 10, 15, 20 words and then get a paper written, you know, that's decent enough that they can go in and do some editing. And so Yeah. What do you think about these 2 wonderful technologies? You know, but how are they gonna have long term implications on our our ability to think and speak up for ourselves, which will also push away the authoritarianism of a centralized
[00:29:54] Unknown:
authority? Yeah. It's a really tough question because it we have Multiple disruptive technologies playing out simultaneously. Mhmm. And so the interplay between them, you know, it's easy to say, well, here's the pros of The pros and cons of 1 technology. Right? And I think you've kind of nailed it with, like, with large language models. The pro is they can construct Grammatically correct, reasonably accurate essays upon an instruction, you know, a single line prompt. The con is, in a sense, the same thing. It they remove the requirement for Problem solving from the individual.
Alright? And and it's the same as like, well, any tool that you have that does work for you, You can say, well, it makes you physically weaker because you didn't have to do the physical work. And so, well, yes and no. Right? Like, we're able to do things with industrial technology No amount of human labor could ever do. No. We couldn't build a 60 story skyscraper with slaves, you know, mindlessly the work we need we need the equipment. We haven't figured out what it is that we can do with large language models or other AI things That people can't do yet, and we're still in the very earliest days. Right? Like like the earliest pieces of technology were just, like, Slightly better, except not requiring the human to do the work, letting something else do the work. So it may be that there are Skyscrapers of intellectual ability that can be constructed with AI that we are not able to construct without the benefit of AI.
At the same time, we have to be careful that, you know and this is an individual thing. It's not it's not something you can control for the whole universe, That you actually become lazy and stop using your mind. And I I do think that's a danger, whether it's for the younger generation or, you know, I I see I see people people are constantly pitching me on Ways to produce content with a, you know, with something that they've programmed and programmed. Right? Told Chad GPT to program within itself And and like you with your son's essay, I, like, I I read the 1st paragraph, and I'm like, okay, this was cons this this is not interesting. It was constructed with ChatGPT. It It's a very useful tool for helping you create a better outline than you could on your own.
It may be helpful in quite a few other things. It it's A good thesaurus. It's a good rewriter. It's a good proofreader. Like, it does a lot of things that are handy and accelerate your productivity, but it doesn't come up with original ideas and Right. And original insights, and that's that's what we need to dedicate our Thoughtfulness too. It's also an you know, it's a criticism of the education system that the assignments are assignments that don't require you to think original thoughts, And so it's easy to use ChatGPT to fulfill the requirements of the assignment, which are just regurgitate information that exists somewhere else an organized and grammatically correct manner. It's important to be able to do that, but it's not really adding a lot of value to our civilization at this point in time.
So we are confronted, you know, and that's just one of these disruptive technologies that we discussed. Right? We've got we've got Bitcoin. We've got CBDCs. We we've got all of the digital Internet technologies that continue to eat the world. So it's a very uncertain time. What what the future really looks like It's a little bit hard to predict. I think there's there's 2 broad polar opposites of the future. There's one where this Bitcoin breakthrough, This decentralized breakthrough, this independence breakthrough succeeds, and succeeds for a large portion of the world's population. And so I think in that case, you have This renaissance of the human spirit, this renaissance of the human experience, right, of just like what it means to be Human and alive and to, you know, and to not experience the world in exactly the same way as everybody else does, like a robot that's eating the same sandwich at the same time and watching the Same TV show that's like a a mass market consumer, but is actually an individual consumer of the things that one finds truly valuable and one charts their own path through this world.
And then and then you've got this other view, which is a very homogenized view of the world where, you know, everyone Everyone takes their share of what's produced by the centrally decided AI overlord, and, and who knows what that's like? It doesn't feel like a very experience. I mean, I think I'd rather die than have to live in that state, but I might not know that I'd rather die If I was living in that state, I might be so drugged and, you know, and and idle and unthinking That I wouldn't know it, and that that I think would be kind of this big tragedy for this whole planet if humans evolved on it and humans got to be here on it somehow And then just became inhuman, idle, fat, lazy, bored, unthinking creatures, You know, almost like plants, where there's so much beauty and potential in each and every single human being. And, I mean, that for me is the message that I feel Bitcoin delivered to me. It's like Everyone needs to find out who their own true self really is and be that person and find a way to be that person as much as they possibly can Through their lives, and that's and that's not easy. Right? Like, if someone else telling you what you need to be and it's the same as everybody else needs to be, that's an easy path, But it's also not rewarding, and it's not rewarding in the spiritual sense.
