Is the Love of Bitcoin the Root of All Evil?

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you know, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, which is basically just a nice way of saying, dude, trust me, that's pretty much what that is.

00:09

Yeah. Trust me, bro. It's a, it's a, that'll be the idiocracy version later.

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You know, like president Camacho will come on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those kids say, trust me, bro.

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Striving for superior theology and denominational unity. One joke at a time.

00:40

Your Calvinist podcast begins now. Welcome to your

00:50

Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey. And as always, I am your Calvinist. Today, we're going to be talking about a subject, which is on the minds of a lot of people.

00:58

A lot of people have questions, but not a lot of people have answers, but I'm thankful today to have someone with me who does have some answers for us.

01:05

I'm joined today by pastor Alan Armstrong, who wrote a book entitled the

01:11

Bible and Bitcoin. So today we're going to be talking about his book. I'm also joined today by the ever popular and always friendly, my not yet Calvinist friend,

01:22

Matthew Henson. We are contractually obligated to give that introduction that he is not yet a

01:29

Calvinist and yet we're still friends. Gentlemen, thank you both for being on the show today. I bet he prays like a

01:35

Calvinist though. Always here. Always happy to be not yet there.

01:41

So it's Zeno's paradox, Keith. You get halfway and then halfway and then halfway, but you never quite get there. Yep. Yep.

01:48

Well, gentlemen, thank you both for being here. And again, Matthew is going to be sort of like a co -host today for those who are watching.

01:54

If you're not familiar with the show, I normally host a show with a guest, but I invited Matthew on. He's very intelligent, young man, and has some, some interactions that we're going to have in regarding currency and the history of money and things like that.

02:06

So that's why Matthew's here. He's not being interviewed. He is part of the interview team today. He's helping me out.

02:12

And, and Alan is going to be the one that we are going to be interviewing. Alan is the author, as I said, of the

02:18

Bible and Bitcoin book available in both print and on audio. I was able to listen to it on audio.

02:24

It was less than two hours. So it was a, it was a quick listen and it was good. I really enjoyed it. And I found it informative and interesting.

02:31

I think it would be helpful for anyone, especially beginners who are looking to research the topic of Bitcoin.

02:39

But also just the history of money in general. That's one of the things we're going to talk about today because Alan, I think you did a really good job of just talking about what money is and where it came from.

02:51

As I said, I used your example in a sermon. So I think you did a good job of that.

02:57

Yes, I'm winning. We're winning folks. Well, good deal. Well, before we, yeah, yeah.

03:06

All I do is win. No, wait, wait. I can't. I can't. I'll copyright violation. I'll get in trouble. All right.

03:12

So before we get started though, with the questions, I do want to play a quick game, a little bit of a get to know you with Alan.

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I want to ask this question, Alan, this is a, would you rather question? Have you ever played? Would you rather? Oh, I'm going to regret this.

03:26

I think I'm going to regret this. No, no, no. Let's just go. Let's just do it.

03:32

All right. All right. All right. So if I were to, if I were to say to you today, okay, to prove that I've read your book in your book, you mentioned that the first ever

03:39

Bitcoin transaction was used to purchase two Papa John's pizzas. Is that correct?

03:45

Am I getting that right? Yes, that's correct. Okay. So today, well, I guess, I guess you could say the first commercial transaction.

03:53

Okay. Yeah, that's fine. But, but Hey, I read the book, right? I, I was, I was listening. Um, but today is

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January 17th, 2024, right? That's the year we're in. So 2024, if you had a choice to today, not, not way back then, but today, if you had the choice to be given $1 million in fiat currency, one, $1 million in fiat currency, or the money that was spent or the

04:18

Bitcoin that was spent on those two Papa John's pizzas, which one would you choose and why?

04:26

Oh man, you're making me do math on the spot. I told you I was going to regret this. Uh, I think

04:32

I, so it was 10 ,000 Bitcoins. I would take the 10 ,000 Bitcoins for sure.

04:38

Okay. All right. How much would that be worth today? When I say worth, you know what

04:44

I mean? What would it be worth if you were to, if you were to put that into... So Bitcoin last I checked was about 41 ,000

04:50

U .S. So 41 ,000 times 10 ,000 is, Matthew, you're the smart guy.

04:57

420. Well, actually I'm not smart in this case. I just have a calculator. $420 million. Yeah.

05:03

So that's, I'll take that. Oh, wow. Okay. So there we go. That's what I wanted to know. Right.

05:08

So, so if you could go back in time and you could, uh, you could pay for those Papa John's...

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I have literal dreams where it's like 2011.

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And in my dream, I think, oh my gosh, what year is it? And then it's like 2011. The first thing I do is go to a computer and get as many

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Bitcoins as I can. And then I wake up and I'm like, oh, it was just a dream.

05:32

Well, speaking of, uh, speaking of going back in time last week, I did a giveaway of two books, two devotional journals by John Calvin that were given to the show.

05:43

And the winners of last week are Ironica and Boris. They left the comments that I asked for, and I'm going to be sending those books out this week.

05:51

And I have one more of those books to give away. So the first person to answer this question, uh, in the comments will receive this week's book.

06:00

And this is, you have to listen to the whole conversation. Here's the question. Do you think investing in Bitcoin is wise, but only comment after you've listened to Alan's arguments?

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That's what you're going to comment today. If you think, uh, investing in Bitcoin is wise or not based on Alan's, uh, presentation today and what we're going to talk about.

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And you put that in the comment, the first person to put that in the comment, you have to mention something Alan says. If not, I'm not going to believe that you watched the whole thing.

06:28

You got to listen to the whole thing and then put your comment in the comments. The first person to do that will receive a, a brand new copy of a devotional journal by the man himself,

06:40

John Calvin. All right. So for just a second, we're going to split and we're going to switch over to, uh, our, uh, thing that we do every week now, which is reminding you of stuff that's important.

06:49

And we'll be back in about one minute. Hey guys, I just want to quickly say thank you for watching this episode.

06:56

And if you're enjoying it, please hit the thumbs up button. If you're not enjoying it, hit the thumbs down button twice.

07:03

Also, if you haven't already, please subscribe to the channel. It really helps us out. And some of you've asked about how to support the channel.

07:09

If you'd like to support us, you can go to buymeacoffee .com slash your Calvinist and leave a donation.

07:15

Most importantly, we want to make sure that everybody who hears this podcast, here's the gospel. The word gospel means good news.

07:22

And that good news has to be preceded by some bad news. And the bad news is this, that we are all sinners.

07:28

Sin is breaking God's law. So we stand guilty before the Lord of the universe. But the good news is

07:33

God sent his son into the world to pay the penalty for everyone who would believe in him. Jesus came into the world, lived a perfect life, and he died a substitutionary death for everyone who will believe.

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And he calls us all to repent of our sin, to turn from our unbelief and trust in him as Lord and savior.

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And if you've never done that, I encourage you to do so today. Now back to the show. So Alan, we're going to begin with the questions.

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Now I gave you these questions beforehand to give you an opportunity to sort of be prepared. And as I said, some of these may venture off into other conversations.

08:07

The first thing I want to say, one is in your book, I was very interested in the history of money.

08:13

And I'd like for you, if you could, just for the next few minutes, I'm going to turn it over to you. Can you give us a brief overview of what you said in your book about what the definition of money is?

