Keynesian economics runs the world without a doubt. And I believe that is single-handedly causing the downfall of the world's economy. Eventually we will move into a post-fiat time but that transition for many will not be easy. Many people don't realize the insidious nature of Keynesian thought.
BTC Weekly Close: $26,221
Block height at time of recording 809,236
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[00:00:00]
McIntosh:
Hey, SatStackers. Today is September 24th, and this is episode 132 of generation Bitcoin. I'm your host, Macintosh. And today's episode is on the Keynesian fallacy. Alright. Let's do this market update. The market closed a couple hours ago at $26,221, which is down, like, $300 from the week before. Or, excuse me, from Thursday when we did our last episode. What that means is that we are now flirting again with this bottom level. I told y'all, I think Thursday. Of course, the end of the month is coming. We're 6 6, 7 days off,
[00:01:12] Unknown:
I guess, from October 1st. So we will be closing a month on Saturday of this week. And I have told you that historically,
[00:01:25] McIntosh:
except 2 months, 2 times in Bitcoin's life, it has gone down in September. I think that's kind of a general trend in the stock market overall. There's different theories about that. The brokers come back from summer kind of vacation, whatever. They kind of rearrange their portfolios, sell off stocks. I I don't know. I don't know how much credence I give to that.
[00:01:52] Unknown:
But the reality is that a number of times
[00:01:57] McIntosh:
in the past, Bitcoin has gone down. So we are a $1,000 or so off of that level, meaning, you know, I think 25,000 is what it opened up the month that so we're a ways off. So I may be incorrect, which is fine. I make mistakes, But we will see, we're flirting with that one of those levels right now, and we had a weekly close below it really,
[00:02:22] Unknown:
or at least right on it.
[00:02:25] McIntosh:
So it's it's possible still, certainly. I'm not gonna say that it's 100% going to happen. I do not know. No real excitement this week. This week was actually the rest of the week was kind of boring. There's no news. There's one news item, actually. We'll discuss that when we get to the news section. But that's okay. That's this time of year, it's quite typical. Don't worry about it. Just keep stacking sats. As we always say, you don't worry about market price, really. You just keep stacking sats. The only thing that $25,000 bitcoin would mean is that we can buy some sats for just a tiny bit cheaper.
So block height at time of recording is 809,236
[00:03:15] Unknown:
block. The mempool is full as it has been.
[00:03:19] McIntosh:
Our difficulty adjustment looking on October 3rd, so just over a week away. 1.42%. So a down. So now that adjustment is looking a little closer to 0 basically. Our sats per v byte wow.
[00:03:41] Unknown:
Am I reading this correctly? No. I'm not.
[00:03:45] McIntosh:
Sorry. Saw a really big number. I was incorrect. The average is 22 sats per vbyte. So still high. We've certainly seen lower even just a couple weeks ago, certainly. Remember it was 12 not too long ago. 10, 12, 8, something like that. But the mempool is full. People are bidding it up. And I don't know. We'll see. Matt Odell and Marty, Bent have a bet going on about whether the mempool is going to clear or not. I do not remember which one is on which side of the bet. I think Matt says that it will not clear by the end of the year, by the end of December 31st. I believe he's actually probably gonna be correct. We we may not see an empty MIM pool until the next bear market, which would be a long way off.
That would be interesting, even though we're in a bear market. They say that the mempool, a lot of the transactions are being used by ordinals. I don't understand that, to be honest. I know that in the ordinals community, there's a big kerfuffle going on. Something about they're having to rearrange the way that they number the sats, and it's messing everything up. And I have no idea. I don't care. We've discussed ordinals to the extent that I'm going to On this podcast, not really a fan. It's an open protocol. They're allowed to do that. I eventually think they will eject themselves from the ecosystem, to be honest, because I think it will be unviable in the long term.
And that's fine. I don't need ordinals to make a profit when I mine. From here, we're gonna jump into the topic. I prerecorded the topic earlier this week. I've had some extra time. My wife has been out of town. It's giving me extra recording opportunities. I've actually recorded 2 episodes. So this one and then another one, which I'm not sure if it will be the next one or not. We will see. So this one, to be honest, is a little I don't wanna say dark, but it's one of these episodes where we're dealing with a topic that's quite frankly, extremely important.
And also, it can be a maybe a bit depressing. So be encouraged. In fact, the next episode that I've already recorded was very much upbeat. I don't wanna say it's the flip side of this, but Bitcoin is the answer to what we're fixing to talk about. Bitcoin is a sound store of value. It's a form of sound money. It, in my opinion, it will eventually be a global reserve currency. It will be the global reserve currency. It will be how come countries conduct trade between each other, and it will level the playing field. Countries will have to change what they're doing, and this is a good thing. So, anyways, take note of that as you listen to this, but listen to this because this and I hate it when I say this, but sometimes I feel like I have to. This may be one of the most important podcasts that I ever record.
I don't wanna be overly dramatic. I'm I'm trying very desperately not to be. But take a listen, and I'll see you at the end. Alright. I wanna get on in today's topic. This has been on my mind lately. Maybe it even started creeping out on the last recording towards the end, but I feel like this is important enough. And maybe since the last time I really talked about this directly, maybe things have solidified a little bit in my my mind. In terms of how as Bitcoiners we
[00:07:30] Unknown:
interact with the world, really, our world view, if you wanna call it that. And actually, I think that's a really good way to put it. Because if you have the wrong world view, you can have wrong results. And unfortunately, I hear people in the Bitcoin space, people who who have some prominence even, who speak things that I don't I wonder where they're coming from. So back in December of last year, 2022, I started a series that lasted for 6 episodes. It was episodes 84 through 89
[00:08:17] McIntosh:
of this podcast. So you could go back and take a listen to them if you would like. I would encourage you to do so, to be honest, if you have not, because I'm not going to get into all the ins and outs, the details of Austrian versus Keynesian economics. But ladies and gentlemen, listen to me and listen to me well. The people who are in power in this world, the central bankers who control monetary policy, people like Jerome Powell, Janet Yellen, These fools,
[00:08:49] Unknown:
and I mean exactly what I said. I don't use that word lightly. Because they're either fools or they're power mad, or both. Because
[00:09:01] McIntosh:
they are leading, well in that case, the United States to a path of destruction. We are at 33 $1,000,000,000,000 $33,000,000,000,000 in debt, which is an astonishingly high figure. There's no chance that we will ever pay this back without devaluing the dollar much quicker than it's been devalued over the last 93 years, which I think this, yes. No. I can't do math. It's 93%
[00:09:37] Unknown:
since 1913.
[00:09:40] McIntosh:
That's a huge amount. The purchasing power of the dollar has gone down that much. Oh, you know what happened in 1913? The Federal Reserve was was created. I do not think those two things are unrelated. So the goal of the federal reserve is basically to, you know, ensure the stability of the United States economy. And it's basically through good luck and then becoming the world's global reserve currency in the late in the, what, mid midish forties, 19 forties, post World War 2, Bretton Woods agreement, New Hampshire. Nice place if you've ever been there.
That is the only reason that we have made it as long as we have.
[00:10:25] Unknown:
That time is coming to an end. One way or the other, the dollar will no longer be the world's global reserve currency.
[00:10:34] McIntosh:
And these people who think they can manipulate the economy and keep it in balance forever are wrong, and history proves them wrong over and over again. And the deeper I go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, so to speak, the tireder I get of this. I only have one life to spend. I don't have more than that. And one thing that's become very clear to me over the last few years is that I will be spending a good deal of that time doing what I can. And I'm not equating myself to Paul Revere when I say this, but to be like Paul Revere, running to sound the alarm saying the British are coming in his case.
