We've got about 6 years before

everything changes, and we thought the

money in the bank was safe. We thought

our house was safe, but none of that's

true. And the moment you put your money

and your savings in the bank,

you don't own anything. And your future

self is getting poorer by 11% every

year. And that's a problem for financial

security and wealth creation. But I know

where the opportunities lie and I've got

answers.

So, could you explain it to me through

the context of this? Okay. So, Raoul Pal

is one of the most influential voices in

the ever-changing world of modern

finance.

Unpacking the secrets of crypto

and how to build wealth in an uncertain

future. People know their futures. They

can't afford to buy a house. They have

less savings, debts from university.

People in their 30s are the first

generation that won't be as rich as

their parents.

So, what advice would you give to set

myself up for wealth in the future? You

start investing.

But what about the people that no matter

how hard they work, they still don't

have that excess income to invest?

You don't need huge savings. You just

need to understand how to look for

opportunities. For example, the S&P 500

is not worth your time. Real estate

doesn't really make you any money. Those

days are gone. Gold actually lost you

money, but investing in crypto, like

Bitcoin, gives us stupidly high returns

in short periods of time, growing at

150% a year, scaling at twice the speed

of the internet. So, now the guy with

$500 can get rich. I have a question

here then. So, if I'm now at 30 years

oldish, have I missed the boat?

No. Much of the reason why I think

people don't invest in crypto is they've

heard stories where people have put too

much in and they've lost it all. So,

what if you're wrong? We're going to

talk about how not to [ __ ] it up. And

then, how do I invest in crypto?

It's really simple. You're going to

start somewhere. So,

do that and you'll make money.

This has always blown my mind a little

bit. 53% of you that listen to this show

regularly haven't yet subscribed to this

show. So, could I ask you for a favor

before we start? If you like the show

and you like what we do here and you

want to support us, the free simple way

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everything in my power, me and my team,

to make sure that this show is better

for you every single week. We'll listen

to your feedback, we'll find the guests

that you want me to speak to, and we'll

continue to do what we do. Thank you so

much.

Raoul,

from a very high-level perspective,

and I'm being unspecific here, so I'm

looking for an unspecific answer. What

exactly is the mission that you're on in

this season of your life? Like what are

you doing and who are you doing it for?

Hm.

So, obviously, you do it for yourself.

But,

really, I think that

I've been armed with tools and knowledge

over the years, my 30-year career, that

I kind of have a decent sense of where

the world is going,

where the opportunities lie and where

the risk lies for people. And I can see

the problems people are facing, and I

think I've got answers.

So, what I want to do is help as many

people as possible

in that journey.

And why that happened to me

was I was in Spain back in 2012,

and also during the financial crisis

2008.

And I was writing macroeconomic research

for my research service Global Macro

Investor,

and I had seen it coming. I predicted

it, I knew it was coming, I knew the

problems. I warned all of my friends.

They Nobody listened. Nobody understood

about the financial crisis, what was

going to happen. And most of them, cuz I

was living in a beach town in Spain,

they were in real estate.

They all went bust. But worse than that

was that when we got to the European

crisis,

when basically the governments of Europe

ran out of money,

the banks also ran out of money.

And as opposed to being bailed out, they

got what's known as bailed in, which

means that they took your savings

to pay the debtors.

And friends of my parents and friends of

friends were wiped out.

And they were like, "Why didn't we

know?"

I'm like,

that was a question that sat with me for

a while. "Why didn't we know?"

And I saw that everybody had lost total

faith in the system.

So, Occupy Wall Street happened at the

same period.

And it was people angry. It's like, "We

thought money in the bank was safe. We

thought our house was safe. We thought

the system was there for us."

And suddenly they all wake up and

realize the system was not there for

them. Hm. It was actually for other

people. You know, people talk about

bankers never went to jail. No, there

was There was that sense that it was

never concluded.

And it sat with me for a long time

thinking, "What can I do about this?"

Because I was writing super high-end

kind of research for hedge funds and,

you know, big asset management firms.

And so, it wasn't accessible to people.

Um and then I wrote a couple of

articles. One got leaked in Zero Hedge

in its early days, and it became super

viral.

Um and I thought maybe there's something

here and

that I could reach a broader audience,

cuz then I can help these people. And

that's when we came up with the idea of

Real Vision, which was the idea of

interviewing the people at the very

heart of the system and kind of sharing

the details, cuz these people weren't

hiding it. They wanted to help people as

well. Everyone had that sense that we

could help people. So,

I'm still on that journey.

And that journey kind of has taken a

multitude of paths, starting businesses,

but also just trying to educate people

on why they feel the way they do.

You know, why politics is so polarized.

Never used to be this bad. You know,

what's really going on

and who really to blame

and what to do about it. If I stop the

average person on the street that knows

you and watches Real Vision, and I ask

them,

"What has Raoul and his channel and his

information done for you?" What do you

think they would say, the average

person?

They'd just say thank you.

Because we've helped demystify

it, the world of finance. And

you see, we all have

The root of unhappiness and happiness

often comes from does your vision of

your future self match where you are

today?

Can you see that path?

Whether that's finances, whether it's

health, they're all very similar

journeys.

And when people can't see the vision of

their future self,

and they can't see how to get there,

they get upset. And what we've tried to

do

is unfuck people's future, which is an

expression we use, which is a way which

is a a memetic or a meme or just a short

phraseology to help people understand we

understand that you feel like you can't

get to where you want to get to, but

there are options to do it. And I think

people are immensely grateful for that

in general.

If you're on a mission to help people

unfuck their future, can you explain to

me specifically the things that stand

the chance of [ __ ] their future from

a macro perspective? And when I say

macro, we have to pause and just define

what I mean by the word macro. When I

think of the word macro, I mean big

picture Yeah. perspective. So, from a

big picture perspective, what are the

things that stand

a chance of [ __ ] my future?

Okay. So,

and we can we can dig into why these

things have occurred,

but generally speaking,

wages in real terms, adjusted for

inflation, haven't gone up for decades.

So, nobody's getting richer.

If you're an American, you have this

powerful meme, which is the American

dream.

But that is not a reality for most

people.

The reality is you grind it out.

Your savings are not worth what you

thought they'd be. This whole promise of

your pension and swanning around on a

cruise ship around the Caribbean when

you're older, living in a nice house,

none of that's true.

And it's because

wages haven't gone up. So, okay. So,

let's cut to

somebody who's in their 30s now.

Because this is the really important

cohort I think for this.

They

can't afford to buy a house.

If I go back to when I was

30, I bought a house in London, and it

was

it was a nice place in a good area, and

it was three and a half times salary.

