Why Catholics Should Embrace Bitcoin (Guest: Devin Rose)

Guest

Devin Rose is the author of several books, including The Protestant’s Dilemma and Navigating the Tiber, and a developer of the Pray Catholic Novenas App. His first novel, Chasing the Seeds, which ties in both Catholic and Bitcoin themes, was recently published.

Links

Transcript

Eric Sammons:

Bitcoin’s price is rising again. Now there’s talk the United States might set up a strategic Bitcoin reserve. But our question is, should Catholics embrace Bitcoin or hold it in suspicion? That’s what we’re going to talk about today on Crisis Point. I’m Eric Sammons, your host, editor and chief of Crisis Magazine.

Before we get started, I just want to encourage you to smash that like button, like the Bitcoin price is about to smash 100,000. I want you to subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. You can follow us on social media @Crisismag. You can also go to our website that’s subscribe to email newsletter. Just go to CrisisMagazine.com, put your email address, subscribe to our newsletter. You get a email each day with our articles for the day. I try to think up something different for that smash comment, and I thought that was a pretty good one.

Devin Rose:

I liked that one.

Eric Sammons:

Did you? So our guest today is Devin Rose. He is the author of several books. I remember I heard of Devin long ago. I think it was the Protestant’s Dilemma. I think that’s the one. It was the Protestant’s Dilemma and Navigating the Tiber are two of his books. He’s the developer of the Pray Catholic Novena’s app. So I want to establish all your Catholic cred here first.

You have your first novel out this year, which I recently read called Chasing the Seeds. Which ties in, there it is, both Catholic and Bitcoin themes. And it was recently published and it’s very good. And I like it particularly because it’s the first in a series. So I was like, “Good. I can keep on reading this,” as the next one’s coming out. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But welcome to the program, Devin.

Devin Rose:

Thank you, Eric. Longtime friends and first time I think we’ve been on this together.

Eric Sammons:

Yes, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, Devin and I go way back. And it wasn’t through Bitcoin, it was through Catholic stuff. And then somehow I think, what was your first book that you self-published and then Catholic Answers picked it up? Which one was that?

Devin Rose:

Yeah, correct. You’ve got a really great memory actually, and not many people recall this. But yeah, the very first one was If Protestantism’s True.

Eric Sammons:

That’s right.

Devin Rose:

This was self-published in the early days of the blogosphere, and then Catholic Answers turned it into the Protestant’s Dilemma.

Eric Sammons:

Okay. The name changed. Okay. I have If Protestantism is True, somewhere around here because I think I was living in Florida. And when was that published? Maybe 10 years ago, something like that.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, probably 12 or 13 years ago.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. Yeah. So great book. Great book. And I’m not surprised Catholic Answers then picked it up. I was excited when that happened because it’s a good solid book for just basic apologetics for understanding Protestantism. And I assume, boy, I should know this, assume that you were Protestant at one point, right?

Devin Rose:

I was, but only briefly. So I grew up atheist and then I spent, Protestants, this would probably make them mad. I spent about a year and a half to two years in Protestantism before realizing the Catholic faith is true and became Catholic all by the grace of God.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

And I think that you and I were probably friends through the Catholic blogosphere first in its heyday from ’06 to 2013 or something.

Eric Sammons:

We’re giving away our age a little bit here.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, gray hair.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, right, exactly. Talking about these hip new technologies like Bitcoin, but we’re the old fogies of it. And so you were atheist, grew up, and then you were Protestant for a while, and then you became Catholic. And so how long have you been in the church then?

Devin Rose:

Believe it or not, I’ve crested a milestone. 23 years as a Catholic, and I became Catholic at 23. And so I’ve now spent the majority of my life as a Catholic, so that’s some credibility.

Eric Sammons:

Okay. You are definitely a nerd like me because I literally did the same thing when I hit my halfway point of life as a Catholic. I think I put it on Facebook or something like that, or Twitter or something because I was also excited. How many years am I now? I’m 31 years. About 31 years in the church. Yeah, which is way more than halfway. I’m not that old people.

Devin Rose:

I was about to say man, Eric. Wow.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, no, it was years ago I hit the halfway part. I know I got the gray, but I’m not in the sixties yet.

Devin Rose:

But you’re the only other person I’ve known who thought of it that way. And so that is probably some sort of nerdy litmus test.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, exactly. So is your background as a software developer?

