Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I wanted to try something a little new here. I'm live streaming a reaction video to Donald Trump's Bitcoin speech. We're all waiting for Bitcoin 2 Trump. I'm going to go ahead and mute the screen audio, but that's only the start. It has a limited supply of only 21 million, so no one can decide to just... But I want to see this speech. Can everybody hear the audio?
Looks like everybody can, so it's going to be a fun time. I don't usually do reaction videos, but this one is pretty special for me. We are minutes away from the main event of the 2020 conference, where I will see Donald Trump speak. I've attended this conference several times, and I'm excited to see what he has to say.
I have a little better understanding of the delay, and again, I'm excited to see how this changes the former president as he takes the stage. What are you feeling right now? History might be made. Can I think that muted the audio for you guys too? Did that mute the audio on the background screen? Yes, please lower the video at the moment. Yes, good.
So, I think this turns it back on. This is the first time I've ever done one of these reaction videos. And there we go, that mutes the feed for those guys as they're talking. No great loss there; they're just saying Bitcoin is so amazing, everything about Bitcoin is incredible. The only thing in the world you need is Bitcoin. All other altcoins are terrible. Believe me, all altcoins are bad.
You know, it's a maxi conference; what are you going to do? I used to go to Dave Bailey's conference. I've known Dave for years; he's actually a really nice guy. I run into him at Satoshi Roundtable and other events, and I've seen him at Jeff Tucker's event since 2013 and beyond. He's got to be hyped as hell; he's got to be pumped. You know he's going to give one of Mike Caldwell's Casascius coins, which Mike started creating ironically to bring Ron Paul into the cryptocurrency industry back in 2012. Mike and I were both big Ron Paul supporters, and for Dave to be able to give Trump a Casascius coin, that's pretty impressive.
A lot of you probably don't know this, but the Bitcoin ecosystem has had a nice connection to these sound money folks for a long time. David Bailey was one, but also David Johnson, Eric Vorhees, and pretty much a dozen or so of the OGs were all sound money guys who came from the Ron Paul movement. We were all Austrian economists, so that's a lot of fun.
Did I like RFK Jr.'s speech? I only had a chance to catch snippets of it because I was flying from Brazil to Argentina, and I heard it was quite good. The only thing in the speech that I really didn’t like was when he said that Mike Saylor could be a potential candidate for Treasury Secretary. I mean, that would equate to everything but Bitcoin being illegal and should be banned, and only Bitcoin should be embraced. So, I don’t think he fully understood the implications of what he was saying, but it is what it is. You just accept these things.
Caitlin Long is a good friend of mine, and Caitlin would be an exceptional Treasury Secretary. If I were running for office, I’d even consider appointing her. Anyway, we’ll just keep letting this go on. It’s not uncommon for presidential candidates to be a little bit late. Right now, they’re having a meet and greet. They reached out to all of us big Bitcoin guys who have been in the space forever and said, “Hey, we’re having a fundraiser for Trump. Do you want to go?” I said, “Sure, how much?” They said, “Well, meet and shake his hand, get a picture: $65,000. To actually sit down with him at a round table and have a conversation and dinner: $892,000.” I said, “You know, I’m not going to pay that much to have dinner with Trump.” I mean, everything has its value in life, but I think we have different expectations of value there.
I think they filled out the table with a whole bunch of Maxis who have way too many Bitcoins floating around. Let’s go over the rest of your questions here. While we’re waiting for the president to get here, let’s see if you guys have anything to say.
WTF? I know I shaved, although it’s rapidly coming back no matter what I try to do. We’ll see what it looks like. That is correct: former President Trump and presidential candidate Trump. Although, typically until recently, if you had a former president, you always just called him president, and it was an honorary title, and nobody really cared. But I guess you guys want to make a big deal out of it.
How is update 9.1 doing? Quite well. It’s released. You know, Pool Tool—if you go to it, you can actually... Let’s take a look at that live Pool Tool. So, Pool Tool is your comprehensive place to go for all of your crypto needs. If we take a look at Pool Tool, Network Health: 9.1 is sitting at 26% install base, followed by 8.9.4 at 25%, and N at 133%. It’s not a completely accurate measurement, but it’s a pretty good one. So, once we hit 70%, then a date can be set for the hard fork.
At this velocity, in a few weeks, I think we’re going to have chats with Trump regarding crypto. If Trump gets elected, he’s pro-crypto. Presently, we will, but I’ve never talked to him, so nothing for you.
When will Trump start speaking? He’s already late. He was supposed to start speaking actually just 20 minutes ago, but we’re all waiting with bated breath. Yeah, I know. I didn’t pay the $65,000 to find out.
Are we going to find out if space aliens are real? I think to win this election, Trump would tell us if he knew.
I want to see a Charles podcast. Well, I’m here. This is Charles talking, so we’re talking. We’re waiting here. Wow, he hasn’t spoken yet.
There we go. Hey, Charles, what do you expect he could say? What do you think mainstream media will cover? There’s been some talk about him announcing some form of a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He announced that he wanted to take about 19% of the Bitcoin supply and buy 550 Bitcoin per day until it accumulates over a period of time. Generally, what he’s going to do is probably attack Biden for all the disastrous policies he had.