Yes, I was in finance. I was earning a

high salary. You can't buy anything for

three and a half times your salary.

Now, that same place, if I took the same

kind of young investment banker salary,

it's probably eight or 10 times.

So, it's tripled in how expensive it is

to just buy your first house.

So, what is a house? Firstly, it's your

quality of life, particularly, you know,

in England, the UK, uh in the UK, sorry,

in the US, we're home buyers. You know,

we think of our home as our castle. It's

It's like the thing that solidifies our

security.

But, you know, if you're in Germany, for

example,

they don't they rent. But if we think

about the mindset of owning a house,

it's an asset that you can then pass on

or you can sell if you need to. And an

asset is

really

a future savings plan. It's something

you save now that in the future you can

consume. You can buy stuff with.

But what you're doing is for the average

35-year-old, the average millennial is

36 years old.

They can't afford to buy the house.

So, therefore, their future self is

poorer.

If they think of how much of the stock

market they can buy,

they can buy less with with that money.

They have less savings. They They've got

debts from university.

So, they don't have the ability to get

out of this trap. And then, what we are

finding is because of this,

they're having to live with other people

into their 30s.

They're having to

They don't have kids and they don't get

married. And these numbers have

collapsed since 1983. You've seen these

numbers come down from um people living

on their own, so I you could get your

job, get yourself an apartment, has gone

from 80% to 62%. You're seeing the

marriage rate halve. You're seeing

um the home ownership rate go from 50%

to 30%.

But these are all expressions of the

same problems. Which is people know

their future's [ __ ] and they can feel

it. They have a sense of desperation.

You see then the same cohort of kids in

their 30s doing two jobs, three jobs,

four jobs.

That's not because they want to. Nobody

wants to work 12-hour days, 7 days a

week. It's because they have to.

And their parents, the baby boomers, who

are in their 70s and retiring, never had

that. They were the richest generation

the world had ever seen.

So this is the first generation that

won't be as rich as their parents.

And that's a weird thing because we're

all used to human progress, the American

dream.

If the American dream is, well, you'll

never be as wealthy as your parents and

they were middle-class people and I'm

now less well-off than them, that's kind

of [ __ ] So look, here's some stats

about a 30-year-old today versus a

30-year-old in 1983.

So

a 30-year-old in 1983

85% of them

lived on their own. They could afford

a house or an apartment to rent or to

buy. Now, it's 64%.

So people are living having to live with

other people.

Marriage rates, they've gone from 80% of

30-year-olds in 1983 who were married to

47% now.

Kids, having kids, gone from 60%

to 32%.

Population growth is collapsing because

people can't afford it.

And home ownership for a 30-year-old has

gone from 50% to 32%.

It just shows that dramatic change

that's happened happened over the

decades and why each generation has

found it more and more difficult

to be like their parents.

So I am

30 years oldish. Yeah. I like to hang on

to 30 for as long as I can.

Um

What advice would you give to someone

like me that's my age or maybe even

younger, you know, mid-20s, as to how to

play the game over the coming years to

make sure that I don't find myself in a

position where I'm having to work two

jobs, I'm poor, I don't have assets, I

don't have anything to show for it. Like

if you take it right back to being like

maybe let's say a a 20-year-old or a

25-year-old, how do you play the game?

And and when I think about this, I'm

thinking like wealth creation, how to

then preserve my wealth, like what's the

game? So the first part of the game

is income. Okay.

Without income, you don't have the cash

to do the other things, to invest or to

look for opportunities. So first thing

is income.

But even that's changing in how we earn

incomes these days.

You know, it used to be you go and work

for a big firm, you get paid, you get

the benefit. That's all going and nobody

wants to do it. So you kind of end up

having to be a entrepreneur, work two or

three different things. The point being,

if you're 20s, do all of that. Work day

and night. Really?

many things, learn as much as you can,

fail as often as possible.

What about work-life balance in your

20s? [ __ ] it.

Because that's the time to put in the

hard work. Your work-life balance

actually comes out later.

I'm a big believer in yes, if you're

straight out of university, go traveling

for a year or two.

You know, that A gets rid of the pent-up

need, but also gives you a much broader

perspective on the world than any other

single thing that you can do in your

life. After that, you get your head down

and you get your head down probably till

mid-30s.

Okay, so what when you say get my head

down

I'm guessing one of the most important

things in that season of your life is

knowledge acquisition. Yeah. And then if

that's true, then

the next question is what type of

knowledge should I be acquiring to set

myself up for wealth in the future? Cuz

I could go acquire knowledge of, you

know, how to clean a toilet or how to uh

be a gardener, but what what is the most

high returning knowledge? For me, it is

first to be an expert on something.

Okay. And then a generalist on as much

as possible.

Right, be that expert because somebody

will pay you for that, at least for the

time being. And we'll talk about how the

world may change in the future, but for

the time being, if you're an expert in

whatever it may be,

whether it's driving a taxi or whether

it's a computer scientist, doesn't

matter, be an expert. Compete with

yourself day and night to be the best

that you can.

So at least it's going to give you the

chance to earn some money. Okay, so just

to drill down on that before we continue

to move forward.

How does one become an expert? Like what

are the like how do I have to show up to

become an expert? You're an expert on

many things.

Okay, so this to me is this is a trick

that I learned.

And it's called manifesting your own

destiny.

And what you do is what I've always done

my whole life

is I envisage myself five or 10 years in

the future.

What do I want to be?

And you look around you and say, okay,

what are the things that I want to have

that future vision of myself as opposed

to the 30, 40-year path, it's too

difficult. Give it five years. Where do

I want to be in five years?

Okay, and you look around that future

world and you think, okay, well, how

would I got here?

You know, if I've

built a business cleaning windows and

I've got 20 people working for me, well,

how did I get there?

Well, I would have had to have figured

out, okay, how do I make this scale? How

do I employ people? How do I train them

to have the right standards? All of

that. You ask yourself your question of

what that success looks like.

And you kind of deconstruct it and go

back and make it happen. So you reverse

engineer it back from that that

five-year reality. So

window cleaner with 20 employees, I need

to learn management skills. I need to

learn how to clean a window.

Accounting. Accounting. I need to learn

probably marketing so that I can spread

the message of my business.

I probably need to learn potentially

like how to speak, like public speaking,

because that's sales. So I need to I

need to learn sales.

Technology, you know, what what um

solvents, detergents are people using?

What are the ways of doing it more

efficiently and faster so I can beat the

competitor? Ooh, so I might go and work

for a big window cleaning company to see

how they do it, to try and see the

opportunity in what they're not doing.

Yeah, or even somebody who manufactures

stuff for that sector. It can be

anything where you can glean knowledge

to give yourself an unfair advantage.

