The Dao of Bitcoin: Understanding Money, Time & Energy with Scott Dedels
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Hey, hey, welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix. I'm your host, Cedric Youngleman. Today, I'm joined by Scott Dietels for a conversation that will challenge the way you think about money, time and energy. We're diving deep into the concept of urgency slavery, how fiat money keeps us trapped in a cycle of stress and scarcity.

We'll also explore why Bitcoin isn't just an asset. It's a force of nature, a metronome reshaping the global economy and the catalyst for a second renaissance. I hope you enjoy this rip. Please support our affiliates and subscribe to the Bitcoin Matrix podcast feed and our YouTube channel. If you do want to get in touch with me, it's Cedric at the Bitcoin Matrix dot com. And now let's enter the Bitcoin Matrix with Scott Tietels. What is real?

How do you define free? You can't jump into cash. Cash is trash. What do you do? You get out. Scott Dietels is the CEO of Block Rewards and the author of The Dow of Bitcoin, Towards a Cosmology of Energy Money. He is also the host of the Block Reward podcast.

Dow of Bitcoin is a spiritual exploration of the energetics of money, manifestation, and a bullish dive into why Bitcoin's fundamental principles are in harmony with universal law. Scott Dietels, welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix podcast. How are you, sir? Thanks so much for having me on, man. Whoever wrote that description of the book, I want to keep that after. It sounds great. Well, it's a great book. Really fantastic book.

One of the best Bitcoin books I've read in a long time. Very inspiring. We got to meet, what is it, about, I don't know, almost a year ago now? Yeah. Yeah. Montreal. Yeah. At the Canadian Bitcoin Conference. Yeah. Which was an incredible experience. I was honored to be there. And it was great to meet you. And that's when you gave me the book.

And I've been eyeing the book for a while. Personally, you know, I have another book here, The Tao of Pooh. Oh, yeah. Which is, you know, probably one of the most inspirational or important books I should say I've ever read in my life. And your book is up there. It was really great. So I'd love to get into the Tao of Bitcoin. What what inspired you to write this book?

Uh, thank you for saying that too. You know, and I, I actually, I, I mentioned those, uh, the Dow boo and the Dow poo and the, the tape piglet books, I think played a really important role in, uh, exposing a lot of mainstream people to the ideas when they came out, I think it was late nineties, myself included. Uh, you know, there was like a trendy, uh, they're catchy books at the time. And, uh,

I would say even, you know, partly those books may have played a role in me writing this one eventually. I think that Taoism and Taoist ideas have just a massive applicability in today's world for helping people get grounded, manage the pace of life, and...

you know, some of the challenges that our sort of modern world pose. And I think a lot of Bitcoiners are sort of like, you know, we talk about pre-coiners. I think a lot of Bitcoiners are like pre-Dawis because a lot of the things you learn as you start studying Bitcoin do sort of predispose you for low time preference thinking, you know,

sort of like pushing off the pleasures of the immediate and the right now in favor of something that may be more desirable at a future moment. And the big one for me is this idea that, I think the problem of melting money is such an abstract thing for people to try to understand and how I conceptualize it

is what we are really trying to do when we are searching for sort of the financial solution is, you know, protect our time and energy. And we expend time and energy to transform it into a financial tool so that we can maybe turn it back into something for consumption in the future.

And the problem is when there's an entropy or a breakdown in that tool that we're using, it's a source of stress. And it causes us to be sort of in a perpetual state of like fight or flight. And Taoism is really about experiencing the physical world in the present moment, like being able to be in the here and now. And to do that, you really need to be like stress-free. So fiat money is really...

kind of anti-present moment. It keeps us in a constant state of anxiety about the future, about life's continually getting harder. And it's doing that because you have to expend more and more of your time and energy to get a diminishing result from your money going down.

shorter and shorter. So, yeah, I mean, I sort of like wanted to write this book as a message, a way to hopefully get people interested in some tools that I think Bitcoiners may be ready to receive. And actually, I think spiritual people should be ready to receive Bitcoin. But, you know, there's maybe a gap in the middle and hopefully we like help to help bridge those for either side. Yeah, I mean, there's always a gap where sometimes it's hard to get people across the gap. So just like with Bitcoin, people say, well,

Where does the Tao come from? What is Taoism or like who started it? Yeah, that's a great question. It's a religious or a philosophical tradition that emerged out of ancient China somewhere between 400-200 BC depending on how you can peg a date and is attributed to a few different thinkers. One of them is a character or a person who

the name is Lao Tzu and Lao Tzu is a name itself, old master translated in English. It could mean that that person never really existed per se. It's hard to say, but that person is accredited with penning an 81 verse manuscript called the Tao Te Ching, which is sort of the fundamental principle text in Taoism and is a study of this

The Tao, which is the idea that there is a universal or overarching central force and principle that guides all things in the physical world and that that thing is procedural. And so in its nature is that it is a cyclical thing. And this is why the physical world we live in is basically everything is cycles, seasons, inhale, exhale,

birth and death and rebirth and sort of every process that exists in nature is seasonal or cyclical and it relates back to this sort of like reflection of this central principle that is just kind of the way of all things. So Taoism is really about like aligning yourself with that force and just sort of like, you know, seeking to interact with the physical world in a way that acknowledges there is

things beyond our control and that it may be the easiest way to live your life is to just get on, get on, you know, uh, get on the stream and roll with the current. And so like kind of maybe even preceding the Dow or maybe a parallel thought, what is, uh, the creature? Yeah. So my Bitcoin journey, uh, it didn't, it didn't exactly start with, uh, the creature from Jekyll Island, but it was pretty early on where, uh,

Yeah, Creature from Jekyll Island really, really got me because I was a history student in university and still am. I love history. Creature from Jekyll Island just blew me away. Like these are like, these are just historical facts that are publicly available and almost poorly understood. So I sort of decided to cast the Creature from Jekyll Island as kind of the villain in the book.

for maybe as a descriptor. And the way I think about it is really that money is a human innovation

that enables us to have complex civilizations and economies. And that in itself is a good thing. But, you know, as safe and all these Bitcoiners will know that money is something that, you know, sort of pre-fiat was often, we're using things that emerged out of nature, you know, precious metals, seashells, stones, etc.

and fashioning them into things we could count or keep track of, but not things that we could really produce out of thin air. And so the creature in my mind is...

kind of like a subsequent innovation that really perverted the money system itself. And this is where things have kind of gotten away from us. So I think that money on its own, really beneficial thing, amazing technology, great idea. Then, you know,

Giving that power to a small number of people to control how it works at the expense of sort of the freedom of everyone else, that's not such a good idea. And it's probably not in alignment with the way things are supposed to be. Yeah, so if the creature is not in alignment with sort of the Tao...

or Taoism, should we be angry with the creature? Yeah, that's a great question too. You know, I tried to really like, you know, move through the book and think about like, you know, how would we, how would sort of the ancient ideas think about these modern problems? You know, another sort of like aspect of how a Taoist might think about a problem like this is

is that there are forces that are out of our control and that the sort of procedural nature of the grand unfolding of things is going to happen the way it's meant to happen regardless of how you might want it to unfold or at what rate you might want it to unfold. And so

I don't think there's really all that much to be angry about. I also, you know, sort of say in the book, like, I personally don't resonate with the notion that Bitcoin is here to be a wrecking ball to the legacy financial system because, you know, the legacy financial system, just like everything else in nature, is going to have its own sort of seasonal life cycle.