08:24

Because when you asked the question in the book, you said, what is money? That was a question I hadn't really thought about. We've said the

08:31

Bible talks a lot about money, but how do we define what it is? Can you take a few minutes and do that for us?

08:37

Yeah. So like most believers, there's a lot of talk, maybe not a lot, but there's enough talk about money in Christian circles.

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But the irony is we never, or very rarely, I've never heard it spoken about, ask the question, what is money?

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We just automatically assume that the thing we use as money is money.

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And so in the book, I wanted to define money. And it was a lot harder of an endeavor than one might think, because I remember sitting at my computer going, okay, let's define money.

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And I'm sitting there going, well, like, what is it? There's so many different ways you could attack this question.

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And they're not necessarily wrong either. So I sat and I prayed and I was reading my

09:35

Bible and musing and meditating over this question. And the answer or the definition

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I came up with, I'm not saying I came up with this. I'm sure somebody else has said it in a similar way.

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But the one that I put on my computer screen, I was going to say pen to paper, but who does that?

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Was that money is a technology that humans use to store our time and energy in so that we can trade it for the fruit of someone else's time and energy.

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Does that make sense? And then throughout history, humans have used all different types of technologies, if you will, to store their time and energy in order to trade with other humans.

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You go through history, everything from beads to big rocks to ledgers of account, silver, gold, of course, seashells.

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And then there's so many other things humans have used to use as a medium of exchange in order to store their time and energy.

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And so, you know, there's not one. I don't think there's one super money or true money.

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You can really use anything as money. It doesn't matter. It's really a subjective thing. Some monies are better than others just because they serve the function of money better and humans have determined it's better, right?

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Obviously, gold is better than beads universally. I mean, there was a time where people making these beads, it was scarce and difficult to produce.

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But once Europeans came, were able to make it much quicker, flood the market with these beads and then introducing gold, you know, so eventually these things went out.

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But yeah, so that's just a brief, my brief definition of money and technology to store human time and energy.

11:37

Yeah, I like the idea of calling money technology. That was what really kind of resonated with me.

11:44

This is a storage of our time and energy, but it's a technology, as you said, and technologies do change.

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Matthew, do you have any thoughts before we go to the next question that you might want to ask or elaborate or anything? Yeah, I'll try not to just repeat what he said because he said it better.

12:01

And that doesn't, that just eats up more time. But so I was a econ and German double major back in college.

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And a lot of our history, economic history classes focused upon this very question. What is money?

12:12

What is currency? How do we get that kind of thing? And some of the examples that were just thrown out there about big rocks and seashells and stuff,

12:20

I know exactly which cases in which societies he's talking about, because those are covered in the same books that I read, which is,

12:26

I love the continuity there. But yeah, money is just the alternative to barter. I mean,

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I've got a cord of firewood and you've got, I don't know, a freezer full of meat and you want to trade and then you get firewood and I get meat.

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And that's the basics of human trade is you get a thing, I get a thing. What money does is it allows us to transact and it allows us to voluntarily exchange things that would ordinarily not be exchangeable.

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So a quick example is I'm an IT person by profession, but the product that I produce, small business

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IT services is not useful to Publix. Publix doesn't need me. They've got a corporate IT department.

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So ordinarily without money, I can't get food from Publix. But instead what I can do is

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I can trade my, as he said, my time, effort, and labor to other people who do need my services.

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And then the intermediate, the thing that facilitates it is given to me. Then I can take that and Publix wants that, then

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I can get food. And if you're listening to this and you're not from the South, you need to repent and come and enjoy

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Publix because it's beautiful and wonderful. And yeah, so, yeah. Alan, do you know what

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Publix is? Do you know what he's talking about? Unfortunately, I'm from the Communist Republic of Canada, so no.

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Oh goodness. Kick him out. Hey, we're transacting across national boundaries.

13:46

Congress has to regulate this conversation and probably tax it somehow, I think. No, but that's the thing is money is something that allows you to make a trade where there ordinarily wouldn't be the capability of doing that.

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It is the only alternative we have yet found to barter. And there's nothing wrong with barter. It's just barter is inefficient.

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And Keith as a pastor receives payment from his congregation to support the ministry that he does.

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But again, he can't go to the grocery store and preach a sermon and get free food. Most of the time. I don't know if that does happen.

14:19

That would be pretty cool. Hey, you know what? Give it a try. See what happens. They need the gospel, right? They may pay me to stop.

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They may offer me a bag of groceries. All right. If you'll just be quiet, we'll give you those groceries. So then there's a whole facade of other things built on that inflation and money supply.

14:36

And is it a gold standard or is it this and that and those are all terribly interesting. But at the end of the day, that's what it is.

14:41

It's the ability to make a trade. It is the technology that is used to make trades happen where ordinarily there wouldn't be trades happening.

14:48

And I'm going to say voluntary trades where they wouldn't ordinarily happen. Yeah. The way

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I understand this is that God created us in his image and he gave us the mandate.

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He defined what it means to be made in his image, which is to subdue the earth, to take dominion of it and so forth and to rule over it and really to expand

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Eden to the whole entire earth, to expand the garden, his rule, his reign through us, his royal stewards.

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And so money, the way I understand money is that money is the thing that scales that mandate so that we can multiply, be fruitful.

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And as soon as there's enough humans, I mean, the Adam and Eve economy was easy. It was just two people.

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There was no need of money. But as humanity expands and we begin to multiply, as God has told us to do, we need something to scale that mandate so that each imager of God is compensated for their contribution in a fair, just way.

15:57

And that's what money is supposed to do. Yeah. And one of the things you do talk about in the book is the idea of fairness and justice in regards to finances, because as we're going to talk about in a moment, what we have now in our currency, there is not a lot of justice in regards to how inflation happens and things like that, because just like the people produce more beads and therefore the beads are worthless.

16:21

Well, when more dollars are printed and there's nothing backing them and there's nothing limiting how much can be printed, then the same thing happens.

16:28

We have a currency that becomes less and less valuable. And so that's going to move into the second question, actually, because in the book, you really seem convinced,

16:41

Alan, that the current monetary system in the United States, and forgive me if I'm saying it incorrectly, but it seems like in the book you said that you believe the current monetary system is inherently ungodly.

16:54

Yes. And you're shaking your head yes, I'm assuming I said that. I'm not misrepresenting you. Can you explain why you believe the current monetary system as it is now, maybe not as it was 50 years ago or a hundred years ago, but as it is now is ungodly and why that is?

17:09

There's several reasons, but I guess fundamentally the main reason why

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I would suggest that is because the current monetary system is built on debt and fraud.

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Basically. So, you know, the way dollars are created is debt.

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The dollars are debt. And so that's, you know, number one, the

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Bible warns us against debt itself. But when the money is debt, what do you do? How do you escape it?

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The money in your account, you may not be in debt to someone, but that money was created as debt.

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And so it's basically fraud. You look at the way that banks work with fractional reserve banking, where they only have to hold a fraction of reserves.

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I mean, these terms might seem intimidating, fractional reserve banking.

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What does it mean? Well, it just means what it says it's fractionally reserved. And I don't know if this has changed.

18:13

I haven't gone and looked, but in March, 2020, they used to be a 10 % reserve.

