Oddbean

A gave a talk at the New Orleans Investment Conference the other day. At 50 years and counting, it is the longest continually-running investment conference in the country, and possibly the world. It is diminished from its heyday due to broader competition and online investment media, but it has a certain air to it. Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, Margaret Thatcher, Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman, Gerald Ford, and Steve Forbes have spoken at it, among many others. It is mostly a boomer/gold/resource/conservative/libertarian conference, and gets the best from that crowd, but otherwise is not huge. The guy who has run it for decades took it over long ago from the original founder, and he wants to freshen it up and modernize it a bit and throw some hand grenades into his own conference, so he invited me to talk. He is a gold guy, a resource guy, an old-school conservative, and he likes bitcoin and wishes he bought it earlier. He's open-minded, objective, and growth-oriented. My talk was "Broken Money, Broken World". -The first theme was that there are 160+ siloed fiat currencies. I used Egypt as my main example, and held up a physical Egyptian pound and said this is basically a national casino chip; it has very low salability outside of Egypt, similar to how a casino chip has very low salability outside of the casino. The 105 million people who live there are trapped in a fiat matrix of 20% annual money supply growth, like a treadmill that they have to keep up with in terms of their wages, price increases, rent increases, and so forth to avoid being diluted, and most can't keep up with that treadmill. And there are dozens of countries like this. I held up a Norwegian krone and said even though this is from a wealthy country, it is still a casino chip because what can I possibly do with it in New Orleans? It's too small and unsalable. This is outdated tech. -The second theme brought it back to the US. I spoke about how the past four decades had two main trends: rising public debt/GDP and falling interest rates (see included pics below). Developing market currencies suffer while those of us in the US feel that things are stable. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, people rightly freaked out about the debt and deficit. The famous NYC debt clock went up in 1989. Ross Perot ran the most successful independent presidential campaign in the early 1990s on the debt and deficit. That was when interest expense as a % of GDP was at its peak. But what they didn't or couldn't predict, was that the next 30 years would be disinflationary. China opened up to the world. The Soviet Union fell. Western capital was united with Eastern labor and resources. China became a manufacturing hub, which was disinflationary. Russia supplied cheap energy to the German industrial base, which was disinflationary. Interest rates fell structurally, allowing more debt accumulation, and for prices to increase far more slowly than money supply growth. But then we hit zero interest rates, and then we monetized fiscal spending. We're in a new world now; debts and deficits matter again. Those guys from the late 1980s and early 1990s were right but early, and now we are facing some of those consequences. Fiat currencies including the dollar have structural instability. -The third theme was to bring up again that there are 160+ casino fiat currencies in the world... and that every one of their gates are fucking down. Pre-Bitcoin, the only way to get money in or out of a country was 1) physical ports of entry (typically limited to $10k USD or so worth of cash and gold) or 2) bank wire transfers (highly controlled by local governments). Countries could maintain their little currency bubbles. But Bitcoin and then stablecoins blew that open. You can bring a billion dollars worth of bitcoin through an airport by remembering 12 words, or writing them down and tucking them away in your baggage, or briefly putting them in an encrypted file in the cloud. Infinite value density. Same for stablecoins- tokenized dollars or whatever the market wants in terms of global fiat currency and assets. I can pay a graphic designer in Nigeria with a QR code over a video call or email or DM in bitcoin or stablecoins or whatever she wants. All of this bypasses their currency bubble and goes around their banking system, unless their country wants to be North Korea and cut itself off or get shut off externally from the internet. And I said the investment implications and macro implications of this are massive; it's a new world that, over the long arc of time, breaks all the fiat bubbles. https://m.primal.net/HPZz.png

Still just talking What did your talk change? Did people flip for a solution and take action? Or did they listen and go back to normal things to only return next year and listen again These conferences and podcasts and the 30 or so Bitcoin books this year literally achieved nothing and things get worse by the day Action… literally anytime we’re all ready The above has been repeatedly said all year

Did you immediately jump in and buy bitcoin when first presented with the information? I didn't. It took repeat exposures from different sources. Even if none of the audience goes out and buys bitcoin immediately after this talk, it serves as an exposure. And coming from someone like Lyn, I imagine they probably perceive bitcoin to be more legitimate than prior to the talk. These things take time and this particular audience has a lot of inertia tied up in the existing system based on the description of atendees. Would you just prefer no one bothers to give presentations on bitcoin's potential if it isn't certain to lead to immediate increases in adoption?

