[30:48] Alex: Can I give you a tip? Thank you for sharing that. It was a really encouraging story.
[30:55] Brecht: Please, I’m all ears.
[30:57] Alex: Try to avoid telling people any specific amounts and times that you purchased Bitcoin because even with what little information you gave right there, I mean, this is an open public ledger.
[31:11] Brecht: Yeah, I understand. Yeah, thank you.
[31:14] Alex: You don’t want the masses knocking on your door when the dollar becomes absolutely– [crosstalk]
[31:18] Brecht: That was dumb. Yeah, I understand. Thank you very much, I appreciate that.
[31:22] Chris: You just got to go lose it on a boat somewhere, man. Sorry.
[31:25] Jacob: Yeah, he’s going to have more tomorrow so that number is going to be obsolete, right?
[31:30] Brecht: I hope so.
[31:32] Chris: Thank you for that, story, though. I mean, I think that helps prove thepoint. I think sometimes people think us being, myself, and I hope everyone else up onthe stage being Bitcoin maxis, we’re toxic, we’re mean, we don’t like people, we hatepeople that have fun. I like to believe we have a lot of fun being Bitcoiners. When I firststarted my Bitcoin journey, I was asking a lot of questions, I was like, “Why does thiscoin do this? Why does this coin do that?” I’m not going to name them here but I wasasking just very genuine questions. I just didn’t know. And a lot of times people will either give me an answer and say, “You got to do your own research,” and they’d recommend an article and a book, and don’t get me wrong, it’s very frustrating because it takes a lot of time and effort and work. They’d point me in the direction of this article or they pointed me to the block size wars or they pointed me to an article on Bitcoin Magazine, whatever it may be. And you finally come around to realizing like all these are like vaporware or they’re just obsolete or they’re not good. Even your point, Brecht, that you’re wasting all this time that you could spend with your loved ones. You were just much better off just buying Bitcoin, putting it into cold storage,sitting on your hands and waiting, enjoying it with your family. I don’t know if you have kids, a wife, a girlfriend, whatever, but, yeah, you’re just much better off using your time and you get more time back by doing that. You feel that your money is safe. It’s not being printed by the Federal Reserve. It’s not being scammed by some VC for an altcoin and I think a lot of Bitcoiners, we try and educate people and, yeah, it comes off as toxic, but I can say people that are very genuine and are asking genuine questions,most Bitcoiners that I’ve met will be very genuine about it.The thing that causes us to get toxic is when people show their bags or listing all the coins that they basically are holding and they’re like, oh, no, yeah, of course, I likeBitcoin. But like they mention a million other coins that they’re obviously holding and I think that’s where it goes from trying to be genuine in helping people to being toxic because it’s like, you see the game they’re playing.
[33:31] Brecht: That’s exactly right. In our meet-up here in our city, if you come and you’re like, “Hey, guys, can somebody tell me what an NFT is?” I’m happy to tell youwhat NFT is, I’m not going to call you dumb ass, whatever. But if you come in there, like,”Guys, I just got to tell you this thing, don’t get mad at me but like this is totally gonna be an amazing project. It’s just new and blah blah blah,” now I’m gonna actually, I’m gonna be kind of maybe a little bit mean with you because you’re literally trying to scam the group right now.
[34:05] Alex: I wonder, though, it might be just worth laying out. There’s a moral problem there because what you’re doing is you’re promoting security in which, for all we know,you might hold a great stake. The difference between Bitcoin and all of these other cryptocurrencies in my mind is that Bitcoin is a property currency and asset, the rest of these are securities. They don’t pass the Howey test. So, when you show them, I can talk about Bitcoin all day, but the amount of Bitcoin I hold doesn’t have any influence on how the network works and I can’t disenfranchise anyone else from using it and it doesn’t pump my bags to get a new user into Bitcoin.That’s not really the case with other cryptocurrencies, especially the proof of stake and other securities out there. That’s probably why the alarms go off when people start to mention specific cryptos.