Sorry, Brits. But in I but in this case, we are headed for a global calamity. And I don't I don't I don't wanna be pessimistic. I don't wanna be alarmist, but I don't see how else this happens. You've got Japan, China, United States, European countries, virtually every country well, certainly all of those. I bet every one of the big 20, g 20 is their so called top industrialized countries in the world, are immensely in debt. What happens when that collapses? What happens when China collapses because they can no longer prop up the the the renminbi?
What happens to Japan when when they cannot support their 200 plus percent debt on on the, Japanese yen? What happens to the EU when they're so in debt that they can't continue? In the United States, we have a program called Social Security. Basically, you invest in it your entire life, and then at the end, you're supposed to be receive money back from the government. Now first of all, it's a terrible investing plan. You look at the returns on investment, and it stinks. Supposedly, they feel like they have to do this because people won't do it on their own. And maybe they're correct in that,
[00:12:56] Unknown:
but it's a terrible system. And because our birth rate is going down and because of the way that the system is set up,
[00:13:09] McIntosh:
we've known for a long time, the end of this system is coming. It will not be sustainable. And that end is in sight. It will happen before I retire. So I will have put in money into this sum 1,000 and 1,000 of tens of 1,000 of dollars.
[00:13:31] Unknown:
I don't know how much. An astonishing amount of money over my lifetime.
[00:13:38] McIntosh:
But there's no way I will get one what I'm even supposed to get, which is not considering what I put in, it's not that much. I would I would have done a lot better taking that money and putting it in a stock, mutual fund index, whatever they call it. Not that I'm saying you should do that, but I mean, it's it's astounding how poorly managed that system is. And yet, because of the way that it's set up, it will end. How is that going to help the situation? And, like, right now, in France, they just lowered the retirement a or raise the retirement age. Similar system. Right? You go to whatever age and then you retire and you're gonna get your or what I maybe that's Spanish. I don't know. Anyways, that may not even be correct. I apologize to whoever I just offended.
I'm sorry. And so they were literally rioting about this. I don't know if it actually passed or not. I think it did though. I think it was a done deal. So they're screaming because they're raising the retirement age because they can't do well, what happens when there is no retirement? What happens when they raise that age to to 80 And and basically people can't even function at that point because they've worked for 65 years. What kind of system is that? Let me circle back though, before I get too much off track. As a Bitcoiner, you need to understand the difference between Keynesian economics and Austrian economics.
You need to understand and I think I did a pretty good job of breaking this down. You need to understand sound money versus whatever they call this in Keynesian circles, stable money or, or whatever. Sound money is Bitcoin. Sound money was gold, although gold could be manipulated. And it was, it was de based. They would mix things in with it, or they would shave gold off of the gold pieces essentially so that it can be manipulated. Bitcoin cannot because it's ruled by a set of protocols, a set of programmatic rules that say, when I send this to you, it, it gets there. You can't double spend that. You can't shave any bit of that off. It that's the transaction.
So the government cannot manipulate that money supply in a way that's not possible any other way. Keynesian economics says, well, credit's great. GDP, the gross domestic product is the most important metric. It's insanity. Basically, they peg everything on GDP. If your GDP is not growing, well then you're failing. Well, how do we do that? Oh, we print more money. Well, that makes more debt. Well, debt's not a problem. We'll print more money. I mean, their logic is just mind boggling. And yet these people have run this system for a 100 years. Well, Keynes, John Maynard Keynes, the creator of the system, he's not that he or he was he's died.
So he was born in 18/83. He died in 1946. Oh, look. He probably got to see the Bretton Woods agreement. I wonder if he was happy about that. So, actually, he would have been old enough. I'm not sure exactly when his ideas started becoming prominent, but it was very early in that mix. I'll I know that. It was prior to, it was certainly prior to World War 2. Probably right around the time of the start of World War 2, I wanna say. It's important to know your enemy, and let me tell you, this is the enemy. And as I say over and over and over and over and unlike Matt O'Dell, and I believe him when he says this, he says, stay humble, humble, stack sats. He has said that that's because he's reminding himself. I'm not reminding myself.
I got this drilled into my head. This now staying humble and stacking sats probably is something I need to remind myself of. But successio plebis, this saying that I post on Twitter, and I've said on here before, I've done an entire episode about it. We do not need their systems. And your job as a Bitcoiner is essentially to figure out how you can get out of that system.
[00:18:11] Unknown:
And it may take you a decade. But do you have a better use of your time? Don't buy into
[00:18:20] McIntosh:
this fallacy that at the end of your life, you don't have to have anything to pass on to your children. Don't buy into the fallacy that a government has to operate in debt in order to operate. Don't buy into these lies. I guess one of the things that really got me thinking about this was talking to, Jimmy, Jimmy Song, about his book, which we did the interview a couple weeks ago or week or well, I don't know. Time gets all messed up. Week and a half, whatever it was. And he talks about the way that this fiat, which you can just tie right into Keynesian economics. This fiat mindset infects so many things.
Things that I didn't even think about are I mean, the economic stuff. Yes. I understood. Some of the other stuff I didn't. I don't have the book here with me, but 31 chapters, 31 different things that Fiat corrupts. And it all ties back to this Keynesian economics. This idea that debt doesn't matter. This idea that we have to have a GDP that is continually rising. This idea that the government can run our economies. You don't know the single thing about economics. If you think that a government can run an economies. Economies are complex. You cannot tweak a little thing here, raise the interest rate there, do this, do that, and not expect backlash.
But, you know, Jerome Powell just got up a couple days ago and said, yeah, we're gonna, like, we think we're good. We're gonna hold it, and then we're probably gonna raise a little bit towards the end of the year, in the next year. I don't know. We're gonna have a recession in 2027. We're gonna go out back after we get done, print some more money. I'm gonna call up Janet. You know, it's it's insanity. Economies have run for centuries, for centuries, for 1000 of years,
[00:20:21] Unknown:
ever since, the guy in Turkey. Oh, man. The first guy that created gold coinage. You know, we've been using sound money as a basis for a sound economy,
[00:20:42] McIntosh:
and people have flourished. We've had civilizations that have grown and so on and so forth. And as far as I can tell right now, the entire world's fixing to be in a really big mess. And I know this sounds really gloomy, but in my opinion, I'm I'm gonna say this out loud, and I I don't like saying it. I'm very uncomfortable with this, but I also think it's true. One of the ways out for countries, this is is war. Well, we'll just go start a war. I think there are nations, and I'm not gonna say which and it's maybe not even the ones that you're thinking,
[00:21:25] Unknown:
but they have prospered based on war. I don't want that. I don't. I don't want it for me. I don't want it for my children.
[00:21:37] McIntosh:
I don't want it for anybody. And I know that we can have a philosophical discussion. Are there times that we should we should fight? Well, maybe. Yes. But I think a lot of wars are over money. You can very easily make the argument about the war in Europe, World War 2, that part of it, being caused because Germany was crushed after World War 1 under debt. We talk about the Weimer Reiner Weimer I may the Weimer maybe it is Weimer Reiner Republic or whatever, where they had I mean, it was hyperinflation. This is where we get the images of wheelbarrows, literal wheelbarrows of money. And that led directly into the rise of Adolf Hitler, which of course led directly into World War 2.