Devin Rose:

It is. Yeah. I got my degree in electrical engineering, but then went right into software. Worked in the Austin tech world for 20 years as a software engineer. Got to be a little bit of an old fogey. And so then I decided I better be a manager of software engineers, which is what I do now.

Eric Sammons:

Okay. Okay. Yeah, we have similar backgrounds. I was a software engineer for many years, about 15 years or so before I moved over into Catholic stuff all the time. And that’s kind of applicable to today’s podcast topic, which is Bitcoin, obviously it’s the technology. So when did you first get involved with Bitcoin?

Devin Rose:

Yeah, I first got involved with it in 2015. I had heard about it before that, but thought, “Oh, this is stupid.” The main site was Mt. Gox and I had played Magic the Gathering. And so whenever it was a website named after Magic the Gathering, I was like.

Eric Sammons:

Can’t be that serious.

Devin Rose:

And then it crashed from $1,200 to $100 dollars with the Mt. Gox implosion. And I thought I was so smart. I was like, “Oh, yeah, I knew that was a scam.” But then it was our mutual friend, Brantley Milligan.

Eric Sammons:

Brantley, shout out to Brantley. I knew he’d come up somehow.

Devin Rose:

He needs to come up and he’s going to be an interesting case for us to talk about later, possibly. We might have to do one where he comes on the show because I call myself a Bitcoin Maxi and he’s definitely not a Bitcoin Maxi.

Eric Sammons:

That’s right. And we’ll have to explain that to the newcomers here, what we mean by that.

Devin Rose:

Yeah.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, Brantley Milligan, great guy. My son-in-law actually does work for him. So he’s just a great guy, but he’s a strong Catholic. I think his wife just had their eighth kid, I think. I’m not even sure.

Devin Rose:

Eight or nine.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, something like that. But been involved with cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, all that stuff for years, and he’s crushing it, just doing a great job. But why don’t we go kind move back a little bit. We’re already using our internal words, Bitcoin, Maxis and stuff like that. So before we go too much in and we lose everybody, all the newcomers here, why don’t we just start basically what Bitcoin is. For more importantly, you said you initially dismissed it. Why did you then embrace it? What about it? What’s the selling point of Bitcoin to you?

Devin Rose:

Yeah, when I, a programmer and I realized, “Oh, this is a peer-to-peer program,” and so the computers talk to each other. There’s not a central server somewhere. And they figured out how you could have this Bitcoin token that no one can control. It’s how much Bitcoin comes into the system is fixed by a computer algorithm. And so the computer programmer in me and thought, “Oh, well, this is kind of cool.”

I wasn’t yet on board. I thought our money was fine and use the dollar and America’s the best and whatever. So that part of it hadn’t dawned on me that, wait a second, they keep inflating our money and stealing from us. That came after I bought Bitcoin. And once I bought it too, this is kind of what happens to some people. I didn’t care about it, but once I bought it, now you’ve got some skin in the game and you kind of start watching the price and then you start watching news. And then if it goes up a lot, I’d always been interested in finance and had stocks and such. If your stock goes up 15% in a year, you’re, “Yeah, wow, man, this is awesome.” Well, Bitcoin would go up 15% in a day. And that got my attention.

So it started off real slowly as to how I then dipped my toes in Bitcoin. I just had a little bit. Yeah. How about you? Is that similar, Eric?

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. Well actually it’s interesting because I got started in 2013 and I’m also a technical guy. And what was interesting about Bitcoin is it was the convergence of two interests of mine, economics and technology. I’ve always been kind of an economics geek. I’ve read a lot about economics. I don’t claim to be some expert or I don’t have a PhD or anything like that, but I’ve loved reading about economics and studying. I’m actually teaching an economics class to a homeschool co-op right now. And so that’s been very fun for me.

And I very much ended up falling into the Austrian school of economics. Which for people who don’t understand, there’s different schools of economics, how they understand how the economy works, things like that. The Austrian school is the one that essentially would be very much when it comes to money, they’d very much be for hard money like gold and silver. Traditionally, they would very much advocate for that. They’d be very much against things like the Federal Reserve printing money, governments printing money, things like that. And they’d have lots of arguments against it.