[35:12] Brecht: You know this thought that I was having, just the other day, it wasn’t that long ago that my parents and their parents were just saying, “Save your money. Just always save some for yourself, save your money.” And now, everybody’s just saying cash is trash and this is such a new thought. This is just a social experiment that’s been happening in the last 50 to 60 years with this fiat standard in inflation. It’s just the most wild thing that you have to continually be a stockbroker, continually put your money at risk in things that you truly don’t understand, just whatever sounds good. And it’s just like an awful way to live with society. And when we go back to the fundamentals, likeChris was saying of loving yourself, loving your family, just storing some money away for yourself, and focusing on your profession, that’s going to build just so much of a bettersociety.And, with Bitcoin, this is not only one of the best things that I can understand becauseit’s like all of these crypto projects and anything like a lot of the fiat stuff, it’s reallycomplex and complicated because it’s supposed to be, it’s built that way for a reason.You’re not stupid. You could totally understand finance. Anybody can. It’s very simple.But when you can understand Bitcoin as well, if you put in the time, but a lot of those other projects, the reason that they’re so confusing is because they’re meant to be. So,it was just interesting to think that, like, since the 401K programs and like SocialSecurity and all this stuff that’s propping up the stock market that has come out and how everybody is preaching cash is trash., I just couldn’t imagine what it’s like. I don’t know.That’s just where my mind’s been lately.
[36:54] Alex: I guess I have maybe an anecdotal kind of segue here. I think time spent inBitcoin tends to lower people’s time preferences. This is something that I think theBitcoin standard was probably the first book to really point out. So you start to see a lifestyle change, you spend less money on bullshit, you become less of a consumer,and the more Bitcoin you control. I don’t know if it’s a rule. It’s definitely not a law. It’s just something I’ve seen just kind of a psychological shift in people. Whereas if you look over the fence in crypto land, it’s just like a sea of green enticing speculative shitcoincasino, a lot of trading going on, a lot of high time preference decision-making. a lot of consumerists, kind of gambling like behavior, but I’d be interested if anyone has felt that kind of change the longer they’ve held Bitcoin.
[37:58] Chris: Yeah, Hannah, I think we just brought you up. I don’t know if you had something to say or something you want to add. All right, I guess she’s away from her phone right now. Yeah, Brecht, if you want to go again, go ahead.
[38:07] Brecht: Okay. Well, maybe that’s part two of what I would have to say is that when you accept that it’s just Bitcoin. So, so simple and really profound when you go ahead and accept that, it liberates you from all the bullshit so you’re no longer interested in any of these other projects. That’s what I found so exciting, I wasted so much of my time, and I’m also finding it’s helping me to focus on things that I wanted before. Now,I’m kind of weighing that against, right now, I view this as a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity and I equate it to – do I want the Bitcoin, or do I want this item that requires maintenance and time itself? So, I’m buying less, I’m putting more into Bitcoin and, from that standpoint, for your time and attention, it’s so liberating when you just accept that this is where you’re going to put your money and your focus and you don’t have to worry about all this shitcoins, what’s going on in the market? And, man, to just recoup all the time that I wasted on bullshit. I would love to have half of it back and put half of my losses back into Bitcoin. It means so much to me but, oh, well.
[39:31] Alex: I think I feel similarly, Brecht. I would characterize it as that singleness of purpose has a really clarifying effect akin to people practicing meditation, working out,anything where you have just one kind of monomaniacal quest in mind, you learn a lot. And I think it doesn’t add. The only thing I take issue with I guess with what you said is Bitcoin doesn’t really have a maintenance cost, but I would encourage people to continue to learn and grow and not kind of set it and forget it. Just keep upgrading your security, keep up with the times, try new things, try new hardware, try new software. It’s fun.
[40:18] Chris: Does anyone think that this is the end of this current bull market, though?
[40:23] Q: What? Do we think it’s not a bear market?
[40:27] Chris: I mean, no, do you think it’s a bear market until the halving? Like, in cycles.