How many more presentations does everyone need Saylor Keiser Lyn Foss Etc There are over 1 million hours of logged #bitcoin and economy is bad blogs, videos, type and in book form hundreds Yes I researched Bitcoin in December 2016 and bought Feb 2017… guess what… we didn’t have any of this conference and video “Bitcoin is smart” help And our guys here did it anyway… at some point u just have to get on with it There is enough info repeated daily to educate the population 50 times over…. How much more talk does everyone need?? If you’re new it’s all easy to find in multitudes …. It’s been done.. 2021 all the good wholeheartedly information was delivered and 100 x since then At some point …. It just becomes a support group reassuring u you made the right decision I’ve got a lot of old skool bitcoiners 10 years or so all saying the same INTEGRATION TIME!! Time for talk is over, she wrote a book, she’s done umpteen interviews… going over ground you’ll find causes confusion and turns people away Too much unneeded info is never good Bitcoin is basic and simple Stop complicating it Debt bad + Bitcoin 21m hard cap backed by math and it’s perfect money + Here is 3 or 4 interviews + Buy = Easy!!!

'Here are some videos' is not as compelling as an in person talk, especially for people in the boomer bracket. Perhaps one could argue that the concept of diminishing returns applies to new recorded Bitcoin content, but to try to argue that the same applies to in person lectures is IMO retarded.

In person talk leads to buy my book and subscribe to my channel Well while conferences are at all time highs and books / videos Education seems to be at all time lows… how many “bitcoiners” still hold their coins on exchanges?? Sadly from what our team has seen… the vast majority These conferences don’t seem to help Self custody Lightning usage Peer 2 peer Beating the hedge funds Etc All I hear is 21m hardest money ever in different pretty words But hey if people need it all at snail education speed by all means enjoy the repeated talks I just hope you at-least learned self custody

From what it sounds like, the talk wasn't aimed at established Bitcoiners (who are the more appropriate audience for the topics you mentioned). It sounds like a more fundamental 'here are some problems with the existing system of which you are a part, and here's how Bitcoin is uniquely suited to address those problems'. Perhaps it's hard for you to empathize with noobs because you've been in the space a long time, but these concepts are still going to be alien to people who haven't considered them, especially if they've been long successful in the legacy system.

Empathise with noobs Here’s is something I either get told nobody is interested or don’t want to hear 2023 Opened lightning economy between USA and Europe of 5000 member organisations that only use Bitcoin and tether (from Australia) all new or never been bitcoiners I work with the Perth Heat and push their Bitcoin baseball programs to new people never been in bitcoin… they have a stasforstats program that gives away Bitcoin to new bitcoiners In Adelaide alone I’ve put 27 businesses to accept Bitcoin via Lightning as well as my own business has accepted Bitcoin payments since 2017 and had 7 regular weekly payers and another 8 monthly payers I show people this…. And all I cop is no one is interested in integration or people don’t want to part with Bitcoin “from the presenters of these conferences” Literally… nobody gives a shit That 5000 crew took 20 minutes to have them all transacting…. No videos No conference Literally showed them how to use Strike and boom… People are smarter than you give them credit for, maybe stop treating everyone like an idiot… because they aren’t… they’re literally interested in Bitcoin but get confused with all the content Maybe orange pill someone… you’ll learn this

Thank you for spreading Bitcoin education, it sounds like you're good at it. Still, not everyone is ready for that level of participation. The majority of people are still convinced Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme that's boiling the oceans. You have to get past those hurdles (and a lot more) before you can be open to the practical applications. Both types of education are still necessary.

