WBD691 Audio Transcription

From Psychedelics to the Bitcoin Boom with Tuur Demeester

Release date: Wednesday 2nd August

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Tuur Demeester. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Tuur Demeester is a Bitcoin investor and economist. In this interview, we discuss the significance of Bitcoin as a sound and auditable form of money, the impact of BlackRock embracing Bitcoin, and the importance of understanding the financial system. Tuur shares his insights as an early adopter of Bitcoin and reflects on its progress over the years. We also discuss addiction treatment.

“Bitcoin is an addition to the world, but it’s also an agent of change; it changes the the world, the way the world works…it’s almost like the economic laws of physics are starting to shift because of Bitcoin.”

— Tuur Demeester

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Tuur Demeester, how are you my friend? 

Tuur Demeester: I'm doing great. 

Peter McCormack: Always good to see you. 

Tuur Demeester: Good to see you, Peter. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, man, I'm so glad you're back writing.  You had a little brief spell where you didn't and we sometimes lose people on the way.  I was like, "Is Tuur going to disappear?  Is he going to have his Bitcoin exit?"  And you came back with this, How to Position the Bitcoin Boom, so it's a good time to talk about it.  But how have you been?

Tuur Demeester: I've been really good, especially the last six months, a bit longer than that.  Yeah, I've been really great and I'm really happy to be writing again.  I mean, I've obviously been on Twitter, but that was more just to do something, but it feels great to be able to write again, yeah. 

Peter McCormack: Danny, what's your favourite ever piece of writing about Bitcoin? 

Danny Knowles: I mean, you're putting me on the spot now.  I would say definitely one of my favourite pieces is Bitcoin Reformation.  I thought that was absolutely brilliant.

Peter McCormack: He always brings that up; he brings up two things: that and Bitcoin is Venice. 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah.  Oh, wow!

Peter McCormack: They are the two. 

Tuur Demeester: That's high company.  Yeah, that's amazing, I mean the article is great, but the book also, yeah. 

Peter McCormack: Well, I'm glad you're back, man, it's good to see you again.  And the timing is particularly good.  When was it released; April?  Yeah. 

Tuur Demeester: $26,000 Bitcoin is when it came out. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it came out pre-BlackRock, which is on everyone's minds. 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah. 

Peter McCormack: We can get into the good, the bad and the ugly of an ETF, but the signal of that I think is huge. 

Tuur Demeester: I think so too.  I mean, I think maybe most bitcoiners don't remember, but when the gold ETF came out that was enormous, 2006, it made a huge difference for gold.  So, yeah, I think this would be an incredible signal to have an ETF approved. 

Peter McCormack: When was the gold ETF? 

Tuur Demeester: 2006. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I was way not in my world of thinking about money in 2006.  Where was I?  That was even pre-2008.  How old would I have been?  28?

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, but also gold was not on people's radar back then, right?  I mean it was only a little bit later, after the ETF, that became more and more discussed.  And then of course with the Financial Crisis of 2008, gold went down for a little bit and then it bounced back, and I think it peaked in 2011.  So, that was because people thought inflation was going to happen and that gold was going to boom.  But now we've got digital gold that might get an ETF.

Peter McCormack: Yes, we do.  Okay, I've got a feeling this show might be listened to by some of my more nocoiner e-friends, or I might point it to them and say, "You're going to need to listen to this show", because we're going to be covering what Bitcoin is competing against; we're going to be covering your horseshit analogy; we're going to be covering how to position, how to think about Bitcoin; and so, I wouldn't mind starting off with a short Tuur Demeester TL;DR, why should people be thinking about Bitcoin?

Tuur Demeester: People should be thinking about Bitcoin because the world needs a sound money, a money that is healthy and that can serve the purpose of storing value over time, so that people can save for the future, and also money that is spendable around the world.  And that means we need money that cannot be corrupted very easily, preferably that cannot be corrupted at all.  And that's what Bitcoin has been doing for the last 14 years.  That means it's actually scarce, it means its transactions are verifiable, it means that you don't need a middleman to interact with Bitcoin, you can directly run a node and run a wallet, so technically you don't need a bank, so that's very great.  And it also means that sound money is also preferably highly auditable so that when a third party does work with it, that they can prove to you that they can be trusted because they can be transparent and show you what's going on, and then have maybe an auditor verify them and all those kind of things.  And that's not present.  None of those things are present in the current financial system.

Peter McCormack: Was it about 2011 when you first got into Bitcoin? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I thought so.  So, you came not long after his birth, a couple of years.  And my assumption in that first year is, I mean, I wasn't around, but it was a lot of playing around with code, technicals, and it was about probably 2011 where it jumped into I think the first exchange; was that 2010 or 2011?  I can't remember. 

Danny Knowles: I'm not sure.

Tuur Demeester: I think 2010, Mt. Gox, I think that was 2010.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, 2010.  And so, there were a lot of predictions or ideas or people had their own personal theses of what Bitcoin is or could be, and we're 14 years after its creation and we still struggle to explain Bitcoin to some people.  You try and sit down and explain why it's valuable, what it can do, what it can replace, and people still don't take you seriously, they think it's ridiculous, so they think you're crazy.  So, back in 2011, even more so.  So, what has been like for you now, 12 years later, to see how much progress Bitcoin has made?  And we are on the verge, it feels like we're on the precipice of Bitcoin really going through what people refer to as hyperbitcoinisation, which even I didn't take seriously to begin with, I just thought we had digital money.  I never actually thought the hyperbitcoinisation thesis was something that would play out.  I was always kind of like, "Yeah, great idea, guys, pretty cute, but it's not actually going to happen".  How is it for you, because you've spent so much time on this? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, it's becoming more and more real.  And in 2011, it was really hard, or 2012, first of all to try and understand it yourself, because in some way, the signal was more pure, because it was only engineers that you could talk to, and almost nobody was in it for the money, or anything like that, so in that sense the signal was more clear.  But there were a lot more unknowns like, "How's Bitcoin going to scale?  What kind of attack vectors are there?  Could they possibly create a quantum computer and somehow attack the system in some way?  Is Bitcoin suboptimal in a way?"  All those questions were not answered.  And so, the benefit now is that there's so much more experience that we can look back on. 

But then at the same time back then, there was just so little adoption.  And that was a big question mark is like, "Yeah, well, we think this is a better mousetrap, but that doesn't mean the whole world is going to believe that.  We're only just a tiny bunch of people and we don't know anything about marketing or how to bring this to the world".  So, that was the big challenge, is how is adoption going to happen; could it be nipped in the bud?  What if all of a sudden a government comes out and squashes this while it's still in its infancy?  That's why Satoshi was reluctant to have, I think it was Wikileaks, use Bitcoin or promote Bitcoin early on because he thought, "Let's let it grow slowly first".  That's possibly why he disappeared as well. 

So, yeah, it's amazing to see both those things come together.  It's like, yes, we have way more adoption, so there's that momentum coming from that.  Millions and millions of people use Bitcoin every day and use it just for their savings; and then at the same time, we have so much more knowledge about what are the attack vectors, how do we protect Bitcoin, what are the things we really have to be careful about, like the block size debate.  We've talked about this in the past.  That was kind of Bitcoin's civil war that it survived, it didn't come out crippled, it came out stronger, and now we know the playbook for the next time around.  So, yeah, it's very, very exciting.

Peter McCormack: There's a great memoir to be written for Bitcoin of the game theory of how this has all played out because sometimes I can't tell if every decision Satoshi made was genius or was just luck, I can't tell if the halving was genius or luck, but it just feels like the closer you get to it, and as Bitcoin grows, the game theory in almost every scenario plays out how it should.  So, I look forward to whoever writes that; maybe that'll be you. 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, and there's also so much goodwill, because I do think it was just an idea that the world was ready for it.  I mean, it's slow, but I mean there were people who were waiting for the prophecy to happen of this digital money.  And so then, once Bitcoin started to be noticed and taken seriously, then I think basically the smartest people in the world started working on it.  So, in that sense, they made their own luck by just really being very diligent, because there were some bugs and stuff that had to be taken care of, it's not like Satoshi gave us something that was without flaws. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I was talking to Danny before you turned up about the kind of reversing of the economic model with this, whereby there is a potential, following BlackRock and their ETF and Vanguard's investments and then other ETFs coming and then potential growing nation-state adoption, we know there isn't a huge liquid supply of Bitcoin.  And so, at that point as this becomes supply shocks or dwindling supply, other people who've held Bitcoin for some time might sell some off.  Now I was saying, look, there's a scenario, say Bitcoin hit $250,000, there's incentive for me to say maybe I'd sell 10, and that would be a significant part of my Bitcoin.  And I would sell that 10 knowing it could go to $1 million.  But right now, that $2.5 million, I've sold 10 Bitcoin, I can go back to my community in Bedford, I can start more businesses, create more jobs in my local community and sell that Bitcoin to somebody who wants it for the future. 

So, we've kind of flipped that borrowing from the future, which we've done over and over again by printing dollars, to almost borrowing for the future.  And so it kind of flips this economic model.  I love it.  I'm here for all of this.

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, it really is.  It's a challenge, but it's kind of a great problem to have, that it's like, "Do I spend my money now where I know what I can do with it; or do I wait and possibly can do more with it in the future?"  Whereas, the fiat model is the opposite.  It's like, "Do I spend it now, at least I know what I got; or do I wait for the future where it's for sure going to decline in value?"  So, everyone's in a hurry in the fiat world and in the Bitcoin world it's like, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to spend 3% of my Bitcoin on this today and then maybe next year, another little bit".  So, yeah, I agree, it flips the model upside down. 

Peter McCormack: I love it. 

Tuur Demeester: Or right side up! 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, the right side up.  And I do have further questions that I think I'm going to save for the end.  I kind of want to ask you about, "Are we ready for this?  Do we really know what's coming?"  But I think we should save that for the end.  Okay, so you're piece you wrote, How to Position for the Bitcoin Boom, we'll put it in the show notes, we will recommend everyone goes and reads it.  Some won't, they'll listen to you explain it here.  What was the background to this being kind of your comeback piece?

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, it certainly was.  Well, the background is for the last four or five years, I had really severe insomnia, I really struggled to sleep.  I would have nights of three, four, five hours, and I'm not a person who is just genetically fine with that, I really need eight.  And so it made it so that I couldn't read books anymore.  I didn't finish a book in the last four years.  I couldn't write any more, I just couldn't remember names.  I actually did a panel in DC, I was at a conference, and this is pretty recently, and I just blacked out.  Somebody asked me a question and in the middle of my answer, I just blanked out, and I didn't know what to say any more. 

