Jordan Bush of Thank God For Bitcoin: Moral Money & The Conference in Miami!

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now! Oh well, hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast, thanks for listening, thanks for visiting dmwpodcast .com,

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checking us out, checking out the merch, leaving us comments, leaving us reviews, we appreciate it, just got another 5 star review this week, we do like those, we've got a few 1 and 2 stars, you know we don't really dwell on those, we just dwell on the 5 star ones, but we like your honest criticism, constructive criticism, we thank you for telling a friend, sharing it with everyone, that's how we bring glory to God, by you guys sharing the podcast.

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Before we get started, obviously in the pre -roll you did hear, thank God for Bitcoin as a sponsor of the show, we also have another sponsor, page 50, and we're going to read through it, it's your business, it's your legacy, don't partner with just anyone, you need people you can trust, you go to page 50, page 50 is a distinctly

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Christian company and that means we do things a little differently, they're committed to providing quality marketing services for all your clients and customers, they're going to help you make the most out of social media platforms, create content, elevate your website so you can grow your impressions and reach your goals, they treat each of their clients account like their own because they're going to build things that last, from web design to social media management, from consulting to execution, from search engine optimization to grassroots campaigns, it's their desire to help your business tell its story to the wildest audience possible, go give www .page50

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.com, that's spelled out, P -A -G -E -F -I -F -T -Y .com, and see how these brothers in the

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Lord can help your business, or click through on the link at the bottom of this episode description, Integrity Innovation Results, page 50,

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Stuart and those guys over at page 50 are just awesome, they've helped us on the podcast with my real estate business, they just do awesome social media stuff, so go support those brothers in the

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Lord and obviously support, thank God for Bitcoin as well in the pre -roll, we love those guys supporting the show, being friends of the show and helping us do what we do.

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Now with that being said and the business out of the way, I want to introduce our guest, now he's been on the podcast before, I think it was

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October, but we only got to sit with him for about 10 or 12 minutes, so we want to get into a little bit more, he's the head of content and education for TGFB, that's

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Thank God for Bitcoin Media, he served as pastor and church planning missionary in Uruguay alongside his wife and kids, he also helped author

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Thank God for Bitcoin, the creation, corruption and redemption of money, he'll be speaking at the Thank God for Bitcoin conference along with C .R.

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Wiley, he's a friend of the show, he's been on before on Theology Podcast, David Cotrone, he's been on the podcast, many others, it's

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May 16th and 17th in 2023 in Miami Beach, Florida, it's Mr. Jordan Bush, Jordan, how are you doing, sir?

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Man, so glad to be back on the program, man. Yeah, I'm glad to have you back because, oh, go ahead.

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No, I was gonna say, I just really appreciated following you, obviously meeting you at Fight Left Feast and, you know, being booth buddies and then just following you on Twitter and, you know, seeing what you guys post, so yeah, thank you for you guys.

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And for those of you listening too, if you hear me cough, I'm gonna try to hit the cough mute button, but I just picked up something over the last day, it was 84 degrees here yesterday and it is hailing out right now in Michigan, welcome to Michigan in April, so something's going around, but I'll try not to cough too loud into the microphone there, but yeah, met

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Jordan down in Tennessee, absolutely love what these guys are doing, you've heard us talk about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, that kind of stuff before, when him and David were on the show down there for just 15, 18 minutes, it was one of our top rated episodes because,

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I mean, crypto is just such a huge subject right now and especially within the Christian community, believers, the reformed community and all that alike, every time

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I'm on Twitter and I see you guys doing, what is it called when you do the audio, is it called a room? It's kind of a space, yeah, sorry,

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I did Clubhouse during COVID for a little bit, but I haven't done Twitter yet, you guys always have so many people jumping on there and you tell there's a hunger for it, just give us an update, we have some new listeners since October of what you do at Thank God for Bitcoin, what it's all about in a couple of minutes and then we're going to get into the conference at your home because I'm excited about that.

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Yeah, appreciate you man, yeah, so basically, again, basically, Thank God for Bitcoin exists to help the church,

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Christians broadly, understand what Bitcoin is and why it matters and basically see the ways in which

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Christians are leveraging Bitcoin for the glory of God and good of people everywhere and so again, when most people think about Bitcoin, they think about a

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Ponzi scheme or they're thinking about this is a get rich quick scheme, all these things and the reason why they think that is because there are a bunch of people who think about Bitcoin and try to leverage it in cryptocurrencies more broadly for that purpose, but again, in the same way that the fact that drug dealers were the first ones to use beepers did not say anything about the beeper, other than that, it was a pretty good and useful innovation, you know, there's nothing, you know, the fact that people use it for bad things does not say anything about Bitcoin, it just says that there's a utility to Bitcoin that people have found that that serves them in ways that other things don't and so basically, again, there's

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Bitcoin, we just basically help Christians understand what Bitcoin is and the different ways that people and Christians all over the world are trying to leverage it and use it to solve very real problems that are faced by people all over the world, so my role is to help create content and yeah, just to help, you know, put out podcasts, we're getting ready to launch a couple podcasts, one of our first episodes will be with, we sat down with Pastor Doug Wilson and kind of talk with him for about an hour about Bitcoin and all kinds of things and there's a money quote near the end of it that we're definitely going to be leveraging, you know, just as we talk to people, but you know what,