[00:35:25] Unknown:
Yeah. It's definitely not rewarding in the spiritual sense. Well, I think about, you know, in order for us to really develop into who we are individually in our own unique one self that There's never gonna be anybody like a Tomer or a Val ever again. It's just us now here forever. And, like, if we don't have, something to push against a little bit. Like, you're gonna just we're gonna be puddles, You know, if everything's given to us, if everything's too easy, you know, we think about our parenting styles. Right? You and I are both parents, and there's no one right or wrong way to parent. But If our kids don't have the opportunity to feel uncomfortable and feels like, woah, I'm stretching, they're not gonna have the chance to grow.
Right? And I think as humans, our human spirits, even though it's like, oh, this is kinda scary, it's like, I don't think we would last as a species with everything being too easy and not something to push up against. I think we would go crazy. I think most of us would. And and I think, obviously, our food supply, our media, The thing our consumption model currently is junk food. It's quick dopamine hits. It's not nourishing. It's not nutrient dense, you know, mentally, physically, or spiritually. And so I think by design, the system wants to keep us not in a state where we wanna push against the system, you know, and and it's it's it's a tough one, you know, because none of us wanna feel all this, it's so painful, but it's like, if we don't have that that push something to push on, we're gonna be to we're not gonna grow into these strong beings, these resilient creatures. You know? And so and and we won't be able to fully express ourselves because we're too afraid or we're too tired or too weak or too collapsed. Yeah.
You know what I mean?
[00:37:22] Unknown:
That's why I think the you know, when when you have an expectation of an easy life that that corrupts your your soul In making in making you unwilling and unable to confront challenges and to grow through confronting challenges. When you accept that there is gonna be hardship in life, when hardship hits you, you deal with it. Right? I mean, it may hurt. It may be heartbreaking, and there's all sorts of things. But you come out of it a enriched being, through through even the hardships. And you certainly Don't if you're living the easy life where everything is handed to you, you never experience the thrill and the joy of having accomplished something that was hard to do or having overcome A hard obstacle to overcome or being proud of what you've managed to think up and and invent. And so there's a whole Large array of some of the most positive human emotions that are never accessible to you if you don't if you're not confronted with challenge and difficulty Because it's the overcoming of challenge and difficulty that is where you're seeing your true sense of accomplishment, originality, pride come from. But if if instead you just typed something into an AI algorithm and it did all the work, I mean, you might be delusionally proud that you did something there, but But you didn't. Right? You did you didn't really accomplish anything dramatic.
[00:38:44] Unknown:
Yeah. It it's definitely it's I think it's something to be on the just to keep it on the radar of consciousness with with our younger generations and then the next younger generations that are gonna come up. You know? It's, You know, we always think about, you know, our I didn't get to know my grandfather. He died before I was born, but, you know, I think about the grandfathers and the generations that were ahead of us, and it's like they're always like, oh, this younger generation has got it so easy. They don't know and blah blah blah. And I feel like It's true in every generation, but it's like there's there's an exponential component to what we're dealing with right now with how quick Right. It is to make things so ridiculously easy that it's like, why bought I don't have to leave my house and grocery shop. They'll bring me Instacart. I don't have to prepare food. I just put it in the microwave for 2 seconds or every little thing that takes away from us having to do this work is like Yeah. Okay.