[00:22:33] Unknown:
If that had not been the case, if they were not crushed under this debt
[00:22:41] McIntosh:
and experienced this hyperinflation of the German mark, then I don't think World War 2 would have happened. I don't think Adolf would have ever come to power. I think that millions of people would still be alive. Well, not at this point, but would have lived because of that. That's just a simple example. So this is super important to me. So if I ever sound like I'm just going on and on and maybe getting a little upset, this is important. It is super important to me that everybody in the country have access to the same money. The same sound money. In the United States, there are people who benefit far greater from the US money printing than other people. And the people who do are a very small percent. It's called the Cantillon effect.
It's based on their proximity to that money printer, essentially. They leverage that and they gain they make immense gains from that. But the poor guy out there doing minimum wage job, whose money is getting deflated or inflated away, they don't, they don't benefit because they don't have investments in stocks and bonds. And, well, these days you probably shouldn't be investing in bonds, but real estate and these kinds the things that benefit from that money printing. That is not fair. That is not fair and it can be solved. Problem solved by moving to a sound money system.
In countries like El Salvador, if I am correct, we will see people flourish based on
[00:24:29] Unknown:
a sound money. A money supply that doesn't, you know, deflate 50% overnight. And after 2 years, it sure sounds like the people in El Salvador are embracing Bitcoin. It's not 100%, but they are happy and they are, I, it sounds to me like they're doing better. As the country prospers, which I believe that they will, those people will prosper.
[00:25:04] McIntosh:
So you could call El Salvador a grand experiment in Austrian economics, except we've got many examples prior to them. So again, going back to what I said. Successio plevis. You can remove yourself from this system. It is entangling. I understand. But it can be done. We are seeing examples of this. People who are on a Bitcoin standard. People who get their job pay in Bitcoin. People who buy stuff in Bitcoin. People who interact with the majority of people in Bitcoin. And there are tools and systems that are being built so that you can convert your Bitcoin to, the US dollar.
[00:25:50] Unknown:
For example, your local currency,
[00:25:53] McIntosh:
so that you can interact with those who don't have Bitcoin or choose not to invest in Bitcoin or that kind of thing. So it is possible, and it's going to become more and more possible over the next few years. So start your preparations. Going back to what I was talking about at the very start though.
[00:26:14] Unknown:
Please be careful listening to people in this space. We are not all the same. And I'm not saying they're bad people, but when you start thinking with a Keynesian economics mindset.
[00:26:30] McIntosh:
I mean, these people are talking like, like people, like these economists, these, these government officials,
[00:26:37] Unknown:
like they know what they're doing and they don't. They're like kids just wandering around
[00:26:45] McIntosh:
acting. They don't know what they're doing. They're not controlling our economy. Well, we gotta get the unemployment rate down. Boy, when we get our unemployment rate down, we'll be in or up. Excuse me. They're mad because the unemployment rate of the United States quote refuse well, it's only like 3.8% or something. Okay. So to to lower inflation, we have to raise unemployment. I mean, what kind of logic is this? Well, we gotta do that so we have a better GDP. Literally all goes back to GDP with these Keynesians.
[00:27:30] Unknown:
Oh, deflation? Terribly bad idea. Now this is something I haven't researched very deeply. I've heard some I've heard some
[00:27:40] McIntosh:
discussion about it. I've heard some podcast about it. I've heard some from people who have thought about it. I've got a book on my list, this kind of thing. So I will say this before I say what I'm fixing to say, but think about this intuitively. When I was 12 years old, our family bought the first computer that we owned. And that computer was a decent machine for the time. It probably cost around $1,000 Well, now you can buy a machine that's dramatically faster than that machine, for for $20 if you want to buy a Raspberry Pi and kind of cobble it together. You can buy one that's orders of magnitude times 10 or whatever faster if you actually spend that $1,000.
But why are we so worried about deflation? Why if we can produce food better and we can lower our costs to do that, why is that a bad thing? Oh, because it harvests the GDP. Because, you know,
[00:28:49] Unknown:
I don't know. That's basically their argument. And it's ridiculous. We should, as a society,
[00:29:01] McIntosh:
we should be moving forwards in leaps and bounds. We should have abundant power. Power is the source of civilization. Think about it. We have we should have cheap power. And there's many reasons why that is not the case. But a lot of it is governmental mismanagement. A lot of it is a lack of a free market. And again, governmental control and, and manipulation of these things are it's all right down the Keynesian's lane. So it's like they're doing the very things to, to harm our economy, then saying that they're going to manipulate these interest rates and whatever to keep everything in check while we watch unemployment explode upward, while we watch our food prices explode upward, while we get these Paul Krugman, I'll just call him out. Not that he knows who I am one bit. He's a big economist.
He's a New York Times opinion columnist. So, you know, he's got a big voice. He goes the other day, well, inflation is how did he word it? I retweeted it. He made it seem to be a big deal that inflation was down just a tiny bit. So like, we went from like 5.8% down to 5.3. Oh, yay. We're winning and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, you do understand that means that year over year that your 5 your $100 bill loses 5 and a half dollars in value. Don't you? I mean, you're this big shot economist.
[00:30:42] Unknown:
Now, I don't think he has to worry about money, so it doesn't impact him.
[00:30:48] McIntosh:
But to the again, going back to the personal minimum wage, that hurts. You know what kind of inflation we should be targeting? 0. Why do they say 3%? That's just completely 2%. Whatever it was. 2%. Now they're saying we should have 3%. So they're always moving the targets by the way. Why 2%? Well, it was completely made up, but they knew they had to inflate the money supply and that was going to cause inflation. So that's what they did. They said, well, 2% inflation is good. That's going to be our target. No. Our target should be deflation. What happens if we build a fusion reactor and energy suddenly becomes 0.01, dollars or 1¢ a kilowatt hour usage instead of 15¢ like it is in my state.
Well, I'm going to benefit. Oh, well, we don't want you saving. See, the Keynesians hate saving. They think, well, what they say is, well, you won't be investing in the economy. They want you spending. They want you buying crap. Excuse me. See, everything about Keynesian economics is diametrically opposed to what it should be. So we need to do everything we can to resist that. And when you listen to people, whether they're in the Bitcoin space or where they're in mainstream well, you can be assured if they're in mainstream, media or whatever, that they're almost assuredly a Keynesian, whether they understand what that means or not. But start picking apart the things that they're saying.
Governments can't control economies. Governments flip a couple of little dials, and they think they have some control over it. And they're printing money into oblivion. We're a $1,000,000,000,000 in debt more just over the last few months.
[00:32:46] Unknown:
It's insanity. The acceleration that is occurring. The United States will not make it to a $100,000,000,000,000 in debt. It will not. It will never happen. I would bet my
[00:33:01] McIntosh:
entire life savings on that. I shouldn't say that, but it's not going to happen. Because we will not be anywhere close to that in our GDP. Our interest will be eating us alive. Well, then we'll lower interest rates. Well, then everything else falls apart because again, economies are super complex. Stop acting like you're the wizard of Oz. You're the guy behind the curtain who manipulates the wizard of Oz, and everybody thinks that the wizard of Oz is all wise and powerful instead of it's just somebody behind the curtain.
[00:33:42] Unknown:
All right. I'm done with this. I'm 30 minutes in. That's enough. But again, I implore you, think about what people are saying. It's time to start separating the sheep from the goats to put it in biblical terms.
[00:34:02] McIntosh:
And you want to be a sheep, by the way.