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I think that's a really cool idea, I've heard a lot of subjects that Doug has talked about and everyone wants to hear his take on stuff,

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I've never heard him talk about crypto or digital currency really at all, so yeah, everyone who's listening, we'll make sure we link up to that so people can go listen to that because I think that's going to be a good conversation,

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I'm glad to see him embracing it, we talked about this a little bit the first time you were on in October, but I've found, okay, for all of these

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Christians and like my parents that were raising me in the 80s and 90s and they were part of the moral majority and they were the government's oppressive and they won't let us homeschool and they won't let us do all these things and oh my gosh, we're, you know, in mid 80s, we were 10 years removed from the gold standard and I remember my dad talking about it,

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I'll tell you what, that generation seems to have the most trepidation about crypto or more specifically

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Bitcoin, which we can talk about how you specifically focus on Bitcoin because it's truly decentralized and I go, why aren't that generation especially accepting this with open arms, this is decentralized, there's really no government interference, there's a finite amount of it, it's everything you want on the gold standard plus mobile and better, more secure and I wonder in your kind of travels,

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I know you do conferences, write books, you're doing podcasts, creating content, have you come across that maybe even the younger and older generation than us and I'll just loop myself in there with you even though I think you're a couple years younger than me, have you found that they're becoming a little more accepting of this or are they still kind of standoffish and bullish on the crypto and Bitcoin specifically?

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Yeah, and honestly, it is changing because there's people out there doing awesome work to help bridge the gap and to help people understand it better.

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I mean, there's a girl, Natalie Burnell, I mean, she's going on different Fox shows,

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I mean, just kind of basically helping people understand it, helping separate fact from fiction as far as things that get said by politicians like Elizabeth Warren, all kinds of people who want to bring up all kinds of and push back on Bitcoin in all kinds of ways.

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I mean, you had a number of Bitcoiners go on Tucker Carlson show, so the more that there's

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Bitcoiners kind of getting out there and explaining what Bitcoin is and what it isn't, I think people are becoming more and more open to it.

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I think specifically, and this is one of the things that I brought up with Doug in the podcast we did with him was stuff like the craziness that happened during COVID, during lockdowns, the stuff that happened with the

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Canadian trucker situation. When you start seeing just governments and politicians, whether it's state governments or national governments, whatever it is, leveraging the dollar banking system to punish free speech as a way to lash out at political opponents for holding different opinions that were normative and good up until five minutes ago.

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I think that's a value proposition for Bitcoin that people are responding to, and I think are just going to respond to more and more as that gets talked about more broadly.

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And so that's part of what we're trying to do is help people think about what are the implications of this?

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I said, one of the things I said to Doug was, hey, I know you guys have been saving for years to be able to build a building.

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They don't want to go into debt. They don't want to do all these things and praise God. But Doug preaches the full counsel of God's word.

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So Doug says things that in this day and age, it's not hard to imagine them getting debanked from whatever bank they're a part of.

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And the way that the banking system works is they can just snap their fingers and you're cut off from access.

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Now, can you get that back via the courts? Well, sure. But in the meantime, you don't have access to your money. And so just that reality of your money in the traditional fiat monetary banking system, your money doesn't belong to you.

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There's a lot of people just don't understand what's going on when they put their money in a bank. When you put your money in a bank account, you sign paperwork to say you're loaning that money to the bank.

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And while they're obligated to give it back to you at some point, they're not obligated to give it to you at the moment you want it.

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And so this is kind of what we... To talk about another recent thing that was in the news, you had the

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Silicon Valley Bank thing. These bank runs on these banks where there's nowhere near enough money in these banks for everyone to actually get the money.

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And that's a result of policies that were instituted during COVID. There are zero reserve requirements for any of these banks right now.

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So they don't have to hold any cash in their banks. Yeah. On top of already fractional lending for decades and decades.

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Yeah. A hundred percent. And so literally now, these banks are not required to hold any of your money in their physical locations because so much of what we do every day is...

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We handle and access our money digitally. So we use things like PayPal and we use our debit cards on websites.

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And we're not interacting with them. So I just think a lot of people are taking for granted that they understand the way that the monetary system works.

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And they're taking for granted the trust that they've been able to have in the past. And they're thinking they still live in that world, even though that world has set sail a long time ago.

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So Bitcoin represents one way to adapt to a new reality that we live in.

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And so I think the more Christians that understand it and the more Christians that see the value proposition of not as Bitcoin is this way that I'm going to make copious amounts of money, but Bitcoin is a way that I can surely have access to my money.

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I think that's going to be something that more and more people appreciate as the years go by. Well, not only surely have access to your money, but also have some religious freedom, the way it looks like it's going, like you mentioned.

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A hundred percent. Right to free speech. Even religious folks, even secular and atheist need to understand that they can be canceled.