Trump’s speeches are always the same: “I’m so great, they’re so bad. I’m so smart, they’re so stupid. Believe me, I know all the great policies, and I know all the great people. I’ll do great policies; they do bad policies.” Then you say, “Okay, so what specifically do you want to pass? What specific bills do you want to pass? What actual policy items are you going to say? Do you support FIT 21? What are your standards on custody? What about IRS codes you want to reform? What is a security? What’s not a security? What should be a commodity?”
These types of questions—nothing. You never get any specifics with a Trump speech. This is an example of where it creates a lot of notoriety, and then the Democrats have to make a strategic decision: do they want to take a strong anti-crypto approach and label crypto as pro-Republican, or do they want to go bipartisan and actually run to the right of Trump on it? We’ll see what Harris does and if she thinks she has the bank or not. They’re kind of fighting from behind.
Glad you’re doing a reaction video; it just shows how big of a deal the speech really is. It actually is one of the most significant events in the history of the cryptocurrency industry. Say what you will about Bitcoin, say what you will about Trump. We went from nobody paying any attention at all, and anytime we get mentioned by anybody, it’s on the front page of Bitcoin Reddit, to a former president, perhaps a future president of the United States, talking about Bitcoin and making a policy item of it. That’s a pretty significant thing.
Okay, he’s going to introduce his own coin. This is not the conference to do that. If I came out on stage, they would boo me. Everybody would be like, “No, Charles, no!”
In your mind, how far away is the sidechain ecosystem? Do you feel like the sidechain concept will wake people up to Cardano as a root of trust? Partner chains are moving along really quickly. I mean, this is what we’re doing with Midnight, and that’s going to bring the entire framework for everybody to play around with. So, faster than you think. As we go throughout the rest of the year, you guys will see a lot of announcements at Rare Evo and at the Cardano Foundation Summit.
Reports say the delay is due to Elon about to jump on stage with Trump. That would just be insanity—absolute insanity. Assuming Trump wins, what cabinet position, if any, would you like RFK Jr. to have? I’d be very happy with FDA or HHS. A lot of cleaning needs to get done.
Trump couldn’t talk for five minutes off the top of his head about any of this. Believe me, Trump can talk about anything for more than five minutes. It might not be coherent, but it’ll be fun.
I do miss the days when nobody was paying attention. I do too. I loved those days. We all got along; we were all friends. The biggest debate we had was, “Do you like Litecoin?”
What was your take on Saylor’s speech yesterday? I haven’t watched Saylor’s speech in a long time. After he said we’re all criminals and we all should be thrown in prison, the only thing legal is Bitcoin. I don’t give a [expletive] about them. I just don’t listen to people that want me to get banned.
This feels so much more intimate than normal AMAs. Well, you know, we’ve got stuff going on, videos going on. We’re watching all this together; we’re living history together. You are seeing this at the same time I’m seeing this. How about that? It’s pretty exciting.
Charles, do you think there’s a setup against the Cardano network? It seems we get a lot of [expletive] from such a well-built and honest network. It feels like it from time to time, but you know, I don’t believe it. I just think that we, as an ecosystem, need to put our best foot forward, get change done, get the budget process done, and let’s go spend some money on marketing and branding and change the narrative.
We have all the foundations and roots to be the best cryptocurrency ecosystem, including Bitcoin, in the world, but we’ve got to earn it, and we’ve got to fight for it. The point of change is to activate the Cardano army, get them where they need to go, and we all have to change a little bit, grow a little bit, myself included.
You’ve got to try new things. This is my first reaction video. Come on, I don’t know how this stuff works. I’m trying my best here. I’m live streaming from a hotel room Wi-Fi in Buenos Aires. I don’t know if it works; you tell me.
Just the fact he is attending this conference. My dad said he lost all respect for Bitcoin and will no longer be voting for him. People are so fickle. Well, the thing is, guys, they invited Kamala Harris to come speak. I know Dave Bailey personally did that; he was telling us about that, and she turned it down. She could have gotten equal standing and actually humiliated Donald Trump because I think she probably could have a deeper technical understanding than he could as a 77-year-old man. Who knows?
She turned that down, so focus on what people do, not what they say. The fact that he showed up says a lot. The fact that she chose not to show up says a lot too. A lot is happening with Midnight. Watch my speech in Brazil that I just made in Rio.
Charles, do you think there’s a need for a bridge between Midnight and BTC? We’re building one. Yes, I do believe that.
Charles, are you in a hotel room? Yes, I am in Buenos Aires, down in Argentina. We’re here for the Constitutional Convention; we’re doing some of the prep work.
LOL, like Charles Hoskinson Mystery Science Theater 3000. This is priceless. Yes, so I don’t know what these guys are saying because I have the audio off, but I can imagine it’s something like this: “So tell me your favorite erotic experience with Bitcoin.”
Well, I remember back in the day when Bitcoin was very small. I would take mayonnaise and rub it on my nipples and then have my dog lick it off while reading the Satoshi white paper by candlelight. It was both exhilarating and disturbing at the same time. As the price of Bitcoin came up, I could pay for therapy not to do that anymore. Unfortunately, the dog died of mayonnaise poisoning.
So, do you guys all agree that mayonnaise poisoning is a big thing with dogs? Well, yeah, yes, absolutely. Bitcoin is the future. I mean, it’s about as much sense as it makes when they say that Bitcoin is the standard and it’s the only thing that matters in all the altcoins.
