Episode 4: Special guest Cory Klippsten of Swan Bitcoin

Published Jan 6, 2022, 10:00 AM

Cory Klippsten is the founder of Swan Bitcoin & Bitcoiner Ventures, Advisor at $RIOT, 50x investor/advisor to VC-backed tech companies, and an alum of top companies you know like Google, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, & Microsoft.

As the CEO of Swan, Cory leads an elite team of Bitcoin experts on a mission to create ten million new Bitcoiners…people who not only own Bitcoin, but understand it. 

Swan accomplishes this through world class education and service for their retail clients, and additional personalized, concierge-level service for their private clients making Swan the go-to place for Bitcoiners to build, grow, and enjoy greater wealth with Bitcoin.


Follow Swan:

twitter.com/coryklippsten

youtube.com/swansignal

swanbitcoin.com


Plus this weeks topics: France Goes Prude? Porn and Cultural Backlash; Elizabeth Holmes & Malcolm Gladwell's "Default To Truth": What flaws in human nature allow frauds to happen; Is Ben Shapiro "Retconning" COVID???

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Calgary Audio, Ladies and Gentlemen, January four, two thousand twenty two. How is it? Two thousand twenty two? I can't believe it. Be honest, you can't believe it either. It really snuck up on us. But regardless of time flashing before our eyes, we still have our weekly dose of sanity, the prevailing narrative. UM. Happy new Year to everybody, Thank you for joining us once again. Coming up soon, I will be having a discussion with the gentleman named Corey Clipston, a friend and client of mine. He is the founder and CEO of Swan Bitcoin, which at first glance appears to be a cryptocurrency your bitcoin exchange, but is more aptly described as a bitcoin accumulation platform. And so what I'm gonna be talking about with Corey is aside from kind of some of the the foundational you know, foundations and basics of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Uh is a beef that erupted online just before the holiday between Jack Dorse he recently departed CEO of Twitter, and a number of members H and vcs involved in the web three world, which is n f T s and dows and define a lot of other kind of classes of crypt of crypto, right. And so a lot of people who are kind of mildly are unfamiliar with bitcoin and cryptocurrency kind of think of these as just you know, assets, asset classes, currencies from a purely financial standpoint. And I think if you really dig, you know, you dig a little deeper in the way that a lot of people are involved in this world we're thinking about it, it's really they're they're more so you know, while they have aspects of just pure financial assets, they really can be systems and institutions, right. And so the Jack Web three beef was about, Okay, how are we going to build out these institutions based on what principles and and what governing philosophies. And if you look at the nature of you know, of how Jack was expressing his grievances and his hostilities. I mean essentially he posted, for instance, a meme with a hose or are a faucet with web three coming at it and all the water is going into a big oversized mouth labeled Silicon Valley VCS. And then some kind of you know, some some thirsty taking a couple of dribbles from the well, uh character there has labeled retail, and the core of Jack's beef seemed to be that, you know, with bitcoin, it's purely based on the blockchain. It really it exists independently of any financiers or anyone you know kind of initially issuing tokens, and it's it's it really is the blockchain and its purest form. While a lot of these Web three projects their financed just like you know, traditional startups, and if that, if traditional venture capitalists are funding these projects, they're going to capture a lot of the value. They're going to be the single points of failure there, you know, whether they wish to or not, or whether they claim to or not, are the ones we're gonna be making rules for these new systems and institutions that are built on the blockchain. And so Jack was taking issue with a lot of that and being highly critical, and it led to really arresting conversation and something in kind of a battle, um let's call it a conversational blood letting where a lot of the proponents of the Web three world in the n f T world and a lot of proponents of the Bitcoin world kind of, you know, they let it all hang out and they they had the uh kind of a argument that needs to be had that's not going to end anytime soon. So Corey and I will be talking about a lot of the basics of bitcoin, will be talking about the nature of this beef. Corey is clearly uh, you know the way he describes it as a bitcoiner, and will be giving you a bitcoin friendly perspective. But that will not be the only perspective that I show you. That that you know that I try to bring you guys on this podcast will definitely have people a little more supportive of the web three world also on it later dates. Okay, so moving on, what else is in the news that's interesting this week? Popping off A two thousand twenty two. So let's talk about porn. Always a always an interesting topic. But really, at first glance, this is about porn, but really it's about a cultural divergence and cultural backlash. Um, So, what happened in the poor in world recently? So the French government just announced that will move to block five of the world's biggest porn sites to this week unless they introduce more protective measures to ensure all users are aged eighteen are over and that includes you know, ex Hamster porn hub x videos, all the big fur you porn sites on the Internet, and essentially the French UM, who are historically known as very permissive and more libertine and you know, and more comfortable with raunching as a nudity and porn and whatnot. Um, they're saying, no, that that we may have gone too far and that these sites that you know, essentially have freely accessible, endless porn um they've got to go and put some guardrails on there that they can't continue to operate and just pretend to be checking you know, to checking be checking age, to be instituting age gates, just to check the box that that's not not significant enough. Okay. So you know, at first glance, this doesn't seem like a particularly newsworthy story, but then you think about it, and we're trying to make kind of cultural comparisons about where respective you know, respective societies are at right. So, as I said, you know, historically everyone knows US thought of as very puritanical, very prudish. That's what it was known as for most of its history, UM up through you know, it took the sexual Revolution in the sixties to really break America out of that really puritanical mindset. And even then, for the next twenty thirty years, you know, you still had a battle over obscenity laws and nudity. And you know, you could go out to Europe and France and channel their basic TV channels, you'd see nudity on and cuss words. And that's not the type of stuff that you at all saw, um in American mainstream culture, you know, through the seventies, eighties and nineties. Um, and it was kind of an article of faith that yes, America was more stuffy, more disciplined, less permissible, and you know Continental Europe, particularly France, far more libertine permissible. Okay, so we we've always just assumed that is the case. Then kind of slowly but surely, but actually not so slowly, but surely, it feels like American Moore's and standards have completely and utterly changed, right um. Now, I mean, if you think about it, you know, there's essentially, you know, no guardrails. Essentially you can anyone can access any degree of porn on the Internet at any time. It's it's completely endless, and there's essentially no restrictions or barriers to do it other than child pornography, which you know is simply based on viewership or or uh, possessing it isn't it itself a crime? But if you've ever gone to these porn sites, there's no no gates, there's no restrictions, they don't do any verification, and everyone seems to have just gone ahead and accepted this as as the new way of doing business. That no one really bats an eyelash of this, anyone in the US these days, who even makes any fuss about, Hey, you know, maybe we took this porn thing a little too far, or hey, maybe it's not so great that we've gone from it being incredibly difficult to access um to essentially you know, accessible to everyone at all times. And it seems that they're seems a little bit of backlash to that from the French in particular, that maybe you know, the wee can accept a basic understanding that we had for so long, was that Listen, you know, porns like chocolate ice cream. A little bit of it is fine, but you start to you get to your fourth or fifth ball, maybe not such a great idea, and and everyone we've kind of just jumped that that notion. But it seems to be popping up a little more often these days. It's also recently, right before the New year, Um, a bit of you know, something that was making the news was Billie Eilish going on Howard Stern and discussing you know, and the Billy Eilish is young, early early twenties. She's not sitting there with you know, worldly adult wisdom, being able to look back on her childhood. She was very recently a child, right. And here's an opinion piece from Newsweek about Billie Eilish's right about pornography is harms and Billy's just twenty. She just mentioned I used to watch a lot of porn. I think it really destroyed my brain. I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn. And this seems to be one of the the pieces. You know, it's on the one hand, we've both jump the conventional wisdom that hey, maybe porn is not the best thing in particular for children with developing minds, but we don't really pay any attention to that any longer. I mean, there's endless, endless reams of studies acknowledging that, you know, excessive pornography use. UM can kind of screw with your your pleasure receptors, dopamine levels, um, desensitized brains to you know, normal romantic and sexual activity lead to sexual violence. And like you know, it used to be during America's prudition and puritanical you know phase this, nobody really questioned these these very basic obvious truths. But we we said, okay, we we can't be that stuffy. We have to find a place that a level of access to pornography, UM and obscene materials that you know isn't too stuffy. Hey, people can have their fund, they can indulge their you know, more lascivious side, but let's not let it get out of hand. And then it seems like you've let it get out of hand and nobody seems to pay any attention to it. You know, you've even got the French saying, wait a second, we may need to pump the brakes. But even try making that case in modern America these days, you will get push back from the sex positivity movement. You will be told you're slut shaming, you know, you'll be told that pornographic actresses and prostitutes are in fact just another form of blue collar work. And how are you shaming these people? And okay, you know, maybe they may have been vilified too much at one point. There is a new way that we need to think and talk about these activities. But you know, there's not much space to make statements or or object to the way that we currently look or our access pornography in the US. But even France is going ahead and saying, wait a second, we need to we need to pump the brakes on this. We need to put some guardrails in place so that I think is is extremely interesting and I think, you know, I don't want to go too far down the rabbits hole on strictly the porn issue, although I do want to mention one piece of incredible reference material on this topic. Um, there's a gentleman named John Ronson and he's a journalist, and he did a podcast called the Butterfly Effect. Butterfly effect is notionally, you know, a butterfly flaps his wings in Brazil and that somehow, through any series of events and dominoes that fall from there, results in some sort of tornado in Texas. Right, So what are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, six, And in the case of the butterfly effect eighth, because it's eight episodes impacts of porn becoming freely accessible on the Internet. So he starts off with the the founding of porn Hub and okay, now this is the napster of porn. Just like you can now download music freely on the internet, now you can download pornography and access pornography freely on the internet. And what are the societal impacts and implications of that? So I think if you you want to get a little more you know, updated on this topic, I think that is a really good piece of reference material to to turn to. Okay, what's really going on here beyond