If you're saving all that time, that's kickass. Are you choosing to be creative and productive with all of that saved time, or are you just creating more consumption of, I'm sitting around watching Netflix or playing video games or Yeah. Smoking weed and not paying attention. You know what I mean? And it's, like, it's great to save that time if you're gonna translate it into something beautiful and productive and and useful and valuable for society to create a better world. But if you're just, I think, wasting the time to just,
[00:40:19] Unknown:
you know, speak around. Yeah. I I do. I I think it's sad, and and and it's also very tempting. Right? It's like, Oh, I had work to do. Now something can do the work for me. Now I can do nothing instead. And and that's an easy trap fall into because nothing is so easy to figure out how to do. It's not there's nothing and there's something. It's like Something is there's a 1000000,000,000 different things you can do other than nothing. Which one of them are you going to do? How hard are you gonna make it? What actually inspires you? How do you discover what inspires you? I I think this is this is part of the challenge of living like kings, which is what we all kings and queens, which we all do In the west, we have all this free time on our hands that we can watch Netflix or, you know, summon somebody, you know, summon somebody to bring our groceries to us, Some in this, some in that. Like, it it's all summonable, rather than we have to do the work for it. And so Mhmm. If we fall into that trap of not knowing what it is that we really love to do, then we just don't live our life doing what we love to do. It it's a very simple conclusion. And so if you live your life not loving What you do, your life just isn't as satisfying. Right?
And but finding finding and getting the Gusto and and and finding people to help you to find it is hard because many other people are like, well, I'm gonna do nothing instead of Helping other people find out what they wanna do with their lives. Right? It's easy to counsel someone, to guide them to say, Take it easy, chill out, do take the safe and well traveled course, and the government will take care of you either way. There's something really wrong in that instruction because it's not saying seize the day, suck the suck every, you know, Bit of juice out of life that you possibly can. And so people think that life isn't special and extraordinary and magical, but it can be, and it should be. At least that's my take.
[00:42:16] Unknown:
I concur. Seize the day. Carpe diem, baby. That's, that's what I'm trying to do right now every single day. I think, you know, obviously, you're a prolific writer and creator, and somebody who I deeply admire on many levels, Tomer. Yeah. What would you say to young people right now who might be listening to this, who feel a little stuck and are concerned about, oh, AI is gonna take my job. What do I do? I wanna go make a difference. Like, What would you say to somebody who is listening who's who's who could use a little word of of wisdom and and support?
[00:42:53] Unknown:
Yeah. I I think, you know, the most important person to make a difference, whose life you need to make a difference in is yours, and And that's not a selfish statement. It's like there's nobody else to figure out what you love to do because only you experience the Emotion of I love this or I hate this or I kinda like this or it feels right, but it's not it's not perfect. So it's only you who can do that. And And so, you know, and this sounds tropey, but, you know, like, you have to follow your heart, and you have to you have to surrender into what you think You wanna do, and don't worry about what other people say. Right? You know, nobody's got good advice for you. Right? Somebody who tells you go study to be a doctor, well, AI might replace doctors. Someone tells you go, you know, study to be some other boring profession that, you know, if you're passionate about healing people, if you're passionate about understanding medicine and science, then Potentially go and study to be a doctor, but be careful because the education system that will teach you how to be a doctor is filled with All of these. You know, make it simple. Just write a prescription.
Send somebody to a specialist. Like, don't figure out the problem yourself. Don't solve the problem yourself. It's already, you know, just pull pull solutions off the shelf, but if if you can truly be passionate about what you're doing, you will find that Life is satisfying for you, and you're doing something to benefit the world because there are people coming to you for the benefits that you give them, so you get this Satisfaction that you wouldn't get by just being an idle consumer of things. So find your passion. It's okay if it changes. It's okay if you go down particular road and it doesn't satisfy you and you're just and your lesson is, well, that wasn't the thing. That's okay too. You don't have to be right about everything.
Sometimes you'll go down a road And it'll be really, really satisfying, and then suddenly it isn't. And that just means it's time to pivot, that you got everything that you could out of that thing, and you'll find that the next thing that you do, Actually, the things you've learned in your experience of going down the 1st road still come in, come in quite handy. So don't reject every you know, all your previous knowledge when you pivot and change I can change direction, but for god's sake, find a direction and go. Just go.