And so it will have a birth and a death on its own. And, you know, in Bitcoin, Bitcoin, too, probably won't be immune to this or that it's 140 years or a thousand years. Nothing that exists in the physical world is outside of these principles. It's kind of like the Taoist idea. So, you know, being mad at the creature is kind of like being mad at the weather.

Like, it just doesn't, there's not a lot to it, right? It takes a lot of pressure off. I mean, I want to be mad at the creature. I want to kick and scream and throw pots and pans at it. What is urgency slavery? Yeah, you know, I think that like, there's so, to me, there's this weird thing that's going on right now. And it's not totally the fault of money, but I do think it has a lot to do with

you know, money, uh, losing value, but then not only losing value, but as it, as it accelerates the rate at which it's losing value. So if we are going back to this idea, I was saying earlier, we convert our time and our energy into money. And, um, so if money is losing value, what it's really doing is devaluing the time and energy that we put in as the input to receive that money. And it's also, um,

It's really storing those things less and less effectively. So if one of the inputs into money is time and the ability of that money to store the time is decreasing, then what you have to do is turn that money back into something else, into a consumable on shorter and shorter timeframes to preserve the time and energy that went into it. So I think what this does is...

It puts us all on a hamster wheel or most of us on this hamster wheel that is just continually speeding up. And it's, I think it, you know, over the past, uh, certainly like, you know, I grew up in the eighties and nineties, the problem was slow enough that it was hard to observe. And I think that's really how we got where we did, where most people, it's kind of happened right under our noses. Then all of a sudden they doubled the money supply in 2020 and people like, holy shit, everything's so expensive. But, uh, you know, I think before that, um,

Yeah, this is the Jeff Booth's idea. If somebody was stealing 2% of the stuff out of your house, it might just be small enough that you wouldn't notice. So urgency slavery, I think, is this place where we've arrived where because our time and energy are continually being stolen, we have no choice but to shorten and shorten our time preference as a measure of self-defense. And so we start having to...

be trapped in this perpetual planning for shorter and shorter times, moving into this never-ending cycle of having to make choices for the immediate now. Yeah, for sure. And I want to read a little bit from the Tao of Pu about cleverness and inner nature. And maybe the easiest way to maybe change a minus into a positive is

or the easiest way to change a minus is to just turn it into a plus. So just take what you see as a weakness and make it your strength. But while sitting on the banks of the Poo River...

shang tze was approached by two representatives of the prince of chu who offered him a position at court shang tze watched the water flowing by as if he had not heard finally he remarked i am told that the prince has a sacred tortoise over two thousand years old which is kept in a box wrapped in silk and brocade that is true the officials replied if the tortoise had been given a choice shang tze continued

Which do you think he would have liked better, to have been alive in the mud or dead within the palace? To have been alive in the mud, of course, the men answered. I too prefer the mud, said Chang-si. Goodbye. And this kind of speaks to maybe the inner nature or the uncarved block or being comfortable with who you are. What is paradoxical unity?

Yeah, another one of these sort of fundamental concepts in Taoism is kind of understanding that duality is also a core aspect of how things are ordered in the physical world. And so one way to think about it is that we can often sort of understand something by sort of seeing both sides of it or by understanding what it isn't.

And so that can be, you know, the idea that something is best understood by understanding, you know, what it is and isn't is kind of this concept of paradoxical unity. What about energetics of duality? The energetics of duality. Yeah, so, I mean, this is kind of a follow through on that idea where we're thinking about how these two...

how something could simultaneously be both of those things. And, you know, I use this idea in talking, you know, relating it to Bitcoin and trying to understand, you know, what is potentially like one of the gaps of a mass understanding of Bitcoin

digital scarcity and some of these core Bitcoin concepts. Like why is it proceeding at the rate that it is? Maybe some people feel it's happening very slowly.

And I relate it the other way where like truly still very, very few people probably have totally grasped the problem of infinite money, which could be like considered to be, you know, the paradoxical opposite of absolute scarce money. So I think that those two things together, the infinite money problem and the solution of permanently scarce money is,

probably need to be understood at the same time to properly appreciate the elegance of the solution or the magnitude of the problem. Yeah, especially the magnitude of the problem and how maybe early we are. Like you were saying, people just don't even understand infinite money. How could we expect them to understand scarcity or something that's finite when nothing in the universe has really been man-made before that has been finite? What is Wu Wei?

this seems to be, you know, really at the core. Yeah. This is, I think, really, so, you know, Taoism is sort of like simultaneously a study of this central force, the Tao, and it is also a pathway to live your life in alignment with this force. And so Wu Wei is really like the key fundamental approach to how you might do that. And it's,

It translates kind of, or one way to think of the translation is effortless action. And so in Taoism, it's about balancing the amount of effort that is applied to anything so that you are doing the right amount of action. And so I always think about it as like, you know, with anything in life, you always kind of know if you have tried too hard or not quite hard enough.

In the book, I talk about sales. I mean, like another easy example, I think, to understand for people is dating. You know, it's like you always know if you've pursued somebody too hard or you didn't show enough interest. And like the trick to having success, threading the needle, is doing it just right in the sweet spot in between where you really are flowing with the current. And that's what Wu Wei is. It's being in a flow state where...

You are sort of like moving along with this natural process that is already unfolding anyways. And when you try to rush things and push them too hard, you're just as likely to have an undesirable outcome as you are if you didn't try hard enough.

And, you know, there's a great like sort of parable about this in the other main Taoist text, which is called the Chuang Tzu, which is a story about a man who was terrified of his shadow. And he was so afraid of his shadow that he started trying to run away from it. And the faster he ran, the faster the shadow was and the louder the footsteps that he heard were. And he eventually ran himself to death.

And what he really just needed to do was stop running and stand under a tree. And, you know, it's, yeah, so. Yeah, when to pursue and when to allow. In the Tao of Pu, I want to read a quick excerpt. The Wu Wei principle underlying Tao Chi Huan, and I'm butchering all this, can be understood by striking at a piece of cork floating in water. The harder you hit it, the more it yields. The more it yields, the harder it bounces back.

Without expending energy, the cork can easily wear you out. So Wu Wei overcomes forces by neutralizing its power rather than by adding to the conflict. With other approaches, you may fight fire with fire, but with Wu Wei, you fight fire with water. You know, I've also seen it described as maybe sometimes the river runs fast and sometimes the river runs slow. And the way I've kind of used that, I was traveling the world and I was in Fiji and

and we were in a remote village on a remote island, and there was a remote nightclub that was really shady and sketchy, quite on the other side of the island. And then the owner of the place we were staying at kind of let us know that, but my friend still wanted to go, and I was like, well, tonight the river runs slow for me. I'm not going to the nightclub. If you want to go run fast tonight when you shouldn't, go, but I'm not going to go. And also with my son...

he just got an assignment from his teacher to go over what his parents are like. Are your parents Confucius or legalist or Taoist in their approach to you and your schoolwork? We've been really Taoist with him, but we now need to intervene. What is the principle of non-intervention though? Yeah, I'm just trying to imagine how a Taoist

approach to parenting with respect to homework would go. Well, maybe we'll have to ask about that later. You know, I think, you know, in terms of like non-intervention, this is a great example of Bitcoin. I don't know how much any of us have as far as an individual ability to influence the outcome of Bitcoin.

