[00:03:45] Kelly Estes: I cannot tell you how many times we said, what are we doing? But then at the end, when we got it where we wanted it, we realized that and really I should let Brian talk to this part of it, but it was the story that was in his head and in his heart. It was what he wanted to tell.

[00:04:01] I just helped him tell it. That was my role in this process. And he was happy with it. So to me, it really didn’t matter what people said. He did what he want, he did what he, where his conscience led him. And so to me, that’s always a good sign that you did a good job. And I’m humbled that people have given it such a great reception.

[00:04:21] And I’m glad it helped people because that was the goal, and it’s not really the positive reviews. It’s the idea that while this helped me and that was really What we wanted to do was make an educational film to help people. So I’ll let Brian speak to the other part of that.

[00:04:37] Brian Estes: Preston I read the book Thank God for Bitcoin four years ago And you know Which is the Christian view of money and morality and Bitcoin and how it fits in and I just was curious on what the other Religions said and so I dove into those and after I finished satisfying my curiosity, I had this voice inside me, like you need to write a book or tell the story or make a movie and I’ve never written a book.

[00:05:00] I’m terrible at telling stories. Never made a movie. And so I just kind of ignored it. And then the voice got getting louder and louder and louder. And finally, I went to Kelly Kelly has her master’s degree in writing. She’s an education teacher. She knows how to tell a story. And I asked her, like. And you helped me get what’s in here out.

[00:05:19] So, I get quiet that voice. And so we hired an Emmy nominated filmmaker and we started this path two years ago to tell the story that was in my head and my heart and what’s in the film is what was in there. So to answer your question, like, yeah, I don’t care about the reviews. I just wanted to shut the voice up.

[00:05:38] Preston Pysh: That’s why it’s so good. That’s why it’s so good. Yeah.

[00:05:42] Kelly Estes: Worst student ever. Worst, worst student.

[00:05:46] Preston Pysh: That hasn’t changed.

[00:05:46] Kelly Estes: Yeah, he did not want to listen to me at all.

[00:05:49] Preston Pysh: Oh my god. Yeah, one of the comments to the point that you were talking about how you were incorporating other religious points of view in this, I read one comment and I was trying to find it in preparation for the show, but there’s so many comments on this movie, I wasn’t able to find it again.

[00:06:04] The person had said, I am an atheist and I absolutely love this movie. Which I thought was pretty incredible because you would think that they would have some type of spin or some type of bias. And I think it’s kudos to you guys to really kind of dig into all the world’s religions, tie it back to why it what’s being taught in all these different religions, tie back to fundamental principles of just being great human beings and how that’s tied to Bitcoin.

[00:06:30] And I think anybody that takes the time to sit down and watch this is going to kind of walk away with. Oh my God. Like this is really important as an example, and I’m talking way too much here. I need to get it over to you guys, but I sent this off to my parents to watch. And after it was over, my dad wrote me, he’s just like, wow, I finally like really understand why you’re so passionate about this as if I hadn’t been in his ear for like literally years, he watches your movie and it was almost like this moment for him to be like, I finally understand why my son is just like enamored by this Bitcoin thing.

[00:07:05] But yeah, let’s start with the opening of the movie because I personally like how you started off the story with this Brady Bunch theme. So tell us why you started it this way and what the overarching theme of that really kind of has to do with Bitcoin and your message.

[00:07:22] Brian Estes: Yeah, so we wanted to go back to 1971 when the Brady Bunch was around, and that’s when our money wasn’t broken yet.

[00:07:29] So that was when the U. S. was on a gold standard. And what happened in 1971 was Nixon took the U. S. off the gold standard. And so from that point forward over the last 53 years, Our money hasn’t been backed by anything. And so that’s called fiat. And fiat means by decree. And so the government says this money is worth a dollar because we say it’s worth a dollar.

[00:07:51] But before that, our money was backed by gold and silver. And so we wanted to see, just show people, like, remember what life was like when we were on a gold standard. And you could have one spouse working, one spouse staying at home, raising six kids, you Have a maid and a dog and, off one salary.

[00:08:11] And if you compare that to today, you have both parents working and they can barely afford one kid. And so, like, why is it so different in the last 53 years? And if you trace it back, It all goes back to what happened in 1971. So that’s how we wanted to start the movie. If you weren’t around back then, or you don’t remember that, it’s just a little refresher.

[00:08:33] This is what life used to be like.

[00:08:34] Preston Pysh: You don’t even think about how absurd that is today with, that many kids, the dad’s the only one working, right? You have a maid and like all of these things was plausible, plausible back then. And now it’s just like so absurd. Well, it was normal. It was normal.