Right, mayonnaise, dog nipples. He’s not talking about dogs; he’s talking about something else. He’s like, “Oh, I love Bitcoin. Bitcoin is so amazing. Everything about Bitcoin is treasured and special in every dimension and way. I wake up sometimes next to my orange pillow, and I just imagine it’s a Bitcoin deep inside of me.”
Come on, guys, get Trump on the stage. You promised punctuality! Come on now. Should have gone peanut butter.
All right, yeah, we’re just waiting. What’s the word on RFK Jr.’s campaign? Rumors of him dropping out and supporting Trump are invalidated. He is not dropping out; RFK is in it to win it. I’m going to support him until November. He’s my guy, going to fight hard for him. Sometimes he missteps, like saying Mike Saylor should be in, but he also said Caitlin, who’s a good friend of mine and would be an amazing Treasury Secretary.
But there we go. This convention needs more speakers. Yeah, you know, I think they have a lot. Ron Paul was actually on; that was really exciting. I enjoyed that. I remember taking Bitcoin classes from Charles a long time ago. Yeah, actually, I’ve got to redo those at some point. It’d be a lot of fun to do a second edition.
What did I just walk into? You walked into mayonnaise dog nipples, sir. That’s what he’s talking about—his Bitcoin pillow and how much he loves this [expletive]. Never realized Charles was so twisted.
Being in the crypto industry for 10 years and having all the crap that people say about you makes you a little twisted. A Bitcoin inside of me? Yep, that’s what he’s talking about right there. He’s like, “Every man needs a Bitcoin deep inside of him every day, all day. Need that Bitcoin. I sometimes wake up in the morning and say, ‘Where’s my Bitcoin inside of me?’”
How is the hotel? Is it nice? It’s a very nice hotel. It’s very, very nice.
Is everybody at the hotel well? They’re still talking. Ergo is better than Bitcoin. If Ergo was what Satoshi created, there would be no Ethereum. We’d all just be Ergo users, and I would be building on it every single day.
Couch coin? Oh no, it’s not a JD Vance show, guys. This is a Trump show.
Bitcoin inside of me? Is that Saylor’s new book? Yeah, actually, that’s a good title. I hope you guys are having fun. For those of you who just tuned in, we’ve been waiting for about 20 minutes for the 45th president, Donald Trump, to start speaking live at the Bitcoin 2024 conference down in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s landed; he’s there. He’s been taking pictures with people. I just messaged Bruce Fenton, who’s a good friend of mine. He just posted a picture with Trump that he took today.
So, Trump’s there, and they just came out to greet him, but we’ve been waiting for about 20 minutes. They’ve got the hype guy right there; I forget his name, but he hates everybody who’s an altcoin and calls us all criminals and terrible people, so no respect for him. But anyway, you know, this is the 50 Shades of Bitcoin panel where they’re all together, and they’re talking to each other about how much they love Bitcoin and, you know, the dogs and mayonnaise and stuff like that. But you know [expletive] them; who cares? We’re here for Trump. We’re here to listen to what Mr. Trump has to say about what he will do for our industry if elected.
How about that? Talk about winning your vote. Meanwhile, on the Democrat side, still no comment at all if Harris is going to be different from Biden. Will she end Operation Choke Point 2?
Will she stop the lawsuits against all the exchanges? Will she commute Ross Albert's sentence as Trump has promised to do and RFK has promised to do? Will she buy Bitcoin as part of the US strategic reserve? Will she end the regulation-through-enforcement regime that Biden has started? Who knows? We'll see. We'll find out. Or maybe she'll just say nothing and hope it goes away like a scary plague. You just don't know.
I see a lot of people doing this. She chokes on points. There was also the knee pads—come on, guys, you don't need to beat her that way. Just beat her on policy. How long until the Cardano ecosystem will be impossible to ignore? It already is. That's why they ignore it. Charles is a certified hater. You know what? I love Bitcoin. The great irony is I've been in longer than all the guys on the panel combined, and I was a founding chair of the Bitcoin Foundation's education committee. As people mentioned, I did Bitcoin or how I learned to stop worrying and love crypto. I absolutely love the early days of the Bitcoin movement, and then they all turned into toxic [expletive]. So I still love Bitcoin, still love technology. I enjoy what it stands for. I enjoy the concept. I can separate the protocol from the Maxis.
Can we hang out, Charles? Y'all are hanging out with me right now. You're here. We're waiting. Do you recall any history with Harris and crypto? Well, I remember her saying that when she was in her dorm room listening to Tupac, smoking a fat blunt, that she was coding with Satoshi or something like that. She may have said that back in the day. I don't know. I just don't know.
When will there be a coin burn on Cardano? Um, never. Trump canceled. No, Trump is there. We know he landed. He's taking pictures with Bitcoin people. Nobody's going to deliver a bigger Bitcoin speech than me, believe me. Nobody. My speech is so big; it's so great, so amazing. And he's back to 50 Shades of Bitcoin. He's talking about all those things. It's almost like the Bubba Gump Shrimp, you know? Shrimp cocktail, Bitcoin at night, Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin transactions, Bitcoin private key generation. Well, that's all I know about Bitcoin.
Charles's impression of Donald sounds like he's gay. Come on, guys, I just got a cold. Don't judge Donald like that. I'm sure he's fine. When Quantum? We're working on it. We're talking about that, getting it done little by little. Is there a useful proof of work paper, or is it just a brainstorm? Yes, there is. We wrote a useful proof of work paper based on Sat [expletive] solvers. Now let's see here. That was the wrong one. Committee—yeah, more vitamin D. Tell me right, committee validation. We'll talk about when we have more details about how Midnight is going to work.
