Why Christians should care about bitcoin, and why it’s consistent with the Christian faith

00:01 Hey everyone, let's talk about why 00:03 Christians should care about Bitcoin. 00:06 Well, for a bunch of reasons, but I'm 00:08 going to highlight just a few. Uh, first 00:10 of all, God cares about a lot of things. 00:12 I am a Christian. My faith is uh very 00:15 important to me. Uh, as far as things 00:17 that I believe absolutely 100 out of 100 00:19 in the world. It is that God exists, 00:22 that God loves me, that God sent his son 00:24 Jesus to die on the cross for my sins 00:26 and your sins, and that the path to 00:29 salvation and eternal life is through a 00:32 belief in Jesus Christ. I deeply believe 00:35 that a 100 out of 100. That is one of 00:37 the few things in the world that I 00:39 absolutely believe. Okay. So, what does 00:42 God care about? Well, a bunch of things, 00:44 but part of what God cares about is 00:46 truth and justice. So, let's assume you 00:49 were from another planet and you viewed 00:52 everything through the lens of only 00:54 truth and justice and you didn't know 00:56 anything about the human race or this 00:58 planet Earth. And you show up one day 01:00 and you're looking around and really 01:03 your radar is up, right? Because your 01:04 big your big thing you care about is 01:07 truth and justice. Again, God already 01:09 knows everything. So, I'm I'm playing 01:10 this thought experiment as though it's 01:12 like a Martian or somebody uh because 01:14 God obviously knows how things are. So, 01:16 let's assume again somebody from another 01:18 planet shows up and all they care about 01:19 is truth and justice. And they show up 01:21 on this this planet and they're like, 01:22 "Okay, I kind of get it. I get why 01:24 people are growing food. They need to 01:26 eat. I get why this. I get why that." 01:28 But inevitably, they're going to ask a 01:29 question, which is, "Wait, what are 01:31 these green pieces of paper that 01:33 everybody keeps swapping with each 01:34 other?" And they keep calling them US 01:36 dollars. What are those? Well, you would 01:38 say, "Well, those are actually money." 01:40 Uh, and they would say, "Oh, oh, yeah, 01:42 that makes sense. Money. Money. Yes. All 01:44 all civilizations end up with the money. 01:46 That makes perfect sense. But wait a 01:48 second. Are those dollars do they 01:50 actually represent anything? Cuz they 01:51 look like just pieces of paper with 01:53 pictures of dead presidents. So like why 01:57 green pieces of paper with dead 01:58 presidents? Like what about that is 02:00 money? Oh well the government just said 02:02 so. Oh well is it backed by gold or 02:05 anything scarce? Nope. Uh the government 02:08 just made it up. It used to be backed by 02:09 gold, but then that constrained the 02:12 government's ability to spend money uh 02:14 at no cost to them, at only a cost of 02:17 inflation to you. And uh so they just 02:19 made the paper mean nothing. It just it 02:21 has numbers on it. It's like, oh well, 02:22 is the $100 bill more expensive to print 02:25 than the $1 bill? Not read, not really. 02:28 It's got a few holographics on it, but 02:30 no, it just it's $100 more valuable just 02:32 because the government says so. So 02:34 immediately again, if you care about 02:36 truth and justice as God does, your 02:39 alarm bells should be going off all over 02:40 the place saying, "Wait a second. How is 02:43 this consistent with truth? How is this 02:45 consistent with justice? How is this 02:47 consistent with the fact that we're 02:49 supposed to have honest weights and 02:50 measures? The ultimate measure of 02:53 anything in an economy is its dollar 02:55 price or the interest rate. But the 02:58 dollar prices and the interest rates are 03:01 perverted and just made up willy-nilly 03:05 by politicians based on how much money 03:07 they decide to print out of thin air 03:10 based on the political motivations of 03:11 which elections are coming up and who 03:13 wants to print money to, you know, make 03:15 the economy and everybody in it feel 03:17 good while they deal with inflation. So 03:19 again, if you came to this earth with 03:21 your justice and truth radar um you know 03:25 hypertuned, 03:26 the first thing you would notice is wait 03:28 a second, one of the things that is the 03:30 most perverted and distorted as it 03:33 relates to justice and truth is the 03:35 money. It's green pieces of paper with 03:37 dead presidents that are controlled by 