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So they have to hold 10 % of your reserves, the other 90 they could lend out and create more money with.

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But in March, 2020, the Fed lowered that reserve limit to zero. So I don't know if they changed it.

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I doubt it. Because usually when governments do something like this, it's permanent. But anyway, so that reserve limit went to zero, which is total insanity.

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Which means of the money that I have in my account, they don't have to have any of it on hand. It used to be if you put $100 in the bank, they hold 10 and they can lend out 90.

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But now they can lend out 100 % of it, which is,

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I mean, 10 % was irresponsible enough, but imagine not having to hold anything, which is the current state,

19:12

I think. And they might have changed. But last I checked, that was the situation. Because when the pandemic happened, it was to ensure financial stability or whatever

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PSYOP they wanted us to believe. So that's the thing. And building on that, there's other reasons, such as this system that is able to quite literally create as much money as they want, prolongs things like war.

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I like to think of or understand a dollar as a war money, because it literally allows the

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United States to go to war forever if they want to fund. There's no limit to the funding of war.

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Had we had a monetary standard that was limited in supply based on some standard, wars could only last until the treasury is empty and then it's over.

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But with this system, wars can literally last forever. And we see this type of thing, right? Like Joe Biden takes

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US out of Afghanistan, total disaster. But who cares? Just print more money. Yeah.

20:26

So with that in mind, well, let me just ask, Matthew, did you have anything you wanted to ask or say in regard to that?

20:32

I saw you shaking your head a few times as if you were agreeing, especially on the fractional reserve things. They seem like you, yeah.

20:38

Well, I mean, if we've seen It's a Wonderful Life, right? The famous bank run scene where George Bailey is trying to explain to everybody.

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They're like, no, I have $1 ,000 or whatever the amount is in deposit at this bank and I want it. And he goes, well, it's not here.

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He borrowed it to build his house and he borrowed it to buy a truck for his business. And he did this and he did that and whatever.

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And he's trying to quell a bank run. And it's sort of this sort of, not campy, but it's just sort of this small town.

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He's doing it based on his charisma to just kind of, as the town banker, get everyone to just take a breath, you know, and they barely managed to keep the doors open with like $10 left or whatever, you know, as the story goes.

21:16

But that's fractional reserve banking. Now, I think most people would probably agree that if a bank is going to make money, the way banks make money primarily is they loan money out at interest and then they pay money on deposit.

21:31

They pay interest on deposits and there's a gap there. If you put your money into the bank and you get a 1 % rate of return on your savings account, the bank then goes and loans it out at four or five or six or eight or whatever.

21:42

And they make money on the difference. That's the basics of how banks make money. Nowadays, it's a far more complicated than that.

21:48

They're doing credit default equity swap, nonsense investments that are the whole thing that caused the 08 financial crisis.

21:55

There's a whole bunch of other gobbledygook in there. And part of, it's not a bug, it's a feature that it's all what's obfuscated, that's the word.

22:05

But in essence, fractional reserve banking needs, in my opinion, and I'm free to let our guests disagree, it needs to exist in some capacity or else the modern concept of a bank does not exist.

22:18

And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we come up with something else entirely, but the idea of a bank not keeping 100 % of their deposits on hand is kind of necessary if they are to loan out money.

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Now, I'm very much staunchly against personal debt myself, so we don't do debt ourselves aside from a mortgage, which we're working on.

22:37

But other than that, I understand the arguments there. But I will say what was just said about setting that limit down at 1 % or 0 % or whatever is incredibly irresponsible because what's to stop them from just loaning out all of the money and having none on hand?

22:57

And you'd say, well, federal regulation. Yeah, but if they go bust, they get a bailout anyway. So what in an incentive -driven market is stopping them from loaning out the most recklessly because they know that shoot for the moon, whatever, if all these people default, you're just going to get some

23:12

Washington or Bank of Canada money. Yeah. If you were always assured that you're too big to fail, then there's no incentive for you to be responsible at all.

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Imagine if you're a teenager and you know that your father will always bail you out.

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He believes you're too big to fail. You're going to go rack up credit card debt.

23:40

You're going to do whatever you want because you know your dad's going to sweep in and bail you out. This is what's happening, except on a, you could even argue a global scale because the

23:48

US dollar is the world reserve currency. And what you said earlier about war is just to give a quick note on that.

23:54

There are some generals, I think Patton, maybe Douglas MacArthur or a couple of others said that at the end of World War II, we should have just kept marching east and take out the

24:02

Soviet Union while we have the chance and all that. Truth is we couldn't. We were broke. Almost all of the

24:08

World War II propaganda you see says what? Buy war bonds. I was just fixing to say about the war bonds.

24:15

We don't hear about that anymore. Why? Because we don't need it because we can print money. Yeah. Buy war bonds because the basic war bond was you give the government $18 and in five years, they'll give you back 25.

24:26

That was a war bond. They were sold in sets and you could get different denominations. But when people said,

24:32

I bought four war bonds, that's what they meant. You would pay 18 times four and you would get back $100 when it was all said and done.

24:40

By the end of World War II, May of 45, and then the war lasted, of course, with Japan until August.

24:48

We were kind of broke. We didn't have any more money to build any more ships or anything like that.

24:54

And the government did not just have a magic money printer lever because we were still on the gold standard at the time. They couldn't just make more money.

25:00

They had to ask the citizenry for it. And that's why, again, all of the propaganda, we didn't need to convince the people that this was a just war, it was a right war, any of that.

25:10

It was, give us your money because we're broke and Uncle Sam needs more bombs.

25:16

Keep them fighting and whatever. Now though, there's no gold standard.

25:22

There's no reason. Just print more. We'll just figure it out that way. Or just go further into debt, as the case may be. Yeah. And that leads to the third question.

25:31

Alan, you in your book, you use the phrase fiat currency. You've used it a few times already today.

25:37

And I think all three of us have said it. When we talk about the gold standard, we talk about fiat currency.

25:44

Can you tell us what we mean by that and what the danger is of having one versus the other?

25:52

Well, with the gold standard, there was only so much gold that there was in existence.

25:59

You could always mine more. That's a big job. It's costly.

26:06

Again, you have to put in energy, real world energy, in order to extract that gold, which is why it's valuable because human beings invested time and energy into getting that.

26:19

So it holds its value, at least theoretically. And like we just talked about, it limits what governments can do.

26:28

There's only so much gold. There's only so much paper notes that can represent that gold.

26:35

So that's all that it was. It was just that you had a paper bank. It's what they call bank notes. And that note represented so much value in gold.

26:46

And so it just was basically an intermediary because people didn't want to carry around a bunch of gold with them.

26:52

It's heavy. It's cumbersome. It's dangerous. You can lose it. It's easier just to have a bank centralize the supply, print some notes.

27:00

And then if you want your gold, you can just simply trade your note in for that gold. And that system works fine for a bit.

27:07

But the temptation to print more than you have in reserve was just too, too much for people.

27:16

Because eventually that's what happened. They began to print more than they had. Then they got in trouble because, well, eventually it catches up to you.

27:26

And, you know, 1971 happens. Nixon basically captures the gold.

27:32

And he says it was a temporary thing. But as I think Milton Friedman said,

27:38

I quote the guy in the book said, there's nothing so permanent as a temporary government decree.