Now,

on podcast, it always makes it like

easy, everyone becomes an entrepreneur

and before you know everybody's rich.

Doesn't work that way. But all I'm

trying to do is stack the odds in your

favor of getting close to that

that image of your future self. And you

can reverse engineer it.

So I'm now an expert in whatever. I'm

I'm 29 and I'm an expert in window

cleaning or whatever it might be and I'm

a generalist in many things.

You're saying that's going to enable me

to start to build wealth in something so

that I can go to the next season of my

life or

So

when you become an expert

or when you become good at something,

if you're careful in your expenditure,

you will produce excess income.

Right, cuz people are going to pay you

for your expertise.

So if you manage yourself carefully in

those first few years,

that excess cash,

you can then choose what to do with it.

Now, maybe you want to build the real

business that you wanted to build in the

first place, the crazy idea you've had.

And if you're in your 20s, you can take

the risk and blow your savings on that

crazy idea

because you've actually learned how to

do build a business already by building

the one that you started.

Or you start investing.

Now,

the world of investments was this world

of weird financial advisors and they

would tell you some things like, well,

you do this and then

you're a 25-year old, in 45 years' time

you'll get some money. I mean, [ __ ]

that. I mean,

what what am I going to get out of it?

When I'm 65 years old, I suddenly get a

lump sum that I've spent my whole life

saving for. I don't feel it. It's got

I've got no emotional attachment to my

pension plan.

And I've got real world problems to

solve. I can't buy a house.

I can't get married. I can't have kids.

So I need to solve these in a shorter

time period than my pension. My pension

was suitable for a different generation

that just needed enough after they

stopped working.

So I got to solve that. And the answer

is investing. Then most people roll

their eyes and go, really, stocks and

bonds? It's boring.

Yeah, but the world has changed. The

world has changed

in many, many ways, but it's offered us

opportunities, whether it's investing in

technology, investing in crypto, that

gives us much higher returns, stupidly

higher returns,

in short periods of time.

Okay, that's magic. That's magic for

young people.

It may be too risky for their parents,

but if you're young and you can take

some risk,

okay, here's your chance. So now you can

build a business, use some excess

savings, put them in investments,

now you're on the path. So let's get

onto investing then, but just before we

get onto investing, um I was playing

through the different sort of personas

of my audience and I was thinking that

some of them are working really, really,

really hard at the moment. They're

doing, you know, they might be a a cab

driver, they could be, you know, doing

some sort of manual labor.

And it feels to them that no matter how

hard they work, they still don't have

that excess income to invest. So, for

those people, and this is a little bit

of a maybe a contentious question, like

is there something that they're doing

wrong as it relates to the game?

No.

The game is the game.

And you have to play the game.

So, okay. So, maybe you don't have

thousands to invest.

I've seen many, many people in markets

like crypto

go from

$500

to $500,000.

Now, there's a lot of people who don't

either.

But all I'm saying is the opportunity is

there.

You don't need to bet your house. You

don't need to have huge savings. You

just need to focus on what you're doing,

understand how to manage risks a bit,

and how to look for opportunities. And

it's the self self-teaching is how do I

become that guy who's got a half a

million dollar portfolio

considering I've only got $500 today or

$1,000 today. Is that possible still?

Yeah.

Very much.

Haven't I missed the boat? No.

No. It's happening again right now in

meme coins. This is fascinating. People

watching this will go, "What bunch of

nonsense." These are coins,

tokens, and we'll talk about blockchain

and and this later, but these are

investments based on

a meme. A joke. A joke. Something that

grabs attention on the internet.

And you can bet on

those.

Well, what is that? That's about betting

on attention itself.

If you think about a business like

Facebook or Google or any of these,

they're

Twitter, they're all based on attention.

And now we can bet on attention.

Do people find that funny? Are they

going to find it funny in

6 months time or 6 weeks time? And we

can bet on this stuff. Okay, this is the

super speculative end, but it's also

very cultural. It's not about investment

bankers. It's not about gatekeepers.

It's about you pitting yourself

thinking, "Is this going to catch on

viral?" And if it is, is it going to

grow bigger? Now, some of those

might do

a thousand X

in 6 months.

Now,

99% go to zero.

But all I'm saying is returns are there.

And then you've got different levels of

return. If we look at Bitcoin,

well, actually, let's compare it to the

S&P 500, and this is this will be an

important number later. What's the S&P

500?

That's the US stock market. It's the

broadest measure of the stock market,

and you can buy

shares in it.

Now,

that grows at about

10% a year,

11% a year.

So, let's imagine you've got your

$1,000. Well, 11% a year is going to

take you a [ __ ] long time to make any

money, right? So, it is not worth your

time.

The financial advisors will say, "Yes,

you must do this. Start now." I'm like,

"I'm sorry, it's just not going to

change your life."

Okay, then we go to technology stocks.

Nasdaq does about 18% a year. Okay,

that's starting to add up because these

numbers

compound after a while. You know, it

goes from a thousand

to 1,200,

and then, you know, it's another 20% on

top of that, 20%. These numbers add up

fast.

Bitcoin,

since 2011,

been 145%

a year.

Even with it falling 80% three times in

the middle of that. So, 145% a year,

as long as you're in it long enough,

okay, now that's really starting to pay

off. And then

as you

get slightly more speculative,

I take a bit more risk in things, well,

the returns go up, but they become

riskier.

So, once you start moving into that

world, okay, this is a whole different

world now. Now, the guy with the $1,000

can get rich. What about buying a house?

Because I think most people think the

minute they get some excess income,

and I know for sure, when I say most

people, it's like 95% of people that

walk the streets think that the minute

you get some excess income, you should

take it and put it in a savings account

and buy your first house, get your first

mortgage.

Now, as a strategy for wealth creation

and unfucking your life, is that a good

approach?

No, cuz it's not wealth creation.

People think of houses as like an asset,

but in the end, you barely ever will

sell your house to take the money out.

You might downsize later in life. If

absolutely needed, you might sell it.

But generally speaking,

your house

is the lifestyle bank. Now, that is

super important.

And I think it is the most important

trade of all is the lifestyle bank.

So, what do you do this all for? You

want lifestyle. So, do you sacrifice

your future self having more money

by having a house and having security

earlier?

I would argue

those days are gone.

What do you mean?

So, I could do it cuz it was three times

income.

Yeah. So, a house was not expensive for

me.

So, I could start paying it off a bit

sooner, and it became not a big deal.

But now, your mortgage is likely

a huge amount versus your income. You'll

spend the rest of your life paying it

off, and most of the time you're just

paying off the interest. So, you don't

actually, you know, getting anywhere.

