#104 Fernando Nikolic: Bitcoin, Argentina and a Warning to the West

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Fernando Nikolić is a Bitcoiner, a former VP at Blockstream, and the founder of Perception, a tool for tracking global Bitcoin narratives. He joins me to talk about Argentina’s collapse, the danger of inflation, and why fiat currency is the biggest gaslighting project in modern history.

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• Transcript

  Peter McCormack

  sure. All right. Well, welcome back, Fernando, thank you so much, man. Good see you again. Always good to be here. How long have you been here now in the UK?

  Fernando Nikolic

  No, I've been in and out, to be honest. But I'm in my second month right now. Just came back from Spain, but like all over the world,

  Peter McCormack

  regularly coming back and forth, coming back a couple of years now, couple of years now. And I'm interested in your perspective, yeah, because we make a podcast, and we interview a lot of people, and we're in the Doom, everything's shit. But just as somebody coming in now, what do you make of the UK?

  Fernando Nikolic

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's very easy to start, you know, piling on the negative news and kind of like, perpetuate the negative news, and keep saying, Oh, this is indeed shit. But something that at least gives me hope, for the sake of you guys, is like, you have such a solid foundation, you have such a strong culture. Like, being British is so awesome. I think so at least you got so much to be proud of that. You know, you can't shake that out that easily. At least you maybe you need insane amount of more years with this. You know, foolishness to do that. But right now, I think you're as a society, you're starting to understand the dangers that is like, very like at home, but without that foundation, it would be pretty hopeless. But I really do say I hear people that are like, starting to wake up and starting to speak up like you, for example, you guys come from, you have this like you have, you're proud of something, and it's something that is worth fighting for. And I feel like, okay, that's the spirit, and I love

  Peter McCormack

  to see it. I mean, you write, you're so right. People are waking up, yeah? People are pissed off, yeah. You know, the thing that keeps coming up, people keep saying, the UK needs a Malay, yeah?

  Unknown Speaker

  Well, I don't know, maybe,

  Peter McCormack

  how's he doing, ladies and great, to see. Yeah? Anyone listening? My friend Fernando is from Argentina, yeah, and we

  Fernando Nikolic

  talked about that there's, there's an older episode where we actually talked about Malay the entire, the entire episode back then he shared that episode out, yeah, he did, yeah. It went viral. Yeah, yeah. That was, that was insane. I, we spoke, and I went to South Korea a couple of days afterwards, and I caught covid in London. So I was like, in the plane, like, giving it to

  Peter McCormack

  everyone, right? Basically, killing all the grannies

  Fernando Nikolic

  and all the South Korean grannies poor. And then I woke up, like, in this, like, fever and juice dream and to and I checked my phone and I saw that melee had retweeted and spoken about it, and I was, like, even more surreal, because I was already feeling like I was body outside of my body, and to see that was just a beautiful thing. And I really think a lot of people appreciated what we talked about in that episode. Yeah, so it's going well, the project mele is going well, yeah. I mean, what can you tell us? Like, what, you know, what's, what's the update inflation is under control is, you know, obviously inflation is a scam. I mean, they're saying two 3% targets is always a scam. I mean, you know, 2% targets, that means your purchasing power is going to debase by 50% in 35 years. Yeah, you know, it's not really good, but compared to for what you've had then, you know, at least it puts kind of like a different chip on people's shoulder. In Argentina, at least the mindset changes a little bit when you're actually able to plan for the future and not necessarily think like, okay, whatever I'm earning today needs to go out right away to cover all my expenses. You can actually save now. And it's just like you can plan ahead. What? What what is that concept, you know, so just that, I think, is tremendous, that is really putting back the social fabric that got eroded, that essentially made my family emigrate in the late 80s, that made many families emigrate in the early 2000s and just like, hopefully, it that will stop, or At least, you know, slow down a little bit more, and people can stay in Argentina, make Argentina great again, and make the economy work. Just that is great. Then there's obviously a bunch of other problems, societal problems, I think, a lot of cultural problems, and that you don't fix in two years. You need more time, like, wow. Well, I think I. Argentina is becoming very Latin American, in a sense, like this, like reggaeton culture is starting to, like penetrate, and, you know, the type of messages, the type of culture that reggaeton music brings forth, I don't know any of this. It's like gangster rap, you know, all of a sudden becoming a thing in the UK that is obviously not the type of content that you want. I mean, I'm saying this as somebody who grew up listening to gangster up in the 90s. So it's a little bit weird, but it was abroad. It was in America, right? Exactly. It didn't really became part of the culture that I was living in. It was like, exotic thing with enough distance. But in Argentina, that stuff is now seeping into the culture, and people are starting to act like, there are, they are from, I don't know, Dominican Republic, and it's just so honestly, Latin America is huge. There's a big difference between being from Mexico, being from Dominican Republic, and being from Argentina. Argentina had, like, way more European roots culture. And that stuff is just, I don't know, is fading away. And I think that is a danger in itself, way past the economical things. And, yeah, there's more than a political force like Malay that can actually fix that. It just, there's other values, morale society that needs to change. So the economy is good. The economy is growing. I think, yeah. And I think the economy, it starts with that, right? Like people having good jobs, getting paid, you know, less crime, you know, it has to start from that foundation. So, yeah, I think, I think it's good. When's the next election? Isn't two years. I don't know exactly when, yeah,

  Peter McCormack

  okay, as his party grown, because he really, he won the election, but he didn't have a lot of MPs, right? And so,

  Fernando Nikolic

  yeah, we talked about that the last episode too. I don't think that has changed that much, to be honest. And there's, there's other members of his party that are like splintering out, and this is so common as well, but to be honest, there's midterms coming up soon, though, at the second year mark, so I think that's going to be pretty determined. In terms of, okay, how? What can we expect in terms of Malay maybe being re elected in two years from now? So and the socialist, is it? The Pyrenees? Yeah, yeah. How they do it? They're scrambling. They're scrambling to for relevance. It's kind of crazy to see a faction of the political system in 2025 Speaking of things as if we were in 1925 it's insane to me that there's still political discourse around class, worker class, who's not worker class, the bourgeoisie, stuff that dude. This is that's happening here? Yeah. And that's also interesting. I walk around here and I see, like, calm, there's an RCP or something. It's a new communist party that is, like, they have like, flyers on the streets, and they're like, they're walking around, they're going to have a demonstration on September 7. No, Berman C Street. What RCP? I think they're you their domain. The URL is communist dot red. Think that's the live domain. I can't find that shit. Yes, that is exactly right. She's young, right? Yeah, that's the one

  Peter McCormack

  revolutionary communist party. Yeah, hold on. This is this? This isn't satire? No, no, this first is not satire.

  Fernando Nikolic

  Donate, that's the girl, though, right? Look at that culture, personality that they're trying to Yeah, I think that's, yeah. That's the one that's speaking in the mic right there. I don't think it is. I don't think it is. I'm pretty sure it isn't. You were moving the cursor. I literally thought there were flies, uh, flying around her head. And that wouldn't that wouldn't surprise me, these people being communists.

  Peter McCormack

  Yeah, that's her, there on the on the right, on the left, there. All right, no, okay, that's not her. No, no. But I think I think I made fun of this woman on Twitter the other day, I think I said, good on you. We haven't made it's not the right kind of socialism. Hold on. Go back to that website that is nuts. It is right, the communist one, yeah. What is it? Again? Communist dot red. There we go. That's a hot dog. And they've literally got, they've literally got the sickle. Yeah, hold on, straight up. Hold on, hold on, like these people are not hiding right. Scroll down. Scroll down. Jeremy Corbyn, what does it mean? What actually should communists take towards it? Hold on. Have they got an about page cons? Go to the bottom. I look at

  Fernando Nikolic

  that. Lennon. Lennon all over the

  Peter McCormack

  market. We've got to get them on the on the pod and just make fun of them. Please do not there. All right. Scroll to the top. It's in the navigation. Join, right. Oh. To courts theory, educational Marxist theory, history. Why is it not an About Us, international shop, I scroll to the top. Oh, yeah. See we go. What are we saying? We are the revulant revenue revolutionary communist party, the British section of the revolutionary communist International. If you want to see an end to capitalism, then get organized with the RCP and fight for a communist future. The revolutionary communist party is the political home of Britain's communist generation. We're fed up with the endless cycle of capitalist crisis, imperialist bloodshed. That's a fair one, and climate catastrophe won't take it lying down. We are a party like no other. We're interested in winning a few cozy position in Parliament or a couple of crumbs from the bosses table. We want to turn the world, this is the part upside down, and put ordinary people in charge. We have ordinary people in charge at the moment. That's the problem. The Labor Party is ordinary. They're all fucking dumb ass, basic bitches. That's no easy task, but history shows us that there's no other way. And more and more people are beginning to think the same we are. We are just, not just a Britain based body with a British section of the revolutionary communist International. Blah, blah from standing a revolutionary communist candidate, Fiona. That's her. Yeah, that's Hold on. Let me see, pretty sure I made fun of her on Twitter, and it's weird one, because I think naval liked my post. Okay, how'd you spell her name? there. You got the you got the Gmail there so you can campaign coordinate her on the pot. I'm sure I made fun of her. I mean, she's obviously an idiot.