[00:08:50] Brian Estes: Yeah. If you look pre 1971. The average woman in the United States at six babies today. It’s less than two. It’s really changed. And the reason, they’re not having as many kids is because they can’t afford it.

[00:09:03] Kelly Estes: And one of the reasons, one of the reasons.

[00:09:05] Preston Pysh: Yeah. It’s crazy that people don’t look to money being the source of it.

[00:09:10] They just, I think a lot of them are just pointing at, it’s politics or this policy led to this, but it’s almost like, ah, yeah, I’m sure the money’s broke, but that’s not like the fundamental, And so trying to tell that story, Kelly, I’m curious when you were working with Brian, trying to extract all these ideas out of his head, what did that process look like early on?

[00:09:29] Like, how did you guys go through that? And the trials and tribulations, I guess.

[00:09:33] Kelly Estes: Okay. So I treated him like I do any of my students who are wanting to write a personal narrative, which is telling their story. And so I said, just give me. Everything you think you might want to say everything that you think we need to include in here.

[00:09:48] And then let me see if I can’t find a thread to pull through the narrative to unite each part. And so never ask somebody who has been studying something for 10 years include everything they know, because it was ridiculous. It was relentless. But it was all over the place too, because talk about mining, you could talk about FUD, you could talk about regulation, you can, there are so many topics.

[00:10:15] And so I said, Brian, at some point we’re going to have to cut some things out and figure out what path we’re going to take the reader on. Look at, there it is. That’s my little mistake there, the reader. I’m so used to saying grab

[00:10:28] your reader by the hand and take them through your story. But here you have to grab the viewer by the hand.

[00:10:34] And guide them down your thought process path and so that was really hard for him and I’m not bragging about him. I’m just stating a fact about him. He knows so much just inordinate amounts of information about this because. Honestly, he’s a little obsessed.

[00:10:51] Preston Pysh: Well, yeah, we’re all psychopaths. That’s that’s all.

[00:10:55] Kelly Estes: Yeah. And he for entertainment, he listens to podcasts. He reads, he learns about every facet of Bitcoin and blockchain that he can. So it was tough to narrow it down to the most important parts.

[00:11:10] Preston Pysh: I’m curious of those themes. I’m curious what Brian’s favorite theme in the movie is, and then I’m curious what your favorite theme is.

[00:11:17] Kelly Estes: It’d be fun Preston, if I tell you what his favorite one is.

[00:11:21] Preston Pysh: Oh yes, I like this.

[00:11:23] Let’s see how, let’s see how accurate you are.

[00:11:25] Kelly Estes: A little newlywed game. Oh my goodness.

[00:11:27] Preston Pysh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s do it.

[00:11:28] Kelly Estes: Long time married game. Okay. So Brian, I’m going to guess that your favorite part in the whole movie is the anti war.

[00:11:37] Brian Estes: That’s right.

[00:11:37] Kelly Estes: Yeah.

[00:11:38] Preston Pysh: Okay. And Brian, what do you think hers is?

[00:11:40] Brian Estes: Kelly’s favorites is when Natalie talks about millennials and how they’ve been basically rug pulled because the financial system has really not treated them very well. And I think that’s probably the most impactful part.

[00:11:56] Preston Pysh: You better tell the truth. Is he right?

[00:11:58] Kelly Estes: Yep. He’s right.

[00:11:59] Preston Pysh: All right.

[00:12:00] Kelly Estes: He gets me.

[00:12:00] Preston Pysh: You guys know each other. Look at you two. I love it.

[00:12:05] Kelly Estes: Every time I watch that, I just. I get a little teary and it slays me. It just like it was a gut punch to hear Natalie explain how millennials feel about the financial system that they’ve inherited. Millennials get a bad rap.

[00:12:23] People are always sort of bad mouthing them and saying whatever they want to say, but people don’t ever stop to think that they are the first generation that will not be better off than the one before them and how that drives emotion, which drives decisions. And when she said that, it just made me reevaluate any thoughts I’ve ever had about how people make choices in their lives for experience, because They need to have experiences because their money doesn’t allow them to purchase things.

[00:12:55] Preston Pysh: Yeah.

[00:12:55] Kelly Estes: Right. So of course they might travel more. They can’t afford a house.

[00:12:59] Preston Pysh: Yeah. There’s like barely any type of net that they’re making because of the system. Yeah. And then they can’t store it. And even if they could, it’d be such a pittance that it just doesn’t really make a difference. And yeah, it puts this dynamic.

