WBD693 Audio Transcription

What Does Bitcoin Fix? With American HODL

Release date: Monday 7th August

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with American HODL. 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.

American HODL is an OG Bitcoiner who has been promoting the innovation for over 8 years. In this interview, we discuss a whole range of topics from free speech, the idea of a Bitcoin citadel, scaling Bitcoin and the race to hyperbitcoinisation.

“The slave system that we live in today, the fiat system, what it does is it extracts wealth from the future, from the unborn...and then we’re anticipating that technology or deflation is going to solve this problem that we created by stealing from the future, but it’s a Catch22 because if no one builds the future, then there’s not going to be a beautiful future for them to inherit, and all their going to inherit is death.”

— American HODL

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: That guy is a fucking dick.

American HODL: Yeah, I was like, "What's going on, man?"

Peter McCormack: He like properly came at me. 

American HODL: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: As I walked through the door, he went, "You fucking cuck".  I was like, "Huh?"

American HODL: It's very weird to me that for a certain group of bitcoiners, you are the worst person in the world!

Peter McCormack: Because I won't -- you know what, you can talk about this --

American HODL: It's like, "What's wrong with Pete?" 

Danny Knowles: We're recording.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I'll tell you exactly what I think it is; I think it's a couple of things.  It's only Americans really. 

American HODL: Yeah, certain type of Americans.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, mainly, I think it's a couple of things.  One, I've said some stupid shit, but then everyone has.

American HODL: Your COVID takes were especially bad, they were really bad!

Peter McCormack: Well…

American HODL: For the most part, yeah. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean but I've walked some of those back.  But there's no point having that discussion now anyway, because there's no middle ground. 

American HODL: Your worst one was when you were like, "Right now, I am a state"!  That was your worst one! 

Peter McCormack: But the fact was, I'd just interviewed a doctor, he'd just come in --

American HODL: No, it was hard to figure out what was going on. 

Peter McCormack: I know the guy well, he works in a big London hospital.  He said, "We had a trickle of people coming in, and then by the evening, the hospital was full".  And then, I think it was whatever time, I can't remember the time, he said, "We had to declare an emergency".  He said, "It was crazy", and he said people couldn't breathe, and they didn't know what to do.  So, when you're in that situation, you can fully understand, "Hold on, there's a problem here, we've got to do something about it".  It's easy in hindsight to go, "Lockdowns were bad"; they were bad.  But I think a lot of the hate comes from that Bitcoin goes through evolutions, right? 

American HODL: Yeah. 

Peter McCormack: It was a nerd tool for cypherpunks, then it was a --

American HODL: Nerd collectible.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, nerd collectible for cypherpunks.

American HODL: It wasn't even a tool, it was a collectible.

Peter McCormack: And then it got kind of a core group of libertarians who were like, "Oh, this is going to bring down the government, we're going to go to a purely voluntary society", which I think sounds great, but it's not going to happen.

American HODL: It's a meme ideology.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: By the way, are we going?

Danny Knowles: Yeah, we're going.

American HODL: Okay, cool. 

Peter McCormack: And I've just never bent the knee, I've always pushed, I've always pushed back.  Like, I think we need more women in Bitcoin; people hate me saying that.  I think we need more diverse people in Bitcoin, because people, you've got to meet them where they are; people don't like that.  I say that democracy is the best thing we have.  It is true, because everything that isn't democracy is -- I know you have a republic here, for the YouTube commenters, and it has its issues, but outside of that, what else have you got?  You've got tyranny.  Everywhere that doesn't have democracy has tyranny.  You haven't even got a libertarian state in America of 52 states.  They're all red or blue.

American HODL: We only have 50 states, by the way, but yeah.

Peter McCormack: So, I think I piss people off, because I'm just saying I'm not going to be audience captured by bitcoiners and I never have, and that's pissed a lot of people off.  Then there's other shit.  I've had shitty sponsors who've gone bust, doesn't help.

American HODL: BlockFi.  By the way, Zac, I'm still looking for that coin you owe me.  If anybody has Zac's number.  He's been on a really long paternity leave.  It's been kind of a while now.

Peter McCormack: Zac, you need to pay up, man. 

American HODL: He's a good father though, I appreciate that about him.

Peter McCormack: HODL pays up his bets.

American HODL: I do, that's true.

Peter McCormack: You need to pay up.  Look, everyone makes mistakes.  If people want to hate me, they can hate me.  I know I've done a net benefit to the Bitcoin world, and I'm comfortable with that. 

American HODL: Well, one of the interesting things about you, and I'm willing to go to bat for you and always have been, because I think that a lot of the hate you get is misplaced, because you fully own your shit.  You're like, "Listen, I'm Pete, Sometimes I say some stupid shit.  I'm not always right, I'm learning in public.  That can be embarrassing for me, That can be hard for me, but whatever, I'm here, I'm being vulnerable", and I think that's important.  And I was thinking about you, because the tweet thread, I put out this tweet thread about basically the Bitcoin Reformation being this individualist journey, and how you have to stay and fight rather than leave and go someplace else where there might be greener pastures.  And I was thinking about it and I was like, "Pete is the fucking ultimate Bitcoin reformer".  You have the football club, which is basically like a Bitcoin shill fest, in addition to being a football club.

Peter McCormack: And a community project.

American HODL: And then you have the nightclub.  And to me, I had this interesting revelation when I was thinking about your story, which is that you have to go through -- if you were going to try and orange pill a community, you have to do it in ways that are meaningful to that community.  So in Bedford, what's meaningful is the pub and the football club. 

Peter McCormack: Beer and sports!

American HODL: Yeah, back to your point about where you got to meet people where they're at.  So honestly, man, I think that you're doing as good a job as anybody, and I think the Bedford Bitcoin Project is as good a conduit for Bitcoin to enter the world and your community as the El Salvadorian Bitcoin Beach Project.  I really think they're on the same level.  Now the difference is the El Salvadorian Beach Project, Bitcoin was more needed there because it's an emerging world, right?  A Third World.  Are we allowed to say Third World any more?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: Yeah.  But it's the Third World and basically they have a pressing need.  Whereas people in Bedford don't really have a pressing need, right?

Peter McCormack: Well, it's a deprived town.  There are serious areas of deprivation and there is a massive demand on food banks at the moment.  And with the massive rise in food inflation, there are people really struggling.  And we've had Larry Fink come out and say, "Bitcoin is hope".  But without wanting to sound too cringey, the football team for me is a kind of hope thing. 

American HODL: Yeah, I watched Ted Lasso, I get it. 

Peter McCormack: I've got a couple of conversations we had yesterday I can refer to.  Firstly, so I reached out to the Mayor of Bedford.

American HODL: That's cool.

Peter McCormack: Because we need a training centre where we've got multiple pitches and people can train.

American HODL: To be competitive, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and so I reached out to him and he's put me in touch with his Head of Economic Growth in Bedford.  And they said, "Look, we haven't got any money.  You just have to know".  I was like, "Great, well the one thing I don't need is money from you.  I've got a community I can go to for that".  But my pitch to them, I'm meeting them on the Friday when I get back from Argentina, my pitch to them is Bedford is a nothing town in the middle of the UK, it has nothing to draw people to it.  It is just another town where we have a town centre and maybe some successful local business men and some sports people have done okay, but we're a nothing town.  There's no reason for anyone in the world to give a fuck about Bedford. 

But we have a paradigm change in money now called Bitcoin.  It is a technical and financial revolution.  And I'm going to make Bedford the centre of Bitcoin in Europe.  I'm going to make it the Nashville of Europe.  I'm not asking your permission, I'm going to do this.  We had 150 people come last year.  They came to an event, they stayed at the hotels, they spent money in the pubs, etc.  Well, I'm going to have 1,000 come in April, and I'm going to do my version of Bitcoin Park, and it's going to be the centre of the UK, I'm going to make it the centre of Europe.  And that, coupled with the football team, which is sponsored by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who are Olympic rowers, who have a film about them, okay, a sponsor in it.  And now people are looking at Bedford. 

We went to an event yesterday at Bitcoin Park, three people have Real Bedford shirts on.  We went to the event in Miami, people were wearing T-shirts that just say Bedford, literally say Bedford.  I said, "You've got a gift here, that's Bedford.  You've got something that's come out of nowhere".  And we've also got a massive solar farm in Bedford.  I think I heard 50% of the energy being curtailed.  Great, let's put a mining rig there.  Now you've got revenue; you said you've got no money, we've got revenue.  So yeah, I'm building my project and I'm going for it with that.

The other conversation I want to refer to is the one with Odell. so I said, "Odell, you should have me on your podcast, you've never had me on".  He's like, "What have you done?  What have you been right about?"  I was like, "Well, I stood up and said no one would use or care about xPubs, and 99% of people won't, and I think people are coming around to that".  He was like, "You should care", I said, "Yeah, I should but no one will!"  I was like, "No one's going to run a node, they're certainly not going to run a Lightning node".  I've constantly pushed back on that because that is a reality, whatever you say it's a reality.  Now, people might make nodes easier, I get it, fine, it might be put into your router, fine.  But I've pushed back whilst getting absolutely fucking beaten to death on these things, and I think I'm still right".

American HODL: Yeah.  By the way, I think the process of doing Bitcoin interior social change or consensus change is an extremely brutal process.  And we make it that way, culturally in Bitcoin, so that things don't just slip by, right?  Like, if you want to change Bitcoin at a protocol level, you want to do a contentious soft fork, well, you're going to have to endure a lot of shit, right?  And we've seen that with all of the guys; Jeremy Rubin comes to mind; Paul Sztorc, who's been pushing drivechain for a long time.  You're going to have to endure quite a bit of shit, and I think that's a protective mechanism. 

Peter McCormack: It's great. 

American HODL: But at the same time, it selects for individuals who are willing to go the distance with it and actually see it through.  And we basically know if you're bullshit or not, because we attacked you from every possible angle, you know, the community.  And the community will attack anybody, it's not just you.

Peter McCormack: Oh, no, and I love that, I absolutely fucking love that.

American HODL: Well, I think the Bitcoin Reformation thing, you're Bitcoinifying Bedford, and the football club and the pub are conduits for Bitcoin to enter your township, and those are uniquely important things to the people of Bedford.  The question I want to ask you is, could you imagine -- this is getting back to this idea of voice versus exit; so what you're doing is voice, what you're doing is interior reform, whereas exit is simply absconding.  The thing I want to ask you is, had you simply absconded, had you gone to Malta or had you gone to El Salvador or had you come to America, do you think you would have the same feeling of meaning in your life, and satisfaction?

Peter McCormack: No, absolutely not.  Because look, I'm from Bedford, right?  You're going to come at some point, I'm going to get you over there. 

American HODL: Yeah, definitely.

Peter McCormack: Danny's been there.  If you come with me to Bedford, what's going to happen is we're going to drive into the town, we're going to park up, we're going to go to a pub, and while we're there, we're going to most likely on a Friday night bump into five or six people I know just randomly.  And if we walk down the high street, we'll see two or three people I know.  And then when we go to my bar, you'll meet 20, 30, 40 people I know, and that's where I'm from.  These are people I've known, some for a year, some decades.  And I've been lucky.  I set up a podcast because I found a podcast I liked, I thought that was a cool job.  And I phoned up Luke Martin and said, "Let's make a show".  And I just picked the subject I was interested at the time, which was Bitcoin.  It turns out to be something that was going to have massive growth and so that meant the podcast would have massive growth and meant I would make money. 

So, it's very easy for me to go, "Right, fuck Bedford, I'll go live in London or New York or Texas or Lisbon", but I've been handed a thing where I can give something back to my town which doesn't have much opportunity.  And so, there's a couple of things, that you get prestige in your local community because people are like, "Wow, look what he's doing here", and that's a really nice feeling, you're getting to change people's lives.  We've got a hardship fund for the football team, which is now £12,000.  No kid in Bedford will not play football now because of money, because if their parents can't afford boots or the fees, we will pay it.  That's come from bitcoiners.  We will create jobs, we will have a football team that's going to take on other teams.  And so, what do I want to do?  