  Unknown Speaker

  I uh, this is exactly,

  Peter McCormack

  oh, I think I've retweeted her, and I actually, and I actually shared a front and I like circled the communist thing. I said hiding it anymore. She had a debate with Nigel Farage. Oh, no, she didn't. Yeah. This one, yeah, no. I can't watch it. Yeah, she's an idiot. Do you know? Do you know the thing is right? I will be fair to her as I will be Gary government. You know? Gary government, Gary economics. Oh, yeah, Gary government, in that they do identify some of the problems that are wrong. Sure, like, we do have an oligarchy, right? We do have corporatism. Yes, we do have small, independent shops in towns who are punished by a pernicious tax system, which the large international companies don't have to pay. Just Starbucks, Amazon, they're avoiding tax, and it's it's wrong, they are. But that is a policy mistake that is not capitalism. Mistake that is a that is a problem of government. But like, I can't believe that September, let's go. Let's go. Should this go? Let's go. With placards for go capitalism, wind them up. Oh man,

  Fernando Nikolic

  if it wasn't for the fact that I that I'm leaving on September 1, I will, I will be there as well with the

  Peter McCormack

  plague. That's a Thursday, September 7. What day the week's icon? That is a Sunday.

  Unknown Speaker

  It's a

  Peter McCormack

  Sunday. Hmm, we have to make a sacrifice. I've gotta go make fun of them. You gotta. But I actually duty. I actually cannot believe I saw a thing the other day where it was a, it was a video, and they were in a university, and they were all wearing their those, like Palestinian scarves, and they were reading their communist demands. This, this kind of socialist comeback, this communist comeback, is fucking insane. It is like, what, yeah,

  Fernando Nikolic

  and it's they're recycling the same arguments as they always had. There's nothing new under the sun. And she has a problem with a politician weaponizing a situation where people are frustrated or vulnerable. That's exactly what they are doing too. Yeah, and it's just sad to see that there's. So little nuance right now that once a kid gets Oh, holy shit, yeah, this is the one, yeah, put your headphones on. Fernanda.

  Unknown Speaker

  I'm here with Communists.

  Peter McCormack

  I mean, they look, oh God, they look like a bunch of retards. They

  Fernando Nikolic

  look super Irish. Do like some meat, so you'll start thinking clear. They're

  Peter McCormack

  all clearly vegans and middle class. I bet they all come from nice homes. They've got iPhones. What

  Fernando Nikolic

  was true? Are you talking about like, and also like, if you read between the lines, they're asking for two things. They're asking for power and they're asking for money. That's it. That is the only thing.

  Peter McCormack

  Where does the money come from? Where's the money? Where does the money come from? Yeah, just tell me where the money comes from. Yeah. Open up your pocketbooks. Like, open up your wallets. That's basically what they're saying. Just, just show me one example of a successful communist country. Yeah. Just show me one Yeah.

  Fernando Nikolic

  If they're so, like, against genocides and whatever, like, why can't they have a problem with the genocides that communism brought and, like, literally

  Peter McCormack

  10s of millions. So I heard it the other day. The best question to ask a communist is, how many people from West Germany tried to break into East Germany? They didn't need guards on that side. But

  Fernando Nikolic

  you have so many examples, North Korea and South Korea, East Berlin and West Berlin, like, how many more examples do you need? How many people need to die? How many people need to starve until you get it? They don't. They will never. Is unbelievable.

  Peter McCormack

  I just don't like, I have sympathy for some socialist ideas, yeah, you know, for with a young person, when you say to them, like, yeah, if you say to a 10 year old, do you think we should give houses to homeless people? Yeah, we should. Should do we think we should take money from rich people and give it to poor people? Yeah? Like, I understand it, yeah. I understand where it comes from. But this is somebody who is now, like, firstly, your parents have failed you. There's no world where even my kids are communists, they've been told. They've been beaten into them that socialism is a stupid, failed ideology, but the fact that they're

  Fernando Nikolic

  it's a mind virus, bro, yeah, that's what it is. And it conflates with other stuff that's happening in the world as well. And they just cherry pick crisises to attach their identities to. And they feel it's about feeling good about yourself. It's about feeling that I'm on the right side of history. I'm with the good guys. And anybody who thinks differently than me, they're the bad guys. Unless we have to fight them. We gotta. They're Nazis, and we gotta, you know, be violent, and it's very childish behavior. and here's how they'd look if humans vanished.

  Peter McCormack

  the weird thing is, I bet if you sat down and you listened some of their complaints, you'd be like, Yeah, well, I agree with that, yeah. Some of them, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. I agree with the political class has failed us. I believe I agree there's failures in capitalism. I mean, it was Alan Farrington as, like, that was like, our third show. He said, you haven't, actually can't have capitalism under Fiat. No, we can't have it. No, because of, it's the fact that the government controls the money and they base it constantly, yeah. And you're socialized.

  Fernando Nikolic

  Seeing the crisis is by just, you know, injecting fake money into an economy that is not real, essentially, and capitalism in its purest form, is the trade of total strangers that you know, instead of bartering, is the subjective theory of value, where I have something that you want to have, that the second person doesn't want to have, and you don't need to trade me for something that I might have that you are interested in, but let's just do it using money. That is the tool, that is what has driven civilization to improve so drastically, and people, it's just too hard of a concept for people to grasp. I think they just want very easy, black and white solutions, and that's why communism and these type of ideologies, they always find their way back. Because society is always complex, and it's more complex than ever, I would say, with so much and everything being so fragmented, I saw your I saw your episode with biology yesterday, so interesting. And he was basically saying, Well, we are moving away from, you know, a standard two party system for like, you know, the US into 1000 communities, right? And how are these 1000 communities navigating? Are they collaborating or not? Well, they are splintered and kind of like doing their own thing. And they might, they might collaborate with other communities in a random time when there's an opportunity to do so. But in essence, all these communities will be kind of like singular, right?

  Peter McCormack

  Well, do you know, what do you know where I'd back that communist lot is that I like the idea of decentralization outside of Bitcoin. I like, I like decentralization in terms of communities, in terms of autonomy, with local councils, in terms of local politics, local budgets. And I've been exposed to that with all this bullshit that's going on in Bedford. I was like trying to understand why our council is failing so bad. And I realized it's not the council themselves that's failing. It is they are they are set on a trajectory to fail by central government. Essentially, central government is outsourcing their decisions to the council. They're creating these statutory requirements for homelessness, for sending schools, for all these things, and they're saying you have to pay for it. Okay, we'll give you a little bit. Here's some crumbs, but you have to pay for it. And their only leavers are business rates, so they need to like local business and the council tax. But there's not enough money in the pot, so they're constantly cutting services and constantly increasing the spend on social and then you start to look at the politicization of everything. The police force, for example, has been so politicized with PCC, there's less there's more money going to admin, PR and politics around police, and they're just police officers on the streets,

  Fernando Nikolic

  right? Which you fixed? Well, I'm trying to at least, but,

  Peter McCormack

  but they're set to fail. And I like, I I'm not going to run for mayor of Bedford because you cannot. You're set to fail, right? There's no point. Why would I do why would I do a job? Like, it's like, why would I run a podcast where I know YouTube and Spotify says we're not going to host your podcast. Yeah, you're fucked. Yeah. So I wouldn't do it. You're set for failure. But if there was a change, if it was, I don't know, 50% of local money is set locally. If you could have, if you could set local laws rather than being mandated by these statutory I'll have a go at this. So what I would say is, I've got no problem with Bedford being a autonomous capitalist society. And you guys, if you've got a bit of land and you want to go and build your communist utopia, go ahead. Go ahead, but we're going to put a fence around either side of us, and you're going to have to come and knock on our door if you want to come here, and we'll go knock on your door if you want to come there. Yeah, okay. I've got a feeling you're not gonna be open the door to any knocks. It's not gonna happen because your