[00:13:10] That’s so easy because you jumped 20 years of a generation in front of them. And it was just a totally different setup for them. And so they’re looking at this younger generation and you guys do such an amazing job telling the story. And by the way, Natalie crushed this, right? She crushed this.

[00:13:27] Kelly Estes: Amen to that. She was awesome. I can’t thank her enough for.

[00:13:32] Brian Estes: Yeah. Our filmmaker was pushing us to have someone that was like a movie star be the narrator. And we kept pushing her like, we want Natalie, we want Natalie. And yeah, and finally we just called Natalie up and said, Hey, are you available at these dates?

[00:13:45] Let’s get in here and record. Yeah. And we just kind of made the decision.

[00:13:49] Preston Pysh: So my favorite part was Natalie is Alice in the middle of the Brady Bunch opening. Yeah.

[00:13:54] Kelly Estes: That was Brian’s idea. It was great. He wanted, it was fun.

[00:13:59] Preston Pysh: Well, the funny thing for me is just, you guys know Natalie. I know Natalie. She’s just so authentic, right?

[00:14:05] She’s just such an authentic person. And a lot of people watch her show and they, they feel like they know her. I can tell you folks, Natalie in person and who she is behind the scenes is exactly who you think she is in real life. She is just so authentic and just she’s searching for the truth like all the rest of us, right?

[00:14:22] It’s just, yeah, I don’t know. I was really happy to see her, narrating the movie and she just did a phenomenal job.

[00:14:27] Brian Estes: We were super happy to have her. We were glad she said yes.

[00:14:30] Kelly Estes: I know. She was a get. She was a big get for us. So we were thrilled.

[00:14:35] Preston Pysh: Brian, let’s talk about the war piece. That was your favorite part.

[00:14:39] I obviously have a huge bias on this one as well, but from your point of view, why was this your favorite part to kind of discuss in the movie?

[00:14:47] Brian Estes: Yeah. So just to give people a little history over the last 50 years, we’ve had this endless Stream of wars, right? And the way it used to be is that a government would fund war through its gold reserves.

[00:15:00] Like, they would pay for their soldiers and their armies and their air force to, their treasury, inside the government. And if they ran out of money, they would borrow the money through war bonds. From their citizens and they don’t do that anymore. So, since we went off the gold standard in 1971, the government just prints the money to fund the war.

[00:15:20] And so now we have these endless wars that just last forever. And so my thought process is that if the world was on a Bitcoin standard. And you can’t print Bitcoin. That means if you want to have a war, you would have to go to your citizens and borrow their Bitcoin from them. And they’re not going to lend the government their Bitcoin to go kill people.

[00:15:40] And so all of a sudden the governments can’t afford war. And so that’s the basic point of the movie is that, being on Bitcoin standard actually will bring us peace. And when hope around the world, and we will be able to defund the military industrial complex. And the reason that’s important to me is both of our parents were military Kelly’s stepdad was a colonel in the army.

[00:16:03] Her dad was a colonel in the air force. Her dad was in the army. My dad was in the air force. We grew up, in military bases around the world. Your viewers can’t see this, but I’ve been in a wheelchair for 40 years. I was in a car wreck when I was 16 and left my legs paralyzed. So I know what it’s like to have to deal with a body that’s not fully functional.

[00:16:26] And when I see our soldiers come back injured, paralyzed, Missing arms or limbs or mutilated. It’s like someone’s stabbing me in the heart when I see that because I know these, a lot of these wars are unnecessary and the reason we had them is because we were able to print money. And so 1 of my primary purposes in life is to be an activist.

[00:16:47] To get the governments off printing money, get on a Bitcoin standard, defund the wars, and defund the military industrial complex, and save lives. And I think if we could do that, we could have a thousand years of peace. Oh my god, I love this. As somebody that’s served in combat, yeah, I just, that’s what we wanted to do in the movie.

[00:17:07] Here’s the funny part, I thought we had already interviewed you. And I was going through everything. I was, where’s Preston’s interview? And they’re like, well, we never interviewed him. And I like, P, he’s like, Preston, like, you need to get down to Florida. We need to interview you right away. And I’m like, come down and let us interview you.

[00:17:21] And, you told your story, which was very powerful in the movie.

[00:17:25] Preston Pysh: What people don’t realize is I had about 20 takes and I probably two takes me. I’m not the best at the live stuff.

[00:17:32] Brian Estes: Retired 101st airborne Apache helicopter pilot. You saw firsthand what printing money does.