Right. Like, uh, you know, I think we, we all spend a lot of time thinking about it and talking about it. And certainly, you know, we, we do have, uh, we do have action that we, that we, uh, contribute in some way, but, uh, not sure that many of us, if any of us are really going to like swing the tide ourselves. Um, so, so I think, you know, in terms of like the, the principle of non-intervention, um,

these are really like core ideas around letting things run their own course and being able to be comfortable with things having sort of a natural outcome without trying so hard to like you know control it control forces that are really beyond our ability to control and I know another one of these is like price you know like we love talking about price and there's totally nothing you know like

That's never going to stop. There's nothing wrong with it. There's all kinds of great content about price. But this is something that really, I mean, I don't have enough money to influence the Bitcoin price. And it's certainly not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. Right. But I can see where being Taoist will help you maybe not look at the price so much.

recognizing that you're not going to influence it and, you know, it's kind of be more in harmony with the universe. What is the way and the way to the way? Yeah. So the title Tao Te Ching is like has been something that it was like a very difficult phrase to translate into English. But the the loose idea is that

The way is a pathway to a life or a way of thinking that will let you live your life in the present moment in alignment with these natural forces that are bigger than any of us. And so the way to the way is...

is, I would say like, you know, breadcrumbs for the white rabbit. It's following the path to start a journey towards, you know, aligning yourself with that type of thinking. Right. Do you think Bitcoin is a path? Yeah, totally, man. And these are, you know, some of the early ideas of like, you know, when I, so I had been, you know, we talked about Dao Pu and I've been thinking about Daoist ideas and studying them for 20 years and

When I got into Bitcoin, like very early on, I'm thinking about this concept for a book. And, you know, some of these ideas are pretty obvious to me. I'm like, yeah, this is a neat, neat basis for a discussion. And definitely one of them is this idea that Bitcoin is a path. Because Bitcoin is a path, right? Like people reorient their entire lives around it all the time when they've discovered it. This is just as true for me. I'm like basically...

My life's completely different than it was before I got into Bitcoin. And not just in like, you know, in terms of like the people I choose to spend my time with, the stuff that I consume, like the intellectual stuff I'm into in my free time, the books I read, how I spend my money, where I go on vacation, just how I even think about like, you know, what's important to me in right now versus in the future. So,

Yeah, I think Bitcoin is a gateway to transforming your life and it's an obvious like parallel to Taoism. And I think that actually the way that it transforms your life is similar to the kinds of things you may find transform your life if you were studying Taoism. This is sort of like a core overlap. Right. And so in that framework, maybe Bitcoin is a whole new way to see the world.

Is Bitcoin a force of nature? Yeah, I make the argument. I think it's like... Hey Bitcoiners, invest in Bitcoin with confidence. Why do I recommend River? River is the best place to build your Bitcoin wealth and they offer zero fee on recurring buys.

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You know, and maybe to loop, you know, first, it's a new paradigm, right? Like, so Taoism was originally actually a manuscript that was intended to provide a new way of thinking about governance in early China. It was a violent time in Chinese history.

And which is also interesting for me because, you know, Bitcoin potentially presents a new form of governance for modern civilization that reorients itself around this concept of separating money and state. So so that's one thing. Is Bitcoin a force of nature? You know, I think that, you know, I love Bitcoin.

uh this discussion that uh bitcoin is element zero potentially uh you know not everybody loves this idea i do i think it's a really cool concept a synthetic commodity a man-made element uh discovered uh potentially but it's also you know that it's this it's this sort of unrelenting uh metronomic um procedural force like bitcoin is like uh you know it's almost like if you could imagine uh

all of the Bitcoin miners in the world assembled into one physical machine. I sort of like think of the, it's like this, I think they call it the world changing machine in the Superman movie that with Henry Cavill, where it's like this giant thing that's like pulsing energy and it's like reshaping the physical world around it. And that's sort of how I imagine Bitcoin. It's like, it's this thing that like, you know, we're undergoing like a seismic shift in the way people think about money right now, but it's really just getting started. Like, and we say that stuff all the time, but

Imagine in like another 20 years, if it continues to grow in force and influence at the rate it's doing now, like truly the whole global economy is going to be pulsing around these four-year cycles. And yeah, I think it's going to be something that could be as like influential as a climate event. Verse 55 says,

Things in harmony with the Tao remain. Things that are forced grow for a while, but then wither away. This is not the Tao, and whatever is against the Tao soon ceases to be. How did Interstellar, or the ocean world, serve as your gateway to understanding of how Bitcoin aligns with Taoist, like, water concepts? Yeah, I love sci-fi films, and I love Interstellar, and...

Yeah, the ocean planet scene is one of the coolest sci-fi scenes I've seen pulled off in a long time. And if you haven't seen that movie or if you have, there's like...

it's a wave that's so big that they have a hard time even understanding it's a wave and it's like hundreds of feet tall and it crashes over the ship and they are just sort of like you know scrambling to uh get themselves collected and there's another wave like and they realize like that's just what's going on this planet it's like this is this crazy gravity planet and um you know i think that

One, this idea of, you know, Bitcoin is a rhythmic timekeeper. And this is another thing that I think is very natural, right? It's like the blocks are each different, like a wave. But they, you know, it's a continually repeating process.

And just like Epochs. And so from this, you have like a natural rhythm of Bitcoin that is continually beating along. And it's sort of that piece, this idea that like as the strength of the gravity of Bitcoin as a financial instrument grows,

You know, they're medium-sized waves right now, but if you flash forward in the future, they will be these hundred-foot waves. Like, people just don't understand the magnitude of what this thing looks like when it's fully matured.

And, you know, the verse you read about nothing that's out of alignment with the Tao will last is really one of my favorite parts. It's a favorite verse, and it relates to this idea about the temporary nature of things that don't come from things that aren't natural. And, you know, everything can have a different life cycle, but

I make this argument about, you know, the Federal Reserve Bank is 110 years old or, you know, fiat banking in general or, you know, in any of these natural things that we have built as a species, they all come and go eventually. And so I think it's natural for us to expect that the things that exist now and the things that we have artificially built now will also like come and go. It's just kind of like a matter of like on what timescale, right?

and the things that will remain are the things that existed naturally and were here before we got here. And that's just true of everything. So I guess maybe that's the Taoist concept of impermanence. Yeah. And so then how do we embrace impermanence? Yeah, you know, I think that, you know, part of this idea of aligning yourself with

a force that is greater than us and that we really probably can't influence all that much is letting go of our expectation or our desire to impose our will beyond what is possible. And that, you know, that's true of the sort of temporary nature of all things. So I think, you know, ideas that are helpful with Taoism is,

to sort of like, you know, letting go of expectations and being sort of present with how things are in the now so that you're continually just appreciating what is happening, even if it's not ideal. Because in sort of like in the world of really sitting with impermanence, nothing remains unchanging. Like everything is procedural and everything is always changing.

then the best thing you can do is accept that sort of like fundamental fact of things and just get on with the ever-changing nature of everything. And so that's really like how I conceptualize impermanence in the Taoist way of thinking. How do you think Bitcoin will change the way we think about time and energy? Yeah, so this is really how I started thinking about Bitcoin. I was very...

