BTC189: PRINCE PHILIP OF SERBIA
ON BITCOIN
03 July 2024
In this episode of the Bitcoin Fundamentals Podcast, Prince Philip of Serbia joins us to discuss his advocacy for Bitcoin and its potential to offer financial sovereignty. We delve into his journey from a background in finance to becoming a passionate Bitcoin proponent.
Prince Philip shares his thoughts on the synergies between Bitcoin and monarchy, the environmental impact of traditional banking systems, and the challenges and opportunities for Bitcoin adoption in Serbia. We also explore his vision for a Bitcoin nation-state and the future of global finance.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN
- Prince Philip’s journey from finance to Bitcoin advocacy.
- The benefits of Bitcoin for financial sovereignty and inclusion.
- The synergies between Bitcoin and monarchy.
- The environmental impact of traditional banking systems versus Bitcoin.
- The steps Serbia needs to take for Bitcoin adoption.
- Prince Philip’s vision for a Bitcoin nation-state.
- The role of merchants in driving Bitcoin adoption.
- Personal anecdotes from Prince Philip’s life as a prince and a Bitcoin advocate.
TRANSCRIPT
Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.
[00:00:00] Intro: You’re listening to T I P.
[00:00:03] Preston Pysh: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this Wednesday’s release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today’s show, we have a special guest, Prince Philip of Serbia. Prince Philip is a passionate advocate for Bitcoin and has a rich background in finance. We dive into his journey into the world of Bitcoin, his thoughts on its potential for financial sovereignty, and the unique synergies between Bitcoin and monarchy.
[00:00:24] We also explore his vision for Bitcoin adoption inside of Serbia and beyond. So with all of that said, let’s go ahead and jump right into this interview with the insightful and knowledgeable Prince Philip of Serbia.
[00:00:39] Intro: Celebrating 10 years, you are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pysh.
[00:00:57] Preston Pysh: Hey everyone, welcome to the show. I am really pumped to have Prince Philip here with me to talk all things Bitcoin and who knows what else we’re going to get into, but welcome to the show. Thanks Preston. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. It’s great to connect with you. I know we’ve talked a little bit in passing here and there, and this is wonderful to be able to sit down with you and have a good thorough conversation, Sir.
[00:01:20] Prince Philip: Yeah. Likewise. I keep on bumping you and I need these amazing conferences, but we never have enough time to take, to sit down and have a good chat and we have little talks, good talks, power talks, but then we’re busy where we got to get back to our duties.
[00:01:33] Preston Pysh: We’re getting torn in different directions.
[00:01:35] Prince Philip: Exactly.
[00:01:36] Preston Pysh: I think for anybody that would look at you and see all of, I couldn’t even imagine the time constraints and directions you’re being pulled in a given day. And I think for somebody that would look at a person like yourself and say; there’s so many things that you could be looking at or focusing upon.
[00:01:56] And here you are talking about Bitcoin and are very passionate about Bitcoin. How in the world did that come on your radar? When there’s so many other things that could be distracting or pulling you in a different direction.
[00:02:09] Prince Philip: That’s a lovely way of putting that question. How did I get into Bitcoin? Yeah, it was first started.
[00:02:15] I mean, I, the story goes that I first heard about Bitcoin in 2011, when I think, I believe the first time I heard about it was when They pulled it off when Visa MasterCard was pulled off the donation page for Wikileaks. And Julian Assange said that we are except Bitcoin. And I just looked at it and I was like, well, that’s funny.
[00:02:46] Then years went by, sadly, and 2017 came along and I was on Reddit. I know, I know Reddit. Yeah. But I was on Reddit scrolling through the homepage of Reddit, and then every now and then the Bitcoin home subreddit would pop up and that little meme. All of the rollercoaster guy with his hands up in the air will be going up all the time.
[00:03:08] I’m going, I’ll say, what’s going on there? I saw this a few times over a few weeks in like early 2017. And then I get a call from my best friend. This is when I was living in London, by the way, 2017. And my friend is like, Hey, Philip, have you heard of Bitcoin? I was like, yeah. Well, what’s up? It’s, it’s something that you should get into.
[00:03:23] You should buy some. It’s like a great investment. It’s a great inflation hedges. There’s only going to be 21 million ever invested. I was like, Ooh, that’s, I mean, produced. That’s, well, that’s interesting. Didn’t really take much notice of that, but he was really into it and passionate about, had some passion.
[00:03:36] He’s my best friend. I kind of take his advice. So I was like, okay, show me how. So he got me onto Coinbase. I bought some Bitcoin. Then he got me on, got me a wallet. I stored it on my wallet. And then I saw some other things on Litecoin. I was like, what are those? Oh, they have, you know, other cryptos or whatever they have a chance to.
[00:03:53] I was like, okay, interesting. Can I buy it? Can I, should I buy them? Yeah, why not? And then that year was full of myself and him. Yeah. We, and we got some other friends into it as well. We go into the ice stuff. So basically I joined for greed purposes. I was working in traditional finance at the time. And I thought I kind of knew how things work, you know, how the financial system works and stuff.
[00:04:14] But when Bitcoin came about, that’s kind of novel that something novel had no idea what it was going to turn out to be. But obviously got distracted by the other things that were on offer by all those other ICOs and other cryptos that were being shoved down your throat. If you were in that crypto space in 2017, and you weren’t really well read in Bitcoin, I was easily distracted.
[00:04:35] We were easily distracted. So we threw our money at this and that project, but nothing ever stuck, obviously. Then it all crashed and 2018, 19 came about and I was like still into Bitcoin, but not really passionately. I was still stacking here and there. When I got a good paycheck or when I got like a bonus, I would buy some Bitcoin and stuff and just mind my own business and stuff.
[00:04:54] Then I think it was 2020 when the whole COVID thing happened. That’s when I started to pay attention. My job went online. We all worked from our homes. We all were told to move and work remotely from our homes, and then I was sat at my desk at home. I say desk, it was a makeshift desk next to my bed, and we had a flat up in Swiss Cottage, like near Primrose Hill, London, and my wife was with our son in the other bedroom, the living room.
[00:05:19] And I remember just thinking to myself, what the hell is going on over here? What’s all this money printing that’s what’s all this stimulus happening and I thought to myself almost working from this computer, I could be doing this anywhere in the world. So then I had the bing the light bulb by a moment and I was like, I could be doing this from Belgrade.
[00:05:35] So I decided I caught up, walked over to the living room. I was like, Dana, her name is Dana. Dana, we’re moving to Belgrade. She’s like, okay, when soon as possible, we don’t know when things are going to get rough or rough or something like that. So that was already by April. So by June. By June, we, end of June, so Vidovdan, which is June 28th, 2020, we moved to Belgrade.
[00:05:59] Vidovdan is a, it’s a big day in our history. That’s when the Serbs won the Battle of Kosovo in the 12th century, and it was the St. Prince Lazar’s Nemanj Saint Day. That’s a big day in our calendar. And the fact that I bought tickets on that day without realizing there was a video done and we moved there on that day, it was kind of spooky.
[00:06:19] Then, sorry, how is this linked to my Bitcoin story? All this was happening, I was like, what’s going on with the world? What is all this money printing going on? Why are we getting all this quantitative easing? Why is the market acting irrationally? And I was like, I have this Bitcoin thing. I’m going to study it more.