So, yeah, all those kind of things were just putting everything on hold and I had to figure it out and I've always been hesitant to take traditional medication because I always worry that it's just going to cover up the problem, and then before you know it, you're ten years ahead and the problem's worse, the underlying problem.  So, I tried a lot of things and eventually, one of the major things that really helped is a treatment I did last December.  I think, had I not done that, I think this report might not exist today, I might not have been able to write it.  But it was the wildest thing that ever happened to me!  And it weirdly has some ties with Bitcoin, actually. 

Peter McCormack: Are you going to tell us? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I think I'm ready.  It's been six months now, I had a lot of time to think about it.  And the reason why I want to share is that the treatment I did is, not in my case, my life was not on the line, but I know of many people where it is potentially a lifesaver and just to kind of cut to the chase, I did an ibogaine retreat.  So, ibogaine is a -- 

Peter McCormack: Is that the thing they use for the addictions? 

Tuur Demeester: Yes. 

Peter McCormack: Is that the thing where you like face all your demons?  It's like ayahuasca kind of thing, but it defeats every addiction? 

Tuur Demeester: It is known to be extremely effective against treatment-resistant addictions, yes.  So, for example, with me in the cohort, there were two addicts who had been 20-year plus.  One was 20-year plus, the other 15 years, heavy addiction opioids.  So, yeah, there's alcoholics who do it, there's people who are addicted to cocaine who do it, and who are able to -- not only does it help you quit, but part of what makes it possible is that the withdrawal period shrinks to about one or two days, down from I think with heroin it's over 30 days of just excruciating pains and things like that. 

Peter McCormack: Do you know about this? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I have heard a little bit about it, I don't know very much. 

Peter McCormack: Well, you're going to explain it, but I've heard the process is horrendous when you go through it.  Don't you go into some hallucination for like 24 hours and face your demons? 

Tuur Demeester: Well, apparently it's not the case for everybody, but in my case you could say it was something like that.  And the back story is also that I didn't just jump into this, I did a lot of research.  And actually, my cousin back in Belgium was really spiralling.  He actually had a substance addiction, was really spiralling to the point where we were worried like, "Is he going to make it another year?"  It was really critical.  And so, we found a clinic for him in Europe.  And so he, in a way, did it first, and similar to what you're saying, a very intense, difficult experience.  And then he felt incredible after.  And he had a streak of nine months just straight clean, which had not happened in, I mean, probably over a decade.

Peter McCormack: Still clean?

Tuur Demeester: He had a small relapse, but he's clean now, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Good, good.  Yeah.  So, what is ibogaine; can you explain it?

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, so ibogaine is a compound derived from the iboga plant, generally speaking.  You can get it from other plants as well, actually, but it's from the iboga.  It's a shrub from the root system, and people ingest it orally.  You just make it into powder, you ingest it, and apparently it was historically used by pygmy tribes first, and then gradually by the more general population of Gabon and also in Cameroon.  And the kind of religious beliefs associated with it is called Bwiti and there's about 3 million people who use it.  And it's not used as a way to deal with addiction, it's actually a right, a coming-of-age right.  So, teenagers will do the same treatment that I did in a tribal setting to kind of become a man or become a woman.  And then later, if you're dealing with a lot of grief, for example your husband died, you might do another ceremony and things like that.  So, it's been around for a real long time. 

It was discovered in the 1880s in the western world by some, I guess you could say colonists, French, Belgian colonists, and they even made it into a medicine in the 1930s.  You can still see photos online of, I forget the name of the brand, but it was like -- because in low doses, it actually is a stimulant, it gives you strength.  So, for a while it was sold, but then it kind of dwindled, I think it was maybe forbidden.  And then in 1962, Howard Lotsof, he was a heroin addict at a very young age and just was trying all kinds of psychedelics and noticed, "I take this and my addiction is completely gone".  So, he became the pioneer of this whole space.  And so then in the early 1990s, when Florida was dealing with this massive problem of cocaine and alcohol, apparently the combination is very, very deadly, so they had a lot of people dying, they started seeing that ibogaine was very powerful against that.  And so that's how slowly, in the western world, it started being used. 

There were a few deaths because it is quite intense on the system.  And of course, if you're targeting people that have exposed their bodies to chemicals of the heroin and the sorts for sometimes decades, you're not dealing with the strongest people either.  But there's protocols that they found to really diminish the risk massively.  And, what was I going to say?  So, for a while it really went more abroad and in smaller places.  And so to this day, apparently only in the western world, between 1960 and now, so in the last 60 years, only about 10 to 40,000 people have ever taken it, western people.  So, it's still very small.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean we have an epidemic of drug issues, it feels like.

Tuur Demeester: Oh yeah, with fentanyl, and absolutely.

Peter McCormack: Opioids, yeah.  I mean, the US seems to have a particularly bad problem.  It seems like this would be a good solution.

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, and there is research in the UK and elsewhere.  There are pilot studies, and so it's like in the wake of this psychedelic renaissance, it is also coming along and it has actually now been declared not technically legal, but it can be used in a medical context now in Colorado.  And so in a few years, we'll see clinics pop up there.  Right now, it's more like Mexico, Portugal and then Costa Rica is where it's been used.  And I can talk about it later, but there's some amazing research that came out on ibogaine.  I went to the psychedelic science conference in Denver where they talked about the results, even how it impacts the brain.  I don't want to maybe spoil it right now, because I don't want to -- well, it's up to you what you prefer.

Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, say it.  I mean, we're in the moment.

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, sure.  So, I knew it was a powerful medicine.  I'd experienced it, my cousin went through it, I've talked to some other people, it is probably the most powerful psychedelic on the planet.  But so, the results of this study where they specifically worked with veterans that have the worst form of PTSD, they really have traumatic brain injury because of being exposed to blasts and things like that, very severe PTSD, what they found is that they have a remission of the PTSD by 80% to 90%, which is unheard of compared to other methods; exposure therapy only gives you 30% to 40%; SSRI, like meds, maybe 14%; talk therapy, 26%.  So, 80% to 90% is unheard of.  And so you see the results go below the average for the general population. 

So, these people become, mentally speaking, healthier than the general population after one month, six months, and even 12 months.  And then also they even see a growth in the grey and the white matter of the brain.  So, for TBI, there's nothing in the world that does that, where actually it grows tissue in the brain.  And then also, you can measure brain age; just like your body can age at a certain rate, depending on what you do with it, your brain as well has a certain age.  And what they see is that one month after an ibogaine treatment, the mean brain age has reduced by 1.37 years.  So, I'm like Benjamin Button, I became 1.37 years younger in the brain sense of the word.  This is a pilot study done at Stanford.  As far as I can tell, it's not published yet, it's still in peer review, but it was presented at the conference.  So, I got to talk to the author of the study and made some video of it.  Really incredible research.  And I asked him, "Is there anything like this for TBI or PT?"  He's like, "No, there's nothing like it in the world".

Peter McCormack: Is there anything in here for big pharma to patent?

Tuur Demeester: Well, I mean if you do the ibogaine treatment, I mean I assume we'll talk about it, about how the experience is, and so they're kind of trying to defang it.  They're like, "Well, what if we change the molecule and you get all the benefits, but you don't have the nightmare?  What if we can take out the psychedelic part of it?"  So, we'll see, we'll see.  They're trying to do that with all the psychedelics, right?  But the nice thing is, just like in the open world, the digital world, the world of code, is that if you have a strong, open-source protocol, people have a choice.  They have a choice to either go with what is open source, or go with the patented version that is slightly tweaked.  So, I'm not really worried about that.

Danny Knowles: I think the idea of trying to take the bad part out of it will never work.  I once read a study on LSD, because you can do massive amounts of LSD and never really overdose, and I read a study of a few people who had done more than they probably intended to do and had terrible trips, and it was something like 90% of them said it was horrible, it was a terrible experience, but I'd do it again, I don't regret going through the experience.

Tuur Demeester: Which is the same for me.  I would say the absolute same thing about ibogaine.  And people who work in the space often word it like, "Well, this is not the trip you wanted, but maybe it was what you needed".

Peter McCormack: So, where did you go for it? 

Tuur Demeester: I went to Mexico for it.  I don't want to be too specific because my experience was not great and I would not recommend it, but at the same time, this clinic in particular, I also don't want to dox them or, you know.  So, I'm just going to say Mexico.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so we won't recommend the clinic in Mexico, yeah, we won't recommend the clinic but we will talk about the experience.  Okay, so talk us through the experience.  I'm fascinated by this, I didn't even know this was coming.  You always do this, you always come with a curveball! 

Danny Knowles: I knew this one was coming. 

Peter McCormack: Oh, did you? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I was emailing with Dan, just checking in. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean I've taken a fascination with it, just purely because of somebody who had an addiction and I had a fortunate medical reaction that made me have to just cold-turkey it, and it made it very easy for me, but I know how people struggle with addictions.  I mean, I struggle with a vape addiction.  It feels an extreme way to stop vaping but maybe it's what I need!  But I'm fascinated by it, so talk us through the experience, how it works, what you went through. 

Tuur Demeester: Sure, and just like is this what you need, just to illustrate how heavy this is, I actually found out beforehand that Jeff Berwick from the Dollar Vigilante, I don't know if you know him. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah. 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, he had done ibogaine because he had an alcohol addiction.  He was an alcoholic, and he had talked about the ibogaine experience afterwards on YouTube, some little video.  And so I sent him an email, I was like, "Hey, I'm struggling with insomnia, thinking about doing this, what do you think?"  And he literally said, "Ibogaine is beyond insane".  And he said, "If you want to deal with insomnia", he said, "smoke some pot and do some meditation".  So, he was basically saying, "Stay away from it". 

Peter McCormack: "Don't do it".

Tuur Demeester: And then on the other hand, what did help me decide for myself was seeing that somebody like Gabor Maté actually has done it himself as well, because he's a doctor who's written tons and tons about PTSD.  And I actually had some serious anxiety as well, which was tied into my insomnia, and so that kind of helped me that several people that are really respected from a medical point of view had gone so far as doing it themselves.  So then, yeah, doing my research, seeing my cousin come out of it on the other end, I think my mentality was kind of like, I want something that's one and done, something powerful, just get to the core.  I've been doing therapy for 15 years, and then I see people do ayahuasca, but then they do it five times a year, and I don't want to have a lifetime subscription to ayahuasca retreats in Costa Rica, or whatever.  So anyway, that was my thinking.  Little did I know. 