[00:17:39] Preston Pysh: And you know what? Bobby was in this section of the movie as well. Bobby Kennedy was in this section and I was super impressed with his comments as well.

[00:17:47] And you talk about this deep state and you talk about, well, he talked about the deep state and he’s talking about this just perverted incentive structure. Of printing and really masking how everything’s being paid for. Cause if you push the bill out five years into the future through this, I’m going to say slow, but I guess it’s a pretty aggressive debasement process.

[00:18:08] And I think this is a key point when the debasement’s happening relative to all the other currencies, it almost feels like it’s not happening because if they debase 10 percent in a year here in the United States. The Euro gets stronger, the yen gets stronger, and then they respond in kind and then they debase their fiat.

[00:18:22] And so relative to the other currencies, it appears to the populace like nothing’s happening or like the money’s not being debased because they’re always comparing it to another fiat and none of them are backed. And so I thought Bobby Kennedy did an amazing job talking about this along some of the other guests.

[00:18:39] And it just really kind of shines this flashlight on this Thing war that is just kind of lost on everybody. Oh, it’s very frustrating for me personally, but sorry to keep going on Kelly. Yeah,

[00:18:50] Kelly Estes: I think you’ll like this. My daughter was, our daughter was watching with us as we were editing. It was the very last cut.

[00:18:57] We had to send our final edits to our filmmaker and she watched Kennedy talk about the repercussions of all the proxy wars that the United States is engaged in. And if you think about it, Samantha is a Gen Z. She hasn’t known war in her lifetime other than what she saw very little of us over, after 9 11 in Afghanistan.

[00:19:25] But she’s 25. She’s too young to really remember that. And I looked over at her. She was sitting on my left. And she was riveted to what he was saying and you could just see the wheels turning and then she looks over at me and she has her eyes are watering and she was like, oh, my God, mom, I said, right, the things that we are seeing today.

[00:19:49] You can trace it all the way back and that happens with all these wars. And I think she really understood what he was saying and what that means for our role as the United States in some of these wars in other countries and how printing money allows for those kinds of So it was good for me to see that because I think a lot of Gen Z and younger don’t know what war really is like.

[00:20:14] Preston Pysh: That was the comment my dad said to me when he wrote me after watching it was just like, wow, I finally see why the war piece is so important to you and why, how it’s being funded. Like it just is so clear to me now after seeing, and this is another thing guys, the visuals and the graphics that go with the movie.

[00:20:31] Help illustrate it so well, because I mean, we can sit here and have a conversation. Maybe somebody’s driving the work and they’re hearing us talk about it. But when you’re hearing a narrative, you’re hearing an interview and you’re having these graphics that are helping illustrate what you’re talking about, it’s just so much more profound.

[00:20:47] And I just from my personal experience with my family, I’ve been talking to them about this stuff for years. And it was kind of like, it just finally clicked because they were able to see it and hear it from a different lens or point of view. So kudos.

[00:20:59] Brian Estes: Yeah, we did 2D graphics, 3D animation graphics. I mean, we wanted to make it visually pleasing to people to help tell the story.

[00:21:08] Preston Pysh: I couldn’t imagine the pain of managing all that, by the way.

[00:21:11] Brian Estes: It was a lot.

[00:21:14] Preston Pysh: But it’s over. It’s over. You guys are, yeah. You guys are, yes. Hey, you’ve had some heavy hitters in this movie. You have people like Tony Hawk, Mark Cuban, Peter Diamandis. I’m a huge fan of Peter Diamandis, by the way. Kathy Wood. I mean, the list goes on and on of people that are interviewed in this movie.

[00:21:33] Michael Saylor’s in this movie. You have so many. Is there any interview that you personally really enjoyed or that you felt really kind of just laid things out in such an incredible way? And I know this is a little unfair because now you’re picking and choosing, but is there anything that kind of stood out?

[00:21:49] Like when you were done recording, you were like, Oh my gosh, that person just clobbered it.

[00:21:53] Brian Estes: Yeah, I think you’re fishing for a compliment, buddy.

[00:21:56] Preston Pysh: No get the heck out of here.

[00:21:57] Brian Estes: Oh, yeah. After your interview, I was just like, I almost started crying. I did. I was like, that’s exactly the story that needed to be in our movie.

[00:22:07] Like, so for me, it was interviewing you. You can’t pick me. There’s no way. I don’t, I don’t buy it. 100%. So what about you?

[00:22:17] Preston Pysh: I’m embarrassed.