03:39 something called the Federal Reserve, 03:41 which is a very small number of 03:43 unelected people that make up what the 03:45 interest rate ought to be and make up 03:47 how much money gets printed out of thin 03:49 air rather than the interest rate being 03:51 set based on scarcity and the amount of 03:54 money based on the value that each 03:56 person has created in the world. So if 03:60 you look at it through that lens, money 04:03 is just about I mean is I don't know I 04:05 don't maybe it's the number one most 04:07 perverted and distorted thing on planet 04:08 earth. I'm sure you could you know add 04:10 to that list because there's a lot of 04:11 things that are messed up on the on 04:13 planet earth but money is perverted and 04:16 distorted. There is a small group of 04:18 people that does not have to work in 04:20 order to use money and buy things. They 04:23 get to make it up out of thin air. Now, 04:25 if you do that, you're called a forger 04:28 or a uh counterfeit and you go to 04:30 prison. But if the Federal Reserve does 04:32 that, or if people in the government do 04:34 that, it's considered legal and nobody 04:36 seems to ask any questions, which is 04:38 absolutely insane. So, God cares about 04:41 justice and truth. And God put us on 04:43 this earth to care about justice and 04:45 truth. And God put us on this earth to 04:47 try to redeem as much of this earth as 04:50 we can between now and when Jesus comes 04:52 back. And we don't know when that is. 04:55 You know, I think when we were all kids, 04:57 we thought, hey, maybe Jesus will come 04:59 back during my lifetime. And then you 05:00 realize, well, it's been 2,000 years 05:02 since Jesus was here in the flesh. 05:04 Probably not going to happen during your 05:05 lifetime. So, what are you supposed to 05:07 dedicate your life and your lifetime to? 05:10 Well, to honor God and glorify him and 05:12 enjoy him forever. If you go uh you know 05:15 a paraphrase version of the Westminster 05:17 Shorter Catechism or the uh you know New 05:19 City Catechism, it all comes down to 05:22 what is the chief end of man? To glorify 05:23 God and enjoy him forever or something 05:26 of that. Well, part of the way we do 05:27 that, we glorify God is finding things 05:30 in the world that are all screwed up and 05:33 finding a way to redeem those things and 05:36 restore them to the best of our ability. 05:38 Now, we can't do that perfectly. We 05:41 don't have the ability as fallen humans, 05:43 as sinful humans to make the world 05:45 perfect. We don't have the ability to 05:47 make anything or do anything perfect. 05:49 But what we can do is take aspects of 05:51 the world that humans have corrupted and 05:54 restore them to the best of our ability 05:57 to honest weights and measures to truth 05:59 and justice. And I think money is one of 06:02 the most important, if not not the most 06:05 important things that humans have 06:06 corrupted and distorted that we actually 06:09 have a solution to. Now, there's a lot 06:11 of things that humans have distorted and 06:13 corrupted um like the family that are a 06:16 lot harder to fix, right? I mean, it's 06:18 just super hard to come along and tell 06:19 everybody, "Hey, all the family should 06:21 stick together. We should all love each 06:23 other. Nobody should cheat on anybody." 06:25 And, you know, the family will be great. 06:28 That's what I want. That's what I strive 06:30 for in my life. But it's really hard to 06:32 wave a magic wand and make the nuclear 06:35 family whole and you know whole and 06:37 wholesome just with a magic wand. But we 06:40 actually can do that in areas of public 06:43 policy. There are certain areas of 06:45 public policy like money where after 06:47 many decades of trying, humans actually 06:50 did figure out a way to restore truth 06:52 and justice to restore honest weights 06:55 and measures to to build a monetary 06:58 system based on the principles of the 07:00 Bible. And that's what we have with 07:02 Bitcoin. With Bitcoin, we have a 07:04 complete and honest and fair system 07:07 where everybody who has Bitcoin worked 07:09 for it. Nobody gets to make it out of 07:11 thin air. And it is completely honest 07:14 and uh honest and true weights and 07:17 measures. There's no way to game the 07:18 system. There's no way to get Bitcoin 07:20 without working for it. Um and you there 07:23 will only ever be 21 million. Nobody has 07:25 a magic Bitcoin money printer that they 07:28 get to push a button and make more 07:29 Bitcoin. Nobody gets to do that. That is 07:31 something that the world does not have 07:33 is a magic Bitcoin money printer. No 07:35 matter how bad you or the government 07:38 want more money out of thin air, you 07:41 can't have it. the government. Now, they 07:42 can tax you, but that's unpopular and 07:44 they have to deal with the voters if 07:45 they do that. The most um you know, 07:49 roundabout and uh sneaky way that the 07:52 government steals your wealth, steals 07:54 your time, steals your energy is by 07:57 printing money out of thin air and 07:58 blaming the inflation they cause on 08:00 other things. 