Long time bitcoiner Vake, and CEO of Students for Liberty Wolf von Laer join me on the show to talk about liberty, and why libertarians should focus on Bitcoin as their top priority: 

• Connections between bitcoin and liberty
• Why some libertarians haven’t focused on Bitcoin
• What they could be doing
• Why libertarians should prioritise the Bitcoin strategy for liberty above others

Guest links:

• Vake: @vakeraj
• Wolf von Laer: @wolfvonlaer
• Students For Liberty: Studentsforliberty.org

Sponsors: 

• Swan Bitcoin
• Hodl Hodl Lend
• Compass Mining
• Unchained Capital (code LIVERA)
• CypherSafe (code LIVERA)
• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)

Stephan Livera links:

• Show notes and website
• Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
• Subscribe to the podcast
• Patreon @stephanlivera 

Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera:

Wolf and Vake, welcome to the show.

Vake:

Thank you Stephan. Big fan.

Wolf:

Thank you so much for having us.

Vake:

I’ve listened to you since the first episode.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. I’ve been speaking with you guys all for a while, and I think it’s it’s time to do the episode about LARPertarians and Libertarianism and Bitcoin. So we need to get into this without—not to be mean to our fellow Libertarians—but just to try to wake them up and get them to realize what’s going on here. So let’s get an opening statement from each of you: what’s the connection between Libertarianism and Bitcoin for each of you?

Vake:

Sure I’ll go ahead and start. So I was actually a Libertarian before discovering Bitcoin. So the transition to becoming a Bitcoiner was very natural for me. I actually grew up in a Democrat household, my senior year of high school I campaigned for John Kerry, who was the 2004 democratic presidential candidate. Then I would go off to college, I started studying economics and all my views start to change overnight, pretty much. In fact, one of the things that was very formative for me was one of my college Econ professors explained the concept of a price floor, which maybe you’re familiar with, Stephan. Basically it means that you can’t sell a good or service below a certain price. And he said, Okay, this is a reason why the minimum wage is a bad idea. And that was like totally shocking to me because, when you grow up basically left-leaning or a Democrat, the minimum wage is basically gospel, right? You believe that should be there, it serves a purpose, that should be perpetually raised. So that sent me down the journey of becoming more free market oriented. And then around 2008, Ron Paul ran for president and I was a big fan of his. He introduced me to the whole concept of Austrian economics, the gold standard, I subsequently discovered Tom woods’ books, and then around April 2013 when Bitcoin crossed $100 when I first heard about it, I saw a video of Jeffrey Tucker, who I had known and was a big fan of beforehand. He had a video somewhere on YouTube that said how Bitcoin will end the nation state. And that just blew my mind. And I watched it and from the very first minute I heard about Bitcoin, I was in love with it. But I was always running into this problem about explaining Bitcoin to other people that were also very Libertarian-ish, very pro-free market oriented—I’d explain it to them and they just wouldn’t believe it for whatever reason, or they’d say gold is better. And so what I assumed was that maybe I was like, Okay, I’m a few years ahead. I’d say, I’ll give a little bit of time, they’ll eventually get on board. And so a few years passed—still, same old story, right? 2017, the big boom came, some of them got in, dabbled in, but also some of them went down the altcoin rabbit hole—none of them got it. And so I’m getting a little frustrated at this point, and now here we are in 2021, the price is above $60k—it’s a hundred times bigger than it was and I’m talking to some of these same people—Libertarian people—and they’re still not on board the Bitcoin train. I mean, they might own a small bit of it. They might have a bag of “crypto,” broadly speaking, but it’s very frustrating to me. So I think the LARPertarian thing was a term that either I, or maybe someone else on Twitter, like @TiKawamoto or @TheGuySwann coined, just to describe like, Why aren’t these Libertarians getting on board with what’s clearly one of the best tools for shrinking the size and scope of the state?

Stephan Livera:

Exactly. And Wolf let’s hear from you: for you, what’s the connection between Libertarianism and Bitcoin?

Wolf:

It’s the best connection ever, because Bitcoin is the single best shot at achieving liberty in our lifetime. Full-stop. I mean, people sometimes summarize it as Fix the Money, Fix the World, but what does that actually mean? It means: without fiat money—and Bitcoin is a big threat to fiat money—you won’t [will?] be able to help billions of people, literally billions of people, and liquidate government debt. Without fiat money, you could not go into debt that much in the first place—personally, but also on the nation level. And without fiat money, the growth of government would be limited by the willingness of people to pay for the services of government. And also, without fiat money, wars would be prohibitively costly. So it doesn’t matter if you’re not familiar with Bitcoin, but look at any kind of policy area that you care about—through Bitcoin, it’s more likely that it will be on a transitionary trajectory towards more liberty. So for me, it’s so clear that this is the best shot that we have right now as humankind to achieve liberty in our lifetime. That makes me incredibly excited. And I’m running a Libertarian non-profit right now, and I wouldn’t mind if the majority of our volunteers that we have in 140 countries would be dealing with Bitcoin and really understand how that can change the world. And yes, I do see the problem because I’m part of the Liberty movement, meaning Conservatives, Libertarian think-tanks. And I know all of these institutes and these guys. And yes, some of them dabble with Bitcoin, but not many are really focused on that. And that is a very interesting question that I’m looking forward to exploring with both of you: how we can also pitch Bitcoin as freedom money to them and say like, Hey, like if you want to live in a free society, this is the best way of going about it. And many people are skeptical. It’s a bold claim. But hopefully after this episode, everybody will say, Hell yes, that’s what it is!