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And by canceled, that can go to taking money out of the bank and stopping digital funds. I mean, you mentioned government's taking money from the

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Canadian truckers. Businesses were doing it. I think GoFundMe just took all the money and gave it to who they wanted.

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So you had private businesses. PayPal, exactly. PayPal, same thing. And I think the distinction we have to make too is once again, decentralized.

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I mean, Bitcoin is so scary to the U .S. government that Joe Biden signed some legislation last year and said, hey, we need to start looking into this as the

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U .S. government and switch over to digital. And it's like, well, I don't want to centralize digital currency. I want a finite amount of crypto like Bitcoin that's backed by such a crazy encryption process.

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It can't be duplicated and have a finite amount of that and have it decentralized.

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I think that Christians need to understand. And look, I know you work with people outside of being

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Christians, but especially I feel like we need to get it through to their heads that this isn't the enemy.

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This is, I think, a common grace, a blessing of the Lord, a reprieve, if you will, on the wickedness of this global world that's trying to take as much control as they can throughout countries.

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And here we've been offered a reprieve that says you have a complete autonomy, almost complete autonomy, I would say, when it comes to Bitcoin.

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Now, I think they're going to try to set some things up, gatekeepers and things like that, because it scares the crap out of them. When you can't control a currency, you can't control a people.

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100%. And so, again, that makes sense. And so that throws a lot of people off initially. They're like, well, they're going to gatekeep and they're going to keep it.

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But you don't have to go through gatekeepers. You can do peer -to -peer Bitcoin transactions the same as you do peer -to -peer cash transactions.

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And so I can use an app on my phone. And even if they shut down the app, there's things that I can buy that can allow me to transfer

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Bitcoin peer -to -peer in the same way that I would do with cash, in a way that gives me the same benefits of cash but in a digital form, decentralized form.

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And so, again, I just think some of this is just technological know -how.

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People think about Bitcoin and their eyes glaze over. And to encourage those people, if you look up videos from 15, 20 years ago, there were people talking about email and their eyes glazed over.

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There's people talking about all these things. And so this is just what happens always with technology. It initially seems impossible.

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And then five years later, it's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. You just take it for granted. Everybody's doing it. And so I just think, again, with Bitcoin, it just takes time for people to understand it.

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But the value proposition is 100 % there. This is what I want people to know, is

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John Huss, Martin Luther, Calvin, all these dudes, they would be using

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Bitcoin if they existed. Like cryptography, I'm actually in the process of writing a short book about some of these ideas.

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And one of the ideas is just cryptography is a gift from God. Martin Luther, he would be leveraging cryptography to the hilt because it allows him...

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If you think about what cryptography is, it's actually really profound from a theological level.

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If you think about what did Jesus do? Jesus revealed himself to certain people and not to others.

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He told the truth to certain people and not to others. Jesus told certain people who he healed, don't tell anybody.

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Don't tell people. So what is going on? Jesus is trying to... He wants to package the truth and give it to certain people at the expense of giving it to other people.

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This is where Arminians have lots of problems because it doesn't make sense. If your presupposition is, if you assume

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Jesus is trying to reach as many people at one time as possible, there's lots of things that Jesus does that don't make sense.

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So what I would say is cryptography does something very similar. Cryptography is designed to protect information so that certain people can access it and other people can't.

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This is a good and godly use for... It's a good and godly thing to do.

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This is prophecy. This is what prophecy is. God goes and talks to the prophet and reveals himself to the prophet, tells his plan to the prophet, and then tells the prophet to go and tell it to the people.

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God didn't just go to all those people. He sent the prophet to do it. So there's something very similar going on with cryptography more broadly where you can encrypt a message and send it so that nobody can access it unless they have the encrypted key.

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This is already being leveraged to send information into closed countries where it's illegal to be a

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Christian. The fact that we could apply this thing to money is an incredible gift that, again, if this was the revolution or the reformation, this is exactly the type of tool that the reformers would have used to get their message out across the world.

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Sure. If nothing else, to fund their trips out of the country away from the pope who was trying to burn them alive at the time, right?

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100%. And how are you going to pay your printing to get your books printed and all these other things?

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It's exactly the type of thing. Again, we look at Bitcoin. It's this strategic, timely tool that God has given us so that we can solve some of the specific challenges that we're facing right now.

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I don't think Bitcoin is the panacea. It's not the second coming of Jesus. It's not going to fix every problem, but it's a useful and good tool that solves targeted, very important issues that we really are facing.

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Okay. So outside of making content and promoting Bitcoin and educating, are you in the investing space at all?

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And maybe this will lead us into the conference that's coming up in May. Are you teaching people maybe how to invest with it at all or how to use it to make money?

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Or is it strictly educational in the way of how to start using it as a daily or weekly or monthly currency?

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Yeah. Basically, this is where people get like a, yeah, they just assume, they see, thank

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God for Bitcoin, their eyes glaze over and they're like, the level of cringe I cannot handle. And so we're like, okay.

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Again, we did it to provoke a response. We put that very somewhat cringe name on it. But no, our point is basically, we just want to help people understand what money is.

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What is money and why does that matter? And so that's a big part of this.

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It's people who you have people, you talk about theology and people are like, no, I don't want to talk about theology.