[00:06:34] So I joined Bitcoin Twitter. I bought the Bitcoin standard and I got studying in Bitcoin. Twitter came across Michael Saylor later on that year. I was like, Whoa, who the hell is that? That’s quite eloquent and quite the spokesman for Bitcoin. He was delivering those amazing, amazing speech messages.
[00:06:52] Satan’s book was a hard digest, but I realized, okay, this is it. I get it now. And they couldn’t Twitter with all the memes and everything. I mean, some of the Bitcoin Twitters, it’s incredibly funny, but some of it’s really serious and there’s a lot of intelligent individuals there. I joined Bitcoin Twitter thinking, I’ll maybe find something else about other crypto stuff.
[00:07:09] And next thing I know, I’m like, Oh my God, this is it. I have the keys of the future in my pockets and everything else doesn’t really make much sense. And that’s when I realized that they couldn’t will be a big part of my life. So I studied more. Nice. Stacked more and I sold all the other crypto, whatever you call them that I had.
[00:07:26] And by 2021, I was a full fledged maxi, I guess. And there was moments like in 2021, when they were trying to ban mining within their borders. They had 60 percent of the hash rate. And I saw this and I saw the difficulty adjustment of Bitcoin playing out beautifully and how Bitcoin just decentralized further.
[00:07:47] It was like cutting off the head of a snake and 20 other heads just grew, and I was like, that’s amazing. That adjustment, that kind of linked it towards the interest rates of the traditional finance world. When the economy grows, they rise interest rates to kind of cool down the economy. Well, when the economy is slowing down, they obviously interest rates are at zero negative, which obviously doesn’t make that much sense, but that’s the way to spur the growth of the economy.
[00:08:09] That all didn’t make sense, but the adjustment of Bitcoin’s big difficulty adjustment when there’s more miners coming on. I mean, when there’s more hash power coming on and how every two weeks that’s readjusted, I thought that was for me, it was one of those big sort of awakening moments. Obviously it was a gradual process becoming a Bitcoin maximalist, but that was one of the big ones.
[00:08:29] Preston Pysh: On that one was fascinating for me. It was like, I was just thinking about like if Google lost half of their data centers, like they went down for whatever, right? It would be catastrophic because of the way that they handle resourcing. So the resourcing would get loaded over to some other data center.
[00:08:46] And like, I mean, they couldn’t handle it if they lost half of it.
[00:08:50] Prince Philip: Exactly. What if Amazon, AWS, what if they lost half their data centers? It would be catastrophic. Everyone they’re trying to buy it. I was a big Amazon buyer, by the way, before I moved to Belgrade, because we don’t have Amazon here. So I was a big consumer kind of.
[00:09:03] Instant gratification. Saw stuff on Amazon. Buying stuff. It was easy. Get delivered to my desk at work. Bam, bam, bam. So easy. When I came here, realized that Amazon’s not available. I got to find stuff. Be happy with what I have. But going back to what you say, yeah, if Amazon, if Google, if Facebook, if any of those big guys lost half their service, there’ll be mass panic.
[00:09:25] Right. Yeah. Yeah. Rex, Rex. And, and I mean, there was no, no, no, not with Bitcoin and Bitcoin, it’s, it’s stronger and fragile at its best. You know, thank you. Talib, my name Talib, you know, who is wrote the forward to Bitcoin standard, but we, we know the story there with, with, with safety. So it turns out he wasn’t very anti fragile himself.
[00:09:45] Preston Pysh: For people that are maybe listening to this, that aren’t intimately dialed into the Bitcoin space. There was a little bit of a dust up between say Fadina moose and all black swan author. Help me out, but anyway, you made this comment about COVID. When I’m getting to the root, I’m curious what you think the root is, but to me it seems like it was the whole world just had the blinder pulled up on the quote unquote experts through all of that.
[00:10:17] And it just made people question kind of everything is, is that what it was or was it, was there something
[00:10:23] Prince Philip: That was it for me as well. It was so strange living in London, then you see drips of it happening, coming through the news, like in, this was in January, like COVID in China, some cases here and there, you’re not really worrying about it.
[00:10:37] Then all of a sudden it starts coming to Europe or something, like, that’s, okay, that’s strange. And you’re like, okay, you don’t think much of it. And then people are talking about, oh, things are going to be locked down. We’re going to have to go home and stuff. It’s like, this thing only kills people are like above 82 years old.
[00:10:51] It’s like, it’s an 80, it kills people of the average age of 82. So it’s higher than the life expenses of your people. And it only kills people who have one or two, two more comorbidities. So it didn’t make much sense. And we’re going to lock down the economies. We’re going to close schools because of this.
[00:11:06] I questioned that at the beginning, but then because of the force of the propaganda, I obviously kind of got along with it, but still it was doing my head in and I was at home. I remember lying down on the floor, like after work with my wife in the living room, holding my head and saying, what’s going on with this world, basically something’s not right.
[00:11:24] Something’s not right. And we were sort of, we were half bought into it basically. Then moving to Serbia was quite the, I say red pill moment, as well as orange pill for myself, but red pill for my wife, because I mean, she’s a Bitcoiner because she’s my wife. I think there’s a lot of wives like that. Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:40] But moving to Serbia, and then we saw how life could be completely open and how life was completely open. Okay, mask wearing in London, I got to say that people weren’t wearing masks in London. That was great. But the way they shut down schools, and the way they shut down everything in London, and all this social distancing stuff, they weren’t paying attention to that in Serbia.
[00:11:58] Even though they had very strict lockdowns in April 2020 in Serbia, Chinese style, they tried to repeat them in July after the government got two thirds of the parliamentary seats in parliament, so they had a majority, so they tried to enforce those lockdowns again. Power grab, whatever it was, tried to impose tyranny, anything.
[00:12:17] I have no idea. But the Serbs being Serbs were like, ah, we’re not having that. And went to the street, took to the streets, a revolution was about to happen. And the government realized they overstepped their mark. Obviously, those lockdown Chinese style Darwinians, I mean, Darwinian, I think, or Williams style lockdowns were not imposed on us.
[00:12:35] And instead, they had some curfews, but like some businesses, social business can’t be open after eight or nine or something like that. But life actually continued. And we were loving it because we could actually get on with our lives. Our son was able to go to, he just turned two just before COVID. So he was able to join a kindergarten in September, 2020, and didn’t have to wear a mask or anything.
[00:12:57] And it was great. I mean, schools are open, things were happening and life was coming, kind of going on like usual, but there was still some restrictions, but nothing like the West, nothing like in UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and those places. So that was really an awakening moment for me. You look at what’s happening in the West and compare it to what’s happening in the parts of the East and what people are saying, and it was, it was troubling, actually.
[00:13:19] I found it unsettling, but that’s what also drove me closer to becoming a Bitcoiner.
[00:13:25] Preston Pysh: So you have a lot of conversations with world leaders and people in prominent places. This conversation that you and I are having right now, is everybody in the world at the highest levels having these conversations, in your opinion?
[00:13:38] Prince Philip: No, maybe they are in close circles, but so I joined Jan three. That’s the company that Samson Mao started for those listeners who don’t know what Samson Mao is, he’s a established Bitcoin maximalist, who was a big executive for Blockstream. Blockstream is one of the biggest Bitcoin only companies out there.