Peter McCormack: I'm so ready for this part of the story! 

Tuur Demeester: Oh, my God!  So, I signed up for this retreat.  It all happened pretty quickly.  I think in about a month's time, they had a spot available.  I signed up, I went in, it was going to be nine days, I think, so you would have four days before, one day of, and then four days after, something like that.  And the way they had it set up was that it would kind of be a rolling thing.  So, every day there were about one or two people who were doing the treatment.  And so as you'd come in, you would actually meet some people that had already done it, so they were totally blissed out, kumbaya; and then some other people who were nervous and still kind of in the throes of their addiction.  Because few people do this for lifestyle purposes, and I think for me it was kind of in the middle. 

So coming in, it was a little bit of an AA-type environment, Alcoholics Anonymous, where it was like, "Oh, let's meditate together and share some things", and there was a massage guy available and then they had a yoga lady come in in the morning, there's a pool, it was just all trying to help you relax.  But there was something off that looking back, there was more indications that there was something off, in that the doctors that they worked with were very experienced, but they had been hired by the company.  They weren't really invested in the company, they were just paid a good wage.  So, there was a cardiologist who was there, and then there was another one in Florida who I had seen on a video, and so their credentials were top-notch, they were very good, and that was what drew me to the clinic.  I was like, "Wow, this is the real deal".  But then being there, I started slowly realising like, "This is a startup.  They've only been doing this for a year".  But at the same time, I was like, just --

Peter McCormack: "I'm here".

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, exactly, "Let's do it".  And I even kind of pumped myself up, and even the day of the treatment, I sent this selfie to my wife and a few friends like, "Yeah, it's happening today!"  It was the perfect before shot.  So anyway, the food was amazing, they really tried to pamper you.  And so the day of the treatment, there was something that they did with incense of warding off any remaining evil spirits and, "We're going to make our own candle and you can paint the candle", and I get it, some of those things are to really just get into the vibe and also just try to help you feel safe.  So, I think that's -- but so, that was part of how they did it.

Then the treatment room was kind of like a hospital room, where there was one bed and another bed and there was a curtain in between them.  So, I was doing it together with a guy who was in his early 60s who had had a pretty severe, I think it was a morphine addiction or something like that, painkillers, in that realm, and he had done a treatment 12 months prior and this was his number two.  And so in a way, I felt reassured like, "If this is crazy, you wouldn't be doing it a second time", right?  And then so finally, at around 11.00, the doctor came in and there was this kind of speech.  They made it sound like they were an airline company and like, "Fasten your seat belts, we're going on a flight", etc, the song was sung and all kinds of stuff. 

So then we got more instructions about what to expect, and this is true; so for most people, the duration of the trip I believe is between about 20 to 30 hours is the whole trip.  Usually you don't sleep.  Although, I mean, there's a way to describe the trip as a waking dream, so maybe you're sleeping the whole time, it depends how you look at it.  But so the first phase of the trip is about five to seven hours where you're pretty catatonic, you can't move very much.  You get very nauseous when you move.  So, you can kind of go to the bathroom assisted, but you really can't move and you're laying down, and they tell you to put on the headphones, put on your eye mask and listen to the music and just really try and follow the music.  Because the weird thing is that your thinking brain does not degrade.  It's not like you're on alcohol or -- you feel like you're really, I don't know, you're really thinking, you're really experiencing it.

Peter McCormack: Do you go in with intentions?

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I forgot to mention that.  So, that was one of the things that they used the four days for, is to really work with a psychologist and think about what are your intentions.  And so in the beginning, you kind of come up with like, "Oh, these are my complaints, this is what I don't like".  So for example, for me, it's like, "I just feel so weak".  I really had trouble with, which the insomnia doesn't help, like, what do you call it?  There's a specific word for it, where you have trouble not giving in to an impulse.  Well, that's what it is, basically.  Where mental discipline, psychological discipline is very hard.  You say, "Oh, I want to do this", and then you do the opposite five seconds later, that kind of thing.

Peter McCormack: Sounds my whole life!

Tuur Demeester: Like, "Today I'm going to eat healthy", and then you're snacking after five minutes, that kind of thing.  So, I was really struggling with that.  And so then it's like, well okay, what if I say, "Why can't I be strong?"  It's like, "Is there a positive way to say that?"  It's like, "How can I be strong?"  And then we landed on like, "Okay, I want this medicine to show me how strong I am.  Like, how strong am I really?  Because there might be a gap between what I think about myself and what's actually the case".  So, that was my intention going in.  Just like, "Show me what you got!" which I didn't feel like I was being defiant.  I was more like, "I want to find some answers there". 

So, going into the trip, they came with a little cup that had all these capsules, and it's quite a lot.  I think in my case, they probably gave me around 2.4 grams of this ibogaine, and you just ingest it, drink a bottle of water, half a litre of water with it, and then in about half an hour is when you really start feeling it.  And so, you go to the bathroom one more time, you lay down, and then one of the first things I remember is these waves of, it feels genuinely like vibrations going through your body.  It's not like I'm trembling, it's not like I feel my muscles twitching, nothing like that.  It's like all the neurons in your body are just kind of weirdly fired up by something.  From your toes all the way to your head, you feel these waves, and at the same time you also feel the nausea happening. 

Then pretty quickly, I started seeing, because I mean, I guess my vision was supposed to be black, but all of a sudden I saw a screen in front of me, kind of like you're in an IMAX theatre, a big screen.  And then that's where things were being projected on that screen.  And there was also a voice, and it was kind of like a drill instructor, kind of really training me to -- it was like, "Stop scrolling", and it was like to be hyper online like, "Stop doing that", which was fairly familiar with what I've heard from other people as well, that they speak about like Father Iboga.  It's like Mother Ayahuasca is like, "Oh, she's loving and you're bathing in the love", and then Father is more stern, and that's why it's so good for addictions, it tells you what you need to hear. 

But so pretty quickly, at least from my recollection because it was pretty overwhelming, pretty quickly the screen went black.  And so after, I don't know, maybe after half an hour or an hour, the screen just went black and it stayed black for the next six hours while I was feeling kind of paralysed in bed.  I felt like I couldn't move, or I was going to vomit, or it just felt so horrible when you did move.  And then the guy next to me, in the beginning he was like, "I'm excited".  And then I heard him vomit and stuff. 

Danny Knowles: So, you're still aware of what's going on around you?

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, that's the weird thing.

Peter McCormack: Why didn't they put you in separate rooms?

Tuur Demeester: So, I don't know why, I think it's because of logistics or something, or they feel you feel a little more like there's a kinship or something that. 

Peter McCormack: Oh, okay; cell buddies!

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, but I was like, "Oh, how are you doing?" and then he's like, "urgh".  But yeah, you're still so lucid.  And so that whole experience started to feel like torture to me.  It was like, "I'm being tortured here".  These waves, I don't know when exactly, but at some point I started making up this theory of like, "Okay, this is not a psychedelic, this is not a psychedelic, these vibrations, this is coming from machinery outside of me.  Also, what I'm seeing or what I saw before is being projected onto my retina with some kind of technology".  So, I started developing this whole theory that basically, ibogaine was a marker that you put in your body and then aliens are able to target your body during that time and turn you into a zombie.  Because I was laying still for six hours, I so believed that. 

When finally I started moving a little more and sitting up, and just kind of being a bit numb, thinking that this was really happening, the founder came in, who had told me earlier, he's like, "In this bed is where I did my first ibogaine trip".

Peter McCormack: Did the six hours feel like six hours, or did it feel like an eternity? 

Tuur Demeester: It felt like an eternity, yeah, because it was that torturous.  Also, this is me looking back now, but looking back, I think basically the first four days, I never quite felt safe in that place.  And I'll tell you a little bit more about why not.

Peter McCormack: That doesn't help with intentions.

Tuur Demeester: Right.  I mean, so I was kind of like, "Oh, we're doing this".  And so I didn't really, really trust the people there.  And so, when he came to check in with me, he's like, "Oh, how's it going?" he was expecting me to be like, "Oh, wow, I saw all these visions".  And I said, "I'm onto you, I know what you're doing here, I'm so angry.  You just tricked me and all of us.  This is not a clinic to treat addicts, this is alien technology".  And so he was just shocked.  And so, that's kind of where the inexperience comes in.  He basically I think struggled to hold it together like, "Oh, my God, what do I do?"  And so I saw his kind of panic, and to me that was like, "He knows I'm onto him".  That was just confirmation, that's all I needed to see. 

So I did that thing, and then what they said afterwards is that at some point they offered me for me to be in touch with my wife, but I don't remember that.  What I remember is I asked for my phone and I was like, "Oh you know, I want to just look at some photos" and maybe I was acting really cool and you know, "look at some photos and think about things.  I don't want to message anyone".  So, they gave me my phone.  So, I don't know what exactly happened, whether they offered it first, they talked to my wife or not, but so then I had my phone and then I wanted to keep it.  I asked like, "Oh, can I go to my room?"  I was just acting, right?  I just really wanted to get out of there.  I was like, "Maybe in my room I can figure something out.  And then I told the doctor, "Yeah, my phone, can I just have it with me?"  And he was like, "Yeah, okay", which in the ibogaine world is a known no; you don't do that ever, ever, ever during the trip give people their phone!  So, anyway, so that's where the inexperience came in again. 

So, they gave me my phone, I went to my room.  This is like, I think now we're talking 12 hours into the trip, I think.  It was already 11.00 at night, something like that.  And I was like, "Oh yeah, maybe I'll sleep some", or I was just making shit up.  So, I went to my room and I had access to their Wi-Fi.  I didn't have a Mexican SIM card, but I did have access to their Wi-Fi.  And so, when I was in the room, I started to really kind of -- thinking through the consequences of this, to me it didn't feel like a theory.  This is just absolute knowledge that I had like, "I am going to die".  My cousin said, "It's 20 hours of nightmares and then heaven" and in my head, that's like, "Oh, he's already a zombie".  20 hours of nightmares, so I just had seven, so it's going to be three treatments of this ibogaine.  So, tomorrow they're going to torture me again.  And then the last day, that'll be the final stage.  