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I want to get down to the practical level. And of course, the practical is really important, but the theology matters.

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The philosophy, the ideas behind things matter. And them being rooted in reality is really important.

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And so that's the first part of our conference is going to be focused on that.

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I'm just talking about the philosophy and the theology behind money itself.

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What is money designed to do? And what does that have to do with the way that God has revealed himself and the way that God has designed the world?

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So that's primarily what we're doing. But then also, we are going to be providing a hands -on tutorial, basic tutorial of how to use

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Bitcoin. How do I buy it? How do I interact with it? How do

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I transfer some to somebody else? Again, a lot of the complexity, it seems super complex.

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And so people don't even get to step one. Our goal is to walk people through the step one, step two, step three.

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And then it'll be less intimidating for them to interact with something like Bitcoin. And then day two of the conference, we're going to be talking with groups of people who are using

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Bitcoin all over the world. And we're going to just be talking to them about why they and how they are using it in the different contexts that they're in.

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So for example, we're going to have one panel where there's going to be four missionaries on the panel. People who are actual missionaries today, helping people in the

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Middle East, helping people in refugee communities in the United States. There's going to be people who are all over the world using

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Bitcoin to further the gospel. We have another one where it's going to end up a panel for Bitcoin in churches.

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What does that look like? And so we have a couple, at least two ruling elders in PCA, Presbyterian churches who are

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Bitcoiners, who've been in Bitcoin for a long time. Again, who are not primarily looking at Bitcoin.

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They're not looking at Bitcoin like, this is how I'm going to get rich. It's no, let's think about Bitcoin as a, this is one part of a long -term diversified portfolio that is in some, in a very real sense, a type of insurance against what always has historically happened to fiat currencies, which is they go to zero.

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And so Bitcoin, talking about what is the role, how should churches and both pastors and the people making the economic decisions, the financial decisions with those churches, how should they, how can they think about Bitcoin as one part of what they're doing?

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So we're trying to do a balance of both, a balance of the philosophy of these things and the practical, tangible ways to implement them.

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So day one, more of the philosophy, day two, kind of the way to implement them. It sounds like this would be good for elders, pastors, leaders, business owners.

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I mean, if you are any of those influencing spaces to get information and to have it in Miami, it sounds like it's going to be,

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I'm looking at hail up here. Boy, if I could get down there, I would like to see the weather, see the friends and talk about crypto for a couple of days.

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You've got some awesome speakers. Yeah. And that's been something that honestly has kind of blown us away.

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So, I mean, we had some really good speakers last year. We had like Tim Tebow stop by.

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Again, Tim Tebow, he's not like the biggest Bitcoin guy, but so with him, we just were like, hey, let's talk about stewardship.

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Like this guy has more resources than the vast majority of us will ever dream about having. And so, and he's like very vocal about his faith and very vocal about trying to leverage the resources that God's put in his hands for God's glory and the good of people all over the world.

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So we talked with him. But in this case, this year, one of the people who I've, you mentioned him, one of the people

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I've been following for years, been a big fan of the podcast has been C .R. Wiley. Read his books, listened to a bunch of his podcasts and just really appreciated him.

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And so I just reached out and asked him if he'd be interested in coming. And he's like, absolutely.

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And so again, he's going to be speaking. He's one of our headline speakers. The other one we invited, and I think they were going to come, they would love to come, was

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Doug Wilson and Ben Merkel. I've spoken to Ben a number of times about New St.

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Andrews. New St. Andrews accepts Bitcoin. So I was talking to them, wanted to have them there to talk about the role of money and education and to have

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Doug just speak just more broadly. But Doug's grandson is getting married one of the days of the conference, so they couldn't be there.

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So hopefully next year we'll get him there. Yeah. No, it's so good. And you know, I mean,

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CR is such a, so learned, learned it. And when he comes on the podcast, he's got five different ways to look at things.

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I'd be really interested in his talk down there and how he's going to talk about Bitcoin and digital currency.

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And he's a bit, obviously he is a historian, not just in church history, but through, you know, throughout global history.

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So that, that is a good main speaker to have down there.

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But I mean, you're going to be talking, can you, can you give us a little hint that we don't want you to give away too much, but like, what are you going to hit on down there when, when it's your turn to talk?

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Yeah. So, so basically my, my talk is going to be on a theology of money. And so again, one of the things that I basically say all the time is just that people,

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Christians have done a fantastic job about talking about the morality of what we do with money. Like even in the last hundred years, like we talk about stewardship and we talk about, you know, using your ways or using the resources that God has put in your hands for, you know, for, for eternal purposes.

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Like where, you know, what do you, how can you, how can you invest the resources and specifically money that, that God has put in your hands to, you know, expand his kingdom, you know, to, to preach the gospel here, you know, all over the world, how, how can you do that?

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But there's another aspect of things that another aspect of money and, and something that Christians ought to think about when it comes to money that, that hasn't been talked about anywhere near as much over the over specifically like the last hundred years in the

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United States. And that's the ethics of the ethical concerns of money production itself. So what are the, what are the, what are the moral things?