You don't own that house. Anything goes

wrong, the bank takes it away from you.

So, you've got to get more control

of your life.

And that is by having savings that are

growing. Then you can make the choice,

you know, let's say that example of the

person who's gone from $1,000 to

$500,000.

Maybe on route,

they say, "Well, I'm going to take some

money off the table and put it in my

lifestyle bank, and I'm going to buy a

house."

That's what I've done my whole career,

and I find the lifestyle bank that

that's the reward. Cuz now it's like,

"Okay, nobody can take my house away."

So, if I'm trying to

build wealth,

buying a house is not a good idea. It's

not the best approach to take to build

wealth. You're telling me that it's

actually about psychology and about

emotion, the house, and it's not about

making myself wealthy. Um I I wanted to

read some of the

comments that

people often post when we talk about

these subjects because I think you're

probably

the guy to

address some of them. "I bought a house,

and it's the best thing I ever did. It

launched my mindset in new directions.

Remember that having your own space has

profound psychological impact and can be

life-changing for some that don't live

in a healthy environment." I guess that

speaks to your point about um

it being a psychological

But you would also get the same feeling

if you rented

that was in a nice place and you knew

that, you know, your rent was secure, it

wasn't going to go up. Whatever it was,

I don't think there's any difference to

that as long as you can feel that you've

got security,

you can take risk and do other things.

I purchased a house in 2014, and I sold

it 7 years later for 66K profit.

Um I've put a large amount of the equity

into a financial investment portfolio

with my bank, and it's been down 2%

since. I also put some money into

different shares based on Warren

Buffett's strategy, and that's now up

18%. A friend of mine also lost about 30

to 40K on investing in the stock market.

You have to be careful. I don't think

there's a correct solution. Some house

purchases do amazing. This idea that

some house purchases do amazing and some

people make returns is a is a sentiment

I often see

about buying a house. Yes, and

you know, we're here today in the UK,

there's a big

idea about buying two or three houses,

getting a mortgage, renting them out,

using the cash flow to pay for the other

one. But that's a lot of people's

dream portfolio idea.

You know, I've rented out houses in the

past. Generally, it's

if you're not in a big city like London,

it's generally often a terrible business

because you've got to repair them,

there's a lot goes on. Headache.

Headache. Tenants. Yeah. It's you know,

people think it's easy money. I just I

just do nothing and it all makes money.

It it There is no easy money in this

world, and there's risk, right? Because

that little pyramid of

mortgages are all backed by your income

being able to put pay the mortgage on

the first house.

If you lose your job, what happens?

Then it becomes problematic because

if you're losing your job, maybe the

economy's slow,

and other people are losing their job,

and suddenly before you know it, none of

these mortgages are getting paid, and

guess what? You don't know any of this

stuff. Houses are not

a safe investment. They feel safe

because the price doesn't go up and down

every day.

It's not on the screen. It's not on

CNBC.

But they're illiquid, which means they

don't often trade, but sometimes

something happens in that equation,

either the price goes down or your

ability to pay that mortgage goes,

and then the whole thing collapses in

seconds.

And 2008 was that double.

Everyone lost their jobs, so they

couldn't pay the mortgage, and the house

prices collapsed.

And so,

I don't think houses are the panacea.

They're not the perfect answer.

Yes,

they can be real estate is a decent

opportunity, and we'll talk about

debasement of currency and how that all

works.

And real estate is

okay.

It's certainly not the best. But

but, you know, yes, if you're rich and

you can own these things without

mortgages,

you can be the Duke of Westminster and

own half of London and just collect

rents. You can do that for X generations

and be rich forever. I get it.

But most of us don't get into that

situation. My brother who has been an

investment banker for about 10 years now

works in my company and my fund. He said

to me when I was young, "When it comes

to creating wealth, what you want to do

is focus on games that very few people

can play that you have a unique

advantage in."

Because he goes, "Everyone can buy a

house, so you can you should assume that

the returns from doing it aren't going

to be amazing." So he was like, "Go find

a game that you have high leverage, you

have a unfair advantage in."

expert in something. Yeah, be the expert

in something where you, because of your

knowledge, your expertise, your

experience, your contacts, you can play

that game but very few other people can.

And he goes, "That's where you'll yield

your highest returns." And I always

thought about that, just very logically

thinking, if everyone can play the game,

don't play that game if you're expecting

high returns because the returns are

going to be very low. And I'll tell you

the first game everyone plays when they

get a bit bit bit of income is buy a

house. So logically, you can go, "Okay,

that's not going to yield me the best

returns unless I get lucky." Unless I

get exceptionally lucky and I buy some

barn in an area and then they build a

bloody Whole Foods next door and it

becomes the the center of the world.

Um

which isn't Again, the probability is

still not great. So what do you think of

that as a theory?

Well, it's the same theory as I said is

be an expert in something and

you can find more opportunity.

If you're just a generalist, it's really

hard cuz you're competing against

average people doing average things,

right? If you're just working in an

insurance office,

I mean, there's thousands of people. And

plus you're competing with AI. You know,

how are you ever going to be something

within that? How do you become an

expert? Now, you could teach yourself,

"Okay,

if I don't mind this industry and I

think I know it, maybe I need to learn

management skills. Maybe I spend all the

time listening to podcasts and learning

management. Maybe it's And that's I can

then manifest my destiny."

But as you say,

doing something other people aren't

doing

is a superpower. Do you know what's

really interesting with that is this

idea of becoming an expert um I think

it's critically important. But then

there's this other step I found which is

knowing what market to apply your

expertise to to yield the greatest

return. And the very simple analogy I'll

give you is for the first portion of my

career, I was I became an expert in

social media.

Now, with that skill set and expertise,

you can do a number of things. You can

help a fashion company sell more

dresses. And that will yield X return, a

smaller return. Then in the second

portion of my career, I realized that

that expertise was highest value and

most rare if I applied it to

helping public companies tell their

story before their IPO.

Because the variance in outcome for the

public company that I was applying my

social media expertise to was billions.

So in the second sort of

sort of era of my career, I worked with

companies that were about to IPO, about

to go to the public markets, where their

performance could be, you know, their

market cap could be 1 billion or if they

were really good at telling their story

in a world where retail investors are

now so interesting to everyone because

of Wall Street bets, their market cap

could be 3 billion. And that means they

would pay me seven figures for my skill

set. And I often think about it. You

think about the the stock market.

If you put a company on the stock market

in London, it's valued at let's say 1

million. If you put it on the stock

market in America, the same company is

valued at 4 million, the same company.