  Fernando Nikolic

  communist bullshit doesn't work. Yeah, no, but I think what you're doing too, you're trying to, you're trying to make change as a private person, right? And I think if you take a look at around in history, in every sense of the word, the private sector is actually the ones that is actually pushing society forward instead of the public sector. Unfortunately, like, if just public services are not good enough, you just open up a business and provide those services. And nine times out of 10, you know, those private services are way better, like private security, for example, would you know, there's no there is no way to trust the police to provide security in a big event. No, you want to hire a private company to do that specializes in these things. You pay them good money for it, but they provide that service. That's just one of, like, 1000 million examples that you know private over public any day. And you're realizing that, and you're actually enacting change through your businesses on a from as a private person, which is the way to go? Well,

  Peter McCormack

  that's what's made me a little bit more libertarian. Right is the experience, not people shouting me on Twitter, you're a status car, yeah, you had to go through the process, right of running local business, seeing how much, how many hurdles that government puts in our way unnecessarily. And. I seeing them no longer as a service provider, but more as a essentially a racketeering total operation, in that we pay business rates and we're not getting policing, right? I mean, that's one of the things it says that we're meant to get and we're not getting this. Would you say this? They get a very small lump of money and then they have to tax for the rest. So they are, they're in the business of being extractive. That's it, yeah, but when they extract business rates they're meant to. You can probably look this up what they're meant to provide common but one of them is policing. But the thing is, they want to do all their other bullshit. They want to do their leaflets for whatever fucking woke issue they're dealing with of the day. And that takes away from what I want to pay for, which is policing. I want to say my business rates if you provide policing and you clean the streets and you take my rubbish, cool. I'm happy to pay for the service. And if there's a private alternative, I want to be able to withdraw my taxes and do it. But they don't. They take that goes into a big pot and they spend it on bullshit. Who knows where it goes. But that's what made me a bit little bit more libertarian. Mvk said it to me. Mvk was like, if you want to tell someone liter and get them to run a business and look, they're not providing the service, so we're going to provide the service. That's it. And because government tends to employ shit people who have weird incentives and do everything terribly, generally speaking, they're rubbish,

  Fernando Nikolic

  for sure, and it's skin in the game, man. And I really want to say it on the record as well. Like to see your story arc, especially since the last time that we spoke the I think it's like a full year now since last time. No, we just short of it. Short September, yeah, and it's been beautiful to watch from a distance. Man, you're really doing something good. You should be proud of everything you do, and more, a lot of more people should recognize you for the work that you do. Here we

  Peter McCormack

  go. Local authorities keep a proportion of the business rates to pay for the services we provide, such as street lighting. We get that improving public space. What does that even mean? Well, street lighting so like, no improving public spaces. Like, well, the public spaces, which are the greens, where all the alcoholics sit and pew can pass out, sounds very improved, yeah. Or this morning, check this one out, this one that came through this morning from somebody, I won't say it is because,

  Fernando Nikolic

  I mean, I'm kind of, like, addicted to Charlie beach. And I see a lot of the public spaces in Manchester, they don't look improved.

  Unknown Speaker

  Dude. Did you see the one where he went to the I see every everyone, we just got

  Fernando Nikolic

  a good kick on him. Oh, like, oh yeah, Fred.

  Peter McCormack

  I like Charlie. But he went to that place where all the gay guys were like, fucking in public. What

  Fernando Nikolic

  he goes to that bridge? Yeah, he caught somebody, yeah. So, weird man, right? Where is it? Where is it?

  Peter McCormack

  So, this is this morning. I got this at before nine o'clock. That's a public space. My coffee shop's literally around that corner, and there's three guys there, and you can see under there's four Kansas cellar and, like, Newcastle Brown, and he just said to me, three to look out for rude, to starve and get aggressive. That's a public space. We had somebody in Bedford the other night had their bike stolen by somebody with an ax. Whoa, yeah, go back to that thing. Sorry. Con, just one second. And so they're meant to improve public spaces and keep streets clean. They do that. Ish, no, actually, they don't Google. They do a little bit. They do a little bit of that and save they're just not doing that. So they're not delivering. I like I've been reading a little bit recently John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, when they talk about consent, and they basically say, consent isn't just at the point of the election, it's an ongoing thing, totally and you should be able to withdraw your consent. I mean, I've withdrawn my consent from this Labor government and this the John tis are the PCC in Bedford, and anyone who's failing, I've withdrawn my consent. I'm doing it myself. Yeah. And I like that idea that I think as a nation right now. I mean, what's 20% of the actual vote labor got of those? How many like them anymore? I mean, it could be 10% of the country that thinks they're shit, yeah, and I don't know what look 10% of the nation thinks they're good, if 90% of the country thinks they're shit. Well, I think we have a mandate to peacefully, Velvet Revolution style, protest strike and force them out. That's my controversial opinion.

  Fernando Nikolic

  Sound kind of like a what are these comments? No, just kidding. No. I think for every purpose that you want to have, you should honestly not rely on voting the traditional way you should think of any other option to change, except for voting, because that has been the standard and the default for so many people. But you can't vote yourself out of these things. You need to enact change in more direct, in more direct ways. It can be like a revolutionary stomp people on the ground hardcore shit, or just provide the services yourself and create businesses around it. And kind of like you provide value to society through these goods and services that is cheaper or better quality,

  Peter McCormack

  right? You would like some of my Facebook posts around this. These are the ones you wouldn't have seen where, like locals are complaining. People. They're like, Who are you accountable to? Right? What if there's a problem? And I've been like, I'm not accountable to anyone, no, apart from myself, right? I'm not breaking any laws. I'm asserting my rights. I can't tell you what clothes to wear, not when you go into town. You can't tell me not to bring private security, exactly. It's a public space, and I'm not breaking the law. Boom. But they struggle with that concept. It's like, yeah, you your license for that? Yeah, we vote for you. Yeah, crazy. I want to talk to you about Bitcoin.

  Fernando Nikolic

  Yeah, let's do it. It's a pretty weird time for me, by the way, since I just exited block street officially as of as of yesterday, so I'm entering on my own, still in the Bitcoin space, but, uh, yeah, I want

  Peter McCormack

  to hear all about it, yeah. But listen, we, but Balaji was a 100th show. We've done 100 shows, right? Amazing. Congrats. Thank you. But, but what a lot of like? If you go and look at our listener base, it's probably 15 to 20% of the old base. So this is large new base. I've got no idea that I made 861, shows about Bitcoin before this. Yeah, and they keep, you see in the comments, they're like, stop talking about Bitcoin. Stop shitting Bitcoin. Stop trying to make Bitcoin a thing. I don't think they fully realize it's like, Dude, I spent eight years making a Bitcoin podcast before this, and so I've got this audience who likes the content, and there's a percentage are like, Why the fuck do you keep talking about Bitcoin? And so I want this one. This is for them. Let's talk directly to this crowd who see all the problems in society. They see the problem in government. They see the problem policing, crime falling, failing public services, taxes going up. They see all these problems inflation, blah, blah. Yet when I bring up Bitcoin, they're like, shut up about Bitcoin. Yeah. And I'm like, Dude, this is, this is the solution. This is why I'm here. So let's give, let's give him a 101. Right? I think.