Charles, how psyched up are you for Chang? I am so psyched for Chang right now. And for those of you who have just joined us, now that we have 14,000 people in the live stream, how about that? We are waiting for the 45th, soon to be 47th president of the United States of America. Perhaps you don't know. You never know. Speak about Bitcoin and how he learned to stop worrying and embrace this industry for political gain and financial well-being. Although I'm still backing Kennedy because I do believe he's the remedy.
Charles, have you read Cult Dow's Manifesto? I have not. Charles, do you play any instruments, or just do-do-do? I used to play the piano back in the day. Back in the day, looking younger. Charles, your whiteboard video on the five pillars of the 21st century was amazing. I find myself going back regularly. Well, I do appreciate it, and I hope it leads to some new insight and clarity. I do enjoy making those, and I can't wait to have more time for deep work.
You sound like crypto shiller Ben Armstrong. You want to explain it? Just tell me about it. What do Ben and I have in common? Honestly, come on. Did you shave your own beard? I did. I did. Oh, that panel's still there. They're still talking. All right, everybody, if Bitcoin was like tofu, what would you recommend pairing it with? I mean, I would pair it with balsamic vinegar. What do you think? Do you think balsamic vinegar is the way to go? Yeah, definitely.
Okay, but we can't just pair it with balsamic vinegar. We got to decide how to prepare it. I mean, do we pan fry it? Do we cook it on the stove? I mean, there are so many ways to prepare Bitcoin as tofu, and I know how much you guys enjoy that. Oh, he wants to cut it. He wants to cut it. He's making that hand sign that we have to cut it. Oh no, he's going to toss it like a pizza. He's gonna toss it like a pizza. Toasty Portuguese roll pizza. Come on, guys, keep your schedule. I don't have all day. Mayonnaise dog, that's the quote of the day. HW Tua, yes, that meme girl, right? Oh, he's talking about preparing it with bacon. Yeah, bacon WAP tofu. That's an interesting direction.
Yeah, okay. He's talking about how big that bacon is, how you slap that pig on the ass. By the way, he's a good pig, just saying. Do you like freedom, or do you prefer freedom with a touch of state collaboration? You know the difference between those two? Diego Angel is the difference between lemonade and lemonade with a little bit of pee mixed in it. My favorite color is black.
Charles, can you say with confidence that you have very high hopes for partner chains being decentralized? Yes, I do believe there's a strong possibility in that. We will work hard for that. We, as an ecosystem, are pushing for that. I do believe. I do testify. Did you play Ultima Online back in the day? No, my first MMO was actually EverQuest. I really enjoyed it. EverQuest was great. It was magical. Play the high elf.
Explain why Caspa is better than anything else. You know, I've noticed that the Caspa guys keep taking old clips of me talking about some technology that Yonaton Salinsky created and use it as like the end-all be-all. Yes, there were a lot of intermediate things like Ghost, Phantom, and Spectre and these types of things that he created, and that's awesome. They worked their way into literature, and the industry has moved on. But that in no way is an endorsement of Caspa, and I don't know anything about it. I'm kind of turned off when people take things I've quoted out of context to promote it. That's a no-no. That's a brand no-no.
Sir Charles, when's the instructional video about PGP encryption? I owe that to you guys. I'm traveling a little bit. Sorry. Is Bitcoin an NSA invention? No, he's still talking about tofu. Don't know why he's talking about tofu. I don't know what he's doing with the tofu. Don't know where he's putting the tofu. He's pretty obsessed with the tofu. I mean, for a soy boy, come on, it's pretty crazy. Remember, we're all criminals according to [Music] them. Having Charles live stream on a second screen is amazing. I know, right? Gives you guys something to look at while we're all just hanging out together. I mean, I'm watching with you guys. That's what we're doing.
How did you find the Olympics opening ceremony? You know, for a worship ceremony for the god ball or Botham, it was pretty good. Now, if it was the Olympics, I don't know about that. Charles, who do you think the special guest will be for Trump's talk? Your guess is as good as mine, man. At Trump's level, not many people could go up there, so if there is a special guest, it's probably going to be Elon Musk, if I guessed. How's Cardano Africa going? Absolutely. John O'Connor is killing it with real FICO. I am very happy with the progress there. Come to Aro to listen to his speech. He's gonna blow your mind.
So crazy. If I throw a few [expletive] in there, it makes it even better. Vitalik at a Bitcoin conference? Nah, you'd have better luck with Taylor Swift at a Metallica conference. Tear drops on my guitar. Special guest is a Satoshi Nakamoto reveal. Show me the keys. Show me the keys. All right, for the 16,000 people that are now here waiting in the live stream, we are all waiting with bated breath for Donald J. Trump to come out and speak. We don't know when. He was supposed to have already been out. We've been live streaming now for 34 minutes. Big, big delay. Trump is going to talk about Bitcoin. We don't know what he's going to say. We don't know what his policies are. We presume that because he is at a Bitcoin conference, Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee, run by my good friend David Bailey, that these will be pro-Bitcoin thoughts, not anti-Bitcoin thoughts. But you don't know. We just don't know, so we are waiting. We are waiting with bated breath. Just don't know.