Stephan Livera:

You’re right. And with Bitcoin for many people, it can be like a Rorschach test. We’re looking in the water and we see our own reflection back and we’re like, Oh, this is it! This is going to be the thing! And whether you’re a Libertarian or a Progressive or a Conservative or a Cypherpunk or whatever, oftentimes that can be the reaction. But I think in fairness, it is fair to say that it will have very Libertarian outcomes and it fundamentally just will drive society in more of a Libertarian direction. But I agree with you both about that frustration, that many of our fellow Libertarians have not gone down this Bitcoin rabbit hole with us. And it might be for different reasons, right? So let’s try to understand why. A few ideas I’ve had on this is: maybe some of them were stuck in gold bug-land, some of them thought it was crypto and they just got stuck with all the altcoins and Bcash, and then maybe some of them are more just like dilettantes, right? They go shallow across lots of little topics, but they never really go deep. They’re are a few ideas I have. What do you guys have on that? Why are Libertarians not going deep enough on Bitcoin? Vake, do you want to start?

Vake:

Well, sure. Actually I want to add quickly to something Wolf was saying: Bitcoin is definitely the best tool we have at achieving a Libertarian society because it’s not purely words, right? Libertarianism is a political movement just like Conservatism, Progressivism, and Socialism, and political movements rely upon politicking. That means: words, think-tanks and papers, and lobbying and stuff. But Bitcoin actually disrupts the Fed basically, right? And a good example of this was Uber: we had—for decades—Libertarian organizations, think-tanks, and whatnot, produce papers about why the taxi cartel should essentially be opened up to competition. But none of it did any good. They did this for decades and decades. And then along comes Uber around 2010 and single-handedly it basically disrupts that same taxi cartel because technology is always more powerful than words or political actions because it gives people the ability to opt out. I love Ludwig von Mises and Rothbard and Ron Paul, but Bitcoin has done more to end the Fed than closer to a century of them writing about central banking, because it actually gives people the ability to opt out. And besides Bitcoin, the only other thing I can think of that’s really cutting into the state’s power is stuff like 3D-printed guns. But I think you were mentioning why are they not getting on board? Part of it’s an inability to engage in adversarial thinking. Bitcoiners are in a sense paranoid about how could the government attack this and how can we defend—create systems that are robust enough against a state-based attack? It goes back to an exchange I had with Eric July, one of these guys I criticized as a LARPertarian. I think his content is great, I think he’s definitely well-intentioned. But about six months ago, he Tweeted that—he said something along the lines of—We should own land in a rural area and learn to defend it, and that’s how we’re going to overthrow the state. And I basically engaged in a long argument with him about this and eventually invited him on a show and we got into a debate on the show about how this is a bad strategy based on what we’ve learned from Bitcoin. The advantage of Bitcoin is that you can secure with private keys that it’s protected by hashing, there’s a whole robust system that’s developed, whereas land offers no such value. But explaining this to them, they’re not used to thinking in an adversarial manner, they’re used to thinking in more of a political rights manner and they have to change their mindset from, Why is the state an inefficient system or evil if you choose to believe [so], to, How do we develop a system that they cannot undermine? It’s a change in your mode of thinking.

Stephan Livera:

I’m wondering as well, is that a trust in the system factor? So like criticisms saying, sometimes you can get highly intelligent people but they’re very high trust in the system. Whereas Libertarians obviously have low trust in the system. Do you think that’s a distinguishing factor? Wolf, do you want to comment on what Vake was saying?

Wolf:

Yes. I mean that’s definitely part of it, and we all have our journeys to Libertarian ideas—and I’m not sure if it’s the case for you Stephan as well as it was for Vake and me—we were first Libertarians and then Bitcoiners. But now it’s a little different because a lot are Bitcoiners and then they discover Libertarianism and it’s a unique thing. But also with Libertarianism, it has to hit you at the right time. And not everybody who is reading Mises or Rothbard or Atlas Shrugged is going to say, Okay, now that makes perfect sense to me. Because maybe you read it at the wrong time in your career or because you had some other dispositions. So there’s different components at work here. And I do have a lot of sympathy for people who don’t get it, because arguably I had like the best environment possible for getting Bitcoin. I got my first fractions of a Bitcoin from Michael Goldstein at the Mises Institute in Alabama, after I’d published a book ranting against the Federal Reserve. And yes, I took that, and I didn’t go down the rabbit hole back then. And if you know Michael Goldstein, he’s one of the co-founders of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, for the listeners here, and a great guy. I said like, Why the hell did I not get it? And I cannot for the life of me sympathize with the guy that I was back then, but finally I got it—it just took some time. But to answer your question, Stephan, I tried to categorize a little bit the reasons: if you look at the Left, it’s pretty straightforward. And this list is not going to be exhaustive. For Leftists, It’s mostly energy usage and the effects it has on the environment—[a] big deal. Another big deal is people getting rich—that’s an issue. Unequal distribution, big issue—they don’t like that either. And that’s all arguments against it, of course. And then—and I think this is one of the most important ones—the Left often sees money as a tool of power and not of empowerment. They don’t understand how useful it actually is for human rights or for empowering the poorest of the poor and the unbanked, actually, because they don’t deal with money and banking. So those are on the Left, but we’re talking more about the Libertarians which are neither Left or Right if you want to argue about that, but also Conservatives. But as a juxtaposition you can say: they say what you have said already, Stephan—gold is better. And that triggers me—I can’t still get over it. It has intrinsic value—it drives me mad. There’s no such thing from an Austrian perspective, and we are all Austrians here, right? But furthermore, more complicated ones, it violates the Regression Theorem that Mises put forth. So Austrians had a theory, they looked at the theory onto Bitcoin and said like, That doesn’t work! Then you have to Chicagonites. They say like, Oh, you need monetary policy because otherwise you have another Great Depression because they haven’t read Rothbard. Some people say it’s too slow—therefore altcoins. And then Libertarians also understand what money actually is, and there’s several criteria—I think seven or so—but Bitcoin on the surface violates stability, portability to some extent, I mean, it’s super portable but you cannot really easily pay for it, and acceptability, which is correlated to that. So those things on the surface violate it and it’s like, Okay, we have our theory—Bitcoin doesn’t map onto this—therefore we reject it and we don’t dive deep into it. So those I would say are some of the obstacles that we need to overcome in addition to just psychological factors: that it has to hit you at the right time, you have to have the bandwidth in your life. During my time I was finishing my master thesis and pursuing my PhD proposal and I was very busy. But plus, also, you have to have it presented by people that you respect, like, and more importantly also that you can see that they’re living these principles. To give you an example, I always tell this to our students as well: You want to not necessarily go from an argument and the other side’s like, Oh, they have the most rational arguments—[now] I’m a completely convinced Libertarian. That never happens. But if they say like, Hmm, I still disagree with this person, but I would love to have a beer with him or her—that should be your goal. And if they see you live a happy life, you’re happy with your principles, and you’re successful, that’s the best argument that you can ever make for Bitcoin and/or Libertarianism. And if you’re grumpy and just slapping people over the head with Human Action or The Bitcoin Standard, that’s not going to go anywhere. So that would be also the strategic point.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, very good point. And I think it does align back to the whole Jonathan Haidt’s The Elephant and the Rider idea that: really, we make decisions emotionally, and then we backwards-rationalize with some kind of rationalization. And that touches into that point about how, really, people are convinced more by their friends and family, people who they are close to and that they love and respect. And because they liked this person—Oh, let me take that more seriously. Or at least give him the time of day to hear him explain his thesis about Bitcoin or whatever. And it seems to me—and I think both of you would probably agree—here is that a lot of Libertarians just haven’t gone deep enough on Bitcoin to understand Why. And maybe that’s why? What do you guys think?