you know, the French saying all right, we need to make it a little more difficult for children and minors to access porn um Where else are we seeing other cultures, other nations take a look at what's going on in the US and saying, I don't know, I don't know if we're on board with this cultural revolution that's been going on in the United States really rearing up over the last seven eight years, but more so through most of the twenty one century so far. You know, a couple of places that you should not be surprising, may reject America's values and Moore's right. UM. Vladimir Putin has made no bones about him being more of a traditionalist. UM. He gave a pretty extensive anti woke, pro traditional value speech about a month ago, but then kind of re up that right before Christmas. Actually, uh does an annual you know, marathon multi hour long year and press conference Q and A went in on the kind of new thinking around gender fluidity. Obviously he's rejecting it, mentioning that you know, he wants to protect Russia from the West gender obscuritanism. UM. And mentioning that a woman is a woman and a man as a man. Okay, not that surprising from Vladimir Putin. We can and will debate the merits of those positions at other times. Who else is talking about these topics? The Chinese UM China. China has started to legislate against male represent feminine representations of males in pop culture in media, UM, banning what they call sissy men. And they they're not making they're not trying to hide the ball here. They're outright the legislators are outright coming and saying that Chinese culture has a masculinity crisis and that a feminine men in popular culture are corrupting a generation. Um. They have banned a series of male makeup artists. You know, some now we have the phenomenon on the Internet of of males who were a lot of makeup and give makeup tutorials. The Chinese are no longer having that. They have banned that. So communist nation, totalitarian authoritarian government. UM. Can't say we're too surprised that that they might take such a step. Right, you look at China, you look at Russia. Okay, not not a shocker that they're rejecting American values. But if you start to look around, it's not just the Chinese and the Russians, and it's not just Eastern authoritarian cultures necessarily that seemed to be rejecting this cute, adorable little cultural revolution that the United States has been going under recently. Go google France woke. You will see a slew a marathon of results about how the French, French politicians, French ministers are now coming out and vocally saying that they believe that they're trying to protect French culture from an infiltration of the woke trends going on in the US. You see well American ideas tear France apart. France resists US challenge to its values, French education minister's anti woke mission and this this is a thing like the French in particular, who have always been kind of the standard bears of continental and European you know, values and culture, and they seem to be and this is what this is an ally. This is a Western society, always one that has been known to be very as I said, libertine and promiscuous and and permissive. And for instance, John Michel Blancuaire, who is Emmanuel Macrone's one of his cultural ministers, outright said we're waging a frontline war on the woke. Our country has been become a target of the woke movement. And if there's a vaccine against the woke virus, it would be French. And the leaders of the movement know that. These are French legislators and cultural ministers, members of the government. And this is not you know, there's some inkling that right wing governments are going to win upcoming elections in France, but that hasn't happened yet. This is supposed to be a relatively centrist, moderate French government and you know, a moderate French government's historically far to the left and more liberal than its moderate counterpart in America, and they're saying, no, no, this woke stuff is way too liberal. We need to maintain traditional notions of male and female um. And they they're rejecting this. And so it's not just these the types of cultures that we've always seen as contra are in counterweights to American culture. Um. Bridget Marcon Emmanuel Marcon, the the Prime Minister of France wife at right, said she doesn't want the mangling of the French language with these new pronouns. She mentioned there are two pronouns. He and she are languages beautiful and two pronouns are appropriate. They're not really hiding the ball here, their outright saying what's going on in the US right now is bullshit. And it also brings up some interesting, you know, perspectives on how we view the domestic battle over these issues, because a lot of those domestic actors advocating for what they claim to be tolerance, acceptance, new modalities, unorthodox social mores, whether it be around gender or anything else, seemed to always you know, make appeals to the notion that Europe has always reflected these values as well, and so okay, if the European cultures are surviving pretty well with the with this view on on um acceptance, tolerance, and permissiveness, then why is the U S so stuck up? But I don't know if they want it to look too far under the I I don't know if they now want to look at what's going on in Europe and see that these countries that they always used as the standard bearers, the comp that they wanted to to mimic more uh, now seems to be rejecting what they're serving. It's not just European countries South Korea. There was recently an article in the New York Times a new political cry in South Korea, out with the man haters. There appears to be what is in some regards termed as an anti feminist movement. But it's not really fringe. This is something that mainstream politicians are paying attention to, that a lot of men and women are coming out against, you know, the new paradigm on gender relations, and that you know, the question of whether some of these the new legislation and thinking about quote unquote gender parody is actually reverse discrimination. And that some men, young men of this current generation feel discriminated against simply as a you know, and in that regard of victim for the sins committed by past general rations that discriminated against women, and that we have to answer this question and wrestle with it of are we now? Are we now engaging in current discrimination against people who are at no fault of their own that they were not at fault for wrongs and injustices that were committed in past generations. I'm not necessarily in this conversation arguing about the subject matter, although I can imagine which side, you know, you can imagine which side I'm a little more sympathetic to. We are the north Star, America's the north star culturally. A lot of our allies and other countries in our cultural orbit are looking at what's going on here and saying, nope, we're rejecting it. It's too far, it's not something that we want a part of um. And so that seems to be filtered through speech codes, through the gender conversation in France, through porn um. And then I'm also, you know, as the as are changing relationship to some of our let's call it diet enemies are soft enemies like Russia and China, although I think China is a hard enemy, but also another conversation to be had separately. UM, I think it's gonna be interesting to see if other countries take a more vocal stance, you know, much like France has in rejecting some of or you know, at least commenting on what they see going on culturally in the US. Another big court case this week Elizabeth Holmes and Thoroness. For anyone unfamiliar with this situation, Elizabeth Holmes, for a moment or two, is considered be richest or that the the youngest female billionaire of all time, probably I guess the richest self made female UM at four point five billion dollars, as her her share of her private company, Thoroness was valued at one point um. Turns out the entire company was a sham. Essentially, it was at least purported to have created a revolutionary blood testing system that would essentially allow detection of any number of UH sicknesses, viruses, infirmaries from just a droplet or two of blood. And it seemed a little too good to be true, And it turned out to to be too good to be true. And you know, some of the things that are notable is not just the size of the the collapse of this company and how big it was um, but also you know, the the nature of who was involved. I mean, you've got to see her her board of directors, in her list of list of investors, board of directors, Henry Kissinger, Jim Mattis another former Secretary of State, George Schultz, former Secretary of Defense, William Perry, another CEO of former CEO of Wells Fargo. High profile investors included Rupert Murdoch, Tim drape Draper, one of the most prominent UH Silicon Beach venture capitalists, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, at one point, for a moment or two, the richest man on earth, number of members of the Walgreens family. And it begs the question, how did such a sham, in such a fraud go on for so long under supposedly the watchful eye of so many accomplished and successful people, right. I mean, you could see a number of people being defrauded for six months a year till a company gets to you know, a hundred million dollars, a billion dollars even. But the longer something false you know, continues, the more opportunities and the more points at which it can be discovered. But it wasn't discovered. It took something like seven or eight years for this fraud to be discovered, essentially in two thousand and fifteen, first with the FDA and then Wall Street Journal expose a that you know, all the results coming back from saranos Is testing system, which was called Edison, were wrong. And then when you look a little deeper under the hood, they essentially weren't even using that system for most of the results anymore. They were using their competitors testing equipment and then just generating results from methods that were you know, we're already accessible to people. It turns out, yeah, the company was vapor uh and there really wasn't anything there, And slowly but surely, over the next couple of years, company fell apart. She was indicted and is now going to jail. So we think about this and and what allows this type of fraud something on this scale, with these types of people involved. What, you know, what are the faults and of human nature that allow this type of thing to happen. We can obviously appeal to greed um, poor diligence. A lot of these people they have probably heard about a hot company. They were just happy to be involved. They didn't look at the they didn't check any of the reports, they didn't check the technology. I think it's very notable that none of her investors were known for their track record in uh IN, in the biosciences or testing or medical sciences whatsoever. They were all kind of outsiders. And when you look back on it, okay, it makes a little bit more sense. But in the moment when you see a company getting all these all this applause, You've got the CEO, founders speaking on every freaking panel to every may you know, heads of state, she's on on stage with Bill Clinton, she's giving ted talks. And in the moment it you think, there's no way that something this significant, that has this that has this much spotlight on it could turn out to be vapor. But it turns out that isn't the case. That something can be a complete fraud at this scale. Like I said, what are the flaws in the you know, in human nature and our makeup and and how you know, human beings operate that allows something like this to happen? So um I'm not a huge Malcolm Gladwell fanboy or anything, but he did write one really interesting book called Talking to Strangers, definitely the favorite book of his that I've read a couple of his books, and this is a favorite of mine. Um. And you know, the basic thesis of this book is the inability of otherwise intelligent and dedicated people to understand when they are being deceived. How often do we come in contact with another person try to interpret their motives, whether they're saying something true or false? And you know, we're kind of flying blind on whether or not our instincts and our process for determining truth or falsity, whether those those instincts are sharp. How do we know if someone is lying? Think about how many times you know people have gotten a lie over your eyes, or think about how many high profile incidents have turned out to be frauds or lies, right, and so, okay, how does that happen? And why does that happen? And so what glad Well attributes it is to what he calls the default to truth, That instinctually we default to the belief