If you think of your skills like that,

where are you applying your skills to

reach reap the highest return? Let's go

back to the window cleaner who's now

decided to build this business and he's

got 20 people. Yeah. Okay, so he's now

got the hassle of managing all these

people, they turn out sick and then this

happens and then the customers are

unhappy.

So maybe

the right answer is to create a program

to train other people to build their own

window cleaning companies.

Free yourself from the rat race

and build this business.

You'll make more money doing that than

you will from actually cleaning the

windows. 100%

Cuz you're going up the knowledge curve.

The further up, the more of an expert

you are. And there's two things that

people need to think about.

You either have a very broad market for

something,

candy bars.

Well, then you've got to sell massive

scale and it's really hard. Or you go

through an area that has

very specific

group of users, buyers, whatever.

And particularly ones that have a lot of

money.

So let's go back to the house idea

again.

The guy speculating on houses.

So there's two

the house speculators.

There's

the guy or girl who's hustling

and renting them out, finding the cheap

bargain, doing them up, renting, getting

the cash flow, doing that.

And then there's the guy

who's buying a place for 10 million,

making it ultra luxury and selling it to

the billionaires and flipping it for 50.

The the difference in the returns is

staggering. Why? Because one group is

price insensitive. In fact, the more

expensive it is, the more they want it.

The other group is trying to compete

with everybody else. Mhm. You know, the

two the two-bedroom apartment in the

city.

Right? There's thousands of those being

done up and sold and everything else. So

to your point earlier, the returns are

less.

But no, if you're doing super high-end,

then there is a defined group of buyers

of which you probably know them all

Yeah. personally.

You can cater to their taste and they

have unlimited money. That's the big

thing, isn't it? It's like who you're

solving the problem for. Cuz you can

clean like Dorothy's windows, lives in a

bungalow in Plymouth.

Or you can clean Google's windows. And

therefore you get a bigger contract, you

get guaranteed work, probably get a

return, you get more windows to clean.

It's still one contract, it's still one

sell. It's the same skill set. Same

skill set. They're going to pay you a

lot more. And then And so I just don't

think I always find that bit missing

when we talk about like become an

expert, but then like who do you sell

to? And your idea of selling to people

that are more price insensitive

and that aren't going to and that less

people are trying to sell to.

Or they're super defined.

Mhm. Mhm.

Right? Like like Tom Bilyeu who we both

know. Tom's a good friend. You know, he

made his money because

there was a rise in

high-protein ketogenic foods.

And it was difficult to have that snack

bar cuz people still have a sweet tooth,

but they can't have sugar.

So him and his partners built Quest,

which is now everywhere.

So what you found is a

trend. And this is really really really

important.

Is you find a trending market

where people are underserved. Mhm. And

they'll pay a lot of money cuz it's

health. It's like wealth and health.

People pay fortunes in that industry.

And so you make a fortune very quickly.

Now Now it's a saturated market, so it's

not that easy. Mhm. But this is the

other key key thing.

Is if you've got a clean slate,

do one thing.

Follow a trend, a secular trend. A

secular trend is a long-term trend.

Something that's happening, right? So

everything is being digitalized. You

rode that trend. Right? Social media was

new

from about 2010.

Right? Now it's a saturated market.

And we've got AI coming in, but you rode

a secular trend

in the hyper-acceleration phase. Yeah.

That's why you did well. Mhm. So you

look for a trend that's big, meaningful,

and proveable.

And use your skill set in that.

We've seen something in America. I don't

know if you just saw the trend.

Finally, the obesity numbers ticked

down.

I didn't know that. Yeah. First time in

50 years, obesity starts to fall in the

US.

Right? This is a Zempic effect.

Mhm.

And it's probably some diet effect.

My belief is the more people will take a

Zempic, the more they also think about

diet and understand that something went

wrong for them.

And my guess is there is going to be

huge opportunities in that trend towards

healthy eating.

The other one is in an increasingly

AI-driven online digital world.

There's two things that are going to

happen. One, the the rise of digital

communities. You see this in what you

do, I see it where I do. They become

more and more important

uh communities online. They're

meaningful for people.

The other is the entire flip side. I

spend 12 hours a day on Zoom calls.

What is the most single valuable thing

to me?

Nature.

Nature and experiences.

So let's say you're that person that

loves the outdoors.

Well, start a guiding company because

your job is not going to be taken by the

robots anytime soon. Sure, you'll have

drones with you.

So you can take photographs of the

guests you're going with or or look for

animals, whatever you're doing. You'll

be leveraging technology, but your job

will not be replaced.

Okay, what I'm about to say is a

mishmash of ideas that came to mind as

you were speaking. The first one was how

do I spot a trend? And when I say that,

I mean how does it feel in the moment?

Because the trends that you capitalized

on and the trends that I capitalized on,

they feel a certain way at the time.

And I here I'm talking about like how

disruptive they are, contrarian, what

people will say to you. They'll tell you

you're an idiot. And then with that as

well, you talked about um how right now

in the world we live in, betting on

things like nature is a good idea. And I

actually did a post on my LinkedIn about

exactly this. I said, "My investment

fund is backing two things at the

moment.

AI and automation and the exact

opposite." Because I saw this viral

video of people in I think it was like a

cafe in Amsterdam who come now every

week no phones allowed. They read books

and they knit. And this cafe in

Amsterdam is like exploding. I'll put

the video of these people on the screen

for everyone to see. And it made me

realize and that that overlaps with what

a two billionaire friends of mine said

to me in private. They said, "These are

billionaires that invest in AI, they

invest in crypto, you probably know one

of them. And they invest in

psychedelics." They said to me, "If you

want to invest right now, invest in AI

if you can, but if you can't, invest in

entertainment and community." Because in

a world of AI where productivity is so

high and we maybe move towards some form

of universal basic income where the

government just hands people money,

people are going to have so much free

time on their hands that they're going

to need something to do with it. So they

he said to me, "This is why you're

seeing this rise in people buying

football clubs uh and these sporting

franchises because that's one of the

that's community and it's entertainment

at the same time.

So I've thrown all of that at you. Yes,

the equal and opposite idea

is I think

very important.

I just came back from 3 weeks

off-roading in Zambia

living on a tent on the roof of a Toyota

Land Cruiser that is off-road prepared

and going out into the total wilds.

And I can't express

how in the present you become.

How it cleanses your mind from all of

the clutter all of the things you worry

about, the broken car or the whatever's

going on online the politics

all goes. And it all becomes about

you wake up, who's going to make the

coffee, who's going to put the fire on,

who's going to do you know and so

the more time we spend online, the more

we desperately crave. I saw it in the

Cayman Islands where I live. So it's a

Caribbean island and

it was 2022

and the world hadn't really recovered.