Trump will arrive when his Bitcoin payment settles. Oh, oh, oh, oh, that's Burns. Burns. Oh my Lord. And right there, the guy with the mustache, kind of a wannabe Kid Rock Bitcoiner, just sitting there, and he's just all like, "Hey, I'm G singing some songs." Kid Rock Bitcoiner. All right, now he's talking about the tofu again. He's really getting into it now. He's like, "Okay, so we've agreed that we're going to sauté it, bake and wrap it, roast it in some butter. We're going to definitely do a pan fry with that. Do you guys agree?" Then the best thing to do afterwards is to take a bath and peer undiluted pig's milk.
Kaiser is on his knees in front of Trump right now, begging to ban everything but Bitcoin. Kaiser would be on his knees for Trump in five seconds if it meant that he'd actually get some money and power and relevance again. Kaiser desperately needs somebody to talk about him. He's fading away. It's kind of like Back to the Future when you sleep with your mom, and then suddenly you fade out of the picture. Well, he's done a lot of sleeping with his mom, so he's bound to fade out of the picture at some point.
What if Trump doesn’t come? His wife asks that every night. This live stream is absolutely positively unpasteurized. Yes, sir. Have Kaiser and Sailor lost their marbles? Sailor has, but Kaiser hasn’t. Kaiser is just a carnival-barking entertainer who has no core integrity or principles. Do you coal plunge when you travel? No, I just get the colder. Who's your favorite enemy, Charles? I love everybody. I really do. What's your favorite heavy metal band? Metallica, by far, because they charter my jet. I like them. I've also met them. I've seen them backstage and everything. They're super cool guys, super good business guys.
I'm not going to talk about this, but this is the topic of the panel, and they're right now discussing it in depth. You know that. Come on, you know that people make a deal about it. They put me on websites. They're angry about it. Come on now. Admit it, you wish you were born into an Amish farm family, the Polya in all Polyal and all one with the Lord. Hey, I only have four Blackhawks because I got caught up in a loan about them, and I'm selling them. But I will not have four Blackhawks forever. It'll take it down to two, and one is for spare parts. It's really only ever one Blackhawk.
Okay, guys, stop judging me for my growing fleet of thingies. Yes, I technically speaking do, but two are quickly going to be sold off. I make money on these things. Guys, do you think you're a genius? Oh God, no. If I was a genius, I wouldn't have created Ethereum with Vitalik. That was a bad decision. What's your favorite field of math? Analytic number theory.
We're still waiting. They're buying time. You are my favorite billionaire. That's my 13th favorite post today. All right, for the 18,000 people watching, top of the hour, we are waiting live for Donald Trump to come up and make his historic speech, or perhaps not. Who knows? At Bitcoin 2024, David Bailey's conference down in Nashville, Tennessee, I've been killing time like they have. This is my reaction video. I am as excited as you guys are, and I'm trying to get an understanding of whether it's going to be a good speech or a bad speech. We just don't know, and we're just waiting. He was supposed to have come out about an hour ago, but he's quite delayed. We just don't know.
Elge brick apology, dude. That's like your opinion, man. Freaking algebraic theologist person doing his thing. Yeah, next thing you know, you're going to be telling me that your favorite theorem is the Theti Sanger index theorem. Topologists are all the same. Lie to us, Daddy. Okay, Bitcoin is going to become the world standard. You talked about dual tokenomics while we wait. You know, it's an interesting concept. So basically, dual tokenomics are where you have two tokens instead of one to represent a cryptocurrency ecosystem. One of them traditionally takes the role of ownership, governance, control, as well as the maintenance of the resources of the system, and that typically has a deflationary monetary policy and pays the staking rewards. The other one has a floating monetary policy, and it's built to allow for the pricing of the resources, utilization of the system, so the smart contract capabilities of the system or transactional capabilities of the system. That typically has a floating policy so that you can have predictable pricing. You combine both of them together. If you have deflationary, you tend to have a situation where you have high spikes of transaction fees during speculative surges. Otherwise, you actually debase the investability of the asset. So you get kind of the best of both worlds by separating them into different monetary policies. We wrote a paper about it because, you know, we always write a [expletive] paper about everything—210 papers. So many papers. Oh my God. But no one gives us any credit for our papers, no matter what we do. Just got a paper. I'm gonna write a paper about us writing papers and not getting credit for the papers.
Did you read Hillbilly Elegy? That couch stuff was disturbing. You know, and all those scenes about his time with Danny DeVito? Wow. And then the dolphins? Wow. I did not know a man could be so attracted to a dolphin flipper. No, poor JD Vance. He's got like a career. He's on the ascendency. He's doing stuff, and then people just make some [expletive] up, and everybody believes it. They said the dude [expletive] the couch. It's not true. Yeah, and then the fact-checkers are like, "Well, we definitively can't say if he actually ever [expletive] a couch or not. We think he didn't, but we don't know." It's like, this is politics in 2024. You know, in 2012, it was Mitt Romney, binders filled with women, and we were like, "Oh my God, I can't believe he said that." In 2024, they're like, "Dude [expletive] the couch." It's in this book. We made it up, but you know you don't know it's true. Probably couch [expletive] a little bit of cushion for the pushing. Oh God, what is going on in American politics? I mean, did he pull out the couch? Well, sticky situation.