Vake:

I mean yeah, there’s definitely a learning curve to Bitcoin. And you have to fall down the right rabbit hole, right? They have to find content like yours, Stephan, and hopefully not some Ethereum content that diverts them the wrong way. But Bitcoin is a hard pill to swallow if you’re not used to—there’s a lot to it: private key management, understanding the role of scalability and Lightning Network. It’s a very technical angle. And for someone that’s used to talking in terms of what our rights are, they’re thinking more of a political philosophy element—it’s a completely new way of examining things.

Wolf:

100% agreed. You have to game theory to some extent and understand like, Why does it actually work? How does the governance of Bitcoin really work? That was one of the things that I didn’t understand. Like, How do we know that there will only be 21 million? I can’t really guarantee it, it’s software—you can change software. And thinking that through. Then it has something to do with cryptography—you have to an understanding of that and why it matters. And I would say that most people were very influential also within the Libertarian movement or in any kind of movement—those are the people who were experienced, who have written books, or given presentations—so therefore they tend to be older. We are here all Millennials and Gen Zs right now. Neither generation really remembers—I mean millennials a little bit—growing up without the Internet, but those folks know that. And so Bitcoin is something so alien, and we have to understand that no framework—it doesn’t matter what ideology you have—maps onto it because we have not seen the birth of a money in over 5,000 years and we’re living through it right fricking now. And that is really a very unique condition that is just mind-boggling. And its implication is also not very clear. But I do believe that the slogans that we already have and the memes like, “Fix the Money, Fix the World,” or, “Bitcoin it’s the single best shot at achieving liberty in our lifetime,” as I like to put it, I think that the more we are saying that, if Libertarians see that then maybe they’ll say, Okay, there might be something there in trying to dig into this. Why do these crazy people in this podcast here make these outrageous claims? In order to pique their interest. And hopefully over time—I mean, it’s going already faster. I mean we’re complaining here right now, right? But Bitcoin is going faster than the Internet, which I believe is the technology that has grown the fastest in human history. So I think we’re doing well. That being said, though, the reason why I want our students—who are already good Libertarians—to understand Bitcoin, is because I’m concerned that the faster Bitcoin grows the more people with different ideologies will come on board. And those people will have influence on Bitcoin. Yes, you will not be able to stop it. Government cannot shut it down—we know all of that. However, if you have the next generation of lawyers who are not very open to Bitcoin, or come from it from a different ideology, or politicians, journalists, academics, if they don’t have the same kind of Libertarian lens or a Cypherpunk lens, then that could severely hamper Bitcoin adoption in the future. So it’s very crucial that we have this conversation. I appreciate you Stephan making room for this on your podcast.

Vake:

Oh, one thing I was a little bit frustrated by on my end is that I’ve wanted Libertarians to front-run the general population to stacking sats, because if we’re going to form this future, I mean like citadels or Ancapistan, Libertopia—whatever term you want to use to describe it—the people that are going to shape that future are going to be people who stacked sats very early and basically had the resources to shape society in the future. I want them to be of a very Libertarian free market mindset. I don’t know if the door is closed on that because the cat is out of the bag—you know, everybody knows about Bitcoin—but I wanted Libertarians to front-run Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Washington insiders, to getting Bitcoin, because who wants the same oligarchy running things in the future as [was] running the past?

Wolf:

May I make a small point here because you make an interesting point, Vake. Because your vision is very clear of what Bitcoin will accomplish, but now people have to swallow two things: one being Bitcoin and its complexity, and you’re selling them also a society without a government. And if people encounter both at the same time and have not seen that before, it’s unlikely that they will take that huge bite out of it.

Vake:

But if they were already of a Libertarian free market mindset, they might be more amenable to that.

Wolf:

That’s a good point. Yeah. You have to really tailor to the audience.

Vake:

Yeah. I don’t expect a Socialist to believe in that. But it’s ironic—I mean, some people that are very Left-leaning politically, very socialist you can say, got Bitcoin faster than people that were Libertarian. So it’s bizarre. Totally unexpected.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. I agree with you Vake and Wolf that it would have been nice to have more Libertarians who were early and held. But also the difference in the understanding in those days was more like, Oh, just spend it around, or, Oh, just use altcoins. Like some of them were more dilittante and hadn’t gone down this sort of, No, HODL your stack so that you will have more influence in the future, and you can potentially use that stack and wealth to influence things in a more liberty-respecting direction. Even if it’s not perfect, at least you’re pushing it in that direction. Let’s back up: probably 2% or 3% of the world holds some Bitcoin today, so it is still extremely early and a lot of those people who hold Bitcoin even now are more like toe-dipping. They’re not necessarily going all-in Bitcoin like a fully orange-pilled person. So I would say there is still a chance there, but it’s more just about, Are Libertarians going to stop being LARPertarians? So do you want to talk a little bit about that, Vake? What’s this term LARPertarian and how would you distinguish that from a Bitcoiner, a Libertarian, and a LARPertarian?