[00:34:05] Unknown:
And the sheep understands that Austrian economics should be the basis of our society. And this Keynesian stuff should be rejected outright as garbage.
[00:34:21] McIntosh:
And we need to start making our voices known. I do not understand how people in this Bitcoin circles can act like this stuff is okay. It's not. Well, we're just going to kind of swap out Bitcoin. No. Swap out our local currency for Bitcoin. Sorry. That's what I meant to say. No.
[00:34:45] Unknown:
Reject it. Reject it all.
[00:34:50] McIntosh:
We need to build the basis on sound money. We need to build the basis on there's business cycles instead of government intervention. We need to build the basis on GDP really doesn't matter that much. We need to build on a basis of debt does matter. You need to eliminate it. If possible, you need to build on the basis of, get out of people's life. How about that? That's what we need to be building on the basis of Not just Bitcoin's a great store of value, Bitcoin can be a sound money. Because it's far deeper than that. Bitcoin is just the thing that has led us down this rabbit hole. Do not forget that.
[00:35:33] Unknown:
Alright. So there we go.
[00:35:37] McIntosh:
We're gonna wrap this up by talking with our about our supporters. This is the shorter episode and especially when I'm late to her on Thursday getting the episode out, which I certainly was this week. Technically, I think it actually came out Friday morning early, and that's okay. Our total support this week was 1598 sats. The majority of that was streaming. I appreciate that, of course. Always helpful when people are using a podcasting 2.0 app and they click a stream. They stream some sats to the podcaster to support them. If you're receiving value from a podcast, then then, you know, you should be supporting that podcast if they're a value for value podcast. We did have a boost this week from, Jack Sog, j a k s o g. I do not know how they wish to have that pronounced.
500 sat boost, no message. I believe that's the first time I've seen them. But I do appreciate them listening and supporting the show. That was, the Bitcoin Basics Nodes on the network episode. So that would be episode 130. So it was 2 episodes back. Well, it was yeah. It was 2 episodes back. So I do appreciate that Jack Sog or however you wish to have that said. Always good to hear from our listeners to have that support come in. I am working very hard to build up a better podcast even today. Well, really right before I recorded tonight, I was working on I'm going to transition my podcast over to Castapod.
And there's two reasons for this. One is money. I'm paying $19 a month to my host, and to be honest, I'm I'm it's an expense. And I'm yes. There's an expense to host it myself, but it gives me flexibility. It's it's cheaper than that to be honest. It's about half the price. And I have the ability to maintain that setup. It's non trivial, but, I can do it. And it with cast a pod, they are continually adding the new value for value tags. Unlike my current host, for example, who doesn't even support chapters. So that's going to be happening in the next few weeks.
I've got the basics set up. I'm having trouble getting Castapod to talk to Redis, but that's an issue that we will get resolved. Point is, I'm always working on, being a good steward of this podcast really of of doing my best to keep costs down, but also provide the best experience. Once I get moved over, I will immediately start doing chapters on the podcast as I get recorded. I do not know if I will be able to go back. I'm now at a 132 episodes as I record this. That's a lot of episodes to go back and put chapters on. Essentially, because it would require for one thing, it require listening to each one of those episodes again.
And that's a lot of time. A 100 and well, probably over a 130 hours. Most episodes are running around a 100, around an hour, around 60 minutes or so. So, anyways, that's what's going on there. We've got news. One bit of news is that Niger and France, I guess, have come to some kind of agreement, I believe, with a fair amount of threats from Niger. France will be leaving the Niger, and, both their military and the ambassador by the end of the year. So in my mind, I'm not going to, you know, these people who are who are doing this, they're called rebels. It's the typical media whitewash portrayal of what's going on. Nobody talks about how France has, profited from this for decades and why they might possibly be a little upset about that.
They being Niger. The new leader of Niger, we it remains to be seen, you know, what they're really like on the world stage, so to speak. But in my mind, and until proven otherwise, the people of Niger have at least gained a little self sovereignty. They are now their own country. They are not some puppet of France. And I man, that sounds terrible saying that, but it really is the truth. And I've gone through that, had a couple of episodes about the CFA, about what France has done in the past, and continues to do so. And these African countries are starting to push back on that. So we will see how that turns out, but don't believe what you hear if they're saying that this this is about France and France leaving the Niger. The plain and simple. That's what it's about.
[00:41:04] Unknown:
And removing the person in power who was a puppet of France.
[00:41:11] McIntosh:
So I do wish them the best of luck. I hope that turns out for them. Hey, they should check out Bitcoin as a nice, legal tender instead of the CFA, if that's what they had, which I believe it is. I think you should whatever resources that Niger has, and I do not know offhand, they should start developing those themselves. If they can mine bauxite for example. Smelt that, turn it into aluminum and ship aluminum. Don't take that bauxite and send it off to France or some other country to have them turn it into aluminum and then, you know, up charge it a 100 x. So make that money yourself, people of Niger.
Now, that's just my little opinion, and I do not live in Africa. I don't have any real contacts in Africa. So that's just my perception. And my biased perception, to be honest. So take that with a grain of salt. Generation Bitcoin supports podcasting 2 point o. It is a value for value podcast, as I mentioned earlier, with no sponsors and no advertising. You will never hear Ledger jump in in the middle of all this and say, or me do a host read for Ledger saying, you know, you should use a Ledger and blah, blah, blah. No. Actually, you shouldn't because Ledger, has leaked your information.
Ledger, if I'm not mistaken, or maybe it was one of the other hardware wallets. I believe it was Ledger. Ledger certainly has this lovely new feature where they touted as being this multi sig setup so that, you know, we've got 2 of your keys and you've got 1. And that way, if you lose your key, you can recover your Bitcoin. Well, maybe you should be more responsible with your keys, have multiple copies, multiple different kinds, have one on paper, have one on metal maybe, or one with a lawyer or one in a safe deposit box and one at home. I don't know.
Be smart. Don't depend on somebody else to manage that. And the whole thing has really kinda turned into a big fiasco. In fact, I think the CTO just left. I don't really kinda report on that kinda news because it's almost like gossip, but, yeah, I think so. I think those two things are related, by the way. Anyways, you can support this podcast in 3 different ways because I am looking to build this out and it does require money. Hosting costs money. You know, I would. There's so many different ways that we could build this out. Anyways, that does require money for one thing. That's treasure. But there's 2 other things really, time and talent, that can be just as important.
I always appreciate people as they listen, as they stream, as they boost. That helps the show. I could use some help with, like, transcripts. I could use some help with maybe work on the website, which is it's always always behind because it's just not, there's just not enough time. I'm recording this twice a week. I'm doing the the research, the putting together of all the stuff. It takes me several hours just to record, put it out, and get the website updated even just a little bit. All of that. And, yes, I have a day job which consumes a lot of my time to support my family, frankly, because it certainly wouldn't happen on this. And and and that's okay. I don't want it to. That's not what I'm looking for, but it would be nice to grow this out. So if you find the content valuable, you can support the podcast by streaming stats or boosting from a podcasting 2.0 app. You can get those apps, at podcastapps.com.
If you'd like the content, I would love it if you would tell your friends about Generation Bitcoin podcast. That is the single best way for us to spread the word about Generation Bitcoin. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. Although, I will not stay on Twitter after they start charging everyone, which is apparently what's going to happen. I will not pay to post on Twitter. I'm not going to do that. I'm also on mastodon@[email protected]. I'm also on nostr. I have that pubkey from nostr pinned, I think, or at least in my profile on Twitter, if you would like to get that.