You really need to try your hand at stand-up. I try it every single day being in this industry. Who will play you in the movie about your life, Charles? Well, if I have any choice in the matter, it’d be Chris Pratt. He’d handle the raw humor and sexiness that is Charles Hoskinson. But I think what they’re going to do is pick Jack Black or something like that, just make me a monster or Steve Bimi.
We are waiting. Almost 20,000 people now, and we’re waiting. Was it leather? Is that like bondage Sundays with JD Vance? I’ve been a bad couch. Oh, he’s not live yet. Okay, well, when the live stream comes up, I’ll go ahead and do it because we’re waiting for Trump on stage. Yeah, but guys, I don’t have it on my live stream. They need to update the live stream. Come on, guys, it’s on Rumble. Your stream is buffering. Well, let’s try this again. Huh? No, hello. Watch Sky News. Boo. Sorry, guys, trying to get the stream to work. I’m on hotel Wi-Fi. Let’s see if we can get this done. I mean, the chat is still going. He is on stage. All right, well, thank you so much, Lady Crypto. I will copy-paste that. See if I can—I cannot copy-paste that, unfortunately. So what I’ll do is I’ll try to switch live streams and see if we get a live stream of Trump talking. Oh, there we go. All right, so we’ll kill that one.
All the time you want. Ah, okay. You can take two hours, three hours. To hell with it. All right, he’s talking. He’s talking. Can you guys hear me now? Everybody, everybody give me a great honor. A lot of things are happening in the world. We just heard—you probably heard that Israel was just attacked. Very severely attacked. All right, he’s talking about Israel. Hisbah looks like. This happened. I mean, you just can’t. They have to respect us. They cannot do this. What they did just now with that attack is terrible. Just happened. And so to all, God bless everybody. This is so serious. They have to respect our country. This would never have happened with us. We cannot let it continue. So we just wish them all a lot of luck. This happened to us as I’m walking on the stage. You probably, most of you have heard about it. He’s not talking about talk to Israel, but I’m thrilled to be here in Nashville to become the first American president ever to address a Bitcoin event anywhere in the world. That is true. You are a former president talking about Bitcoin. That’s why I’m doing this live in the world
Yeah, okay, they want to choke you out of business. We're not going to let that happen. No longer will your government sit by and watch as Bitcoin jobs and businesses flee to other countries because America's laws are too unclear, too tough, too angry, and too stiff. We will keep each and every Bitcoin job in the United States of America. That's what we're going to be doing.
Upon taking office, I will immediately appoint a Bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council. Would anybody like to be on that particular council? Please raise your hand. Their task will be to design transparent regulatory guidance for the benefit of the entire industry, and they will get it done in 100 days. We will have regulations, but from now on, the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate it. People who want to make it clear, simple, straightforward, and fair. People who want to see your industry thrive, not dive.
Next, I will immediately order the Treasury Department and other federal agencies to cease and assist all steps necessary because there's a thing going on in your industry. They want to move the creation of a central bank digital currency. It's over; forget it. There will never be a CBDC while I'm president of the United States, and I will always defend the right to self-custody. Yes, sir, you're going to have a great industry, and we're going to fuel your industry, not demolish it.
America will once again be a nation that protects property rights, privacy, freedom of transaction, freedom of association, and freedom of speech. We're going to change our course; we're going to go back to the old days when we were a nation that was building, not a nation that was eating itself alive from within. As part of our effort to provide regulatory clarity, we will create a framework to enable the safe and responsible expansion of stablecoins. Do you know what a stablecoin is? Does anybody know? Please raise your hand.
This will allow us to extend the dominance of the US dollar to new frontiers all around the world. America will be richer, the world will be better, and there will be billions and billions of people brought into the crypto economy, storing their savings in Bitcoin. That's pretty much the way it is. Those who say that Bitcoin is a threat to the dollar have the story exactly backwards. I believe it is exactly backwards. Bitcoin is not threatening the dollar; the behavior of the current US government is really threatening the dollar. The danger to our financial future does not come from crypto; it comes from Washington, DC. It comes from trillions of dollars in waste, rampant inflation, and open borders while giving welfare and free healthcare to all the illegal aliens pouring into our country by the millions.
It comes from printing hundreds of billions of dollars to fund endless wars overseas while our cities are like combat zones here at home. Two weeks ago in Chicago, 117 people were shot, and 17 died. Afghanistan doesn’t have anything like that. You think about tough places; look at what’s happening with our cities in the last three years. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. Think of it: 117 over Fourth of July weekend, 117 people were shot, and 17 died. This is the United States of America. I don’t think so.
By the way, when I was president, we had no new wars. Remember when Hillary said he would start wars? Look at his personality. No, I said my personality will keep us out of wars. But we finished off some of the old ones, like ISIS, which they said would take five years to do, maybe more. We did it in four weeks. We beat ISIS in four because we have a great military, and it’s not a woke military. By the way, maybe some of the people on top are woke, but our real generals and soldiers are not going to go woke. I can guarantee you that.
With your support this November, we will restore confidence and common sense to our nation's capital. Ultimately, it’s not about whether you are conservative, liberal, or progressive. They like "progressive"; it sounds so nice, right? It will destroy our country. It’s actually become a terrible word. It will destroy our country. But it’s not about that; it’s about common sense. We want to bring common sense back. This is all common sense that we’re talking about today, and Bitcoin and crypto will skyrocket like never before, even beyond your expectations. You are the people doing it.