  Fernando Nikolic

  And It's so typical, like, what you just said, the way you frame it reminds me of that video from Peter Schiff when he goes into the Occupy Wall Street crowd. And it's just like, what's what's going on? Like, talk to me, what are you mad at? Right? And it was like everybody knew that what the issue was. Everybody agreed on the problem, but could not agree on the solution. They thought the solution is to, like, raid the Wall Street guys, and, you know, kill the fat cats of Wall Street. And I think this continues in 2025 as well, where, you know, you look around and there's obvious signs of decay, moral, societal and everybody agrees on that. But then the solution, nobody can really understand. So some people, they go into they think communism is the solution, or other solutions, right? They we can never agree on the solution. We can all agree on the problem. And I think Bitcoin. Think Bitcoin, it's not necessarily like this one magical thing that will fix everything. I don't think so, at least, right. There's a lot of cultural moral things that like, we like, we talked about 10 minutes ago, when it comes to Argentina, that you need, like a foundation first, to improve stuff like the moral and the cultural stuff you need, like a healthy economy as a base, you know concepts of being able to save for the long term, that enables you to plan for the long term. All of that is rooted in using money that is not debased, okay? And I think Bitcoin serves that purpose as that foundational layer that you can build on top, you know, a society that has morals, that is not trying to, you know, find quick solutions or shortcuts, the kind of like a builder mentality for the long term, kind of like the type of societies that you saw, you know, and like Florence, for example, when the currency was, you know, based on gold, and they were able to pay somebody for a project that was like, 35 maybe more years in the future, right? You can't, you can't do that with the current monetary system, because they know whoever's on the other side who's going to take that project. They know that everything will go up in price or the same. The other side of the coin is that things, the money is going to be worth and worth less. So they are incentivized to build buildings quickly as possible with the cheapest material as possible, because they know, over time they can't invest. They don't have that luxury of time to really think in the long term, so that I'm trying to put this in a nutshell, yeah, but that has a lot of consequences. That trickles down to how you and me walk in the street and we see around and we take a look around and see what society is like. Does that make sense? No, no, I do. I get it look

  Peter McCormack

  one of the reasons I'm doing this project in Bedford, right is I have a foundational position where I'm secure financially in terms of work, I have an income, but I feel secure for the future because I don't store my money in a bank account. So I don't know if I told you the story. When I was in Argentina, right? But I went out for dinner. So I got there, go to Buenos Aires, and I was expecting it to be a shit hole. I was expecting it to be a dump. I saw less homeless people in Buenos Aires in London, weirdly. But I was expecting everyone to be struggling, life to be difficult. We went out to dinner, and this restaurant was full, and I was like, What is going on? I thought you had massive inflation. It's a nightmare that said, we do, and there's like, this nihilism. But people cause they can't save they just they live for now. They go out and they have dinner. I was like, that's interesting. And then one of the guys at dinner said, By the way, everybody has two jobs in Argentina, they have the job and the other job is they're a financial director, they spend 30% of their time taking their Argentinian pesos and trying to think, what do I do with that? What do I do with that? So I doesn't get the base. How do I get dollars? How to get US equities? How do I get bitcoin? How do I get gold? Again, that was fascinating, because what they were trying to do was buy time. Yes, because money is a proxy for time. So I like, I was like, that was like, that was really fascinating. And when I've come back to Bedford, it's like, oh, shit, I don't have to think about that, because my bitcoin is there. I feel good for the future. And that's why I'm doing project Bedford, because I've got the time. I'm I could retire. I've got the time. So how do I fix things? Because I have time, right? That's, that's, that's me saying I agree with you, but trying to translate that so somebody listening right now, who's like, can I afford a fucking holiday? My shopping, my groceries are going up every month, and my boss won't give me a pay rise. Why the hell do I care about Bitcoin is $100,000 I've missed it. I'm too late and all that shit. How do you translate that to them, what's a good starting point?

  Fernando Nikolic

  Starting point, I think, is this, you are, let's, just stay and stay in the UK. So you earn in pounds. You get a paycheck every month, and you get paid in pounds. Those that that money is going to is programmatically debasing in nature. It's programmed to lose value over time. And if you keep saving in that money, your savings will be worth less over time as the currency devaluates. Why does it devaluate because it gets it gets printed in a very arbitrary way. If the government needs to send aid to some NGO, they need money for that, okay? Add it to the budget. They print money to add that money to the budget, which is then a claim from the central bank, right? They just print money to cover that claim because they want to, they want to pay for stuff. They, you know, everybody knows. You know that every governmental budget is never, it's never, it's always, it's always in minus they, they always spend what they have. There's always a deficit. And they are able to do that because they can just print money, whatever you can do it. I can't do it if I want to spend the money that I have. I can't spend more than I have. Maybe I can go into credit that, get a credit card, but I can't just, like, infinitely, just pay for more money. They're going to take your car. Yes, exactly so. And that's, that's the thing you can't save in an instrument like that is programmatically debased. So you need to, do? You need to save in a currency that does not and this is something that humanity hold on like,

  Peter McCormack

  Yes, I see what you're saying, because you said earlier of 2% inflation year is 50% over 35 Yeah, if I'm 30 and retire at 65 I can save, but I'm gonna as well stay at 2% by the way, which it won't, right? I'm gonna lose 50% of my value, yes, but that's why I have a pension, because it's

  Fernando Nikolic

  invested. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about that, but there's a hurdle rate. You gotta be as well. It's a hurdle rate. And honestly, pensions is more Ponzi more than a pension. I would say, I know, you know my mom is about to hit, you know, she's 6364 she cannot retire. She's forced to she just recently got a new job, actually, so she is just job seeker at 63 so that, you know, I don't want to go into the intricate of why the pension appliance that is a scam, but it's obviously a scam when you work 40 plus years and you are 63 years old, looking for a job, going to interviews, uploading your CV and updating. Your LinkedIn profile at that age. So it doesn't, it doesn't do what its purpose. I think what you're saying is

  Peter McCormack

  like, what 100 pound buys today, should buy the same tomorrow, maybe more, and in 10 years, it should buy the same, maybe more, right? And it doesn't, because of inflation, exactly right. So we've been robbed,

  Fernando Nikolic

  right? Slowly, slowly. It's so slow that people don't really get up and protest or have, like, a very violent reaction to it, because it's not, it's not, the impact is not, it's not big, but it's slowly over time. So and that is on purpose as well, like, obviously, the people who are creating this system don't want you to react or go out in the streets and protest, if it's slow enough, then people won't say anything, because regular people, they have two jobs, three jobs, they have a family, they have a life to live. They can't become financial directors like the Argentinians, right? That's not the life that most people they just want to live their life normally. So what Argentinians have done? Because I always joke that this is a recurring joke for among Argentina's, like we come from the future. When we come to speak to you guys in the West, consider us like aliens who come from a different planet. Didn't the World Economic Forum, yeah. It's a recurrent future. Yeah, we come from the future. We heard to tell you what's going to happen and what we have done, what we have figured out, because our government and the way they inflate the money is so much more violent and ravages that it's not slow at all. We wish for 2% we now have 2% and we were talking about this as a success story. So imagine that, right? So we have always spent the Argentinian peso that we earn straight away in restaurants and groceries, whatever to cover the bills. So whatever you go, get in, everything goes out immediately, because you don't know how much carton of milk is going to cost in 14 days. So you find alternatives, you find monies that is established, that have higher liquidity, that has more you know, that more markets are participating with so we choose the US Dollar as this hedge. So anything that we can take from the Argentinian pesos and we save it to US dollars that becomes our savings, the Argentinian peso does not it's a spending account. And US Dollars become the savings accounts because the US dollar is, well, it's inflationary too, but not as fast as Argentina peso. So think of Bitcoin in the same way. For Westerners like your The British Pound is not as bad as the Argentinian pesos, but you are already now talking about this topic. It's not my savings account, right? It's not, should never be. But the society now is starting to react. Is starting to talk about like certain things, certain cracks in society, things that they see on the street, policies that are very weird, obviously, the degradation of the streets, the public spaces, stuff like that. So you guys are starting to feel this, but you still don't know that this is rooted in money being worthless and being spent on stupid programs that shouldn't be financed in the first place. So that you need to look into bitcoin as the way Argentinians look at the US dollar, as this hedge against your local currency that is worth less and less to save and plan for the future, to be able to do stuff like you are doing right now. I mean, your example is a crazy good example, but it's a pretty it's an example that you know you've been in, you've been a bit kind of like me, like since 2017 or something like that. So the longer you're in, the longer your savings account is in Bitcoin, the more opportunities, bigger opportunities like yours to actually create a change you will have. But for people starting out right now, in a year from now, you can afford, like, small luxuries. You can go on trips, you can maybe, you know, pay your bills and feel like you have enough left over at the end of the month to go out and do fun stuff. So Bitcoin works that way because it's the actual opposite. It is programmed to be predictive in terms of how much bitcoin is in circulation. Every 10 minutes, a block gets created which is connected to other blocks, which is the blockchain, which is essentially the entire history of all transactions of Bitcoin since inception, since 2009 January 3. So you consider all these transactions that are gathered in individual blocks that are connected to each other, as the McKinsey or the Deloitte of the network, which essentially audits the network every, on average, every 10 minutes when a new block gets created, all the transactions gets verified, meaning you can actually see how many bitcoins there are at any time. Mm. Uh, on your own, you just download the database. You download, I guess it's about a terabyte worth of data, and you have it in your hard disk, and you can actually check any transaction, who transacted with, what, how much Bitcoin was transferred, and how much is in circulation since the beginning of time. You can't do that with Fort Knox. You can't audit the central banks. All of these things are not public information, right? So the blockchain, which is Bitcoins, base layer, is exactly that. And every 10 minutes, new bitcoin is being distributed to the to the to the economy, let's say so every 10 minutes a block gets a reward. Those who mines these blocks, they get that reward, and that is essentially the new Bitcoin that is being put into circulation. Every 10 minutes, new bitcoin is put into circulation. The beautiful thing is, you know exactly how much Bitcoin will be inserted into the economy every 10 minutes, all the way to the year 2140, so now you can, you can audit it backwards in time, and you can also audit the entire network in the future as well, more than 100 years out in the future. So this programmatic, this uh, predictable issuance, is the exact opposite of what this current monetary system is on, which is the plumbing of society. And that is why it works. Maybe it works because fiat money doesn't work and kind of like this. This is the this is the contrast that is reflected in the price. But I think more and more people are starting to understand why that is important, that the Bitcoin monetary properties, because they feel it in their pockets. They feel it around society that something is wrong, something is happening, and something is wrong with the money. But it's maybe not that easy to explain or to understand. So I think that is the contrast that Bitcoin currently represents. And I think the more people understand Bitcoin from a monetary property perspective and using Bitcoin as a savings technology, I think that is the first I think that's the widest door that people can come through right now, because it's so it's so relevant right now to to what people are going through. So I always, when I say, when I explain what Bitcoin is, I always go through that, because there's other ways you can be more technological. You can talk about like the anonymity and other properties that is also interesting and also has value. But I think this one is the one that is super relevant right now. Would