that if someone tells us something, that they're telling the truth, right, And so that kind of you know that can come up on a day to day basis. They're small little lies. Um, I don't know who farted in the elevator. Someone may or may not tell the truth, and you have reason to believe or disbelieve that person. But in certain regards you may default to believing them. Right. But as the stakes get higher, people don't become more skeptical, they become more trusting and more believing. Right, Because as the stakes get higher, the impact and the friction created by someone lying becomes more significant. Okay, Whenever, when things were going along fine with Elizabeth Holmes, all her investors, all her advisors, her board of directors, they were on a rocket ship. There wasn't really you know, it wasn't painful for people. Everything was going smoothly. If someone were to look at her, her operation, and look at her claims and the under lying science, and if they were too accused it of being false, if that turns out to be false, and that is now reality, Look how painful it is. People look stupid. There's hostility, you're you know you're gonna get pushed back from Elizabeth. Um, the situation has become adversarial. There's blame going around and look how messy it gets if it turns out that a person is lying. This seems to replicate itself quite often, right if you look at the Bernie Madoff situation, that's one of the situations that Gladwell looks at in his book, Um and a guy named Harry Markopolis. It was another hedge funder who was in the I think the late ninety nineties, was looking at Bernie Madoff's returns and he said, oh, well, god, this guy seems to be killing it with his hedge fund. I'm going to study his methods and tactics so we can replicate that those at my hedge fund. And he kept on looking into it, and the more he looked into it, he said, wait a second, there's just there's no way this is an obvious Ponzi scheme. Says it took him about a couple of months to figure it out. And once he figured it out, he took He took the case. He was trying to low the whistle on made Off for a decade. He took a thick file to the SEC showed him everything incontrovertible evidence that Bernie made Off was running a Ponzi scheme. This isn't something that I believe it was nine and the SEC ignored him. Um, every you know, just about every other publication that he brought this evidence to also ignored him. And it took you know, another decade for him to be vindicated and for everyone to now you know, acknowledge the very basic truth that he had been showing everybody. And so, okay, how does this happen? Why does so many people default to truth, particularly with with with institutions, and it you know, it kind of begs the question of how does society look at those who are disagreeable? Um? And the way that Gladwell points it is that you know, people need to trust in each other and trust and systems for things to work. That if everyone was as disagreeable and paranoid as Harry Markopolis the way he puts it, as, the air would be so thick with suspicion in paranoia that there would be no Wall Street. And that's an interesting point is its society can and operate with just with paranoi and suspicion without trust in its institutions. But that needs to be balanced out with not you know, with not putting blind faith in institutions because look what, Look what happens. I mean, Markopolis outright says that he says people have too much faith in large organizations, and that's why he was able to crack the Bernie Madeoff situation a decade before everybody else did. But look what happens. Bernie Madeoff gets exposed. You've got all the pain suffering, You've got him being thrown in jail, his family disgraced and ruined, hundreds of not thousands of people with their life savings gone overnight, and all the controversy and pain that comes along with it. Right, So once again, people default to truth because the fallout, the friction that comes with calling someone out on a lie, or even just the reality where a lie is exposed a lot of times just becomes extremely painful. And I think that's that's a phenomenon that you see, and that you saw with Elizabeth Holmes. People people didn't want to have to confront the realities of her being a fraud. And that's what part of what you know allowed her to continue with this for a long time. And it repeats itself over and over again. A couple of really interesting experiments that Glad Will mentions in his book that kind of give a little more light to why you know people have these flaws, the illusion of asymmetric insight, that the way we kind of think about ourselves and our motives and processes is not the reflective and how we think of others. So here was a task that that a psychologist gave some people. It's a word completion task. You give subjects, let's call it two out of seven or two out of five or three out of six letters in a word, and the person would have to fill in the remainder was like a crossword puzzle, and we have to fill in the remaining letters to to construct a word, right, and what word would they think of? It wasn't supposed to be as hard as a crossword puzzles, since the subjects were supposed to be able to fill in the words relatively easily. And then after they filled in the words, the psychologist asked them, did these words, the words that you chose, say anything about you? Did they did they reflect you know who you are? Or anything subconscious or or why? And out of a hundred of the people said no, I just chose those randomly that don't really say anything about me. Then he went and showed those same people UH the results of those tests that they ran on other people in the words that they choose and how they filled in the incomplete words themselves, and then they asked those people, what do you think the way that this person filled in the word what do you think that says about them? And without fail, every person started trying to make assumptions about these people based the third parties, based on how they filled in the words. Right, What does it tell you is that we we ascribe different motives to other people than we ascribe to them to ourselves. So why do people sit there and think like, Okay, there's no real motive. I can't really interpret any um modes of my behavior from this, but I can interpret other people's behaviors. And it turns out we're really bad at interpreting other people's behavior. And that can you know that can be replicated or or you know that that's highlighted in so many different experiments experiments. Another criminology exercise that glad Will talks about named after a criminologist named Sinhel Mullan Nathan. Sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong, but essentially he built UH, an artificial intelligence system to analyze data around criminals and offenders and tell, okay, based on this data, is this person likely to reoffend or not? Okay? That's typically not done through artificial intelligence. That's typically done based on judges, you know, interpreting the behavior that the person to person interaction with the with uh, with the criminal or with the accused. Right. So they went and compiled the data from two controlled studies over the course of a number of years, and the artificial intelligence system was far better at determining sentencing guidelines and whether or not a criminal would reoffend, both overestimating and underestimating. Right. So that means it's not that the judges were necessarily too light or too strict. The judges were more strict on some people than they should have been, and and more lenient and too lenient on some people when they should have been more strict. The the the system, the artificial intelligence system that didn't have human air be because it took emotion out of the decision, It didn't have any face to face interaction with these people was far more objective and yielded far more accurate results. I think that's fascinating and that, you know, the way that we encounter other people in the cues that we take from them. I mean, I think just generally people have worse bullshit detectors than they may think. And that's a lot of what Gladwell talks about in the book. Um, I highly recommend it. And you know, if we want to talk about faith and institutions, whether or not you know you should believe very grand assertions. Um, certainly something that seems very relevant to our current situation, particularly as relates to COVID, because that's going back to Gladwell's original thesis, the inability of otherwise intelligent and dedicated people to understand when they are being deceived. Okay, so our instincts are they sharp? Are they leading us in the right direction? Who can we trust? Can we trust institutions? Obviously these have been massive, massive, massive topics around COVID, one in particular that him up has come up recently. And the question is our number of people now that a macron is out, more transit, more transmissible, less severe, infecting everybody but not killing a lot of people as a lot of you know, COVID alarmists now go ahead and admit, you know, it seemed to be admitting and acknowledging certain truths or reality. Hey, we can't stop the virus. Hey, you know, not everyone we've got we've got to be able to live with this thing. Um. And a lot of people, and myself included in a lot of ways, are looking at that and saying, well, hey, guys, thanks for finally catching up. We've been saying this for a long time. Why are you now finally coming around to this? And so a lot of people who are taking, you know, my approach, although I'm not universal in that approach, um, are claiming that, you know, we're engaging what's called rhet conning. Okay, So rehet conning is defined as to revise retrospectively by introducing a new piece of information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events. So essentially saying, hey, you know, on the one on the one hand, you've got a lot of the COVID alarm is saying listen, we're we have new views now because there's new information, we're dealing with a new virus. While on the other hand, you know, some of us mentioning that reality seems to have caught up with a lot of people and saying, listen, this hasn't changed the nature of the virus in our situation that much. You just now know that you don't get to stand up and and pren and lecture people as much anymore because everybody's getting infected. So now you want to acknowledge some of these truths. So I don't know who's who's more correct looking at it from one vantage point. You know, depending on which vantage point you look at it, it could go in either direction. Okay, So a lot of the controversy around rhet Connie popped up in regards to a thread from Ben Shapiro this week. So Ben Shapiro died in the woold Conservative, very controversial guy, no friend to the Democrats, and definitely has been beating the gong of hey COVID somewhat exaggerated. We need to get back to living normally for quite a while now. And so you know, let's go through some of his claims and see, Okay, is this something that is a new reality based on new information or is this a reality that has been in place for quite a while now that some people are just waking up to. First, when he mentions cloth masks are ineffective against O Macron mentions that was a reference to a CNN medical contributor named Leona When or Lena When, who has been a COVID alarmist, start to finish, and she essentially said, cloth masks are facial decorations. Some people have been saying this for quite a while. Um, but is our more cloth masks and those those surgical masks something that we're useful but now are no longer that useful because O macron is more transmissible. And I think that's a tough question because you know this, it's a falsehood and it's a fallacy around the notion of you know this question do masks work? I mean, that's a ridiculous question. It's a false binary matters what type of mask for how long, in what situation and how and how much does it work? And also is it realistic? Are are we in a scenario where it can realistically be worn? Right? These are the questions that really matter around masks, not you know some do masks work? Yes? Or no? That's a ridiculous question. So then you think, all right, cloth and surgical masks, Well, doctors wear masks in the hospital. I mean a case could be made, Hey, you're you're you know, inhibiting the flow of particles and air um. But clearly it's not perfect, I mean, because we can you know, it's it's known that certain you know, and K ninety five, the whole notion of them is that everyone knows they keep out you know, they inhibit more air flow and more you know, particle released. Right. So Okay, if the K, if the N ninety five are x level of uh, you know, of effectiveness at inhibiting particle and droplet flow, right, so, then the cloth masks are clearly less effective. So you know, they've clearly got some imperfections. So are they worth wearing in various scenarios? I think that one thing that people in the mask around the mask debate always seems to be forgotten is duration. Right. If you know, if with no mask on, let's call it, you know, you're you're you're allowing a amount of particles out, and a mask takes that to a cloth mask takes that to a you know, forty percent of a or of a right over a certain amount of time, you're eventually going to let out just as much air and as much airflow and particle flow as if you know you had been unmasked for a shorter amount of time. Right, So that's why you know the masks on planes. I mean, if you're sitting there for hours on end, eventually you're gonna allow it in as many particles to be released as another person who was sitting with with someone wearing no mask for you know, one of the time. I don't know, Maybe I'm thinking about this incorrectly, but I don't think so. Right, we don't factor duration into, uh, the analysis of whether or not mask certain surgical or cloth masks are effective. But let's let's give the you know, the the new reality people that one that Okay, cloth masks, we're gonna be a little more useful. Um before oh macron when stuff when something was not quite as transmissible, Okay, that's fine. Um, the vaccinated can spread and get COVID. Now, this is one that you know a lot of people made false representations of and have not owned up to it. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, members of the CDC, Faucci, don't give me this. They originally had claimed that the vaccine would prevent transmission of the virus. Okay, Faucci called it and said, if you get the vaccine, you become a dead end for the virus. Joe Biden outright said, if you get the vaccine, you will not get this. Okay, they've clearly changed their narrative and their tunes since, but they don't want to account for that. They want us to memory all the fact that they ever, you know, mentioned that in the first place, and now that so many vaccinated people are getting getting O macron and you know, in the vast majority of cases extremely mild. Okay, you know, it's not doesn't mean these vaccines are a total failure. They are not. However, yeah, you know, the people need to to accept this reality that some people that there is a base narrative that the vaccine prevent a transmission, and that turned out not to be true, and in the case of Omicron, turned out to very much not be true. Then Ben says number three, the death rate is comparable to the flu um. Here's one where Shapiro is definitely wrong. The death rate was certainly higher than the flu um. For it was certainly higher than the flu for the first seventeen to eighteen months of COVID. You know, things that look a little more comparable between the flu and O macron now um particularly you know, at at all age rates below sixty sixty five and you know, once again under sixty sixty five or let's call it fifty five. UM. Even for prior strains, the difference in in uh in fatality rate between you know, COVID and the flu was almost negligibly but but COVID was still much higher. So I think Ben is wrong about that one. Um. Many people are entering hospitals with COVID, with COVID not from COVID. Now, this is a tricky tricky one because right now, you know, everyone, all medical professionals are acknowledging tons of people are being hospitalized and testing incidentally for COVID right there. Being it with it's so transmissible and so many people having it, it's just inherent to people going to the hospital that if you go for a freaking car accident or a broken bone or god knows what, that you will also test positive for COVID. So a ton of with COVID not from COVID, and incidental hospitalizations right now. And I do think that Faucci the medical establishment really undersold how many people were you know, we're we're incidentally in the hospital that with covid as as opposed to from covid um up until now, Why was this not a default metric in in hospital data? Why did they never when they're putting out data, you almost never see a distinction between the two. People have to go on anecdotes on specific press releases from specific doctors. It should be part of every data set put out there. So I think that the medical establishment, I don't really, I don't think this is necessarily conning. I think the medical establishment seriously undersold and did not communicate just how many people were either hospitalized or died with covid as opposed to from covid um. Here's one that the you know, reality always catches up. Crowd definitely was right on natural immunity is the reason Ohmicron hasn't been his virulent um. Faucci mentioned that. But Faucci has devalued and dismissed natural immunity at every turning point, And so is the medical establishment. And if there's anything, I'd say the two most mind blowing falsehoods and where the medical establishment and the media have just gone off the rails during this entire episode. One UH claiming the lab link is debunked, and the notion that the virus escape from a lab was debunked into discounting natural immunity. It's something just infinite studies support. Was kind of a basic tenant of virology going into this entire situation, and in both the anecdotal evidence and the data and all the controlled studies all supported. You know, so natural immunities being something that's powerful, that's useful uh in you know, in reducing severe outcomes and reinfection. Um, that's something that hey, thanks, thanks for catching up. Guys. We are not red conning that number six. We have to take into account societal needs, not just spread prevention. This is another one. I'm sorry guys. Reality is finally catching up. You know that you have There has to be a balancing of interest. We have to balance the costs versus the benefits of restricting normal social and economic behavior. Okay, Now all was saying, oh this, you see all these media players and members of the medical establishment. Hey, we need to learn to live with COVID. Right. Okay, Well a lot of people have been saying that for quite a while. Number seven, the asymptomatic shall not should not be tested. Um, this is one I'm a little more on the fence about I think it was pretty clear at least a lot of good evidence that there is asymmetric spread um, and so, you know, for a while it made sense, let's test a asymptomatic people. We should focus on hospitalizations and deaths, not case right from the mouth of Joe Biden, our president, um, seems like this has been a fairly sound principle for quite some time. Listen with this many people getting it the vast majority. If there's a situation where you know, you take away and up and the fatality rate is less than a tenth of a percent, I mean judging this using as our markers simply how many people get infected as opposed to how many people have a medically severe outcome. And I think for a while that's been a sound principle, and a lot of people are just catching up now. It took cases just going bonkers out of control for a lot of people to warm up to that reality. So that's definitely not one that we're ret conic. I think that's been a sound principle for quite some time. Number nine, children are not at risk and school She'll remain open um. This is another one that's been been a reality for a while. Okay, not a threat to children. They don't spread it as easily because their immune system fights it off very well. Um, all the data, all the studies show that the virus, they have not seen any any They have not seen nearly as many outbreaks as anticipated from schools. Um, obviously they're more. There's more harm to keeping children out of school than there are to keeping adults out of an office, particularly the digital age, and balancing, you know, balancing the costs versus the benefits of keeping kids out of school. I mean, I think it's not this, This is not red conning. Okay, this has been a reality for a while, and a lot of people have finally just had enough and are no longer. It's mostly been a lot of these the teachers, unions and and administrative boards who have been trying to keep schools closed, which is odd because this is their job. Um, So I think, you know, I'm gonna put that one in the not Retconning column. COVID is predominantly an illness affecting the immuno compromised and elderly, and we should not shut down society. This one's a bit broad right, Um, but I still think it holds up. This has been this has been a truth for quite some time. I mean, it's just so stratified to people who are either elderly or already sick from something, whether it be obesity or something that's you know, more commonly thought of as a disease, given the impact, and I think we we've still we have just gotten so used to society not operating normally that we've forgotten what it's like to operate normally. We've just accepted the costs of you know, of the supposed new normal, and and are not acknowledging how much it's impacting people from you know, there are other health concerns to the breaking of societal bonds, to mental health and what to the harm to business and whatnot. And I think if you're balancing that out and looking at the day, this is uh COVID only being severe for the elderly or people who are already sick. This is not a new thing. This is not something that popped up in with omicron. Okay, this has been a reality for quite some time. And so, okay, is that one being retcond or is that simply is that is that an ongoing reality. This aligns with data that we've had for a long time, predominantly an illness effecting the immuno, compromised and elderly. This is not something that Omicron changed the terms of guys. This is something that we've known for quite some time, not red Conning. So looking at the scorecard here, there are a couple of places where you know, Shapiro and some of those proclaiming that everybody else is now catching up to their reality. They're often a couple of spots, masks are questionable, death rate about comparable to the flu. They're wrong on, but a lot of other stuff they're right on, natural immunity, balancing the costs and benefits, not closing down society, keeping keeping schools open. These are things that have been realities for quite some time and are still realities, and a lot of people just have caught up and claiming that this is being retcond, that it's revisionist history, and that we're trying to, you know, to revise history based on a new set of facts of realities and around Omicron, that's just not the case for most of the stuff. Now, what's the most degree each case of reality catching up? Right? Of there being an obvious truth that anyone looking at at something with clear eyes new to be true, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of the powers that be just discover this is true, you know, eight months a year later. It's got to do with obesity and the health impact of being overweight. CNN yesterday tweets out a study a story on a study people who are overweight or obese are at a much higher risk of much more severe disease and even death from COVID nineteen and one. New studies suggests that losing weight can reduce risk. That is January third, two thousand, twenty two. Good god, we're twenty two months into this thing. This has been a known obvious reality for god knows how long. I mean, if not just common sense, Yes, you're less health Like, go talk with any medical professional, not just the dissidence and the contrarians. Okay, they'll admit. It's shocking the percentage it's either old people or people who are obese, And how much more more tougher of a time they have combatting COVID and how more likely they are to have a severe outcome? Right, for number a number of purposes, you know, the virus attaches itself to fat. Fat is more inflammatory, Their bodies are more inflamed overall. Um, the being obese pushes up on their diaphragm, inhibiting airflow and and lung functioning. I mean, it's just this, This is not this doesn't take a fucking a genius cardiologist to acknowledge this type of stuff, right, This is all very common sense. So why are people all of a sudden now acknowledging this reality? I mean, and why was this view so demonized for the last eighteen to twenty two months, right in particular? And you've got to you've got to see some of these incidents. A friend of mine, John Nieman, founder and CEO of Sweet Cream, trying to bring healthy, all natural you know, healthy salads and based on all natural products to the masses. Right, it seems like a pretty noble objective and that he's executed on very well. He wrote a LinkedIn piece a few months