As we stop the war on crypto, we will immediately begin to build our economy because when America is prospering, Bitcoin is soaring, and it will go up with it. We had the greatest economy ever, and we will soon have it again under the Trump administration. The typical middle-class family income rose by $6,000 a year. People don’t like mentioning that. America had more money to save than at any time in many decades as a result during my four years in office.
Now, you have to listen to these numbers. These numbers are like beautiful, and I don’t want to repeat myself. Listen to these numbers: as a result during my four years in office, Bitcoin surged by 3,900%, from $898 the day I took office to $35,900 the day I left. That was the biggest jump in just about any industry. Think of that. Now compare that to just after three and a half years of Biden and Harris. Adjusted for inflation, Bitcoin is up 50%. Now, 50% sounds good, but not when you’re comparing it to almost 4,000%. Right?
Fifty percent, you know, normally you say, "Oh, that sounds pretty good." Let’s not put that into the speech. No, 50% is not good when people can’t afford groceries or rent. They have no savings to store in Bitcoin. This administration caused the biggest inflation in the history of our country, and that’s what’s happened. Our people are being wiped out. From the very first day we take back the White House, we will replace the Biden-Harris economic stagnation with a brand new Trump economic boom. You’re going to have a tremendous boom.
You know, you have a lot of great analysts out there, Scott, I’m talking about you, Scott, one of the greatest of all. The last and others say the stock market’s going up because they think Trump is going to be elected. If Trump isn’t elected, this country is going to go into the likes of what you had in 1929. I hope that’s not true, but I can understand it, and I can understand what they’re saying. The stock market gain they think is because it looks like we’re going to win the election. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the election; you know they cheat like hell. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if we win, this country is going to boom. It’s going to be booming like it never boomed before.
The current administration’s economic plan includes trillions in new spending and $5 trillion tax hikes. They want to increase taxes by $5 trillion. They want the expiration of the Trump tax cuts to take place. They want a wealth confiscation tax so that when you make all of your money and all the people you’re going to employ, they want to take away your money in the form of a first-time-ever tax and a gigantic capital gains tax that will exceed substantially in many states over 50%. My plan is the opposite. We will lift the workers; we will create savers out of so many people, and we will reward success. We will not punish success. They want to punish success; they want to punish genius. Not going to let that happen.
I will make the Trump tax cuts permanent and deliver massive tax cuts for families, individuals, and businesses that produce jobs. That includes no tax on tips. You know that, right? We’re going to get rid of the tax on tips. It’s unnecessary and burdensome regulations. Fight every day to make America the best place on Earth to build a business, including a crypto business. It’s going to be the best place. You’re not going to have to go to China. You’re not going to have to learn, "Gee, how do I learn Chinese?" I want to learn it very quickly. I have a little granddaughter that speaks fluent Chinese; can you believe it? It’s a wonderful thing, but it’s not easy. But you’re not going to have to do it.
Most importantly, for our citizens, we will end the inflation nightmare that this administration has created, and we will end it quickly. It’s got to end; it’s destroying our country. You know inflation is a country buster. You can go back many, many years to Germany and look at what happened to Germany during their huge period of inflation. It destroyed the country. It’s a country buster. The bitcoiners, and I say to you, recognize the dangers of inflation long before most others did. You understood inflation frankly better than anybody else. You know that, don’t you? If only they had listened. They didn’t listen to you.
The trillions of dollars in ridiculous waste approved by our opponents resulted in the very inflation disaster that bitcoiners had always predicted. Twenty, thirty, and even forty percent of the value of every dollar was wiped out quickly. You understood that, but a lot of other people didn’t. The life savings of millions of Americans was rapidly destroyed. Very simply, uncontrolled inflation is a stealth taxation of the middle class. It really is. It’s a stealth taxation. I call it the Biden tax. Now call it the Harris tax or the Harris-Biden tax or whatever the hell we’re going to call them, but it’s a disaster. It’s a tax of 50%. It’s a 50% tax inflation. Think of it; it’s a 50% tax on people. This is a human tragedy, and it’s destroyed people. It’s a national disgrace; it’s destroyed everything in its way. It must never be allowed to happen again, and it won’t when I’m president. I guarantee you it won’t happen because we’re going to do things that make sure it doesn’t happen.
They’ve allowed pricing to get totally out of control. We’re going to bring energy down to levels that people have not seen in many, many years. We had it at levels; we were at $11.87 for a gallon of gasoline. You don’t see that right now. For four straight years under my leadership, we had effectively no inflation. None. When I left office, it was 1.4%, and then it stayed there for almost two years. Remember when Biden said it was nine? I inherited 9%. That was just another lie, misinformation, disinformation. We went through COVID; we did an incredible job, never got credit for that. Always got credit for the economy and the military. We rebuilt the military; we created space. We did so many different things, never got credit for that. You know what? We gave them a great country with essentially no inflation, and after two years, they drove this country and inflation through the roof.
In two years, the cost of living went up in some cases by over 50%. They say 22%; they like to say 22%, but it could be much higher, and it is much higher depending on what they include. They don’t include things like interest rates that went from 2.5% to 10%, but you can’t get the money. When I return to the White House, I will stop the wild and wasteful spending of this administration. I will end the endless wars; they never stop. Again, we had no new wars under President Trump. They thought I was going to start a war. Let me tell you something: I’m going to stop World War III because we’re closer to World War III than we’ve ever been since the end of World War II.