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What are the moral considerations that need to happen when you think about you know, just like the creation of money itself.

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So why is, why is this matter? Because there's fundamentally, there's fundamentally two different ways throughout history that people have looked at money.

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One is that money is, is the prod, money is a product that, that has a cost associated with the production of it.

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And, and, and by having fixed costs associated with it it roots itself in the world that actually exists.

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Now here, that's all sounds highfalutin. Here's, here's, here's an example. So for, for a long time, gold and silver has been used as money.

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Now why? Gold and silver has properties that basically makes it, it allows, you know, it lasts for a long time.

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There's a relative, relative scarcity involved. It, you know, it's, it's easy to, to imprint a, you know, an image of somebody.

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It's easier to distinguish what is real silver versus what isn't, you know, a real silver or gold versus what is not real silver or gold.

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And so, and then the other, another side of this is that the gold and silver requires production costs.

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So I have to pay people to go out into the world, to dig up the gold and silver, to process it.

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I have to, you know, build machines or buy machines that help process, help that production process. So there is a, there is a relationship to put it in Christian parlance.

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There's a relationship between sowing and reaping. I have to actually sow real world effort, energy costs, whatever it is, in order to produce gold, gold currency or gold coins, or, you know, silver coins at the end of day.

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That's one way of looking at the world. The other way of looking at that, that has happened throughout time is that governments or central banks have said, we're going to create fiat currency, which is basically it's money that only has value because we say so.

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And so what that means is we're going to take this piece of paper that is literally, I mean, a frat can cost a fraction of a penny.

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We're going to take this piece of paper. We're going to put ink on it. And on some of them, we're going to put tens on another ones.

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We're going to put hundreds. What's the difference between the 10, the $10 bill and the, and the a hundred dollar bill really is just a little bit more ink is the only functional difference between the production of those two things.

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And what that does is fiat currency that, you know, paper fiat currency enables governments to expand their, their power and to create, to expand their power with very little cost.

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And so functionally, what that does is it allows governments to act like gods. It allows them to say, cause again, who, who creates value out of thin air?

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Only God, only God can speak. And then real tangible, valuable things are created.

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Governments can't do that. People are not gods, but fiat currencies have enabled governments to act like gods to functionally be gods.

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And part of what comes with that is by creating as much money, they can create as much money as they want to.

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And then by having that money, they can then go out and subsidize whatever message, whatever idea that they want to subsidize.

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So we see this in the form of, I mean, the transgender insanity, the, you know, the LGBT, all that, all that stuff.

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Why has that been able to, to, you know, those ideas, how have they gotten so widespread throughout the world?

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Well, it's because the United States has the ability to produce money, to incentivize those kinds of ideas.

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They basically, they reward people. You know, they, they create schools, the government, most people are educated in public schools.

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They give money to those schools and then they control what those schools teach. And so by, by doing that, you know, you're, by controlling and subsidizing certain messages, certain messages and ideas at the expense of others, you can, the governments are creating their own reality.

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They're creating a world according to their own image and their own likeness, whatever, whatever they want.

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It's a world where they're the gods ruling over it, who have ultimate authority in doing all these things.

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So again, those are two fundamentally different ways to look at the world. One looks at money and says, we are, you know, we who are creating the money, our people were created in God's image.

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We are stewards, not gods. And so we have to abide, but to create money, we are going to abide by the rules that God is, has designed the world with, which is the law of sowing and reaping.

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You know, in the, in the book of Galatians, the apostle Paul goes so far as to say, God is not mocked for what a man sows that will he also reap.

30:26

So Paul goes so far to say is that sowing and reaping is so hardwired into the world that to deny it is to mock

30:31

God. You know, we, we see Jesus saying, God will give to each one according to his works.

30:37

You know, we see that there's a relationship between sowing and reaping that this is, this is instrumental and instrumental part of, of God's designing the world.

30:45

Why couldn't, why couldn't God just forgive us for our sins? Why couldn't he just say your sins are forgiven?

30:50

Why did he have to send Jesus? It's because actions have consequences. Sure. And so fiat currency denies that reality.

30:59

It basically allows governments to, to reap where they haven't sown. And it allows governments to, to act like they are unlimitedly, you know, they are all powerful, omnipotent and, and can create whatever reality they want.

31:13

And so that has horrible, that has had and continues to have awful consequences here at home, here in the

31:19

United States, but also all over the world, it's, it's way worse because there's, there's lots of places that don't have a currency that's as widely used as, as the

31:27

U S dollar. And so, yeah, all these factors really, really make it very difficult on people around the world.

31:35

I would argue too, that they violate the 10 commandments too, when they inflate currency on purpose and steal value from me.

31:45

You know, money is nothing more than labor monetized. Labor is my time. And when you devalue or inflate through inflationary practices, the dollar you're stealing that from me, you're stealing time, which is the most limited resource that I have, or the most unknown resource.

32:01

Right. So I definitely see the argument against fiat currency. Cause I've been that I grew up in that family, right?

32:07

My father talking about why aren't we on the gold standard or what's going on? You know, so I vote, you know, and I said years ago, geez, we're just playing this big game where dollars are just monopoly money.