Do yourself a huge biggie Head on down your local shop and suggest they accept Bitcoin… I guarantee u you’ll be surprised they’ll be infinitely curious My strike rate on pilling since I went just on offering or direct is near 100% I think you’ll not only spend some good orange… but utilise your precious time in Bitcoin with winning Do yourself another favour… sounds like you’ve heard enough about Bitcoin… you seem like Orange pill good guy Go do some real bitcoining with good people… sure point people at the conferences if you like… start taking the next step Lead some people… Trust me 🤝

I like your style and what you're saying! 99% of bitcoiners are comfortably lurking on social media and podcasts. Consuming endless amounts of Bitcoin porn in their cushy bubble. Myself included. So your call to action is appreciated. I'll see what I can do.

@DWOLFBTC TLDR: publishing "new" content (that repeats known/documented stuff) over and over again is necessary, if you want people to see your topic In a way I want to agree with you, that the info is already out there in millions of texts/videos/podcasts .. so it wouldn't be absolutely necessary to regurgitate it all perpetually, just adding more redundancy. The internet is a vast pool of content which people COULD sift through when they're looking for answers to questions about the world, trying to understand. I guess the problem is: not that many people are actively thinking: "The monetary systems seem broken, I should go read up on the internet for hours to see if someone already found a decent solution." Many people (including me most of the time) are mostly just consuming content (without an adhoc goal behind the consumption, other than seeing something new) that passes by in timelines/feeds/streams, be it news sites, or social media or public TV/radio. Those timelines/feeds/streams almost always put "new" content as the next item to consume (instead of mixing in random old content to give it another chance at resonating). This design of feeds basically forces people who want to direct attention to a specific topic, to always fight for a share of the current timelines by continuously churning out "new" content about their topic. If you want to increase exposure of the public to a certain topic, it helps to put the topic where people will scroll past it, over and over again. As an aside: I think your typical chronological timeline/feed/stream - as obvious as it may seem - is a fundamentally flawed principle. In an abstract way it means "New is everything that matters, nothing else does." I think alternative feed compositions would be much more interesting. For example if the (mostly) chronological feed also showed random old content, the share of it being some inverse function of content age.

Every talk, every podcast, hell every NOSTR post is adding energy into the system, priming it for what will one day appear to be a sudden change. Consider the culture and our economy like a pot of water. Bitcoin is a fire lit underneath that pot. The water can appear absolutely unchanged while heat builds up slowly and unseen. Then there are some minor changes to the surface that you might miss if you’re not paying attention. But then finally it boils. Keep the heat on full blast. Change is coming.

You had me at New Orleans. I worked in TradFi in NOLA for a few years and it’s also what radicalized me. Unrelated to this conference, I assume. But interesting connection nonetheless. Awesome that the new blood wants to throw in these conversations. Amazing opportunity. Hoping you had some good food. (It’s okay to eat fiat food when you’re in New Orleans)

Wonder if the advancements in technology (AI / automation / robotics / renewable energy, etc.) will not save the fiat system by being disinflationary like China and fall of the Soviet Union in the 80s and 90s? If we look at the debt to GDP of US and Japan, 120% to 260%, there is a lot of way forward (years, potentially decades), how they can be stretching the system. However the existence of the alternative (Bitcoin) should cause the system to crack, as more and more people & institutions will be opting out of the "financial oppression" that is inevitable (inflation, money restrictions, cbdcs, etc.). Per your words, the gates are open. Question is how far they will go to close the gates to protect their system? I believe we have crossed the point of no return ... they will not succeed ... however they could slow down or complicate the transition substantialy.

For small business owners (US-based in my case) are there any payroll software platforms that allow us to easily interact with international employees, pay in stable coins or btc, etc? That would be amazing!

Bitcoin pops all the fiat bubbles. nostr:nevent1qqsvqh4kzy4e9q2c56w9wr74wreacenm760zpm64t8trvm733v5zjtqpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsyg82krn4d5etsz7dge8nmpztspqrqvr45yl2hs6enfmzexk84wglfupsgqqqqqqsnxf2h3