[00:13:57] And 2022 decided to start his own startup called Jan three. January three was the reference to the first block mine in January 3rd, 2009. And TAN3 was, is a company dedicated to hyper, hyper Bitcoinization or basically nation state adoption and spreading the word of Bitcoin to nation states and trying to speed up Bitcoin adoption all over the world.
[00:14:19] And we have our technologies, we have our wallet, Aqua wallets, and we do buy and sell Bitcoin and we work on other, some other projects for revenue, but otherwise we’re known as a nation state adoption Bitcoin company. Okay, so how did I get in there? Sorry, when I became a public Bitcoin in 2022, After going on a talk show here with my wife, the biggest talk show in Serbia, the host figured out, because we met with him three days before to have a chat just to get to know each other, and he figured out I was into Bitcoin.
[00:14:47] And when we did the recording three days later, he interrupted me while I was talking about my current traditional finance job. I wasn’t very, well, not showing much passion about that. So is now a good time to talk about crypto. And that obviously was a good time for me to talk about, yeah, not crypto Then that then went viral because I took three minutes afterwards, I, I kind of went on a monologue about Bitcoin.
[00:15:09] Preston Pysh: Yeah.
[00:15:09] Prince Philip: And next thing I know, I’m on podcast. The, my first podcast was Daniel Prince’s one bed podcast. Then on safety. Yeah, and then on safety in the Moose’s podcast, which was like, for me, a proper, surreal moment. Having listened to his podcast, he’s like reaching out to me in my DMs and like, oh my God, safety is reaching out to me in my DMs.
[00:15:25] This is insane. He’s like, he’s telling me how Bitcoin can bring back monarchies and stuff. I was like, yes. Yes, that’s true. Then I’m on his podcast talking about democracy versus monarchy and stuff and Bitcoin. It was great. Then I get invited to Miami and at Miami I met Samson and he instantly just like, Oh, I want to hire you.
[00:15:41] I’m looking forward to people from my company. Do you want to join? And I was like, yes. I didn’t really think twice because I was looking to get an exit out of my traditional finance job. Cause at that point, two years of being a Bitcoiner and working traditional finance, I didn’t really feel that I was in the right place.
[00:15:56] So that goes back to your question about meeting presidents and so on other people, so we do meet, we try to make conversations with leaders around the world and people around the world, but obviously to talk about Bitcoin and number one, having, trying to start a conversation with a leader around the world, if we’re trying to initiate, if I try to initiate a conversation by maybe Initiating a, starting a diplomatic line with a leader or somewhere within an embassy.
[00:16:18] And I say, I want to talk to that leader about Bitcoin. That doesn’t go anywhere. Really? We know it doesn’t go anywhere. People want, especially in the European union, other parts of the world, maybe what we rely on mainly is connections that I have already. And the other thing is. I would say is other Bitcoin is around the world.
[00:16:37] Other Bitcoin is around the world are passionate, hardworking, good souls who wants obviously to spread the meaning and the love and the utility of Bitcoin. And they have gone to send, speak to their local elected official and stuff about Bitcoin. And so they’ve obviously identified somebody that’s open to talk about it.
[00:16:57] And then they need some help. So quite a lot of times we get a lot of messages, emails coming from random people, all random Bitcoiners all over the world. And then we start a group with them. You know, Bitcoin, I would say Jan 3 with a certain country, and then from there we can get some meetings. Because we, some Bitcoiners around the world have identified a politician, a minister, or even a president that’s open to talk about it.
[00:17:20] And I’m afraid that unless it’s very private conversation, COVID doesn’t really come up.
[00:17:25] Preston Pysh: So it’s really, truly ground roots, people on the ground that are then kind of initiating that maybe have a slight bit of access to whoever the elected body is in whatever country. And then it’s kind of from the bottom up.
[00:17:39] Prince Philip: Obviously it’s that’s because we totally understand that Bitcoin is a bottom up strategy, it’s a grassroots effort, it’s What I talked about said, well, as we know, it’s decentralization at its finest, it’s, you can’t stop it from growing on the ground, but top down, there’s not much help happening there.
[00:17:58] So we believe that there is a need for maybe some individuals or some companies or people to work with some leaders around the world and to basically understand Bitcoin because they can reach a bigger audience. They can able to market Bitcoin. They can understand that it’s good for not just for them because I know leaders are very, you know, they look after themselves, but also they can have to look after their futures.
[00:18:19] And they have to look after their people. If they want people to vote for them, then we tell them that Bitcoin is good for them. Bitcoin is good for their people. Bitcoin is good for society. Bitcoin fixes a lot of issues. It doesn’t just fix money, but it fixes energy. It fixes politics. It fixes so many parts of our lives and we need to sell this to them.
[00:18:35] It says ways of like strategies that we can engage with easily with with jurisdictions, I say, or local authorities around the world. And we see the Bukele example is a very rare one. I mean, I think that’s not going to happen for a while, but never say never after bull run, you never know what’s going to happen.
[00:18:51] For viewers who don’t know what Bukele is the president of El Salvador, he adopted Bitcoin in 2021 alongside the dollar as their legal tender. So the El Salvadorans are free to use the dollar and Bitcoin as their currency. And they were given a wallet to buy the president with 30 in that wallet in Bitcoin, and they’re able to buy and sell Bitcoin freely.
[00:19:12] And this was beautiful. But what he did, right? Buckeye was giving them the option use either fiat dollars or Bitcoin. Yeah. The cheaper wallet has some teething problems in the beginning and stuff. There was some problems. Obviously government doesn’t do tech well, but you know, it got, it got there and it works.
[00:19:27] And now El Salvador is. Thanks to his other policies of taking down the gangs and being and now turning into the safest country in the world and opening up tourism, but also his technology laws, less taxable on most industries there. that it’s become a very competitive country. So it’s not only safe, but it’s a very competitive state.
[00:19:44] And as a result, people are moving back. El Salvadorans are moving back and people around the world are like, I want to live in El Salvador because they’re offering me X, Y, and Z. And that’s what my country is not offering. So anyway, I think El Salvador as an example, I think hopefully that will be picked up and we see the ripple effects of Salvador happening in other Central American countries, but it’s still tough because they don’t have The Bukele moment was that he was uncorruptible, he was rich, and when he came to power, he could easily do what he wanted, what was needed.
[00:20:17] Luckily, he was a good player, a Bitcoiner and a Bitcoin maximalist and did the right things. But that happening in other countries is difficult, especially with all these elaborate democratical or tyrannical or whatever systems are happening around the world. So the other two strategies that we try to focus on as well is just as a store of value.
[00:20:36] I mean, that’s what Bitcoin is technically right now. I mean, as a means of as a currency. Yeah, it’s going to be there one day. But I think. Right now, I mean, this is the salient argument that Bitcoin is a store of value. It’s doesn’t want to, you know, it’s also, he doesn’t want to, I say, he, many people think it’s happy the way it is right now, you know, ossification and all that.
[00:20:56] And so we’ve trying and advise governments or people to, not just governments, but also companies and stuff to, to hold it on that balance sheet as on the treasury, because it’s. Better than holding cash. Just what Michael Saylor says. If you any, basically Michael Saylor is much better talking to people about this than I am.
[00:21:14] So store of values and I think the other thing is energy. Bitcoin fixes energy. Bitcoin is an energy backed money. So Bitcoin miners are looking for the cheapest form of energy. That is good for civilization when you look and when you have incentives of something that makes money that’s looking for the cheapest form of energy, that’s going to bring you good energy.
