Tim, you've been saying $250,000 Bitcoin for a while. I didn't realize that they would set Bitcoin back for five years.
Every time there's been sort of an advance in currency or an advance in store of value, the world gets richer because we move money faster. AI, as it merges with Bitcoin, is going to be also very important. We have five... I have five digital twins that I started.
Tim, you've been around Bitcoiners now for a while. How likely do you think it is that you might have already met Satoshi and not realized it yourself?
Well, look, I have met all the people that they have suspected was Satoshi, and I don't believe I've met Satoshi yet.
What makes you think that?
Because I think, well, first of all, that press person is always playing with innuendo and, you know, ended up throwing Elizabeth Holmes in jail. I mean, he's got a nasty habit of trying to pull things out when there's nothing there. And so I know that there's more suspicion that we actually can find Satoshi. I have a theory and I will never share my theory.
Government regulators need to go beyond the Clarity Act and beyond the Genius Act to a third act. And the third act should be about allowing people to operate their entire business in Bitcoin. Keep it on the blockchain. Have the taxes go out automatically. Have the payments go out automatically and have it all be on the blockchain so that those businesses don't need to have the auditor, the accountant, the bookkeeper, the transfer agent, the tax lawyer, the tax collector. None of those people need to be there because we are moving to an anthropological leap forward and governments are holding us back, and it's time we let that thing go. We let it happen. Go ahead, put tax inside the blockchain and allow people to operate their businesses in Bitcoin. That's what they want to do.
I mean, a lot of people here would say that there's been a lot of regulatory developments in the US, especially the Genius Act last year, and hopefully the Clarity Act for a lot of people this year as well. I mean, do you not think the US has made a lot of progress with regulations?
No, I think they've made good progress. The first one was for DeFi, Bitcoin, that kind of thing. The second one is for, and let's hope they allow this to happen, for stablecoin and being able to create a coupon or lend or buy stablecoin. The third one really, and that's sort of stablecoin is the bridge to Bitcoin. They should be ready for Bitcoin, one that allows people to operate in Bitcoin now.
Tim, you've been saying $250,000 Bitcoin for a while.
I know. I didn't realize we'd have a really bad government under, you know, whoever, the Gensler or whatever. I didn't realize that they would set Bitcoin back four or five years, and they did. But now it looks like we're going to be hitting my number pretty soon.
You said 18 months fairly recently.
I mean, yeah. Because that's after the halving. We still call it halving. It was a halving. I don't know a lot about economics, but I do know that if this is supply and demand and the supply gets cut, the demand goes up and the price goes up. So, but what I'm actually thinking is that there will be a moment where retailers start saying, hey, I want to take Bitcoin. And then there will be a moment, but a little later than that, when retailers say, I only take Bitcoin. And then what happens? People run to the bank and get their dollars out. They buy Bitcoin. And at that point you're not going to want to compare Bitcoin to dollars because dollars will be worthless. So it'll have to have some other measurement.
You said before the last government screwed up that prediction of 250,000. What happens in a hypothetical world if the next administration is anti-crypto? We've got, you know, just over two years left of Trump.
Well, for one thing is they'll lose because the crypto lobby is very strong now. And so any politician who wants to go against it is up against it. But really, the cat's out of the bag. We've got a new economy. It's moving forward. You can see it here, you know. I mean, government can get in the way of progress. But we got progress here. It's going to be fantastic. I mean the world will be wealthier because of Bitcoin. The world will lose a lot of the friction that is created by the banks and the central banks and the governments that have slowed down the progress of commerce. And every time there's been sort of an advance in currency or an advance in store of value, the world gets richer because we move money faster. It's a little like, you know, the way water works. If you conserve water, nobody gets to use it. But if you use water, it goes down and back up and down and back up. You get to use it many, many times. Moving to Bitcoin is the same thing. The frequency at which transactions can happen can really accelerate. So, you know, we just talked to somebody who's got a decentralized system and they can go, I think it's 15 times faster than the Visa network by using the Lightning Network. And so not only are we going to allow money to move much faster, so we all benefit from that. But we also will have the infrastructure to replace all of these credit networks and all of the banks and all of the central banks. And once that's all in place, and the retailer recognizes that it's a better deal to take a Bitcoin than it is to take $73,000, that's going to change the whole dynamic.
And what does that world look like? Because obviously now we're even seeing with the Clarity Act, there's debate with the traditional banking system over stablecoin yields. They're kicking up a bit of a fuss.
Of course, the traditional banking system has a huge lobby, and they're going to fight every way they can to keep it the same. You know, you hear bankers saying, oh, I don't understand Bitcoin or whatever. They understand it perfectly. They just realize that it's a huge threat to their business until they start accepting it and make it a part of their business. So if you controlled all the dollars, you would not want a new currency to come along that was better than your dollars. And now there is. Now there's a new currency. It's better than your dollar.