[00:44:57] Unknown:
I love it. And I I think about Nelson Mandela. He has a quote. He's like, I never lose. I either win or I learn. Mhmm. And it's like, go take a chance. Right? Like, it's okay. And I think a lot of people get caught up in like, oh, am I gonna be good enough? Is am I gonna make $1,000,000 or whatever it is? It's like especially young people. It's like, you know, obviously, things are are tough out there, but it's still like you have to get up every day and, like, do you do something that makes you wanna jump out of bed or makes you wanna pull the covers over your head. You know? There's a big difference. And and money can't buy that energy of wanting to get out of wanting to get out of bed and be like, woo hoo. I get to go do my jam today and be on my mission, whatever your mission might be. It's super duper great great words of wisdom, Tomer.
[00:45:45] Unknown:
Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Don't let yourself feel the other thing I was saying, like, don't don't let yourself Be judged by the standards that society has. Right? Like, are you are you successful in a traditional sense, Like, with respect to money, are you popular? Are you whatever those traditional senses are. Like, find what really matters to you. And then if you do that thing, it doesn't matter that other people Say that's a good thing or that's that's a bad thing. Like, when you find your thing, you're happy you're happy doing your thing, and you can find satisfaction that isn't Envy driven. Right? Like, you know, all of these all of these pushes by everyone to be financially successful is a is a great example Is is one where everyone's looking at everybody else, not saying what do I need, but what do they have, and how do why don't I have as much as they have? So it's How do I measure it? Second handed. Yeah. It's second handed rather than internal, and so look, you know, look within. The answers are the answers are within, And, I wrote I wrote 1 piece that I if if anyone's listening to this and interested in it, it really concretizes this as a short story called The lesson of the golden teacher.
And it's a story about, all sorts of people Being able to look inside themselves and realize what they truly wanna do rather than being told by, their teachers and Society, what they wanna do. It's a if you Google the lesson of the golden teacher, Tomer Shorlette, you'll find it. It's on the DM.
[00:47:12] Unknown:
And and Can I say about what that might also be about? Sure. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. Or, just you know? You know, you and I obviously talk a lot about, plant medicine and healing journeys and and transform transformative, experiences through this, and so, and I know we've we've we share a lot of views on just the just the power the power of the plants, you know, and the power of psychedelics and medicine. What, what do you see on the horizon with a lot of the legalization and everything with, like, mushrooms here in the States. I mean, something's going on in Canada. Right? Can you get mushrooms at, like, a dispensary?
[00:47:58] Unknown:
You can order them online and not have any issues as far as I'm aware. Uh-huh. That's this is not advice for people, and this is just my my awareness of Of things. There's a there's there's websites that will, deliver, deliver them to you, so they're they're available if not quite legal yet. But I I just I think that they're not being pursued in any kind of aggressive way by, by the government. Marijuana is legal everywhere in Canada. The government, you know, the government delivers it to your house here where I live if you deliver it. So it was a government run store and 30 minutes or less, Domino's You can order. Delivery. You can get same day delivery if you're in a hurry, but there's lots of There's dispensaries on every corner. What used to be coffee shops now are, mostly, weed shops, I guess. So it's it's widely available here. Again, I don't know exactly what impact that's having. I think, you know, to your broader question, plant medicine Is is a new path, that integrates, mental health, physical health Mhmm. Nutrition, and and potentially all sorts of other things like, you know, self discovery and and self awareness. And so for some people, this is this has been hugely helpful and eye eye opening or fact revealing or direction Setting. And for other people, it's it potentially has ruined us. You know, people who become, dependent on chemicals or think that chemicals Provide them with the answers to everything always may not may not have a particularly good goal of things. So This is stuff to be responsible with, just like everything else we talk about. Right? There's there's work, there's responsibility, there's self testing, there's learning about yourself and And being truthful to yourself about what experiences you're having if you're having experiences with these types of medicines, plants.