So, I just was like, "Okay, so basically tomorrow at 11.00am, the same time, I'm going to die".  That was what I started to really, really believe.  And then the first phase was panic like, "How do I get out of here?"  I started looking around, the window in my room was a bank, it was quadruple glass or something.  And I was like, "This is a prison", which looking back, if you build an ibogaine clinic, you're going to have extreme experiences, you don't want people crashing through a window.  It makes sense to do it that way, but for me it was just compounding evidence that this is so sketchy.  And so for about 10 to 20 minutes, I really had to grapple with, "Okay, I am going to die".  You know when the Tetris game is going really, really fast?  At some point you realise, "I'm not going to last a lot longer.  Maybe a few more rows and that's it".  So, that was kind of, "Okay…" and this the weirdest thing, but accepting my death like, "Okay, okay I'm going to -- okay".  

Then it was like, "Okay, can I actually make it a little easier; can I commit suicide?" and I said looking around.

Peter McCormack: Jesus!

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, genuinely it was like, yeah, because I believed all that stuff.  And I was like, "No, they took my knife", you know, they took stuff.  It's like, "I can't do that".  And then finally the last step was like, "Well, maybe in the morning I can try to escape, at least give it a try, and at least now they think I'm sleeping, I can warn my friends", which I started doing. 

Peter McCormack: You started texting them?! 

Tuur Demeester: Oh, yeah, oh more than that.  Yeah, and also I was so lucky that my Twitter 2FA didn't work, I would have blasted all this out to the world; I swear I would have done that! 

Peter McCormack: It would have been like, "Tuur's been hacked!" 

Tuur Demeester: I mean, I know because I would have been able to interact and I would have come up with things to prove that this was me.  Oh, you bet, I would have. 

Peter McCormack: I kind of wish your 2FA had worked!

Tuur Demeester: Oh, my God!  So, I started writing emails on my phone and I was specifically targeting the people that I respect the most, the people that I thought are the smartest that I know, much smarter than me.  Because basically, to me, this was an invasion that was happening.  This is the beginning of the aliens that are taking over the planet.  They're starting with the low hanging fruit, the easy.  And as I was thinking, I was like, "Man, these guys who've done the ibogaine treatment, they're all so jacked, they're all fit".  And of course, if you want cattle as an alien race, you want human cattle, you want them to be strong and performing.  So, everything was just making sense. 

So, I was blasting out these emails about what was going on, and people, I mean of course Adam Beck, Greg Maxwell, everybody, and people from other areas that I also know and respect, and then also I had Signal.  So, I don't know if your audience knows but Signal is like WhatsApp.  You can call people and you can also leave voice messages or regular messages.  So, I start leaving recorded voice messages.  I was like, "I swear this is real.  I swear".  I'm literally saying, "I'm going to be dead tomorrow.  This is going to happen".  This is in the middle of the night for people, right?  I mean, people are sleeping.  So, the reactions I got back was a few people immediately responded.  This is a minority.  A few were like, "Dude, what are you doing?" they were pissed off.  And then the majority, because I had been kind of dropping here and there, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to do a treatment for my insomnia".  So, they're like, "Oh, it looks you're having an intense trip.  Good luck".  That was the majority, which is of course very well intentioned. 

Peter McCormack: "See you on the other side!" 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah.  I mean but for me, it was just like, "They don't get it.  They'll get it once I'm dead, they'll understand what I'm talking about".  And then the last category was very, very few people.  This is all in the middle of the night.  And meanwhile, I was having like, not seeing people in my room or something, but for example, I looked up and I saw in the dim light the front door of my room, and the walls, it looked there were fingernail scratches all over the walls, which to me it was like, prisoners have been here before, people have died before in the same way.  I mean, it was just…

So, I'm just emailing people.  And so there was a minority of people, one of whom was Greg Maxwell, who was amazing.  He basically he told me afterwards that he had dealt with people with severe mental health issues who would go into psychosis, and so he actually kind of went along with what I was saying, meanwhile trying to keep me safe.  He was literally saying like, "Oh, maybe play along with the nurses just for now" or things like that.  And one of my fears was also that, "Okay, I'm dead, I'm written off, but basically my body is still going to be around while I'm a zombie and I'm going to be an agent for the enemy".  So I was like, "You've got to look at my behaviour after this retreat and compare it with how it was before", and I literally was like, "Do it like you did with Craig Wright, look at the internal inconsistency, try to figure out".  Anyway…

So, I mean on the one hand, it sounds completely bonkers and crazy and how can this possibly be a useful experience?  But on the other hand, now I do know for sure what I would do if it was my last day on Earth and I knew it; I know I would go out with a fight, I would try to warn my friends about what was going on, I would try to do what I can to help people figure out what's going on.  But that's later.  I was still so in the moment, sending out all these emails, people emailing me back.  I even had a screenshot of my Google Maps because as I was driving in the taxi to the hotel, they picked me up at the airport, I realized I don't know the address.  Nobody knows where I am.  So, I took a screenshot, this is before the trip, of course, I took a screenshot and I had that on my phone.  And so I had put that in several emails, "Is anyone in this town?"  And actually one guy wrote me back, "Oh yeah, I'm here".  He was at a wedding or something.  I was like, "Yeah, whatever.  It's too late for me, but at least now you know where to go once the news is out that I'm dead or something".  So, anyway, it's going to get crazier.

Peter McCormack: Oh my God, this is unbelievable.

Tuur Demeester: I do have to say, talking about this, I do feel some adrenaline again!  Because it's not like, "Oh, I believe this to be the case".  It's in my bones, I knew.  That's why they call this a living dream.  The earliest description from Father Henri Neu in 1885, he says about the iboga rituals, he says, "The one who drinks it falls into a deep sleep during which he is obsessed by uninterrupted dreams, which until the time he awakens, he takes to be actual events", so this is spot-on to me.  And so imagine if instead of a 10-minute nightmare, you have a 30-hour nightmare, or a dream.  So, it's uninterrupted, the theme doesn't change.

Peter McCormack: And there's no part of you that can ever go, "Well, hold on a second, Tuur, you know this isn't real.  You've chosen to come and do this, just take a step back"? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, no I think maybe that could have happened, because I've read about a lot of other people's experiences, if you have someone at the clinic that you really trust and they can sit you down, even during the trip as you're lucid; they can just explain what's happening and then you can kind of be like, "Oh, okay".  And it's rare for someone to have a -- this is almost like a psychotic break, I really broke and I couldn't come back, at least for that, you know, it's going to be 30 hours; this is a -- 

Peter McCormack: I would have Danny with me! 

Tuur Demeester: -- 30-hour trip. 

Danny Knowles: Were they checking in on you during the time? 

Tuur Demeester: So, when I was in my room, nobody came to check.  So, all the way from midnight to the morning, nobody checked. 

Peter McCormack: That sounds bad. 

Danny Knowles: Yeah, it does.

Tuur Demeester: I mean, yeah, I don't know.  I think they were hoping that I was going to settle in or figure it out because, yeah, I don't know what they were thinking.  But at around 5.00am, I remember my theory by then was like -- so they just have this mapped out in a diagram where, "If the people are docile, we're just going to put them through the treatment and they get their three treatments and they're zombies.  But we have so much choice of clients here.  We don't care if somebody starts to cause a fuss, we'll just kill them".  That was my thinking, is that they'll let me leave and they'll just shoot me in the head.  They'll just kind of do it and dump me somewhere.  And so then I was like, "Okay, well at least if that's the case, it's a quick ending, and maybe there's a very small chance I can jump out of the cab or something like that". 

So, I started to concoct a plan to escape the facility.  So, around 5.00am, I did a reconnaissance run.  I just walked up to the breakfast area, and I took some water and I was like taking some water and there was this ginormous, male nurse, a really buff guy, six foot tall, who was sleeping in the couch and he kind of lifted an eye and I was kind of like, "God damn it, they've got it figured out, that's why they have the gorilla there because people try to escape here all the time".  I was like, "Okay, but at least I know now, I remember now where the front door is".  And so, more time passed, and by 7.00am, 6.30am or 7.00am, I think 7.00am, I ordered an Uber and I was like, "I'm going to just let it park outside and I'll see the confirmation it's here, and then I'm going to just try to run out the door and get in the Uber and go".  And that's what I did.  The Uber came and I -- 

Peter McCormack: Hold on, you did? 

Tuur Demeester: I tried. 

Peter McCormack: Oh, you tried? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah.  Yeah, I tried.  I saw it on my app arrive and I was pretending to go to breakfast and then I just bolted through the first door, which was open, but then the second door, it was kind of, you know how in Mexico things aren't that safe, and so they build a wall around the building sometimes?  So, that was the case.  So, it's like a compound and the second door was locked.  And that was the moment when I was like, everybody was looking at me and literally everybody knew, all the staff, which was a lot, they had like seven or eight staff there, they all realise, "Oh, what's going on?  This guy?"  

Then my attitude changed where I was just insisting, "You've got to let me out, you've got to let me out", and they were stalling, because they knew my ibogaine was going to wear off at some point.  So, they tried to stall and it was like, "Oh, why don't you rest a bit", in my room.  And in my mind, these were all robots, they're all zombies who were Ais, so they were looping through the same thing over and over, which in a way was true because they were kind of panicking.  So, I think they weren't really that present.  Yeah, go ahead. 

Peter McCormack: Did it feel a nightmare at the time?  Were you terrified or did you go into kind of autopilot of, "Actually, I can deal with this"? 

Tuur Demeester: I think there's only so much panic your body can deal with. 

Peter McCormack: Right. 

Tuur Demeester: And so, I think after a certain amount of time, the adrenaline is still there but you go into different modes.  And I became very, especially in the morning, the anxiety kind of went away and I just became more like, it's not angry.  It was almost like, what is the word?  Like, "I'll run through a wall, I don't care".  You know, just very committed, very, very certain of everything that I was doing.  I was literally saying them to their face, "I don't care what you're telling me, I don't want to talk to you right now".