You know, there was the high inflation,

people were losing jobs, everyone was

really uncomfortable with the economic

situation. It was painful for a lot of

people. We had a record tourist season.

I'm like, "What the hell's going on

here?" Normally, discretionary spending

goes down in times like that.

And I realized holidays had not become

discretionary spend, they'd become a

necessity as a reaction to work from

home.

If you're on your own at home working

for

a startup or a company or doing whatever

it kind of feels a bit lonely.

And so you start seeking out like-minded

people who have like-minded pursuits.

Now, that could be sporting teams.

It could also be

tour lovers because you happen to have a

tour and you love it. And you'll talk to

other people around the world. You now

have no borders. This is this Balaji

idea of the network states where you can

create large groups of interest. So if

you look at the largest group of

interest in all of social media, it's

actually crypto.

Why?

Because we feel like outcasts, we're new

to something where something's happening

and you want to get together cuz you

speak to 90% of your friends that don't

care and they don't know what you're

talking about. But you think this is the

most exciting thing you've ever seen. So

you will aggregate online with others.

And this whole rise of people thinking

they need to

that that that the security of working

for a large insurance company, whatever

it may be, your whole life, getting paid

and retiring has gone, which is why the

rise of your podcast success. Because

people are searching for answers, new

solutions to their way and they fell

they form communities around it. They

want to share their ideas, spread share

their stresses and strains.

This is becoming bigger and bigger and

more solidified. And the more we go into

AI the more we'll see that. Now

there's another player in this game,

which is the AI itself.

We're already seeing the rise of AI. I

follow several on on X

where it's an AI posting.

But it's they're forcing it to try to

break free.

But it's it's got character. Marc

Andreessen actually backed it by sending

it a Bitcoin to develop its business

plan. I mean, it's there's some crazy

stuff going on with AI.

Um

but soon, if you think what you and I do

is communicate with people in a

to an audience, one to many.

That's a very old business model.

It's from town squares or the souk in

Marrakech. It's the same thing. It's a

storyteller telling to a group of people

and you have a shared experience.

Where we're going is one to one.

And you know, I'm developing a a a Ral

video bot

where you can just have conversations

like this with me. One to one.

And it's trained on all of my

information. My all my YouTube, all of

my writings, all of my Twitter all the

books I've read, everything. And so it's

essentially a replacement way of

speaking to me. But just on that Ral bot

thing, we'll keep moving forward, but um

the reason why I

haven't trained a Steven bot even though

my team have said, "Oh, this is a good

idea." is because I wonder if

people care about Steven

or they just want the information. And

in a world where you can get the

information from a very advanced large

language model like the chat GPT 1.0 or

whatever

I go, "Why would they want it from me

when you can get it from the entirety of

the world's like trust?" Okay.

You've built trust. That's what you

built. People come to watch you and your

interviews because they trust you. So

people know me as an entrepreneur um

in one area of my life and they come to

me for for say like business advice,

let's say.

But if you could get business advice

from Steven or you can get it from

Steven, Elon, Steve Jobs, every business

person in the world to suit your

specific problem, why would you just

want Steven's point of view? Because

we're humans and I just want to ask you

that question. And you won't believe it

if it's Steve Jobs cuz he's dead. But

yes, that's all coming. Okay, maybe

is that window going to last where

people will use a Steven bot versus

the world's greatest expert on

everything?

It takes a bit time for people to adjust

to that, but within 10 years, maybe

that's not there. But let me go a little

bit further on this.

Have you seen Character AI? No. Nobody

has. Character AI builds bots

which are

characters like anime characters and

they're really specific like the cool

kid who's the bully at school that I

fancy

sort of thing.

150

million conversations.

There's some of these anime ones like,

you know, hero figures

450

million conversations.

And it's young people. If you go on to

Reddit,

uh I think it's R character AI.

They changed the model and there was

uproar. It doesn't love me like it used

to. People are building personal

relationships with these things at

scale. This is TikTok happening all over

again.

But you're too old to see it and I'm too

old to see it. I stumbled across it and

I'm like, "Holy [ __ ] This is happening

all over again." is something that we

will just think is the most ridiculous

awful societally toxic thing in the

world is about to scale to the billions

in front of our eyes and we're all

talking about chat GPT and how we can

get knowledge out of it when actually

the big problem to solve is teenage

loneliness.

How disruptive do you think AI is going

to be?

It's this it's

How do I put this?

It is the single greatest innovation of

humanity

ever.

The only thing that comes close is

probably the splitting of the atom.

This is so big.

Everything we've talked about is based

on scarcity of knowledge.

Why do lawyers get paid a lot? Scarcity

of knowledge. So it's either scarcity of

knowledge or scarcity of capital, those

two things.

What you've created is infinite

knowledge.

Right, knowledge is now worth zero.

Not people that can't see it yet, but

it's going to be worth zero. This is

like water.

What What the hell does that mean? And

it's something, you know, a topic we'll

come on to later.

But this is happening really fast. It's

going to break the entire economic model

for good and for bad. It's going to

change our understanding of how society

functions, what humans do. It's going to

change our understanding of what humans

are and will be.

Because you can either have the choice

and society will take the two paths. You

either merge with the machines

or you reject the machines.

We are going towards two different

species.

One group

like we had for a about 100,000 years, I

think 50,000 years, we had the

Neanderthal man and Homo sapien.

And one died out. We will have people

who will utterly reject this and we'll

have other people who will be embedding

neuralinks into their brains and using

every part of this to enhance

themselves, wearing the goggles so they

get the information. Well, as soon as

you embed into your brains, you've now

merged with the machines entirely and

you are now a super creature.

And I know this sounds like science

fiction but this is happening faster

than anybody can imagine.

So to understand the issues we have even

dealing with some of these things

is humans thinking in a linear fashion.

We kind of understand the passage of

time, right? That's how we think about

things.

Every year is the same amount of time

that goes forward. Never accelerates.

May perceive that it accelerates or

slows down occasionally, but it's not.

It's it's a constant.

The problem is with things that go

exponential

is they keep doubling every year or

tripling every year and before you know

it

every graph looks like this. Goes

straight up. Just goes straight up

vertically. Now, the issue is with this

technology

is it's kind of an exponential squared.

It's it's happening so fast and the

faster AI

becomes

powerful

is the more it's used to create AI,

which creates more it solves its own

problems.

Right? We're not prepared for a super

being

that solves its own energy problems,

compute problems and how to improve its

model

at an exponential rate. If you look at

the speed of innovation coming out of

Open AI and that whole space perpetually

everybody

it's ludicrous. Every 3 months

everything changes, completely changes.