[00:21:35] I didn’t know how to put it. Basically, the cheapest forms of energy out there are stranded or wasted energy. And these are in places where, in, in electrical grids that have inefficiencies, where Bitcoin miners can then plug themselves into those stranded, wasted, inefficient areas, and you can start some power purchasement agreement with the electrical grid, with the state or so forth, and they can start mining Bitcoin.
[00:21:59] When that grid then has some stress through hot weather, like it is today in Belgrade, it’s 37 degrees, that’s going to cause a lot of people to turn on the air conditioning, that’s going to put stress on the grid. That can lead to some blackouts or when it’s freezing, it can be minus 20 or 30 here degrees centigrade.
[00:22:14] That is, and that’s going to put some stress on the grid as well. Then Bitcoin miners can then sell the electricity back or just turn off their miners, depending on the agreement they have back to the electrical grid. It stops rolling blackouts altogether. You have fortified to strengthen that grid completely.
[00:22:31] Also for renewables, whether you’re into it or not, I’m not into obviously wind and solar, but other renewables like hydro and geothermal, it’s pushing people to find clever sources of ways of finding or using a hydro when it’s not being used to convert that energy into money. And then that money is then used as in Bitcoin.
[00:22:50] And when I say money, I think Bitcoin. That Bitcoin is used as for infrastructure projects. And so basically, so what we’re doing is we’re trying to create joint ventures with other states, with other local authorities out there and being in a joint venture with the local authorities, some government, when they’re involved in Bitcoin, then they will tend to be kinder to Bitcoin.
[00:23:08] And then they will tend to understand what the values of Bitcoin is. And then they will then be better in regulating Bitcoin. Yes, Bitcoin doesn’t need regulation, but the rest of crypto does. And maybe they will stop, you know, create better regulations and differentiate Bitcoin from the rest, take away capital gains tax from Bitcoin, allow it to flow free.
[00:23:24] Preston Pysh: On the energy front, I think in like five to 10 years, it’s going to become abundantly clear to the rest of the world how demanding AI is for energy consumption. And I think when we look at the existing energy grid, there’s so little nuclear kind of in the mix as a percentage. And for where I think we’re going with respect to AI and the energy demands, you’re in this unique situation where you almost have like a chicken and egg scenario where you’re going to have a lot of countries around the world that don’t want to like build out like this really intense infrastructure.
[00:23:59] And Call it nuclear because there’s just not enough of a demand signal locally there at the moment, based off of the population’s demand to build it. And then hopefully the AI data centers come or whatever. And I think when you look at what Bitcoin really offers, it’s offering a turnkey. If you build it, you can stick these things here and immediately have somebody that’s willing to buy all that excess energy.
[00:24:26] And then you can bring in the artificial intelligence data centers and now your country that might not have been real competitive on the AI front for running all these models locally in whatever jurisdiction we’re talking about now has a pathway to be competitive on the global landscape with respect to AI.
[00:24:44] And I don’t think people were talking about this today.
[00:24:47] Prince Philip: But that’s a good point. Yeah. I think in Europe that could be now, right now, maybe in the States less, I’m not too familiar with this. Exactly. Europe is suffering energy wise, especially in the EU. We have these terrible laws coming into effect, these directives coming in from the EU commission to try and move us to renewable energy sources.
[00:25:07] Yeah. And A lot of, a lot of subsidies being pumped into solar and wind, and as we know, solar and wind are not good for baseload energy, completely terrible. So there’s an abundance of now solar and wind, but these types of energy are not good. So this is destroying our energy capacity. Plus with the conflict with Ukraine and Russia, where a lot of Europe got it, especially Germany got it energy from Russia, and now it does not get its energy from Russia.
[00:25:33] We know the story about Nord Stream 2 and who blew that up. Anyway, let’s not get into that. Bye. But we know how it’s Europe is shooting itself in the foot right now with energy. We are paying sky high prices for energy right now. And that shouldn’t be the case. We could have so much abundant energy here.
[00:25:50] We have so many good hydro sources, geothermic sources in Serbia alone. I want to get Serbia to be an energy autonomous, independent, sovereign, thanks to its ability for its geothermal. We are sitting in so much geothermal activity. But obviously it costs too much, you need to lower your time preference to access it.
[00:26:07] But if you hook it up, if you side by side it with, let’s say bootstrap it with Bitcoin mining, then we’re talking, but that’s something for the future.
[00:26:15] Preston Pysh: So do all these people in the elected officials in the European Union, do they just have to experience more pain in order to come to this realization?
[00:26:25] Prince Philip: It’s a crazy one because right now nuclear has been shunned, completely shunned, especially in Germany. It seems like the coal lobbyists in Germany are the ones who are pushing the left libtards to say that coal is a better option than nuclear because coal has come back with a vengeance in Germany.
[00:26:44] Look, I don’t have much against coal, but it’s a dirty source of energy. It does pollute the air. You can obviously stick some filters on it and clean it up. But Germany has great potential for nuclear, so does anywhere in the world really, but especially Germany. But what happened in Germany, instead of them going nuclear, which is much cleaner, they’ve gone to coal.
[00:27:02] And this has been driven by a lot of the Germany power structure is that the Greens have some of that are in a coalition. And you would expect that with Greens in the coalition that they wouldn’t go for coal, but apparently that’s the case. So apparently coal is not as bad for the environment as nuclear.
[00:27:19] Preston Pysh: But Phillip, anybody who’s done even the smallest bit of research, you know, two or three layers deep on nuclear, they understand that there are tremendous safety changes that have happened over the last, call it 20 to 30 years on nuclear. But I think it’s such a divisive word. And the public is so superficial in their knowledge and understanding, and there’s no type of campaign that’s being pushed out there to properly educate the populace as to the risks and the benefits of nuclear, that it’s such an easy political smashing of the hammer of like, Oh yeah, we’re not even considering this.
[00:27:56] Right. That’s nice.
[00:27:57] Prince Philip: As you said, that one nuclear triggers a lot of people. It’s the same thing as like, I put up there with abortion, basically, you would get the similar divisions on that. But I guess I don’t know what it is. I don’t know. I’m thinking that they know that I think someone knows that nuclear could save us completely.
[00:28:13] And it’s almost like a free energy source. Yes. It requires investment. Well, once it gets going, it’s beautiful and you do it properly, but look, I think people look, maybe people looking back at Japan in 2000. 10 when Fukushima was a Fukushima, yeah, that was, that was quite a horrible incident, but that was their fault for putting a plant right on the water, like right on top of the Pacific ring.
[00:28:37] Yeah. Yeah. Right in front of where tidal waves can hit it and stuff, but we’re talking Germany, man. We’re talking like almost landlocked country, right in the center. So the only thing that they get is the occasional Hailstorm. , I think. I think nuclear power plants can, can withstand a hailstorm and health.
[00:28:58] You know where this isn’t? I know. I, I think it’s ridiculous that we haven’t gone nuclear. Yeah, I can understand that. Countries like Serbia that don’t have the resources will not go for nuclear because it requires a lot of investments and stuff. That’s why I’m going into geothermal. We have the idea geothermal activity over here.