Vake:

Well, a LARPertarian—LARP is an acronym. It stands for live action role-playing, and it’s just you could say teasing people who talk a lot about something but don’t really take action. So as we’ve been talking about this episode, Bitcoin is a way of putting Libertarian philosophy and beliefs into action. So if you’re a Libertarian that’s not actually engaged in Bitcoin in any way, promoting it, HODLing it, then you’re kind of LARPing, right? I mean to me it’s like being an oncologist that’s never heard of chemotherapy. It’s like, What are you doing? You can talk about free markets and shrinking the state all day—if you’re not doing the things that have tangible impact—everything you do in your life, you want to have the maximum impact for the amount of effort that you put in. Bitcoin, at least in my opinion, has one of the highest impact-to-effort ratios of any activity that you can engage in to reduce the size and scope of the state. I mean, creating podcasts and articles and stuff criticizing the state is great and all, but the government politics works on very—there’s power structures that are very hard to reform no matter how much effort you put into it. So you have to strike at the root cause, which, as you’ve delved into many times, is fiat money. So you gotta do things that actually have impact. There should have been a bi-directional funnel from Libertarianism into Bitcoin, as well as in Bitcoiners becoming more Libertarian. And I mean, you’ve done a great job amongst all the other Bitcoin content producers—people that discover your show and learn more about Bitcoin eventually discover Austrian economics through your show and become more Libertarian in time. But my frustration was that I didn’t feel that the reverse was happening: there should have been a pipeline from somebody watching, I don’t know, Dave Smith’s show, and then over time, maybe Dave Smith mentioned Bitcoin here and there and then they get into the Bitcoin side of things. It should have gone both ways but it seemed to have only gone one direction. But I guess that’s the way things worked out.

Wolf:

Yeah. I mean, I’m in the business of changing that. So we are using Bitcoin in the business and actually paying a dozen of our staffers with Bitcoin since 2015. And I have just raised—and it’s not enough—but I’ve raised three weeks ago $50,000 for Bitcoin-related activism. And I have a multimillion-dollar proposal that I’m thinking of so I hope to find somebody that is interested in that at some point. I’m already training staff about seeing this and then influencing the volunteers that we have, but there’s so much more work to be done. But we’re already seeing this. Like Reason had great videos recently produced with Alex Gladstein as well. I mean, Alex and the Human Rights Foundation does fantastic work, even though they are more focused on human rights—but liberty being part of that, of course—and we see this a little bit more happening. And I hope at some point somebody at Cato [Institute] will also get it too and take Twitter away from Steve Hanke—which by the way I admire—I’ve quoted his work. He does great academic work, but of course, unfortunately, he does not understand Bitcoin which then reflects poorly on some other of the great aspects of the work that they’re doing. So in my opinion, at some point [Bitcoin] will be a necessity and more non-profits would be focusing on that. But as you can imagine, the incentives frameworks are not conducive to that, because like, Who are the affluent people that donate their money to Libertarian causes? They normally tend to be demographically 60-70 year-old white males, generally speaking. And they are unlikely to understand Bitcoin or get Bitcoin. Or they’re running institutions that prohibit to even putting their toes in there because, predominantly, donors from that movement come from the financial sector. And so they are actually by law discouraged to digging into that, so they don’t have an incentive to that. But I mean, change is occurring fairly fast, and [inaudible] conversations with different means are trying to change that. I see more and more interest from young people and I’m trying to give them the tools and resources so that they can take on the banner and find different ways to spread this, because not everybody has to just focus on Bitcoin solely, but they can use Bitcoin as a part of the solution. What I enjoy about Classical Liberalism specifically, and what I really admire about our ideology, is that we don’t say like, This is what society should look like, this is the perfect [solution], right? Because we know it requires trial and error. And it requires competing entities coming up with different solutions, like Vake, your Uber example was perfect in that regard. We know all of that, and at the same time we cannot say like, Hey, we know this is the only way that we can achieve liberty. Maybe somebody starts a free city project. And then it shows to the rest of the world that decentralized governance will be helpful. I don’t know what will lead there, but I know that Bitcoin will be part of that. And I’m glad that more and more people are seemingly having interest in it and hopefully understand. And also [understand] Austrian economics and money, because I believe it’s a litmus test for a Libertarian: if you understand money and what the problem is with fiat money, then I think you are not going to turn back and become a socialist two weeks later.

Stephan Livera:

Right. And it might also be that people will disagree on the best strategy to achieve liberty. Now obviously, all three of us believe Bitcoin is the best strategy, essentially. Like that everyone is stacking sats and essentially making it very expensive for the government to take everyone’s resources and resource extraction via taxation or inflation and otherwise. And so maybe their view is more like, Oh, no, we’re just going to politically campaign. We’re going to try and do like Ron Paul, right? Like maybe a Dave Smith might say that? What would you say to those strategies? Or maybe they might say, We’re going to do seasteading, or we’re going to do free private cities—free private city is not a good example because they are very pro-Bitcoin as well—but you get the idea. What if, from that Libertarian perspective, they think Bitcoin is not the best strategy?