27:46

So, you know, he said, this is a temporary thing to stabilize the dollar.

27:51

Don't believe the speculators saying anything different. But as we can see from 1971 to today, that gold standard never returned.

28:02

And that U .S. dollar supply has just kept growing and hasn't stopped.

28:11

Now, you believe, I mean, based on the book, you're very convinced that the answer to this.

28:19

And finally, I know people have been listening to us for 27 minutes and they're like, hey, they haven't talked about Bitcoin yet. And this whole show is supposed to be about Bitcoin, but I haven't really mentioned it.

28:26

But the reason why is because I'm sort of doing what your book did. Your book doesn't start with Bitcoin. Your book starts with the problem, right?

28:33

It starts with here's the issue. And I think at this point, all three of us, at least as semi -intelligent males, would all agree that there's a problem, right?

28:45

That there is an issue with where we are. And you're convinced, at least based on the book, you are convinced that the solution is not necessarily cryptocurrency in general, but Bitcoin specifically.

29:02

And so what makes you believe that the problems that we have just suggested, which are fiat currency and the hyperinflation based on the printing of money, which no longer has the value that it once did, and it will eventually have no value at all.

29:18

Why do you believe that Bitcoin is the, and here's the way I wrote it in the questions, the godly alternative, because that's an argument you make.

29:26

You don't just make the argument that it's the better or more financially stable or safer. You believe it's the godly alternative.

29:32

And that's what I want to hear you make your case for. Yeah. So as we discussed, the fiat monetary system or network, you could say, is built upon this sort of fraud.

29:46

And it's basically like, look, God's monetary policy, let's talk about that first. What is God's monetary policy?

29:54

It's very simple. This is what you learn when you're a kid.

29:59

My young, young children have already learned this. They're not even 10 years old yet.

30:05

They're not even six years old yet. They have learned this. Simple. They know

30:10

God's monetary policy. And this is what it is. You shall not steal. That's it. That's God's monetary policy.

30:17

You can extrapolate that out, but boiled down to one statement, you shall not steal, is

30:22

God's monetary policy. So what you have in the fiat system is a system built on theft, theft through inflation, primarily.

30:31

Now, this is a stealth theft. It's very cunning and very in the back door, because you might look in your bank account and go, well,

30:38

I still have $1 ,000. But they've stolen money from you by inflating the supply because that $1 ,000 no longer gets you what it used to.

30:49

So this is a sort of theft that is very deceptive.

30:56

Now, excuse me. The reason I think Bitcoin is the more godly alternative is because of its fundamental properties, the rules of the network.

31:08

So Bitcoin has a supply cap, 21 million Bitcoins. That's it.

31:14

So this thing cannot inflate. It's stuck at 21 million.

31:19

Now, there's a supply issuance. So it's not like 21 million Bitcoins just exist now, but they're slowly being programmatically issued.

31:28

But we know the final outcome is 21 million. We know the supply. So if you own one

31:36

Bitcoin, you own that Bitcoin. That's the percent of the monetary network you have.

31:42

And nobody can take or inflate or debase that slice of the supply of the money you have.

31:50

So it's inflation proof and no one can steal the value from you from that Bitcoin or whatever percentage of the network you own or have access to.

32:03

Also, it's borderless. It's open. It's transparent.

32:09

It's censorship resistant. Nobody can stop you from using it. I mean, someone can put a gun to your head.

32:16

But, you know, generally speaking, there's no intermediary that you have to go through in order to use this money.

32:24

You can just access it from anywhere in the world. So I'm just thinking off the top of my head.

32:31

Oh, the best and my favourite function of Bitcoin, why I think it's the more godly system, is because it separates.

32:39

This is the best part. It separates money from the state. We've heard of separation of church and state, and we know that the separation of church and state is not separating

32:51

God from state, right? It's not that we're not saying that the church should not influence the state.

32:58

What we're saying is the state should not influence the church. So with the separation of money and state, what you're doing now is you're taking money, monetary policy, the supply of it, the rules of it, and you're separating it from humans and putting it into a computer, a mathematical protocol of code.

33:20

And math and code doesn't lie. So it's a system of truth without humans being able to influence it.

33:31

So that's by far my favourite part of Bitcoin. You could say, and I know it's a stretch maybe for some people to say this, but you could say

33:38

Bitcoin separates money from sin because it separates it from humans.

33:46

Well, that leads to a lot of questions, but I do want to... just one thing that sort of came up while you were saying that.

33:54

You're saying Bitcoin is limited to 21 million. If you own one coin, is that one of 21 million or is that a percentage of one coin out of that 21 million?

34:06

How does that work when you own a Bitcoin? So one Bitcoin is divisible into 100 million parts.

34:15

So think of it like $1 is divisible into 100 cents, right? So you have $1 can be broken down to 100 cents.

34:25

You have one Bitcoin can be broken down into 100 million, what's called satoshis or sats.

34:34

So you have 21 million Bitcoins, which - Sounds like a

34:39

Bond villain, just going to say satoshi. Sorry. So you have 21 million

34:45

Bitcoins, which can be broken down into 2 .1 quadrillion sats, which are the...

34:52

Yeah. So - Okay. So that seems to me, and again,

34:58

I'm just pushing back because I don't understand. It seems to me like that's a reverse type of inflation.

35:04

You can go backwards and get to the point where one Bitcoin can be divided up 11 billion times.

35:12

And then therefore, what's the 11 billion pieces, the sats, the

35:17

Bond villain, what are they worth? Well, so it's easy. So if one

35:23

Bitcoin is worth, I don't know, $100, then you would be able to find out the value of the sat by just taking the $100, dividing it by 100 million, or maybe the other way, and then you would know the price of one sat.

35:43

Okay. Is that how the - It's like there's 100 pennies in a dollar. He's just saying that's just the smaller denomination.

35:49

Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. So it's divisible by, one Bitcoin is divisible by 100 million.

35:58

Okay. So with that in mind, well, first I'm going to leave Matthew out. Matthew, you have a question that you might want to ask or anything at this point you want to throw in?

36:09

Well, so I do agree with the technical description of it. And what's funny to me, and I'm sure that we'll have a good laugh about this, but when people say, well, what is a

36:21

Bitcoin worth? The first thing we think is, well, $42 ,000 or whatever. All right. So we've just used a currency that does not have anything tangible backing it up.

36:31

And to give it a value, we've referenced another currency that does not have anything tangible backing it up.

36:38

So it's like when people assume that the US dollar is more real or something than a

36:45

Bitcoin and in a sense of exchangeability and in universality of the locations in which we can use it,

36:53

I suppose that's true. But there's fundamentally nothing different backing it than a

37:00

Bitcoin. Every bank note you have in your pocket, and now my wallet's somewhere else.

37:05

There it is. A federal reserve note says, backed by the full faith and credit of the

37:12

United States government, which is basically just a nice way of saying, dude, trust me. That's pretty much what that is.

37:19

Yeah. Trust me, bro. It's an IOU. That'll be the idiocracy version later.

37:26

President Camacho will come on. Yeah. President of America. Yeah. I mean -

37:31

They'll still say, trust me, bro. So I've said this before, especially during COVID. I said, we have outsourced our critical thinking to entities which have an incentive to do it poorly.