I will seal the border and stop the invasion of millions of people pouring into our country illegally. We will totally deflate, and we will do this quickly. We will defeat inflation, and together we will bring back the American Dream for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed. We will bring back the American Dream. You don’t even hear the statement "American Dream" anymore. You don’t hear those words anymore. We used to talk about the American Dream. A lot of you people are in the American Dream, but you’re going to be crushed if you don’t elect me. I hate to tell you; if you don’t elect me, you’re going to be crushed. You’re going to say, "Alice, what a mistake it was. We went for a person who has no talent; she’s been a failure at almost everything she’s done instead of Trump."
Look at us now; we’re going to move into an extremely small house from our beautiful house. But we will end the war on American energy, and we will very simply drill, baby, drill. We’re going to drill, baby, drill. We have to; it’s what we have. We have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation in the world—more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia. We don’t use it; we don’t use it. They use it; we don’t use it. We go out and buy oil from Venezuela. It’s amazing. But we won’t stop there. We will harness American energy in all forms. I have set the ambitious goal that by the end of my term, the United States will have the lowest cost of energy and electricity of any nation on Earth. We can make it so inexpensively because of what we have under our feet.
With low energy costs, America will become the world’s undisputed Bitcoin mining powerhouse. You’ll be a Bitcoin mining powerhouse. You will not have to move your family to China. You will not be moving to China. As we implement these reforms, Bitcoin and crypto will grow our economy, cement American financial dominance, and strengthen our entire country long into the future. Many Americans do not realize that the United States government is among the largest holders of Bitcoin. Does anyone know that? How about that? The federal government holds almost 210,000 Bitcoin, or 1% of the total supply that will ever exist.
But for too long, our government has violated the cardinal rule that every bitcoiner knows by heart: never sell your Bitcoin. Right? That’s right, isn’t it? How did I figure that one out? Never sell your Bitcoin. So, as the final part of my plan today, I am announcing that if I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, the United States of America, to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires in the future. We’ll keep 100%. I hope you do well. Please, you’re not going to buy any. This will serve, in effect, as the core of the Strategic National Bitcoin stockpile.
As you know, most of the Bitcoin currently held by the United States government was obtained through law enforcement action. You know that; they took it from you. Let’s take that guy’s life; let’s take his family, his house, his Bitcoin. We’ll turn it into Bitcoin. It’s been taken away from you because that’s where we’re going now. That’s where this country is going. It’s a fascist regime. So, as I take steps to transform that vast wealth into a permanent national asset to benefit all Americans, today I repeat my pledge to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to a sentence of time served. It’s enough; boy, we lost it. It’s enough; he’s our boy; he needs to come home.
Ultimately, my promise to each and every one of you is this: I will be the pro-innovation and pro-Bitcoin president that America needs and our citizens deserve. This will be one industry, but this will be a thriving industry, a great industry, and I’m going to be doing the same thing for every other industry. Our nation has never thrived by trying to censor new ideas and shut down the dreams of our people. America always plants our flag on the next frontier and pushes boldly ahead. We have to do that; we haven’t been doing that for a long time, especially in the last three and a half years. It’s gone the exact opposite.
Those of you in this room inherit the legacy of generations of American pioneers and patriots, risk-takers and renegades who settled this continent and built the modern world. You live on the bleeding edge. You do know that, bitcoiners, don’t you? You are the modern-day Edisons, Wright brothers, Carnegies, and Henry Fords. What you do in your lifetime stands a chance to outlive us all and inspire humanity for generations to come. This will go down as a very important day in the history of your industry. Together, you are building America’s future with your own smarts, your own grit, and your own skin in the game. You have a lot of skin in the game, and that’s what you’re doing. It takes courage to do it; most people don’t have that courage.
My job will be to set you free and to let you do what Americans do best, and what you’re going to do better than anybody: win, win, win. You’re going to win, win, win with energy, passion, and brilliance like we have rarely seen before. Our country cannot fail. We’re in a failing nation right now, but we’re not going to be for long. Our country cannot fail. With your help, we will save our nation, we will restore our republic, and we will make America and Bitcoin bigger, better, stronger, richer, freer, and greater than ever before. Thank you all. Have a good time with your Bitcoin and your crypto and everything else that you’re playing with, and we’re going to make that one of the greatest industries on Earth. Good luck, and God bless you all. Thank you. God bless you.
The former president, Donald Trump, wrapping up in Nashville. That was the speech, everybody. We all listened to it together; we watched it together. If you’ve ever watched a Trump speech before, it’s basically how he does his speeches. He goes out there, freeballs it; he has some talking directions and points, and he covered all of them. He covered immigration, covered energy, drill baby drill, took potshots at Biden, took potshots at Harris.
The substance of the speech had about five things. There’s this concept of a Bitcoin reserve; about 200,000 Bitcoin have been seized through law enforcement. Instead of selling it, I guess he wants to hold it. No statements equivalent to what RFK was talking about regarding purchasing new Bitcoin off-market, and that’s something. Second, the commuting of Ross Ulbricht’s sentence; that’s something we all support. That’s good, and I’m glad he said it. Firing Gary Gensler? Can’t complain about that. He also mentioned Operation Choke Point 2.0, so hopefully, he can make
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