32:17

They're no longer backed by a federal note where I could, you know what was it? 50 years ago, go into the bank and say,

32:23

Hey, I want $1 worth of silver for this. It's a federal note that right. We're off of that. But what would you say to detractors as we, as we wrap this up here to detractors that might say, well, maybe crypto is the exact same way.

32:36

It's just has value because other people think it has value. We know that there's scarcity, you know, in, in the blockchain, but why couldn't someone argue, say, well, you know, gold or silver has a physical use in the real world.

32:51

Bitcoin doesn't, or crypto doesn't you know, you're just doing the same thing.

32:56

The fiat company's doing, but digitally, how would you, how would you argue against that? Yup. And again, it's, it's a, it's a question that makes sense.

33:04

But it's, it's misinformed in that basically there is something backing Bitcoin. The thing that's backing

33:11

Bitcoin is the, in the same way that when you produce to produce gold, you had to have the picks and the shovels and the guys, you had to pay them and you had to do all these things.

33:18

There's something very similar happening within, within Bitcoin, which is in order for Bitcoin to, to, to come into, to be issued, do you have to invest money in Bitcoin mining computers that you are using?

33:31

So they're, they're, the computers are real computers. So you have to buy the computers. You have to store them in a real physical place.

33:37

So you might have to pay a mortgage to, you know, a mortgage or buy the building where you're going to store them. You have to pay for the electricity costs.

33:45

So there's a real sense in which like there, there are real world, tangible, real world goods involved in the production of Bitcoin.

33:53

It seems weird because it's digital currencies, but it's rooted in, in real world goods.

34:00

So that's, that's the first thing. First thing I would say in terms of, in terms of the production, it's every bit as real as something like gold.

34:07

Now, again, at the end, what's the primary difference? You don't have something, a physical representation of all of that work.

34:15

You know, that is, that is the coin of gold itself, which that is both feature and bug. Okay. So gold's physicality, most people think of it.

34:22

Oh, that's a, that's a great thing. Well, in our church in Uruguay, half of our church were Venezuelan immigrants. To them, gold would be a liability if they were trying to bring their gold with them from Venezuela to Uruguay.

34:34

So again, they, they had to walk across the border. And when they walked across the border, there's all kinds of bad people who were, you know, who could rob you if they see you carrying, imagine if you're carrying a bag of gold or something like that, they're going to, they're going to rob you right away.

34:47

So there is a sense in which in some cases, depending on the threat model, gold's physicality is, is of a benefit.

34:54

There's other cases in which it's, it's, it's a problem. You know, it actually creates a, a threat model.

35:00

It creates a, a, a vulnerability. That's one of the reasons why vaults and banks were created in the first place.

35:07

You can't go around carrying around 50, 60, 70 pounds of gold a hundred years ago. And just to interject very quickly too if it really comes down to a situation, whether it be in a established country or in a, in a third world country or developing nation, as they say now what good is a block of gold really going to do me if I need food, shelter, water outside of being able to make some, you know, transistors in a computer with gold, isn't, isn't gold just another means of replacing a paper dollar or digital currency for exchange?

35:42

And it's much more clunky. So in a situation to where we have an issue where we have electrical outages or gas outages or, or something like that, like a catastrophic event, what, what is the,

35:56

I look at it and I've said this for many years and my father, he's kind of in a different camp. So we get into these arguments, who's better off the guy standing there with a, with a, with a, with a block of gold or a guy who has something that's fluid and digital and can be sent back and forth and they can both buy me water, shelter, food, whatever that is.

36:16

So I kind of see this antiquated, uh, gold and silver. Um, yeah. And again, yeah, you're, you're right.

36:24

And again, I, I am the most sympathetic person to gold. Like I think gold is, I'm not, I'm not here saying nobody should own gold.

36:30

Again, I think all of these things you're talking about, there's, there's situations in which they make sense and they're valuable. And I think like, if I, if I, you know, look at the trend toward the way that things are going,

36:40

I think gold is going to be, you know, going to be valuable. I guess it's still going to go up in value again, because if you're, it depends on what you're comparing it to.

36:46

If you're talking about versus us dollars, gold is going to do great. It's gold is still scarce. Well, most things were more scarce.

36:52

Yeah, exactly. But Oakwood probably Oakwood would probably get a hundred percent. Exactly.

36:58

A hundred percent. And so this, so if they just took, if they left the tree in its original form, you know, it'd be worth more than the paper it's written.

37:04

But yeah, I think another thing again, to the, to the value proposition again, because people were like, you know, they're initially it's, it's unintuitive.

37:15

It's not clear to a lot of people what Bitcoin's value is, but what is the value of having something, having access to something that I, that no person can, that I don't need a mediator for.

37:27

I don't have to, I don't have to trust my, I don't have to trust my Bitcoin to a bank and, and risk not being able to access it.

37:33

You know, this is all these people at that Silicon Valley bank. They, I mean, this is one of the biggest banks, like the 17th largest bank in the country.

37:40

This whole thing, of course, I feel safe with my money in there. And they felt safe until they didn't until they tried to go get their money out and their money wasn't there.