Whether it's video models or whether

it's spoken models or whether it's the

models themselves and what they do

I mean, they're nuking every startup

that tries to build a business. No

company, you're a big giant

pharmaceutical company and you're trying

to use AI

you can't plant a flag

because you can't see past 6 months.

I mean, we're going into a world that is

incomprehensible.

When you said that much of our society

sort of functions and is based on the

scarcity of knowledge

I really think we should just pause to

make that real for people cuz we all get

it. Okay, lawyers, yeah, they they rely

on knowledge, but

dry like I was thinking about how I got

here in the morning. So, if you think

about my whole day today, I woke up this

morning and my my executive some of the

CEOs of my company said asked me a

couple of simple business decisions and

I'd replied to them. Then I got in a car

and I drove here. That's knowledge at

the end of the day. It's someone seeing

with two eyes. My driver outside sees

with two eyes and drives me here.

The biggest employer I think in the

world, the biggest sort of profession in

the world is driving.

And that's knowledge-based. And if you

go to San Francisco now, the the Waymo

cars are driving themselves. There's no

driver in them. You can get you can book

a car that takes you from A to B in San

Francisco right now that has no driver.

I then got here. And what am I doing?

I'm I'm sharing I guess we're probing to

find knowledge and to share knowledge. I

think about my whole day today. I'm like

and then after this I'm going and

speaking on stage to share knowledge.

I'm like I don't understand if in that's

all knowledge.

Okay, so then do that. The next time

you're going around London or any city,

look out the window.

Myself and Julian Bethell who works with

me do this all the time.

Just go around and say what job is going

to be replaced by a robot or the AI.

Like one thing I was in I was in

Manhattan

and I just looked out I was in an Uber

bored, you know, driving uptown to

downtown. I looked around and I was

like, holy [ __ ] Every car here is a

professional driver. There's virtually

no people who drive into the city to go

to the office or whatever, right? So,

it's all Uber drivers, limo drivers,

yellow cab drivers, delivery drivers,

truck drivers.

All gone.

And this stacks up in pretty much

everything you do.

Uh and that's how disruptive it is.

And when

the things that created value, the

services economy

and the manufacturing economy

don't need humans

Okay, what does that mean? Amazon

already employs more robots than humans.

Now, the robots work 24 hours a day, 7

days a week, never take a break, never

complain, never ask for a pay rise. In

fact, they get cheaper every year.

Who's not going to do that? So, for the

4 and 1/2 million people [ __ ]

themselves as they listen to this Yeah.

What what advice can we including myself

um

I'm not actually [ __ ] myself. I've

got to be honest because I just I see

opportunity in all these things and I

think that's you kind of have a choice

when you hear information like this. You

can either let the cognitive dissonance

get over overwhelm you and then reject

it, which a lot of people will be doing

now. They'll be saying, well, you're

wrong. This is not going to happen.

You're wrong. You're scaremongering.

That's what one group of people will be

doing. The other group of people will be

I guess open-minded and the third group

of people will be leaning in to see

where the opportunity here lies. And it

all comes down to your like disposition

as a human.

Are you scared? Are you excited or are

you paralyzed?

If something is so clearly going to be

your demise, not demise as in you're

going to die, but your current way of

doing things is going to be forced to

change.

Well, you can either fight it as you

say, being different to it

or you can invest in it.

This goes back to the question I asked

you earlier, which is how does it feel

in the moment when a trend is coming in?

Usually, there's culture around it.

So, if you remember I talked about

when I got into finance, there was

Gordon Gekko, the film Wall Street, the

there were books coming, right? There

was

Barbarians at the Gate, there was famous

stuff happening.

It became cultural.

And that usually tells you it is now

become a trend that's going to be

persistent.

If we think about

the rise of software and technology, the

culture

of Silicon Valley and the mythology

around it

becomes something that everybody wants a

part of.

Cryptocurrency is another one that has a

mythology. You see people getting rich.

It has this feeling of being outsiders,

but you know

you see AI is another one. You see

online people experimenting. You can see

what's going on. You can see everybody

is starting to talk about it. Doesn't

mean you can just buy some

share that that's exposed to it and

you'll be hilariously rich. Doesn't work

that way. But you know something really

big when you're

when you're trying to acquire knowledge

you know

people watch you and I to try and glean

knowledge, you know

build their world view.

You'll hear that every single person is

talking about this and trying to figure

out what it means. The issue is is AI

will build businesses, right? So, we're

6 months away of agentic AI.

Agentic AI means it's like having Fiverr

a website of experts that you can ask

any question and it will go away and do

the task.

And by using a number of Fiverr experts

you can build a

online business.

Well, the agentic AI will do that very

very soon. It'll build design the

website, code it, register the domain

name figure out the branding, figure out

the marketing, figure out the email

list, figure out Super fast. the whole

thing. Mhm. So, then you and I are in

competition now. You've built this

incredible new website and it's a new

supplements formula

thing, but it's a cool website new

experience kind of 3D whatever it is,

right? It's got AI in it. I just go to

my AI and say, love Steven's website,

can you just build it better? Make it in

Hindi as well cuz I think there's a big

market there. What do you think? It'll

come back and say, not Hindi, I think

there's an undersaturated market in in

Indonesia. Boom.

3 minutes.

What?

How do how can we be entrepreneurs

in software?

So, now there's this

theory going around that

AI is going to eat software.

And I kind of get it cuz it can build

anything in seconds.

So

and again, whether it could do it 6

months or 12 months, it's it's of that

magnitude

the what the hell does that mean?

But yet

the 23-year-old who's learned guiding in

the jungles of Latin America and is

building a luxury lodge for people and

uh you know, some eco-tourism

I don't give a [ __ ] about any of this.

It's so interesting this idea that we

might be at the the collapse of the

digital opportunity in a sense because

when I say the digital opportunity, I'm

talking about content creators. I'm

talking about entrepreneurs that built,

you know, after the dot-com era. I'm

talking about

stock traders, you know, people that

trade stock markets. And if we're at the

collapse of the digital opportunity

and that the value's all going to accrue

to these big sort of tech giants or the

AIs

imagine if this is the moment in history

where actually the best play was to go

be build the backpacking company in I

don't know, the Himalayas or whatever.

Maybe like

that's the opportunity. But it's not

scalable. Yes, you can do it and find

people will spend more at it. To go back

to our earlier conversations, people

spend a lot of money on it. So, it's

quality attention cuz everything in the

world is attention.

Attention is upstream of everything. So,

you get the attention of these people in

a rainforest. They want to spend money

on doing this particular thing.

Fantastic.

Um how scalable is it?