Vake:

Well, whatever strategy you choose has to be government-hard for lack of a better term. So Bitcoin is government-hard. There’s no person who’s been coerced to shut it down. Unfortunately, most of the strategies that Libertarians have engaged in has been basically trying to push for a new candidates—the Ron Pauls or the Rand Pauls of the world—but even if you get them into office, they can’t really change much because there’s such an entrenched bureaucracy and power structure that it can’t be reformed. I mean, besides Bitcoin, like I said, 3D-printed guns is a great thing because there’s no central authority that they can shut down. I mean, stuff like Impervious.ai—maybe if that takes off, that could be an interesting thing, building a more censorship-resistant internet. There’s a few projects out there working on similar things. There’s a few promising projects, but Bitcoin’s number one amongst them. And [Libertarians are] just trying engage in political action. It’s futile. I mean, I was in the same circles. I think, Wolf—I interned at Cato a long time ago—10 plus years ago. So I know those circles, I’ve lived in DC, and they’re about producing policy papers. And then you go to Capitol Hill and you do briefings for congressmen. And maybe they’ll listen to you, maybe they don’t, but I’m really struggling to think of examples where a Libertarian or free market organization was able to make a substantive impact on a piece of legislation or regulation. I mean, there’s little victories here and there but they don’t add up to much. And so it feels like not a very good use of resources. Whereas Bitcoin—I mean, it’s a trillion dollar asset in a little over a decade! And if it keeps going as it is, then it’ll be the global reserve currency relatively soon. So one strategy seems to be winning quite well, and the other strategy seems to not really produce fruitful results.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. Wolf?

Wolf:

Yeah. So I do agree that I think the relative efforts that have been [expended] within the political sphere are relatively too high, especially when it comes to developed countries. I do have examples where some of our alumni—for instance, Burundi, they have a GDP per capita of $320 annually. That’s like what we spend in a month on Amazon, right? They have that annually. One of our alumni, he went through our programs and he started a think-tank and he was able to reduce the filing fee for a new business from $74 to $24. Like, that now means thousands of people can start a business now and sustain their family and serve the community. That’s real change there. I’m sure that on the margin that also happens in the United States, but you have to invest so much more energy. Because like it’s such a more sclerotic environment where it’s so bureaucratic, it’s hard to get anything done. But yeah, my answer to that would be: let a thousand blossoms bloom. The more people are trying different approaches, the better. And Uber example is fantastic, or any kind of sharing economy stuff. Airbnb produced so much more value. I don’t want to even think about how much less stuff I could get done with my budget if I wasn’t able to use Uber and had to use taxis all the time. I don’t even want to think about that. That’s just a nightmare for me. So there are pockets of freedom that are being created by technology, sometimes by politics, sometimes by people starting businesses, or pushing out ideas that influence others. But I do believe Bitcoin should be part of all of that and that people that are serious about making a dent in the universe, those people should grapple with Bitcoin, because it should be part of their journey in order to accomplish those Galt’s goals faster. That’s what I would say on that.

Stephan Livera:

In your view, what should Libertarians be doing? Like what should they be doing to not be a LARPertarian? Should they be stacking sats—sign up and get their Bitcoin savings plan going? Or should they be promoting it on their shows and podcasts? What kinds of actions do you think they could be doing?

Vake:

They need to be more like you, Stephan! I mean, I think what you’ve done is heroic work. I wouldn’t expect Dave Smith or Eric July or any of those guys to turn their focus entirely towards Bitcoin. That’s not reasonable. They have their niches—like comic books and politics for July—but I think that Bitcoin should be some non-negligible portion of their content, right? I mean it’s an effective tool at evading inflation and improving your financial sovereignty. So stacking sats, securing your private keys—all that stuff. It’s more effective than a lot of the things they’re doing right now. Just getting involved in Bitcoin in any way they can.

Wolf:

Yes, I do agree on that. And there’s a strategic component to that question. So on the one hand, we do have the incentive framework of Bitcoin: every Bitcoiner has the absolute incentive to create more Bitcoiners because that will affect the price and everybody’s better off. I mean, that’s not how we think, but that’s how it works. It’s like the ultimate network good. Like Facebook becomes more relevant, more interesting, if more people are on there. And with money, it’s even more so. So it’s already baked into that. That being said, I do believe that we just have to make the case very strongly and pique people’s interest and say like, Hey, Bitcoin is freedom money. It’s something that we can use to achieve liberty in our lifetime, and you should be learning with this. I tell to many audiences—and I think I did this when we were on a panel, Stephan—I said like, The single best thing that you can do with your time right now is studying Bitcoin. And if they hear that from people like you guys, are respectable and are known at doing great things, thenthat becomes more important. I do think that there is a strategic component to that though, which means that we should be careful how we’re approaching these things and we should be open-minded to the criticism and not say like, Oh, you’re stupid for thinking it’s too volatile or whatever it is, Or being too toxic. I know toxic, some people put it as a badge of honor, and I do understand why, but we also have to understand if some innocent bystander just sees how people behave, they might be just off-put by how people come across and then they maybe wrongly just reject Bitcoin. I mean, it’s their own fault then, of course. But I think those things matter: how we are communicating to people. And Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, if that’s on the table of every Bitcoiner, I think we would be even more effective than we are right now.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And I think at the end of the day, the Number Go Up is honestly what pulls a lot of people in. But from our perspective, if you are thinking to try to preferentially target or try to educate Libertarian-minded people, then maybe that’s a better idea. And maybe that’s also related to this idea of the remnant, right? It’s this idea that you’re focusing your efforts on a certain group of people who you think are more primed to accept this idea, or more able to help this project see fruition. So what do you think about that? Should we be targeting our efforts?

Vake:

I’ve only recently heard a little bit about this remnant concept. I know Alex Svetski is one of the big promoters of it. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. You definitely want to focus your efforts on the most receptive 1% of the population, but I mean if Bitcoin succeeds, eventually you have to go from 1% to 2%, to 10%, to 100%. And we’re about 12 years in now, 12 and a half years into the Bitcoin project. And I think we’re ready to go from, like—I think you were saying 2-3% of the world population owns Bitcoin, Stephan?—so if that’s correct then yeah, I think we’re ready to take that leap from 2-3% to 10%. And I wanted Libertarians to be the first 2-10% in. And so hopefully, they’re gonna get it quicker and not put it off much longer.