  Unknown Speaker

  Do you think it's a little bit like,

  Peter McCormack

  you know, how you just naturally learn a language? Yeah, you naturally probably learned Spanish as a child, right? And I naturally learn English. You just pick it up over time. And with money, we just pick up how to use it, but we actually understand money. We teach what money is and what gives it value. Do you think we don't naturally have that intrinsic understanding of money? No, no, we just get gaslit into accepting this fucking

  Fernando Nikolic

  totally let me tell you my story. So I'm from Argentina, but I grew up in Norway. My mom emigrated from Argentina in 1989 1988 1989 1990 very tumultuous period, and we, I think we went over we did in the middle episode, hyper recession. Carolita, no, that's 2001 Okay, so 1989 huge, like currency changed names, you know, they changed the color of the paper and the notes, and there was like they changed the capital city from Buenos Aires to Vietnam, and they 180 it was like total chaos after the military dictatorship ended in 1983 1989 everything exploded, and my mom immigrated to Norway as a result of that, together with me. So my dad was left in Argentina. The rest of my family was left in Argentina, and I came back. Every year, I spent three months in Argentina to visit him and the rest of my family. And as I grew older and I came back, inflation was always a topic of conversation. Oh, always it was a, you know, my cousins talking about, like, you know, shopping strategies, you know, we should go here for the milk and then go there for the meat. And I wish we need to do it at that time. And my aunt, you know, talking about, like, exchange rates, where are the best, like, underground layers, where you can get a better exchange rate to trade your pesos to dollars, stuff like that. That is like exhausting for normal people, right? And time and time again, I came back and it was always a topic. So that led me to try to figure out, like, why is this inflation thing such, um, such a big topic of conversation, and obviously tapping into my public education. I had no idea, like, they don't teach you these things, right? So I started reading about it on my own. That led me to understand inflation. And you know why it's a kind of like a, always a monetary Bill Freeman, yeah, which Millay has also recycled. It's always a monetary phenomenon. Yeah, so Milton, Friedman, the Austrians, all of that, right? Then, when my friend talked to talk to me about Bitcoin in 2017 it all clicked because of the monetary properties, because we're not being taught these things at school, and we take it for granted. And like you said, we are being gaslit to think it's not a problem. So that is just, you know, wild to really understand. Once you understand it, and you get to a position where you start to unlearn a lot of things, you start to realize, hey, the things that I've the things that I've been taught, is not really true. Where do I go from here? And that is also something that I'm also very you know, I think this education, this lack of education, is only going to be harder and harder for normal people to actually understand, because we're living in a in such a fragmented media landscape that, you know, in a society where you are forced to work overtime, work two, three, part time jobs, you have a family and stuff like that. You don't have time to educate yourself on these things and get, like, a nuanced perspective on what money is or what Bitcoin is. You maybe have some spare time to listen to a couple of influencers or read the mainstream media and believe that, and that's the only source of information that you will get. And we are now living in such a fragmented media landscape that one outlet will only give you one source of information, and the incentives that are at place is only for you to get addicted and to get deeper and deeper into that echo chamber and not really hop out of that and get a balanced, nuanced view of what's happening. So narrative warfare, the narrative warfare. It is, it is scary, because I really don't think, I think 99% of people are just going to be a victim of that narrative warfare, and the 1% will have that luxury, like you and I, to actually have the time to read different books, to listen to debates where different opinions are debating. Most people, they will just go on YouTube and get victim of the algorithm and just, you know, not really, not really learn anything new.

  Peter McCormack

  Do you think narrative is a like a comfort blanket in what? In what sense in that? Well, there, I think there are people say that you are a victim or narrative author and I am as well. Yeah, even maybe we're Bitcoin. We are like, are we really objective? And but there are other people who just, okay, communists, go back to the communists, right? Yeah, we know objectively. They are fucking idiots. Yes, we know objectively. Communism never works. It leads to poverty and the deaths, starvation of 10s of millions of people, and that to maintain it, you have to have control, and the elite class control every Yeah, your movements, what you think, what you say, we know it's bullshit, right? There's a bunch of people there. They're obviously upset about something, and then, you know, they angry at society or the world, blah, blah. Do you think the narrative they've chosen, the communist is a comfort blanket for them for what they're really pissed off?

  Fernando Nikolic

  Yeah, that's exactly it. And I think they are any I think I think you're right as well. Like, just touch on the first thing you said. I mean, obviously, you know, time is scarce. We can't, like, read every single book in existence and listen to 10,000 hours of podcasts every week. And then, you know, claim that we have a nuanced perspective of everything. Obviously, we need to be some we need to we need to curate our content. We need to be selective about things. And obviously, when we are in a time where we are following people and not necessarily brands, we want to connect to certain people. So we need to see ourselves. We need to follow influencers or thought leaders that kind of like resonate with us. So it's going to be a limited, you know, availability of people that you want to trust and listen to, right? So me, you everybody falls victim to that, but what I'm saying is getting to somewhat of a higher, you know, level, where you can see a little bit of, like, everything that's going on, and not necessarily have this insane, intense echo chamber that you can just cannot get out of, like the communists. I think that's going to be increasingly difficult over time, because, you know, we, both of us, we can look back at a time where, as a society, we had shared moments, culturally shared moments. You know, TV had two, three channels. Radio had three, four channels. It was a high chance that whatever happened in the news or a show that was showing on TV that a lot of people talked about, and you can have, like this water cooler conversation the next day, chances are higher for that, but also,

  Peter McCormack

  yes, you would discuss it, but there was really usually one or two versions of everything. Right now, there's a million views on everything. Every argument has a counter argument totally, and they're vicious arguments. And you've, you've got, and everyone has an opinion, yeah, you know, and it's this kind of. Like, weird world of how you navigate it, and if you don't agree with someone, they're going to insult you. And yeah, and then you maybe insult somebody who doesn't agree with you, yeah? And like, the narrative warfare, it's just become, it's like information anarchism, yeah, I like that. It's like anarchy,

  Fernando Nikolic

  but there's some wicked financial incentives behind that too, apart from just the actual content, right? Like, there's a mix of like, everybody who are educators or content creators are audience captured at some level. And it's really interesting to see the audience capture of the legacy outlets, how they are, for example, when it comes to Bitcoin, how the BBC, for example, or financial times here are just like, doubling, tripling down on things when, like, hey, look around like the world is changing. Bitcoin is having a momentum is obviously, you know, growing in adoption is not stopping anytime soon. Why do you keep falling back to these, like, recycled arguments? That's because they're audience captures. They don't have the luxury to pivot on Bitcoin, because they will lose the little remaining size of audience that they, that they, that they have left right? Dude,

