"Hello, welcome to the Bitcoin Standard podcast. Our guest today is Balaji Sinasan, the entrepreneur and investor and the author of the network state. Balagi, thank you for joining us. >> Thank you. I'..."

"let me zoom in. But basically this shows how a network state can emerge. You start with you know and this will loop in a second. It'll start with one guy and then it'll go from over here it'll go from..."

"that's how the network state and Bitcoin connect. And I'll come to that. In the era of hard money, territory was something that states had to buy and sell. And so, they did. There was Louis Louisiana ..."

"meaning it already means the cost of living crisis people are talking about is really a sovereign debt crisis. Buy now pay later. Except the pay later is now, you know, for many in the west unfortunat..."

"jewels for hard currency because even like the bronze ovens, you know, there's an anecdote that the bronze ovens that the Soviets were making when they tried to export them once communism went away an..."

"exactly, but it's pretty much flat over 20 years. So the Chinese government is not really profiting from inflation as much. And the Chinese central government, I think this is a really curious statist..."

"provinces so they don't get too much localism or affection to any one thing. They're kind of managing all of China rather than one place. Um, and uh even with their tech companies, they let them all j..."

"argument is correct. It is that it's do or die mode that sort of conscripts everybody in a way that they're like, "Okay, I better work or I die." like in a sense of you know so it's a little bit like ..."

"way things were supposed to be. But having the rest of the world completely blown to smitherreens is actually an extremely unusual state of affairs. And so everybody who's like, "Oh yeah, remember 194..."

"possible but I think the key thing is they are operating within a global market as you said because they're operating within a global market they're able to get global prices as inputs and then they'r..."

"beat the Houthis militarily. NATO was not able to beat Russia militarily. And if you can't beat the Houthis or Russia, you definitely can't beat China. And so, uh, Hegath, who's a defense secretary, i..."

"internet companies right so the way I put it is the kind of the two old school things are gold and Chinese bonds and the two new things are internet companies and digital gold right and those kind of ..."

"Chinese client state and so is Russia nowadays actually. You know Russia thought Ukraine would become a Russian client state and maybe but really Russia is is alive because it's got all the cheap Chin..."

"governments is Bitcoin, which is the network that stands above states that limits what states can do without the consent of others. Right? and they simply can't steal like they've gotten accustomed to..."

"has less bluecollar dissatisfaction relative to America and it has uh it also has no illusions about being a military power or the global reserve currency and so on and so forth. And Australia also di..."

"and it had all the diplomats. It signed 100 plus, you know, economic deals, all these economic deals with 193 countries. And so it had the center of the global empire and therefore it had the ability ..."

"economy used to be real and then it was by degrees virtualized imperceptibly. It's it's kind of like, you know, shrinkflation. You start with like some old school uh I don't know like a um I don't kno..."

"way offer live concierge service to guide you with your Bitcoin cold storage, running your node, privacy, best practices, inheritance planning, corporate strategy, and multisig solutions. They don't t..."

"real job producing things of value and get paid or whether you find your way to the fiat money printer and you know given that real work you know real work is difficult it's uncertain you may get into..."

"humans play amongst ourselves to coordinate things. It's a coordination game, right? Like for example, a bird or a wolf or something like that walking along doesn't have a name, doesn't have a passpor..."

"because it's really disunited, you know, it's not the United States. Even the term American and America first, it the problem is it's more coherent to say like Republican first, right? I mean, Democra..."

"Go ahead. >> Yeah. No, go ahead. I'm uh I mean I'm not as uh up to date with American politics as you are, but this strikes me as uh um unexpected. So >> So let me Yeah. So let me here's here's my arg..."

"world. I see it the other way around. I see it uh as people just waking up and realizing oh my god I can't believe all of these horrible things that were happening to us were happening to us because o..."

"policy free with everyone entangling alignment alliances with no one basically. >> Yes. Except the issue is that um empire is I mean the thing is power aborts a vacuum right and so the really interest..."

"as an outcome is um you know up till 1991 I would argue that from 1945 to 1991 with all its faults the US was better than the Soviets like West Germany was more capitalist than East Germany you know S..."

"dollar. Now, you said it's not going to be Mad Max, and I do disagree with that, and I want to just show you just one image just to give you a sense of like what I what I'm seeing in my feed, right? S..."

"essentially mafias that would shake people down because when the state failed and basically just like one day this totalitarian Soviet state and all its guards, they just weren't getting paychecks any..."

"like Bitcoin maximalist really, it's funny, just saying fiat inflation and so on a million times. It's actually valuable because even at Chipotle, for example, right? This is something this is, you kn..."

"no banking system that could allow you to have a modern 1990s economy using the US dollar or the euro or some other kind of uh currency. People just uh they lost the monetary system. And if you lose t..."

"many countries, many companies, many financial institutions and so on are dependent on the solveny of the US currency. And it's also not just their individual stockpiles. It's the edges between the no..."

"the dollar collapses. But there it happens in 1915. And the reason it happens is I invented a bitcoin equivalent in 1910 in that story. It's an alternative history. And u essentially a bunch of uh avi..."

"um milk people through inflation And without the ability to control people through the benefits of inflation that you steal from them, all of this entire idea of governments just wanting to expand ter..."

"island, you can build something great together. >> Thank you, man. Glad you liked it. >> For sure. >> It was awesome. >> So I think that's pretty cool. Um I think it's a it's a well actually I'd love ..."

"know, a lot of these technologies, we think that they're going to move us towards new things, but all they end up doing is taking us back to older things. You know, people go back to primitive ways be..."

"to do one thing only, choice. You get to decide if you're going to buy it or not. And then they sort out all the details. So, I think this is a much healthier way of uh providing incentives. And I thi..."

"chain, and it's a genuine contract. It's like a real contract, like a like a binding contract. And what it does, for example, there's different ways of doing this, but you could pledge a portion of yo..."

"It's almost like a marriage contract, but it's like a binding vote on both sides because the social smart contract says what that government can and can't do and they kind of pre-agree. For a small ex..."

"you know then you will face consequences so what I'm trying to get at is that these two distinct approaches I mean obviously in some things you want technology you know I'm not I'm not I'm not a lot I..."

"house and now it's your house. Or if I hack your stock portfolio, you know, if I hack uh Zuckerberg's uh private keys, I can't just waltz into Facebook's offices and tell them, "Nope, you know, I have..."

"Number two is on the on the locks thing and so and so forth. That leads us down to other kinds of chains, but I'll just say a few things which are A, you can have smart locks now and there are smart l..."