[40:35] Crown #Bitcoin: I think it’s the end of the Altseason. I think Bitcoin can decouple and do its own thing and forge its own path. Just like it kind of does even in bear markets. In the bear market in the last three years, you saw Bitcoin go anywhere from$3,000 to $14,000, it’s a wide range, but I didn’t get back to an all-time high, but I do think we can see an all-time high again before the next Altseason but I definitely think this Altseason’s over, hopefully. Especially if this red last, at least, long enough for people to capitulate a little more, at least two more weeks, maybe more. The longer that this red last, I mean, right now, we’re finally seeing some 2018-like red days. Yesterday and today, I looked at Coin Market Cap. there have been lots of like, is it a bear market yet in the last year? And I was always, like, no. Yes, kind of, but not really. Right now, we’re looking it went down 50% for the week, Polkadot 40% for the week, Cardano, 40% for the week, a lot of 50% for the week. These are like a real bear market like 2018 bear market numbers, shitcoiners are getting absolutely slaughtered. If this is going to be like 2018, you’re going to lose half your money every day if you’re still in those things and it’s ugly for a reason. But if I can go on for at least another two weeks, they will definitely get tired of trying to buy the dip and getting wrecked over and over again. When that happens, that’s finally the end of the Ponzi cycle, we can move on to building and thinking about Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin can decouple, and break all-time high without any real exuberance over Ponzi’s. And then eventually, there’ll be some new hype that sparks because of something. Who knows what? That creates another Altseason, but I think, for now, it’s over.
[42:20] Chris: Can I ask you a question, Crown, and I’m not being funny. What the hell is Altseason? How do you define that? What does it mean?
[42:30] Crown #Bitcoin: Altseason is a term– sorry, that has been used for the last, I don’t know, probably six, seven years where all the non-Bitcoin coins start to actually group. Normally, like in 2018, 2019, if you bought whatever trendy thing other than Bitcoin thing,you’re pretty much just going to lose money from the first time you buy with few exceptions, always like some random thing that can pop, of course. But if you’re just out there trying to play the markets in 2018, in all coins, late 2018 especially, it’s going to be a totally different lesson. You’re going to learn your lesson very quickly ’cause you’re going to buy it, you’re going to lose money and you’re like, “That was dumb. Why do I listen to these Twitter people telling me that this was a good thing to buy.” Whereas, in an Altseason, you can buy any dumb thing and still probably make moneyand you can call it a bull market generally, but it’s a little different since it’s mostly defined by just all coins is just a bunch of new dumb money coming in buying all theshitcoins, basically, and then prices are going up. But that part is over.
[43:40] Alex: I would also add that it kind of suppresses Bitcoins price towards the tail end of its all-time high there just because a lot of people get convinced to go in on all as well who had money in Bitcoin.
[43:56] Crown #Bitcoin: Well, yeah, and Bitcoin has always held its own apart from this market like right now, where we see other assets losing the other big quote of classeslosing 50% of the value this week. Bitcoin only lost 21%, which is a lot less than 50. If you think about it mathematically, it’s like 50% is like another doubling from 20 or another half of your money, more than a half of your money. So, it’s a huge difference but Bitcoin tends to get dragged down when market sentiment is bad in general. Also because so much of the trading is algorithmic. So, the algorithm see everything going down and it doesn’t make them want to buy more Bitcoin. But, eventually, it separates. It stops caring as much if all the shitcoins are having a bad day.
[44:46] Alex: I think if we want the average consumer not to get really, really hurt by altcoins in general, I think we have to hope that Ethereum fails to actually switch to proof of stake because otherwise, it’s going to capture that whole bullshit ESG narrative and get the institutional investors to really pump the average person into it, where you’ll start getting retirement funds and all sorts of things involved.
[45:20] Chris: Yeah, John, I just brought you up. Do you have a question or comment or anything?
[45:27] John Mark Cobern: All right. Yes, I was just going to mention that, and I don’t necessarily comment on the young man that was saying that he really regretted wasting a lot of time on these awful things. I’m a little older than most of the people here.I’m 50 and I was investing in the dot-com era and lost a lot of money on some of these dot-com stocks that no longer exist. That event and that lesson are what caused me when I first started studying all this crypto stuff to focus on Bitcoin and see the difference between Bitcoin and all these other altcoins.So, investing in something like some of these shitcoins can be a good learning experience, and just, hopefully, people learn it with the least amount of pain as much as possible. I had a lot of pain in the dot-com era, I lost a lot of money. I just wanted to make sure of that and turn it into a positive. It’s a good lesson.
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