I hate the citadel concept, I've always hated it.  It always smacked off, "I'm rich, I'm going to build a fence to keep out the poor, keep out the peasants", I've always fucking hated that concept.  And I know some people will listen and they'll defend it and they'll say, "No, it's not about that, it's about creating our community with our rules".  No it's not, it's keeping peasants out, I know what it is.

American HODL: 100%.

Peter McCormack: I've seen Land of the Dead.  Have you ever seen Land of the Dead?

American HODL: George Romero?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: Yes.  

Peter McCormack: He said the zombies are the lower class in that.  It's fucking brilliant, in that moment they realise they can go through the water and they come attack them.  I've seen Land of the dead.  All that it is, is a citadel to keep out the peasants.  I don't want that, I want to go and help my community.  So, if I went to Lisbon, it would be people I've known for a short amount of time and we're just living in our communities saying how clever we are. 

American HODL: Yeah, and what do you do?  You buy a Lamborghini and you go to a night club and you drink Dom Pérignon, and you tell yourself how great you are.  But I think a lot of us did some of that during the bull run, the last bull run, and you know, you've got to treat yourself, right?  We'd been hodling a long time.  But It's meaningless, that's the point, is it's fucking meaningless to do that.

Peter McCormack: Well, so on a Monday, when I'm at home on a Monday, I go down to Allen Park, right?  There are a 120 girls aged 7 to 18 playing football, who in a few weeks are all going to be wearing black Real Bedford outfits, all matching outfits, all playing there for our team; and then on a Tuesday, I go and watch the men's senior team train; I get a day off Wednesday; the men's senior team train on a Thursday; sometimes I go and watch the ladies' senior team train; Friday, I go to my bar; Saturday, I get up, we go to the game, we play football; Sunday, I go and watch the girls play football.  So, six days a week I've got football in the community.  I fucking love it, I love it.  And it's making a difference to people's lives, people are looking at my town. 

So for me, that is what Bitcoin is about.  It's not about getting rich and going and separating myself from everyone.  It's about going back and giving back to other people who don't have it.  That's what that 10X -- you give Bitcoin away, right?

American HODL: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: And every four years that gets easier because your wealth increases in value quicker than you can spend it.  Someone needs an operation, a project in Thailand for an orphanage where they needed football goals; you can just do that.  And so the next bull run, thanks Larry Fink, everyone's going to have so much money.  Go and fucking do something with it, positive, build a Bitcoin Park, start a Real Bedford, help someone get an operation, just fucking go and help people.

American HODL: It's fun, man, it's like, I can tell that when I sit here and listen to you talk about what Bitcoin means to you and Bedford, I can tell that it's emotional for you.  And it's emotional for me, when I listen to you, because I really feel that Bitcoin has meaningfully changed my life and the life of those around me, and is changing my family's future.  And I get really excited when I can turn somebody on to that and show them the way, and basically they get excited and then they become a node that shows it to other people and it just keeps growing outward and outward. 

There's something about what we're all doing here where it's really not about us at the end of the day.  People talk about Bitcoin Zen.  Like, "Hey, man, my Bitcoin Zen is --" I don't even think about the price.  I don't talk about it, I don't look at it, and it's like, that's cool.  My Bitcoin Zen that I've reached is like, most of my Bitcoin is not for me.  It's for my children and for the people who come behind, because the slave system that we live in today, the fiat system, what it does is it extracts wealth from the future, from the unborn.  They are literally born into the matrix, into bondage, and we are stealing from them.  And then we're anticipating that technology or deflation is going to solve this problem that we created by stealing from the future, but it's a catch-22, because if no one builds the future, then there's not going to be a beautiful future for them to inherit, and all they're going to inherit is debt.

So, the fiat system is extracting wealth from the unborn and the big idea in Bitcoin to me, and I really do get emotional when I think about this, is that we are gifting wealth to the future, which is, in my opinion, the blockchain of humanity.  And anytime you don't have that situation, where you're gifting more than you were given, you've thrown an error, and basically the chain is being re-orgd.  That's the big idea that's going on here to me, is that we're re-orging the chain back to what we had before we lost it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's like you're reversing time.

American HODL: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I never thought of it like that.

American HODL: It's when Superman goes around the world.  We're running it back, we're running it back, baby. 

Peter McCormack: Me and Danny have a disagreement on this whole inheritance thing.

American HODL: Yeah, what do you think, Danny?

Danny Knowles: No, it's not on that point, but Pete has told me numerous times that he's not going to give Connor any money, Connor and Scarlett, his children, any money until they're 40 years old.

Peter McCormack: No, that's not true.  No, it's not that exact.  So what I've said is, the way my will is structured is there is money they can access.  So, if they want to buy a house, there is money to pay a deposit, but not to buy the house.  So, you have to have a job so you can pay a mortgage.  You have to have a reason to work.  I think man has to work.

American HODL: Yeah, absolutely.

Peter McCormack: And so, if you buy them a house cash, they haven't got to that point where they've earned money and know that a portion goes to the mortgage.  So, I think it's something like the maximum they can get is 15% for their deposit.  And then there's different pools that come to them, like 25, there's a small amount, and then 30, it's a bigger amount, but the vast majority, 80% to 90% is when they're 40, because I don't think either has the maturity for it till then.  Also, they wouldn't get it all.  Imagine by the time Connor's 40, my Bitcoin wealth suddenly, because it's gone up so much, it's like £100 million equivalent of now, right?  There's no way I leave that to them.

American HODL: So, I kind of disagree.

Danny Knowles: So my disagreement on it is, unlock as much capital for them as quickly as possible and let them put that to work.  Like, if you've raised them the way you have, they're great kids, you need to put some trust in them and let your money that you've earned go to work for them.

Peter McCormack: They can have capital to work, but they can't have all of it to lose it and fuck it up.  We've seen people go to zero from very high heights.

American HODL: I would say that I would reframe your "people need to work" to be "people need to be of service to others".

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: Like, if your daughter wanted to be a wife and mother, would you be comfortable financing that?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, absolutely.

American HODL: Right, because she's being of service to others.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I need to rethink my will for that, because I did not consider that scenario.

American HODL: Yeah, that's the point.  I think that it's hard for human beings to have a meaningful life if they are not being of service to others.  And so for me, when you talk about the inheritance conversation, I mean managing a vast amount of wealth is obviously its own thing, and have you ever seen the movie, Brewster's Millions?

Peter McCormack: Of course, man.  Love that film.  Have you seen that film?

Danny Knowles: No.

Peter McCormack: So, the premise is that his great uncle, or somebody --

American HODL: Left him like $300 million.  

Peter McCormack: Or it's $1 million.  He's allowed to take $1 million, or if he can spend $30 million in 30 days, he gets $300 million.

American HODL: So, yeah, he's getting left $300 million, but he has to spend -- his great uncle uses the analogy like, "When I was a boy, I got caught smoking cigars, and my father made me smoke the entire box of cigars, so I'd fucking hate smoking cigars, and I'm going to make you feel the same way about money, I'm going to make you hate spending money".  And so he's got to spend $30 million in 30 days, but he can't own anything at the end of it.  So, he has to find elaborate ways to basically piss away money.

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: He can't give it away.

American HODL: One of them is a great one that I always remember from the movie, which is he buys a super-expensive collector stamp, and then mails a letter with it, and so he actually uses it!  Or he throws a big party and he only rang up $700,000 and he thought it was going to be way more.  And he finds out, it's really actually hard to piss away your money when you're that wealthy basically.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: So, I brought this up because my plan, it's very scientific, is to do a Brewster's Millions on my children.

Peter McCormack: The Bitcoin version!

American HODL: I think it's important to fuck up when you're young.  So, I'm going to give them just enough to fuck up, then they're going to fuck up, because we all fuck up when we're young yeah, and then later, they'll inherit the real money.  And then what you do is, instead of giving it to them no strings attached, you give it to them when they're in sort of middle age, and then you watch over things why you're still alive, right?  So, you don't wait until you're dead, you give it to them -- you let them have control of the empire, and you fuck off to do whatever you want in your retirement, so it's great for you too.

I got this from John D Rockefeller did this with his son.  He basically transferred the majority of control of the business to his son when I think John D was you in his 60s, 70s, and then he had a comfortable retirement, lived to be almost 100.  And the son was in control of the empire, but you still had your father providing wisdom when needed.  So, on the inheritance conversation, I think that's probably the appropriate way to do it. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean there's loads of ways to think about it.  You just made me think of a tweet I mentioned in a podcast the other day.  It was a promoter tweet, but it was brilliant.  This guy said, "What if we taught kids that failure is learning".

American HODL: Absolutely.

Peter McCormack: I fucking love that.  But look, I want Connor -- Connor is the only person who will ever understand the football club like I do.  He understands the meaning, he gets it more than anyone.  And I'm away right now and I've said, "You've got to be running shit while I'm away".  And I've made him a committee member --

American HODL: How old is Connor; like 18, 19?

Peter McCormack: 19.  I've made him a committee member, and this week he's phoning me every day.  It's like, "We need to this, I've made this decision".  Great.  And so, he's been pushed really hard and I want him to take that over; it suits him.  Scarlett would suit probably the bar or something, but I want him to -- because if something happens to me, that football project has to continue.  But I'm not saying I'm wealthy by any stretch of imagination, but if somehow our Bitcoin does go to a lot, if there was tens of millions there, I just don't think they need it all.  I think I would distribute some into different places.  Nieces and nephews to start with, I'd like them to have the same opportunity to grow capital the way Connor and Scarlett did.  But I almost like the idea of in my community, there's a trust there so any kid who wants to start a business, anyone can get a £5,000 grant, go and start a business.  I'd fucking love to be able to do that, just spread that money out.

American HODL: Kind of a mini Teal Foundation, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but in my community.  Because, look, there's a harsh reality right now, that the jobs market is definitely changing over the next decade.  We talk about this on the show all the time.  I use AI daily.  Our podcast is more efficient because of AI and most likely our staff count over the next few years drops rather than increases because we can automate a lot.  So, that's happening everywhere.  We had Jeff Ross in here the other day talking about radiology. 

American HODL: Oh, radiology, yeah, totally dead.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and then lawyers.  I mean, I showed this great example the other day.  Just get it up and show HODL; if you get up ChatGPT.  I just want to show you this great example for the football club.  This is the kind of thing that's blowing my mind with AI.  So, if you put in -- so, having a football club, there's certain rules and regulations you have to follow.  Yeah, "Write a non-discrimination policy for a football club following the FA guidelines", right?  So, we have to write a policy; check this out.

American HODL: That's good.

Peter McCormack: Literally, in 30 seconds you have --

American HODL: How do you know it's not hallucinating though, because I've heard that some of the legal language is hallucinated?

Peter McCormack: So, you can just read and review it.

American HODL: So, you still have to pass it to a lawyer to sign off on?

Peter McCormack: No, because this isn't a legal document, this is just a policy, right? 

American HODL: Got it. 

Peter McCormack: So this is just a policy, this is our policy, how we will be a --

American HODL: Yeah, basically you have an intern who works for you for $30 a month, or whatever the ChatGPT is, yeah, right. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and so we're using it like this all the time.  And then, you can just pick any industry, podcasting, editing, publishing.  You can pick, I don't know, legal, legal documentation, contracts.  Any industry, you know there's going to be a wave of jobs lost, and that is either going to lead to --

American HODL: Knowledge work? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's going to lead to a society that it could become super more efficient and we have more people to do other things, or it could lead to mass unemployment and concentrations of wealth.  We don't know, you can picture both scenarios.  But at the same time, I think the kids now, like my daughter, they are learning skills they don't need for jobs that are not going to exist when they enter the workplace.  And so, what better to be able to say, "Start your own thing, do something creative".  So I'd love to do that. 

American HODL: Well, and the nice thing is that they have a benefactor, so you can help them get something off the ground. 

Peter McCormack: I can get my statue on Bedford High Street! 