back um mentioning essentially that seventy percent of hospitalizations due to COVID are for a beast and overweight people. And is any question is there an underlying problem that perhaps we have not given enough attention to is there another way to think about how we tackle healthcare, the suggestion obviously being that we should be encouraging people to be healthier in the first place, and that will prevent more severe outcomes from disease. You have to see the reaction to this. The reaction to John's piece was so incredibly unhinged there are not words to describe. You would have thought that he poisoned children's school school children's milk. It was insane that that he the basic truth of encouraging people in a very good faith manner to be healthier because it will result in better health outcomes for them and for lestrand On, the medical system and a healthier society overall. And he was demonized. He was portrayed as the devil. He had to take down the piece, NonStop claims of fat shaming or god knows what other violation of our new code that he committed. And then are we if we're looking back on this through CNN tweets out the same god damn thing, acknowledging the hard data in science that overweight or obese people are to higher risk from severe of severe outcomes from COVID, and nobody makes a peep It's like, oh, what what have we been saying for the past two years? Where were you? What glasses? What lenses were you looking at society through when you were unwilling to acknowledge this reality, right, and smearing and intimidating and trying to castigate people who would acknowledge that reality. And that seems to have repeated itself many times over. So this whole, this whole claim of rhet conning that oh, were people based on new facts and circumstances of a new strain that does look a little bit more just you know, like just the flu that now we're we're trying to pretend that these were the the rules of engagement throughout the entirety of the pandemic. No, there's a bunch of stuff that we've known to be true for quite a while, whether it be natural immunity, whether it be some of the questionable impacts of man us, whether it be school closures are particularly the impact of being overweight or obese on on your health and likelihood of a severe outcome come from COVID. We've known this ship for a while, and a bunch of people now are finally waking up to it. Okay, So that's what's interesting. Now. We went from this these phases where a lot of people disagreed with each other. Now we're entering a phase where a lot of people agree with each other but disagree on how they got to the answer, with one side saying we've known this the entire time and the other side saying, no, this used to be not true. Now it is true. So it's gonna be an interesting battle in tuggle war going on there as we hopefully exit the pandemic perfectly. Honest, I'm pretty sure we're gonna be completely done with this or the vast majority of the severe outcomes within the next six to eight weeks um, but only time. We'll tell thank you once again for joining us. Upcoming, as I mentioned, a fascinating discussion on the battle over the heart and soul of cryptocurrency, Jack Dorsey coming out swinging on behalf of bitcoin against a bunch of the venture capitalists and other players funding a lot of the web three n f T dualized financing projects, and a lot of fascinating players arguing about you know, some topics that I think are going to be really key to understanding society over the coming years. So um, please stick around and listen to that, and we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. It is December thousand, twenty one. This is the prevailing narrative. And you know how much on the prevailing narrative that we love a good Twitter beef, particularly one that has larger implications. And so an interesting Twitter beef that that sprung up in the last week or so was between between recently departed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and a number of participants in the Web three is called Web three n f t um um Expensive cryptocurrency space, in particular some other titans of the tech world, Mark Andrews and of Andreas and Horowitz. Um and Jack got pretty spicy, and we you know, I'm looking at this and I think that the the kind of fundamental battle in the battle over principles related to cryptocurrency. And Jack, who seems to decide and be a very big supporter and advocate for bitcoin verse uh, some of his targets in the Web three world, I think this is gonna be a really important conversation and and battleground for understanding money, finances, culture and a host of other stuff over the coming years, and so, uh, I wanted to get into it with an expert, and uh I certainly have one here today, Corey Clipston of Swan Bitcoin, Hey, mad, thanks for having me on and uh yeah, looking forward to talking about this absolutely And so I don't want this necessarily to be kind of a you know, a bitcoin primer uh podcast. But you know, Corey, if you could just tell us a little bit about you know about bit about Swan, how you're kind of philosophy on bitcoin informs what SWAN does. And then you know, more specifically Jack in the way that Jack uh termed it in one of his tweets that he cares only about decentralized decentralization, your private foundations without single points of failure. So within that purview, you know, how do you believe that that bitcoin reflects those values that Jack expressed? All right? Well, as a father of two young daughters and running a growing company, I'm fighting for sleep and uh cognition during the day. So we'll break that seven part or up into uh into seven parts as we go. But you know, broadly, bitcoin one way I like to think about it, and this is a pretty tech savvy audience, and you know, as you and listen to your first couple episodes, you know, I think it's really just the invention of electronic money. It's something that we never had before. It's something that's been theorized for over a hundred years that we would have some kind of decentralized money, free of government control, confiscated the way that gold is, by surizing powers. And if you could come up with that, and you could provably, you know, send over the Internet or over communications protocol value from one person to and now one pier two peer or no, no, and no, for sure that the person who sent it doesn't have a copy of it anymore, and know for sure that nobody's sitting in between the two nodes or the two peers messed with it along the way. If you could prove that through math, then you would actually have an unconfiscatable, uh sort of pure money. And that's what you know. Basically, people identified that problem of the double spend problem and called it the business Team General's problem in a famous paper, and for the next thirty six years, the cipher punks and other computer scientists worked hard at trying to solve this and that all kinds of failed efforts, but kept on building little building blocks and things that would get you closer and closer, And finally, in two thousand and eight, someone who went by the name of Stosi Nakamoto actually put it all together, put out the Bitcoin white Paper on Halloween of two thousand eight, launched the network with sort of the first first version of the code January three of two thousand and nine. And uh, yeah, for the last twelve almost thirteen years now we've had bitcoin, you know, running without h And it turns out that some of the properties of this as as it plays out in the game theory of you know, this this layer one monetary protocol interacting with the social layer of us humans on the planet and interacting with the world of energy because it requires energy to run the network. Uh basically created the best money that we've ever had as humans. And in fact, it's a perfect money or a day of near perfect money, or no one has ever been able to theorize something that would be better than that. And then if you think about, you know, there's kind of a common saying in silicon valuate circles that you know, if you're going to unseat uh an entrenched. Um, you know winner in a space, then you better be ten times better. There's just absolutely no way to make something even like ten percent better than bitcoin, let alone ten times better. And so basically the race for money has been one a long time ago. This is what we've got. We've got, you know, the design choices in the network architecture choices broadly have been the same for the last thirteen years and have you know, continue to ossify, which is a good thing. When you're talking about a layer one, just like T C P I P on the Internet, you don't want to change a bunch of things at the base layer because on layer two, layer three, layer four or five, six, seven, seven or eight is the layer where you and I are talking over video chat right now in recording something that everybody can see. You don't want to change something at the base layer because it messes up everything else above that you need. You need the lower layers to ossify to remain the same. Basically, So that's kind of what we've got with bitcoin. We've got only twenty one million bitcoins that can never be it's the best money that will ever have. The total addressable market for store of value, which is like the thing that money is for more than anything else is like four or five trillion dollars conservatively, bitcoins at like a trillion dollars market app That's when people talk about like okay, where where can this thing go? It's basically just saying like, well, there's probably like single digit millions of people on the planet, like less than ten million people that both have a lot of their net worth and bitcoin and understand it deeply. So the upside there is absolutely tremendous, Like at the minimum, you know, between now and the end of the decade, more people will actually understand bitcoin well, um and have a lot of their networth in it. Absolutely. And the way a lot of people describe bitcoin is digital gold. And there's certain people who, um, if they kind of you know, sorted through the explanation you just gave, might might want to describe it as such. But I saw that you um retweeted someone who and we're obviously, uh, kind of validating their claim that bitcoin is not digital gold, and maybe just it's focus specifically on that, on how you see this is not digital gold and why that descriptor is you know, is off the mark. So now, first of all, I like the digital gold analogy, but it is an analogy and it can confuse people. And basically one of the ways that promoters of all coins have twisted that is to say that, you know, essentially the the potential market cap of bitcoin is something akin to gold, right, which is around ten or twelve trillion dollars. So this is like really popular with like Jeff Dorman of ARCA, who's you know, kind of like a DeFi promoter and promotes all coins and stuff like that, and you know, it's one of the main people out there that's not actually in Silicon Valley who was constantly sort of denigrating Bitcoin and and sort of throwing shade at it. So stop it, Jeff. But you know, I just think it sells it short because if you actually have you know, if you think deeply about it, and you think about digital gold, and you think about actually being to make it unconfiscatable, being able to send it instantly and nearly for free anywhere in the world in any denomination for you know, pennies or dollars, single digit dollars, like that's that's a heck of an innovation and it you know, that's why it has a total addressable market of something like four llion dollars, not ten tillion dollars like gold's market cap, will be just like a quick stepping stone for bitcoin over time. And yeah, it seems in terms of liquidity and transactional velocity, just as digital gold as a limiting descriptive. UM. So as Bitcoin has continued its march and become more widely spread, more widely used and known. Um, the concept has arisen of the bitcoin MAXI or the bitcoin bitcoin maximal list. UM. In your eyes, what how is that term being used? Would you consider yourself one? Um? And I mean some people are labeling Jack once again within the framework of the controversy we're going to get into as one as well. UM, what are your thoughts on that term? Yeah, I mean, so it was an epithet created by the talk the founder and uh manager of ethereum, and so he can the term max list and that's an epithet. And so somebody that says maxi is using a diminutive of an epithet. And you can kind of tell if somebody uses it they don't really know much about bitcoin or bitcoiners, or are sort of an active antagonist or denigrator. Now so many bitcoiners have said, Okay, this is a slur directed at me. I'm just gonna go ahead and own