[00:49:57] Unknown:
Totally. And I know we're running on on time here. I wanna ask 2 more questions, like one still about this, but then another will talk about Swan and what's going on at Swan and all the good stuff you guys are up to. But I wanna tag on the end of your your comment, though. I I got to interview, Ione Appelberg. Yep. You know, Ione and we were talking about the white shaman, you know, because he's a medical doctor in talking about plant medicine and how western medicine is starting to at least wake up more, you know, to the understanding that, you know, MDMA or mushrooms are being used for end of life care and trauma, and, you know, obviously, Ibogaine. I did Ibogaine for, addiction. So there's a lot of transformational things that are starting to move forward, and thank goodness that the, You know, some mainstream medicine is starting to to catch on, you know, to these tools. How has What's the biggest that you've had from, you know, your your, adventures, experiences, your healing with medicine with plant medicine or any of these medicines. It doesn't have to be plant. Yeah. I I mean, for me, the fact that I'm a writer now Is
[00:51:13] Unknown:
is something that came from the result. They're like, I was always a writer, but I didn't know it. And plant medicine Showed me that at a time when I thought I was a failed businessman, that I was actually a gifted writer. And, and that was, You know? And that gave me the courage and the wherewithal to
[00:51:31] Unknown:
start writing, like the book that you've got there. The Why Bitcoin book? Anyway Yeah. Have you looking over my shoulder next to Alex and, and Gigi. Yeah. Just gonna
[00:51:42] Unknown:
Yeah. And And it it was amazing. Like, I went through my whole life writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, you know, business memos and this and that and the other Presentations, business cases, philosophical diatribes, but doing it as a businessman. And, and then when my business career Derailed in in part because of well, for lots of reasons, all all these kind of fiat and lockdown reasons. I started doing a little bit of writing, and I started reflecting on it while, while under the influence of some of this plant medicine, and it just gave me this A realization of the talent that I actually had that I could then dedicate, my energy to. And so mixing my energy and my talent together, Things things are working out, and they're not working out by the success measures that I would have had of myself as a businessman.
Mhmm. I'm not getting lots of options in a company. I'm not the president of a company. Like, these were these were lofty goals as a businessman, but I'm very satisfied as a content creator, a creative individual, who who is bringing ideas to people and helping share ideas and doing so in a way through a craft of communication. So I'm I'm judging myself by different standards on on a different talent that I have, and it feels actually a lot more natural. It's not that it doesn't come with its own pains. Right? It's like Being a very successful businessman was very rewarding financially compared to being a writer, but there's a different reward system here, and And I can't bring myself to being a pure businessman ever again. I don't think. It's just it's no long I've shed that part of me. It's no longer who I am. And yet I used to think that, like, I would introduce myself with my job title after afterwards for for the better part of a decade. So that's
[00:53:33] Unknown:
That's one example there. I love it. Well, it sounds like, you know, when we have an identity shift, you know, and we wanna resonate with, you know, this new identity, right, or this, you know, evolved identity. You know, it makes it easier to step in and take risks and do the things that might seem a little intimidating. You know? I always think about, like, you know, when I'm when I'm just Val, I'm like, oh, I'm Val. You know? But if I'm Valerie, the vibe goddess on stage, and I'm DJing. I get to step into that persona and deliver an experience and connect with the audience in a way that Mhmm.
Val could, but it wouldn't be quite as Right. Lit up. You know? And so there's a permission slip there. Yeah. You know, once you say, hey. I'm now I'm a writer or I was a CEO or I was a founder or whatever it is Yeah. That this this iteration of your identity. Evolution will will and, you know, go on. You it's like, then you can wear it. It's like a cloak. You know? And you're like, do do do. Here I go. You know? And so you get to deliver more potent results. And I think, you know, psychedelics and plant medicine, and they they take away those inhibitions and the fear and the old programming that says, who are you to be a writer or who are you to be a DJ or who are you? You know? And it's like, I'm Tomer. I'm Vat, you know, and so I think there's something really powerful to be said as as, you know, collaborators.
Like, to me, they're collaborators on our transformational journey. You know? You don't wanna use them all the time, but I think it certainly impacted who I am and how I how I am on planet Earth here. So I love it. Yeah. K. So okay. So next question. I know we gotta hustle. Oh god. Yeah. Wait. Super sorry. It's 2 do you have to do you have 2 minute stop? I I yeah. I do I do have to stop in 2 minutes. So Okay. Cool. Let's let's make it quick. Okay. So 22 okay. Swan Bitcoin. What's happening with Swan? How can people get ahold of you over there? And, you know, a closing thought for for for the audience here. You know,
[00:55:49] Unknown:
I I I always feel a little bit uncomfortable plugging a company, but because I'm not a businessman anymore, but I I think I think Swan is, in a sense, more than a company. It's part it's part of the mission of Bitcoin, and and really the mission of the company is do what's right for Bitcoin and for Bitcoiners And and work hard at that, you know? And so it's like and and working hard is we I'll just tie in all the stuff that we we were talking about before in this In this podcast, working hard isn't easy. This is it's almost a different you know, the definition of hard is not easy, and and and There's a lot that needs to be done. Right? Bitcoin doesn't come to us as a in a finished state fully adopted.