American HODL: So, I mean yeah, that's a positive thing.  It's an interesting thing about the world that we're leaving our children, with the advancements in technology.  I have a tendency to throw cold water on the ChatGPT thing and say it's hallucinating a lot, it's not as good as we think it should be, it's not able to fully do the work of a human being, but it is able to get rid of junior associates and interns, right, because it's doing the first draft.  But if you ask it a question right now that you specifically know the answer to, it'll bullshit you.

Peter McCormack: Dude, get up Bard.

American HODL: I'll tell you one.  I had a specific example of, "Tupac only had one testicle", do you know this?

Peter McCormack: No!

Danny Knowles: Is that true? #

American HODL: This is true.

Peter McCormack: I didn't know that.

American HODL: He got shot twice. 

Peter McCormack: Five times, he got five bullets.

American HODL: Yeah, the first he lost a testicle, the bullet went through his hand and into his groin area and he lost a nut because of that.  I was asking ChatGPT about it and ChatGPT was like, "That's not true, Tupac never lost a nut", but I know this to be true, this is documented in rap --

Peter McCormack: You've seen it!

American HODL: Right!  And then I basically was, "How did Tupac feel about losing his nut?" and then ChatGPT was like, "He was obviously very sad, it's a tough time to lose a nut", and I go, "No, he wasn't sad, he was defiant", and then I linked it to an interview and I was like, "Here in this interview, he's defiant about losing his nut", and I'm just having this ridiculous conversation with ChatGPT.  But it's bullshitting me the whole time. 

Peter McCormack: You see, Bard said it is, "Rumours are saying that he still had both of his testicles".

American HODL: "However Tupac denied these rumours saying that he still had both of his testicles, 'A bullet through my nuts only made my balls fatter'"!  By the way, that's not true.  In the 1996 interview when they asked him about it, I've watched the interview, he said, "I still have more nuts than all y'all anyway, so it doesn't bother me", that's what he actually said.  So, this is fake, this is bullshit. 

Peter McCormack: So, I had a conversation with Bard.  I wonder if it still does it.  Say, "Why are you lying to me?"  So, I got something wrong and I said, "Why are you lying to me?" and it admitted it lied.

American HODL: Let's see.

Peter McCormack: "I apologise if I gave the impression I was lying to you".

American HODL: "I'm not lying".  It's gaslighting.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's gaslighting!  Yeah.  Ask it why it's gaslighting me!  No, because I did and it said, "I'm sorry.  I'm sorry for lying to you".  It was something like, "I'm sorry for lying to you.  I didn't know the answer, so I made it up".  It was something really weird like that. 

American HODL: Well, I'll tell you this.  As a think boy, ChatGPT is amazing, because it's all bullshit!

Peter McCormack: But the thing is, you've got to remember, this has just come out of nowhere, and how much you can do now, and we're already on ChatGPT4; what about 5, 6, 7? 

American HODL: They're going to get better for sure. 

Peter McCormack: It's clearly going to accelerate past us, and be super fucking good.  But the point being is, we've got no idea what world we're heading into.  I think you can do any thesis.  You can do the dystopian thesis, you can do the reformation thesis, you can do the middle-of-the-road thesis.  You can say there'll be loads of jobs burned, there'll be loads of jobs, any scenario.  But the one thing I think I'm pretty certain on is that we are definitely not preparing our children for the world that's coming.

American HODL: Oh, how could you?  You're a caveman, you're from the past.  We didn't even have the internet when we were kids.  I had the internet when I was six or seven. 

Peter McCormack: 14 is when I first...  Do you remember your first search? 

American HODL: Oh, yeah, it was for boobies, obviously! 

Peter McCormack: I was in school, I searched for corn! 

American HODL: You know what's funny?  This is hilarious.  The year is 1996, or whatever, and I was doing civics class, or I had to write a paper about the branches of government, and I typed in whitehouse.com.  And whitehouse.com in the mid-1990s was a porn site!  I'm in like the third grade and I was like, "Dad! Dad!"  So, whitehouse.gov is the site, that's what you're looking for. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I was trying to explain to my kids, "Before the internet, when I was doing my homework , we used to have this row of books.  They were called the Encyclopædia Brittanica, and you used to get it out, and you'd just copy it word for fucking word, write that shit down.  And then now they have a fucking supercomputer with an AI bot.

American HODL: Well, I think the core thing here is to embrace change, that you have to be willing to constantly embrace change.  And in a world that is changing so fast, not embracing change is the thing that is fatal.

Peter McCormack: We should embrace Cherry Crush!

Danny Knowles: Have you seen it?

Peter McCormack: Have you seen Cherry Crush? 

American HODL: No, what's Cherry Crush?

Peter McCormack: Oh, my God.  It's very Black Mirror, it's going to fuck your head up.

Danny Knowles: Is that what it's called?

Peter McCormack: That's what her name is, Cherry Crush. 

Danny Knowles: Okay. 

Peter McCormack: But I would search her on TikTok.

American HODL: Oh, she's one of these consistent AI characters.

Peter McCormack: No, she's real.

American HODL: Oh, she's real?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but she looks AI.

Danny Knowles: She, like, plays an NPC.

American HODL: She's real?  Oh, is this that new thing with the girls in the TikTok videos all over Twitter, that thing? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: What the fuck is that?

Peter McCormack: I don't know, but I was like, "This is fucking weird". 

American HODL: I know I'm an old man because I don't know what the fuck that is, and I don't know who the fuck Zendaya is, you know what I mean?  Like, I don't know anything any more.

Peter McCormack: I was watching it for like 15 minutes going, "What the fuck is happening here?" 

American HODL: It's somewhat mesmerising, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but they're making lots.  I'm assuming there are just weird incels dressed up as furries at home, just sending them money or something.  Have you found it?

Danny Knowles: Here you go.  I don't have TikTok.

American HODL: Is this the black girl or the white girl?  Oh, this is the white girl.

Peter McCormack: I prefer Candy Crush, is it?  No, Cherry Crush.

American HODL: Yes, I saw that girl on Twitter, yeah, I've seen this girl too. Look at the one on the left, they're like competing.

Danny Knowles: This one?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

[Video plays]

Peter McCormack: All right, come out of this one. 

American HODL: Jesus Christ.

Peter McCormack: Get one of the ones where she --

American HODL: How would you feel if your daughter came to you and was like, "Dad, I'm making $30,000 a month, I'm an entrepreneur; and then you were like, "That's amazing, what do you do?" and then she showed you this shit?  What is your reaction?!

Peter McCormack: It's like, "Why are you not paying me rent?"  Connor's paying rent now. 

American HODL: I wouldn't know how to feel.  I would just be like, "What the fuck is this?"

Peter McCormack: Yeah, my boy pays rent, he pays for his car.

American HODL: It's better than OnlyFans, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I wouldn't be keen if she did OnlyFans.  I'd probably say, "You're not allowed to do that".  I fucked with her yesterday, right?  I'm such an arsehole.  There's this guy on Twitter and he's wearing this T-shirt.  You've probably seen it, you'd love this, especially as you're --

Danny Knowles: Which guy? 

Peter McCormack: So it says here, "Rules for dating my daughter: (1) be employed; (2) if she cries, you cry; (3) understand I don't like you; (4) lie to me and I will find you; (5) what you do to her, I do to you; (6) she's my princess, not your conquest; (7) get a solicitor; (8) I'm everywhere; (9) get her home early; (10) know that I don't mind prison!"  So I sent that to my daughter.  I was like, there's this boy she likes and I was like, "I'm going to send it to him".  She was like, "No, don't, dad!"  And so then I got a screenshot of his Snapchat, but I then sent it to my son.  I cut it out of the one I sent to my son and put it in his.  I said, "I've sent it to him".  She fucking lost her shit.  Absolutely fucking crazy!

American HODL: See, I think the best way is not to even make it explicit.  I mean, if a 16-year-old boy comes over to your home and he's not immediately terrified of you, maybe you're doing something incorrectly, you know what I mean?

Peter McCormack: I think they'll be terrified of her, she's terrifying.  Did you meet her the last time?

American HODL: Did I?

Peter McCormack: I think you will have done at the Gemini party.

American HODL: I was pretty drunk at the Gemini party.  So, maybe I met her.

Peter McCormack: We should get HODL's tweet up. 

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

American HODL: Which one?  The one about --

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because I fucking love this. 

American HODL: -- voice versus exit. 

Peter McCormack: I love your rebrand into Serious HODL. 

American HODL: Well, I wore the glasses today just to be Serious HODL.  I could have worn sunglasses and been Douchebag HODL, but I got my serious HODL.

Peter McCormack: No, I like Serious HODL honestly.

American HODL: Well, I got hammered I got community noted for this shit because, dude, I've been off Twitter for so long I forgot you had to spell everything out, and I use the word "offered up" which made it seem like Balaji was the one who invented this concept, when Hirschman was the one who invented this concept.  But I think about everything through a Bitcoin worldview.  

Peter McCormack: "Offered up" doesn't say he created it.

American HODL: No, I know.  Fucking Joe Weisenthal I have to thank for that.

Peter McCormack: But me and Danny always say in the background, I'm going to gush on you a bit here, but we always say you're one of the smartest bitcoiners, but a lot of people didn't know because you were originally just a fucking nightmare!  But you're actually one of the smartest bitcoiners and so I like Serious HODL.  So, when I saw this tweet, I was like, "We've got to sit down and talk", because it spoke to me.  So, "If you're new, you may not know that Balaji offered up the concept of voice vs exit back in 2015.  Voice=interior reform, exit=voting with feet.  Since then, exit has become the rallying cry for many.  Balaji and the other proponents have already left.  Here's why I'm staying; a thread".

American HODL: Yeah, this is back to the concept that we were talking about, about the Bitcoin reformer, the person who stays and is part of their ancestral homeland.  And I think about it like this.  Have you been following what's happening with Andrew Tate at all?

Peter McCormack: Well, yeah.

American HODL: Yeah, a little bit, right?  So I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the case because I really, truly don't know, I don't know the truth, right?  But I think about a guy who's a brash individualist like Tate, who talks a lot of shit, ending up in a Romanian prison in a country he doesn't understand, with a legal system he doesn't understand.  And he thought he was being smart and savvy by going to Romania so that he wouldn't be under the watchful eye of the British or American authorities.  But it's like, guess what?  The arm of the law is extremely long, and they can reach you even in Romania.  And I definitely do think that the Brits and the Americans were, I don't know if they explicitly sanctioned it, if they encouraged it, but they had something to do with his prosecution. 

Let's say that ultimately you're going to face a hostile government action, but okay, here's the thing.  If Bitcoin really does go to $100 million a coin, you think that the government's not going to want to steal your Bitcoin?  Of course they're going to want to steal your Bitcoin.  And they're going to find a million different hooks into how they can do that.  You cheat on your taxes, guess what?  They're going to steal some Bitcoin from you.  You got something illegally from across the border, they're going to steal some Bitcoin from you.  Anything that they can use to fuck with you or extract wealth from you, they will fuck with you and extract wealth from you.

Peter McCormack: Because they have always done.

American HODL: Always, it's just how things are.  That's why you got to play by the rules, right?  And so the thing is, if you're in a foreign land with a legal system that you don't understand, how are you going to effectively fight back?  You're going to end up getting Tated.  The thing that happened to Andrew Tate is going to happen to you.  You're going to be dealing with a Romanian lawyer in a language you don't understand, trying to figure out a legal system you don't understand, and the best you can do is appeal to western media.

Peter McCormack: So I'm going to push back on the tape thing a little bit -- 

American HODL: Go ahead. 

Peter McCormack: -- in that, he specifically said why he was going to go to Romania. 

American HODL: Because he wanted to pimp "hoes"? 

Peter McCormack: Again, I'm not going to put the words in until -- I don't want to be incorrect and he has a lot of sycophants who get very upset when you criticise him.  But the point being is --

American HODL: I don't really know what's going on with Tate, I'm just using his situation as a proxy.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but his situation is one whereby he is accused of a variety of things.  Now coercion is a crime in various places in Europe.  Coercive pressure is a crime, and we can debate whether it should be.