[00:29:13] We just need the investment and the bitcoin minus to boost trap that, yeah. Geo nuclear was the biggest energy source in France. They started to try and shut that down, but France was a leader in nuclear energy and it’s like that’s not been studied or looked at or appreciated enough. I wish that the model for France could have been replicated in other countries.
[00:29:33] We wouldn’t be in a problem today because our energy bills all over Europe are sky high.
[00:29:38] Preston Pysh: When I heard you say about it not happening in Serbia, I’m just thinking about if you could get a group of politicians that could lay down some type of public partnership with one of these large mining companies to work together in building the infrastructure For the power called nuclear, and then they get some type of fixed rate energy or percentage wise or whatever, based off of the, you know, let’s say they guarantee a price of 4 cents per kilowatt hour, and then maybe it goes within a 5 cent after a certain time frame after that, but there’s something that’s like put in place.
[00:30:15] With the minor, the buildout is enormous from an energy perspective. And then the minors are then cooperating with the state to say, we will soak up at least 30 or 40 percent of this excess within a certain timeframe. And there’s this relationship that is set in place that gives the state this incredible resource with the power.
[00:30:40] And they’re also able to set up and from the miners perspective, like one of their biggest risks is the political risk of being thrown out of a certain region with after they spent all this money building the infrastructure and putting it all in place. And so there’s this opportunity for this win win relationship between the state and miners.
[00:30:59] That they get the duration of guaranteed. We will not kick you out for 20 years or whatever it is. Right.
[00:31:06] Prince Philip: That requires having to go against the short termness of the democratic rules, not just in Serbia, but in most parts of Europe. And they don’t think about the longterm. A nuclear power plant is not, it’s not something that you built in four years, five years in a one election cycle.
[00:31:23] So that’s, that’s where the issue is. I think it will require some private spencers, maybe. Or it will require a good state actor for that to happen. But it can happen. It will happen. There was talk about nuclear here before, but it’s kind of fizzled out. I don’t know what the latest is, basically, but it can happen.
[00:31:42] Preston Pysh: Yeah, but I think you bring up an interesting point. It seems like politics all over the planet are heavily biased towards this short term thinking or this time preference, right? Does Bitcoin change this with time? You know, are we talking 20, 20 years, are we calling it multiple decades before the impact of Bitcoin’s time preference starts rubbing off into even politics or is it something that never penetrates that?
[00:32:08] Prince Philip: I think it will penetrate at some point. The first is the sentiment of Bitcoin. As you see, Bitcoin is, it goes off to its halving site. After it’s halving, it becomes. Scarcer, it stopped the flow, the ratio goes up, the price goes up, and people gets FOMO and stuff, and it taps into the human psyche of sentiment, you know, fear of missing out and all that, and that’s part of what drives adoption, right?
[00:32:31] So that’s always going to be a player. But we have seen recently in the states that Trump, for example, an old former president, and hopefully could be the next president, saying things like, oh, I’m going to protect your self-custody, which is huge. Like the fact that he said self-custody and I’m going to protect your ability to self-custody.
[00:32:53] And I’m going to stop Elizabeth Warren and her goons from touching your bitcoins, plural. I like the way he said bitcoins, plural. That is, that is huge. So obviously they’re realizing that there’s a lot of crypto guys. I mean, I have to say it, but that’s because a lot of them, a lot of people, there’s, I don’t know how many Americans, 50, 70, 70 million Americans that own crypto voters.
[00:33:14] So if you’re not kind to these guys, you’re going to lose a lot of votes. So this is what the Biden administration got to wake up to. Obviously they were not kind to Bitcoin in the last four years. They did the bare, bare minimum. And if anything, they were actually trying to destroy the mining industry in the U S and impose those heavy 30, 20 or 30 percent taxes on, on all mining activity.
[00:33:34] Just follow Pierre Rochard on that. It’s fantastic. He’s great at updating us on that whole shenanigans of what they’re doing. But now, with Trump saying, no, I’m going to protect your bitcoins. Now our mining is actually good for the country. Now we should be the best bitcoin miners. We’re going to mine all the bitcoin in the world.
[00:33:49] We are going to be number one in the bitcoin. That’s fantastic. That’s what it should be like. That’s what every country should be like because it’s the first countries who adopted. So El Salvador is way ahead of everyone. They’re going to be miles ahead of civilization. They’re going to be like, you know, like in that film, June and something like that.
[00:34:05] They’re going to be those guys like running the whole place.
[00:34:08] Preston Pysh: I think this next cycle is really going to highlight how progressive and, and forward thinking BK liaison and another.
[00:34:16] Prince Philip: Exactly. And so he’s lowered his time preference. So he benefits and he’s played the game theories way before anyone. He’s cool.
[00:34:23] He’s awesome. But now with other, when I’m talking about other nations, I think so in America now we’ve had. Trump, we even had RFK jr. We have a lot of other senators. We have Cynthia Loomis. We have Ron Paul kind of, you know, advocating for it, but especially Cynthia Loomis, we have some big players, big political players in America are advocating for Bitcoin.
[00:34:43] And that is huge. And especially coming from Trump, who was all anti crypto. So all us dollar, which I understood his position because he’s just America number one, which is a good position to have, because actually it had, it led to a better foreign policy, but let’s not go there. That’s yes. So now we have American presidents talking about Bitcoin and that’s fantastic.
[00:35:03] So I think that Bitcoin is going to be on candidates platforms in the next 10 years. You’re going to have on average about two election cycles across the world. And you’ll see by the second election cycle, I think Bitcoin is going to appear in a lot of their, on their platforms because they realize that people are becoming aware of the farce that is the current.
[00:35:26] Global financial system of what they will start to learn about fractional reserve lending and banking. They will start to understand what fiat is all about and how it’s created. And they will start to think maybe I should take take sovereignty of my own money and stuff. So they will start to look at people will start to look at gold and property and stuff like that.
[00:35:46] But a lot of people will actually wake up and start to study Bitcoin and realize that that’s the best option. So that’s happening at an incredible rate. I think Right. It’s plateaued a little bit, as in it’s still increasing over the bear market and stuff, but now we haven’t even haven’t seen retail hit the market yet in this run, but we’ve seen institutional money hit the market big time.
[00:36:08] That was thanks to obviously, as everyone, most viewers, listeners here should know that in January, early January, I think it’s January 11th, about 12 or so spot Bitcoin spot ETFs were approved in the United States. And that’s huge when gold stock ETFs were approved in 2004, that five X, the price of gold, the years afterwards with Bitcoin approved spot ETFs that hasn’t shown, we haven’t had a three, we’ve had like a three X now.
[00:36:34] Preston Pysh: No, I think there was a, I want to say it was like around 25 or 35 on the approval.
[00:36:40] Prince Philip: It’s about 35. So it’s definitely two X, but we’re still in the beginning. You know, we’re still right at the beginning of that right now. And we still are Yeah, I think, well, basically that institutional adoption, that was a big part of institutional adoption is bot ETFs coming, coming in.
[00:36:56] I don’t agree with it. It’s not Bitcoin. It’s obviously you’re not getting exposed, you’re just getting exposure to the thing, but not actually buying the thing, which is something that I don’t support. But in terms of gaining traction and people becoming aware and also institutions that weren’t able to buy the thing before can now do it because they’re able to buy ECF star financial products in the old traditional financial world, then that’s actually bringing a lot of money into Bitcoin.