[00:22:18] Kelly Estes: I think for me, it was Rabbi Lappin because he was describing, we were talking about how the Bible and for in his case, the Torah really explains or illustrates how we are to treat each other when it comes to money and what money is supposed to be used for and in what way.

[00:22:38] And he was talking about within the Jewish faith that they look at money as a way of rewarding the talents that God has given to you. And then within that community, say there’s a Jewish community. For example, you might have a roofer and you might have a doctor. Well, the doctor is at home with his family.

[00:23:00] His roof is leaking and his wife is yelling at him, and he calls the roofer over, the roofer fixes it. Doctor’s like, oh my gosh, thank you, I could never have done that, I so appreciate you. How many appreciation tokens will that be? And instead of calling money, Dollars or whatever Appreciation tokens and really that if you would start looking at money that way you would see that you would never Cheat somebody that way you would never try to steal from them You would never try to tip the scale in your favor because you would be Ignoring the person that God created them to be and I thought that was a really interesting and beautiful way to talk about How we are to treat each other when it comes to money, I was always taught that a roofer is no Less than a neurosurgeon that we are all people with talents and maybe that’s why it resonated with me so much But today, we don’t treat each other that way at all.

[00:23:58] So maybe If we could, and maybe Bitcoin would allow that because it maintains its store of value, that we could get back to a more peaceful way to interact with each other.

[00:24:09] Preston Pysh: I love that. You also have a section in the movie that talks to the Islam side of this and how debt based money is forbidden. Is that the correct word?

[00:24:18] Can you talk to us a little bit about that interview that was in here?

[00:24:23] Brian Estes: Yeah, so Harris Irvine did a great job. He’s an Islamic expert over in London. So, and the way he explains it, it’s called Riba. So, Riba is what the Islamic community and faith call lending money or receiving, like, if you lend money or you receive interest.

[00:24:39] That’s against the religion. You’re not allowed to receive Riba or like, pay interest or receive interest. And so he talks about that in the movie. And so if you think about it, there are 2 billion Muslims in the world where our current financial system isn’t compliant with their religion. And so gold is compliant with the religion because gold doesn’t pay interest or receive interest.

[00:25:02] And there was a cloud, a Saudi cleric that came out a few months ago. And we put this in the movie that. He came out with a, it’s called a fatwa and it said that Bitcoin is Sharia compliant money because it doesn’t pay interest or receive interest. And so now all of a sudden you have 2 billion Muslims where Bitcoin is Sharia compliant money in their religion.

[00:25:25] And so we show that in the movie and we build on top of that with some other stories.

[00:25:30] Preston Pysh: Kelly, we’re going to nerd out here on the tech for just a second. Something that I find so fascinating is when you look at the lightning network and you would take Bitcoin, let’s say I have one Bitcoin, I want to plug it into a channel and I want to basically be a liquidity provider for payments on layer two Bitcoin.

[00:25:46] And I can collect fees or some people would call it yield or they would, whatever term you want to put on that I’m earning Bitcoin by routing the one Bitcoin that I have by loading it into a channel and allowing layer two to route it the whole time. I’m never lending that Bitcoin out. It remains in my node.

[00:26:05] And it’s this agreement between me and another person to just route it back and forth, but it never leaves my possession. And I don’t think we’ve ever had money that can even do this from a technical standpoint. We haven’t. And it’s still not violating this Islamic theme of credit based or debt based money.

[00:26:24] Which I just find beyond fascinating and as Brian, as you well know is, I mean, this could be our new risk free rate in 10, 15 years from now, which is also mind blowing that it’s not violating these principles, which I just find mind blowing.

[00:26:41] Brian Estes: Yeah, when you talk about risk free rate, it reminds me of what Harris Erfron said on the movie too, is that he tells a story about how God sets the price in the market, right?

[00:26:51] And if you think about a risk free rate, who sets that price? Well, today it’s the Federal Reserve. They say treasuries are the risk free, and that’s kind of what we base the risk free rate on. But if you think about it, God, who should set the price in the market, not like a Fed or a group of people.

[00:27:08] So we should let the market decide what the risk free rate is. And right now the risk free rates being manipulated by the Federal Reserve.

[00:27:17] Preston Pysh: What was one of the biggest challenges that you guys faced throughout this? Like if you just go from the very beginning to where you’re at, right. And it may be it’s right now with the marketing or whatever.

[00:27:26] I don’t know, but what would you say is the biggest challenge? And then we’ll go to the most rewarding part after that.