100% of inflation is 08:03 ultimately a result of government money 08:05 printing. Now, often there's a time 08:07 delay. Often the connection is hard to 08:09 follow which is why they get to blame it 08:11 on other things and a lot of people 08:12 believe them. But at the end of the day, 08:14 if prices of something are going up, 08:16 someone somewhere is printing money or 08:19 someone somewhere did print money a few 08:21 years ago and it's just taking now for 08:23 that to show up in the prices. But 08:25 anywhere and everywhere, as Milton 08:27 Friedman says, inflation is anywhere and 08:31 everywhere a monetary phenomenon. That 08:33 means it's not a result of greedy 08:35 corporations. That means it's not a 08:37 result of the of humanity getting worse 08:40 at making things. We get better at 08:42 making things every year. It's the 08:44 result of someone somewhere printing 08:45 money or doing that at some point in the 08:48 past and it just now showing up in the 08:50 form of inflation. But is it's always a 08:53 corruption and a distortion of the money 08:56 supply that ultimately causes inflation. 08:58 And inflation is the stealing of your 09:01 time and energy because money, sorry, 09:06 fly in the eye. Um, money is what we use 09:09 to store our time and energy. So if 09:11 somebody is printing money out of thin 09:13 air, what they are effectively doing, 09:15 not even effectively doing, what they 09:17 are doing is stealing your time and your 09:19 energy. They are devaluing it without 09:21 your consent. And that is what's 09:23 happening when the government prints 09:25 money. So with Bitcoin, we actually have 09:28 a solution. We have an area in the world 09:30 where there is an answer and it's 09:32 actually an easy answer. It's a hard 09:34 answer to understand, but it's an easy 09:35 answer to implement, which is we have an 09:38 honest money, honest weights and 09:39 measures, honest unit of account, a 09:42 money that nobody can corrupt, nobody 09:44 can distort, where there's a hard limit 09:46 of 21 million, nobody gets to make it 09:48 out of thin air, and it is immune from 09:50 the corruption of humans. And that is 09:52 incredible. It's not the only thing we 09:55 have the ability to do that with on 09:57 planet Earth. You know, the the US 09:59 postal system was all screwed up. It was 10:01 illegal to send a letter unless you use 10:03 the US Postal Service. Uh even today, 10:06 FedEx and UPS are not allowed to send 10:08 first class mail, which means the kind 10:09 of mail that shows up in your actual 10:11 mailbox, like a piece of paper, a 10:13 letter. Uh it's illegal for UPS and 10:16 FedEx to do that. But humanity invented 10:18 email. We redeemed that complete 10:20 insanity with the invention of email. 10:23 And now we don't have to worry about the 10:24 US Postal Service because we can send 10:26 stuff with UPS and FedEx uh to get 10:29 around that or if it's in the form of a 10:31 letter, we can uh send it via email. And 10:34 so email is a way that humans redeemed a 10:38 part of the world that had been 10:40 corrupted by a government monopoly on 10:43 the sending of mail. And that's happened 10:45 in numerous other cases as well. you are 10:47 in, you know, most parts of the world, 10:49 certainly all of the US states, you're 10:51 allowed to homeschool your kids. So, if 10:53 you are in an area where the education 10:54 system has been corrupted and distorted 10:57 and perverted, you can opt out and you 10:59 can homeschool your kids. That is one 11:01 way to redeem education in a world where 11:05 education is messed up. Other education 11:08 choice systems are similar where you 11:10 have the ability to send your child to a 11:12 system to a school system or a school 11:15 that is a better fit and not all messed 11:16 up. So there are a lot of areas of 11:19 public policy where government in you 11:22 know government actors and the 11:25 corruption of humanity has resulted in 11:26 things being all screwed up. And in some 11:28 of those things we have a silver bullet. 