37:48

And, and like with Bitcoin, again, I can access it 24, 7, 365. There's no, there's no weekends for Bitcoin.

37:55

And so I can, I can access it. I can send it anywhere in the world. And there's nothing that anybody can do to, to intermediate that transaction short of coming to my door and, you know, and, and, you know, take it from me.

38:06

But even then, again, like I can, I can store my Bitcoin. I can store, I can memorize a 12 word passphrase and cross any border in the world.

38:14

And, and nobody knows I even have it. And then I get where I'm going. I, you know, put, plug those 12 words into a, into a

38:20

Bitcoin wallet and boom, I've got my, I've got access to my Bitcoin. It can transfer it, buy things, you know, whatever, whatever I need to do.

38:25

So again, I think a lot of the reason why people don't see the value proposition of Bitcoin is because they're, they're, they're living in a situation in which things, they think things are a certain way and they've, things have been, have, have had a certain level of trustworthiness and stability that is not just guaranteed to be there for all of time.

38:46

It's just. I mean, I don't, I don't think, I don't think the general population, I think it's getting better, but I don't think the general population understand how, how much we're teetering on the edge, how fragile the monetary system is.

38:58

Yes. You know, five or six years ago, I work in real estate and in commercial real estate,

39:04

I can go three or four months without, without receiving any type of commission check or money. And then have large amounts of money come in to where a bank will go, well, we have to hold a $75 ,000 check for this many days.

39:17

Right. And I might have to move large amounts of money around or withdraw them. And I remember five years ago,

39:22

I went to a, my bank, which is a national large bank. And they said,

39:27

Oh, we don't in this branch, we don't keep any more than $12 ,000 in the vault. And now I'm not, $12 ,000 is not a lot of money.

39:35

Now I understand it is a lot of money, but when I'm dealing with larger sums where I could move 10 or 20 ,000, you know, every couple of weeks,

39:43

I went, you gotta be kidding. Oh, come back in seven days and we'll order it and we'll have the brinks guy drop it off.

39:49

And this was five years ago. And I just went, Oh my gosh, this is such a fragile system. Yes. Um, and if anyone ever made run on banks, we saw it like S was

39:56

SV, like you were talking about is SVC, uh, SVB. Yeah. So we'll come back. Sorry. So I hope that people start listening to guys like you before it's too late.

40:07

They need to be before everything crashes or some, or a major crash of some sort happens.

40:12

And I'm not saying that we're not conspiracy theorists here. I mean, you talk to any, uh, you know, any, any mainline, uh, broker, anyone in the financial services, they understand how fragile the monetary system is.

40:25

Um, and I think that's why Bitcoin keeps hanging around. And I think that's why we keep seeing all these other cryptos that aren't real cryptos at all.

40:33

They're centralized. They can be traded. There's no limit to them. Doge coin and all the rest. We've talked about that before.

40:39

Those are joke. If you want to try to make a couple of bucks on them, go have fun. But that's why I think, um, you, you guys really promoting

40:46

Bitcoin. It is the moral currency. And it's kind of what you said, you're going to be talking about at the conference, um, about the theology of money.

40:53

And when I look at fiat currency, and then I look at Bitcoin, I see Bitcoin as a believer, as someone who believes in the inherency of scripture and the word of God, I go, well, that's the moral, uh, monetary system, not the fiat government ran, right.

41:08

Uh, fed federal reserve currency. Yeah. And, and again, and then I will be the first one. Like, that sounds insane.

41:15

Like when you first did that, like how in the world is Bitcoin a more moral, but that sounds crazy.

41:20

And, but, and, and again, it's, it sounds crazy, but it's not crazy in that again, what, what, how is anything moral and in the way, like one of the ways that, you know, one of the, okay.

41:31

So Romans one, one of the things that God says, this is what, this is what the wicked don't do. They refuse to acknowledge him as God or be thankful to him.

41:40

So what does it mean to acknowledge God? Like, what does that look like? It means to take account for how he has designed the world and submit yourself to that design.

41:51

It means, it means you don't just set aside. Like, so in that way, if that's what humility is, is submitting yourself to God, then arrogance would be setting aside what

42:00

God has said and setting up your own thing. And so literally that is what, like, that is what, that is the story of fiat currencies is governments setting aside any kind of thing that would restrain them in order to create a money that they control completely and can create ad infinitum.

42:20

And so this is, I mean, if, even if you just look throughout history, like hard money has been one of the things that's limited the length of wars.

42:29

You know, like one of the reasons why we haven't had endless wars throughout most of human history is because the, you know, the soldiers basically get to a point where they refuse to accept, like they, you know, diminish the money supply down.

42:40

So let's say they use silver coins. Well, they get to the point where over time, the, you know, this happened in Rome. It's happened all over the, all over the place where the rulers keep introducing more and more lesser metals into the monetary supply so that there's less and less silver, for example, in each coin.

42:56

We get to the point where people understand that this thing is worthless. This thing has no silver in it. And so it just becomes worthless.

43:04

And so like, this is, this is an example of the same kind of thing is happening with, with dollars.