  Peter McCormack

  the YouTube thing is so painful for us, and it really, it really upsets me, man, tell me about in that there's a few things going on. Firstly, okay, YouTube's goal is to get people to watch as long as possible so they can pump out as many as to make money. Yeah, that's their business model, right? So everything's still resigned around that we definitely have a conservative, libertarian audience, more conservative, but you know me, I talk to anyone. I want to talk to people on the left. I want to have conversations. I don't beat them up. I don't believe them. We just, we just have a conversation. But if I get somebody from the left on, the drop off rate is high, and the dislike buttons press more, and we get very few views. Yeah, it's just, they just don't perform. And so YouTube is basically saying to me, Pete, we don't want you to do those left wing shows. We got somebody for that. You just do the right wing stuff on, by the way, when you do it, if you if you do me your titles, you're gonna get more people click on it, and so you're gonna get more people coming in. And it's really painful because we don't want to do it. We have to play the game a little bit. But I just don't want to fucking play the game, right? I would love to put out every show. This is Fernando, not even tell them what we're talking about. Just go and watch it. Yeah, no one will fucking watch it. And so you have to play this game. We have to the I read this thing said, advertiser takeaway, deliver a steak dinner that we have to constantly advertise, like a dripping bacon double cheeseburger with onion rings and fries, yeah, just to get them in and then have these conversations. But it pains me, man. And by the way, look, we will do those other shows. I can see how other people there are only revenues, YouTube revenue, and they're like, Fuck, I better do this. And I better make it look better, make it sound crazy. I better get Bonnie blue on and talk about having 1000 dicks. Yes, because if I don't get her on and talk about 1000 dicks, like, what else am I gonna do? I'm gonna talk to a local businessman. Why his business? Why is business struggling? Nobody wants to. They want to hear about 1000 dicks. And so they get Bonnie blue on and do that. Or they something happens in Iran, and they get something to talk about. The World War Three is about to start, or civil war is about to happen in the UK. They're almost, they're almost pushing the crazy agenda, because the crazy agenda hypes people up. But we just did it. We had the collapse of the West with Balaji. I mean, it's what he spoke about, but it's Douma. I want to well now only our titles are actually positive content. Like, hey, the world's good. We need to the world isn't to be fair. It isn't fair. We we need to do 1000 dicks with not even me stop saying 1000 dicks. Peter, 1000 dicks. I hope my dad said this one. Dad, do not, do not watch wonley blue with 1000 dicks. But yeah, so like and then and Twitter is the same x, whatever I'm gonna call it again. I used to get good engagement on Bitcoin content post, solid posts about Bitcoin, 1000 lies, some good conversations. You fuck all now, in Bitcoin, if I say, we need a revolution, bring down Keir Starmer, 8000 likes. If I say, look, I've got a nuanced argument about some failures left. It's boring, yeah, it's, you know, and the algorithms are kind of evil. Yeah, it

  Fernando Nikolic

  is. But also, like, you know, with so many people fighting for your attention, there is some value in having clarity and being very straight and being very predictable. Say, Okay, every time I log on, check out a new episode of Peter McCormack. I know what to expect, right? So there is certain value in that, and I think that's what the algorithms care about. But there is the unintended consequence of like you are essentially incentivizing everybody to be more and more extreme just to get that attention and continue building that audience from what they built on before like you had some, you know, guest that was, like, critical of Bitcoin and stuff like that when you did your Bitcoin show, but you were like, mostly, you know, pro Bitcoin, right? Yeah. So you built your audience being pro Bitcoin. So in the future, if you were to pivot on that, you would lose a chunk of your audience, probably right. So it's kind of like that. That is what we do. And you did, you did when you did this, yeah. And now you're building this audience that is more conservative. And if you, in two years from now, starts to pivot on that, then you have to build it all over again, I guess. Yeah, I have

  Peter McCormack

  no more business in me, perhaps, maybe then the arguments, it holds people account. So, for example, a lot of politicians complain about what's happening on Twitter with political discourse. But look, the Labor Party are a bunch of morons, and they've been called a bunch of morons every day. Every time that their party posts something, they're being called out for their lies. I mean, I think we're streeting. Got done today, bullshit, and they said they've got 9 million more doctors appointments. They weren't doctors appointments. There were appointments with physicians and other things, etc, and so there's this like, it's almost like the world of politics hasn't reinvented itself like everything else, like Spotify reinvented music, Netflix reinvented distribution of films. The Internet has reinvented newspapers, podcasts have reinvented news media in some ways, like everything's had to get reinvented, but politics hasn't yet reinvented, and therefore all their failings are getting exposed, like when Rachel Rees comes out with her latest bullshit, everyone just laughs and makes fun of her because she's an idiot. Yeah, like, and Keir Starmer is getting and so hopefully the flip argument is that we will actually have to get politicians who aren't who come out and say, Look, by the way, this job's tough. I'm going to make mistakes. This is what we're dealing with. And people, I think people go, Okay, well, I understand you're being you're not just gaslighting me. So maybe the Twitter is the force change to politics we did. And, like, is that covid? I think, no, I

  Fernando Nikolic

  think it's, you know, I see a lot of parallels, to be honest with you, because you mentioned Spotify. And let me tell you some other things about me that I don't think, you know, like, I started my career in the music business, right? So I was in Norway, you know, I had my own record label. Did, like hip hop and rapture, of course, Latino Latina in Norway. Of course, I did hip hop. And no, so I built some success with that. And I started Universal Music, super early in my career. And this was at the time, like in Oslo, in the Oslo office. This was at the same time, at the end of, you know, mid arts, or end of the 2000s where, like, the Pirate Bay thing was really growing. Everybody was torrenting, you know, music, yeah, all that stuff. But in the Pirate Bay, guys was very curious, because, yeah, they were getting sued left and right. And you remember, like, you wouldn't steal a car advertisements and stuff like that, you know, trying to, like, stop it, right? And they just click, yeah. Oh, that was that was so disappointing. I remember that. But, like, so we were in Oslo, they were in Stockholm, and they were getting sued by, like, Hollywood lawyers and stuff like that. And this is, like, it's not the piracy that is really the or the technology, is the fact that all these cultural moments are now available to, like, a random dude who lives in a jungle in Sri Lanka who want to, like, download menace to society and watch that person, that kid would never, ever be able To, you know, get that piece of culture, unless he traveled to New York or something like that. Remember, like, at least for me, there was like, a big, like, moment when somebody brought, like, a VHS tape that had, like, some music videos from MTV or something, because we didn't have MTV in Norway, right? So all these things got liberated and got distributed freely, and that changed the culture. It had, like, this cultural undertone, and that's the unstoppable part of the technology that these people I was trying to like in the in the executive board, like 20 year old junior product managers, like, hey, we need to, we need to, we need to release these, like, low bit rate versions of singles so people can just distribute it and then, you know, they will buy the album later. They were like, No way. We need to sell CDs. We will maybe do like, enhanced CDs, double CDs with a DVD of concert footage. That's the business model. It's like, no you either adapt or you die, and it's just a matter of time. Like, how fast can you react and adapt? Or else you're just going to be ended up, like being bought up, you go into mergers and acquisitions, and you're just gonna, like, fade into irrelevance, right? And that's what's happening with the media, with the politicians

  Peter McCormack

  right now. Well, do you know what's wild about this? Like someone of Connor's age doesn't even know this happened, right? There has been, Connor hasn't even lived at a time where there was no internet. Kurt, do you even remember no internet? I was three when we started walking, yeah. So, so I remember no internet, right? Me too. And so when there was an album you wanted to get, I've probably told I don't know if I've told you about this Connor, but you would walk into 10 walk into town or get the bus, and you go to the record shop like and these records are our prize, and you would go and buy and originally as a cassette, and then it was a CD for me, right? And you would have this stack of CDs, but this moment in time where everything changed with the internet, this website came out called Napster. You heard about Napster? And then suddenly you could get any music at the click of a button. And it became like existential for music industry. There was this, like, feels like a three, four year period where the music industry was like, what do we do? People used to spend 15 pounds on a CD, and they're now downloading it for free, and they're not buying CDs.

  Unknown Speaker

  Well, the whole thing was wild. But the the

  Peter McCormack

  were a little bit radical. Yeah, that's fair. Well, what was my favorite moment of all of it was, it was Sean Fanning. Was Napster, right?

  Fernando Nikolic

  No. Sean Baker, I think that's No,

  Peter McCormack

  no. I think Sean Fanning. Try and look it up. He's the guy in the social network, yeah? So you know, you know the guy that was. His name, Sean Parker. Sean Parker, that's it. Baker is the director. So who was Sean Fanning?

  Unknown Speaker

  There was a Sean fanning as well. Random.

  Peter McCormack

  Look it up. Who's Sean Fanning? Computer Programmer. Was he Napster as well?

  Unknown Speaker

  He developed Napster.