[00:27:34] Brian Estes: I think the biggest challenge was the time commitment to do this. We spent over two years and we did over 60 interviews all over the world. And it was just, it was a lot of time and then that yielded about 75 hours worth of interviews and we had to take it from 75 hours to 1.

[00:27:51] 5 hours going through all that editing, picking what was we thought was appropriate for the movie. What wasn’t just the continuing cuts and cuts and cuts and versions and versions. We went through like, what, 20 cuts? 20 versions? I don’t know. And it was just like, it’s our first time doing this, making a movie, but there’s so much minutiae that you have to pay attention to.

[00:28:14] And it was just like, every time we would watch it, we’d find something else that needed to be fixed. And so the movie that you see today, it’s Yeah, we kind of grade it. I asked her, like, what would you give it? She said 10. And I would say that same thing because we’re perfectionists. There’s still always little things in there.

[00:28:29] But what we were told by movie makers is that you’ll never get it. Perfect. No matter how you work on it for another year, it may be maybe just a little bit better. So we finally just said, okay, it’s good enough to let’s release. And like you said, according to the comments, people love it. So I guess it’s good enough.

[00:28:45] Kelly Estes: I think you had unrealistic expectations of what it taught to really make a story and to tell a story because the first time we got the very first rough cut back, which was three hours in length. Yeah, he watched it and he was so mad because he realized at that moment what it was going to cost him time wise to be able to get this movie where he wanted to go.

[00:29:13] And I mean, it was a bad moment.

[00:29:15] Brian Estes: Yeah, I thought I could hire a filmmaker, tell him what’s up here and he wouldn’t make a film. Right? Yeah, but it doesn’t work like that. Like, right. If you have something up here, you’re the only one that can make film period. Yeah. So I was really mad at myself for like committing to making the movie.

[00:29:31] But looking back, like I wouldn’t want to have made the movie again, but I would make the movie again if I had to.

[00:29:39] Preston Pysh: When you just look at how complex Bitcoin is and you’re trying to distill all that down into a concise turnkey, somebody shows up and they kind of leave an hour in what, what is it? An hour and a half, 20 minutes, nine minutes.

[00:29:52] Kelly Estes: Okay.

[00:29:53] Preston Pysh: For them to leave in that short duration and really have a deep understanding of all the complexities of it. Like you almost can’t outsource that if you’re somebody that actually deeply understands Bitcoin. I just don’t even know that you can outsource that information. You have to be in. So basically it was, you knew you were going to have to be heavily involved was what it was, Brian. Like we were involved.

[00:30:14] Brian Estes: I’m taking 10 years of knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. I’m packing that into 89 minutes so that it saves the viewer time. Right. Yeah. Like it took me, years to like, get to this point to understand Bitcoin. Yeah. So what I want to do is accelerate people’s learning curve so they don’t have to spend five years to understand it.

[00:30:34] You could spend 89 minutes and understand why this technology is so important.

[00:30:40] Preston Pysh: Kelly, what was yours?

[00:30:41] Kelly Estes: I think the hardest part was managing him.

[00:30:48] His expectations. I mean, I know how hard it is. To tell a story while you have to keep digging in and peeling away layers and getting to the nugget. And honestly, because he has studied for 10 years, when he thinks he’s giving a simple explanation, it’s not. So that’s kind of where I came in. I am not as studied as he is.

[00:31:10] I understand Bitcoin on a basic level, but not like you, not like you or him. For Natalie or anybody else in that film, and so I would say that definition is not going to get it. No, we got to dig down again. Keep going keep digging and that was really hard for him because he wasn’t patient through that process.

[00:31:29] And it is painful. I get it. You think you’ve told your story and then someone comes in and was like, and that doesn’t make sense. We got to do it again. That was hard. He didn’t want to take my revisions. You did not take my revision suggestions. Well, did you?

[00:31:42] Brian Estes: I think I agreed with 80 percent of them?

[00:31:44] Kelly Estes: No, but you didn’t take them well, He finally came, agreed to them, but it would take me saying, okay, it’s your movie when you do what you want to sleep on it. And then the next morning you go back, you’re like, okay, we can cut it. So the other thing that was hard was to cut our friends. If we had people who had just great parts, but they were deviating from the storyline and we had to pull them out, that was hard for both of us because we’d be like, no, we don’t want to lose them. It’s so good. And they gave their time so freely and kindly. We didn’t want to.

[00:32:17] Brian Estes: Yeah. We only use about half the people that we interviewed.

[00:32:20] Kelly Estes: That sucked for both of us.