Wolf:

And there’s so many things that you can do. I mean, it depends what audience you’re talking about. If you’re talking about Libertarians, it’s pretty clear. First we have to identify like, What do these people want? And how can we use Bitcoin as an explanatory tool so that they can get what they want? And that might be for somebody that comes from more of a Left-wing environment, different than from a Libertarian, than from your grandmother. But that means that we can all do something about it. It doesn’t have to be as complicated that we have to start another podcast and compete with Stephan Livera. That’s not going to happen, right? That’s going to be very difficult. It doesn’t have to be that threatening. But it can just be like, Hey—maybe you talk to your coworkers—and say like, I love Bitcoin. If you’re interested, on Saturday, come over and have some beers, or we do it digitally, and I will just answer all of your questions. I did that with some of my friends to just practice my arguments early on, and one of them bought and he’s very happy now. And so far, he has not gone down the altcoin road either. But you cannot always prevent that. There’s things that we can all do that we don’t have to apply our whole life to, because circumstances are different. Some people have a 9-5 and they have a family and the bandwidth is very low, but maybe they can just, on the weekend, do something. And if we all see that, then we can see more applications of that. So for instance, I will have mandatory staff training on Bitcoin because—I don’t want everyone to buy Bitcoin, I don’t care about that if they want to do that fine—however, I want them to understand what the opportunity is for liberty, and for our students, and for the world. Maybe they don’t agree with these arguments, but at least I want them to grapple with it. That’s something that I can do within my sphere. I already had some alliances built amongst my staff, and some of them are in Nigeria and they get it, like all of them need to have Bitcoin if you want to survive. Some of them work with our students in Afghanistan. Those students sometimes only escaped absolute poverty because they had their seed written down on a piece of paper. If you are in these environments, it’s so much more obvious. I mean, I have three staff that’s coming from Venezuela. Some of them have lost probably more than 90% of the wealth in their family. They get it immediately. And those are also the sort of stories that are going to be powerful. Yours is very powerful, but us as like pretty rich Westerners, it is not as convincing as if somebody said like, Hey, this tool, this technology, saved my family and saved our lives because we were able to flee with a seed instead of trying to carry like gold bars—which probably they will not have that. And [that’s] the storytelling and making it really about like, How is it good for humankind? And not only for you. If you do it both for them but also how it benefits others, I think that could be the winning formula.

Stephan Livera:

Right. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And in terms of what Libertarians could be doing maybe one example with Students for Liberty, Wolf, it sounds like people within the organization are already using Bitcoin. Some of them are getting paid in Bitcoin. That’s also an important aspect, because now you’re using it day-to-day—you’re really gonna learn. Your’re competent. You’re going to have to learn how to use Lightning. You’re going to have to learn how to have your hardware wallet to secure your stack and things. Wolf, do want to comment a little bit on the use of Bitcoin inside Students for Liberty?

Wolf:

Absolutely. Yeah, no, that’s perfect. And we had to use Bitcoin because I have staff in—I don’t know how many countries—but on every inhabited continent. So to send a wire via Bank of America costs like $50 if you want to send it to Brazil. Like how insane is that? And it will take a good five days. And so then we’re just using Bitcoin which is infinitely cheaper. And so it was just a necessity that we saw. And then people, as you’ve said, start to use a hardware wallet and maybe save a little bit of Bitcoin and then just cash out some of the money in fiat money. And that is very good. The next step is—now we just set up like a month ago our BTCPay Server and we take Lightning donations and on-chain donations—but the next step is we have right now like 2,500 volunteers worldwide that dedicate five hours each week towards Libertarian activism. I want all of them to be reimbursed in [Bitcoin]. That will take a little bit of time but that will be the next step. And maybe I incentivize them because sometimes we have to reimburse because they organized an event and I get like $50 for pizza or whatever they had. But instead of having to send that via TransferWise or PayPal—depending on the country, because we have so many different tools to do this—they get a Lightning donation and then they get a little bonus when they take it Bitcoin because it’s cheaper to do it than with Transferwise or what have you. And that could like—because of self-interest—could get them on board and say like, Huh, maybe I just let it sit there and see what happens and then NGU—Number Go Up. They might have another incentive to dig into this. So those are some of the things that we’re working on in addition to YouTube videos—we have a channel called Learn Liberty where we do some of the education—but also thousands of events every year. And I wouldn’t mind if the majority of those events would be focused on money and econ and Bitcoin.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. Excellent. So one other aspect I’m thinking as well is that some Libertarians might be thinking, I don’t want to risk my reputation on this thing. I’ve spent all this time, maybe years or decades in some cases—whether they are a Libertarian academic or Libertarian podcast or popular person—maybe that’s one of their fears, that they feel, if I do this, I don’t want to go full hard on Bitcoin and be like, Yeah, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Bitcoin, because what if it all crashes? And then I look like an idiot in front of everyone! What do you guys think about that idea?

Vake:

I mean, being a Bitcoiner 10 years ago was a reputational risk because it was a brand new project. The price was under a hundred dollars. But by now, I feel like it’s been thoroughly de-risked. It’s on CNBC every day, Donald Trump tweeting about it, it’s being debated on the floor of Congress. So it’s not a niche thing anymore. So it’s time for people to get on board, especially if you have that liberty mindset. There’s not much of an excuse anymore, in my opinion.

Wolf:

Yeah. Agreed on a personal level, but still it’s pretty scary. Just in the last six months it dropped by 50%. I have talked with people about Bitcoin very passionately in the run-up to that and then they bought mainly on the top and then it went down. And I’m sure that some of them might not thought so kindly about me at these times, because they have never been through these cycles. I mean, we have seen some of these cycles. We have survived a few of them. But if you haven’t, it’s still pretty gut-wrenching. And so if you do that with your grandmother’s inheritance or something along those lines, it’s, it’s still can be quite a tall ask. And that’s just on an individual level. I’m not saying that one shouldn’t, Vake—I 100% agree with you. It’s just the emotional factor that sometimes comes with the volatility that it still has. And yes, it’s to the upside still, but it’s there, it’s real. Especially also for institutions, because theoretically, every non-profit or for-profit should put Bitcoin on your balance sheets, but you have to deal with governance, you have to deal with boards, you have to deal with other stakeholders that potentially could attack you very well. And really, for a non-profit, if you do some investments and the money goes up, I don’t think anybody cares. But if the money goes down and you’re wasting donor money, for instance, you will hear from your donors and from your board. So the incentives are still so that people are more likely to be cautious than not, but over time, maybe everybody turns to be a Michael Saylor.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And I’ll tell you one thing that’s very interesting there: maybe one way around that is if—let’s say there’s a whale out there listening and they want to focus on education for young Libertarians—they could give a certain amount of Bitcoin and mandate, Okay, you’ve got to HODL it in Bitcoin. Or something like that. Maybe that’s the way that kind of thing could happen, just as an idea, right?