So, they were stalling, but then eventually they did put me in touch with my wife and they thought maybe that would help, and I was just so amped up still and I did little tests to see if she was compromised or not.  I was like, "Tell me a joke", and then she looked up a little joke and sent it to me, and I was like, "My wife would never come up with this kind of joke.  She's just a robot right now".  And I would tell her like, "I don't believe you".  And so, I would kind of write that off and they just kept trying and I wouldn't talk to her even on the phone, just all, yeah, I was just so...  But weirdly, I was also emotional because I felt I was going to die.  And so, even if this is just kind of a ghostly manifestation of what was once my wife, I'm still kind of saying goodbye.  So, sometimes I would be emotional and say something. 

But so I just kept insisting like, "You've got to let me leave".  And then they got the cardiologist there as well, and he tried to reason with me.  I was like, "Oh, this guy, he can think better, he's probably an alien.  The other guys are robots, this guy is probably actually an alien".  But so eventually he came with paperwork saying, "You can sign out against doctor's orders, we can't keep you here".  And I was like, "Yeah, hell yeah".  So, I signed out against doctor's orders, and that was like 9.30am, 10.00am, so I'd been tripping for 23 hours or something.

Peter McCormack: So, they let you go?

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, because they're not a psychiatric clinic.

Peter McCormack: Still…!

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, and so looking back of course, I think what you want to do is you want to walk your client through a bunch of steps and let them sign things that are very clear like, "Hey, during your trip, we can't let you leave the building".  So, then they could have shown me my own signature, which was not the case.  I didn't trust them and then they had to try and convince me in the moment.  So, it didn't work.  And they were afraid for violence as well.  They just didn't know if they say really no to me, what am I going to do?  Because I think they're going to kill me, so I mean what would you do? 

Peter McCormack: But I'm surprised they hadn't had any other weird experiences like this with other people. 

Tuur Demeester: I mean they'd only had, I don't know how many clients up to then.  Maybe they'd had slightly over 100 or something, and I have talked to other people from this ibogaine world, and my case is pretty rare. 

Peter McCormack: Okay, it happens. 

Tuur Demeester: Usually, people will have the nightmare feelings, but then they can kind of still trust some people around them.  So, that was different for me.  And in my mind, I was just kind of like, "Yeah, but I'm an analyst, I figured all this out.  That's why the other people don't try to escape".  Anyway, so I just tell myself stories.  But so yeah, I did order an Uber, I signed out against doctor's orders, I was waiting for the Uber, and they were hanging out outside with me, the doctor and a few of the people, my psychologist.  And I was like, "What are you doing here?  Go back inside.  I don't want you here", just because I wanted to be able to actually try to escape.  So, I got in the Uber. 

Then looking back, I saw the psychologist get in her car, and I was like, I took $40 and I gave it to the driver, and I was like, "Drive, go as fast as you can, I want you to lose this car".  So, we were racing to the airport.

Peter McCormack: When you're speaking to the Uber --

Tuur Demeester: He did a great job actually, the taxi driver, he lost the tail!

Danny Knowles: When you're speaking to the taxi driver, do you sound totally lucid, totally normal?

Tuur Demeester: No, I definitely would, no, I definitely would look like I'm --

Peter McCormack: Insane!

Tuur Demeester: No, not insane, but I'm anxious or I'm agitated, I'm insisting. 

Danny Knowles: But you don't seem like -- you don't look drunk. 

Tuur Demeester: No, no.  So, my vision is totally clear. 

Peter McCormack: And you had your passport?  I, no, wait, did I?  No, no.  Okay, so because I signed out against doctor's orders, they actually gave me my stuff. 

Peter McCormack: Okay. 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, they gave me my passport and I think they, I was like -- the suitcase, I was like, "I don't want the suitcase", because I had a plan.  I was going to try and go to the airport and then maybe change lanes in the middle of it and go to the bus station and take a bus, because I wanted to lose my tail.  So, we drove to the airport and I was nauseous in the car.  I was also thirsty because I hadn't had enough water.  And I basically was realising, physically I'm quite vulnerable.  And so what would happen if I take a bus to some other city to try and get to the border with the US and the alien shit still works and they start treating me again, and I'm convulsing there in the middle of nowhere?  So, I was like, okay, let's just try to go to the airport and maybe get out that way. 

So, I got to the airport, I made it there, found a way to get some water.  And so apparently, which is what my wife told me later, the CEO did manage to follow me and he spotted me at the airport.  So, he was spying on me.  I mean, of course, I'm glad he did, looking after me.  But so yeah, he was somewhere around, which I didn't know.  And I was like, my anxiety started coming back because we were getting closer to 11am, which was when I thought when the vibrations would start again, and at the same time I was also believing that the aliens were already controlling me with the nausea.  If I went to a place they didn't want me to go, they would make me nauseous.

For example, I was talking to my wife, it was like, "Okay, we got a flight home".  She's like, "I only found one at 6.00pm, which wasn't true, but she knew my ibogaine would have been worn off by then.  This is early.  It was noon by then or 11.00am or something.  And I was like, "Book another flight.  Oh yeah, there's an Air Canada flight to LA, book that one".  And she actually did book one other flight.  And then that flight was in another terminal.  And I was like, alright, I'm going to lose my tail, I'm waiting for the bus to take me to the other terminal.  And as I was waiting, the bus just arrived after ten minutes of waiting, and I had this wave of nausea.  And I was like, fuck, the aliens, they know what I'm doing.  They're telling me to not go.  Alright, I'll just go back. 

So, eventually I went through security and I was still massively into this trip around noon, I think.  And so for the next four or five hours, basically the ibogaine started to wear off and apparently it's in your muscles and you start getting these strange, almost electric razorblade type pains, these, I don't know.  It's almost like electric shocks in some way, and it's very unpleasant.  And I remember they had told me, "You need to exercise to get it out of your system".  So, that's what they would tell the people that were in the clinic before me, "Do some workouts or swim or something to get the ibogaine out of your muscles", and I was like, "Yeah, now I get it, this is how the aliens control you with this stuff". 

But so anyway, I just wanted to get rid of the nausea and I started walking and I still have it in my app, my Apple app.  I walked for seven miles in the airport.  I was with all my luggage, it was just marching seven miles, nonstop, around the airport over and over and over.  And meanwhile, also talking to my wife and I started to gradually trust her more and I started feeling emotional because she was telling me like, "Yeah, two friends of yours are going to pick you up at the airport".  And so my theory started gradually to change, because I started feeling better.  And I was like, "Maybe the aliens have a different plan where I'm going to be compromised slowly.  And then eventually they're just a sleeper cell, they'll just activate me when they need me.  I'm kind of like a terrorist without realising it and they'll just do --", what's the Matt Damon movie, that kind of thing, they'll just activate me.  Then I talked to some friends and I was more in the space of, "Oh, they're naïve, they just don't get it yet, but I'll explain it", and it started feeling really good to think about being home.  It's like, "Oh, yeah, maybe I will make it home somehow". 

Then the last phase, I would say, was that I started feeling really good.  I had just done 40 push-ups, I'd done all this workout stuff, because they use ibogaine for this purpose.  In Gabon, they go and it's for hunting and stuff, for endurance.  And I start to glow and I was like, "Maybe I can start a YouTube channel and I'll be the Alex Jones of this alien theory".  And I was just kind of like, "Before I get compromised, I'll be able to warn more people.  And I've got so much charisma now and it's just..."  Anyway, that was the last phase!  And then at around 4.30, which was very briefly, yeah, something like that, very shortly before boarding the flight, I was glowing and I felt this thing over my body and this wave and "whoop", and something closed above my head.  And literally in a second, all the paranoia was gone.  It was incredible.  It was just all gone, like you're just waking up from a dream.

Peter McCormack: And were you like, what the fuck am I doing?

Tuur Demeester: I mean, I remembered a lot, but all of a sudden the memory started to become more vague about this theory and what was happening, and I started being like, "How does that prove anything?  What if it was just an audio hallucination?"  I started really being more like, just like you've woken up.  And then funny, and I just felt so great and glowy, because apparently there is a kind of a serotonin effect which basically lasts for months.  That's part of why this is so powerful, is that your body metabolizes the ibogaine, noribogaine gets deposited in your liver.  That lasts for about six months.  So, you get an afterglow of about, I mean the first days is amazing and then it goes a little less, but still.  So, for an addict, that's an incredibly valuable time to build new habits. 

So, I started feeling amazing, boarded the plane, there was a young guy from Colombia who was sitting next to me, and I started crying laughing.  I couldn't stop laughing because I was realising I emailed all my friends, people that aren't even my friends, that are the most precious business contacts or whatever, like, "Oh, what did I do?"  I was not panicking at all, it was just kind of such a relief, and I knew I was going home.  My wife was actually doing a retreat in California, so she had to rush home, and so that's why two friends of mine picked me up, and so I was just like, "Man, my friends are going to pick me up".  And so then it was incredible.  It's like my cousin had said, 20, maybe 30 hours in my case of nightmares and then heaven.  I just felt incredible.  I was like a baby.  You just feel so good in your body.

Peter McCormack: So, how do you reflect on that whole thing then? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, so in the beginning, especially the first few months even, sometimes there would be waves of I remember so vividly being so scared of this alien stuff.  I basically had trouble placing it, what exactly was that; was it real?  Even if it's a 5% chance that it's real, I didn't want to invalidate how panicked I felt and how certain in my bones I was of all this stuff.  But so, only later when I found out about the clinic and apparently they're in debt and that there is some anxiety actually there in the clinic, then I was like, "Oh, I just absorbed this anxiety and the ibogaine ran with it and it enlarged it".  So, in some way, I was correct during the trip to not trust, to an extent, these people. 

But so anyway, the biggest takeaway for me is that it actually was a manifestation of my worst nightmare growing up, because there's a lot of addiction and depression in my family, a lot of trauma as well.  And so I remember still as a teenager, one of my big, big fears was that determinism was real, that maybe free will didn't exist, and that I was doomed to become like that, I was doomed to basically become a zombie, a depressed person who is at the whims of everybody else.  And so in that sense, it was extremely cathartic to live through my worst nightmare and have my adult facilities with me.  In a way, even having this whole escape plan, being able to communicate with friends, being able to weirdly leave a legacy, that was what I was typing.  I was like, "Cypherpunks unite!"  And I was like, "Greg, you're the one I always looked up to", I meant it, right, "You're the one I always looked up to most".  I'm basically leaving him with a nugget to be able to figure out the mechanics of all this so we can maybe thwart it. 