37:41

And as far as monetary policy, we have outsourced the creation of our system of exchange to entities which have an incentive to do it poorly.

37:51

So I completely understand and agree. If I were to offer some pushback, biblically, it would be this.

37:59

There's, of course, the famous encounter Jesus has with the Pharisees. And when I say that, there's like a million of them because he's always schooling them because they never learn.

38:08

But the point is, where he's asked, should we pay the tax to Caesar or not? And Jesus doesn't get into a discussion of monetary policy or theory or whatever.

38:17

He says, whose picture is on the coin? Caesar's. And he says, give to Caesar what's Caesar's and give to God what's God's. Now, there's a bunch of different ways you can exegete that passage.

38:25

The only thing I would say, though, is that Jesus holds up what is the legal tender for that society.

38:32

And I don't want to say he blesses it or he sanctifies it or anything like that, but he at least doesn't throw it over his shoulder and say, this is an oppressive evil system from a central bank in Rome or whatever.

38:44

He holds up the denarius and he says, yeah, use this and give it to Caesar. Transact with this, essentially.

38:52

If that's the case, is there at least a biblical permissibility to government -issued currencies, would you say?

39:00

That'd be my question. Well, the thing with the denarius was that it was still a silver coin and there was only so much silver that Caesar could print his face on, right?

39:14

So, even if you had a bare piece of silver, it would still be accepted in Rome.

39:21

It's like an ingot. Yeah. Caesar would just take it and put his face on it, right? So, I mean, if you could put your face on, well,

39:32

I guess you can put an image on the Bitcoin blockchain if you wanted. If you were somehow able to get every

39:38

Bitcoin in existence, you could put your face on every transaction, I suppose. New goal achieved.

39:44

Yeah. Achievement unlocked. Even with Caesar's image on the coin, there was still a separation to some degree of state for money because it was just a metal, right?

39:59

So, yeah. I'm not going to get into that passage in my interpretation because we'd be here for an hour.

40:05

I'd have to preach a sermon, but I do have, if you're interested on the website, there is an article about that.

40:12

I'd like to because I've heard some incredibly poor exegesis on that passage and what it means.

40:17

Well, you know what? You can hear my poor exegesis. No, no, no, no. What I'm saying is it's application phase.

40:25

Heresy always shows up in application phase. I'm just convinced of that. But I would love to read that because I've seen some wildly contradictory stuff on that.

40:33

So, thank you for doing the work on that. I intend to. Well, it was that very passage that I was preaching two weeks ago that I mentioned your book.

40:42

So, there you go. I was in Mark chapter 12, and I thought it was interesting that when

40:50

Jesus says that the image of Caesar's on this, and then what I think you mentioned in the book about God's image being on us,

40:58

Alan, and the fact that rendering to God the things that are God's is the thing we often don't think about.

41:05

We often fight about the first part, render under Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but we don't think about the second part, which is what is

41:11

God's, us. We belong to God. So, I thought that was a good point that you made.

41:18

So, and correct me if I'm wrong, though. So, this is really where the difference lies in Bitcoin versus Dogecoin, or that's really the only other one

41:31

I know, and that's because of Elon. But you would say the difference with Bitcoin is because like silver or gold, it's limited?

41:44

Well, I mean, it's not hard to create a cryptocurrency. I mean, you could literally just copy and paste the

41:52

Bitcoin source code and just change the name and be like, boom, it's, you know, whatever.

41:59

It's Keith Coin or whatever. You can change it. I'm investing. Have some money, Keith. I'll buy some. You can change the supply issuance.

42:07

You can change any part of it. But at this point, the cat's out of the bag about blockchains and how those things work, right?

42:18

And that's why you see there's so many of them out there. I think that the key difference or the way

42:23

I like to view it, Bitcoin and then all the others, is sort of like the internet or another digital network you could think of, but the internet's the first one that comes to mind, is that even if somebody came up with a different network that we could exchange ideas on, the internet has already taken so much of the market, the network effects.

42:50

The other one's not going to catch up. And I mean, that's one thing. But I think maybe the best argument for Bitcoin only is that the way in which

43:00

Bitcoin was released, created and released, is unique.

43:06

It cannot be duplicated. It's one of a kind. So the story behind, I'll try to be as quick as I can here, but the story behind the creation and release of the

43:16

Bitcoin software is absolutely fascinating. It has fascinated me for these years

43:23

I've studied it. And it's just every time I think about it, I'm like, wow, I can't believe this is real life, that this actually happened.

43:29

So the creator of Bitcoin, his name is Satoshi Nakamoto. He's a pseudonymous person.

43:35

Nobody knows who he is. But that's where they got the name Satoshi. He is the Bond villain. He's the

43:41

Bond villain. Yeah. So they named that Satoshi after the creator or the collective community did because nobody really, there's no

43:51

CEO of Bitcoin or anything. So this unknown individual,

43:56

I think it's an individual, some think it was a team of people, but anyways, created

44:01

Bitcoin, wrote up a white paper, released it and said, here, I have this idea for this peer to peer digital cash and then released the software.

44:11

I think it was in January 2009. He released it into the wild and he mined his own coin.

44:21

So he didn't give himself any Bitcoins. He had to participate in a network just like everyone else. And it's a distributed network.

44:28

So there's no central hub or computer that's running that network. It's a many, many computers all running it together.

44:36

So he releases it and then he disappears. And Bitcoin either lived on its merits or died on its merits.

44:47

And just through natural market processes, Bitcoin has went from a soft, a computer software that was released by some guy, nobody knows who just disappeared after a few years to becoming what it is today.

45:01

So it was an organic thing. There was no corporation behind it. There was no funding behind it.

45:06

It was just a guy created a thing, released it and disappeared. And here we are. So because it was released that way without venture capital funds, without any sort of, it was just an organic thing that happened.

45:21

And here we are today. There's a lot more that can be said about it, but that's my main argument for why

45:27

Bitcoin only, because it had a pure release. Put it that way.

45:34

Preston Pyshko All right. I want to kind of get into a few other questions and I want to put myself in the seat of the person that I can imagine who, like my dad, who might hear this and my dad listens to my show.

45:52

So he will certainly hear this. Hi dad. I'm glad that he listens. He's going to hear this.

46:00

He's 76 years old now. I think. And when he hears words like digital currency, especially the word crypto currency, that sounds very intimidating.

46:15

And I admit for me, I don't know. I think you and I may be about the same age,

46:21

Alan. I'm assuming I'm 43. You don't have to announce your age, but I'm assuming you look like a little younger.

46:28

You don't have enough gray in your beard yet to be in your forties, but maybe. I'm almost there. I'm almost there. Okay. Well, like one of the things that cash can be comforting because I can hold it, right?

46:43

Like this is a real thing, right? Like when he reached in his wallet and he pulled out that green bank note, as much as I know that inflation is reducing the value of it,

46:53

I know that I can take that down to my local gas station and I can do the things that I need to do with it.

47:04

Someone seeing the word digital makes a person,

47:09

I think, feel less comfortable and more intimidated. And then phrases like, and I put this in the notes that I sent to you, phrases like mining, sounds almost artificial.

47:20

There's no one with a pickaxe that's doing this, right? These are words that we're taking from other places and we're putting it on this.