[00:32:22] Preston Pysh: What was the hardest part of Bitcoin to tell in this? Because some of it gets really complex. Like we were talking about the lightning channels and stuff like that.

[00:32:30] If somebody’s showing up and they never heard of this, like you’re just not going to understand that right out of the gate, but for the part that you were trying to explain technically or religiously or whatever, what was the hardest part of the story to tell in the amount of time you were trying to tell it?

[00:32:47] Kelly Estes: I think it is, what is Bitcoin and how does it work, because it is an abstract idea, basically, and if you are not a mathematician and you don’t understand algorithms, how in the world are you supposed to wrap your head around this idea that computers are out there solving a math problem and it creates money that you’re supposed to use?

[00:33:05] That is crazy. Like, if you put it in those terms, that’s how the average person thinks about it. And then let’s go ahead and add in these magic keywords that you have and you can put them on a ledger. What’s a ledger? I mean, yeah, what is going on and then it’s XO hash and then we start getting really cuckoo bird out there and it’s hard It’s an abstract Complex concept, Bitcoin itself.

[00:33:28] Just what is it and how does it work to pull those down to a level that gives people some confidence and being able to explore it further. That was the challenge, but I think we did a really good job.

[00:33:39] Preston Pysh: Oh, you did, you did.

[00:33:41] Kelly Estes: Looking at how it solves problem. I just thought it was great. I thought that the people we had in there did a really good job.

[00:33:48] Preston Pysh: Yeah. The thing that I’m most impressed with, and I don’t think that there was any type of. Planning for this, the timing of this movie is so impeccable that it’s coming out right now or post having, you’re getting all the speculators are coming because they’re seeing price action, but you’re having this political acceptance.

[00:34:07] And I mean, I think it was Cynthia, Senator Cynthia Lummis today proposing a yet another bill for a Bitcoin treasury. And now you have this movie. So people are coming and they’re saying, what is this? What is this? And you have this incredible movie, the distribution. Talk to us about where people can watch this.

[00:34:24] Can they watch it on their Apple TV or how can people pull this up?

[00:34:28] Brian Estes: So we decided just recently, like a month ago, this was a for profit entity. And we decided that, the people that really need to understand what Bitcoin is, Or the people who can’t afford 10 to buy or run the movie. So we decided that we weren’t going to charge people.

[00:34:45] And so we put it on YouTube. If you go to our website, God bless Bitcoin. com. It’s on there when it’s on X, the former Twitter we’re submitting it to Apple, so it’d be on Apple, within, it takes them what two or three months, it’d be up on like Apple TV, Amazon prime. There’s TVOD, which is transactional video on demand, AVOD, these are all new terms we had to learn, advertisement video on demand, but we’ve basically open sourced it.

[00:35:14] So anyone could go to our website, download the movie for free. And if you want to host a viewing or a festival, or I had someone from London email me that he works with the BBC and he wants to present it to the BBC. They’ll, put commercials on it. And he asked me if we can share the revenue. And I was like, no, it’s, this is a gift.

[00:35:35] It’s if you get it on the BBC, you keep the revenue. So we want to create financial incentives for people to go out, take the movie and go out and get eyeballs on it. So it’s a gift. Just like in the spirit of Satoshi, Satoshi gave us Bitcoin for free. He could have, patented the technology, could have started a company with it, but he didn’t.

[00:35:56] And he just gave it to us for free. And that’s how we felt. We thought this, we should just give this to the, Bitcoin community for free and let people watch it.

[00:36:04] Kelly Estes: Well, it’s a gift from the Bitcoin community, not us. It’s everybody in the Bitcoin community rallied together to help make this film.

[00:36:11] Preston Pysh: You’re too gracious. Don’t listen to Kelly.

[00:36:13] Kelly Estes: We gave it freely in the spirit of the community.

[00:36:15] Brian Estes: In the opening credits, it says, a film by the Bitcoin community.

[00:36:20] Kelly Estes: This is from the community effort.

[00:36:22] Brian Estes: Yeah. And we’re trying to educate people on why this is the best form of money.

[00:36:25] Kelly Estes: I mean, how many people watched the rough cuts as they came through time and time again and offered feedback? I mean, it wasn’t just the people who were interviewed, just the entire process, everybody in the community gave.

[00:36:40] Preston Pysh: Wow. That’s all I can say.

[00:36:42] You guys are very special people. What else do I have? Is, is there something that you guys want to highlight from the movie that changed you or that you think is really important or that isn’t discussed very often? What do you guys got?