So, yeah, it really was incredibly cathartic.  And so my anxiety has been way lower since, generally speaking, way, way lower.  And also, what I was saying in the beginning about the difficulty to resist impulses, that really improved a huge amount.  So, I started taking ice baths very regularly, I cleaned out my diet.  I don't have trouble with wanting to snack or sugar cravings.  It's not that there's never any cravings, but there's so much more space that I feel like, "Oh, I can do this instead, or I can do that instead".  So, now I think I really understand how this can break addiction.  And also, one of the things it does apparently is it resets your opioid receptors.  So, that's why people who've been opioid addicts, and to some extent, any addiction is going to generate internal opioids, and so if you can reset that to back when you were six or seven years old, it's not like you can never get addicted again, but you start with a clean slate in a way.

Peter McCormack: So, worth it?

Tuur Demeester: For me it was.  And so I don't want to just say in general, people should do this, or whatever.  My experience is what it is.  There definitely are health risks that you have to look into.  For me, yes, Jeff Berwick, I agree it was beyond insane.  But for me, yes, I'm really glad I did it and I may do it again. 

Danny Knowles: Has it cured your insomnia?

Tuur Demeester: Yes.

Danny Knowles: Amazing.

Tuur Demeester: I want to say it gave me the tools to be able to very, very significantly improve my sleep, yes.

Peter McCormack: Me and Danny, I did my first ever trip with Danny here in Texas, actually.  I've only done it once, mushrooms, great experience.  And I was very apprehensive going into it.  I was very nervous because I just have a history with drugs.  But it was a brilliant experience.  You have probably a bigger interest in it than me. 

Danny Knowles: Yeah, definitely, I think that sounds too intense for me!  I'm no way ready for that.

Tuur Demeester: So there's -- I'll tell you later, but go ahead.

Danny Knowles: I really do fancy trying DMT though.  But again, I'm very nervous about doing it.  I think in a really nice setting, I would do it, but I'm very apprehensive.

Peter McCormack: It's weird, I'm kind of more drawn to ibogaine, because I think I have internal demons that need dealing with.  I know I carry demons with me.  My whole life, I've carried demons, especially the last decade I have.  They exist, I know what they are, I know where they hold me back in life.  Danny probably knows what they are, if I asked him he'd probably say what they are.  And so weirdly, everything you've said about that is what I fear would happen with DMT.  I would fear it, fear a weird trip.  But at the same time, I feel more drawn to do ibogaine than DMT, because it's meant to be part of it.

Tuur Demeester: Well, I have learned some things afterwards.  One of the things is that if you're not a severe substance addict, there's actually a more gentle way to be exposed to ibogaine.  What they did with me is kind of uncommon.  In more experienced clinics, they actually give you a test dose first to kind of see, which I think is 30% of the full dose or maybe 20% I'm not sure, just to kind of see how your system responds, not only physically but also psychologically.  So, I didn't have that, it was just kind of all the way, straight in.  And then, I forget, there's just some other things that work for people that are coming at it from a more psychological approach rather than from addiction.  There was something else I wanted to say. 

Well, yeah and so, in terms of facing your fear, what I've learned is that there's a difference between knowing, roughly speaking, what your fears are, and some of them you have encountered during dreams, I think.  I do think that that some of that stuff actually is very vivid in nightmares and things like that, but there was a big difference for me to actually stare my fear right in the face.  It's like the closet opens up and you're just looking right at it.  And weirdly, part of how I talked myself into going into an ice bath, because I knew at some point I want to try that, and I didn't do it because I was worried I would be too weak, like somehow I'm not the person who can do that; whereas afterwards, I was like, even a week after, I was like, "Just buy some ice, throw it in a tub".  And then I was like, "I defeated the aliens, I can do this"!  Really, that's what I would tell myself, and it really helps with mental resilience somehow.

Peter McCormack: So, how did ibogaine help you position for the Bitcoin Boom?!  How long have we just gone for?

Danny Knowles: An hour and 15!

Peter McCormack: That's a big build-up.  We were like, "I just want fucking moon juice, man, tell me how to buy Bitcoin"!  Okay, we might even have to split this and say, look, if you don't want the trip buildup... 

Danny Knowles: Everyone should hear that story. 

Peter McCormack: Everyone should hear that.  Okay, let me ask you something, and it might sound a little bit "urgh" but has it changed any thoughts or how you approach Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is so central to your life, certainly for the last decade, 12 years; did you come out and go, "I thought about Bitcoin like this and now I think about it like that", or did it give you more clarity, or did it give you more determination?  Because if there's an impact on Bitcoin, I'm obviously even more interested!

Tuur Demeester: Well, one thing that comes to mind is that the determination with regards to the cypherpunks, the cypherpunks are badass.  If there was ever an alien invasion, these are the guys that can figure it out.  Honestly, they were there.  In terms of, I don't know, just the resourcefulness, I know that there was just so much there, in a way that I didn't really trust before.  I really leaned on them, these are people that I know, and they really, especially Greg, was amazing, and other people too.  So, that is just to me, the cypherpunk values, part of it is you care about the truth and you care about figuring out what's going on.  And you also care about humanity and basic human freedoms.  So, that really came to life much more for me.  And so, it just gives me more conviction that this is... 

It's like Bitcoin is an amazing piece of technology, but it rests on the shoulders of these incredible people that go back way before Bitcoin was even invented, people that were working on all kinds of ways to protect privacy and other human rights in the digital space.  So, that's definitely a big takeaway.  I think also I'm more resilient in terms of just the emotional swings of the market.  I feel like I can handle that better, I have a bit more of a view from a distance, which is always healthy.  Then in terms of specifics, no.  I mean, I feel more determined maybe to kind of poke at the Ethereum monster and some other monsters, but I didn't change the direction; maybe I'm just more intense. 

Peter McCormack: I used Ethereum this week. 

Tuur Demeester: Oh yeah, I think I read that.  In Argentina, people want to send USDT on it. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I triggered some people with that.  It's my first time I've ever sent tether.  I'd never used it because I had no need.  We're going out next week to make this film and the driver wanted to book the car, wanted to pay him in tether.  And so, yeah, I paid him in tether.  He's a bitcoiner, but he needs tether day-to-day. 

Tuur Demeester: Sure, and tether, you can use it on Tron as well and there's some other ways.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Polygon and some other things, but I think it's that he can probably rent the car with tether.  He uses tether day to day.  If he then wants to convert part of that into Bitcoin that's down to him, but yeah.  Anyway, we won't poke Ethereum today.  Okay, I also think it's quite interesting that the first piece you write is How to Position for the Bitcoin Boom after this, because it feels like a piece that says, "I know what's coming, I'm sure it's come in, okay, let's fucking go, here we go".

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, that's how I feel. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think we've found ourselves feeling that anyway in the last three months, certainly in the last month, even more so the last couple of weeks.  I said to you earlier, when I think I first read about hyperbitcoinisation, maybe on the Nakamoto Institute, which by the way, brilliant resource.  If you're listening and never checked it out, please go and check it out.  We'll put it in the show notes.

Tuur Demeester: Oh yeah, Michael Goldstein, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, the amount of things I read on there and every time I was like, "Yeah, whatever".  And then I come out like, "Fuck, they were right".  Honestly, they're the Nostradamus of bitcoiners.  But I always felt like hyperbitcoinisation is a Bitcoin wet dream that would never actually be a reality.  Now, I think it's coming and coming soon.

Tuur Demeester: It's more a matter of when and how.  I don't think it's a matter of if, because it's just better technology.  I mean you don't have to make it a religion or make it emotional.  People are eventually going to build life, hobbies, lifestyle around this, and so that might even mean it's going to be incorporated in some religion.  That's all possible but the bottom line is still it's just better technology and it's resilient.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, there's also you get to see bitcoiners externally and some people will have some resentment towards it and some people have some jealousy, but you get to see bitcoiners live a certain kind of life, and you can resist that, but I think it's also a good advert if you're the right person to consume that advert.  So, if I'd have gone all in to Bitcoin in 2013 when I first discovered it like I did in 2017, my net wealth would be -- I'd be in a very good place.  And I didn't, I resisted it, I just didn't take it seriously.  And I have friends I've been telling about since 2017 and they're going to see the job I do and they've seen I've got a football club and seen things that have happened to my life and they naturally come to me now and say, "Am I too late for this Bitcoin thing?"  I'm always, "No".  

So, I think part of the boom is going to be people just constantly seeing it around them and thinking, "I want to be part of this.  That looks different.  My life is this and my money's fucked, and everything they said is true and look at the life they're living".  And so that's part of the whole game theory.  So, okay, we should start digging into this.  Part two of how to position for the Bitcoin boom.  Hopefully you've all taken your ibogaine and you're ready for this!

Tuur Demeester: Take a little microdose to get through this interview!

Peter McCormack: Let's microdose ibogaine!  All right, so let's talk about what Bitcoin is competing against.  So, for anyone listening, what is it competing against? 

Tuur Demeester: That's a good question.  Yeah, what or whom?  I think that just always, if there is a technological revolution, there are winners and there are losers.  Early adopters usually are winners.  Losers, in the economic sense, are people who are too late or who have built up a certain status that is not easily interchangeable in this new world, because maybe it is built on being a Cantillonaire and you get close to the source of that sweet dollar nectar and you've been at it for maybe multiple generations even, because there are fiat dynasties out there of people who have just been very close to the source.  So, for those people, it's kind of going to be a lose. 

I mean, Bitcoin is not a net win for the entire world.  In the long run it is, but not in the short run.  So, I think those are the people that are going to be resisting this, some more fiercely than others.  And I think I wouldn't call them enemies, but they won't give in very easily.  They will stick to what they know, and they will try to come up with strategies to deter people from being a bitcoiner, or using or buying Bitcoin.  And I think that's just the general thing to be aware of, is that this is a...  And also, just to have some compassion, because it's such a thorough change.  To some people, it's just too overwhelming to just accept it.  It's been 14 years that Bitcoin has existed.  Literally, I think everybody in the civilised world, sorry I don't want to say that; everybody in an advanced economy knows what Bitcoin is, roughly speaking. 

Peter McCormack: Even non-advanced economies, I would say. 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, maybe even more. 

Peter McCormack: I've been saying for a long time, Bitcoin has mass awareness.  You don't meet people these days and they say, "What do you do?"  "I've got a Bitcoin podcast", and they're like, "What is Bitcoin?"  They've got questions.  Everyone knows it exists.