Wolf:

I’d love to have that conversation. Anybody who wants to have that conversation, I’m all ears!

Stephan Livera:

Well there you go. That’s one example,

Wolf:

Force me to HODL Bitcoin. Then I’ll bring that to my board. I’d love that.

Stephan Livera:

Part of it is also just that the broader global conversation around inflation—I mean, even for me at Swan Bitcoin, I’m getting customers now who are calling up and being like, Hey, I’m actually getting a bit more concerned about inflation—I’ve got this cash, I want to get into Bitcoin. And they’re new and they’re trying to learn and so obviously I start teaching them about Bitcoin. But the conversation is shifting as well, that more and more people are becoming aware of the risk. Whereas previously it would have been seen like, Oh, that’s too risky to go into Bitcoin. Now it’s starting to turn to be the other side: it’s too risky to leave too much money in your fiat bank account.

Vake:

Two years ago, most people would’ve never heard the term fiat. And now it’s everywhere. You know, Money Printer Go Brrrrrrr is a popular meme. It’s amazing in the last year and a half since COVID started, how much people have been red-pilled about the money printing. I mean think about Ron Paul in 2008, 2012, talking about the gold standard and the Fed and it was just crickets in response. And now everybody gets it! You’ll see even comedy podcasts talk about inflation. [inaudible] it’s insane. You’ll hear Joe Rogan or someone talk about it. It’s no longer a niche concept on [inaudible] that fiat money doesn’t really have any intrinsic value or inherent scarcity.

Wolf:

Yeah. And Parker Lewis has a great article on this, the definancialization of everything, and people are looking like, Where do I start to save? And then they have to become more and more focused on these very volatile instruments and meme stocks and all that kind of stuff. And some people make money. And now, the Gen Zs are all trading in stocks and probably burning a lot of money. And I think just by learning through very painful experiences, people then discover like, Hey, maybe I should just buy and HODL Bitcoin and not engage with all of these other very volatile things. And this is an important message. Yes, it’s freedom money, but also if you just buy and HODL, you will sleep much better at night. I certainly do. And promising that to people and showing that that is actually something that you can do, might be also enticing.

Stephan Livera:

Now one other area I wanted to talk to you guys about is this idea that as Bitcoin grows, there will be more of a political and lobbying effort around it. And we saw the beginnings of this really—or at least it started to get a lot more prominent—is around this whole infrastructure bill in the US. So at that time, a lot of the Bitcoin lobbying and policy advocacy groups were scrambling to try to stop this crazy section going into the infrastructure bill in the US, but it seems to me like this is only going to get more and more [prevalent]. Now, does that mean there is a need for a single-issue Bitcoin political party, or do you think it really more in practice is going to mean each side will have different politicians who are trying to become more Bitcoin-friendly? And what’s the implication going to be, then? What’s it going to look like?

Vake:

Well, you’re 100% right, Stephan, that as Bitcoin gets bigger and bigger in the cryptosphere in general, the government’s going to focus on us like the Eye of Sauron, but this is really what’s going to distinguish Bitcoin from the altcoins, right? Because Bitcoin—there’s no way they’re going to be able to change the underlying source code that we all run on our nodes. Millions of us across the globe. Whereas the altcoins like Ethereum, what’s going to happen is I don’t think that the government’s going to come in there and shut down Ethereum one day. But they’re going to go to the Ethereum Foundation consensus and they’re going to say, You need to take this out of the code base, you need to add this, you need to change this monetary policy, you need to tweak this, and you also need to censor this transaction. It’s going to be slowly undermined by a death by a thousand cuts. Slowly regulated into oblivion where it’s no longer distinguishable from something like Amazon Web Services. But Bitcoin has that robustness. But as far as whether or not Bitcoiners should be lobbying, perhaps with respect to things like capital gains taxes—we don’t need to really worry about the Core protocol, but if we did have to worry about the Core protocol then our system is not robust—but taxes, other ancillary things, KYC on exchanges. That stuff I think there is a role for organizations like Coin Center, but ultimately the underlying protocol and the consensus that we have around Bitcoin, and what it means, and what it is, has to be robust and not necessarily defended by lobbying.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. Wolf?

Wolf:

Yeah. I mean, the most important thing is of course always giving our thanks to Bitcoin Core developers, because it’s a very unthankful job for keeping Bitcoin as strong as it is, because it’s not like you’re just programming something and you can just change it tomorrow. You have to deal with all of these different interest groups and it’s a very unthankful job, but they’re making sure that Bitcoin stays robust and within the vision that Satoshi and other cypherpunks set early on. Now that being said—that needs to happen—but I said earlier, we need all of these Libertarian Bitcoiners in all aspects of society. We need people in law. We need people in politics. And I believe, yes, we do need lobbyists, because if all of these bureaucrats create laws that don’t make sense, that hamper adoption, making on-ramping onto Bitcoin much harder—sure you can still use Bisq and other decentralized exchanges and stuff, but not many people will be using that at the end of the day and it will slow it down. So I actually talked to very recently with Jerry Brito, who’s the guy in charge of Coin Center and he’s doing a phenomenal job. I mean, he’s focusing on crypto generally, not only Bitcoin. And I think as freedom-loving people we say, Hey, sure, go for it. But of course the only thing that will be able to compete with the Dollar and fiat money is Bitcoin. But he mentioned a few good things and he and I discussed that and we basically said like, Yeah, there is room for a functional Trade Association representing like a lot of the Bitcoin businesses. There’s lots of room for an organization that represents Bitcoin and/or crypto users—but it’s very hard to do that, right? And especially with so much in-fighting. So I don’t want to take that on, but if somebody in the audience listens to this, I think there’s a need for that. And maybe also an organization that represents all of these other exchanges and so forth so that there could be a united front presented to the lawmakers to say like, Hey, if you regulate it in X fashion, then that will lead to a lot of unintended consequences that will be problematic. Will we be able to stop that? The machinery in DC is very powerful, but they do get their insights from lobbyists, and so if we give up on that entirely, that could have ramifications that would slow down adoption. I mean, in the US we are pretty well off because we have the SEC and Gensler—people that know that—but also out of the SEC comes a bunch of regulation that we don’t like either. So more people on the forefront of that would be helpful. And we have already seen that the Bitcoin community has some sharp teeth in this regard. And that was helpful.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. From a political point of view as well—obviously that’s around lobbying and industry groups and associations and things—from a political point of view, which is related, do you believe Bitcoin will end up being supported more by the Right-wing parties versus the Left-wing parties? Or do you see it like it might just actually be supported by both sides?