[00:36:57] Brian Estes: Yeah, I mean, the one, the biggest thing I took away, yeah, I grew up in a small town in Illinois and we had Protestants and Catholics in the town.

[00:37:06] Right. You’re either, Catholic or you’re either Baptist or a Protestant faith. And we had one Mormon family, but we didn’t have any Jewish families or Muslim families in the small town I’ve lived in. So I just didn’t know much about other religions. And after talking to Harris Erfron and the rabbis and the different religions, what I realized, and I guess I should have known this, but the Old Testament, those are the scriptures.

[00:37:32] That all the world’s religions use. So the old Testament is what Christians use, what Jews use and what Muslims use. And so the 10 commandments, Genesis, Ezekiel, Proverbs, those are core beliefs to all these religions. And so what I realized is that we’re all very similar in our belief system. It’s just, you get out later.

[00:37:56] What the, after Jesus is born and all the different fractions, but if you drill down to the base layer of core beliefs of the religions, we all believe kind of the same thing. And so that, that’s what, that was 1 big takeaway for me is that we’re very similar. We’re more similar than we are different.

[00:38:15] Preston Pysh: It’s interesting because people love to focus on the differences without even talking about the similarities and what it is that they do agree on.

[00:38:23] And maybe that’s human nature that kind of drives us that way too. But I think it’s a super important point is we’re trying to rally around something that I think shifts the entire incentive structure. Of society and in a way that incentivizes cooperation as opposed to division and divisiveness.

[00:38:43] How about you, Kelly? Anything that you want to highlight or that was kind of, you went through this journey, this long journey, anything that changed you or that you think is meaningful to highlight? And if not, that’s fine.

[00:38:55] Kelly Estes: No, I think I probably touched on it when I spoke with Natalie, when you realize that millennials today, they are hurting, but I guess I’ve always had a servant heart.

[00:39:05] I’ve been in education my whole life, but for the past 15 years, I have worked with students who’ve grown up in generational poverty. And when Brian talked to me about Bitcoin for the first time, I realized that is something that could help those communities the most. And I think what surprised me was realize, cause I always focus there, right?

[00:39:25] That’s where I give most of my time is in those communities. But when I heard Natalie say that, I was like, Hey, open your eyes up. Kelly. It’s not just the people who live in poverty. It is the wage earner. And in fact, It is people with college degrees who are still struggling. We have got to do something to help people understand that there is a better way out there for them to store value and to get ahead.

[00:39:51] So I think that really just opened my eyes up to a broader group of people, kind of like Brian, he realized that we’re more alike than we are different. And it’s true. We all struggle. We all need Bitcoin.

[00:40:03] I mean, I hate to say it. We need it. All of us.

[00:40:06] Preston Pysh: Yeah. Thank God for Bitcoin.

[00:40:11] Kelly Estes: That’s right. The inspiration for the movie.

[00:40:13] Preston Pysh: That’s right. So just to kind of wrap up, one of the things that, one of the comments that I saw that I just really love about this is people saying that they feel like they finally have a resource that they can just hand to a family member. As opposed to saying, read this book, which is usually a pretty big burden.

[00:40:30] Most people have 90 minutes to sit down and they want to watch a movie. They want to watch a documentary and they can just kind of sit on their couch and relax. And for me personally, when I have that person, it’s like, all right, so give me a resource for Bitcoin. This is going to be at the top of the list.

[00:40:46] And I guess What I’m trying to say to the listeners is like, this is it. Like, this is such a turnkey, it starts the person that everyone talks about, like marketing funnels. This is the perfect thing for a person to watch that really doesn’t know anything about Bitcoin and it gives them enough that they’re probably going to be very, very curious after watching this because of how much ground it covers in such a short amount of time.

[00:41:10] So we’re going to have

[00:41:11] Brian Estes: links and we want people to use it. We want people to download the movie. If you have a platform, you want to put it on, put it up on your platform, drive traffic to your platform using our movie, it’s open. It’s free to everybody to use.

[00:41:25] Kelly Estes: Yeah, exactly.

[00:41:26] Preston Pysh: We’re going to have links in the show notes to numerous places where people can watch it.

[00:41:31] Please comment, please like, share. This is just such a powerful movie and kudos to you guys. I’m telling you folks, I’ve seen how hard they’ve worked on this behind the scenes. You just have no idea how hard they’ve worked on this, but thank you guys for making time and coming on the show. And thank you for this movie, “God Bless Bitcoin.

[00:41:49] Brian Estes: Thank you, Preston.

[00:41:51] 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, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional.

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