American HODL: To me from the outside, it seems he's being selectively prosecuted.  Do you think it seems he's being selectively prosecuted? 

Peter McCormack: No it seems like he is potentially a stupid criminal, who went out there and said, "I'm going to commit this crime". 

American HODL: You don't think his internet fame has anything to do with this prosecution? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's him advertising to the world, "Here is the crime I'm going to commit".  He commits it and then gets arrested for it and complains about it.

American HODL: There's a video of him saying that the big thing that -- "I'm not a rapist", this is Tate's words.  It says, "He was facing several sexual assault investigations in the UK, and by his own admission appeared to have considered Romania more appealing.  'I'm not a rapist but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want, I like being free.  Romania is a beautiful place, there's no feminists, there's no open homosexuality, there's no homosexual agenda', he said in a now deleted clip". 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's also said about getting away with different types of crimes. 

American HODL: None of that is, "I like illegal activity". 

Peter McCormack: No, but there's another one.  It's not that one.  But he has put out videos explaining how to make a girl fall in love with you and you get to do what the fuck you want. 

American HODL: That's what they call the Loverboy method, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Now again, you can have the debate whether that should be a crime you could prosecute against.  You won't find many women who don't think it's a crime.  It's usually men who would say, "That shouldn't be a crime.  I haven't committed a crime.  It's my own free will".  And then you get into the debate, was it free will or wasn't it?  According to very serious crimes in the UK, when you look into abuse, I mean, we interviewed Maddison Clyne from Women in, what's it called; name the charity?

Danny Knowles: Women in Distress.

Peter McCormack: Women in Distress.  Coercion is a real thing.  Abuse doesn't have to just be physical, you can be abusive in a number of different ways and you can mentally destroy someone, destroy someone's life.  The point on Tate is, a lot of criminals like to be secret, they like people not to know who they are, what crimes they've committed, because they don't want to get arrested.  He's gone out there and said publicly, "Here are the crimes I'm going to commit".  He's committed them, then got arrested and said the Matrix has come after him.  No, you're America's dumbest criminals, you're Europe's dumbest criminals.  You advertise to the world what your crime is and then you did it and then you decided to become this huge internet personality, where the whole world was looking at you to the point where schools are having assemblies referring to the way you talk about women, and then you gaslight people constantly. 

So, I don't think he's been targeted by the Matrix.  I think he told the world, "I'm going to commit this crime", he committed the crime and then got arrested. 

American HODL: See, I don't know if he's done things that are illegal.  I think he probably has.  Again, I was just using him as an example, I don't go deep into the weeds on his case, or anything.

Peter McCormack: I think there are better examples.

American HODL: Yeah.  Listen, part of it, the reason I brought him up is because he's rich and they want to extract wealth from him.  I mean, that's definitely part of it.  Now, if that wealth is the proceeds of crime, maybe they have a fair reason to do so, but certainly they want to get their hooks in and be able to extract wealth from him.

Peter McCormack: Here we go.

Danny Knowles: I don't know exactly what this is, but…

[Video plays]

Peter McCormack: There's always elements of truth in the things he says, but again that's not what I'm referring to. 

American HODL: None of these clips are particularly damning. 

Peter McCormack: No, but if anything, it's just a bit weird.  Why would you go out and say that? 

American HODL: Well, he's an online hustler guy.  He's kind of a scammer. 

Peter McCormack: He's totally a scammer, "Escape the matrix, pay me --"

American HODL: I don't really want to be the guy on this podcast defending him, because I think he's also a crypto pump and dumper, right?  I mean, he doesn't have his own token, but he definitely is heavy shitcoin trader and he teaches people to shitcoin trade.  Maybe I have a misunderstanding, I don't know.  Again, I'm just using him as an example though.

Peter McCormack: I think all he did is he repackaged what Jordan Peterson had been saying for a while in a way to sell it to teenagers, that's what he did, and I just don't find it interesting.  Zuby talks about masculinity, talks about going to the gym, and he does it in a way that I think is far more inspiring than that.  That is brash and arrogant and just for me, I don't it.  And I know some people love Tate.  Great, it's just not my example of somebody to go to my son, "Here's an inspiration for you", or someone I really want as an inspiration to the boys who go to school with my daughter, because it turns them into little shitheads, it does.  What he thinks they learn from it, they don't, and they just become little misogynistic shitheads.  And so, I think there's just way better people who are an inspiration to people than him. 

American HODL: My point, back to my point, my point here is that if he was in England or America, he would understand the legal system a lot better and be able to more appropriately defend himself.  We will wait now that he's got a charge against him in Romania, so we will wait to see if he's convicted of that charge.  And if he is convicted of that charge, then I'll be on your side of the table and say, "Well, he probably did it", depending on what evidence comes out during the trial.

Peter McCormack: Yeah. 

American HODL: Right now, I'm just being neutral and just not reserving judgment, because none of those clips were particularly damning. 

Peter McCormack: You know that final rap in 8 Mile where Eminem says, "Everything you're going to say", he tells him all the things, and so the guy has nothing left to say; I feel like he's playing a similar strategy.  He's giving you all the defences ahead of time like, "This is what they're going to do to me, the matrix is coming after me", to gaslight people into thinking he hasn't committed a crime.

American HODL: That's a smart strategy if that is what he's doing. 

Peter McCormack: Of course it's a smart strategy.  I just don't find it interesting.  I see Tucker Carlson interviewing him and all these other people just defending him already, when there is a legal due process.  I just think it's a bit crass.  I think, let the legal process happen and let's let a court of law decide. 

American HODL: Do you believe in the Romanian legal process though? 

Peter McCormack: I've got no reason not to. 

American HODL: Would you put your life in the hands of the Romanian legal process? 

Peter McCormack: I mean, I don't -- 

American HODL: I wouldn't.  I can say this, we're not Romanian.  Romania is fucking corrupt as shit. 

Peter McCormack: But the US is corrupt as shit.

American HODL: They held him for 90 days without charge.

Peter McCormack: The US is corrupt as shit, the UK, I'm in a legal situation in the UK, which is bullshit.

American HODL: You know what's interesting about the US is that there is a lot of corruption in the US, but our judiciary is actually working pretty well.  Our court system is still working pretty good.  And it is sort of the arbiter of truth.  Now, is it perfect?  No, and it's never been perfect, but it's working about as well as it ever worked.

Peter McCormack: I've seen enough documentaries about people who've been convicted for crimes they should have done, the way the prosecutors work, the way the police have to --

American HODL: Yes, this is true.  Like the poor, especially in the way they do plea deals, and yet all of that is true and there's a problem.  But if you are well-funded and have the right attorneys, you have the ability to defend yourself in America, and you have the right to a you know a fair and expedient trial.

Peter McCormack: But so where's Romania?  There you go; 63.

American HODL: This is the corruption index?

Peter McCormack: The perception, corruption perception.

Danny Knowles: Corruption in the public sector.

American HODL: So, they're saying that Romania is much less corrupt than you would think?

Peter McCormack: Well, 63.

American HODL: They're in the middle of the pack, corruption-wise.

Peter McCormack: Top third. 

American HODL: Yeah.  Yeah, I mean it's pretty corrupt.  Where's America on the list?  We're at 24. 

Peter McCormack: 24?  Where are we, Dan?

American HODL: UK, 18.  You're even more corrupt.

Peter McCormack: And scroll up.

Danny Knowles: No, less corrupt.

American HODL: Oh, these are perceptions.  Oh, got it, okay.

Peter McCormack: It's just perceptions.  Look, again, having been in the legal process, I have very little trust in the systems any more.

American HODL: Yes, that's true.  But your legal process seems to be, like, you guys have some weird fucking laws because you don't have free speech.  You know, one of the things that bummed me out after being friends with you was realising that the classic British humour was actually just a reactive response to the fact that you don't have free speech.  You all have to be sarcastic all the time because you have to be able to have a shield and be like, "I was just taking the piss, mate". 

Peter McCormack: Yeah. 

American HODL: Because you don't have free speech, which is terrible.  By the way, you guys sent us Prince Harry and he was like, "I don't understand America's free speech law", and I was like, "I don't understand how you can be a cuck to your wife, but agree to disagree, Harry".  I mean, can you take him back already? 

Peter McCormack: If you keep her!

American HODL: No, fuck that!

Peter McCormack: We want him back.  We want the pre-Megan Harry.  That was the cool Harry.  There's two issues with free speech in the UK: one, we don't have a legal protection; but we also have a coercive pressure.  So, I am happy, fully happy to admit this.  I'm now Chairman of a football club that has a lot of eyes on it.  I have to think very carefully about some of the things I want to say in the world we're in, and I have to really think through the nuance and how I want to explain it.  I was talking to Odell about this yesterday, because when you're the Chairman of a football club, there's a lot of eyes on you, and if you look like you're saying anything wild, anything like an Andrew Tate, they're going to come for you, and that project's so important.  So, it's not that I'm censoring myself, I'm having to think through very carefully how I construct points.  And the reason I said this to Odell --

American HODL: There's always a way to say what you want to say, but in a less controversial way.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: But that is a bit of self-censorship. 

Peter McCormack: It is, absolutely.  I will still make the point if I want to make it, but I will have to bring the nuance to the table to explain it in a way that doesn't scare people.  Like, for example, even in a loose example, CBDCs, it's going to be very difficult to go, "This is just government tyranny, they're just trying to steal your money and control you".  I'm going to talk through the arguments against the CBDC and show examples across the world of the negative impacts of them, rather than just having headlines.  But I have to think through it very carefully, because where we are in the UK, the range of opinions, the Overton window is very different from in the US.  Like, you fucking fight and argue on extremes.  We're very near the middle and when people are outside of that, it doesn't matter left or right, you're painted as crazy, you're painted as an extremist. 

Or I was saying to Odell, Russell Brand isn't even that far out.  He's now been essentially painted as a right-wing extremist in the UK, Russell Brand.

American HODL: Oh yeah.  To me, he's a hippie. 

Peter McCormack: And the reason I care about this is I want people to have freedom money in the UK, I want people to have more freedom.  So, I'm trying to think, "How the fuck do I communicate this in a way so I don't sound like --"  You know my pinned tweet?

American HODL: Right, yeah.

Peter McCormack: I don't want them to think I'm Alex Jones.

American HODL: Of course, yeah.

Peter McCormack: So, it's a hard job, and that's why on the show sometimes, people listening, usually Americans, are thinking, "Fucking Pete is such a cuck".  It's like, no, I'm trying to balance two audiences here.  I'm trying to provide good content for the American audience.  But also I have a British audience.  I also want them to consider what I'm saying and take it seriously.  So, I'm trying to walk between the two people on the pinned tweet!  It's fucking hard!

American HODL: By the way, you guys are more cucked than we are, but it's not like we're not cucked.  I mean, I know that there are certain things that I could say that would put me on a list; I know that there are certain things I could say that would get me in massive amounts of social trouble, whatever.  We have less and less free speech in America than ever before, but we still have it, thank God.  And if it went to the court system and I had to have my feet held at the fire for something I said, I feel confident that I would win.

Peter McCormack: Well, Elon Musk called some guy a paedo and got away with it!

American HODL: Yeah, the Thailand guy, the submarine guy!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, the submarine guy.

American HODL: They were in a cave, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, the submarine guy.

American HODL: Yeah, he kind of shot from the hip on that one!

Peter McCormack: But he got away with it; free speech protection.

American HODL: Yeah, we can say whatever we want in America, up to a point.  You can't say specifically violent things about somebody.

Peter McCormack: You can't incite violence.

American HODL: You can't incite violence, and that one's tricky.  I mean, they said Trump incited violence and did he; did not?  Did Alex Jones incite violence?  Like, I don't know.  These are very grey-area issues, right? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's the shouting fire in a cinema thing. 