I can be reached by email, [email protected]. Stay humble friends. Go out. Make it a great week. I'll talk to y'all soon.
Hey, SatStackers. Today is September 24th, and this is episode 132 of generation Bitcoin. I'm your host, Macintosh. And today's episode is on the Keynesian fallacy. Alright. Let's do this market update. The market closed a couple hours ago at $26,221, which is down, like, $300 from the week before. Or, excuse me, from Thursday when we did our last episode. What that means is that we are now flirting again with this bottom level. I told y'all, I think Thursday. Of course, the end of the month is coming. We're 6 6, 7 days off,
[00:01:12] Unknown:
I guess, from October 1st. So we will be closing a month on Saturday of this week. And I have told you that historically,
[00:01:25] McIntosh:
except 2 months, 2 times in Bitcoin's life, it has gone down in September. I think that's kind of a general trend in the stock market overall. There's different theories about that. The brokers come back from summer kind of vacation, whatever. They kind of rearrange their portfolios, sell off stocks. I I don't know. I don't know how much credence I give to that.
[00:01:52] Unknown:
But the reality is that a number of times
[00:01:57] McIntosh:
in the past, Bitcoin has gone down. So we are a $1,000 or so off of that level, meaning, you know, I think 25,000 is what it opened up the month that so we're a ways off. So I may be incorrect, which is fine. I make mistakes, But we will see, we're flirting with that one of those levels right now, and we had a weekly close below it really,
[00:02:22] Unknown:
or at least right on it.
[00:02:25] McIntosh:
So it's it's possible still, certainly. I'm not gonna say that it's 100% going to happen. I do not know. No real excitement this week. This week was actually the rest of the week was kind of boring. There's no news. There's one news item, actually. We'll discuss that when we get to the news section. But that's okay. That's this time of year, it's quite typical. Don't worry about it. Just keep stacking sats. As we always say, you don't worry about market price, really. You just keep stacking sats. The only thing that $25,000 bitcoin would mean is that we can buy some sats for just a tiny bit cheaper.
So block height at time of recording is 809,236
[00:03:15] Unknown:
block. The mempool is full as it has been.
[00:03:19] McIntosh:
Our difficulty adjustment looking on October 3rd, so just over a week away. 1.42%. So a down. So now that adjustment is looking a little closer to 0 basically. Our sats per v byte wow.
[00:03:41] Unknown:
Am I reading this correctly? No. I'm not.
[00:03:45] McIntosh:
Sorry. Saw a really big number. I was incorrect. The average is 22 sats per vbyte. So still high. We've certainly seen lower even just a couple weeks ago, certainly. Remember it was 12 not too long ago. 10, 12, 8, something like that. But the mempool is full. People are bidding it up. And I don't know. We'll see. Matt Odell and Marty, Bent have a bet going on about whether the mempool is going to clear or not. I do not remember which one is on which side of the bet. I think Matt says that it will not clear by the end of the year, by the end of December 31st. I believe he's actually probably gonna be correct. We we may not see an empty MIM pool until the next bear market, which would be a long way off.
That would be interesting, even though we're in a bear market. They say that the mempool, a lot of the transactions are being used by ordinals. I don't understand that, to be honest. I know that in the ordinals community, there's a big kerfuffle going on. Something about they're having to rearrange the way that they number the sats, and it's messing everything up. And I have no idea. I don't care. We've discussed ordinals to the extent that I'm going to On this podcast, not really a fan. It's an open protocol. They're allowed to do that. I eventually think they will eject themselves from the ecosystem, to be honest, because I think it will be unviable in the long term.
And that's fine. I don't need ordinals to make a profit when I mine. From here, we're gonna jump into the topic. I prerecorded the topic earlier this week. I've had some extra time. My wife has been out of town. It's giving me extra recording opportunities. I've actually recorded 2 episodes. So this one and then another one, which I'm not sure if it will be the next one or not. We will see. So this one, to be honest, is a little I don't wanna say dark, but it's one of these episodes where we're dealing with a topic that's quite frankly, extremely important.
And also, it can be a maybe a bit depressing. So be encouraged. In fact, the next episode that I've already recorded was very much upbeat. I don't wanna say it's the flip side of this, but Bitcoin is the answer to what we're fixing to talk about. Bitcoin is a sound store of value. It's a form of sound money. It, in my opinion, it will eventually be a global reserve currency. It will be the global reserve currency. It will be how come countries conduct trade between each other, and it will level the playing field. Countries will have to change what they're doing, and this is a good thing. So, anyways, take note of that as you listen to this, but listen to this because this and I hate it when I say this, but sometimes I feel like I have to. This may be one of the most important podcasts that I ever record.
I don't wanna be overly dramatic. I'm I'm trying very desperately not to be. But take a listen, and I'll see you at the end. Alright. I wanna get on in today's topic. This has been on my mind lately. Maybe it even started creeping out on the last recording towards the end, but I feel like this is important enough. And maybe since the last time I really talked about this directly, maybe things have solidified a little bit in my my mind. In terms of how as Bitcoiners we
[00:07:30] Unknown:
interact with the world, really, our world view, if you wanna call it that. And actually, I think that's a really good way to put it. Because if you have the wrong world view, you can have wrong results. And unfortunately, I hear people in the Bitcoin space, people who who have some prominence even, who speak things that I don't I wonder where they're coming from. So back in December of last year, 2022, I started a series that lasted for 6 episodes. It was episodes 84 through 89
[00:08:17] McIntosh:
of this podcast. So you could go back and take a listen to them if you would like. I would encourage you to do so, to be honest, if you have not, because I'm not going to get into all the ins and outs, the details of Austrian versus Keynesian economics. But ladies and gentlemen, listen to me and listen to me well. The people who are in power in this world, the central bankers who control monetary policy, people like Jerome Powell, Janet Yellen, These fools,
[00:08:49] Unknown:
and I mean exactly what I said. I don't use that word lightly. Because they're either fools or they're power mad, or both. Because
[00:09:01] McIntosh:
they are leading, well in that case, the United States to a path of destruction. We are at 33 $1,000,000,000,000 $33,000,000,000,000 in debt, which is an astonishingly high figure. There's no chance that we will ever pay this back without devaluing the dollar much quicker than it's been devalued over the last 93 years, which I think this, yes. No. I can't do math. It's 93%
[00:09:37] Unknown:
since 1913.
[00:09:40] McIntosh:
That's a huge amount. The purchasing power of the dollar has gone down that much. Oh, you know what happened in 1913? The Federal Reserve was was created. I do not think those two things are unrelated. So the goal of the federal reserve is basically to, you know, ensure the stability of the United States economy. And it's basically through good luck and then becoming the world's global reserve currency in the late in the, what, mid midish forties, 19 forties, post World War 2, Bretton Woods agreement, New Hampshire. Nice place if you've ever been there.
That is the only reason that we have made it as long as we have.
[00:10:25] Unknown:
That time is coming to an end. One way or the other, the dollar will no longer be the world's global reserve currency.
[00:10:34] McIntosh:
And these people who think they can manipulate the economy and keep it in balance forever are wrong, and history proves them wrong over and over again. And the deeper I go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, so to speak, the tireder I get of this. I only have one life to spend. I don't have more than that. And one thing that's become very clear to me over the last few years is that I will be spending a good deal of that time doing what I can. And I'm not equating myself to Paul Revere when I say this, but to be like Paul Revere, running to sound the alarm saying the British are coming in his case.