that, like many other communities have decided to own slurs sort of directed at them, and uh, and they'll just say, yeah, if it, I'm a maximalist whatever, um, you know. But it's really up to the person, and it's not something that I think would be acceptable for someone outside to sort of slaying it at somebody. Um. I call myself a bitcoiner, and that's you know, that's self defined. There are other bitcoiners that wouldn't consider me a bitcoiner because I'm like not hardcore enough and I don't code stuff like that, and I'm not a cipherpunk, and they have like a higher definition on the tech side of what determines a bitcoiner. And I might not consider them a bitcoinner because I don't think they're you know, investing enough, if they're not worth in it or something like that. So it's it's really just based on your own personal definition. But yeah, I don't like it when all coin fans and denigrators of pitcoin will sling around words that they are they love to sing, Yeah, they love to sling that one around. Now, I still have a little bit of empathy because there are obvious scammers, and there are also people who fooled themselves into be scamming. And then there are some people, uh that are working in crypto like that mean well and think that they're doing something, you know, that that has societal benefit. I think they're wrong, but I don't actually question some of their motives. And you know, and they're labeled with the term ship cooiner right, like they're shipcoiners, and I would call them a ship coiner. So like, I can't really like throw those stones and be too sensitive about somebody throwing something back, right, or maybe you can. I don't know. Some people, uh if if the the true believers in in any approach towards um the blockchain world, um, some some are true believers. And I think, like maybe if we're wondering when the the bitcoin maxi slur might be properly used, it's really just when some people are extra annoying on I mean, the only defense I have there of like you know, why it's okay for me you call them a shitcoin and them not to call me a maxi is that I'm right, Well, there you go. So Okay, so four bitcoiners or bitcoin Maxi's um is do does that leave any space? And if so, how much space for other players other currencies? And and you know, is it is it a bitcoin universalist or is are we just saying, okay, we prior prioritize bitcoin. We know that this is the the most effective system for a company, you know, for reflecting the values that we wish to reflect. Um. And there's really no no space for anything else, because I do speak to some people like that. Or is there or is there a space for other players in the cryptocurrency game, but they need to be adhering to the Bitcoin underlying principles as much as humanly possible in their activities. So there's lots of tease apart there. UM. So first, you know, there are Chuck e cheese tokens, right, they exist. You can go to an arcade and you can check in some real money and you can get some fake money. You can get some casino chips the MGM grand and you can only use them there in the casino. And they have their reasons for doing that, and they like to have that currency. You know, they're in the casino. Um. You know, and Chuck e. Cheese likes to have their tokens there. There's a lock in, and if you end up with a bunch of tokens when you leave, your like more enticed to come back. Things like that. So you know, what do you call like a payment token or friction token? Like you know, there are reasons for that. They don't need to be decentralized. If you try to make them decentralized, then by definition, you're in seven open competition with bitcoin to be money, and you're gonna lose, which every single one of these has over time. So I think you know, the race for money was over long ago. It can't be a centralizing That's that's the problem with proof Mistake is it's centralizing over time. It actually doesn't matter how centralized or decentralized or whatever they claim like today, the fact is that it centralizes more over time. That second derivative of the vector that it's on is what's really important. And Bitcoin decentralizes over time, and proof Mistake actually centralizes over time. So it's just the way it's more more centralized control. It's kind of the same thing we've been dealing with for millennia um as far as like other uses of it. I mean, like n f T s are totally orthogonal. It's not trying to be money. It's not trying to restore of value. I think it's you know, just like digital collectibles. It's the narrative is like dramatically puffed up way above what it actually is, which is like you own the hash to a signal. Sure you don't know in the jpeg. Like all these things for the most part, are living on centralized services, and you know, it can be removed and people can change it at their whim if they want to. Things like that. But inasmuch as like there's a strong community around some type of collectible, and you know, if something goes wrong with the system, the community can kind of like collaborate on putting it up somewhere else and then you know, let the market start over again. And if we were used to having you know, some crypto punks being valued at X, they'd probably be valued at X minus a little bit if you had to kind of restart it somewhere else. It's not that big a deal. Just doesn't have much to do with bitcoin. I think what frustrates uh bitcoiners is just kind of all the noise about it because I'm I'm seeing you know, hundreds of business plans and you know, new startups raising money and making noise essentially having just replaced the word blockchain from a seventeen business plan with n f T and claiming that it's going to do something for healthcare or royalties or rights or all this stuff that it can't do. And it's just it's just kind of funny because this too shall pass, just like every other all cooin narrative has come and gone in the past, whether it's you know, World Computer or you know, it's gonna be defied, it's gonna be I c oh, it's it's gonna be crowdfunding, it's gonna be this, and now it's like all these different things. They just kind of come and they're hot for a little minute and they pump all those things and then they crash back down and they move on to the next narrative. So it's just kind of a it's just like an assembly line that keeps on moving these hamsters through the snake. And so that goes directly to what at least it's the hostility that Jack expressed in that it at least at least My interpretation was that these non bitcoin projects in the cryptocurrency world that expressed themselves as much as you mentioned as n f t s to centralized finance dows and things that do not have the same you know, really fundamental privacy and decentralization qualities that Bitcoin does. That a lot of them are being funded by these vcs and the venture capital the capital firms, and nobody is really objecting to the idea that in the current web environment, they capture a lot of the value the private investors, other than in a handful of cases like the facebooks of the world that appreciate heavily in the public markets, these private investors and wealthy, wealthy investors, they get access to a project and they capture most of the value and the appreciation from it, and that's leaving everybody else out of the game for the most part. Is that how you understood the kind of core of Jack's beef as well. I think that was probably like a secondary or tertiary objection. I think the main one is just like the immorality of it and just basically what's going on, and it's been going on since the first sort of pump cycle and bitcoin when it hit a hit, there were a bunch of all coins launched. Then than it happened again in Seen and there were a ton of points launched. Then most of them are dead, and now you're kind of seeing it again with you know, the new batch of all points being launched and coming to prominence. And essentially what it is from the VC standpoint is short time to liquidity. It's literally the second slide on every VC raised deck that they HLPs with is that they can get short time to liquidity with these instruments because they can create money out of thin air. They're not regulated today the way that they will be in the future, just like there was a moment in time and the odds when you could do online gambling and make tons and tons of money, and then that kind of just went away because the regulators came down and chopped it off. So right now, as has been for you know, basically the Seen eighteen, you know through now you've got this moment in time where you can, in the favored phrase among these vcs is we can make our own weather because there's nobody holding you to account for how you market these things. So you get in bed with one of these people they try to find a professor with great credentials or some coder that you know, speaks well enough or sounds super smart or whatever, and they, you know, pump one of these things up. They get their buddies on board. They all talk in sort of private rooms and like with their friends and stuff, and they'll be like, you know, ten or twelve firms collaborating. One will buy it at this round, and then the other ones all agree to step up the value here, quid pro quo being that if they start one, all the other firms will pump up the next valuation and kind of create this price history of like round values stepping up to the point when it finally gets available to retail. Even if they you know, dump it a bit, it still is a big step up in value because they already are up, you know, twenty or thirty or a hundred x from when they invested at the beginning. Right, And that's liquid, right, that's liquid. They've got the money, their LPs are happy. They can raise another fund, you know, so you take something like in Grayson Horowitz, which is raised like three billion dollars, getting the two a U M on a three billion of crypto funds. I think it's four billion now actually um of crypto funds, and they can just pump these things like crazy. So you know, they buy a big chunk of like Salana tokens, which is something that's mental data thin air, that's a centralized team that can shut down the network at any time, that can sense of transactions, that's not decentralized and doesn't even claim to be just outside the reach of the current regulatory regime but won't be for long. And they can put their whole army on you know, clubhouse on Twitter, send out Chris Dixon, send out all these people to go and talk it up, talk about how amazing it is, talked about all in podcasts with Chamas and David Sacks and all these guys. And then you know, they can sell out of their cost basis plus some and ride the rest for a free call option as much as they want not to mention there. Then in the you know, the angel and seed rounds for all of the other stuff in the ecosystem, and like Salona, all the deep by tokens and the Salanta ecosystem are notorious for doing exactly what you said, which is the VC is taking essentially all of the upside and before it's available to the public anyway. M hm, So you know, so it's quite a racket. Yeah, And I want to get and we'll get into the layers of that and within the context of what you know, Jack was saying on Twitter. But I want to just step back just a second and think I'll be helpful for for some listeners who might not be quite as as familiar with crypto and not quite as tech savvy and from a fundamental perspective ethereum, these other layer ones that are used for a lot of the Web three activity, how do they fundamentally differ from Bitcoin? And then we can kind of talk about how those fundamental differences are kind of inherent to the vulnerabilities and problems that we're discussing about. The specific coins and pumps. I mean, they mostly all claim to be smart contract platforms. It's basically it, and there's a bunch of them, and they're all trying to be like the top smart contract platform essentially. But a smart contract is just an if then statement. It's basically how computer code is written in the first place. The only thing that makes it a smart contract is it's supposed to be running on a decentralized network. Bitcoin has smart contracts, it has since the very beginning. A multi signature while it is a smart contract can say like, you know, this bitcoin doesn't get spent until this signatures, you know, this hash is produced basically something like that, and then the then the output can get spent. So you know, I think that's in the long run, I think all this activity ends up on Bitcoin, built on on on the existing smart contract infrastructure in the layer two, three, four, So you can build these apps on You can build these apps on bitcoin. You can. There's just not much demand for it right because there's