American HODL: Yeah.  My point is though, okay, this is dissidents versus reformers, right?  If you are going to be a dissident, you're going to leave America or you're going to leave England and you're going to go to whatever you think are greener pastures, right?  And who's to say that these pastures are actually going to be greener and you don't get caught up in whatever legal quagmire over there.  And at the same time, you've abandoned the place where you actually did have the ability to -- I couldn't go to England and do what you're going to do.  You're going to be Mr Bedford, boy who grew up in Bedford who's got the local football club and like, "Hey, it's me, Pete, sometimes I say the wrong thing, I put my foot in my mouth", whatever and you know how to talk to your people.

If I went over there, they'd all just view me as the biggest arrogant douchebag in the world, kind of like they view me in America!  But the thing is, in America, I'm better at talking to Americans because I know how to operate in our system, I know our cultural values, I know how to think.  If I went to El Salvador, I'm going to sit on the beach and eat pupusas and go surfing and basically do nothing for anyone.  I'm not going to help advance Bitcoin forward.  I have to stay here because I know the rules here, and America is also a beautiful place that's worth fighting for.  Where else are you going to go?

Peter McCormack: Well, exit is retirement, I think.

American HODL: Yeah.  Exit is just giving up.  Back to the point we were making earlier about, I was saying that you're doing a uniquely British thing with the Bedford Football Club and the pub.  I think the uniquely American thing is to hold America's feet to the fire about its founding documents; speak truth to power, hold the feet to the fire.  Like if you go back to, I was thinking about the civil rights movement the other day and how Martin Luther King Jr won and was so effective, and they killed him for it, right?  That's obvious.  I mean, that was terrible, but he won, he fucking won.  And the reason he won is because he said to America -- he used voice.  At the time, there was this idea of exit which was called the back-to-Africa movement, I don't know if you've ever heard of this. 

Peter McCormack: I don't know anything about that. 

American HODL: There were a bunch of black separationists who wanted to go back to Africa and start their own community and some of them did, but it was not as effective, I think, in messaging to the black Americans, because black Americans have struggled and fought and toiled and bled, almost more than anybody else in America, I think definitely probably more than anybody else, maybe the Native Americans, for America, so they deserve to be full owners of the society, and that was Martin Luther King Jr's message.  He said, "Listen, America, you're the one who wrote down on paper that all men are created equal, okay?  And all I am asking is for you to make good on your word".  And that's why he fucking won, because that's a powerful argument, it's powerful for everyone.  It's powerful for the white people who are hearing it, it's powerful for the black people who know what they went through to get there, it's powerful. 

Saying, "I'm going to take my ball and go home", first of all, you're doing two things.  You're not reaping the rewards of all the struggle that you and your people went through; and you're giving the racist white people what they fucking want anyway, and fuck them, right?  So, if you're going to have a Bitcoin social movement, it has to be unique to your specific region, and who's better to do it than you, the person who this is your ancestral homeland?

Peter McCormack: Well, this is why I fucking love Bitcoin Park, right?  I've gone down there multiple times now.  Harry, Rod, and Odell are busting their balls to make this work.  We know it's a lot of work.  When you talk to them, you just get them on their own, have a chat, they're working so hard to make it a thing.  But it's working.  We've got hundreds of people here this week; they've got 40 events across the year; they've got bitcoiners coming in from all over to come and get together.  And the great thing about what they're doing is, everybody in that room can go back and go, "Holy shit, what?"  The most important people are the people not in Nashville.  They're the ones who go back to Atlanta, Georgia, or fucking Cleveland, Ohio, or fuck knows where, and they go back and go, "Right, I'm going to do my version of this".  And their version might just be a meetup that is 10 people, then 30 people, then 40, then 50, and then they might buy a football club or do something. 

It's Michael Peterson in El Salvador who basically, one day, got contacted by somebody and said, "I've got some Bitcoin, what can you do with it?" and through a series of events, the President made Bitcoin legal tender.  All these hard projects are now delivering around the world.  So, Odell, Harry, Rod, Michael Peterson, the guys in Austin, the people in Berlin, all these people just going out there and doing these projects, they're so fucking important.

American HODL: This is one of the most beautiful things about America, is that we can both vote with our feet and use our voice politically to change things.  So, we have four established citadels in America.  It's Austin, Nashville, Miami, and Wyoming.  Those are the four American citadels.  And what is an American citadel?  It's basically a place where bitcoiners have gotten together, they're forming a community, they're starting to talk to the local politicians, they're starting to talk to the local ranchers, they're talking to the local people, they're building webs of trust amongst the people in their town, they're taking real ownership of the place they live, and they're being civic organisers. 

All of that sounds, I don't know, something your grandfather would have done.  It's a very old idea.  The fact that none of us belong to any community organisations, like I probably will sign up as a member of Bitcoin Park when I go tomorrow, or later today, just because I want to be a part of that civic community, even though I don't live here in Tennessee.

Peter McCormack: Well, you want it to work.

American HODL: I want it to fucking work, I support them, and now that I've said it on the podcast, I actually have to do it, so I'm holding my feet to the fire in that way.  But to me, when I thought to myself how I don't belong to any community organisations, I don't really know my neighbours, I don't really give a shit, I don't care about the place I live, it's kind of a problem for me.  And so, I'm thinking I've got to wait until the next bull run, because we're poor right now!  But when the next bull run comes, I'm going to move to one of the American citadels.

Peter McCormack: Okay, well, I want to come back to that.  The only thing I wanted to add to that is you've got those four citadels, but actually you've got these nodes all around the world.  You can hop to any of those.  You can hop to El Zonte in El Salvador; you can come to Bedford, and it's happening, people are coming; you can go to Lisbon; you can go to Indonesia -- 

American HODL: Pubkey in New York. 

Peter McCormack: -- Pubkey in New York.  These things are springing up everywhere. 

American HODL: When I was in New York last time with you guys, I just went back and forth from the hotel to Pubkey, the hotel to Pubkey.  We're in New York City, we're in Manhattan; I didn't give a shit, I just went to Pubkey, and I ate the bar food and the bar food was fucking amazing.  I basically stayed at Pubkey the whole time because my people, my diaspora, my tribe, they were at Pubkey, and that's all I actually care about, is my people.

Peter McCormack: Well, because you have that thing, right, ignoring the guy in the bar that my son stepped in front of, everywhere you go, people are cool.

American HODL: Well, there were 160 people in that bar, only one guy had a real problem with you.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but everywhere you go, people are cool.  And you know, when you get there, there's certain pillars that you're going to line up on, and you're going to share jokes that you're going to get and you're going to share stories you're going to get, and you've got this same mission.  And so, whether you go to Pubkey or you go to Nashville or El Zonte, it's like that Cheers, remember Cheers? 

American HODL: Yeah, where everybody knows you. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's that.  But it's that globally that's happening.  Honestly, I'm fucking here for it, I love it so much. 

American HODL: It's so fucking exciting and in a certain way, have you ever heard this idea that the citadel is you and that it emanates out from you?  Or you could think about yourself being a conduit.  Essentially Bitcoin is this alien substrate, right, and we all touched it and then we became Bitcoin, we became infected with Bitcoin, and then we go around infecting the rest of the world with Bitcoin, basically sharing the gospel, spreading the good news of Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: We're missionaries.

American HODL: We're Bitcoin missionaries.

Peter McCormack: We'll probably have that at some point, two guys turning up in your door with cheap suits and ties and rucksacks!

American HODL: People say this all the time about Bitcoin that, "I hate Bitcoin because it's religious and those maxis are so religious, and they're so orthodox and they have all these social adherence, like they only eat meat and they sun their balls, and they do this and they do that", but really what we are is a community organisation, we're like a large global community organisation that has all these different pockets, these nodes, these citadels, whatever you want to call them.  And that's what's really going on here, is we're a bunch of people who are using Bitcoin as both a progressive and restorative technology, to restore social cohesion and civic responsibility to America and the world.

Peter McCormack: I fucking love that.

American HODL: Dude, that is so boring.  You know what's amazing about Bitcoin, is that is so boring and grandmotherly.  All of Bitcoin is boring grandmother advice, like have a family, have strong principles, stand up for what you believe in, have a garden, eat real foods, you know what I mean, get to know your neighbours, join a community organisation.  This is what your grandmother would have told you, this is what bitcoiners will tell you, and allegedly it's radical in today's world.  There's nothing radical about it. 

Peter McCormack: So, in the next bull run you're going to move to Bedford!

American HODL: No, I like free speech too much!

Peter McCormack: Did you see Rob Hamilton's chart yesterday?

American HODL: No, which one?

Peter McCormack: Oh, my God, this is brilliant.

American HODL: I love Rob, by the way.

Peter McCormack: This troll is a fucking brilliant; he trolled Austin.  So, Bitcoin Park, Bitcoin Commons and Real Bedford. 

Danny Knowles: They responded to this though, didn't they? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: "Open Carry", he has a butter knife? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah!  Yeah, but he was wrong, because you can pay for drinks, so he had to update it.

Danny Knowles: Let me find the updated one.

Peter McCormack: It's under that.  So, if you go into that, he replied to my tweet.  There you go.  So, it's a massive troll of Bitcoin Commons!

American HODL: Dude, honestly, we should start using this.  We should use this for Bitcoin citadels. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, these are the principles.

American HODL: "Pay for Drinks with Bitcoin", is amazing; "National Bitcoin Capital", amazing; "Hosts BitDevs", that's important; "Open Carry".

Peter McCormack: So, we don't host BitDevs, but we sponsor the London BitDevs, so I was like, "I'm claiming that".

American HODL: Do you allow dogs?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: On the pitch? 

Peter McCormack: No, they've got to be on the lead. 

American HODL: Okay, got it.

Peter McCormack: They've got to be on a lead, can't run on and steal the ball!

American HODL: This is a fucking amazing chart, I love this.  This should be our de facto standard for how good is your Bitcoin -- so, Pubkey should display this like they display health codes!  No open carry for Pubkey, because they're in New York City, so that's one of their only demerits.

Danny Knowles: Do they host BitDevs?

American HODL: It's the spot after BitDevs for drinks.

Peter McCormack: That counts.

American HODL: So, yellow!

Peter McCormack: You can't open carry.  Do they allow dogs in the bar?

American HODL: They should.  There might be a New York City thing against that.

Peter McCormack: They can't claim National Bitcoin Capital, because Bitcoin Park's claiming National Bitcoin Capital.

Danny Knowles: It allows hot dogs though, maybe you can get away with it!

Peter McCormack: Yeah!

American HODL: I think it's one of the -- it's part of the quad.  I said there are four, so it's part of the four.

Peter McCormack: So you think you're going to move?

American HODL: Oh, I'm 100% going to move.  You know why?  Because I fucking love bitcoiners.  I want to be around bitcoiners.  And if I'm not going to move to one of the four, I'm going to create the fifth.  That's my mentality.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  I don't want to say where you live now because I don't know if you talk about it publicly.

American HODL: I'm in Nevada.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so have you thought of doing one there? 

American HODL: No, it sucks there, it's terrible. 

Peter McCormack: But there are bitcoiners there. 

American HODL: I almost stepped on a scorpion in my garage the other day.  I said, "Fuck Nevada".  You know, it was 113° when I left. 

Peter McCormack: What are your options of places to start one? 

American HODL: Well, I love the American South.  I mean, I love where we are now, I love Nashville, I love Tennessee. 

Peter McCormack: New Orleans? 

American HODL: New Orleans would be dope, although their state tax treatment is a big thing.  So, Nevada has the no income tax going for it; that's big. 

Peter McCormack: I think you're going to come here.

American HODL: I think I'm probably going to come to Nashville or Austin.  Yeah, one of the two. 

Peter McCormack: Is your wife keen? 

American HODL: She wants Florida because she wants a beach house, I was telling Danny.  But Miami is full of shitcoiners. 

Peter McCormack: Fuck Miami. 

American HODL: So, I would have to set up an adjacent and go to Sarasota or something. 

Peter McCormack: Sarasota's full of weird people.

Danny Knowles: It will be perfect for a citadel!

American HODL: All of Florida's full of weirdos.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I went to Sarasota to interview Charlie Shrem.  I went out on his Satoshi boat.  I fucking love Charlie!  You can start one with Charlie. 

American HODL: Pass! 