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, and so I just think that the transition is going to be tough.  But at the same time, it'll be it'll be tough, tough, tough and then I think all of a sudden it'll feel kind of effortless.  The last bit is just going to be "whoop", just how people go bankrupt a little bit at a time and then all at once.  I think similarly for hyperbitcoinisation it's going to be very tough, a tough climb.  At some point we'll be like, "Are we ever going to get there?  There's so much adversity here", and then the last bit is just going to be nothing.

Peter McCormack: I think that also relates, I mean collectively yes, but I also think individually that first tour of duty you do, your first four years, you can get lucky.  I got lucky in that when I went deep in again, it was right at the start of 2017, Bitcoin was $600 and by the end of the year, it was $20,000.  I did go very through a very painful experience from millionaire to nearly broke, because I didn't know about bear markets how to prepare for it, but I still bounced back and I did my first tour of duty, my first four years.  It gets a lot easier after that.  You know the cycles, you know the pain points, you know the stupid things you can do, but it's getting through that and it's trying to explain.  It's proof of work and time preference.  I think that's what that first tour of duty teaches you, is proof of work and time preference.  And if you understand both of those and you apply them to your life, then it gets a lot easier.  Would you say that's fair? 

Danny Knowles: Totally fair, yeah. 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I agree.  And I think those are challenges that are definitely out there for all of us still.  I think additionally to that, there are going to be potential prosecutions.  In certain countries, this is going to be declared enemy number one.  People are going to say this is the reason for the inflation, weirdly, turning the world upside down, but I think they'll do it; they'll blame inflation on Bitcoin.  They'll kind of have this -- probably the environmental concerns are going to get blown up more and maybe they'll say like, "Bitcoiners are selfish, they want to keep everything for themselves, they don't want to share".  So, that is something just to be aware of.  There's amazing work being done on the political side, and so I think a lot of nations are going to be very Bitcoin-friendly, but at the same time some just won't get it and we have to accept that.  It's just something to generally prepare for, I think.

Peter McCormack: I think the environmental side is about to flip.

Tuur Demeester: You mean pro-Bitcoin?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think so, and I think there's a very clear line of sight in that ESG came from Larry Fink and BlackRock.

Tuur Demeester: Yes.  Yeah, because weren't they the kind of the banner child for being politically correct with regards to climate?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I don't know if they specifically created the ESG model, but I know they very much pushed the ESG model and with that expectation there would be ESG charts and companies, which we do have which are bullshit, but whatever, and they pushed a lot of that agenda.  It's going to be very difficult for them to push a significant Bitcoin agenda without them directly addressing the fact that the environmental concerns for Bitcoin are misguided, and actually explaining the benefits of Bitcoin.  They're actually incentivised to do that.  I mean, their customers are going to question this.  And when Larry Fink comes out and says, "Bitcoin is ESG", it covers -- and by the way, with ESG, most people focus on the E. 

Tuur Demeester: What does it stand for again? 

Peter McCormack: Environment, Social, Governance.  And so you look at Bitcoin's governance, it's about as pure as you can get, in that the decentralisation means rules not rulers; you look at the social side of things, I mean this is work that, for example --

Tuur Demeester: Bottom up. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, bottom up.  I mean, Jason Maier's book on Progressive's Case is actually doing a very good job explaining to progressives and progressive politicians that actually, Bitcoin is a great tool for reducing income inequality and various other things.  And obviously, there's very good stories on the E.  So, if Larry Fink is to come out with his annual newsletter, he does have an annual newsletter, doesn't he, which everyone looks to, and says, "Bitcoin is the most ESG thing out there", he's incentivised to do that and he can do with facts and truth, you would now be in a position where the likes of The New York Times have to go, "Shit, maybe we got this wrong", and the Financial Times have to go, "We got this wrong", and everybody has to go, "We got this wrong".  And I might be being hyperbolic here, but I genuinely think BlackRock is potentially the hyperbitcoinisation trigger.  I could be wrong.

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I mean looking back, there will be these little milestones that we look at as like, "Oh, that, and that, and that.  Those factors were huge".  It'll probably only be able to tell that looking back.  But yeah, this ESG stuff, in a way it is a doctrine, right, just like how back in the 1500s, you had doctrines revolving around the Bible and how that had to be used.  And then weirdly, as the economic interests in Europe started to diverge, the Protestants would say, "The Bible agrees with us", and then the Catholics would say, "But the Bible agrees with us".  So similarly, we don't need ESG to go away, we maybe just need to have a market for a different interpretation of ESG, and I think that'll happen.  Eventually, I think economic interests tend to win, although some empires fight it.  The Spanish Empire fought economic interest tooth and nail, and it bankrupted them.  So, that's possible, right?  But it doesn't mean that the underlying technology doesn't win eventually.

Peter McCormack: In your, do you call it a report? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: In your report, with what Bitcoin is competing against, you list remittances, US Treasuries, payment revenues, paper money, above ground physical gold, central bank reserves, currency deposits, residential real estate.  Do you think it eventually replaces all of that? 

Tuur Demeester: Well, it won't replace our house. 

Peter McCormack: No, but the way you think -- I think it could considerably devalue the housing market. 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, I think all these categories are, to a large extent, surrogates for sound money.  They only exist because we don't have sound money.  They would never be -- I mean of course, under a gold standard, a government could still borrow, but to a way smaller extent because interest rates were naturally high and because people actually realised, "Oh, you're going to tax me more to pay off this debt", whereas in the fiat world, you can borrow against the future for a long time and the bill only comes ten years down the road.  So, yeah, I think that surrogacy factor, everything is monetised, like debt is a form of money in a way; housing is monetised, like people think of a house as their piggybank instead of just a roof over their head.  They're all money substitutes. 

So, once the real knight comes on the scene, people are like, "Oh, that's the real deal.  Let's just use that.  Why do we have to do all this complicated stuff and all the middlemen get paid so much?  Why do all the financiers and the Wall Street people have to be so wealthy?  Why can't we just save money?"  People talk about the robber barons with a lot of disdain, it's like, "Oh, these guys".  But if you think about the industries that they were involved in, it's oil, cars, very rudimentary building blocks of our modern society.  So to me, that's exciting.  Maybe that means there's going to be a new era, the Bitcoin era, where the people that are wealthiest are once more entrepreneurs that actually build stuff rather than move money back and forth.

Peter McCormack: That's exactly what we were saying, weren't we, a shift in the allocators of capital, because there's going to be some people who, over every wave, is going to get significantly more wealthy.  And does Michael Saylor need to sit on 120,000, whatever it is, Bitcoin forever, or what will he start to do with that capital?  How will he invest it?  I mean, I know myself, if Bitcoin hit $1 million, my small amount of Bitcoin becomes super-valuable, I'm going to be thinking about how I can allocate that, what I can do with that.  And I'd rather I was allocating it than the government.

Tuur Demeester: I'm trying to remember who it was, which one of the robber barons who built all these libraries around the US; maybe Carnegie.  But so when he died, he was one of the wealthiest men in the world, he left so much money, and so his foundation just really funded so many universities, and they literally built libraries all across the US.  And I mean, we'll have to see in terms of what Michael Saylor wants to do, but so far he's said, "I plan to make education free forever".  That's his goal. 

Peter McCormack: That would be an unbelievable gift.  But there's but there's lots of people who will be doing different things and allocating capital in different ways as I said.  I want to do as much as I can for my hometown, and I need capital to do that and if Bitcoin keeps going up, I'll have that capital.  And there'll be people all around the world able to do things like that, which I think will be great.

Tuur Demeester: Well also, that's how they build churches, for example.  Whenever there's some money available, you build a little more, you build a little more, and then eventually it takes 150 years, but you can do that because the money is strong.  Whereas, in a fiat world, you can only borrow once and then the money starts evaporating, so you've got to build it all right now, which results in really shitty, cardboard type, sticks-and-matches houses that break down after 20 years.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Can we talk about what people don't really understand, the problems in the financial system that people don't really understand?  Yeah, and I would just again use myself as a perfect example.  Prior to Bitcoin, I never thought about money, it would come into my bank, I'd try and save a little, I would pay my bills, spend it through the month, inflation was something I thought that was part of a growing economy, I had no understanding of the financial system, or I never felt incentivised to learn about it.  So, what do you think are the main things, that people who maybe haven't properly discovered Bitcoin, what are the things they don't understand about the financial system that they need to understand?

Tuur Demeester: I remember this video, I think he was interviewed while on a panel, where Hans-Hermann Hoppe was speaking, he's an Austrian economist, and somebody asked him a similar question and he said like, "Well, what you want to do is you want to ask existing economists or pundits or people who are known to be part of the financial system, ask them questions like you would a five-year-old, like a five-year-old would do, very, very simple questions".

Peter McCormack: That's What Bitcoin Did, isn't it?!

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, yeah.  I mean, because it's important.  Because when I actually went to school for macroeconomics back in Ghent, when I was 19, I thought like, "I'll give this a try", and they would throw these really complicated models at us and all these assumptions, "Oh, here's utility and then there's this other thing", and weirdly everything had numerical values and you do this maths and then all of a sudden, some prediction would come out.  It's alchemy basically, present-day economics works a lot like alchemy, and the way you pierce through that, you just ask a very simple question.  It's like, "Where does money come from?" or, "What determines the price of our money?"  Like, "This coffee has a price, but if I want to borrow money and pay it back later, there's a price there, that's the interest rate.  Okay, well, where does that come from?" or, "Why don't people have life insurance anymore?  People used to 100 years ago, they don't any more, what's up with that?"  "What happened in 1971?"  So, these very simple questions are how you get to the... 

I don't want to throw out a whole bunch of answers right here, because the questions can be different for every single person.  But to me, that's what put me on the way.  There's a little book called Economics in One Lesson, these are very -- because they will actually take those questions to heart and try to answer them.  There's a little book by Garet Garrett written in the early 1930s, just when the Great Depression broke out, called The Bubble That Broke the World; that's another example of very simply breaking down what's going on. 

So definitely, it's wonderful to see this revival of Austrian economics, and I think the reason is that they actually have thought about this for a long time and they have answers that are not vested in a certain agenda, because the agenda of a fiat economist, most likely they're going to be working for the government or some bank, and so their incentives are aligned with the debtors, the parties that have the most debt and who have the most vested interest that the money keeps losing value over time, and the most vested interest for a general population who is confused about economics, right, because that's how you can sell fool's gold, is if nobody really knows what the difference between fool's gold and real gold is.  So, yeah, the simple questions are what we need, I think.