You know, Gigi's Bitcoin is Time was like a really like, you know, early on opened my mind and really got me excited. This is the kinds of things where I'm like really so amazed by how people have been thinking about Bitcoin for as young as it is. And so for me, you know, Bitcoin is the first form of money that has really served as a true proxy for energy and time.

And I think of it as like there should be this relationship between energy, time and money. And I represented in the book as a triangle, as an equilateral triangle. All the sides are the same. And so we should be with an equilateral triangle. If you know the the the measurements of two sides, you can always figure out the third. So it makes sense for me with money.

and value when if you're putting in energy and time to produce something, then you should know the value. And if you know how much energy you put in and you know the price of something, you should know how much time it took and vice versa. So if you know how much time something took and you know the price of it, you know you shouldn't be able to figure out how much energy was required to do it. And this is only possible

with a form of money where there is no entropy, where there is no sort of like leaky inability to properly store the energy and time. So for me, money is this composite of the inputs of energy and time. And we use money really to turn

to then, you know, sort of like turn it back into energy or time in the future. And so I think of like, you know, our money's inability to store time is, um,

It robs us of the time that we spent earning that money in the first place, but it also robs us of the future time because we can't then turn it into the same amount of time that we used to earn it in the first place. Like, you know, it's not a fair exchange. So to me, yeah, money is a representation of energy and time. Great money, perfect money should be a perfect solution

sort of like triangular representation of the three in synergy. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So then what are the cycles of Bitcoin and how do they relate to the seasons and the eternal? Yeah, this is another thing I think is like, has been very helpful for me with Bitcoin and understanding that we have really...

certainly since 2008. A lot of people who are maybe investing in Bitcoin really maybe weren't around for investing before 2008. So we've arrived at this really weird place in the financial system where to keep the whole thing from imploding, they need everything to go up forever. You know, they can try short breaks and they have, right, with...

Brief experiments with tightening, but they can't have the whole thing crumble. And the only way to prevent that is to try to prolong the party for as long as possible by inflating everything away to nothing, but doing it slowly enough that this is the desirable alternative to everything just collapsing tomorrow.

And so what this has really done, I think for most people, is sort of given us a false expectation that if we were thinking about the economies as like seasons, that it would always sort of be summer, like things are always going to be good. And we've even got to this really strange place where recession has become like a dirty word. Or in this, you know, viewing things from a Taoist perspective or just thinking about the nature of all things is...

You know, you have to have periodic periods of exhale if you want to have a really great inhale. You have to have winter if you want to have a great summer. And, you know, if things only stay hot and dry, it's not just going to be nice forever. You're going to start to have forest fires. So I think that this aspect of seasonality that applies to Bitcoin is...

It's a healthy understanding so far that Bitcoin has behaved in a way that is consistent with how things in nature actually work. So Bitcoin does have boom cycles and it has bust cycles and the media likes to portray the downtimes in Bitcoin as scary and it's a really useful tactic in keeping people maybe hesitant.

This is a positive thing because it tells us that Bitcoin is behaving in a very natural way, as opposed to the artificial things that we have that are engineered to give us the impression that they're going up forever. And I think that, you know, so that's a way that I think about the seasonality of Bitcoin.

That's wild. I want to maybe explore more of sort of the duality of the yin and yang or kind of like how Bitcoin flips, how you see things. How does Bitcoin change your reason for desiring wealth in the first place? Yeah, I was toying around with this notion of like, you know, in the infinite money world, we are really programmed to go out and collect as much stuff as we can, because as

I guess in the infinite money world, basically, you know, money is endless, right? So, so there's, and, and not all, I guess, you know, we don't necessarily realize this so much, but as the money is becoming less valuable continually, we need more, but,

A lot of maybe how people have confused the notion to become wealthy or the desire to continually collect more money in my mind might be related to the fact that it's impossible to really feel like you have enough money unless you are fortunate enough to have like an absurd amount of money. So for the rest of us, this is sort of that urgency slavery where we're continually

spinning the wheel forward just to try and get to that place where we think we will really feel is safe. And what I think about, you know, back to this idea about money and energy and time, what are we really trying to do? You know, I actually truly believe that most people don't really care about being rich. Most people care about having like a fulfilling life with, you know, loving people and cool experiences. And monetary wealth is for a lot of people just something that would be neat if it happened.

What people are trying to do is safeguard the time and energy that they've spent as their life is consumed. Because the one thing that we all truly have that is finite is time, our own time to be alive, right? And so I think that what Bitcoin does is, for the first time, offers us a truly effective way to store your time without entropy. And so what that does is...

it bestows a different kind of wealth on anyone who chooses to do it. You know, you can't store that time in your body, but you can store it safely so that you can use it, you know, with confidence at some later date in the future. And that is what I think that people are truly seeking. It's the ability to store your future with certainty.

Right. Some would say maybe you could store the Bitcoin in your body with 12 words in your brain. You know, there's other notion in the Dao Pu about the busy backs. And I want to read a quick excerpt from there. Now, one thing that seems rather odd to us is that the busy backs in society, which practically worships youthful energy, appearance and attitudes, has developed no effective methods of retaining them.

a lack testified to by an ever-increasing reliance on the unnatural, false-front approach of cosmetics and plastic surgery. Instead, it has developed countless ways of breaking youthfulness down and destroying it. Those damaging activities that are not part of the search for the great reward seem to accumulate under the general heading of saving time. For an example of the latter, let's take a classic monument to the busy backs, the hamburger stand. In China, there is the tea house. In France, there is the sidewalk café.

Practically every civilized country in the world has some sort of equivalent. A place where people can go to eat, relax and talk things over without worrying about what time it is and without having to leave as soon as the food is eaten.

In China, for example, the tea house is a real social institution. Throughout the day, families, neighbors, and friends drop in for tea and light food. They stay for as long as they like. Discussions may last for hours. It would be a bit strange to call the tea house the non-exclusive neighborhood social club. Such terms are too Western, but that can roughly describe part of the function, at least from our rather compartmentalized point of view.

You're important. Relax and enjoy yourself. That's the message of the tea house. What's the message of the hamburger stand? Quite obviously, it's you don't count. Hurry up. Not only that, but as everyone knows by now, the horrible hamburger stand is an insult to the customer's health as well.

Unfortunately, this is not the only example supported by the saving time mentality. We could also list the supermarket, the microwave oven, the nuclear power plant, and the poisonous chemicals. I'll disagree with the nuclear power plant. I think we could use that. But I think we get the gist there. How does Bitcoin change how we mark time? And what is an internal ledger? Yeah. I'm pro-nuclear too, for the record. I think... Yeah, I mean, so...

Back to what I was saying, you know, in the previous like point about the ability to store time. This, if we're thinking about the path and a life where you're really spending a lot of your like waking thought in the pursuit of experiencing for you what is happening in the moment.

