The One Question

Every passage, on the record.

1. 00:00Claim

   Bitcoin represents a brighter future because it is more efficient at allowing for the transformation of energy from inaccessible to accessible.

2. 01:06Claim · condensed

   Bitcoin itself is an asset. It's the most stable thing that has ever existed. This is working because of the design of the system. It works and that adoption doesn't take a backward step.

3. 02:18Idea

   I need to distill what questions need asking in order to maintain conviction in the thesis. It really boils down to a very simple question that you need to have top of mind at all times to know whether or not you should be reallocating energy elsewhere because the Bitcoin narrative is failing.

4. 03:08Claim

   History shows that those that invest in resources and processes that increase the efficiency of energy transformation, they are the winners. The losers never have more energy than the winners. It's not possible, because the game that's being played is energy accumulation.

5. 03:39Idea

   If you want to win, allocate energy to optimize your systems for future energy transformation and storage. There are two pieces to this puzzle: there's the transformation of the energy and there's the storage or the accessibility of the energy at any time.

6. 04:13Idea

   When I say the word economy, I mean the economy as a group of individuals who agree to store energy in one another. That is what an economy is. The goal behind this sharing is to transform more energy than would be possible and to store that energy than on your own.

7. 04:48Claim

   If you act in a group, you're going to be able to transform more energy than you would on your own. No man is an island, or if he is an island, he is less efficient at energy transformation. Therefore he is going to have less energy reserves, which makes him more susceptible to the unknowns in the world that exist in the future.

8. 04:48Quote

   If life continuing is the ultimate goal, it is going to need energy in that process to be able to have ultimate optionality to continue to bring order to disorder.

9. 05:30Claim

   Winning in this scenario isn't just winning over the money, the technology. It's control over the foundation for energy transformation itself. The conflict is between which energy transformation system are we going to operate on as an economy, as an extended order.

10. 06:10Claim

    In the past, the conflicting sides would have been monarch versus monarch, republic versus monarch, empire versus empire. Today, it looks like socialism versus capitalism. It's going to be centralized versus decentralized.

11. 06:42Reference

    To dig into this idea, we've had Jason Lowery's book, "Softwar," on this idea of war and Bitcoin. This has rubbed some people the wrong way, but it's an interesting way to view the dynamic that is occurring between the two systems and the role that Bitcoin might play there.

12. 07:54Claim

    In a war, in that conflict, what do you get when you win? You get to set up the abstract power hierarchy. You control the real power, the real world power where there is no trust necessary. It's beneficial to the extended order or it wouldn't do this, because it's more efficient: we can transform more energy if we properly employ an abstract power hierarchy because we're not at each other's throats.

13. 08:27Reference

    This is where things fall apart, at least up until now. This is where the mean, or the saying, that strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times create strong men. Something along those lines.

14. 08:59Claim

    This circular theory that continues to happen is that it doesn't matter who you put at the top of these abstract power hierarchies, eventually they fail. They fail because trust is required, because people fail. It only takes a few bad actors inside of that space to spoil the system. That's when it can start to reverse and eat itself into an inefficient debt spiral.

15. 09:35Claim

    To be prosperous, an economy needs to be efficient and accumulate energy reserves. If they do not do that, someone else who is will just take what they have.

16. 09:35Quote

    If they do not do that, someone else who is will just take what they have.

17. 10:16Claim

    One of Jason's main points in the arguments that I have seen is that conflict itself, and therefore the resolution of that conflict, doesn't have to be physical. As we have progressed in our energy games, we have moved further and further from broadly applied energy intensive activities across entire economies. Now we've settled on a much more tactically placed energy usage.

18. 10:49Idea

    The conflict is between two energy transformation tools that are so low on the foundational pyramid that they bleed into almost every aspect of an economy itself. Bitcoin and the legacy system are engaged in an energy war. Each side that can transform more energy, store it, and make it readily accessible to those that can leverage it in the present to ensure more plentiful reserves in the future will win.

19. 11:26Claim

    There is this idea of the broad versus the narrow view of conflict. It's very simplistic to have a narrow view: I project more kinetic power than you, and I win, after all wars are an energy race, the more you have the better your chances. This is true to a certain extent, but there are complexities at the margins we need to examine. It isn't just about manpower and weapons or energy delivery systems.

20. 11:58Reference

    There is a fantastic video on this very topic of a Nobel Prize winner, Chemistry in 1994, Kary Mullis. It's describing how scientists made World War II possible in the first place.

21. 12:29Analogy

    Science requires energy. Investing energy and processing data into information is energy intensive. From the disorder, from the unknown, we want to create order. So we are filtering signal from the noise with a very specific application in a very specific domain with the hopes of improving efficiency along the way.

22. 13:03Claim

    In World War II, it's things like whether it's drugs for soldiers, how do we get energy to the front line quicker, how do we get it there more stable, how do we get it there with less bleed. Any improvement in any area in a delivery system makes the whole system more robust, makes it more efficient.