[00:37:21] It’s going to drive the price up. Yeah, I think that’s going to, that’s going to then lead to a huge. Supply constraint shock soon because we all know that Bitcoin had a hard being on the 20th of April. I hope it was. I don’t think it was 2040. It was a 2140 depending what time zone you’re in, but that led to being for from 900 coins being produced every day to 450.
[00:37:44] And now these ETFs are sucking up about two, three or 4, 000 coins a day. So the mass is suggesting that there’s going to be a huge supply shock soon. And as Samson says it, we’re going to get the Omega candle or as Adam back, you know, the Godzilla candle or something, or as a Max Keiser says, the gold candle or something like that.
[00:38:03] But, and that’s when retail comes in and stuff, but yeah, it’s going to be interesting that we’re going to see going back to time preference, as I think what people will start to, I have now load my time preference after learning and studying about Bitcoin able to put my wealth away in something that is indestructible, that has all the properties of money.
[00:38:24] It’s durable, it’s portable, it’s fungible. It’s most importantly scarce, I think. And it’s their acceptability now is something that it’s had 14, 15 years of a track record. Now you can say that it’s actually, it’s, it’s viable. It’s there. So it takes all those boxes, whereas gold only takes a few of those boxes.
[00:38:43] Obviously the gold is not very divisible. Very, very, very durable, but portability is a huge issue with gold. And that’s what led gold standards ultimately lead to a Fiat standard. So Fiat, obviously not scarce, obviously, but obviously very, not durable. I don’t think very durable, but very, very portable and very divisible.
[00:39:02] But when it comes to scarcity, terrible, and that’s what’s killing us all. You know, that’s what’s giving creating the cost of living crisis because they can’t stop printing that. So I think people are going to wake up to this, and I’ve woken up to it, and I think it’s something that we do. We can store our wealth in something that they can’t take away from.
[00:39:17] They can look at it, they can see it, because it’s there. Your pseudonymous, your keys are kind of open to the public, right? But they can’t do anything yet. They’ve got to come and take it away from you with a bloody big wrench. But you have ways of mitigating that, and you have ways of doing What’s it called?
[00:39:30] Sorry, I’m drawing a blank. When two more signatures, multi sig. Oh, multi sig, yeah. That’s the word, multi sig and stuff like that. But just so everyone’s aware, I kind of lost my Bitcoin the other day. I was out on a boat and I’ve lost it all, so I got to start from scratch. But I know very well that I’m stacking again.
[00:39:45] I have very little, but I know very well that even if I stack now, we are still super, super early. So, yeah.
[00:39:51] Preston Pysh: I love it. Okay, this question is going to change gears a little bit, but this was for when I’m coming up with questions. This was my favorite one to ask you. What is the best part and the worst part of being a prince?
[00:40:04] For people that are not seeing the YouTube feed, Princeville of Space is like, do I have to answer this? Start off with the best part.
[00:40:13] Prince Philip: The best part. You know, it’s not easy being a prince. People think it’s easy, but hey, look, I’m going to try. I’m going to play a victim over here.
[00:40:21] This is not a very Bitcoin thing to do. But look, this is also why we all should be Bitcoin is the best thing about being a prince. It can also be the worst thing about being a prince. Amen. Okay. My family is that I’m from the Kara Georgievich dynasty. Our dynasty was born from Kara Georgia, who led the first revolution uprising, I should say.
[00:40:40] I don’t like the word revolution. That’s a communist word. I think we started an uprising against the Ottoman empire in 1804. And Serbia was on the Ottoman empire, tyrannical rule. We were slaves to them essentially for four centuries, for about three, 400 years, got a Georgia in 1804 was an affluent pig farmer, like livestock merchants, and in the Somalia region, which is very close to Belgrade.
[00:41:05] And he gathered him and some other Serbs, got together in a meeting in Cvetinje, which is the 15th, 14th, they had the meeting on the 14th of February, 1804, where they decided that they would start the uprising against the Ottoman Empire. He was actually chosen. He wasn’t the first or third or second elected.
[00:41:25] He was a third elected, but they went for him because the first elected and second elected said they had some conflicting interests this and that. I’m not going to get into the details, but it was chosen that Kara Georgia would lead the army to uprise against the Ottomans because of his, let’s say he was quite a base individual.
[00:41:41] He was over two meters tall. Kara Georgia means black George in Turkish. He was a good decision maker. He would make harsh decisions and stuff. So he had the right makeup for a good general in this situation where the odds were stacked up against us. But he managed to lead an uprising and gather enough strength that it liberated Serbia out of Ottoman rule.
[00:42:02] And then you could see in the map and the old maps of Europe that the Ottoman Empire with big like blob over most of Southeastern Europe, then in 1804, in the middle of that sea of Ottoman Empire, this little boop, Serbia just appears out of there. That’s Karadjordje and leading the uprising. Then that kind of failed after a while, and then there was a second uprising by the Obrenovic dynasty.
[00:42:25] And then that properly secured Serbia’s independence from the Ottoman Empire. We were a principality under the Ottoman Empire, but what led after that is that there was two competing dynasties, which was the Obrenovic and the Karadjordjevic dynasty. Banovich were, by the end of the century, by 1902, there was a a rego side.
[00:42:43] They were killed off because they weren’t playing well. People blame that on the Kara George riches, but that’s not true. But king Peter at first was then put to power again. Oh, no. Again, he was put to power in 1903, and he was, anyway, this is going to history. What, what I’m trying to say is that we as a family, we led, we were the leaders of the country.
[00:43:03] We established democracies. I hate to say it, but we established a democracy that worked. It was actually more of a like a constitutional monarchy, but with more rights to the monarchy than to the other sides to constitute to democracy. So it was like a bit of an absolute monarchy and democratic rule at the same time.
[00:43:20] This then led to the creation of Yugoslavia because Yugoslavia, King Alexander, King Peter’s first son created Yugoslavia as a way to protect the region against the growing threat of the Austro Hungarians. And basically this was during the time when Yugoslavia, Serbia, the monarchies were creating a lot of wealth and it was a very good environment for asset creation.
[00:43:44] Money was backed by gold and people were making lives for themselves and things were more or less stable apart from times in the First World War and the Second World War. But this is pre First World War. Post first world war and now pre second world war. And we had, I said, accumulated, we had done a lot of business.
[00:43:59] We own some gold mines. We did a lot of trade here and there, and we built a lot of properties and we had palaces that my great grandfather built here in Belgrade. And we had the palace in downtown and stuff that he gifted to the state, to the people of Serbia and stuff like that. And this was all done through private money, but we had good, strong, private property rights.
[00:44:18] That’s what’s really important is the monarchy is all about having strong private property rights. What then happened, Second World War, is after Second World War, it was that Socialism, Communism came about, and they had very poor, or little, or nothing, no property rights, and everything was taken away from us, confiscated, even to this day, it’s still confiscated.
[00:44:38] So, had I been born pre Second World War, I would have had a lot, now born post Second World War, I have nothing. So, that’s the thing, I think there’s some princes out there, or royal families. I’m better, I say not better off, but they obviously have a little bit more comfort, a bit more luxury, they are part of the system, they have properties that they’ve been inherited, because that’s how a good royal family monarchy is, how a descendancy, how succession works, is you look after your property for your sons and all that.