This is where we, I think, have the most fulfillment when we're not sort of preoccupied about our stress of what's in the distant future or our regret about what happened in the past. It's about spending more time in the immediate moment. And that's really like possible in the absence of like

paralyzing stress and anxiety about that is, you know, externally imposed largely to do with the flaws of the money system for most people. And so, you know, I think one way that Bitcoin transforms how we think about time is that time is the price of time right now is a very subjective thing because

Because our money and our experience of money is continually changing the price and the value of time and devaluing it. Right. So it it it makes our experience of things. You know, we all feel this sort of like ambient anxiety as a result of the devaluation of time.

And so the eternal ledger, you know, is this bigger idea that this Bitcoin operating as this giant sort of like metronome is imposing a rigidity on the variable value of time. And it does this with its unchanging, you know, periodic measurements of blocks and halvings. And so I think that...

If we are anchoring ourselves around this thing, the eternal ledger is this idea that Bitcoin is going to last well beyond any of us are gone. This thing moves forward in a linear fashion through time, but it does it at a predictable, measurable rate. And this is a Gigi thing, right? Like an important part of the experience of time.

is the ordering of events. And so this is what's happening. Bitcoin is a continually forward marching record of human activity, and it's also a giant clock. So I think that the idea of combining time and money in terms of like how that may change how we experience time is partly that we're headed to a place where we

we'll probably have more time to go to the cafe and not worry about what the actual time in the day is because of this other way of thinking about the value of time. Right. And then sort of thinking about how, you know, kind of time moves on. How has change the only constant? Yeah. So this is sort of that principle we were talking about earlier with impermanence. And so I'm like, if everything is always changing,

you know, this, this is the idea that you can really, the thing you can be most comfortable with is that things will continue to be different. And, uh, I, I eventually get to, you know, talk about a handful of different things in the book. Um, one of them is, uh, the fourth turning a huge fan of the book, the fourth turning. I think it's incredible that it was written when it was, uh, certainly how, given how things have turned out.

But one of the things that struck me as really interesting and forth turning was this idea that there were a lot of people who, as World War Two was winding down, were worried about the war ending because what they were afraid of was that it would return the world to how it was before World War Two, which was like the Great Depression.

And, uh, and the opposite turned out to be true. Change is forward moving. Things never sort of like, you know, change back to the way they were. They always change forward into sort of some unknown future. And, uh, and this is, this is continuing to be true. So I think that like, you know, the world is evolving now. It's changing into something unknown. The likelihood, you know, we often even now hear about people wanting a return to the way things were.

And that's probably not going to happen. And, you know, in the, in the short term sense or in the long, like we're, we're going somewhere, we're going somewhere unknown because that's the way things are. This is, uh, this is just kind of the, how it works. Well, kind of thinking about how like return or returning to the way things were, or just sort of this idea of return, what is Bitcoin's gravity? Um, so I think Bitcoin's gravity is, uh, you know, what we will see, uh,

Hardest and soundest money is the inescapable and it's kind of the Safedian idea of you can ignore hard money, but you can't ignore the effects of ignoring hard money. This is what I think Bitcoin's gravity is. So we're seeing this now where, you know, it's it's February of 2025 and there are one in three U.S. states is hard.

advancing legislature around Bitcoin treasuries. You know, this is really a pretty short period of time to think that, you know, like three years ago, the average person really probably thought Bitcoin had died permanently, which turned out not to be true, obviously in hindsight. But yeah, I think that the gravity is that the bigger it gets, the bigger it gets. And what we'll see is,

a reordering of of our financial world where uh bitcoin ends up at the center of it because um it's it's inevitable probably at this point so then maybe what what is the taoist concept of abundance so you know i i talk about a few different like concepts of uh real wealth and taoism and um

abundance is this idea that the natural order of things or the central principle of the Tao is that the Tao itself is a never-ending

creator of everything. And it's like, it's a gift giver that never runs out of gifts. And this is really quite true of the, you know, the physical world. It's like ridiculously abundant, you know, like all of the things that were provided for, however we got here, whatever caused this like cosmic experiment that we're participating in, there is amazing stuff everywhere for us, you know, like more, more than we would ever need. And, um,

And so that's really the principle of abundance is that the natural order of things is that the Tao at the center of everything is a creation machine and it's a creation machine that never turns off. And so creation is a part of this natural cycle that destruction as a paradoxical unity is also a part of, but on the other end of destruction is creation. And so like, as this like,

never ending, inhale and exhale. Everything that happens in the physical world is abundance. So from your chapter, The Nature of the Infinite, verse 40, returning is the motion of the Tao. Yielding is the way of the Tao. The 10,000 things are born of being. Being is born of non-being. How can we reimagine abundance then? You know, I think it's like,

We have this scarcity mindset that is the result of a scarcity paradigm. Our viewpoints, I think in the way I'm saying about people in the West are, you know, really dictated by the world that we all have grown up and spent our lives in. The inability of money to effectively store energy and time.

creates a scarcity. So we always have to have more money. We always need to find a way to have more time. And I think that skews our ability to appreciate abundance. And this is also where like, I think you can think about things of the distracted nature of Western society today, where you go to a restaurant and half the tables you'll see sitting around you

it's not enough for them to be at the table with their friends. Half of them are on their phones trying to look at Instagram videos of people they've never met doing more exciting things somewhere else in the world, right? The abundant nature in all things has to do with our ability to be experiencing the present moment right now without wondering what else is, without that scarcity mindset, without wondering what we're missing.

And so that's how I kind of like think of the abundance as being everywhere. And it's nobody's fault that we have a difficulty like living in that place now because this is why I painted the creature as sort of the...

the villain in the book because this is something that has happened to us and it happened to us without our consent before we were born. This is a system that we were sort of involuntarily born into and it's not a naturally occurring thing. This is a man-made problem that disproportionately benefits a small number of people at the expense of almost everyone else.

And the reason these problems exist are because of that problem. From the chapter, the Tao of Bitcoin, verse 14, discovering how things have always been brings one into harmony with the way. What is true wealth? Yeah. So for me, this is one of those things where I think that it's maybe a more esoteric concept of wealth.

an extension of what we were talking about earlier, but if we're not really necessarily all trying to be wealthy in the material sense, then real wealth, I think, is the ability to spend as much of your time as possible in the present moment.

and whatever that looks like for you, right? If you're a parent, it's being able to be with your kid, but doing it in a way where you're genuinely not worried about how you're gonna be paying the bills that month. And you're like, you're just enjoying right now. And so, you know, for me, Bitcoin and true wealth is, I mean, it can mean literally material wealthy in the physical world, but it could also just mean

the wealth of being able to like really enjoy your own life to the fullest, whatever that means for you, where Bitcoin is that tool that finally enables you to do that. Because I mean, like the rest of your financial alternatives are it's just it's you know, the the traditional financial world has become insanely convoluted and complex in its effort to like outrun this fairly simple concept of of melting money.

And it's nobody's fault. I think that's also nobody's fault. Everyone's just trying to solve this problem and human ingenuity has like no bounds. But Bitcoin is like this incredibly actually simple solution to the problem. And, you know, that's where I think true wealth is.