There's a lot of work that needs to be done down a lot of different paths, and I'm really excited Swan is taking on as many of the things as it can possibly Get under its belt and bringing together mission driven people to help succeed with this with this mission. So I'm I'm just like, almost every single day, that I'm Interacting with my colleagues over there. Really, really thrilled, to be part of it because this is something that I wanted more than anything else. I didn't wanna be a businessman. I wanted to work in Bitcoin, and, I thought that was through, you know, bringing certain business skills of mine, but I'm I'm getting to work in Bitcoin in this philosophical Nature by producing content and collaborating with colleagues who are deeply involved in building things in Bitcoin, and, And it's thrilling. There's just an I don't wanna say endless, but there's a long pipeline of things that are being worked on and delivered by the company, And, and they're all they're all, super super exciting and and on mission. Right? We're not resisting or fighting The direction of Bitcoin, its decentralized nature, its random and chaotic growth patterns, and just Surrendering and going with the flow, like, it's is just is tremendous. So it's really nice to be able to, ride this wave.
[00:57:46] Unknown:
Yeah. I love it. And I know Swan is kicking so much booty. You guys are I love it. I'm so grateful that all the work you're all out there doing, all the education and just commitment to the mission. It's a big deal. You know? And I'm really, really grateful to get to, you know, have gotten to go to Pacific Bitcoin a couple of times. Oh my gosh. What an honor, and I can't wait to go again and keep supporting you guys. So, It's it's great stuff. Alright, Tomer. Where can everybody find you?
[00:58:18] Unknown:
Well, swan.com/blog is where my latest articles are. I tend to do, Twitter spaces. So if you follow me on Twitter, I, you know, I tend to tweet I try to tweet once a day just some thought about Bitcoin. So at Toomer Strohite on, on Twitter. There you go. You've got it up on the screen. That's probably the best place to follow me And keep keep tabs on what I'm up to. I'll try to keep every everyone up to date on that. Yay. Alright. Final word. Be yourself. Yes.
[00:58:50] Unknown:
Everyone else is speaking. Yeah. I love it. So good. So good to see you, my friend. I miss you, and I'm grateful for you. And it's thankful Thursday, so I'm thankful for Tomar coming on the show here and, doing these live stream. Yeah. Thank you so much. And, Yeah. Everybody, go check out Tomer Strollite on, X, Twitter, and Check out Swan if you guys wanna get some Bitcoin and dollar cost in or get your IRA set up. Swan's gonna help you out. And, Until next time, my friends, stay cool, and thanks for tuning in to Bitcoin for Peace. And peace, love, and warm aloha. Peace.
Thank you so much, Tomer.
Introduction of Tomer Strollite and the topic of Bitcoin for Peace
Tomer explains the inspiration behind his article on Bitcoin reuniting a divided world
Discussion on the corrupt marriage of money and the state and how Bitcoin can fix it
The potential impact of Bitcoin on fair and transparent elections
The challenges and opportunities of AI and CBDCs
Advice for young people feeling stuck and concerned about the future
The guest talks about the pressure to be financially successful and the importance of looking within oneself for fulfillment.
The guest mentions a short story he wrote called 'The Lesson of the Golden Teacher' that emphasizes the importance of self-discovery and following one's true desires.
The guest discusses the potential benefits and risks of plant medicine, particularly in relation to mental and physical health.
The guest talks about the integration of plant medicine with other aspects of well-being, such as nutrition and self-awareness.
The guest shares his personal experience of how plant medicine helped him discover his talent and passion for writing.
The guest discusses the mission of Swan Bitcoin and its commitment to doing what's right for Bitcoin and Bitcoiners.