Sorry, Brits. But in I but in this case, we are headed for a global calamity. And I don't I don't I don't wanna be pessimistic. I don't wanna be alarmist, but I don't see how else this happens. You've got Japan, China, United States, European countries, virtually every country well, certainly all of those. I bet every one of the big 20, g 20 is their so called top industrialized countries in the world, are immensely in debt. What happens when that collapses? What happens when China collapses because they can no longer prop up the the the renminbi?
What happens to Japan when when they cannot support their 200 plus percent debt on on the, Japanese yen? What happens to the EU when they're so in debt that they can't continue? In the United States, we have a program called Social Security. Basically, you invest in it your entire life, and then at the end, you're supposed to be receive money back from the government. Now first of all, it's a terrible investing plan. You look at the returns on investment, and it stinks. Supposedly, they feel like they have to do this because people won't do it on their own. And maybe they're correct in that,
[00:12:56] Unknown:
but it's a terrible system. And because our birth rate is going down and because of the way that the system is set up,
[00:13:09] McIntosh:
we've known for a long time, the end of this system is coming. It will not be sustainable. And that end is in sight. It will happen before I retire. So I will have put in money into this sum 1,000 and 1,000 of tens of 1,000 of dollars.
[00:13:31] Unknown:
I don't know how much. An astonishing amount of money over my lifetime.
[00:13:38] McIntosh:
But there's no way I will get one what I'm even supposed to get, which is not considering what I put in, it's not that much. I would I would have done a lot better taking that money and putting it in a stock, mutual fund index, whatever they call it. Not that I'm saying you should do that, but I mean, it's it's astounding how poorly managed that system is. And yet, because of the way that it's set up, it will end. How is that going to help the situation? And, like, right now, in France, they just lowered the retirement a or raise the retirement age. Similar system. Right? You go to whatever age and then you retire and you're gonna get your or what I maybe that's Spanish. I don't know. Anyways, that may not even be correct. I apologize to whoever I just offended.
I'm sorry. And so they were literally rioting about this. I don't know if it actually passed or not. I think it did though. I think it was a done deal. So they're screaming because they're raising the retirement age because they can't do well, what happens when there is no retirement? What happens when they raise that age to to 80 And and basically people can't even function at that point because they've worked for 65 years. What kind of system is that? Let me circle back though, before I get too much off track. As a Bitcoiner, you need to understand the difference between Keynesian economics and Austrian economics.
You need to understand and I think I did a pretty good job of breaking this down. You need to understand sound money versus whatever they call this in Keynesian circles, stable money or, or whatever. Sound money is Bitcoin. Sound money was gold, although gold could be manipulated. And it was, it was de based. They would mix things in with it, or they would shave gold off of the gold pieces essentially so that it can be manipulated. Bitcoin cannot because it's ruled by a set of protocols, a set of programmatic rules that say, when I send this to you, it, it gets there. You can't double spend that. You can't shave any bit of that off. It that's the transaction.
So the government cannot manipulate that money supply in a way that's not possible any other way. Keynesian economics says, well, credit's great. GDP, the gross domestic product is the most important metric. It's insanity. Basically, they peg everything on GDP. If your GDP is not growing, well then you're failing. Well, how do we do that? Oh, we print more money. Well, that makes more debt. Well, debt's not a problem. We'll print more money. I mean, their logic is just mind boggling. And yet these people have run this system for a 100 years. Well, Keynes, John Maynard Keynes, the creator of the system, he's not that he or he was he's died.
So he was born in 18/83. He died in 1946. Oh, look. He probably got to see the Bretton Woods agreement. I wonder if he was happy about that. So, actually, he would have been old enough. I'm not sure exactly when his ideas started becoming prominent, but it was very early in that mix. I'll I know that. It was prior to, it was certainly prior to World War 2. Probably right around the time of the start of World War 2, I wanna say. It's important to know your enemy, and let me tell you, this is the enemy. And as I say over and over and over and over and unlike Matt O'Dell, and I believe him when he says this, he says, stay humble, humble, stack sats. He has said that that's because he's reminding himself. I'm not reminding myself.
I got this drilled into my head. This now staying humble and stacking sats probably is something I need to remind myself of. But successio plebis, this saying that I post on Twitter, and I've said on here before, I've done an entire episode about it. We do not need their systems. And your job as a Bitcoiner is essentially to figure out how you can get out of that system.
[00:18:11] Unknown:
And it may take you a decade. But do you have a better use of your time? Don't buy into
[00:18:20] McIntosh:
this fallacy that at the end of your life, you don't have to have anything to pass on to your children. Don't buy into the fallacy that a government has to operate in debt in order to operate. Don't buy into these lies. I guess one of the things that really got me thinking about this was talking to, Jimmy, Jimmy Song, about his book, which we did the interview a couple weeks ago or week or well, I don't know. Time gets all messed up. Week and a half, whatever it was. And he talks about the way that this fiat, which you can just tie right into Keynesian economics. This fiat mindset infects so many things.
Things that I didn't even think about are I mean, the economic stuff. Yes. I understood. Some of the other stuff I didn't. I don't have the book here with me, but 31 chapters, 31 different things that Fiat corrupts. And it all ties back to this Keynesian economics. This idea that debt doesn't matter. This idea that we have to have a GDP that is continually rising. This idea that the government can run our economies. You don't know the single thing about economics. If you think that a government can run an economies. Economies are complex. You cannot tweak a little thing here, raise the interest rate there, do this, do that, and not expect backlash.
But, you know, Jerome Powell just got up a couple days ago and said, yeah, we're gonna, like, we think we're good. We're gonna hold it, and then we're probably gonna raise a little bit towards the end of the year, in the next year. I don't know. We're gonna have a recession in 2027. We're gonna go out back after we get done, print some more money. I'm gonna call up Janet. You know, it's it's insanity. Economies have run for centuries, for centuries, for 1000 of years,
[00:20:21] Unknown:
ever since, the guy in Turkey. Oh, man. The first guy that created gold coinage. You know, we've been using sound money as a basis for a sound economy,
[00:20:42] McIntosh:
and people have flourished. We've had civilizations that have grown and so on and so forth. And as far as I can tell right now, the entire world's fixing to be in a really big mess. And I know this sounds really gloomy, but in my opinion, I'm I'm gonna say this out loud, and I I don't like saying it. I'm very uncomfortable with this, but I also think it's true. One of the ways out for countries, this is is war. Well, we'll just go start a war. I think there are nations, and I'm not gonna say which and it's maybe not even the ones that you're thinking,
[00:21:25] Unknown:
but they have prospered based on war. I don't want that. I don't. I don't want it for me. I don't want it for my children.
[00:21:37] McIntosh:
I don't want it for anybody. And I know that we can have a philosophical discussion. Are there times that we should we should fight? Well, maybe. Yes. But I think a lot of wars are over money. You can very easily make the argument about the war in Europe, World War 2, that part of it, being caused because Germany was crushed after World War 1 under debt. We talk about the Weimer Reiner Weimer I may the Weimer maybe it is Weimer Reiner Republic or whatever, where they had I mean, it was hyperinflation. This is where we get the images of wheelbarrows, literal wheelbarrows of money. And that led directly into the rise of Adolf Hitler, which of course led directly into World War 2.