11:31 It's not often you get a silver bullet 11:33 in an area of public policy that can fix 11:36 all of the problems that ails it. But 11:38 Bitcoin and money is one of those areas 11:40 and it's pretty incredible that uh we 11:43 using the the wisdom God gave us were 11:45 able to invent a money that nobody could 11:47 corrupt. That's just incredible and it's 11:49 a huge advancement for the human race. 11:51 So, I dedicate a huge amount of my time 11:53 and energy and wealth to educating 11:56 people about Bitcoin. And my passion for 11:58 that does not come from just the fact 12:00 that Bitcoin has made me uh 12:02 significantly wealthier than I would 12:04 otherwise be. I certainly like that. But 12:06 at the end of the day, my plan is to 12:07 spend all of the wealth that I ever 12:08 acrew uh making the world a better place 12:12 and redeeming it in various ways to the 12:14 glory of God. I plan to die a poor man. 12:17 I don't see any reason to die with a lot 12:19 of wealth. If my kids want wealth, they 12:21 can work for it, just like I did. But 12:23 there's no reason for my kids to have a 12:25 bunch of wealth that I worked for and 12:27 that they inherited. So, you know, my 12:30 kids are not set to inherit huge amounts 12:32 of money. My kids are set to have all of 12:34 the health care and education they could 12:36 possibly want for their lifetimes and if 12:39 there's money left over for their 12:40 children to have health care and 12:42 education. But if they want to do fun 12:44 stuff, they got to work for it. And uh 12:46 so I'm going to use all the money in my 12:49 lifetime other than what is needed for 12:51 the healthcare and education of my kids 12:52 and to create a loving environment for 12:54 them. I'm going to use that money for 12:56 making the world a better place. And the 12:58 reason I do that is because it's all 12:59 screwed up. And especially the money is 13:01 all screwed up. And God in in his 13:04 blessing gave humanity the ability to 13:07 invent Bitcoin and a way to reverse the 13:10 curse that has uh you know uh confounded 13:14 our ability to have sound money for many 13:16 many many decades and now we have a way 13:18 around that and I'm super passionate 13:19 about that. So why should Christians 13:21 care about Bitcoin? Because Christians 13:23 should care about truth and justice. 13:25 Because they should care about honest 13:27 weights and measures. And our current 13:29 fiat, meaning governmentinvented 13:31 monetary system where they make money 13:33 out of thin air and then charge you as a 13:35 criminal if you do the same thing. That 13:37 system is so corrupt, so perverted and 13:40 works against the uh the the efforts of 13:44 so many average people, normal people 13:46 that are just working and their time and 13:49 energy is devalued by government money 13:51 printing. We should all care about that. 13:53 Especially Christians like me should 13:54 care about that. And what should we do 13:56 about it? We should do our best to help 13:58 the world migrate to a new financial 14:01 system that is built on Bitcoin that is 14:03 not built on the fiat system. So 14:06 governments um have disorded the system 14:09 and certainly Christians should lead the 14:11 charge uh ushering in a new financial 14:14 system that is built on truth and 14:16 justice and all of the values that are 14:18 in the Bible that we should all care 14:20 about that we should live by. And one 14:22 way to do that is by migrating to the 14:25 Bitcoin financial system which is much 14:28 more consistent with the principles of 14:30 the Bible and how uh money should 14:33 operate than anything else that humans 14:35 have ever invented uh in history. So I'm 14:38 a Christian. I am passionate about 14:39 Bitcoin. I am passionate about Bitcoin 14:41 because it brings truth and justice to a 14:44 financial system that is totally screwed 14:46 up and corrupted uh to uh against the 14:50 will of so many. And Bitcoin is a way we 14:52 can redeem that. And one of the reasons 14:54 God put me on this earth is to find 14:56 things that we can redeem with our 14:58 efforts. And helping to redeem the money 15:01 of the world is a very worthwhile cause 15:04 and something I'm deeply passionate 15:05 about. Have a great evening everyone. 15:07 Thanks.