no massive influx of VC money pumping up the incentives. So basically what this is right now is like if you're, you know, launching a new city for Uber, and you give everybody free rides like crazy, like handing them out like candy. Everybody starts riding Uber, and what the vcs are hoping is that you get to the point where everybody gets hooked on Uber and it's like a real thing and there's natural demand for the stuff. But we've never seen in eight years is natural demand for anything outside of Bitcoin. The only thing going on is speculation on speculation with a lot of leverage. It's literally the only thing that's going on. There's no such thing as yield and defied. For instance, the only place that returns are coming from is the pumped up, propped up value of these governance tokens that are given as rewards, just like the free uber rides or the door dash rebate or whatever for some centralized service, and not one of them has ever hit escape value escape velocity to actually have people paying for the service if the free money goes away, meaning that these applications do not have independent utility beyond some reculation. Also speculating that by by purchasing the token that is issued from this application that's built on the blockchain, the token can be issued because it's on the block chain instead of not. Right, if if you remove that financial incentive, which is you know, in your mind and a lot very much so speculative, there's no reason for these applications to exist on the blockchain, that's right, or is there? Or is there no reason for these applications to exist period? Well, I mean we've had I guess the biggest thing that people are doing that looks like something that exists in the real world, and that has natural demand is overcollateralized loans. So it's like you know, post post dollars and you know, get fifty with the sable coins or something like that. But that's got that's nothing new. That's called margin lending. That's just that's just buying. That's just a trading thing. Every every stock market, every you know, prime brokerage lets you do that already, you know. So basically what's interesting in the short term is you can do that essentially trust us lee and like very quickly. But the only people that want to do that are crypto traders. And the only reason I want to do that is because the numbers are going up, And the only reason the numbers are going up is because the crypto vcs are pumping LP money into the space. But it doesn't mean that there's any natural demand for any of this stuff. And so I think it'll take a while. It'll take a while for the you know, thirty billion dollars of VC capital that's been you know raised in the one billion that's been deployed into cryptoe alone to work its way through. But you know, I just these things are centralized, they're easy to shut down and there's no natural demand for this stuff once the tide washes out, So the whole space is overleveraged. You know, probably five or six x something like that broadly is like probably a fair estimate. And so you know, if there's ever any kind of like real pullback, you know, even just an ethereum with all all the overcollateralization and all the margin trading and all that kind of crap, Like, I don't know, it's very possible that this whole thing just collapses and there as a gaming hole. But you could you could envision the prospect of of useful, independently useful applications being built on ethereum, and some of these projects yielding some value. But the anticipation is that with all the money propping it up right now, overwhelming portion of that you know, whether n or above. If we want to get into specifics, how to watch attention to some of the other ones and like, like I really don't care that much, but ethereum is basically doomed. I mean, it's it's moving. It may I mean as it's not that bold really like as proof of work, it's screwed because the more people use it, the more expensive it is, and so that's just like working at counter purposes trying to make something like having any sort of global utility. And if you move to proof of steak, which is what they're trying to do next, then you have something that is inherently centralizing over time and will be controlled co opted by you know, governments and banks. So you'll see like you know, JP Morgan and WF Pounding ethereum. Essentially, I'm wondering why I feel like they those central central forces, whether government's large banks, corporation, it's actually it's actually Anderson Horror. It's trying to corner the market on essentially owning all of the revenue that comes out of proof of steak. So they're the big backers of LEDO, which game theoretically appears like it would you know, maybe grab all the transaction fees more or less in in a proof of stake world. Do you think there are any projects that they're involved in that have that that have some potential, Yeah, lots of stuff Outside of crypto. They still do good stuff and you know SASS and market networks and social media and stuff like that. It's still a good firm. Oh right, right now, huge supporter. I'll leave it to Corey in terms of their activities in the Web three world, but outside Web three, massive supporters of injuries and Horwitz and the companies that they're supporting and and their thesis there, Um, well I should I should be cleared Like it's it wasn't it wasn't a bridge too far for them to get into crypto and doing this because it turned into an investment bank a decade ago, like very quickly after starting, it started to realize like the real squeeze was in doing deals and sort of getting free upside and free call options. So like long before they started, you know, pumping all these crypto crapto projects, like they were already acting as bankers and like setting elevated prices for rounds and putting their label on it and then essentially getting a free ride by selling the rest of the deal and SPVs right, and so they would essentially get their investment for free. And you know, they got hundred and forty people as registered reps. Now in case some of these crypto things are securities, they did that back in you know, so you know most of the people that work there now are people that are the profile and the type of person that would have worked in investment banking, like fifteen years ago before the GFC, when you could you know, still go and have people in the nightclubs actually think you're cool for being a banker. Once that kind of dried up in two thousand and eight, two thousand nine, and they all moved west and traded in blazers for Patagonia invests, and now they're running around Silicon Valley. I think you and I have seen. I got a first you and I got a firsthand look into Just to give everyone a little little background, Corey and I have worked on you know, projects and startups together that would guests be termed Web two and these were venture backed companies and and uh we we've seen the culture of well I gets the the affiliate the affiliate site of the right Yeah, in the Bay Area and about a quarter l A and about a quarter of New York, so you know, but it's it's a lot of the same culture, really, no doubt. And just to to make sure that for anyone who might be relatively less familiar with crypto, I mean, the the original thesis for this discussion and the Jack Dorsey Web three beef you know, the as core has been describing in in great detail, UM, the jack is falls on the side of those who believe that, you know, Bitcoin for the most part, is the only project in this space that really embodies its true qualities and and has you know, perm and has durability, and you know, this this web through space that seems to mimic a lot of the same mimic a lot of the financial and cultural activity of the traditional venture capital and startup space. UM is what he was criticizing. And I get Corey, let me know if you agree, But essentially it's saying that, okay, and I'm not indicting venture capital UM as a whole, but there's no place for it in the blockchain world. We don't need it. UM blockchain means that we don't need that venture capital model, So why are you bringing it into this space? Would you agree with that? Mm hmm. I mean the fact that they're just creating, you know, tokens that will be worthless one day. So whether they can extract value and essentially you know, pump something up enough to be able to profit from it, it's zero sum at the end of the day. So they're just taking money from somebody else as opposed to creating value you know, for humanity and society in the world the way that I think the bitcoin does. Um. You know, so there's still plenty of investment to be made in cryptography and mesh networks. I think, you know, if you wanted to say, like what Web three ought to be defined as, it's not this you ship coin stuff. It's actually like a decentralized stack. It's it's personal servers. It's you know, unsensorable email, uncensorable social networks, bitcoin and lightning nodes in every home, those kinds of things. I think that's really interesting. That's an interesting vision for Web three that actually makes sense. And so when you say personalized servers and truly everyone runs their own node, and everybody okay, I mean, and the stuff is starting to be more popular than ever. Like it's actually not that part into the Internet backbone for a tech savvy person and to actually like run a personal server and have their own email server and their own Internet connection and and all that stuff and kind of skip by sps. I think it's expensive and difficult for the average person, but you know, you could see that, just like anything else, to demand increases for that sort of thing. And I think it's happening with more and more people want to run their own financial infrastructure with bitcoin and lightning. I can see them just packaging those up. It's already starting to happen, like starting nine labs and packaging all this stuff up together, and you get your own your own like run your own internet, be your own bank, be your own i SP and that will get cheaper and cheaper and easier and easier with the complexity sort of abstracted away. And I think that's actually a really worthy go and that's part of your long term vision for bitcoin. I just think it's something that will happen. You know, it'll happen because people are into running there. You know, you take take the orange pill of getting into bitcoin, and eventually you realize like you'd prefer to not be censored for information either, and you want to connect to the Internet on your own terms and kind of like redcentralize the Internet. And if you can do that, if you have have the infrastructure, the energy, and a system that is secure enough that you don't need some particular expertise to secure the network, that that all of a sudden becomes possible. Yeah, yeah, so you know, I wanna I want to just throw a carrot out to you know, your list a nurse which is UM. You know, based on this conversation and based on maybe the first two or three people that ask me questions, I'll put together just a little list of reading resources and literally anybody who emails me and references Matt show at, Krey at swan bitcoin dot com, c r y at swan bit point dot com. I'll put together like you know, four or five bullets and just have like an email ready to go, UM just to give you guys, you know, further reading. So you will be things like UM only the Strong Survived by by Alan Farrington and big Al. It'll be things like John Feffer's piece on ethereum back in seventeen, maybe something by Lynn Alden, who's one of the best analysts in the space. UM. You know, I can think of a couple more. That whole idea about the vector of of whether something is actually becoming more more centralized or more decentralized over time comes from an article by stop in decrypt Backen. So a kind of point point to a few of those resources that help inform my thinking by people much much smarter than me would be incredible, Corey, and thank you so much, UM. And before and just so everyone, UH, just to run that back real quick. If you reach out to Corey UM at the email or the UH at the at his Twitter handle, which would be Corey Clipston c O R Y K l I P P s t E N and mentioned his appearance on this show, he will provide you with some incredible foundational resources to understand this world better. UM. And before we let you go, I did one lab another piece of this universe that is a particular interest to UH, to my listeners and you know, the top of mind right now. UM. And it on a certain level, what you've discussed in kind of the limitations or failings of the web three world, UM are all inherent and apply to the n f T space. But I do see a lot of you know, valid counter arguments in that culture is culture and that