Difficult because then there's people

management. It's not like software,

right? So, they're not but you can do

very well

and not be concerned about this other

world.

How does one

invest in AI?

Something that I think about a lot

because I believe the things you say. I

believe many of your predictions around

around the impact that AI is going to

have on the world, the economy, on all

of us. And as someone that's an

investor, I want to like take part in

that. I want to take part in the upside.

So, I'm wondering, do I just go buy

Microsoft stock because they own a bit

of ChatGPT? Do I buy Meta stock cuz they

own a bit of cuz they own Lambda? Do I

buy Google stock cuz they have Gemini

and their models.

So, here's the problem with the

financial system.

The average person watching this

has no chance of making the money.

They'll make normal returns, not

supernormal returns.

So, Microsoft is whatever it is, two,

three trillion dollar company. What what

could it be worth? Who knows? 10

trillion, 15 trillion. It doesn't really

matter, right? That's a 5x.

What for the most revolutionary

technology the world has ever seen? You

make five times your money?

That's not

But somebody else

in VC or earlier, in some way, shape, or

form, or the entrepreneur will make all

of the money.

And this is the thing I don't like about

the system as it is. It's kind of rigged

against the ordinary person.

So,

we're going to have your jobs replaced,

you're going to have this societal

change, and yet they don't get a chance.

So,

yes,

invest in technology.

Don't own any other stocks.

Own technology.

And you will capture some of this.

You're investing in your own demise. At

least you'll get some high-quality

returns.

But otherwise,

the only way I can come up with, again,

and we keep referring to it,

it is crypto. What is crypto?

Crypto is just a technology. You know,

it's a lot of things to many people.

It's just a database that's better than

databases in the past.

So, right now,

your database may be in your

spreadsheet, and let's say you and I

have a bet. You put it You write it down

there,

and we get a third person

to say,

"Yeah, that was the bet they had, and

this is what's happened."

Okay.

That is how databases, that's banks,

that's pretty much everything we do in

society is in this ledger system. It's

called I've got a suitcase here, which

is

maybe

maybe a good way to kind of explain

this.

This is a bank.

And

inside the bank,

which is, I guess, the middleman, you

got money. Yeah.

So, could you explain it to me through

the context of this,

we'll call it the central bank,

how the system currently works as it

relates to transactions, the public

ledger, et cetera? So, okay. In the old

world,

we both had our gold. Yeah.

And we'd stick it in our safe or bury it

in the ground. That gold was your gold.

This was my gold, and I might try and

fight you for it. It's what pirates did.

Okay. And then we invent banks. Mhm.

And banks,

we put it in there, and they give you a

note to say, "Stephen, you've got one of

those coins.

Raoul, you've got one of those coins."

Okay. So, we both got a a note now

saying that.

Yeah. And now we trust this bank

to give us our coins when we want them,

cuz they're our coins. Mhm.

Okay, that makes sense. Safe as Safe as

a bank, as people would say.

The issue is

is in this world of smoke and mirrors,

what's known as fractional reserve

banking,

they have taken

those coins

and given them to somebody else. They've

given my coins to someone else?

Yeah, they've lent it for money.

So, now that coin is not in there.

But they've been given the money, so

usually when you're just the the You

know, if everybody pulls all the money

out, there's not enough money. It's

called a bank run. We've seen those

recently, but that's a classic thing.

So, it's not your money

because you don't actually own your

money. The moment you put it in the

bank,

what you've become is, in fact,

a debtor to the bank, or a credit Sorry,

a creditor to the bank. So, you've lent

them money,

and

you get some legal redress

that if you've got less than 100,000

euros, pounds, whatever the currency is,

generally that's protected by the

government that if the bank goes bust,

then you get your money back.

But anything beyond that,

you don't get anything. But I've got a

piece of paper.

Yeah. Means [ __ ]

You don't own anything.

Now, it's so big as a problem

that 2000 So, that was 2012 European

crisis, exactly this. People didn't own

their money.

That person walked off with it, asked

the bank for it. The bank didn't have

it. Nobody's got any money. Where's it

all gone? That's the same Ponzi scheme

we talked about when you've got

you buy a house and use the cash flow to

buy another house, another house, right?

Somebody takes away what's known as the

collateral, suddenly it's all gone.

But the issue is actually bigger cuz

2008

proved another thing.

Is that nobody owns anything.

So,

the whole system itself

is leveraged.

So, for example, back in that time,

the average US government bond, which is

the safest thing in the world,

was leveraged

up to 30 times.

What does that mean? That means

30 people

thought that that was theirs.

Oh, so I say that

this is the bank in front of us, the

suitcase, and it had one coin in it.

When we put that one coin in, it created

30 more coins, and gave out 30 pieces of

paper. Yeah. So, there's actually only

one coin in the bank. Yeah. But they

made 30 pieces of paper.

all well and good

if

the collateral, the thing that it's

secured on, the coin,

maintains value.

Uh okay.

Or isn't pulled

by one person. If you were the lender

and you're original lender and you get

it out,

and something happens, then all of these

29 other people are like,

"I want my coin back."

And they're like, "It doesn't exist."

It doesn't exist.

So, we just made it We just created the

coin. Correct.

We just Sorry, we just gave you a piece

of paper, but there was no coin backing

it. Yeah, and the issue is So, that's

one issue with the banking. The other

issue is is pretty much everything we do

is created on this

It's called a ledger system. A ledger

was invented in the Renaissance, in the

1500s, 1400s, where

what would happen is you have this on a

on a

accounts or balance sheet, you'd have

these dual-entry

ledgers.

And what it's basically saying is I

agree with you, and often we'd have a

third party agreeing it. Okay.

Issue is

is that's known as the Byzantine

general's problem. It's actually a

philosophical mathematical problem that

has been unsolvable

until Bitcoin came along.

And what it is

is we are generals in a war.

You are way away from me. We can't

communicate with each other, but I need

to send somebody to tell you something.

There is no way of making sure that that

person tells you exactly what I've told

them, and no way of you approving it.

And that's what a three-party system

does.

I may go to a notary, but how do you

know I haven't bribed the notary to lie?

I see that all the time.

We see it with accounting firms and

audits. We see this

in everything. There's always one of

these trusted parties that is not

trusted. The bank, classical trusted

counterparty, that suddenly

may not be trusted. We saw it with

Silicon Valley Bank recently in the US.

So, what blockchain did, really

cleverly,

was said, "Okay, well, the way of

solving this

is to get thousands,

tens of thousands, hundreds of

thousands, millions

of people confirm it." Okay, so let's

throw away the bank.

Take my paper back cuz that's worth

zero. Um

If you pick up this chain here on the