[00:45:07] And when it came to the Cary George’s family, there was nothing handed over to me, so I’ve got to fight for this again. But that’s why maybe I became a Bitcoiner, and that’s maybe the good, a good and bad thing that turned me into someone who is a staunch supporter and advocate for private property rights.
[00:45:24] Yeah. A freedom fighter. And that’s why Bitcoin resonated so much for me because As we know very well that Bitcoin is an example of property that it’s almost impossible. It’s that you can take that you can’t take away with no dispute. When you buy Bitcoin, you’re buying something that you can’t that it’s indisputably yours.
[00:45:43] When you’re buying land, you can go back and you can argue with someone that like two, three centuries ago, this line used to belong to X or that nation used to be blah, blah, blah. And you can bring all this sort of stuff up. But when it comes to Bitcoin, No, the definition of private property of rights and of ownership, I should say, is much more clear when it comes to Bitcoin.
[00:46:05] So this is, and I think that will help with future arbitrary processes and law processes that I think that Bitcoin is going to wake up a lot of people to what the value is of private property. And I think that’s what the good thing and bad thing about being a prince is in my position. That’s me and Philip as being a prince.
[00:46:23] That I, I was born with, I essentially not, okay, I was born in the United States, I don’t know if people know this. My family, not too wealthy, but you know, they had, you know, we were, went to decent schools and all that, and they gave us a decent life. My parents separated, I went to live in Spain with my mother, she’s a Brazilian princess.
[00:46:40] But then my father remarried to some random Greek, and we had to move to London to be with him. Went to a boarding school, and then went to university, and then all of a sudden, Serbia, we were allowed to go back to Yugoslavia in 2001, after Milosevic got ousted. But we were allowed to then live in the palace, but the palace is still owned by the state, still confiscated by the state.
[00:47:00] Now, this is where it gets Debatable where it’s supposed to be owned by the people, it should be owned by the family. I mean, I’m obviously for the, for the, on, on the camp that it should be owned by the family. And we should be able to do what we please with it. But no way am I going to sell it away just to get money and leave the country.
[00:47:16] No, I’m fully invested in this country. I will find ways of monetizing that property or figuring out ways of restoring it. And he has a lot of work that needs to be done, but doing so, I don’t know, I’m going with this conversation, but yeah. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that in my position, it’s great being a prince.
[00:47:32] You get a lot of attention, you have, and you have a spotlight. And if I think, I hope I have good intent, I have good morals. And if I have good morals and maybe I can use that to help other people. But then I guess if you’re not, if you’re a bad actor, if you’re spoiled or whatever, and then I’m going to say that maybe there’s disadvantages of being a prince is that you, that you get attention and you obviously in a fiat world with all the fiat.
[00:47:54] Perverse incentives that can be that can actually go negative. And you end up just being one of these instant gratification players and all that sort of stuff.
[00:48:02] Preston Pysh: You know, I interview a lot of people and I’ve heard through the years from people that are just ultra successful. They say to me, Preston, it’s not about the destination.
[00:48:11] It’s about the journey and it’s about the, the trend of that journey. And when I hear your story and I hear what you’re explaining, I’m thinking to myself. What an incredible place to be, to be able to kind of point the attention. You’re talking about the attention that naturally comes with the position, but also being so based, based on your background and what, what your family has experienced through all of this.
[00:48:38] To be able to shine a light on property rights and to shine a light on what real money is and how it benefits humanity. And you wouldn’t have that. You wouldn’t have that opportunity without the hardship that the family has experienced through everything that was kind of taken away through the years in the past and going through socialism and all these things that the hardships that were endured.
[00:49:02] And it’s almost like if you were going to play a video game. And the, you could start off with like all these skills and it was just kind of easy to go through the whole game and you just completed it. It’s like you got to the end and it was like, well, there was no journey because the journey was just like really simple when you could just play it and just win.
[00:49:20] And it wasn’t hard, right?
[00:49:22] Prince Philip: Games like Zelda did so well. Yeah. Super Mario, because they were proper journeys. They were proper journeys. The hero’s journey, right? Hero’s journey. Yeah, exactly. I don’t know. I love it. I’m not saying that I’m a hero. I’m saying that it’s tough. We are all of us. Yeah. You, me, all those Bitcoiners, even non coiners, people who are just aware, non-coiners or pre coiners who are just aware of what’s going on out there.
[00:49:44] But the number one issue that we are all facing over here is Invasion and demolishment, I guess, is the word of private property, right? Is that it seems to be happening at an accelerated rates over the last 70 years since the Second World War. Some places more than other places. And I think even owning private property now in some places what you call free comes with a lot of what’s the word?
[00:50:08] Well, it’s not really yours if you’re if it’s taxed inside out. Owning land, for example, even in the States, I say only land in places in Britain. I don’t own land here one day, maybe, but it comes with all these taxes that you have to, we’re not just buying it or selling it, but maintaining it and all the duties and they have to do with that land.
[00:50:29] There’s a, it can’t just be yours. And this is where Bitcoin fixes that. And I was like, how can that help then with other forms of ownership? And I think it can, because it brings up this shines a spotlight on the, on how arbitrary ownership can actually be. And I think that’s the loss process. It’s something that’s been destroyed.
[00:50:50] I mean, I would say ever since the first world war, I think in the monarchical years, people would say, oh yeah, okay, I, I would say that in the monarchical years of Europe, you would have better court systems, cheaper, that’s the most important thing is cheaper court systems in those countries that had kings that understood that if they would want to hold on to that power for longer, they would make sure that their common man was able to defend themselves.
[00:51:17] as well as the elite. And what we have now, so post first world war, that was what happened during the first world war and afterwards is the destruction of monarchies and the introduction of democratic republicisms, is that a law system became much more complex. And when they become complex, they become more expensive when they become more expensive than the common man finds it hard to defend themselves.
[00:51:43] So then when you then introduce a system of short termism, like of election cycles to these complex law systems, you’re going to have systems where invested interests of those who have the elite will be able to pump money into maintaining their power in those short election cycles, and they will dominate the law process.
[00:52:05] Whereas those who don’t have, the common man, will find it very difficult to have a say and defend his land, property, rights, and all that. And this is what’s been destroyed away. And I think part of this is what you see with land, with ownership, with rights and all that, and that’s why we live right now in a very divided world.
[00:52:25] One way of explaining it is also the Cantillon effect as well.
[00:52:28] I think that’s why we’re making it very The Cantillon effect, I should say, the Cantillon. Cantillon is he was a French economist, 1840s or 50s, and he noticed that this economic phenomena Of that those who are closer to the money printer that those elites who are closer to the wealth of creation wealth creation money printing favorite better than those who are further away from it.
[00:52:51] Of course, that makes sense. But what happens is that those who are close to the money printer get money when it’s fresh at the lower interest rate and able to reinvest it. And they’re told to rent to obviously use it to reinvest in the economy. And Keynes would say, yeah, trickle down in economics. You should, you know, you should practice that, but that doesn’t work.
[00:53:10] Instead, what they do is they actually buy real assets. So they’ll buy property, gold, and now Bitcoin, maybe. So when that, when we go down further down further on the food chain, when it gets to the common man, he can’t borrow money at the same rate as those big elite, he has to borrow at credit card rates, which is like 20 percent or something, which is ridiculous.
[00:53:28] Not only is money cheaper, more expensive to borrow then, but it is also inflation has taken a more of a hold since that money was first created from that when the elite actually was given that money. So basically that actually leads to the inequalities that we have today. That added, I’d say, what’s the word, multiplied?