47:29

So how do you, I mean, you have a church, you have people that you have to answer to, like how do you make people feel better if they're asking you,

47:36

Hey, Pastor Allen, you wrote a book on Bitcoin. You think we should invest in this, but I'm uncomfortable. All right.

47:42

So there you go. Okay. So it's like, wow. That's a lot.

47:47

Yeah. Yeah. Some of it is comical too, right? Because, and I get it, I totally get it.

47:53

There's going to be hesitancy and stuff like this. And it's understandable. It took me a very long time to get

47:59

Bitcoin. So, you know, I had all these questions too. But if we think about it, like, you know, terms like mining and things like this, the same sort of thing has happened with technologies that are mainstream today, like email.

48:13

Well, is it mail? Right? It's not really mail. It's, we're just taking a concept from the world and applying it to a digital thing to try to explain what it's like.

48:25

You know, I always laugh on the cell phones. There's the icons, right?

48:31

And you got icons like the phone icon, right? If you ask a kid today,

48:37

I don't know if you might be able to see it. Probably not. No, you can't. But the phone icon, it's like one of those rotary phones.

48:44

Ask a kid today, hey, what's this icon? And they'll say it's a phone, right? But if you show them like they don't, they don't make that connection.

48:52

But you know, nevertheless, there it is. So, yeah, here's what

48:58

I think people need to understand about Bitcoin. It's a technology that we haven't had before.

49:03

It's a brand new sort of concept. And there's definitely a learning curve around it.

49:11

And at this point, it's just a matter of whether you're willing to take the time to understand it.

49:17

It's like that when the internet was new in the 90s, how many people took the time to really figure out

49:23

TCP, IP and all this kind of, not many, a few did, but not many. Matthew's the one and that's how he makes his living now.

49:33

Slowly raising my hand. So, I mean, but here we are, all of us now using the internet, using that protocol with other layers of protocols built on top of it to have this conversation.

49:49

So, yeah, it is intimidating. It is a brand new thing. There's a huge learning curve.

49:55

But I've discovered that as I've used Bitcoin, and I never tell anybody, hey, you should buy

50:01

Bitcoin, like take your dollars and buy Bitcoin. What I do tell people is, especially Christians, is put the time in, understand the technology, and if you have conviction, then buy

50:13

Bitcoin. If you have no conviction, if you have no understanding, don't buy Bitcoin. Because the first sign of a dip or a 10 % loss, you're going to get scared and you're going to sell it.

50:25

But if you understand it, if you have your conviction in it, for me, Bitcoin is not a monetary tool to enrich me.

50:32

I believe in it from first principles, from a moral perspective. I think it's a more moral monetary system.

50:39

And so I want to fight for it for a better future. And I understand that it's going to do this.

50:46

I understand I might lose 70 % of my purchasing power as we did in 2022.

50:53

But I knew that going in, and I'm willing to hold through the ups and through the downs. So if you don't have that conviction, first get that conviction, first learn, and then buy some.

51:04

But yeah, so that's what I would say. It's a learning curve. You're going to have to put time to learn and figure it out now, or I believe in the future.

51:13

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing about all this is, and why I do encourage people to get your book, because you're really just trying to educate people on what this is and why it has caught your attention and why it's getting...

51:27

You've obviously made an investment, so you believe in it. And I do appreciate the fact that you did say, you're not out there telling people what to do with their money.

51:37

You're just saying, this is what I think is a godly solution to a problem that you're seeing.

51:45

And that's your thought. Matthew, did you have a thought or a question about what we just...

51:50

Yeah. My first interaction, and maybe this should have gone more towards the start of the show, but I think it's useful now about kind of getting familiarity with it.

51:57

My first interaction with cryptocurrencies was in 2014, I want to say, when I was back in college, maybe 13, something like that.

52:04

Turns out that would have been a great time to get invested in Bitcoin, but I didn't. I didn't fully understand how

52:10

Bitcoin worked, but I did find some forum posts about some of these, what they call altcoins, which are like we were talking about earlier,

52:16

Dogecoin and Ethereum and various other ones like that. And I was at a dorm room where room and board covered unmetered power.

52:24

And I had a nice gaming computer with a decent graphics card. And I said, what the heck, let's give it a go. And so I left it just whenever I wasn't using it, it was just sitting there mining, which just means doing math problems over and over again.

52:34

That's what mining is. It's just a piece of computing hardware doing a math problem over and over again with slightly different iterations.

52:41

And I had to download like two or three pieces of software and put a code here and a code here, hit paste and go.

52:47

And they would all talk to each other and all that. And then within like, it took a couple of months because my

52:52

PC wasn't all that powerful, but I had earned enough of this altcoin to then transfer it and convert it to Bitcoin.

53:01

And then this Bitcoin, which is probably worth thousands at this point, who knows whatever, but I transferred it out into US dollars because there was a particular online electronics retailer that was selling a part

53:11

I wanted for my PC. And I thought, okay, this is just like the Terminator. My PC is self -replicating now.

53:17

It has mined the currency needed to purchase its own upgrades. This is a little, but I bought an upgrade for it with that.

53:23

And then as time has gone on, the hardware required to mine any appreciable amount of cryptocurrency has gotten pretty ridiculous at this point.

53:32

So I haven't really dabbled with it since then, but I had a basic understanding of like, when you do this for a couple of months and then you click some buttons and then a new piece of tangible hardware shows up and you didn't pay any dollars for it, that was pretty cool.

53:46

I thought that was pretty neat. Another thing I would just say is my dad helped me understand what it was to invest in the stock market early on.

53:55

Not that he would advocate being risky or anything like that, but just explaining how it worked. Because the question

54:01

I had for him was, if I own a hundred shares of this company and they're at 20 bucks a piece, and then the company declares bankruptcy, my shares are now worth nothing.

54:09

That's not fair. How can they just take all of my money away like that? And he said, well, a share represents a portion of the company's assets and there's assets and liabilities.

54:17

And he's trying to explain this. And it took like days of trying before I finally understood a share of a company just gives you rights to something that it owns.

54:27

And if it's debts and its assets cancel each other out and it's zero, and therefore they declare bankruptcy, then you don't own anything.

54:35

And it doesn't matter how much money you put in, you now own nothing. And so the idea of a share being sort of a decoupled from physical reality, that was another thing that helped me understand how this could work.

54:48

And so I'm always favorable to Bitcoin. I don't mess with it much myself, but I've never heard much of a moral case against it, except for, and I'd love to hear our guests thoughts on this, because this is a lot of scaremongering.

55:02

Well, Bitcoin's only used by the bad guys and the cyber criminals and the whatever and the scammers and the human traffickers.

55:08

And it's a character assassination tactic on anyone who would be involved with it. And so I know what

55:14

I would say in response to that, but I'd be interested to hear from my uncle or whoever.

55:20

No, no, no. The FBI says that only the Chinese scammers use that. I don't want anything to do with it. What would be your answer to that?

55:28

Get rid of all your dollars then. Because the dollar is by far the most used currency for all crimes on this planet.

55:40

Sex trafficking, abortion, money laundering.

55:46

The US dollar is the king currency for crime. So that's my argument.

55:53

Let me be a little more sophisticated. If someone's using a money for crime, it's not the money that is bad.

56:04

It's the person doing the crime with the money. So money is a neutral tool.

56:10

So when people say, oh, Bitcoin's only used for this, only used for that, what you're doing is legitimizing it as money at that point.