23. 14:10Claim

    It's just to drive home the point that information requires energy. The more information that you have, the more information a side has, the better off they are, because it shows that they have an abundance of energy reserves to be able to plug into these in the first place.

24. 14:44Quote

    It's just to drive home the point that information requires energy.

25. 15:52Analogy

    It's just not possible because the demon requires energy itself. It has to be fed in order to gain the efficiency that it does, or gain the energy that it does, from this closed system.

26. 16:22Claim

    The conflict appears to be a money versus money, old technology versus new technology, fiat versus Bitcoin. It is much more than that, because one money contains within it an incentive structure that encourages or discourages certain structures of the extended order itself, and therefore the energy transformation system run by it. So there are two opposing forces for mass organization in our current models: capitalism and socialism.

27. 17:25Quote

    If the one goal we can all rally behind that every decision is downstream from is the fact that more energy at our fingertips is better than less, then we should do everything to optimize for the best outcome in the energy transformation domain. That is our North Star.

28. 17:25Claim

    If we dig deep enough into this process, we find it isn't so much the money technology that is the center of the conflict, but rather centralization of energy versus decentralization of energy. Bitcoin has shifted the balance of power in this struggle as decentralized energy tracking was simply not possible before its existence.

29. 17:58Claim

    That is the piece that Bitcoin solves, and the conflict has become tipped to one side. Centralization is less efficient. It is slower to change, has much lower incentive creation around progress at the individual level.

30. 18:32Analogy

    There's a stark difference between 12 people getting together in a room and setting what they believe to be the price of time versus the entire market self expressing value and that being reflected in real time with a figure that is known to all regardless of social status, physical location. That is the hive mind coming together to produce interest rate values versus the current system.

31. 19:06Prediction

    Now is when adoption happens and this progress itself reinforces across time and at a certain point becomes unstoppable.

32. 19:36Claim

    As Bitcoin adoption grows, the ability to centralize power diminishes because the control of power is dependent on energy extraction by those that seek to control.

33. 20:14Prediction

    Centralized power will experience energy loss at a rate never seen before. Billions moved at the speed of light, never seen before. All the timelines for how long this will play out become extremely condensed relative to past events.

34. 20:14Quote

    Billions moved at the speed of light, never seen before.

35. 20:45Open question

    If this is true, then what might that look like as it was happening? How could we recognize that? How would we be able to recognize the shift occurring and where would the early signs pop up to let us know our hypothesis might have legs?

36. 20:45Analogy

    This is the only question that we need to ask to understand. This is like if you get to the Merkle root inside of a Bitcoin block. This is the one that has to maintain in order for all the other factors that we care about to matter at all.

37. 21:19Claim

    Fiat is designed to be a means to divert existing energy reserves to a certain few who make up a privileged class inside of the extended order.

38. 21:19Quote

    Bitcoin is designed to never allow energy flows to be dammed, to never be diverted, no matter what direction they are flowing it.

39. 21:52Analogy

    The water, or in this case the energy, will find its level if it is left undisturbed. Really that is the idea behind Bitcoin itself.

40. 21:52Open question

    So then the question becomes can you see energy efficiency increases where fiat is involved? Do you see mass value add where fiat rails are being employed? Are the components that make up the fiat system continuing to innovate and add value when they are used?

41. 22:22Claim

    I see a world where fiat adds complexity to any energy transformation. It makes the process less efficient. It stands as an impediment to progress because it diverts energy away from the exchange itself.

42. 22:53Reference

    Do you have to get permission from those who produce nothing of value? This is the Ayn Rand angle on this idea. If a class of people can siphon energy for no output they will, and they will grow to a size that the system will let them.

43. 23:23Claim

    We the extended order need ideas. Ideas are energy, and we need exposure to as many specializations as possible, because if we don't have that someone else will, and they will use it against us. We can't shield ourselves from someone else using this technology because it exists and is more efficient. It cannot be suppressed.

44. 23:23Quote

    Ideas are energy.

45. 23:54Claim

    Every single instance in history of a conflict results in the side of those that have more energy defeating those that have less energy.

46. 23:54Quote

    To beat it you don't even need to overpower it. You simply need to exist. The drain will happen on its own because of the design of the system. The flow cannot be interrupted.

47. 24:27Quote

    The real question we need to analyze the issue from is which system is enabling efficiency gains and energy transformation. That's it.

48. 25:02Claim

    When you view the conflict through this lens it seems fairly clear that Bitcoin wins across the board, that Bitcoin dominates in every single aspect which allows for the decentralization of energy control in the first place. And that is a positive for the extended order. It might be something to allocate energy towards if the writing is on the wall at this level.

49. 25:34Prediction

    The gradually then suddenly part will be more condensed than ever. The suddenly will be faster. The gradually will be smaller.

50. 26:04Prediction

    The result is that you may wake up one day and you just will not be able to catch Bitcoin, and that's not a position that you want to find yourself in.