43:10

It always happens with fiat currencies. It's happened. It's nothing new. It's happened all throughout human history. And, and the, just the, the speed at which it happens in the last days is just bonkers.

43:22

You know, people are like, oh, I see that prices have gone up in, in the last few years. Well, yeah, but the, the crazier thing is the reason why prices have gone up is because since 2020, when they were airdropping money to everybody, 40 % of all of the dollars that have ever existed were created in the last, in the last three or four years.

43:41

It's insane. 40%. I was like, there's no way that can be true. I'm like, there's no, it's a hundred percent true.

43:46

You can, you can look it up. Yeah. We've existed for almost 250 years as a country in the last two years, we've printed 40 % of our monetary supply.

43:55

Yeah. And, and so again, like the, the inflation, you know, people, you've, you hear people talk about, oh, we have a 2 % inflation target.

44:02

What's like, okay, well, I want you to think about what that means. So 2%, so if 50 years goes by, you've lost a hundred percent of what you're doing.

44:10

You've lost a hundred percent of your buying power. And so again, like a lot of these issues, they're hard to keep track of because they, they kill you.

44:18

It's death by a death by a thousand cuts. You know, they, if they, if they steal from you slowly enough, you don't really, you don't really object to it.

44:26

It's the frog in the pot analogy. You know, you just keep turning that, turn up the temperature a little bit at a time, and then you turn around and one day you're dead because you know, the frog is dead because he got accustomed.

44:36

He got used to the rising temperature until the point where he was unable to do anything about it.

44:42

And so again, so with, with Bitcoin, basically what we're, you know, we thank God for Bitcoin. The purpose of this conference is to help people think again, even if people walk away and they don't buy

44:51

Bitcoin, at least they'll have thought more about the nature of what money is and why that matters spiritually speaking.

44:57

Like if that's the only thing people took away in Bitcoin died tomorrow, that part would still have incredible value to people.

45:04

And then, but even beyond that, you know, if, if, if Bitcoin is going to continue to grow the way that it has, then having a tool that I, having a tool that enables me to send money from here, where I am in Florida to the

45:18

Middle East in 10 minutes with no, you know, with, with very little fee, with all these different things that, that, you know, is impossible to stop.

45:27

Like that's an incredibly valuable tool for this, for advancing the spread of the gospel. And so again, our, we're just trying to help people see

45:35

Bitcoin is, it's better money, whatever else you think about it. It's, it's better money. It has, it has, it has disadvantages.

45:43

Again, it's, it's electric. It's, it's all these things, but again, everything in this world, we're not trying to say

45:48

Bitcoin has no, there's nothing that can happen to, no, of course, Bitcoin is, is a tool and every tool has strengths and weaknesses and all these things.

45:57

So we, we're trying to help people think about Bitcoin as one part of a, of a broader strategy to help you deal with the, the real problems and risks, threats that are out there.

46:07

Bitcoin is one great tool. It's, it's, it's not going to be a replacement for a house.

46:13

It's not going to be replaced for, you know, you can't eat Bitcoin. So if you're talking about, if you're, for some reason, trying to force a binary choice, one or the other, well, then you should take the other.

46:24

But in the world that we live in, in the real world that we have, there's multiple threat models and we're trying to balance those threat models and have insurance in, in all of those cases.

46:34

And Bitcoin represents, you know, insurance for, for a number of those threat models. So. Awesome.

46:40

All right. Once again, as we wrap it up here tell everyone when, where, and why for the conference.

46:46

Yeah. Yeah. So basically we're if you go to tgfb .com you can find information about the conference there.

46:53

We have three different ticketing options. There's one, there's a two -day pass for the conference. The, the address and everything will be on the website as well.

47:02

But there's a two -day option. There's a one, a one -day ticket option. If you can only make, you know, either the 16th or the 17th or for folks like you know, our, our, our buddy, our, our dead man walking friends who are up in Michigan, we have a live stream option as well.

47:17

We, we invested heavily in a, a five camera setup basically to make everyone be able to feel like they're actually there.

47:26

It's going to be a super high quality, you know, setup. So we would love for you to, to, to be able to participate that way.

47:33

You can, again, I think Greg mentioned this in the, in the intro, but if you use promo code

47:38

TGFB23, that'll get you 15 % off any of the, the ticketed options. And we, you know, we'd love to have you there in Miami if you can get there.

47:45

And otherwise we'd love to, to just have you participate via the live stream. Awesome. Jordan, thanks so much for taking time out.

47:51

Every time you come on, it's very educational. I really appreciate the passion in which you talk about these things.

47:56

And I know that I'm not going to be able to make the conference, hopefully next year I'll schedule it, but I know it's going to be an awesome conference and we're going to make sure we link up everything we talked about.

48:03

So it'd be very easy for you guys listening to this. We scroll down anywhere you get your podcasts, all the links will be there.

48:09

Tickets, promo codes, all that good stuff where you can find Jordan as well too, on Twitter and social media and all those places.

48:16

Guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast. We appreciate you. And as always,

48:23

God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Dead Men Walking Podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips, or email us at deadmenwalkingpodcast at gmail .com.