Being able to actually solve that problem of the brain drain that goes into the anxiety of trying to think about how you're going to solve that problem so that you can just take that mental energy and reallocate it to enjoying your life and spending the finite time that you have in a way that is more aligned with your own personal values.

Sure, yeah. I keep thinking of the scene in Good Will Hunting when Ron Williams is saying to Matt Damon, you know, it's not your fault, Will. It's not your fault, like, because Will just, you know, confessed that he'd been abused as a kid and just, you know, kind of figuring out how he is and stuff. What can Bitcoin and the DAO teach us about humility and compassion? Yeah, probably a lot there. I think that, you know, it's a funny space for a lot of reasons. You know, I think Bitcoin is...

kind of a weird fishbowl where people can experience a level of fame that they otherwise would not have. They can experience maybe a level of material wealth that they may have not otherwise had. And there's definitely a lot of desire in the space for people to, you know, put themselves forward as like, you know, knowing more than other people.

And Bitcoin is like continually, a way to think about it is when any of those things turn out to be not true, humility is kind of like a virtue in Taoism. And this goes back to this idea of impermanence. And if everything is impermanent, so is being rich, so is being young, so is being good looking. Nothing lasts forever. And some of these lessons are

that they get learned are learned as a result of like the fact that everything is continually changing. So in terms of humility and what can Bitcoin teach? I mean, I think it can teach that like nobody has fully understood Bitcoin. Nobody knows what it's going to do. Nobody's necessarily permanently rich. I mean, I've met lots of people along my own Bitcoin journey. Like a friend of mine has a Bitcoin wallet with 300 Bitcoin sitting in it. And he,

flailed the seed phrase and it's gone forever. And so in one moment in time, he had 300 Bitcoin and now he has some number that is vastly less than 300. And yeah, these are humbling things that you don't wish them on people. But the DAO has a way of giving people exactly what they need. And that doesn't necessarily mean material wealth for everybody. Yeah, I want to read a little bit from the DAO of Poole.

The two fearless rescues just mentioned bring us to one of the most important terms of Taoism, Su, which can be translated as caring or compassion, and which is based upon the character for heart. In the 67th chapter of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu named it as his first treasure, and then wrote, From caring comes courage. We might add that from it also comes wisdom.

It's rather significant, we think, that those who have no compassion have no wisdom. Knowledge, yes. Cleverness, maybe. Wisdom, no. A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care. Wisdom does. We also consider it significant that core, the Latin word for heart, is the basis for the word courage. Piglet put it this way.

She isn't clever, Kenga isn't, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a good thing to do without thinking about it. Sue not only saved Roo, discovered the North Pole and rescued Piglet. It also gave Piglet the courage to go get help for Pooh and Owl when Owl's house blew over. Now Piglet, as we know, is a very small animal and not exactly the bravest one at that. But when Owl's house fell down, Piglet discovered that he had more courage than he thought he had.

And it kind of brings up maybe like how to find maybe like a life partner. You know, you want to look for someone with a good heart because someone's heart will never really turn bad. But like you're saying, if you marry for money or for looks or for these, a lot of these things can change over time or could be used against you. You know, money could be, you know, you think you're marrying someone, they have a lot of money, maybe that money is used to enslave you or they use it as a, you know, they're going to take it away from you if you don't do what they want or, you know, they won't allow you access to it, things like that.

What does Taoism and Bitcoin teach us about attachment and surrender? Certainly, this is one way I talk about this in the book has to do with people attaching events in their life to certain Bitcoin prices.

And the shorter that is in your timeframe, the more you are a slave to that thing that is just totally out of your control. But I think it's just as true, it's just less painful if you are a longer term timeframe, like I'll retire at X price, I will buy this, this, this. So these are things where you have an attachment to something you have totally no influence over.

And the surrender piece really is the notion of like, if you're going to like truly live your life in a way that is, uh, acknowledges forces that are like larger than you and outside of your personal control, then you really do need to accept the fact that, um, you, you, you don't have like a total sort of like God-like influence over your own situation. And there are things that you can control and there are things that you can't.

And this is back to that idea earlier about Wu Wei and balancing the right amount of action and non-action. Attachment and surrender are sort of like a very similar pairing, an idea where you can be attached to things, but at the same time, you probably need to surrender. So if you're going to say like, I'm retiring when Bitcoin hits 500,000, then you need to surrender to say that like, I don't know whether if that's going to be in 2027 or 2029, and I'm okay with it no matter what.

That would probably be a good way to like conceptualize balancing the two. Yeah. So it's not to have hope, but just to find that balance. What is the counterforce? Yeah. Counterforce is another one of these Wu Wei ideas where sort of things in nature have a natural sort of balance.

an opposite reaction. So the harder you push on something, the harder it's likely to push back. And this is why this principle is why I don't personally ascribe to these ideas that are more envisioned. Bitcoin is like a really violent end to the way things are now. You know, I see it more as Bitcoin is a parallel evolving technology that is happening naturally on its own

course and the existing financial system is also on its own course and it happened to be that these that there's some kind of overlap that's happening between the two the way I put forward in it from a Dallas perspective in the book is that you know were we to want to push Bitcoin forward as you know as a weapon as a wrecking ball and

then the harder you push that forward, the more resistant it's going to meet. So like if you want to see Bitcoin bans or, you know, the establishment like really reacting in a combative way, then start thinking about and talking about Bitcoin in a way that is itself combative. And this is the principle of counterforce. And it's an idea that's always made sense to me. You know, if you're standing outside a bar,

And a drunk guy's looking to fight. The easiest way to get in a fight is to shout back at him when he's yelling at you. And the easiest way to not is to avoid that scenario entirely. Sure, no, that makes a lot of sense. And what is reversionism in terms of Taoism? Yeah, reversionism is this idea that eventually all things return to the natural order. And it's a phrase that in one way or another...

comes up more than once in the 81 verses. And so as this idea that the Tao is the never-ending creator of all things, all things on their own have their own natural cycle, and when that cycle comes to a completion, they in their own way return to the point of origin.

And so this is another thing with that has to do with attachment and surrender. So if you have accepted that this is sort of like the fundamental nature of all things, then really everything is on its charting its own course. It's it's on its own seasonal path. And you don't have to you know, the only reason why you would be worried about when the, you know, Federal Reserve is going to come to an own its own its own end is because you have an attachment to

you know, that you're imposing from your own like internal perspective, right? It has nothing to do with the Fed's journey. And so reversionism is just sort of this basic principle that those things will happen and they will happen on their own time because that's how it's always been with everything that's ever happened. And so really what you're just trying to do is like live in this place where you're kind of like acknowledging that

And flowing with that and trying not to be too attached to an outcome. And if you are, trying to surrender to how long it's going to take to occur. Reading from the puzzle, your chapter, the puzzle, the pieces. Verse 54, the Tao is everywhere. It has become everything. To truly see it, see it as it is.

In a person, see it as a person. In a family, see it as a family. In a country, see it as a country. In the world, see it as the world. How do I know this is true? By looking inside myself.