56:17

You're presupposing already it's money. It's just bad people are using it. Okay. If that's the case, then it's not the money that's the problem.

56:23

It's the people. And no one is here saying Bitcoin will fix sin.

56:30

It won't. Bitcoin is not going to cleanse your heart of sin and make you righteous. It's just a tool.

56:36

It's a money you can use. My argument for it is that it's the network and the policies of it more aligned with the principles of God than the alternative does.

56:50

How would you answer the thought of, and I already know kind of what your answer would be, but I'd be interested to hear you say it.

56:59

There's been quite a bit of talk about government -sponsored and government -sanctioned crypto digital currencies, central bank digital currencies,

57:08

CBD, whatever. Say CBD is not that.

57:15

CBDC, yeah. Maybe some overlap there, but there've been a lot of bluster from various politicians about,

57:22

I signed a bill banning this, or I signed a bill or whatever. What do you think about that? It's really simple.

57:28

I think a CBDC, a central bank digital currency, sounds intimidating, sounds bad, and it is.

57:36

It is. Just let me say I'm not in favor of it, but I think people are blowing this out of proportion because I've seen people maybe on the freedom fighter side of the spectrum saying things like, use cash only, use cash only.

57:51

They're going to go digital. Here's the thing. Most of the dollar is already digital.

57:58

Probably upwards of 90, maybe more percent of the dollar is already digital.

58:04

I forgot the number, but it's big. All a CBDC is, is a software upgrade on the system we already have.

58:13

It's just taking the 10 % and throwing that away or whatever and saying, okay, we're just fully digital now.

58:18

It's just upgrading the fiat software to be more totalitarian, more controlling, and easier to commit fraud with for the ones controlling it.

58:30

What they want to do is control your use of the money. Make sure you're not breaking the rules where they have all the control and they can make whatever rules they want.

58:40

CBDCs are a horribly bad totalitarian thing. I'm totally against them, but at the same time, it's a slight software upgrade.

58:51

Advocating for using fiat cash to defeat a CBDC seems insane to me because the

58:59

CBDC is just the... How can I say this in a politically correct way?

59:06

Maybe I don't have to be politically correct on this podcast. No, let it fly as I hold my edit button.

59:14

A CBDC is just the bastard child of the fiat system we already have. That's all it is.

59:21

That child's going to grow up to be more wicked than the mother. We should just kill the mother while we can and adopt a more righteous system.

59:30

Maybe edit that part out. That's going to be my short. That'll be my YouTube short. That'll be the 30 seconds that I use to...

59:39

Let me ask you this because I'm going to show my ignorance and my age a little bit.

59:44

Okay. I have a safe. And in that safe is some things that I keep very close to me, such as old pictures and things like that.

59:58

I have things that are valuable probably to me only. It wouldn't be worth anybody breaking into. But we keep a few dollars in that safe as well, just because in the event of an emergency, to have money to buy gas if the hurricane comes and kills the electricity.

01:00:13

We live in Florida. Matthew's also my surrogate weatherman. He's an amateur meteorologist.

01:00:19

Matthew's just like my guy. Alan, I want to introduce you to my guy. Everybody should have a wingman.

01:00:25

Matthew's one of my very close wingmen. Anyway, so with that, can you have

01:00:35

Bitcoin in a privately stored place? Does that sound dumb?

01:00:41

Could I put Bitcoin on a hard drive and put it in a safe? Well, Bitcoin, I guess you could say

01:00:48

Bitcoin lives in the network. Okay. The Bitcoin network.

01:00:54

So technically you don't own any Bitcoin, but what you do is you have a private key that gives you access to the

01:01:02

Bitcoin in that network. So if I send you a Bitcoin, you're going to give me a address.

01:01:09

What's called a Bitcoin address. It's just a string of numbers and letters that your wallet on your computer will generate.

01:01:14

I will send the Bitcoin to that address. That address is the public key, but you have the private key.

01:01:21

So now the Bitcoin that goes into that address, you have access to. Now, if I get your private key somehow,

01:01:28

I can open that up and take it. So think of Bitcoin. I need to keep that key in the safe.

01:01:34

Well, yeah, exactly. So you need to keep your private key private. So think of Bitcoin like a literal safe, right?

01:01:44

There's a bunch of slots, like a bank, maybe a better illustrations of what they call those bank safe deposit box.

01:01:52

Yeah. Safe deposit box. Yeah. Think of it like a big thing and there's a bunch of different deposit boxes and each has a key.

01:01:59

So you would say, I have the key to this box. I would put the Bitcoin in that.

01:02:05

You would lock it and keep your key. So you have the rights to the money in that specific public key and only you can access it with your private key.

01:02:18

So all Bitcoin is technically is visible to all, but only certain individuals who have the private key can access to spend that Bitcoin.

01:02:30

Okay. All right. But there would be no way of, and again, we got to start,

01:02:38

I have a thousand questions. And one thing I do want to say about all these questions, you do a good job in the book at the end of answering some of the more common questions.

01:02:46

And that's why I'm not asking some of those, because I do want to point people toward the book and you answer questions about some of the more common questions people have.

01:02:55

But one of the things that I've thought about, if my nephew has a birthday and I put $5 in a birthday card, give it to him.

01:03:04

That transaction is known to no one but me and my nephew and maybe his parents.

01:03:11

If we are on an entirely digital system where everything is digital, there's nothing in my hand.

01:03:17

There's nothing I can put in my safe. Is every transaction I make from then on going to be something that is documented?

01:03:26

Is there not going to be any more undocumented transactions? And do you get where I'm coming with that?

01:03:33

Yeah. So Bitcoin is a pseudonymous system, meaning that your personal identity is not connected to your transactions.

01:03:42

You don't have to put in your name, your address or anything. A Bitcoin wallet is just a series of private and public keys, which are just long strings of numbers and letters.

01:03:53

So it's pseudonymous in the sense that you have an identity, but your identity is cryptographic key pairs.

01:04:01

So that's just how it works. There's really creative ways.

01:04:07

You can put Bitcoin onto a piece of paper.

01:04:14

You can put the instructions on how to access it and hand that to your nephew and then he can restore that onto his wallet.

01:04:21

Bingo, bingo, it's done. So there's really unique ways you can gift a Bitcoin and use Bitcoin in a physical way, if you would.

01:04:30

I know one company even prints these bills where you would scan the QR and all that kind of stuff.

01:04:36

Yep. I've seen coins where it has a little sticker on it. And if you pull the sticker up, kind of like a gift card you buy at the grocery store, you don't need to scratch the code off or whatever.

01:04:45

And it has a private key underneath it that grants you access to a wallet. And the wallet is what has so much bit.

01:04:51

Right, right, right. I even have these cards called seed signers or tab signers.

01:04:59

Anyways, it's the size of a credit card and there's a QR code on the back with a public address and people can send

01:05:06

Bitcoin to it. You can send Bitcoin to it and you can then just hold the card and you never really have to interact with any computer software unless you want to spend it.

01:05:18

So yeah, you can gift that to people. And it's a new paradigm. It's a new way of thinking of transacting.

01:05:24

And I'll just say this. I've been using Bitcoin for several years now.