  Peter McCormack

  Okay, and who was Sean Parker? Was he Napster as well?

  Fernando Nikolic

  Sean, yeah, he was definitely the Napster. Yeah, yeah. He was maybe, like, co founder. Okay,

  Peter McCormack

  so Sean Parker is Justin Timberlake in the social network. Did you know that? Yeah, so they developed Napster, right? But there's this great story with Sean Fanning and, yeah, so Metallica were the ones who came out of the ones totally against Napster, like they were gonna sue everyone. It was like, Come on, man, you're like rock and roll. Guys like rock and roll, people used to say, go and steal your CDs. Go into HMV and steal it. And they were suing them, and they're like, the richest rock and roll guys, Sean fanning was, I don't know. I want you to see this. This is right. Go on YouTube. Search for Sean Fanning. MTV awards. Stick it. Stick up on the thing. Oh, you don't, you don't. You don't. Yeah, this is wow. This is so good. Forgot about this. All right, sure. Fanning. So it's not that's it, that's it, yeah, well, our soul, Rick, yeah, no, we don't need it. You see it?

  Unknown Speaker

  Nice shirt. Wait, I think we

  Peter McCormack

  see. It's pretty spears and so Metallica are taking on this teenager who's trying to liberate kids and get any music he wants. Obviously, he comes out in a metallic shirt, and Lars Ulrich is like, this, refuses to look but it was Connor honestly, like the whole industry changed. It was the weirdest moment. yeah, but that's why I think concerts have got so expensive. They milk the concerts now and the T shirts and the merch look. I think artists used to get paid well, for their for their music, and I don't think they do now. And it's, I think it's harder for smaller artists, and it's harder to get known again, it goes back to algorithms. If you're a bloody if you record company exec, if you A and R, you've got to find that big act, yeah, and how many small labels are

  Fernando Nikolic

  out there. What was interesting, though, is, like, I remember back then, the advent of MP threes was also the advent of like these, like music blocks that just, I don't know if you remember, like, not, right, stuff like that for, like, rap music, but it was also, like, disco bell.net, do you don't know about me having a fanzine? No. So I started a fanzine at 15 pre blog. Okay, so I did a fancy I used to go in interview bands, interview corn, and I interviewed, uh, skunk and Nancy and Slayer Pantera, yeah. So, like, I predate the person. This was in person. Some Pantera was over the phone, whereas they were, like, a Dictaphone against the phone. Biohazard was in person. Corn was in person, yeah? Like, life of agony, yeah. So cool, yeah. The blogs were big. The blocks were big. And that was, like, that was a distribution arm, right? Because back then, if you were an indie artist, you needed to go through EMI Music or whatever, because they had the network, they had the connections. They would get you the distribution and put your music in stores. But then MP threes happen, and now all these blogs, just like literal blogspot.com, domains that started just like focusing on very specific things. So like East Coast rap music, two dope boys, uh, disco bell in Sweden, that was more like electronic disco type of music. All of a sudden, these, like very niche blogs were the distribution lamb goes, the one I go to hardcore music. Yeah, no, but I was checking that out too. And it's like, it's very interesting, because then the music labels panicked and they wanted to buy up all these, like indie labels, just to stay relevant, right? And eventually Spotify came and literally wrapped MP threes. This is what the model is right now. And the big record labels, they all got, like, I don't know, a shared 18% of the of the shares of Spotify when they when they enter the US market. And I've seen the same things with Bitcoin right now. I think the same way Spotify wrapped MP threes, we're going to see financial institutions wrapping Bitcoin and offering that because of because of the 21 million limit. So it's the same type of disruption happening with the exact same patterns just wrapped differently. You know, it's very interesting. Let's talk about

  Peter McCormack

  what's happening in Bitcoin. This is where people who don't know Bitcoin might get a bit lost in the conversation. But I Natalie Brunel interviewed me the other day, and I said a couple of things. I said, firstly, I think it's got a bit boring. Yeah, I do. There's a lot of celebration to what Michael say. Let's do which is kind of interesting, right? This whole way he is scooping up money and convincing people they can get a return, and they are getting returned like the performance is incredible, but this push away from using Bitcoin as money, for me, is a problem in 2140 and look, I think Bitcoin goes through these eras, we started our cyberpunk, we went libertarian, we went Tech, we went macro, we now go in finance, and all this financial engineering is happening, and it's interesting. It's bad if there's paper Bitcoin, but it's interesting, right? But I feel like we've lost this revolutionary edge to us, this peer to peer, Yeah, fuck you money, where I can send you money and no one can stop me. And it's now it's like Treasury companies and returns and, yeah, all these different share things that sale has done. I'm paying much attention to because I find it boring. Because I find it boring. Yeah, me too, and I just wonder if we are destroying the soul of Bitcoin. And to add to that, the names are drifting off, and there aren't new, interesting names coming out. Like, when was the last time we got a Lynn Olden or a Jeff booth or, like, some fascinating person who's got some. Interesting, new perspective. It's, it's like, the Blackrock crowd, the MicroStrategy crowd. I'm like, where are we going? Yeah, is the Metallica syndrome, right? Yeah, this is it. You know, the revolutionaries. They got rich because they still got their Bitcoin from 2011, 1213, and now they're like, they're rich. Maybe they're you're not. You don't, you don't. You don't become that revolutionary when you get power and money. So maybe that's, maybe that's it. I mean, I am, yeah, I don't mean to be like, Look at me, but like I'm,

  Fernando Nikolic

  this is what we were told we were meant to do. Yeah. Fernando is like, Fuck the government. All they do is steal from us. We need to get fuck you money and say fuck you, yeah, and then all the they're not saying, fuck you. They're some are moving to Dubai. Some are just disappearing, yeah, sitting on their snacks. It's like, but I think where's the revolution? Things are. I don't think a revolution is in the sense of, like, Oh, we're gonna, like, disrupt everything in one bang. I think it's just a successive steps towards having Bitcoin be the monetary base, right? And that includes everyone, people that you don't agree with, people that uses Bitcoin differently than you do, people who just don't use and just stash, hoard it. I mean, I think with adoption comes a lot of new players that is just going to change the face of Bitcoin because of how broad it's getting, right? All

  Peter McCormack

  right? So, so the so that I think I had the same defense, though, I said I'm okay with these Treasury companies. I'm okay with it because we're accelerating hyper bitcoinization. Yes, and to add to that, and what you've just said, we're accelerating it become the monetary base. Yeah, is that so is anything towards the monetary base?

  Fernando Nikolic

  Good? I mean, like I said, I believe, at least personally, that if you have Bitcoin as a monetary base and that becomes the plumbing of society, I think that's a crazy improvement from having fiat money that is programmed to debase and lose value as the plumbing of society. Now, it does that mean that there's a high chance that Bitcoin might end up like gold, and it's just like the reference point for a lot of paper products, IOUs, and, you know, things being, you know, the things that we actually end up transacting is just a reflection of Bitcoin. It's just a credit. I think that might be very well

  Peter McCormack

  a reality. Well, that's a failure though, yes, because gold hasn't, gold has only really been that for, like, some rich people and governments buy gold when they know their money's going to shit. But we wanted that for everyone.

  Fernando Nikolic

  Yeah, but the thing is, okay, I don't think it's a failure in terms of, like, what people end up using or not using, or doing or not doing. I think the fact that you can you can transact, and you can download a wallet, receive Bitcoin and sell goods and services in the most remote places on Earth, that's winning. That's success. Now, if 8 billion people are not doing it. Yeah, it's a failure in that way. But to be honest with you, Bitcoin is not for everyone. I think it's it's for anyone. It's for anyone. I don't think there's just a lot of people who are just not going to learn. And I'm not talking about like poor people, like people in poverty or in, like, the Global South. No, anyone will, like, just not get it. And maybe if we get closer to 2140 more people will, I hope so. I mean, think the last 16 years have been pretty good in terms of adoption. Maybe we want to, like, kick start some factions. I want to see more circular economies in Latin America, for example, be on a Bitcoin standard. But at the same time, I think I tell them, like, Hey, if you have Bitcoin, don't spend it, because it's best for you, right? Because you should be spending the local currency that is not worth anything. So, man, cool with treasuries. I'm cool with treasuries, but I don't care too much. I don't like the story. I don't find it interesting, yeah, but I do think it's an interesting point. I mean, it's an interesting use case for the using Bitcoin as a denominator, because you have the store of value story that's kind of like established you have the minimum exchange story, which is like, people are fighting. We need more of that. Blah, blah. But then the third part, that is kind of like the main functions of money, which is the unit of account, I think the treasuries are kind of like, spearheading that. No, if you see the Jack mallerson, yeah, he's like, I don't care, our success is Bitcoins per share. Bitcoin per share, yeah, like, that's the, that's your unit of account. Then it's not Fiat. It's actually Bitcoin. I'm like, that's a really cool story for the unit of account story.