How is inner peace power? This is one of the things that I think where it has the coolest opportunity for overlap and thinking about Bitcoin and why I think a great place to be with Bitcoin is a place of inner peace because Daoism is really a way of experiencing the physical world that starts on the inside. And it's something that is meant to really be felt rather than really thought through and like, you know, reasoned. And so...

when you have arrived at a place of like of fully being in that present moment um there should be like a sense of stillness like it is when we've successfully like removed our anxieties about the future and our regrets about the past and we're just enjoying what's happening right now and this is where um and so you know the idea that this happens for us in the inside

I think what also happens for people one by one as they come online in terms of like really understanding Bitcoin, because I believe that Bitcoin, as we were doing earlier, it is also a pathway. It is a new way. It's a way to enter peace because if we believe that for a lot of people, the source of anxiety is an externally imposed problem, broken money, and

that problem is something that is experienced on the inside. You know, like we really do. Um, we're pulled out of the present moment because of the stress and anxieties that relate to money and, uh, how we experienced that is, is on the inside first. And, you know, Dallas have this belief that, um,

it's an inward journey outward. So as we start to experience something and internalize a feeling or a state of being that then changes how we act and interact with the rest of the outer world. And as each of us sort of like makes that change, uh, the world around us transforms. And so this is partly also what I think is going on right now. We're in the early stages of it because very few people have had this sort of like awakening, uh,

to the innovation of Bitcoin, but this is where I think we're headed. I can't wait. Tesla said, if you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration. I know we touched upon a little bit before, maybe you could elaborate. How does the creature subvert contentment? Yeah, so when you're forced to use a system of money that has energy

you know, a designed inability to do what it's supposed to do, which in my opinion is store your time and energy. What that's really doing is the creature is stealing your time and energy. I say it's feeding on it. And so subverting it, stealing it, call it however you want it. This is, like I said, it's a problem that I think, you know, we talk about the fixing the money is really, you know,

an important thing for people who've understood Bitcoin for a lot of different reasons. And I think it's easy just to think about the sort of like surface level things that would be better if governments didn't have access to money printers and all of the different sort of like cascading social effects. And for me, it starts at the personal level and think about all of the problems we would solve if each individual person had true sovereignty over their time and energy

and was then able to go out and interact with every other person they met without any fear of the preservation of their own time and energy. I think about this with houses. We go out and we pay an absurd price for a house and we leverage that house by mortgaging. Literally, it's like a debt contract on your own future. And the way out of that contract for most people is

is to sell your house for someone else's future, right? So that they'll take on your debt contract, even more debt than you took on in the first place. So what we're really doing in the current system, and again, it's nobody's fault, but the way it works is we're really like harvesting each other's time and energy. It's a very like vampiric, you know, and so this is the part that I think can be fixed. And if we all of a sudden remove that,

we have a totally different basis for people to interact with each other. And it has like really removed a very toxic and yeah, just a really cruddy part of the way things work. Right. So on the other hand, then what can Dow money teach us about contentment?

I mean, hopefully a lot of things. I think that...

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at Thea.us/cedric. That's T-H-E-Y-A.us/C-E-D-R-I-C. This is a cool thing to think about is like if we've, if not, you know, as a social experiment, we haven't really seen anybody yet of people who've grown up in a truly sound money time. And like things really were different, right? There's lots of information about

the rate of inflation before 1913. And like in Canada, I live in Canada. In Canada, between I think 1881 and 1913, the inflation over that 30-year period was like zero. So like there was long extended periods where the price of stuff just didn't change ever. And this is one of my favorite ideas. Another one of my favorite minds in Bitcoin is Michael Dunworth. And Michael's always talking about

Money, working properly, provides us all the ability to plan for the future with certainty.

So, really, that's what this is doing, right? So, you know, in this case, it's Bitcoin. But what it's offering is giving people the opportunity to plan for the future with certainty. And when you have certainty, you can have hope. You can have optimism. And I think that that's the really cool thing. Imagine a world now where people are hardwired to believe that tomorrow will be better than today because...

They have a reason to believe that because money is working properly. And it's been a while, I think, since, you know, you can think about this however you want. Well, this is something I touched on in the book with like getting back to science fiction movies. In the 50s and 60s and 70s, science fiction movies had a genuine undertone of like, you know, utopia and like the way the world was headed to like this, like the Jetsons and like things are going to be incredible.

And then something happened in 1971. And by the time the 80s arrived in the 90s, science fiction got really dark. And this is some kind of a subconscious reflection of what people in popular culture are imagining the trajectory of the human race. So all of a sudden, instead of like the Jetsons, we're watching the Terminator and the

Right? Like this is, I think it's not an accident. So. No, things definitely took a dark turn. What can down money teach us about oneness and harmony? You know, so this is, I think, coming back to that idea of like, right now, we really don't have much of an alternative, but to steal other people's time and energy because our own time and energy is being stolen from us. And that is really a suboptimal place for

to think about building a society that has any real hope for cooperation. And, you know, if you're continually having your own time stolen, you're going to have less and less time and energy all the time to think about altruism and how you might go out into the world and just help other people for no reason. So,

Yeah, a form of money that preserves time and energy for me becomes the bedrock of a new way of allowing people to really think about being in community. And this is where I think things get really exciting. I, you know, sort of like, I think the book, what I really wanted to come across in the book is that I'm insanely bullish on humanity. And I think that Bitcoin is a catalyst for like,

a second renaissance and and that's where I hope we're headed because I think that people are hardwired for uh for hope and I believe that because I believe in this principle of abundance that they uh the universe and the physical world around us it truly is like as incredible like we're so lucky to be here and um yeah there's just uh there's just a you know minor thing that needs to get fixed

Yeah, well, maybe it's not so minor. To roll out here, I'm going to read the final word from the Tao of Poo, and then I'll ask a couple more questions. Well, what do you think, Poo, I said. Think about what, asked Poo. The Tao of Poo, of course. The how of Poo, asked Poo. Do we have to go through that again, I said. Go through what again, asked Poo. The Tao of Poo, I said. What's the Tao of Poo? You know, the uncarved block, the Coddleson Pie principle, the Poo Way principle.

that sort of bear and all that oh said pooh that's the dow of pooh i said oh said pooh how would you describe it i asked well this just came to me he said i'll sing it to you all right now then

to know the way we go the way we do the way the way we do the things we do it's all there in front of you but if you try too hard to see it you'll only become confused i am me and you are you as you can see but when you do the things that you can do you will find the way and the way will follow you that's what i think it is he said perfect i said but you know don't you know what said pooh it's the same thing oh said pooh so it is

So what can the DAO and Bitcoin teach us about returning to the source? Yeah, I mean, this principle of rejuvenationism, I think holds true for me that there is a sort of natural order of things. And we can't necessarily control the rate of change or the outcome of like how fast certain things happen. But one of those things for me

is that we are meant to live in a state of harmony together. And getting back to this idea about cyclicality, harmony would only make sense if there were periods of disharmony.