Vake:

I mean, I think definitely the Right, Conservative parties are gonna adopt it first. You’re already seeing it. Let’s take your atypical Tim Pool, someone like that, is already way into Bitcoin, but you rarely see on the Left. Mostly Left-leaning individuals like Paul Krugman are anti-Bitcoin, and Right-leaning individuals are either neutral or favorable towards it. And that makes sense because at least with the current big tech censorship environment, it’s affecting conservatives a lot more. They’re having their bank accounts revoked, they’re kicked off Twitter, et cetera. So they have a greater need for it because Bitcoin is fundamentally censorship-resistant.

Wolf:

It’s a fascinating question. I like it a lot. I would love to hear Alex Gladstein’s opinion on that as well, what he thinks. But I generally think probably mostly on the Right, because fiscal conservatism is at least a talking point. It’s not a principle that’s being held, but it’s a talking point. And so then Bitcoin could fit into that. And we have seen some unlikely Conservatives including Ted Cruz taking this on. I mean, he might be flip-flopping three weeks from now—I mean, who knows. But that’s politicians for you. It all depends not on the media or the politicians, because what comes first is the ideas and society. And Hayek has so eloquently laid that out in his article, The Intellectuals and Socialism, how ideas realy come. And it starts with the ideas and then a second-hand dealer of ideas. And you, Stephan, you are one of them by being a podcaster, and journalists and so forth. And once that trickles down, then at the end, once people already say like, Bitcoin is the best thing, then also politicians say like, Yes! And the more they see that they can get votes from that—and what you said, Stephan, maybe like a party. I don’t know the history of single-issue parties, if that’s successful. I mean, we have the Pirate Party in several countries around the world, they are marginal. But Bitcoin is a bigger deal, arguably. So yeah the more the constituency will call them up and say like, Hey, don’t do stupid stuff on Bitcoin, because I have a lot of my wealth in that—because they have a vested interest. I think that could definitely be a very good path towards politicians actually being more on board with that. But it would most likely start on the Right-wing and not with the Left-wing, because of the arguments that I’ve mentioned: like why the left-wing might not be that open to it. Because we also have to understand that redistribution and fighting inequality is a very important value of the Left. And if you take away the money-printing purse, it will become much harder. And so if people realize that then that might be not like the best way of going about it. However, if more from human rights angle you can say like, Hey, this empowers the poorest of the poor—that could be really helpful, then maybe more of the Left will be open-minded to it. But I think the Right’s generally going to be first.

Vake:

It didn’t have to be this way. I mean, right now I would say that the Right-wing is under more censorship pressure than the Left-wing. But if you go back a few decades like the 1980s, back then it was Reagan’s America—Conservatives are dominant. I’m sure if you’re on the Left side of things, then you had greater censorship risk at that point in time. But unfortunately I think the pendulum swung the other direction. But the other thing that really keeps the Left from on-boarding is probably going to be the ESG stuff. You know, if the media continues to tie Bitcoin to global warming, then somebody that’s on the Left side of political spectrum is going to be more hesitant to adopt it, naturally. So the Right-wing is going to beat them to it.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. Interesting stuff. So yeah, at the end of the day I think the message really is: if you’re a Libertarian, you need to get into Bitcoin, stop lobbying, get out there and get more active. Meaning: stacks some sats and teach your Libertarian friends that they need to also stack sats, and try to use Bitcoin in your organization in some way. So let’s throw it to you guys for just a final closing comment on Bitcoiners and LARPertarians. And of course, where can people find you? So Vake, let’s go with you first.

Vake:

Yeah. And I totally agree. Stack sats, set up an account with Swan Bitcoin and start DCAing right now, learn to hold your own private keys, run a full node, CoinJoin. I mean, there’s a progression of self-sovereignty there, and that does a lot more good than simply talking about politics. You’re actually bringing the dream of AnCapistan, Libertopia. You’re actually bringing it into reality. Or citadels as we describe them now. And you can find me on Twitter at @vakeraj.

Wolf:

Very good. Yeah. Everything that Vake said, plus just start learning. If you believe only one tenth of what we said in this podcast here, and we piqued your interest in some way, just dedicate one hour a week and start learning. Start with the Gradually, Then Suddenly series by Parker Lewis or listen to more of Stephan’s podcasts or watch the Michael Saylor series with Breedlove, or read The Bitcoin standard. All of those are great first resources that you can start learning. And I think once you learn and you think more about it, you will get an excitement and a passion for it that will not make you stop. And that’s what happened to all of us. And I think it might happen also with you. So I think that that would be the way of going about it. So if you’re curious, just dig into it! You can find me on Twitter at @wolfvonlaer and I’m running CEO of studentsforliberty.org. and I’m trying to orange pill the whole movement that we have all around the world. And if you want to help me with that please reach out on Twitter or just email me at wolf@studentsforliberty.org.

Stephan Livera:

Thank you guys. I really enjoyed chatting with you. It was a really good, fair discussion about liberty and Bitcoin.

Wolf:

Thanks so much anytime.