simply that nobody's really nobody is really promising, UH, giving the prom us of decentralization in terms of certain you know, cultural signifiers or art or music, and that just those it's supposed to be for some sort of personal ownership. So if it has the the contracts imbued, sorry, the the qualities imbued in smart contracts and things of that nature that n f T s while a lot of these are part of some kind of short term overhyping and pump um that n f T s aren't necessarily going anywhere. Um, what are you from a from the blood and guts of n f T s. You know what's your perspective, Well, you can't enforce anything on chain that's off chain, so you could you're still completely dependent on trusted third parties in meat space in the physical world to enforce any rights that you think that you might have two an n f T m M. So it's as you know, like it's completely community dependent because you actually have no rights whatsoever. There is nothing that a smart contract gives you in relation to the JPEG, the song, or anything else. You're trusting Adidas, you're trusting Nike, You're trusting you know what is it, board apes or whatever like, You're you're trusting those centralized entities in the community around it to keep the value for whatever it is that you own. There's nothing decentralized about that. So that's just something to keep in mind. So if you're attracted to a decentralization narrative around n f T s, and you think that this collectible is somehow actually yours in a trustless way. It's just not. You are completely dependent on all of these people to enforce your rights for you, and so these smart contracts really do not exist independently of of the programmers, where whoever is hiring the programmers when they do, but you can't actually have a claim to the piece of art itself or the song or anything like that. Like it's it's not enforceable, got it, got it? You can't. You can't really do anything with an ass with an off chain asset. It's called the oracle problem. Like there's just no way to actually bring off chain assets on chain. It's impossible, is the problem. It seems that some of the promises that purchase of on chain assets is going to give you access to some off chain assets or experiences that you would I guess that's just really you're paying the price of admission, and that's just that's a rewards program. It's a rewards program. It's a loyalty program. Like I mean, shoot, I might start like some kind of loyalty program for swan and maybe we have like swan points that you can either buy or that you can learn through you know, making purchases or making referrals or whatever it is. And you know, this is the old Kanye Colin plan VCS used, right. And I actually started out my my whole career in this space working on n f t S first back, so I'm one of the oldest people in the space. I invested in Open seaes angel around like, you know, way back in the day. So you know, I've been around it for a while. I understand it deeply, and you know, it's just not what people are saying that it is today. You know, it is just is just fun and sort of false narratives around it. Now lest anyone sort of think that I'm just beating up on uh, you know, non bitcoin things, I'm notorious for having some of the biggest fights with bitcoinners about false narratives. Uh. And you know, for instance, stock to Flow, which is like a really popular thing, and Bitcoin is complete bullshit, like the models are bullshit. The whole thing was always bullshit. I've been calling it out for two years. Um, a few people finally come around, you know. And and similarly, like this whole thing with Drayson Horowitz and the vcs, like I've been on this for you know, two years, saying all the same stuff as have like a lot of bitcoiners. They've been calling this out forever. Jimmy Song has been calling it out since, you know, So it's not new. What knew is that Jack has six million followers and is one of the founders of Twitter and the recently exited CEO. And what's also new now is that he's now given air cover, essentially to some other people who actually understand this stuff deeply and are now less scared to come out and explain and like not play the sort of omerta game. The NFL coaches can't talk bad about each other that you know, sort of Silicon VC, Silicon Valley VC kind of enforces that. So you're seeing people sort of gingerly stepping out and calling bullshit because they actually understand what's going on. Aaron Levy is a great example, right, the box founder two point four million followers, Like he's just not having it. He's going on spaces, he's doing tweet threads, and he's like pointing out that like bology. He says it very politely, but bology, you're full of ship, Chris Dixon, You're full of ship, Like all you guys are full of ship, and I'll explain exactly why. And these long threads and these Twitter spaces and it's just hilarious because all of these network engineers at like Microsoft and Amazon and you know, even the banks like go talk to people at JP Morgan that run ethereum teams and they're like some of the biggest bitcoin maximalists out there because they see what dogshit this stuff is. And then it's all just you know, on a w S anyway, M and uh, it did seem like this was a battle that needed to be and it's just it. It's it's opening stages, right, this is this battle is not going anywhere. But Jack becoming vocal about this, it brought a lot of big names and and it felt like a lot of people who had been holding on to some some views decided to pour them all out. And it feels like in an inevitable and necessary conversation, given all the capital flowing, all the attention running through these running through the pipes of you know, cryptocurrency prop projects um and it rhymes very very closely with rhymes very very closely and instead of in racing. Last time it was Fred Wilson from us V and all the people are explaining that I c O s were bullshit, and he was saying, no, I c O s are awesome, right, And this is the same thing they're saying, like Web three is new and special and different, and all the bitcoiners saying, no, you're full of ship again. How is a lot of what's going on right now different than an i c O. It seems to be very it's the same thing. They just like, yeah, they just call them, they call them ideas now, which is an initial decks offering instead of an initial point offering. So yeah, all these uh, all these uh, you know, defied projects that Anderson and these guys are in the you know seed rounds for uh. They pump up the token and do a bunch of marketing around it, and then they listed on the decks and then they have a market maker in place to pump up the value which is illegal and securities land but not illegal today while it's outside, Like this is part of how you get when these projects started. You do backroom deals with the exchanges to make sure that you get listed. You do, uh, you have market makers in place to pump the price of the token and like show that show that pump so that retail believes in the price. And like even if there's a little bit of a dump later, they have this expectation that it won't go below like level acts or something like that. So it's very much or get straight in. And there are you know, thousands of well paid people getting paid by the VC money funneled through the toke and then getting paid by the you know, paid out of the token to go and execute these services, to pretend that there's a real market for these things and paint that picture for retail. And it's this this space seems to get more convoluted and more saturated every day. And and the this battle is like I said, it's not it's it's just beginning. And and the kind of principled disagreements between people in this space and and let's the bit coiners um it's I think, regardless of what side one falls on. And let's be just be clear here. I want to make sure on this podcast to be showing every side of the coin here. And you know, Cores has done an incredible job of communicating this perspective and you know, we want people to look at all perspectives. But um, this this is a battle that I think is look at. Just look at the amount of money flowing through it at stake here. Um. If that doesn't tell you you know how I'm pactful. This is going to be about the upcoming stages of you know, American society. Um. So with that, did want to just hear from you a little bit about SWAN. Um it's particular uh particular offering in particular position in the bitcoin ecosystem. Um, and love to hear about the particulars of that. Yeah. Sure, so swan bitcoin dot com or you can just go to swan dot com about that. Finally, um so we're just the best place to buy bitcoin. It's it's bitcoin only. Uh you know, I would say like this is interesting. Lots of like crypto traders and crypto fund managers and you know crypto vcs. Even we'll always send their friends, their family, their coworker nut coworkers because they're working crypto, but like you know, sort of network colleagues. We get a ton of referrals from crypto people to SWAN because they know that they want they know the game and they know that they don't want to wreck their friends and family, so they send them somewhere you can only buy bitcoin. So that swan you can only buy bitcoin. We have have you know a lot of the top educators and sort of influential people in the space work at swan um. You know, so authors like Jon Pritzgury and Vera and Thomas stoe Light and these folks actually work and have day jobs working in bitcoin. At swan um. We make it really easy to put bitcoin and you know, retirement accounts like I ra A s. We can help you buy for your company, for trust, for your dependence, beneficiaries, all that kind of stuff around the world. So it's global. Um. So yeah, get in touch. We've got you know, an incredible concierge team. Uh. We got chosen by Mac Jones from the Patriots last weekend for his his holiday gift for his offensive line, you know, like the w Russell Wilson a few years ago gave you know, Amazon stock to his old line. While Mac decided to give bitcoin and he did it through swan So it was pretty cool. Um. So yeah, there was a sign of the times. Yeah, so you can you can do gifting through Swan and uh yeah, I mean, anybody's interested to learn more about that again, o free a just hit me up. You know, we're we're small enough with people that you can still email the CEO and it'll look you up with the right person. So if then you get in touch, we have powered by Swans. We have a bunch of different apps and websites that sell bitcoin using our API s and stk s. So that's another option for for people that want to have you know, bitcoin for sale in their apps and things like that. So yeah, it's a it's a bright orange future, working hard on and you know, I would say like I will say this, So there are a lot of people myself included, who started in crypto or work in crypto for a time and then kind of saw the light and they are welcomed with open arms by bitcoiners. H Bitcoiners are you know, generally fine and you know, polite to people who aren't in crypto at all, and they're super welcoming to people that come from crypto and moved to bitcoin. The only ones that that draw the real ire are are the people that were sort of well known and influential in bitcoin and then turned to shipcoins to monetize their fame and influence. Um. But short of that, like everybody is basically completely welcome, not everyone is as spicy as Jack Dorsey has been choosing violence this last week on the internet. Uh, sparing no expense. It was it was fascinating to observe. Um, it was a fascinating, fascinating topic and fascinating to hear Corey interpret it for us today. UM. So everybody, I hope you learned a little bit more about bitcoin, about the cryptocurrency world and the texture of this battle that is is definitely gonna be right. However it ends up, it's going to be raging for a while in terms of bitcoin verse, you know, Web three and some of the alternatives. Um, Corey, I cannot thank you enough for joining us today in your time. UM. Once again, he's at Twitter at Corey Clipston. That's k L I P P S T E N. And that email address again was c O R Y at swan bitcoin dot com. I answer my emails fantastic. Well Corey, thank you once again, and happy holidays and we'll talk to you soon. Awesome. Thanks mat I am at Bolinski once again. You can listen and subscribe to The Prevailing Narrative on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening right now. Make sure to follow me on my socials at Matt Bolinsky m A T T B I L I N s k Y. The Prevailing Narrative is a Cavalry Audio production and association with I Heart Radio, produced by Brandon Morrigan, Executive produced by Dana Burnette and Kegan Rosenberger for Calvary Audio. I'm Matt Bolinsky.