[00:22:33] Unknown:
If that had not been the case, if they were not crushed under this debt
[00:22:41] McIntosh:
and experienced this hyperinflation of the German mark, then I don't think World War 2 would have happened. I don't think Adolf would have ever come to power. I think that millions of people would still be alive. Well, not at this point, but would have lived because of that. That's just a simple example. So this is super important to me. So if I ever sound like I'm just going on and on and maybe getting a little upset, this is important. It is super important to me that everybody in the country have access to the same money. The same sound money. In the United States, there are people who benefit far greater from the US money printing than other people. And the people who do are a very small percent. It's called the Cantillon effect.
It's based on their proximity to that money printer, essentially. They leverage that and they gain they make immense gains from that. But the poor guy out there doing minimum wage job, whose money is getting deflated or inflated away, they don't, they don't benefit because they don't have investments in stocks and bonds. And, well, these days you probably shouldn't be investing in bonds, but real estate and these kinds the things that benefit from that money printing. That is not fair. That is not fair and it can be solved. Problem solved by moving to a sound money system.
In countries like El Salvador, if I am correct, we will see people flourish based on
[00:24:29] Unknown:
a sound money. A money supply that doesn't, you know, deflate 50% overnight. And after 2 years, it sure sounds like the people in El Salvador are embracing Bitcoin. It's not 100%, but they are happy and they are, I, it sounds to me like they're doing better. As the country prospers, which I believe that they will, those people will prosper.
[00:25:04] McIntosh:
So you could call El Salvador a grand experiment in Austrian economics, except we've got many examples prior to them. So again, going back to what I said. Successio plevis. You can remove yourself from this system. It is entangling. I understand. But it can be done. We are seeing examples of this. People who are on a Bitcoin standard. People who get their job pay in Bitcoin. People who buy stuff in Bitcoin. People who interact with the majority of people in Bitcoin. And there are tools and systems that are being built so that you can convert your Bitcoin to, the US dollar.
[00:25:50] Unknown:
For example, your local currency,
[00:25:53] McIntosh:
so that you can interact with those who don't have Bitcoin or choose not to invest in Bitcoin or that kind of thing. So it is possible, and it's going to become more and more possible over the next few years. So start your preparations. Going back to what I was talking about at the very start though.
[00:26:14] Unknown:
Please be careful listening to people in this space. We are not all the same. And I'm not saying they're bad people, but when you start thinking with a Keynesian economics mindset.
[00:26:30] McIntosh:
I mean, these people are talking like, like people, like these economists, these, these government officials,
[00:26:37] Unknown:
like they know what they're doing and they don't. They're like kids just wandering around
[00:26:45] McIntosh:
acting. They don't know what they're doing. They're not controlling our economy. Well, we gotta get the unemployment rate down. Boy, when we get our unemployment rate down, we'll be in or up. Excuse me. They're mad because the unemployment rate of the United States quote refuse well, it's only like 3.8% or something. Okay. So to to lower inflation, we have to raise unemployment. I mean, what kind of logic is this? Well, we gotta do that so we have a better GDP. Literally all goes back to GDP with these Keynesians.
[00:27:30] Unknown:
Oh, deflation? Terribly bad idea. Now this is something I haven't researched very deeply. I've heard some I've heard some
[00:27:40] McIntosh:
discussion about it. I've heard some podcast about it. I've heard some from people who have thought about it. I've got a book on my list, this kind of thing. So I will say this before I say what I'm fixing to say, but think about this intuitively. When I was 12 years old, our family bought the first computer that we owned. And that computer was a decent machine for the time. It probably cost around $1,000 Well, now you can buy a machine that's dramatically faster than that machine, for for $20 if you want to buy a Raspberry Pi and kind of cobble it together. You can buy one that's orders of magnitude times 10 or whatever faster if you actually spend that $1,000.
But why are we so worried about deflation? Why if we can produce food better and we can lower our costs to do that, why is that a bad thing? Oh, because it harvests the GDP. Because, you know,
[00:28:49] Unknown:
I don't know. That's basically their argument. And it's ridiculous. We should, as a society,
[00:29:01] McIntosh:
we should be moving forwards in leaps and bounds. We should have abundant power. Power is the source of civilization. Think about it. We have we should have cheap power. And there's many reasons why that is not the case. But a lot of it is governmental mismanagement. A lot of it is a lack of a free market. And again, governmental control and, and manipulation of these things are it's all right down the Keynesian's lane. So it's like they're doing the very things to, to harm our economy, then saying that they're going to manipulate these interest rates and whatever to keep everything in check while we watch unemployment explode upward, while we watch our food prices explode upward, while we get these Paul Krugman, I'll just call him out. Not that he knows who I am one bit. He's a big economist.
He's a New York Times opinion columnist. So, you know, he's got a big voice. He goes the other day, well, inflation is how did he word it? I retweeted it. He made it seem to be a big deal that inflation was down just a tiny bit. So like, we went from like 5.8% down to 5.3. Oh, yay. We're winning and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, you do understand that means that year over year that your 5 your $100 bill loses 5 and a half dollars in value. Don't you? I mean, you're this big shot economist.
[00:30:42] Unknown:
Now, I don't think he has to worry about money, so it doesn't impact him.
[00:30:48] McIntosh:
But to the again, going back to the personal minimum wage, that hurts. You know what kind of inflation we should be targeting? 0. Why do they say 3%? That's just completely 2%. Whatever it was. 2%. Now they're saying we should have 3%. So they're always moving the targets by the way. Why 2%? Well, it was completely made up, but they knew they had to inflate the money supply and that was going to cause inflation. So that's what they did. They said, well, 2% inflation is good. That's going to be our target. No. Our target should be deflation. What happens if we build a fusion reactor and energy suddenly becomes 0.01, dollars or 1¢ a kilowatt hour usage instead of 15¢ like it is in my state.
Well, I'm going to benefit. Oh, well, we don't want you saving. See, the Keynesians hate saving. They think, well, what they say is, well, you won't be investing in the economy. They want you spending. They want you buying crap. Excuse me. See, everything about Keynesian economics is diametrically opposed to what it should be. So we need to do everything we can to resist that. And when you listen to people, whether they're in the Bitcoin space or where they're in mainstream well, you can be assured if they're in mainstream, media or whatever, that they're almost assuredly a Keynesian, whether they understand what that means or not. But start picking apart the things that they're saying.
Governments can't control economies. Governments flip a couple of little dials, and they think they have some control over it. And they're printing money into oblivion. We're a $1,000,000,000,000 in debt more just over the last few months.
[00:32:46] Unknown:
It's insanity. The acceleration that is occurring. The United States will not make it to a $100,000,000,000,000 in debt. It will not. It will never happen. I would bet my
[00:33:01] McIntosh:
entire life savings on that. I shouldn't say that, but it's not going to happen. Because we will not be anywhere close to that in our GDP. Our interest will be eating us alive. Well, then we'll lower interest rates. Well, then everything else falls apart because again, economies are super complex. Stop acting like you're the wizard of Oz. You're the guy behind the curtain who manipulates the wizard of Oz, and everybody thinks that the wizard of Oz is all wise and powerful instead of it's just somebody behind the curtain.
[00:33:42] Unknown:
All right. I'm done with this. I'm 30 minutes in. That's enough. But again, I implore you, think about what people are saying. It's time to start separating the sheep from the goats to put it in biblical terms.
[00:34:02] McIntosh:
And you want to be a sheep, by the way.
[00:34:05] Unknown:
And the sheep understands that Austrian economics should be the basis of our society. And this Keynesian stuff should be rejected outright as garbage.