  Peter McCormack

  I have. I've been stacking Bitcoin personally and through my businesses since 2017 it's protected me. It's secured my family's future, and it also strengthens all of my businesses. So if you want to start stacking Bitcoin, where do you do it? Well, for me, it's with Gemini. They're a fully licensed, full reserve exchange and custodian, so they give you a secure way for you to buy and own your Bitcoin. There's no risks and no funny business. So if you're serious about stacking Bitcoin the right way. Head over to gemini.com, which is G, E, M, I, N, i.com Well, so what is interesting that's happening then? Because, like, I'm out of it, right? I'm in my own little world of UK decline and politics and trying to fix things, blah, blah. I've kind of stepped away and I like, peer in over the edge. I just haven't seen that much interesting stuff happening. Yeah, here's

  Fernando Nikolic

  kind of like what I so the story that I wanted to share today is also that I'm that I'm I left block stream right after four plus years being the VP of Marketing Communications there to launch a new venture of my own called perception. It's also called Bitcoin perception. That's like the research arm of it. Essentially, what I'm doing is everything that is being discussed about Bitcoin across all pockets of the internet, conferences, podcasts, videos, you name it. I gather everything, and then I look at for trends, for things that are happening in every pocket of the internet. And also like, what are the blind spots? And I've been building that technology for, yeah, since last time we spoke honestly, because we were discussing how Melee was being portrayed differently by very like selected media outlets, how the stories can be so different, and they're looking at the same thing. Bitcoin is also like a victim of that. So I was like, let me put let me create some technology that takes everything and in order to have a full 360 view of what's really happening in Bitcoin. And what you're saying is true that you don't have these, like, big personalities anymore, but you have, like, subset of parallel stories all happening in different places of the world that some people are reporting on but gets ignored by other pockets of the internet. So I think is a very valuable platform that I'm building so that people that are in the industry that want to look for opportunities, or they just want to understand how Bitcoin is being perceived, or like sections of the industry is being perceived, it's for them, you know. And I think this is a result of the fragmented media landscape, where if you only like you, no disrespect, but if you only go on your Twitter timeline

  Peter McCormack

  a couple of times a day, and that becomes your you know your information, then there's a lot of stuff that you don't do. There's no There's no Bitcoin into it anymore. Anyway, it's all lists of stories and people killing other people. That's it. It's like people fighting, stabbing each other, and you don't understand, like, visceral fat around your heart. Here's a tweet thread to stop being a fatty. That's it. There's no like, there's no like, oh, let's have a conversation about CTV.

  Fernando Nikolic

  That's that's all gone, yeah. I mean, it's, it's happening. It's not like it's not happening. It's just few people are part of these. These things are happening. People are jumping to nostrils. People are jumping to different platforms. It's happening also in the normal land. People jumping to blue sky and stuff like that. You're blue sky. No, no, are you crazy? You know me enough to know that I'm not, but people are just factioning into these little pockets of the Internet where they feel safe and they just have each other and everybody agrees. And then there's very few instances of people actually jumping outside these echo chambers and actually debating and actually having these conversations. And I think podcasts is becoming a reflection of that, like people talking about the same thing, this one thing trending, and everybody jumps on that, and everybody agrees on that. There's no really new angles anymore, unless you really start to look into, like, deeper into the but again, that's the problem. Nobody has time for that. So that's kind of like what I'm trying to fix with this, with this platform, is just like you log in, you see what's trending. You see something related to Bitcoin. It's interesting in Singapore or in Chile, but also in Chicago, and you have access to that, and you're able to have at least a 360 view instead of wasting a bunch of

  Peter McCormack

  hours when you launch right now, can I see it? Yep, Oh, go on. Stick it up. Perception. Dot T O, there we go.

  Unknown Speaker

  I'm excited. Oh, sorry,

  Fernando Nikolic

  yeah, so you gotta, you gotta just. Just login with Google. I mean, when that thing is, yeah, just sign in with Google, for example, just below their constraint. So you're just gonna get a free you're gonna see the free, the free, the free version. That's gonna give you just a snapshot, but that's enough. I mean, that's all you need to see right now. Just skip and go to snapshot. What do you get? What you pay for it. So you won't be able to access all the other stuff. But I think this is, this is good enough, right? So you see what's trending now, and I take, I take the sentiment on every single thing that is being discussed, from a singular tweet to an article at Bloomberg, and I run sentiment analysis on it. And all of that is being indexed into, like my own proprietary fear ingredient index, which I think you know is the is the one that is closest to being the most accurate. All the interesting stuff is just BS To be honest, and they're not transparent with their sources. And you can see that cybersecurity and AI is daily topic, trending regulatory updates and scaling is not being talked about as much compared to yesterday. You see the mainstream financial media outlets that are talking the most about Bitcoin, and you can see what their sentiment is. This is pretty useful for like PR professionals and console professional investor relations people. Forbes always positive, yeah. And also high the volume is insane, yeah. And then you see the sentiment Changes at the bottom, at the bottom right as well. You see how it's trending. And obviously you can go, like way deeper into it in the other sections. But then you can also, if you go to the to the trending now, you see the arrows you can know in the in the section to the left, where you are right now. Yeah, you can see, you know different. These are the different trends that is happening right now. And you see crypto media, social media is talking about that right now. So you see like this. These are trends that is happening first, yeah, sorry, you only have the snapshot there, but you can see there's some where the discussions are starting and then whether they get picked up later by legacy media. Well, okay, here legacy media has actually,

  Peter McCormack

  are you just doing this for Bitcoin now? But this could be anything. Yeah, it feels like that.

  Fernando Nikolic

  Yeah. It's you have the little Bitcoin drop down there at the top. So I'm working on stable coins and also tokenized finance.

  Peter McCormack

  But you could, you could go into other shit, like soccer or like, oh yeah. But

  Fernando Nikolic

  I want to, I want to stay in the business. I feel like this media fragmentation is a problem anywhere. But I think for Bitcoin, I want to do it. For Bitcoin, I want to have something that people can log into and see this is what's happening, so they don't miss anything. And also, kind of, like, do a little fact check and check on all the all the outlets that are covering Bitcoin, you know, like, Are there is Bloomberg negative like, forever, or are they actually pivoting? When is that pivoting happening? If that's happening, stuff like that,

  Peter McCormack

  how much have you gotten down the AI robot hole? Very, very deep push your P doom. Oh, man. P Doom, I don't know what that is. He's like probability that he like kills us all. Oh,

  Fernando Nikolic

  hmm, I feel I struggle with, like, on one side, I feel like AI is like dumb robots that we should just, you know, control, and we need to just be able to control it so that they don't go crazy. But then I also feel like we have absolutely no control, and so I have no idea.

  Peter McCormack

  I think, on a long enough time frame, they kill us other. Long enough time they get us all.

  Fernando Nikolic

  I mean, you really, you really start to see, like, so many things being hacked so easily, right? Like, you know, train stations all of a sudden just collapsing because of they're getting hacked. And I definitely feel AI can, like, hack, you know, government databases or something like that. So a lot of disruption might come through that way. Yeah,

  Peter McCormack

  well, we have to teach it to be compassionate to us. Because somebody explained to me it's like, if you're building a new house and there's like an ant hill, you just bulldoze over those fucking ants. Yes, you concrete, those little fuckers. In every

  Fernando Nikolic

  prompt that I have is always with a thank you at the end. So if they will spare me, hopefully, when the time, when Judgment Day. Thank you.

  Peter McCormack

  Thank you, Mr. I taught mine to call me babe. So I'm like, hey jazz, I hate babe. I'm I'm so into I'm more concerned short term about how disrupt the speed of disruption in the jobs market, like graduates can't get jobs at the moment, it's so fucking hard is as AI, because graduates have been raised with AI. And I'm like, what does that mean? You know, what is that going to mean in the short term that I'm a little bit concerned about long term? I assume it just thinks we're fucking idiots.

  Fernando Nikolic

  I think that the way, the way that you see right now, like so much, AI slop on comments, on YouTube, comments. On Twitter threads and stuff like that, and content being created by that, I think 95% I mean, we're going to end up in a dead internet reality. I definitely feel that theory.