And people would only appreciate like the golden times in civilization if there were also periods of, you know, less ideal times. And I think that, you know, one of the big sort of like psyops, the big mistakes that people make in the modern era is the notion that like this is the best it's ever been. And, you know, that's tied to like maybe this is potentially the most ideal.

we've ever been technologically, but that doesn't mean that this is like a high period in human civilization. I think that sound money and human flourishing are intimately intertwined, and the last golden time was probably actually

um, the long 19th century, the hundred years that sort of preceded World War I when money was working very well and we were cranking out, you know, cathedrals and beautiful buildings all over the world and, you know, it's like this period of like Mozart and, you know, symphony, symphonies and, and art and, um,

You know, now really like this has sort of been a period since the Titanic where I would argue like from a cultural perspective, things actually getting progressively worse. So I think we're on the way down. I believe that this is a natural process that the exciting part is it's going to go up again at some point soon.

So to round out here, from your chapter, The Great Mystery, verse 81. You go on to write, so what is The Great Mystery?

In my ponderings on Lao Tzu's teachings, I've come to view it as the understanding that, if you zoom out far enough, everything is both knowable and unknowable. The sweet spot lies in humbly surfing the space between them. This is the human experience, where we dance between participation and surrender. Everything we do, everything we observe, is a dynamic balance, thinking we understand and having absolutely no idea. Where things tend to go sideways is when you have too much conviction in either.

Synchronicity is the language of the cosmic oneness, a tapestry of seemingly unconnected events constantly unfolding as the dynamic rebalancing of yin and yang spirals to infinity. There are no coincidences. We are all connected by energy, whether we are aware of it or not. The space between the individual experience and the collective consciousness is where we can observe this great mystery, an elusive and temporary state of being.

that comes and goes with our own shifting awareness. The great mystery lies in recognizing the existence of a higher power and knowing that it can never be fully known. I am early in my journey of understanding both Daoism and Bitcoin. What I do know about Bitcoin fills me with wonderment and optimism. I hope that reading this book has taught you something about either subject and hopefully inspired some deeper curiosity in one or both. I am certain fully knowing either is unlikely, but it doesn't diminish the pursuit.

The world will look very different on the other side of Bitcoin. The change will be a lot to process, but it doesn't have to be a war. Bitcoin is love and it is a path to return to harmony. Change is a natural part of life's seasons and all things in the end return to the Dow. I'm curious, what was your rabbit hole story?

That's a good question. I was, uh, my background is, uh, traditional finance. I, uh, spent the majority of my career, um, consulting on, uh, compensation and pensions. And, um, I actually wasn't even looking down the Bitcoin rabbit hole when it found me. I was, uh,

trying to really get my head around inflation during lockdown in 2020. And was really just concerned about fixed income markets and what money printing was going to do to the bond allocations in my pension funds. And so I sort of like, I mean, we really locked down in Canada. I spent the first kind of like week watching Netflix. And then I started taking out economics textbooks from university and

Eventually, Amazon recommended me Price of Tomorrow. And Price of Tomorrow was the first Bitcoin book I read. And then I think over the next three months, I read everything I could get my hands on. So that was how it went for me. From there, you know, I started thinking about like, yeah, I mean, you're down at two, right? It never ends. How has Bitcoin changed you? Yeah, I mean, I left my fiat life.

about a year later and spent some time thinking about how I was going to move it forward. I mentioned I was, I was, I had been working in compensation and rewards and in 2023 I founded Block Rewards and Block Rewards is a, you know, a Bitcoin company singularly focused on solving Bitcoin, paying people in Bitcoin. And I think, I think earning Bitcoin, I think is,

is the most important use case for Bitcoin to be fully matured, for us realizing a circular economy. I think earning Bitcoin is the first step for people to really reclaim ownership of their energy and time. If you are going to trade your time for a wage, it already today makes more sense to trade it for money that's real. And I think part of the gap that exists right now is like there really aren't

There's a lot of room for growth in the tools that are available for employers to make it easy. And so that's what we're trying to do. That's awesome. I love that. How has maybe Taoism changed you? Yeah, probably a lot more. I live my life to these principles. So writing the book was, I want to say, writing the Taoism part of the book was easier than I thought it would be.

And there's, you know, I think maybe like, I'm not on the Taoist like Reddit boards, but they're probably a lot more forgiving than the Bitcoin ones. Yeah, I mean, I try to like hold these things that, you know, if you read the book, the themes that are in the book are,

uh, our representation of Taoist principles and lessons that have really resonated with me and that I, I carry in my daily life. So I do try to spend as much time as I can in the present moment, feeling so grateful for, uh, you know, things I've been fortunate enough to enjoy people that I get to meet and, uh,

Yeah, what I do have as opposed to the scarcity things and what I don't have and what I can't prevent from happening. Do you think Lao Tzu would be a Bitcoiner? Definitely. Yeah, I even wonder like...

Yeah, some of these things, you know, Bitcoin could have existed even back when he was around, maybe not in the way that we think of it now. But, you know, the number zero would have existed, too, before people understood the number zero. And and so, yeah, I think that these I say this in the book. I think that, you know, in some ways, Bitcoin represents a return, its own return or a path to for people to return to the way things were.

And that's partly what inspired my Twitter handle is Lantern Bitcoin. And I love this idea like a lantern is this really old way of illuminating something. And that's where that came from. My final question then is, do you think Taoists would be into orange pilling? Yeah, I hope so. You know, so far the reception from

That community who maybe don't have a Bitcoin background has been really positive. And this is part of also what I was very interested in writing the book for, probably more so than the Bitcoin part, because I think that there is a massive part of the population that doesn't understand the money problem.

because they just actually don't understand money, but they do understand energetics and, um, you know, these other principles that would resonate with them. And, uh, you know, a big intention with the book was to create a, create a digestible way. Like not everybody wants to read, you know, hardcore history of money and economics books. And, uh, and so this book is really not for, uh,

Not for everybody. It's definitely not for every Bitcoiner. I think it's wider in a lot of ways. I like that it's not economic, but it kind of gets a lot of economic principles across through Taoism. But I kind of really meant like, would Taoists...

You know how Bitcoiners try to orange pill other no-coiners? Would Daoists be cool with evangelizing? Yeah, I see. Or would they be like, yo, that's not cool. Just let it go. Yeah, probably not. I think that even in my own experience, it's actually this Wu Wei is non-doing. Yeah.

It would be more like non-pilling, like you would just, as a virtue of people seeing how you are rather than how you talk about it. Yeah, man. Scott, this has been so dope. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. This definitely was awesome. So I'll leave it to you for any parting words. Let people know where they can find you and your work and Black Awards.

Yeah. And thanks. Thanks as well, man. I had a lot of fun tonight, Cedric, and it's a pleasure to come on. Yeah, we have our own podcast, The Blocker Word Podcast. It is, you know, that one is what I'm trying to do is really like entry level conversations. So it's a podcast geared towards people you might want to who aren't looking for the ultra high level stuff.

Um, on that, uh, so we have a YouTube page where you find the podcast. A few of my, um, live, like the speech that I gave Montreal are on there as well. Uh, I love to present when I get the opportunity and some of these, uh, some of these talks are on there. Um, block rewards. We're just in Canada right now, but stay tuned. We, uh, we are expanding out of Canada in the near future. Um, so, uh,

But we're on, you know, our social handles are block underscore rewards on just about every platform. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Bitcoin Matrix. If you enjoyed the conversation, don't forget to like, subscribe and drop a comment below with any questions or thoughts you may have.

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