Peter McCormack: What do you think of the threats that still exist with Bitcoin, or threats to Bitcoin, threats to Bitcoin's expansion?

Tuur Demeester: I think the biggest threat is in us, in the human beings, because the threat is that we lose our values, the threat is that we lose track of what got us here in the first place, where does that determinism come from?  Because when we discuss altcoins versus Bitcoin, it always ends up going back to the principles, because technical discussion doesn't make sense.  Like, why is one thing better than the other, unless you can refer to an underlying principle?  Like, "Oh, but we need censorship resistance, or we need this or that".  And so, it goes back to the philosophy. 

I think that's part of why Bitcoin art, for example, is so important, because in a way, the best Bitcoin art is going to understand these values and translate them and make them accessible to a wide audience in various ways, so that we can communicate with future generations like, "Hey, this is us right now.  We're going to be dead in 50 years, but you guys have to continue this and this is how we did it".  These are the things that are so important to us as far as morals and values go. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, there's a long conversation I had recently with Alex Thorn from Galaxy, where we were talking about if Bitcoin does go through a hyperbitcoinisation phase, there might be a very fast transition to new influencers and voices in Bitcoin, people we don't know exist yet who could be highly relevant, highly well-known cultural people, sports people, news readers, and that transition might happen very quickly.  We might have a significant number of asset managers who want to influence the future direction of Bitcoin, and one thing we have to think about is how do we scale the culture, the principles of decentralisation, censorship resistance, those things which were under attack during the Blocksize Wars and could come under a future attack; how do we scale that?

Tuur Demeester: Well, one thing to keep in mind that might help with thinking about this is that ultimately Bitcoin's potential Achilles heel is the economically important full nodes.  And so that means, basically the Bitcoin whales, which Bitcoin software do they choose?  If there is a fork, which coin are they selling; which one are they keeping; which one are they adding to their, you know, they're selling one and then the proceeds they invest more in the first one.  So, which way, quo vadis?  And we saw an example of that in 2016 with the Blocksize Wars, where we actually had a hard fork between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin.  And overwhelmingly, the hardcore Bitcoin OGs who had the most Bitcoin, they voted with their money and they caused the exchange rate, which was in the beginning very close to parity, to tilt massively in favour of the Bitcoin that we now know and love.  And the one with the bigger blocks, who had the immutability removed from it and who was a lot more vulnerable, that one went by the wayside. 

Similarly in Ethereum, not to start a whole thing about that, but they also had a fork, and there the economically important nodes voted for the more perilous path, the less principled path, the path with the bailouts, the path towards the fiat world.

Peter McCormack: Which set a specific path for them that's continued to this day. 

Tuur Demeester: Oh, yeah.

Peter McCormack: So, a common question that comes up, and it's going to come up more and more I think over the coming months, and certainly the year is, "Am I too late?"  It always comes up because they're like, "Oh, you told me about Bitcoin when it was $600, Pete, and then you told me about it when it was $4,000, and then $12,000, we’re now at $30,000.  Am I too late?"

Tuur Demeester: God, no.

Peter McCormack: So, why is now a good time?

Tuur Demeester: Yeah, you're not too late at all.  Looking back, if you zoom out enough, you are going to be seen as a Bitcoin OG if somewhere in this year, you expose your family to even the smallest amount of Bitcoin, and I'll try to substantiate why that is.  But I believe that whoever interacts with the Bitcoin mainchain, which is what happens when you just send a normal Bitcoin transaction today, the other one is Lightning, that's a layer on top of Bitcoin; but I think if you have even just one interaction with the mainchain, to me that's enough to be an OG, to be an Original Gangster, because this is going to scale so much, the value is going to go up so much, that the cost of doing one transaction on the mainchain is not going to be accessible to regular people in the future.  Right now, I don't know what the transaction fees are, maybe $2 or something.  That's going to go away.  It'll be the equivalent of $10,000 to send something. 

So it's kind of like, if you compare it with shipping containers, who charters a shipping container ship?  That's a very specialised business.  So similarly, whoever interacts with the blockchain is going to be very specialised, high-octane-type businesses.  So, anyway, that's one way to think about it as 14 years in, imagine if gold was invented at some point, right?  If gold didn't just exist in the Earth's crust but somebody invented it at some point 500 years ago, and then 14 years after its invention people were worrying like, "But am I late?  Oh, my God", it's similar to me.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm going to be having that conversation a lot.  Okay, so then let's talk about if somebody is interested and they're like, "All right, Tuur, I'll buy it, I've read your report, I don't have any Bitcoin, how do I start?  Where do I start?  How much should I be allocating to this?"

Tuur Demeester: Well, if you've read the report, it's actually in there; we can talk about it!

Peter McCormack: This is really for the ones who aren't going to read it!

Tuur Demeester: I do, I just want to say about the report, I'm really proud of it.  It's about 20 pages, it has no fluff, it's pretty dense, but I think very accessible.  It's really made for my own family and friends, is what I had in mind writing it, and it does get practical.  We talk about how to store Bitcoin and also you're alluding to how to allocate, which I think is important that people think about, because it's again with the principles.  If you start with the right principles, it's a lot harder to actually regret a decision, because you know what you're doing, and we can walk through it. 

There are three approaches to thinking about Bitcoin that I think are helpful for new people.  The very easiest way to get someone interested in Bitcoin for me, from an investment point of view, is to tell them, "Think about Bitcoin as insurance, insurance of your existing portfolio, because really, what is out there that's going to protect you against systemic risk?  All the insurance is expressed in dollars, and so if the dollar goes down in value, that's not going to help".  And then it's like, okay, well how do you think about insurance?  Well, think about a home, for example.  Your homeowner's insurance charges about 0.25% of the value of your home every year, and you don't expect your house to burn down tomorrow or in two years, but you pay it anyway because you just want to have that peace of mind. 

So, if you think about it from that point of view, what would it cost to insure your portfolio for about ten years with Bitcoin?  Well, then it would be 2.5% of the value of your portfolio.  So, that's one way to think about it.  So, to me, what I said in the report is 2% to 5% of your wealth.  If you allocate that to Bitcoin, I think there's a great argument to be made that that's an insurance policy.  It's going to pay out if things go really badly, which, by the way, we've seen a little bit of it already with Silicon Valley Bank, which was doomed.  And then it got a big bailout, this is very recently, and Bitcoin immediately jumped by, I forget how much, it was a lot.  It jumped up immediately because people realised like, "Oh, that's how we're going to do it, we're going to bail out the banks, which means more money printing, which means the dollar is going to go down eventually".  So, that's one way to think about it. 

Also, you could say, "But 2% to 5% isn't that high?"  Yeah, when I wrote my report in 2015 my percentage was lower in that respect, because your house was in better condition.  Right now, you could argue that the kitchen is already on fire, that the value of global bonds corrected for inflation is down about 30% in the past couple of years.  So, this is one of the most conservative investment categories.  All the boomers believe, and for a long time for good reasons, believe that bonds were the safest instrument.  So, in a way, if the kitchen is already on fire, how high do you think the insurance company is going to charge you to insure it?  It's going to be a lot higher.  So, that's the first way to look at it.

Peter McCormack: Well, I would highly recommend people go and read the report to see the rest.  Just to finish out, do you think, it's not that we're ready for this, but do you think we really understand what's coming?  Because my mental framework is the current world, but with Bitcoin.  But I don't think that's the world we're going to.  It feels like I have the wrong mental framework there, but I haven't really spent enough time either thinking about it myself or talking to the smartest people who will understand what this new world is that we might transition into.

Tuur Demeester: I think that's such a great question.  It's really profound, right, because Bitcoin is an addition to the world, but it's also an agent of change.  It changes the world, the way the world works, not just makes a few people richer and other people the same or poorer, but it's almost like the economic laws of physics are starting to shift because of Bitcoin.  People talk about Bitcoin urbanism, Bitcoin diets, Bitcoin, all with the idea that Bitcoin changes your time preference and makes you value the future more than the present, those kind of things. 

So, how is the world changing?  I think what's, I forget the name of that law, but there's that law that in the short term, things change a lot slower than you think.  But once you go out 5 or 10 or 20 years, they go a lot faster than what you might think, which is like, that's how exponential change works, right?  So, I think that's just important to keep in mind.  It's like, just kind of keep your ears perked, keep your eyes open, try to see little things, like in a movie, you're trying to predict the end.  So, you're trying to pick up on like, "Oh, is that Chekhov's gun?  Are there any clues here?" 

But at the same time, I think that you can also weirdly at the same time, you can be very zen about Bitcoin because it simplifies so many things.  If you do your homework and you study this, it could be one of the only things you need to study in the whole realm of economics.  You don't have to go to your banker and try to figure out like, "Is this the best fund, or is that one the best?" or comparing banks with each other.  There's a little bit of that because you want to store Bitcoin in a safe way.  But still, I think over the long run, I mean think about how many hours people spend trying to figure out the mortgage rates and if you're going to invest, how does that work?  And the tax laws keep changing and how do you deal with that? 

Whereas Bitcoin is portable wealth, it's scarce, it doesn't change.  The only thing that changes is people's reactions towards it.  So, sometimes it's going to be worth a hell of a lot, other times it's going to be a little bit less, but over the long run it's going to really store the value for you and your family.  So, I think there's something incredibly zen about that.  All that decision fatigue just falls away. 

Peter McCormack: Amazing.  Brilliant show.  Ever since we first sat down, I think it was in San Francisco, wasn't it? 

Tuur Demeester: Yeah. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've enjoyed every one of our conversations.  I always take something from it, always get something from it.  I love your writing.  I appreciate you back and I wasn't really prepared for what we spoke about today, but that was fascinating!  Do you want to send anyone anywhere?  I mean we'll obviously put the report in the show notes.  Do you want to send them anywhere else?

Tuur Demeester: I would just say if you google my name, Tuur Demeester, you will just find my Twitter page, which is probably number one in the results.  And then if you plug in adamantresearch.com with four As, you will find my company's webpage.  And the downloads of all my reports that I've written in the past, going back to 2012, are all there, freely available, and there's also a link to my report, my latest one.

Peter McCormack: All right, well, we look forward to the next one, and I'm sure we'll sit down with you again.  Great to see you back, man.

Tuur Demeester: Pleasure.