01:05:30

And once you learn it, once you know how to use it, you don't really want to go back. Because although it's new and confusing for some, once you figure this thing out and learn it, you do discover that the current system we have is very clunky and outdated and not a very good way to transact.

01:05:51

Going to the bank is painful for me now. It's like, man, you guys just get upgraded already. This is painfully inefficient.

01:06:01

Well, as we draw to a close, and again, Alan, I'm so thankful and I do encourage people to go and get the book.

01:06:08

But we're at the hour mark now. So I'm going to begin drawing us to a close. I want to ask this question and maybe

01:06:14

I'll ask this to both of you. And I want to give Alan the last word. So I'll let Matthew go first. What important takeaway from today's podcast do you people should consider?

01:06:25

What's one of the things that you think we've talked about that people ought to really take home from today?

01:06:33

We didn't exactly get into the passage, but I just take any opportunity on this subject to correct a terrible translation of Jesus talking about money.

01:06:45

Money is the root of all evil. No, it's not. That's not what he said. That's not how you translate that.

01:06:52

He said, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, which is absolutely the case.

01:06:58

So whether it is in Bitcoin or dollars or seashells or gold bars or whatever, a corrupted and sinful heart will always find a way to hoard something and to say that I deserve this and God does not.

01:07:14

I deserve this and caring for the poor and the downtrodden, who cares? You are not shielded from any of that, no matter what system you pick.

01:07:22

As our guest has said, this is not going to wash the sin off of your soul. It's just a technology. So what

01:07:27

I would say is no matter what method you use to transact in, do so understanding that you don't own it.

01:07:33

God does. That you are accountable to him how you spend it, no matter what part it's in.

01:07:39

If you choose to convert all of your dollars into Bitcoin tomorrow, that doesn't make you a better Christian. You now have a different type of investment that you have to manage, but you still have an investment to manage and manage it well, manage it biblically, manage it in a way that God will say, well done at the end of it, no matter what.

01:07:56

I was going to say whose face is on the bill with Bitcoin. That's a little bit different, but no matter what method it comes in, do that.

01:08:04

And yeah, if you want to, I think our guest has made some very compelling cases here for why

01:08:10

Bitcoin represents a more moral alternative to what we have. That doesn't mean it's perfect, but it's a better option than what we have.

01:08:17

I'm pretty sold by that argument. And I think that it's worthy of discussion and debate, but don't be weird and don't separate over it.

01:08:26

That's what I would say. All right, Alan, your last word, last thoughts about what you think people should take away?

01:08:34

My heart right now is really for the next generation.

01:08:40

And maybe that's because I have young kids and sort of that's just natural what happens when you have young kids.

01:08:48

But I see this generation and I've been blessed and fortunate. God has been gracious to my wife and I that we have a house and that we bought a house before.

01:09:00

They printed a ton of money and made it almost impossible for anyone to get one. And I give thanks to God because there's no reason why this house

01:09:11

I live in should be worth what it is. I bought it in 2017 and it's worth a lot more now, but it's in worse condition.

01:09:21

What the heck is that all about? How do you have a house that's in worse condition that's worth almost twice as much?

01:09:28

It doesn't make any sense. So my heart is for the next generation, these kids coming. How are they going to afford just to live, let alone have a home for themselves?

01:09:37

So my heart is for them. To the Christian church, I would say, don't be silent.

01:09:44

This is a pernicious evil that's happening in our society with fiat money and inflation and stealing.

01:09:51

It's not a small thing to rob a man of his living. That is not a small thing.

01:09:57

That's a very serious thing. It's a demoralizing thing. It destroys families. It destroys marriages.

01:10:02

It hurts children. This is a very, very wicked, wicked system. So we need an alternative.

01:10:07

I think Bitcoin is the best alternative. Maybe you think something else is the best alternative. But at the core of this issue,

01:10:13

I want to at least do my part to try to push forward a system where my children and grandchildren and great -grandchildren can work hard, save money, and have a legacy and build a family.

01:10:32

It should be that easy. It should be as easy as work hard and save money.

01:10:39

That should be enough with the money. But with fiat money, it's not enough because you can't out -save inflation.

01:10:46

This is a very wicked thing. That's what I would leave people with, just with an urgency to learn.

01:10:53

Learn how this fiat system works. Just know it. When you do, it will move you to action to find a solution.

01:11:02

Thank you so much. You can't out -save inflation. That's a great quote.

01:11:10

Really, honestly, as I said, reading your book, I was very encouraged. Well, listening. People sometimes take issue if I say

01:11:16

I read it when I actually listened. But listening to your book, I was encouraged.

01:11:21

I was encouraged by a lot of what you said and particularly what you just reiterated, the importance of understanding what's happening with our money and the dangers and the ungodliness that is happening with inflation and taking what, like you said, what once had value and making it less and less valuable to the point where one day it may be without any value.

01:11:44

I'll just say one more thing just quickly. I see this sort of Hezekiah rationale happening amongst people now where the

01:11:56

King Hezekiah, remember, the Lord came to him and he said, there's coming a day when the

01:12:03

Babylonians are going to take all your riches from you that your fathers have stored up and they're going to take your sons to be their eunuchs.

01:12:10

And Hezekiah says, huh, yeah, that's OK, so long as it goes well for me.

01:12:16

He says, the word of the Lord is good for he thought so long as in my days there's peace.

01:12:24

So there's this sort of Hezekiah thinking now with people where they go, well, yeah, inflation is bad now, but so long as like it's

01:12:31

OK for me, then the word of the Lord is good. Who cares if my sons become eunuchs? Who cares if all my wealth gets taken away that my fathers and I have stored up for future generations?

01:12:42

As long as it's OK for me, then it's all good. So this is what's happening. We have to reject that thinking and start thinking,

01:12:48

OK, wait a minute, Lord, no, let it come upon me, not upon them, and have a more loving attitude.

01:12:57

It says love your neighbor as yourself. But I think what we forgot is we're not loving our yet to be born neighbors by racking them with all this debt.

01:13:07

It's a profoundly hateful thing to do, I think. Well, I tell you what,

01:13:12

I hope people stayed on with us long enough to hear just that. That was very profound and very important.

01:13:19

You're not loving your neighbors well if you're not thinking about the next generation. That's good thinking and good thoughts, Alan. So I want to thank you for coming on today, for sharing with us what you have learned and for continuing to preach the gospel as well.

01:13:34

I'm thankful that you're a fellow gospel preacher and in Canada, of all places. What an amazing thing to know that the gospel is being proclaimed in Canada.

01:13:42

So praise the Lord and thank you and your family for giving us the time to come on and be on the show today.

01:13:48

Thank you. I appreciate it. And I love your videos. Keep pumping them out. Thank you for your contribution to helping me be sane.

01:13:59

Oh, praise the Lord for that. And Matthew, as always, you're my buddy, my pal, one of my right -hand men, and I'm thankful for you as well.

01:14:06

Glad to be here and along for the ride. Thanks, Keith. Amen. And I want to thank you again for being a part of your

01:14:12

Calvinist podcast today. And again, if you haven't already, please subscribe to the channel. It really does help us out more than you think.

01:14:19

Leave a comment and let us know how you enjoyed the show. And if you did enjoy it, hit the thumbs up. If you didn't hit the thumbs down button twice.

01:14:26

Thank you again for listening to your Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.