Peter McCormack: I think you'd like it here. 

American HODL: Oh, yeah, I love it.  I've been coming to Nashville for 25 years and it's finally started to pop.  It feels like Austin 12, 15 years ago; Nashville feels right now.

Peter McCormack: Well, so we're going to Austin this weekend and everyone's left because it's too hot.

American HODL: It's hot as fuck, dude.

Peter McCormack: So, you would always have to think about that; whereas Nashville, it's all year round.

American HODL: Nashville's nice.

Peter McCormack: We'd have another reason to come if HODL was here.

American HODL: It's got a good culture, you know.  But I mean, I do think that there is a potential to set up the fifth American citadel, you know I mean.

Peter McCormack: Have you got the energy to do that?

American HODL: And by the way, if it's not me, somebody else should be doing it.  We should have more American citadels, as many as possible.

Peter McCormack: Well, not just America, everywhere, we just want them everywhere.

American HODL: Sorry, Americans are very xenophobic and I'm the worst offender.  We only think about things through an American world view.

Peter McCormack: Have you been outside of America? 

American HODL: Yeah, to Canada and Mexico!

Peter McCormack: Have you been outside of North America?

American HODL: Can neither confirm nor deny.

Peter McCormack: I'm going to get you to Europe.

American HODL: Yeah, I want to come to Bedford at some point.

Peter McCormack: We're going to get you there.

American HODL: Here's my deal, I support all Bitcoin citadels.  I said this thing a while ago, that if you have 6.15 Bitcoin, I owe you a steak dinner. 

Peter McCormack: Okay. 

American HODL: So, in that way, I owe you a steak dinner if you have 6.15, and if you're a Bitcoin citadel, I support you and will make a pilgrimage to your location.

Peter McCormack: Have we been to all of them?

American HODL: You guys probably have.

Danny Knowles: Yeah, I think so.

Peter McCormack: You haven't been to El Zonte.

Danny Knowles: Oh, no, I've not been to El Salvador.  We've not been to Berlin.  They're trying to set something up in Berlin. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay, well that's competition for Bedford, so I'm going to push hard on that.

American HODL: Berlin is coming up strong.  That's good to know.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's a great city, man. 

American HODL: Amsterdam seems kind of like there's some Bitcoin activity happening there.

Peter McCormack: It's needed in Europe. 

American HODL: Yeah. 

Peter McCormack: You know, we've got to have this push back on the regulatory side of things.

American HODL: Well, Germany has the second highest node count, I believe. 

Peter McCormack: Is that true? 

American HODL: Yeah, I think so, right?

Danny Knowles: It was really big --

American HODL: America, then Germany.

Peter McCormack: It's going to be really interesting on the back of -- if this all plays out like I'm hoping, in that every bull run has a hero and Saylor was the last one, and this one might be Larry Fink.

American HODL: God, I hope not, fuck Larry Fink. 

Peter McCormack: Harry made a really good point the other night.  He said, when Odell was up there saying, "Fuck BlackRock, buy Bitcoin, self-custody", and he's totally 100% right. 

American HODL: Oh, yeah, I agree with Odell. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, 100% right.  Harry was like, "But look at the signal.  That's all we need to care about.  Larry Fink, who --" 

American HODL: Oh, he's bent the knee. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  And Larry Fink is telling every asset manager in the world, "You can and you should have Bitcoin", every asset manager in the world.  And the narrative shift that you might get with that is that you may now get New York Times writing, "Bitcoin is good for the environment", you might get that.  And once you get that, you've won. 

American HODL: Totally.  Did you notice that the news changed when BlackRock filed?

Peter McCormack: It's bullshit.

American HODL: No, I like that narrative. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's bullshit.

American HODL: It's a useful narrative.  Did you notice it changed, Pete?  Now you edit this podcast, now you say yes.

Peter McCormack: No, it's bullshit!  But what was really interesting, Dylan LeClair put out a great tweet yesterday.  He said, "Bro, they're going to ban Bitcoin".  He was like, "Bro they can't even ban it"!  XRP!

American HODL: That's one of the beautiful things about the American judiciary.  By the way, it was funny because I think it was Pierre Rochard put out a tweet that was like, "If the SEC wins, bitcoiners will cheer.  If the SEC loses, bitcoiners will cheer.  Until you understand this, you won't understand bitcoiners".  It was something like that!

Peter McCormack: That's brilliant!

American HODL: And that's how I feel.  I thought it was funny when the SEC lost.  I think it's funny if they win.  I enjoy the whole thing. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but the XRP army have come out in force.  I just went to war with them.

American HODL: Oh. my God, they're back.

Peter McCormack: They're back.

American HODL: Yeah, "ISO 2002, man.  Don't you know about it, man?"

Peter McCormack: What is it, $287, or something?

American HODL: "The standard, man".

Peter McCormack: XRP, the standard.

American HODL: You know what's funny, the XRP guys have basically said to the SEC, "Hey, we like being stupid, leave us alone"!  They won!

Peter McCormack: What happened to the price yesterday?

Danny Knowles: It went up like 70%.

American HODL: It was up like 75%. 

Peter McCormack: But the hilarious thing was that Cory put out the zoomed-out chart.

American HODL: Oh, it's still getting demolished.  Well, that's the other thing too.  As a bitcoiner, I do think -- I saw some bitcoiners who were very shell-shocked that the SEC had lost in court, or whatever.  Or it was a split decision, but they kind of lost a little bit.  It's a bad decision, by the way, though.  I was talking to some lawyer friends and they think it'll be overturned in a year or so.  So, it has faulty reasoning within the document.  And so it's likely to be overturned.  So, you basically have this one year or year-and-a-half time period where there's going to be -- so unfortunately, we're stuck with another fucking alt season, because of course we are.  But anyway, it's neither here nor there. 

The point is that I saw bitcoiners complaining about it and it's like, "Listen, man, I've been duking it out with fucking Ripple guys in the free market for seven, eight years".  I'm happy to continue duking it out with them.

Peter McCormack: Put my tweet up.  See what you think of this because I think I crystallised hopefully what a lot of bitcoiners are thinking with regards to this, and I kind of half plagiarised off somebody else.

Danny Knowles: Is it this one?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, I said, "It's still a massive shitcoin", but then some guy had a go at me, "I was expecting Peter McCormack to be a man, just say congrats.  This space will --"

American HODL: "Your small walnut brain cannot comprehend this victory"!

Peter McCormack: And so I said, "Look, I'm glad Ripple beat the SEC, because fuck the SEC, but Chris Larsen of Ripple funded a $5 million anti-Bitcoin campaign.  We are not the same, GFY".

American HODL: Yeah, 100%.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, "That's it, go fuck yourself".  I am pro the SEC losing, Brad Garlinghouse --

American HODL: You can be anti-SEC enforcement and you can be anti-Ripple, you can be both. 

Peter McCormack: It's like quantum shitcoining. 

American HODL: Yeah.  Now that said, if the SEC had won, I also would have been like, "Well, that's what happens.  I mean, what did you think was going to happen?"

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I want the SEC to keep losing.  The SEC losing consistently and --

American HODL: As a bitcoiner, I don't really give a shit about the SEC.  Do you think about it that often?  I don't think about it very much.  They have no purview over Bitcoin.  I mean, the spot ETF, but who cares?

Peter McCormack: I just think it's just everything's good for Bitcoin, right?  So if they win and they lose, I just get Harry Sudock in my ear going, "Everything's good for Bitcoin".  And I just think, "Why?"  And I figure it out, and it always is, everything's good for Bitcoin.  But what I will say is, certainly over the last month but definitely last three months, I'm feeling the whole narrative changing now. 

American HODL: Oh, massively. 

Peter McCormack: The anti-Bitcoin arguments are just not flying.  People are coming out with anti, like Ben McKenzie at the moment is getting humiliated. 

American HODL: Ben McKenzie, actor. 

Peter McCormack: Yes, I know. 

American HODL: Fuck it, stop taking that guy seriously! 

Peter McCormack: Well, we're going to sit down and talk to him soon. 

American HODL: He's an actor.

Peter McCormack: But what I'm saying is, anyone who's coming out with any press, like Bitcoin's bad for the environment, you've just got a wave of people coming and showing them charts and saying, "You just don't know what you're talking about".  And so you've got that, you've got every presidential nominee is pro-Bitcoin, lots of Congress people are turning, the wave is changing. 

American HODL: Oh no, 100%, you can feel it.  And I think this is something I want to get into too.  I think that it's important that, back to your xPub thing, I think that it's important that we build Bitcoin designs to meet TradFi where they're at.  Because we've had this incorrect assumption in Bitcoin for a long time that either you're fully cucked and you trust a third party and you have a Bitcoin IOU, or on the other hand, you're fully cypherpunk and you have a sovereign multisig that's DIY that only you control and know the private keys to, right, or the seed phrase to. 

I think that there is just a massive gradient in the middle, and basically the centre of that gradient is collaborative custody.  And there's all sorts of different variations of covenants, script, collaborative custody that we can use to create different trust models, brand-new trust models.  And we don't have to just say, "Okay, BlackRock, here's all the Bitcoin".  We can say, "Okay, BlackRock, here's how you work in a Bitcoin framework in order to have a collaborative model, where you can have all of the regulatory compliance that you want, all the cryptographic security practices that we want and your customers expect of you.  And then there is no one trusted third party who can abscond with the keys".  Now paper contracts and rehypothecation is a different thing, and that's not part of the Bitcoin network, and so that's --

Peter McCormack: A risk.

American HODL: Well, it's a risk, and it's also something that we can't do much about, other than say, "Have fun staying poor", because what we've seen is that everybody who does rehypothecate, sorry, BlockFi Zac, you owe me a coin by the way, everyone who does rehypothecate gets absolutely taken to the woodshed.  They just get totally fucking destroyed.

Peter McCormack: I think you need to add on to that, that kind of middle ground.  We had a long conversation with Alex Thorn of Galaxy yesterday.  We were talking about, how do you scale Bitcoin culture?  And the reason this becomes important is that the Blocksize Wars, half of the people on one side of that argument was essentially the business Bitcoin people who said, "We need the bigger blocks". 

American HODL: Yeah, The New York Agreement. 

Peter McCormack: The New York Agreement.  And that was a group of credible respected people at the time who said, "No, Bitcoin needs bigger blocks" and they fought for it.  And there was a clear separation between them and the devs and it got really -- I mean, I didn't understand what was going on at the time because I was new, but it was getting dicey.  And talking to these people, going back and talking about what happens, it was a scary time for bitcoiners.  You can see a whole new world.  What I said to Alex Thorn is, "If Bitcoin goes to $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 and we have this massive global adoption, the Bitcoin influencers, we don't know who they might be.  It might be Logan Paul, it might be Joe Rogan, it might be somebody we've not heard of, it might be some sports star, it might be a whole wave of people that eliminate the likes of me Marty, Odell and they've got the big, powerful voice.  

If they don't understand the key pillars and principles of decentralisation, self-custody, who Adam Back is and why he's so fucking important, they don't understand all this, what are the narratives that get disseminated now?  Then if the next New York Agreement is a bunch of asset managers who think Bitcoin needs to be ESG, how do you fight back against that? 

American HODL: Yeah, I think the OGs, which you're becoming an OG, I'm becoming an OG, I think we're kind of the Bene Gesserit from Dune.  We show up and we do whisper campaigns.  I got invited to a phone call recently about orange-pilling a small Caribbean nation.

Peter McCormack: Love it.

American HODL: Yeah, and I was on the phone call to tell them what strong Bitcoin-focused principles look and how they could adopt a Bitcoin-only standard and actually have this work in their country.  Why the fuck am I on that phone call, you know what I mean?  But bitcoiners are everywhere, we're everywhere.  And so if it is going to be a new class of influencer, a Logan Paul or something like that, it's important that they stay on message and they don't say things that are anti-Bitcoin, antithetical to Bitcoin, and ultimately harmful for both them and the audience that they're talking to.  So, it's important that OGs continue to work behind the scenes, like we all do anyway, and just talk to people about it and tell them like, "Hey, man, instead of going down that path, I might try this path and this will be more effective for you, right?"