[00:34:21] McIntosh:
And we need to start making our voices known. I do not understand how people in this Bitcoin circles can act like this stuff is okay. It's not. Well, we're just going to kind of swap out Bitcoin. No. Swap out our local currency for Bitcoin. Sorry. That's what I meant to say. No.
[00:34:45] Unknown:
Reject it. Reject it all.
[00:34:50] McIntosh:
We need to build the basis on sound money. We need to build the basis on there's business cycles instead of government intervention. We need to build the basis on GDP really doesn't matter that much. We need to build on a basis of debt does matter. You need to eliminate it. If possible, you need to build on the basis of, get out of people's life. How about that? That's what we need to be building on the basis of Not just Bitcoin's a great store of value, Bitcoin can be a sound money. Because it's far deeper than that. Bitcoin is just the thing that has led us down this rabbit hole. Do not forget that.
[00:35:33] Unknown:
Alright. So there we go.
[00:35:37] McIntosh:
We're gonna wrap this up by talking with our about our supporters. This is the shorter episode and especially when I'm late to her on Thursday getting the episode out, which I certainly was this week. Technically, I think it actually came out Friday morning early, and that's okay. Our total support this week was 1598 sats. The majority of that was streaming. I appreciate that, of course. Always helpful when people are using a podcasting 2.0 app and they click a stream. They stream some sats to the podcaster to support them. If you're receiving value from a podcast, then then, you know, you should be supporting that podcast if they're a value for value podcast. We did have a boost this week from, Jack Sog, j a k s o g. I do not know how they wish to have that pronounced.
500 sat boost, no message. I believe that's the first time I've seen them. But I do appreciate them listening and supporting the show. That was, the Bitcoin Basics Nodes on the network episode. So that would be episode 130. So it was 2 episodes back. Well, it was yeah. It was 2 episodes back. So I do appreciate that Jack Sog or however you wish to have that said. Always good to hear from our listeners to have that support come in. I am working very hard to build up a better podcast even today. Well, really right before I recorded tonight, I was working on I'm going to transition my podcast over to Castapod.
And there's two reasons for this. One is money. I'm paying $19 a month to my host, and to be honest, I'm I'm it's an expense. And I'm yes. There's an expense to host it myself, but it gives me flexibility. It's it's cheaper than that to be honest. It's about half the price. And I have the ability to maintain that setup. It's non trivial, but, I can do it. And it with cast a pod, they are continually adding the new value for value tags. Unlike my current host, for example, who doesn't even support chapters. So that's going to be happening in the next few weeks.
I've got the basics set up. I'm having trouble getting Castapod to talk to Redis, but that's an issue that we will get resolved. Point is, I'm always working on, being a good steward of this podcast really of of doing my best to keep costs down, but also provide the best experience. Once I get moved over, I will immediately start doing chapters on the podcast as I get recorded. I do not know if I will be able to go back. I'm now at a 132 episodes as I record this. That's a lot of episodes to go back and put chapters on. Essentially, because it would require for one thing, it require listening to each one of those episodes again.
And that's a lot of time. A 100 and well, probably over a 130 hours. Most episodes are running around a 100, around an hour, around 60 minutes or so. So, anyways, that's what's going on there. We've got news. One bit of news is that Niger and France, I guess, have come to some kind of agreement, I believe, with a fair amount of threats from Niger. France will be leaving the Niger, and, both their military and the ambassador by the end of the year. So in my mind, I'm not going to, you know, these people who are who are doing this, they're called rebels. It's the typical media whitewash portrayal of what's going on. Nobody talks about how France has, profited from this for decades and why they might possibly be a little upset about that.
They being Niger. The new leader of Niger, we it remains to be seen, you know, what they're really like on the world stage, so to speak. But in my mind, and until proven otherwise, the people of Niger have at least gained a little self sovereignty. They are now their own country. They are not some puppet of France. And I man, that sounds terrible saying that, but it really is the truth. And I've gone through that, had a couple of episodes about the CFA, about what France has done in the past, and continues to do so. And these African countries are starting to push back on that. So we will see how that turns out, but don't believe what you hear if they're saying that this this is about France and France leaving the Niger. The plain and simple. That's what it's about.
[00:41:04] Unknown:
And removing the person in power who was a puppet of France.
[00:41:11] McIntosh:
So I do wish them the best of luck. I hope that turns out for them. Hey, they should check out Bitcoin as a nice, legal tender instead of the CFA, if that's what they had, which I believe it is. I think you should whatever resources that Niger has, and I do not know offhand, they should start developing those themselves. If they can mine bauxite for example. Smelt that, turn it into aluminum and ship aluminum. Don't take that bauxite and send it off to France or some other country to have them turn it into aluminum and then, you know, up charge it a 100 x. So make that money yourself, people of Niger.
Now, that's just my little opinion, and I do not live in Africa. I don't have any real contacts in Africa. So that's just my perception. And my biased perception, to be honest. So take that with a grain of salt. Generation Bitcoin supports podcasting 2 point o. It is a value for value podcast, as I mentioned earlier, with no sponsors and no advertising. You will never hear Ledger jump in in the middle of all this and say, or me do a host read for Ledger saying, you know, you should use a Ledger and blah, blah, blah. No. Actually, you shouldn't because Ledger, has leaked your information.
Ledger, if I'm not mistaken, or maybe it was one of the other hardware wallets. I believe it was Ledger. Ledger certainly has this lovely new feature where they touted as being this multi sig setup so that, you know, we've got 2 of your keys and you've got 1. And that way, if you lose your key, you can recover your Bitcoin. Well, maybe you should be more responsible with your keys, have multiple copies, multiple different kinds, have one on paper, have one on metal maybe, or one with a lawyer or one in a safe deposit box and one at home. I don't know.
Be smart. Don't depend on somebody else to manage that. And the whole thing has really kinda turned into a big fiasco. In fact, I think the CTO just left. I don't really kinda report on that kinda news because it's almost like gossip, but, yeah, I think so. I think those two things are related, by the way. Anyways, you can support this podcast in 3 different ways because I am looking to build this out and it does require money. Hosting costs money. You know, I would. There's so many different ways that we could build this out. Anyways, that does require money for one thing. That's treasure. But there's 2 other things really, time and talent, that can be just as important.
I always appreciate people as they listen, as they stream, as they boost. That helps the show. I could use some help with, like, transcripts. I could use some help with maybe work on the website, which is it's always always behind because it's just not, there's just not enough time. I'm recording this twice a week. I'm doing the the research, the putting together of all the stuff. It takes me several hours just to record, put it out, and get the website updated even just a little bit. All of that. And, yes, I have a day job which consumes a lot of my time to support my family, frankly, because it certainly wouldn't happen on this. And and and that's okay. I don't want it to. That's not what I'm looking for, but it would be nice to grow this out. So if you find the content valuable, you can support the podcast by streaming stats or boosting from a podcasting 2.0 app. You can get those apps, at podcastapps.com.
If you'd like the content, I would love it if you would tell your friends about Generation Bitcoin podcast. That is the single best way for us to spread the word about Generation Bitcoin. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. Although, I will not stay on Twitter after they start charging everyone, which is apparently what's going to happen. I will not pay to post on Twitter. I'm not going to do that. I'm also on mastodon@[email protected]. I'm also on nostr. I have that pubkey from nostr pinned, I think, or at least in my profile on Twitter, if you would like to get that.
I can be reached by email, [email protected]. Stay humble friends. Go out. Make it a great week. I'll talk to y'all soon.