[00:53:49] exacerbated by the destruction and not destruction, but the, the, the further complexity of our law systems has meant that the common man has really missed out over the last century and is suffering big time. But you know, apparently we’re okay with all these distractions, third world war, COVID, BT, bird flu, bird flu, all that stuff, all of the above, basically conflicts here and there.
[00:54:15] That’s no, and what the real issue is that the real economy. And this is what happened during COVID, is that the real economy, and I think you can be very accentuated. What happened over the last hundred years can be accentuated. What happened in COVID is that that power grab was that the mom and dad shops, the brick and mortar shops, were the ones who were told to shut down.
[00:54:34] Whereas the big shops. The big, big companies, you’re talking your Facebooks, your Amazons, your Washington, I’m not, Facebook’s not a good example because they will function no matter what. Your Amazons, your Walmarts and things like that, and we’re all able to function properly, continue. But whereas your mom and dad’s shop, your brick and mortar, where we’re told to go home, close their shops.
[00:54:55] given some stimulus, but that stimulus obviously was just a distraction. And those, that real economy, that brick and mortar economy absolutely got leveled, got destroyed. So we had this K shaped recovery. And this happens all the time, destruction of wealth. And then the elite wealth, the ones who have the ones who in control, the ones close to the money printer, the ones who actually have better rates.
[00:55:18] All that continued to grow higher and we saw a huge expansion of wealth post COVID. And it’s only going to happen again. I don’t know when, but it’s going to happen again. And it’s kind of, I mean, now we’re, I don’t know what the next thing is. What is the next thing right now? World War III. I don’t know.
[00:55:34] Bird flu. You said bird flu, yeah. But they tried bird flu in 2002 or 2009 they tried bird flu?
[00:55:43] Preston Pysh: I have no idea, but it they need something to blame. They need something to blame because financially the numbers that are brewing into the fall here are, they’re going to need something. Right.
[00:55:56] Prince Philip: In America is that the labor markets there are absolutely nuts.
[00:56:01] And what they’re telling you is one is not what is actually really happening. You follow people like, I don’t know if you follow people at Edward Dowd, Edward Dowd, he’s not a bit corner yet, but he should be. He is pointed out that there has been Increased number of disabilities ever since something was introduced in 2021.
[00:56:20] And so Biden’s comes into power 20, okay. He voted in late 2020. He comes into power 17th or whatever, 19th of January, 2021. And he inherits COVID economy where everyone’s been told to go home and unemployment is at record highs. Then obviously he opens the markets up and he thinks he can take the, not the blame, the what’s the word, the credit for having all these jobs come back.
[00:56:44] But no, because he’s just inherited unemployment through lockdowns. But then what has happened is that unemployment hasn’t actually reached back to the peaks of pre COVID to some margin. And not only that, the quality of employment is terrible. You have people on one or two or three jobs. Making absolute nothing and not being able to make ends meet.
[00:57:05] Also with cost of living crisis, thanks to all the quantitative easing money printing happening. But what I’m saying is that gap, why is that gap? A lot of disabilities that have come about, and this was thanks to some things that were mandated in 2021, which is something that we should really look into and make some noise about.
[00:57:21] Preston Pysh: Prince Philip, thank you so much for making time and coming on and your response to the one question that I wanted to say this I think what speaks volumes about you and what I’ve seen from interacting with you in person And I just walk away from it every time and I’m just saying he has so much humility for a person who just lives this really interesting life.
[00:57:43] And I just can’t thank you enough for coming on, sharing your stories and just being just very candid with the audience and putting it all out there and just your contributions to the Bitcoin community are just deeply appreciated by everybody who’s ever interacted with you. And you’re just. Like such an awesome person in this space.
[00:58:01] And I love calling you a friend. I also wanted to throw this out there. You and I had thrown around the idea of maybe doing something in Belgrade, in Serbia at the end of August. I don’t know if you’re still inclined.
[00:58:13] Prince Philip: No, I was. I think we should do something. Thank you so much for those kind words. Really?
[00:58:18] No, it means a lot to me. Like, like to say that being a Bitcoin in Serbia is not easy. I think Serbia has a lot to offer Bitcoin and Bitcoin has a lot to offer to Serbia.
[00:58:28] Preston Pysh: Yeah.
[00:58:29] Prince Philip: We have a lot of technical minds here, a lot of quantitative minds here, which is great. But the current sentiment here is that it’s very cash orientated.
[00:58:37] Cash, cash is king. And when Bitcoin comes, when people are exposed to Bitcoin, they think, oh, yes, it’s just some digital thing created by the KGB or the MI6 or the NSA and stuff, but obviously they haven’t done their homework yet. So that, you know, that physical, you don’t have that physical ownership, and that’s what Serbs like, is that physical ownership.
[00:58:57] And that’s, I like that. That’s good. But that’s one, almost, so they’re one step away, a lot of Serbs from understanding Bitcoin. So whenever I tweet or share anything about Bitcoin, there’s a lot of loud voices and you think Bitcoin Twitter can be harsh? Serbian Twitter, that’s another, that’s another level.
[00:59:13] Yeah. So going to what you were saying afterwards is yeah, I think post Riga, you should do something. Yeah. I think we should definitely do something here in Belgrade.
[00:59:21] Preston Pysh: If people are interested in, they’re hearing this after the rega, there’s a rega event, like I think the third week of August and then maybe we’ll do the last weekend of August.
[00:59:30] Prince Philip: Yeah. So then afterwards, maybe on the 27th, 28th, 29th of August, we can do something here in Belgrade. We have a hub in Belgrade, a Bitcoin only hub that was opened up a year and a half ago. So thanks to John’s Barry, I think that’s how to pronounce his name who works for peak shift. His company have paying for the rent of a space.
[00:59:48] It’s like an apartment. Location on two levels here in the center of Belgrade, top location, and it’s called Hub 21. It’s a co working space that’s also open for meetups, for lectures, for presentations, for also anything Bitcoin related really. And we can meet there. And also I think we’re going to maybe make a meeting happen in the palace as well.
[01:00:12] At the moment, as you can see behind me, it doesn’t look very palatial. I still live in a flat downtown, but hopefully I am moving into the palace as soon. That’s another story that we can talk about. Maybe, maybe, maybe in Belgrade. Yeah, maybe in Belgrade. But yes, let’s make some, let’s make something happen here.
[01:00:28] Preston Pysh: I love it. Okay. So if people are hearing that you’re in the area of Serbia, Belgrade, and you want to try to go to this, we’re going to set something up end of August. Stay tuned.
[01:00:37] Prince Philip: Also. Yeah. Sorry. One more thing is maybe we’re talking about having a one day conference, maybe in October 16th. Oh, okay. In Serbia as well.
[01:00:45] Okay. Yeah.
[01:00:46] Preston Pysh: Awesome.
[01:00:46] Prince Philip: So it’s still very early stages.
[01:00:48] Preston Pysh: Stay tuned.
[01:00:50] Prince Philip, thank you so much for your time. This was such a pleasure and really enjoyed the chat.
[01:00:56] Prince Philip: Preston, the pleasure was mine too. Thank you very much.
[01:00:58] Outro: Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes to access our show notes.
[01:01:09] Transcripts or courses go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network, written permission mustbe granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.
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