Peter McCormack: But scaling that, how do you scale it?  Because I think, again, it goes back to how I talk to people in the UK, I don't think the toxic pleb culture will scale into asset managers.  They will need the --

American HODL: Yeah, they're not going to be toxic.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, they're going to need almost like the reformed HODLs.  It's you coming from that and being Serious HODL, that reformed person who still has a sense of humour and did everything he did, but now understands how to communicate that in a way that an asset manager wants to hear, because you're not going to have BlueBanana64 come in and fucking yell at them because they don't want to hear it.  But you might get Serious HODL in there, who comes in and says, "Look, these are the core principles, this is why you've invested it, for Number Go Up.  To maintain Number Go Up, you need to maintain these core principles", and we've just got to get that across to people. 

American HODL: Yeah, I know.  I recently started making startup investments, and the two that I've invested in so far is, I invested in Mutiny --

Peter McCormack: Nice.

American HODL: -- which is about as fucking cypherpunk as you can fucking get.  And then I invested in Rob Hamilton's company, Anchor Watch, which is a regulated insurance product for big money, basically.  And I believe that both of those products, which are on opposite ends of the gradient, I believe that both of them pump Bitcoin equally, right?  Because you need to be able to do Bitcoin in both ways.  Bitcoin needs to --

Peter McCormack: Have you seen his T-shirt?

American HODL: Yeah.  No, I know.  Those guys are wizards.  Mutiny is one of the greatest wallets of all time. 

Peter McCormack: We're getting Tony on on Sunday, right? 

Danny Knowles: Yeah, in Austin.  But going back to the kind of influences taken, they're not going to be talking about Bitcoin ever.  Like, who talks about the dollar on a podcast right now? 

Peter McCormack: Oh, but they will.

American HODL: Once it hits you and then you become part of these community organisations that I was talking about, you just can't help but talk about it.  It's part of your life.

Danny Knowles: But then you become a bitcoiner.  But those influencer podcasts are always going to be about sport and music and culture.  I don't think they'll become Bitcoin podcasts.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but what I'm thinking is, you think during how much crypto shit Logan Paul did in the last -- he fully embedded himself in crypto culture.

American HODL: I happen to know that the Pauls are big on Bitcoin, but they're also crypto scam guys, that he did that NFT scam, or whatever. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Zoo!

American HODL: But I also know that Marques Brownlee, YouTuber, big YouTuber, he's big on Bitcoin.  MrBeast, the biggest YouTuber in the world, he's big on Bitcoin.  And so, it's not a bridge too far for these young guys that came up on YouTube or whatever, they all get it, they all have Bitcoin.  I know things behind the scenes, I know they get it.  So, it's just a matter of them coming out and saying it publicly, really. 

Danny Knowles: But to that point, MrBeast isn't going to stop making Bitcoin videos.

Peter McCormack: No, he might not, but I'm not saying everyone in the world.

American HODL: Because is there anything -- his thing is about getting the most views.  Doing a pandering, boring, preachy video about Bitcoin is not worth 100 million views.  Yesterday, I watched him crash a train into a pit.  That's fucking sic!  Who doesn't want to watch that?! 

Peter McCormack: But I'm not saying everyone will, but it might be a case of Logan Paul for a few weeks when Bitcoin's going crazy, he's holding Bitcoin, he's talking about Bitcoin, and all the youngsters, they're not going to listen to What Bitcoin Did.  They're going to listen to Logan Paul and listen to what he has to say about it, and they're going to learn about it.  So, I'm just saying it's important.  Like, we don't know how culture will scale.

American HODL: And the big money listens to Larry Fink, which is why you were saying that he's the hero of the cycle, because Bitcoin is a monetary network and so in order for a number to go up tremendously, you do need rich people to understand Bitcoin, and it's more important that rich people understand it than poor people in terms of price appreciation.  I'm not saying poor people shouldn't understand it.  Obviously, we spend a lot of time talking to the average person, the normal person, trying to get them to understand it.  It's sometimes like trying to talk to a donkey, it's really difficult, but we do our best. 

I do think that the Larry Finks of the world are going to orange pill a lot of big money managers, and they're going to -- we've been saying the institutions are coming for fucking ten years, and it finally, I felt it too, the same thing you felt, the tectonic plate shifted, and it feels like the institutions are really coming in a big way.

Peter McCormack: Well, they need to get their shit together because you don't want to be the last institution, like you don't want to be the last country, and it's a race. 

American HODL: That's when things heat up, man.  Think about that.  When you start to think in your mind, "I don't want to be the last country, I don't want to be the last hedge fund, I don't want to be the last bank, I don't want to be the last central bank", those are really powerful incentive mechanisms. 

Peter McCormack: Of course, because you cannot catch up.  Nobody can catch Saylor up now.

American HODL: Right. 

Peter McCormack: You just can't catch him up. 

American HODL: Well, you could catch up to Saylor if you had a lot of money. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay, but no one really is going to catch up.  Like, if someone tries his play now, it's going to cost them 5X, 10X what he spent doing it. 

American HODL: That's okay for a lot of people.  I mean, there are orders of magnitude of adoption, right?  So, in the very beginning, it was rich libertarians, and by rich, I mean $1 million or $2 million; they were the guys pumping this thing.  And the very final stage is central banks.  So, the Fed and the ECB are going to both buy Bitcoin and put it on their balance sheets.  That will happen at some point.  There's nothing we can do to prevent that from happening either, right? 

Peter McCormack: Well, it's the thing that saves them.

American HODL: Yeah.  And you'll know it's happening, Preston Pysh has talked about this, you'll know it's happening because it'll be reflected in the price.

Peter McCormack: Of course.

American HODL: Right, because they're going to have to spend a lot of money.  But when you have the largest money printer in the world, what the fuck does it matter to you?

Peter McCormack: I mean, it's such an obvious play for them.  Print a couple of trillion, buy the Bitcoin, wait, erase the debt.  It's such an obvious play.

American HODL: Yeah, and also you can you know do what Luke Gromen talks about and if you're America, you can leapfrog China and Russia, which have been stacking gold.  And it's like, "Whoops, we just made your fucking gold worthless", right?  This is one of the myths that I think bitcoiners often, we get hand wavy about, because hyperbitcoinisation, it's like an apocalypse, you know what I mean, where suddenly all of the bad people go to hell and all the good people go to heaven, you know what I mean?  It's exodus, right?  And so it's just like, hyperbitcoinisation is your own beautiful world of wherever you want to go and whatever you want to do.  

But the truth is, this is a hard truth to hear, but the truth is that central banks are going to buy Bitcoin in tremendous quantities, and then they're going to issue CBDCs against Bitcoin.  There's nothing that is intrinsic to Bitcoin that prevents a sovereign from issuing a currency against Bitcoin.  And then what they're going to do is they're going to break the peg and then go full fiat again, and that's the cycle, that's the doom loop that humanity is stuck in.  It's the same cycle on the gold standard.  You know, constantly the gold was reaccumulated, gold was stolen, reaccumulated.  Every war in Europe's history was either God, glory or gold or some combination of all three.  You collected the gold, you used it to beautify your society, then after a while, you got lazy.  Your insolent kids came up after you and they started clipping the gold, mixing it with different metals, and then the whole society collapsed under loose fiscal policy.  And that's what always happens.  Have you ever heard the quote by Tytler?

Peter McCormack: Go on.

American HODL: Okay, I've got to pull it up because it's a long quote.

Peter McCormack: Do you want Danny to pull it up on the screen?

American HODL: Yeah.  Danny, can you just type in, "Largesse from the public treasury, Tytler", and the quote will come up.  This is a quote by, I believe Tytler was a Scottish academic from the late 1700s, and this quote is about basically how cycles -- okay, here it is, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.  The average age of the world's greatest civilisations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependence; and from dependence back into bondage".

Peter McCormack: So, we're in "apathy to dependence". 

American HODL: See, this is the thing for me.  In fiat, we're moving from apathy to dependence.  In Bitcoin, I am moving from spiritual faith to great courage and so are you guys.  I think we're a stage ahead.  Well, it depends where you are.  I think we're moving from courage to liberty. 

American HODL: I think we're spiritual faith to great courage.  Courage to liberty will come when there's a direct challenge from the government about your Bitcoin. 

Peter McCormack: Okay, fair.  That's a fucking amazing quote. 

American HODL: Oh dude, I think about this quote --

Peter McCormack: Is that from a book? 

American HODL: Yeah, I believe so.  I think about this quote all the time. 

Peter McCormack: It's incredible. 

American HODL: This quote is, "Hard times make strong men", it's that, it's the meme. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah. 

American HODL: You think about it though.  Think about the American Revolution, okay?  The American Founding Fathers were rich aristocrats, okay, who were just on principle ticked off that they had to pay taxes to King George. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, 2%. 

American HODL: On fucking principle.  And because of the principle of their spirit and their spiritual faith, their belief in God, and the belief that they would win, they gambled with their fucking lives in order to throw off the boot that was on their neck.

Peter McCormack: 2% tea tax, that's all it was. 

American HODL: And because they won, we now make statues of them and name things after them, but you know, there's a version of history where those guys are fucking hanged, right?  In fact, 99 times out of 100, that version of history plays out. 

Peter McCormack: And you would never have existed. 

American HODL: Exactly, there'd be no American HODL.  I'd be British HODL!

Peter McCormack: There is a British HODL.

American HODL: Yeah, there is.  But yeah, without the courage, the spiritual faith that leads to the courage, you're not going to do the thing you need to do, you're not going to answer the call. 

Peter McCormack: It was what Breedlove said to me. 

Danny Knowles: In terms of voting yourself money? 

Peter McCormack: Voting yourself money, it's voting yourself money.

American HODL: Yeah.  By the way, one of the things I'm most worried about in American politics is that we're moving from democracy to dictatorship.  It's not Donald Trump, but it's both sides in a race to put Hitler in office.  That's how I see it, and I'm terrified of it.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's that very clear point.  When you see it, it's like you may be voting for one side, but you're voting for the same thing. 

American HODL: Even Elon Musk was tweeting things about Roman dictators, saying we need a Sulla, this kind of stuff.  I mean, there's a feeling out there that we need a dictator in America to just right the ship, because democracy is chaos.  And when you have democracy plus free speech, it's chaos plus napalm plus gasoline.  It gets really chaotic to be an American and be in the mix, right? 

Peter McCormack: Well, that's why you will see some people argue back for monarchies, like Saifedean argues that monarchies are better; or you'll see some people out there defending places like Saudi Arabia saying, "Well, look, there's no crime, the streets are clean, everyone's happy, but it's a dictatorship". 

American HODL: Well, monarchy is the best system when it works.  When it works, monarchy is fucking great.  I mean who wouldn't want to live under Marcus Aurelius, right?  I would want to live under Marcus Aurelius.  The problem is you get that for about 40 years, and then you have Marcus Aurelius' shitbag son, Commodus, and then you have to live under that asshole, you know what I mean?  That's the problem with monarchy.

Peter McCormack: I always think of the young king in Game of Thrones.

American HODL: Yes, yeah, exactly.

Peter McCormack: Have you seen that?

American HODL: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: What's his name?

American HODL: Joffrey.

Peter McCormack: Joffrey.

American HODL: Joffrey, what a cunt, right?!

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Well, great character, though.

American HODL: Oh, amazing.

Peter McCormack: And what a kid to play. 

American HODL: And that is what unearned privilege gets you.  Monarchy via you're using blood to pick, I forget the name, but using lineage to pick the monarch…  I mean look at your monarchs.  They all look like they're inbred.  Prince William has the worst genetics I've ever seen.

Peter McCormack: We had a great Queen who was, I mean, what, 90 years she was on the fucking throne, or something ridiculous?

American HODL: She was an old lady.

Peter McCormack: No, it's more than that.  She was unimpeachable.  Like, name one thing she did bad, apart from, I think the only thing, obviously she stood by her nonce son. 

American HODL: Yeah, Andrew.

Peter McCormack: But apart from that, she doesn't have anything.  She doesn't have anything on her record.  Look at the rest of them.  She has nothing bad on her record.

American HODL: I will say this about her.  I've learned everything I know about her from watching The Crown, but I will say this.  She seemed very civically minded and a person of great faith, and those are good qualities you want in a leader.  Now, she's not actually a leader, she's just a figurehead, or she was.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, she's someone to look to -- she's somebody that people look to when times are tough, like what's she going to say, how is she going to calm the nation?  I think it was probably more important under her father, King George, I think he had a much more important role, and during her reign, they lost power, and that's fine.

American HODL: But look at George's brother, who literally was making pacts with the Nazis to put him back in power.  What a piece of shit that guy was.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

American HODL: That was so bad, you guys had to pretend like it didn't happen, but it did.

Peter McCormack: No, it didn't happen!  Look, I mean I think you can look to any model and say it works, you know, it works now, it doesn't work then.  I mean, everything is chaotic.

American HODL: There's something about that Tytler quote, though, where when you see it, you just go, "Oh, that's it".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'll be going back to that, you can't unsee that.  That's very interesting.

American HODL: So, my point, the reason I brought it up is that's going to happen with Bitcoin at some point.  And I think, when you talk about the --

Peter McCormack: What, so Bitcoin breaks the cycle or repeats the cycle?

American HODL: Well, with Bitcoin we have a shot to break the cycle, but that's a very human cycle.

Peter McCormack: Hold on, bring the quote back.  So, if it's only Bitcoin, so we go from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, what is the part of democracy that causes that to break down?  Is it the vote themselves, largesse from the public treasury? 

American HODL: That says it right there, it's loose fiscal policy. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but will Bitcoin enforce a new fiscal policy, because they can't print money?

American HODL: Yeah, if we have a whole world of strong cultural bitcoiners, right, and the bastardisation of money is seen to be one of the great evils of the world, which currently it is not, but if it ever gets that way.  And I have hope for this future because we are sort of canaries in the coal mines.  We're just regular guys who started going deep about the history of money.  That's a weird thing I didn't see that happening for my life, you probably didn't see it happening for your life.  So, maybe we are the vanguard of the cultural revolution in which we really instil it in our children and grandchildren that, "Hey, if you fuck up the money, I will come back and fucking haunt you", you know I mean, "I will come back from the goddamn grave", it needs to be that severe.

This is the cycle, every time, loose fiscal policy destroys great nations and it's because weak children who are the inheritors of the establishment, this is back to the inheritor conversation we were having, weak children who are the inheritors of the establishment, who don't appreciate what they've been given, who believe life should go on and be easy, what they do is they  just do a little trick to fake growth; they always do it.  So, going off the gold standard was a trick, it was just a little trick to fake growth for a while.  And when you're the person who decides to make that decision, it's the greatest thing ever for you, because you get to keep the party going while bearing none of the consequences, because by the time the consequences come due, you'll be dead.  So, that's why it keeps happening.  It's a very human cycle over and over again. 

So, if Bitcoin's going to break it, we're going to have to have an extremely strong cultural understanding of Bitcoin across the entire world, right, or at least in the world's great nations, where it is understood that the government is not allowed to print currency ever, and that Bitcoin is the currency, and if the government is not managing its Treasury correctly, that's what we have the referendum on.  And we don't do anything to keep the party going.

Peter McCormack: We hang them!

American HODL: We have to force austerity.

Peter McCormack: And we hang them!

American HODL: I mean, that's the argument for monarchy.  In monarchy, you only have to hang one guy.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and they have to know they can be hung.

American HODL: By the way, the problem with systems like monarchy or democracy is not the monarch or the bureaucrats, it's the nobles.  The nobles are always the problem.  The nobles are actually who bitcoiners are fighting against.  The nobles are the Cantillonaires; they are the corrupt capitalist class who uses the state as a husk, as a weapon, as a shield against the poor and to further enrich themselves.  Those are the real people that we are in a protracted battle with.  The best you can ever do when new elites go against old elites is you can get about half the seats at the table; that's the best you can do.  Because, there is nothing that prevents current elites from porting their wealth into Bitcoin.  You can take your billions and ill-gotten gains that you got off of whatever you did in fiat land.  Look at the US; the US has 130,000, they have a Michael Saylor amount of Bitcoin, right?  You can take your ill-gotten gains and you can port them directly into Bitcoin there's nothing any of us can do to prevent that.

Now, not all the new elite or the old elites are going to the landed gentry, they're not going to all get this message in time, and so about half of them are going to lose and be replaced by bitcoiners.  And what happens is, when you join the table, you're suddenly in an advanced conversation about rulemaking.  That's what elite societies do; they make rules.  And bitcoiners now are going to get about half the say as to what the rules are, because here's the real truth.

Peter McCormack: Well, we've already set a very important set of rules ourselves.

American HODL: Well, so I'm getting I'm getting there.  Here's the thing, is that no matter how rich you are, there is a global cabal that controls all of the guns and writes all of the rules and none of us are in the club, but we're trying to get into the club.  And our big thing that we're bringing to the club, just like the New York Agreement is saying, "Listen, you guys have been used to sitting at this table and deciding the future of all of humanity.  And all we are doing is bringing a rule set that we do not control, and we're putting it in the middle of the table and we're saying we are going to now all abide by this rule set".  That's the big idea that's happening between the new elites and the old elites.  You don't get to change the rules on the fly anymore.  That game is over.

Peter McCormack: There's a beautiful way to end this conversation.  Man, I love Serious HODL.  I really, really love Serious HODL.

American HODL: I wore the glasses and everything.

Peter McCormack: Dude, I love it.  Honestly, I can sit and listen to you for ages.  I love everything you're doing.  I would talk to you every week if I could.  I wouldn't move to Nashville.

American HODL: You've got to stay in Bedford.  I mean, you're already a citadel founder in Bedford.

Peter McCormack: I appreciate you recognising what we're doing there and I cannot wait to get you over.

American HODL: You know what, it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand what you're actually doing.  I just thought, can I be honest, I just thought it was Pete living his fantasies.  I was like, which it is.

Peter McCormack: It is that.

American HODL: But I was like, yeah, Pete's living like he's a rock star and he's going to the pub every night and he's fucking got the football club, he gets to be big man about campus.  And then I realised, I said to myself, wait a second, Pete is meeting the people where they're at and he's a product of Bedford because he comes from Bedford, so he knows what people in Bedford want.  And then I reframed the whole thing and it finally clicked for me and I was like, "Oh shit, that's what he's been doing".

Peter McCormack: What are they doing here?  They're meeting the politicians, I'm meeting the mayor.  They're meeting the businesses, I'm meeting the business.

American HODL: We're going to dinner tonight.  You're going to be at that dinner, right?

Peter McCormack: What day is it today?

American HODL: You're going, I'll be there.

Peter McCormack: No, I'm not, I've got to go to a thing.  But what I'm saying is, the football thing is the thing that is a distraction.  People are like, "I don't fucking care about football".  I keep saying, "Forget that it's football.  It is surfing in El Salvador, it is --"

American HODL: Football's an important community organisation.

Peter McCormack: But if you don't football, it's a distraction for people.  There are people listening to this podcast who are fed up of me talking about it, because they hear football, they miss the Bitcoin point.  The game theory is, I get to live out my fantasy and expand Bitcoin and make a better life for the people of Bedford.  All our incentives align, and it's actually working.  We went from one team last year of a squad of 20 men, and we're starting this season with that one team squad of 20 men, we've now got a first team squad of 20 women, we've got two reserve squads of 20 women and we've got 20 teams of girls aged 7 to 18 all playing under that brand; 320 players.  We've also got a partnership with boys aged 7 to 18, they've got another 30 teams.  By the start of the following season, we will have the largest footballing group in Bedford done in two years. 

We're now working on training, we're working on a new ground and I had a netball team write to me two days ago, I've had a rugby team write to me, two other football teams.  This thing is expanding.  Everyone's eyes are on this and they want to know what it's about, they want to know what this Bitcoin thing is about, they want to know how they can use Bitcoin for their team or their sports club.  We're taking money and supporting other projects.  It's taken a lot of people a long time to click what it's about, but it is clicking.  And I'm glad you recognise it, I'm glad other people do.

American HODL: No, and you picked something that's smart because it gives you meaning and purpose, it gives back to your community, and it can grow along with the Bitcoin price because becoming a Premier League team is extremely expensive.  So, as Bitcoin price grows, you are going to continue growing the football club, which is important.  It's a beautiful positive feedback loop where a lot of bitcoiners haven't even thought to themselves what they're going to do with their wealth.  Their vision of being wealthy is just sitting on a beach drinking a margarita and it's cool, you do that for one day, you're having a great fucking time; you do that for a week, you feel like shit and you're sick; you do it for a year and you're fucking dead.  What you've picked for yourself is meaningful, it contributes back to your community and it sounds crazy to everybody on the outside.  Me, who's on the inside with you in Bitcoin, I think you're actually going to get to the fucking Premier League.

Peter McCormack: Well, and again, that's the funny thing because I said from day one, "We're going to get to the Premier League", and all these people in football, they look at us as a tenth-tier non-league team that had 50 people come and watch us, where we've got one tiny, little stand, a little wooden stand that could burn down at any point.  They looked at it and they go, "What the fuck are you on about, you're never going to do this, look where you are".  We know how much this costs, but none of these people understand Bitcoin and what I'm thinking is, "Well, I know this is going to take 10 to 20 years, but in that 10 to 20 years, I have an audience of people who listen to my podcast, which is going to exponentially grow.  Those people are going to get exponentially richer, and they're going to want to support this project because it's their team". 

So, we have the Bitcoin cheat code, and they don't understand the cheat code.  And it is a cheat code.  It's an audience and financial cheat code that can empower any project.  Nashville Bitcoin Park is using the Bitcoin cheat code, that's all it is.

American HODL: Well, and you know what's funny is like, instead of your competitors being like, "Look at this fucking retard over here with his Bitcoin", what they should really do is think to themselves, "Wait, is there something here that we're missing?"  But they're not going to until it's too late.

Peter McCormack: So, if Liverpool Football Club go, "They're onto something.  We will never catch them because they've got a head start now".

Danny Knowles: All they'd have to do is match your treasury.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, my treasury is 5 Bitcoin right now.  But in 10 years, that 5 Bitcoin might be 10 Bitcoin worth £10 million.

American HODL: That's like, it reminds me of the Billy Beane thing, where he came out and he used sabermetrics to revolutionise baseball for the Oakland A's.  And then the Yankees and the Red Sox realised, they were like, "This guy's got something, he's on to something". 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and we're revolutionising the finance side.

American HODL: That's when you get the ultimate validation.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and everything we've ever sold for Bitcoin, or any money we take in Bitcoin, we've left in our treasury.  It was 2.17 Bitcoin at the start of the season.  By the end, it was over 3 Bitcoin with the things we sold.  Now it's over 5 Bitcoin, and that will keep growing.  I will never spend that Bitcoin, because it gets to the stage where we get to the Championship, and maybe we've got 20, 30, 50, whatever Bitcoin, that Bitcoin could be worth millions, tens of millions.  We're constantly in a better financial position than the people we're up against.  So fingers crossed, I think the plan will work.  I've got a key worker.  You'll see it when you come over, how hard everyone works.  We've got my son, the manager, Emma, when Danny's over, Danny's cooking the burgers, we work so fucking hard.  And we've done one season and it worked.  We're going to make it work this season.  I can't wait for you to see it, man.

American HODL: No, I'm I can tell that it's extremely meaningful to you.  And I think it's something that, you've just picked a really good thing to do with your life.  It's going to be something you can leave behind, and it's impactful for the people of the community and that's what matters.

Peter McCormack: Well, love that, man.  Okay, I think that's all.  We got Matthew Pines here.  We're going to talk about aliens. 

American HODL: Yeah, proper aliens, let's do it!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, all right, man. 

American HODL: I love Matthew Pines.