So I fell into that. And so I was into, I had gold and silver and things like that. But also was a technology nerd. And so when I heard about Bitcoin, it was through I think a Tom Woods podcast, I think with Eric Vorhees I think is who it was. For anybody who knows who these people are, Tom Woods, you might know who he is, a lot of people might out there know who he is. And all of a sudden I was like, “Wait a second.” This was in 2013. And so it had just shot up to a $1,000 and it had been hanging out under 100 for a long time, and then all of a sudden it shot up to 1,000.

So I did the deep dive where you just go down the rabbit hole, you start reading everything you can, you get on the forums, you find out. And I was like, “Wow, this is cool economically.” Because it’s basically modeled after a digital equivalent of gold is the philosophy behind it.

But then technologically, my software development had been all internet based. And so the whole peer-to-peer decentralized stuff is very familiar to me. I mean, I remember, I was involved with actually the first company that ever offered web hosting software. If anybody has a website and they use a control panel online to control their website, I was actually part of the company that was the first people who created those. And this was in the 90s.

And so the whole decentralized, I understood that decentralization works technologically. It can solve a lot of problems. And so when I saw that Bitcoin was essentially a decentralized way to transfer value from one person to another, it did click with me and I thought, “This is great.” Now I will say I was most excited at first about it as a currency using it to actually spend my … In fact, I’ve said this before, I don’t know if I’ve said it on this podcast. I have spent probably over 30 bitcoin in my life.

Devin Rose:

Oh, wow.

Eric Sammons:

Thank you for that chuckle. Yeah, because when I first got involved with Bitcoin, I was trying to use it as a currency. I wanted it to be something you’d spend. And so I had had a debit card that directly pulled Bitcoin out, and so I’d buy things with Bitcoin. I’d be at Home Depot or whatever, and I’d buy something with Bitcoin directly. And so I used a lot like that.

And so just so people know, people I don’t have anywhere near that much because I spent most of it. I mean, that’s the funny thing. And it’s like it’s okay because at the time that’s what I was excited about. And I think that things like that help bring it about to where it is today. I’m not taking credit for it, but I’m just saying people like me who are using it and stuff help bring it to the masses more. And it wasn’t until a couple years ago I really started to see it more as the digital gold.

So why don’t you break down then kind of how Bitcoin is modeled after gold. I said that, but why don’t you break down what that means?

Devin Rose:

Yeah, sure. And before I jump into that, the way that something kind of becomes money, there’s four stages. It’s a collectible. Then it’s a stored value like gold, which is where we’re at now. Then it’s a medium of exchange, which is what we all wanted it to be a little bit prematurely. And then finally, it’s a unit of account and we’re not there yet. But a lot of people got disillusioned because it wasn’t easy to use as a currency, and that’s what they were banking on.

So gold, you mine gold out of the ground because God put it there. And we mine a certain amount every year, and it goes from being in the ground into the stock that people have. And then it has industrial uses, but it’s also used for jewelry. And people do use it as money too, or stored value. Even central banks, even though central banks can print dollars at will, they all have gold in their vaults for some reason. It’s very interesting. And there’s a certain rate at which gold is pulled out of the ground. Generally, the higher the gold price, the more gold miners are incentivized to mine it. And so that percent can actually increase the amount of, if you will, inflation of gold that’s above ground.

So Bitcoin is similar in that God didn’t make it’s a man-made invention by a pseudonymous person named Satoshi Nakamoto. No one knows who he is. But there’s a fixed amount, 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist. And Satoshi came up with this proof of work where computers “mine” Bitcoin, and mine’s in quotes, by solving what amounts to a pointless algorithm. And whoever solves it the best or the fastest gets the next little block of Bitcoin that’s mined into existence. Well, it’s very clever though, because every four years that amount is cut in half. So it started off as 50 Bitcoin every 10 minutes was mined into the world. And now we’re at, what are we at? Are we at three or 1.6?

Eric Sammons:

I think we’re at the three.

Devin Rose:

Okay.

Eric Sammons:

Because, remember we had the halving back in March, and that dropped from six to three.

Devin Rose:

25, 12, six. Okay, so three. Right. And so now the amount of Bitcoin, new Bitcoin that comes into the world every year compared with the amount of Bitcoin that’s already been mined is actually makes it scarcer than gold in a stock to flow ratio is what they call it. I know that we’re getting a little technical, but it does mirror gold in that sense. And so the comparison to digital gold is pretty apropos, don’t you think?

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. I think one of the things I learned when I was studying economics on my own, especially the Austrian school on the origin of money, what I think a lot of people think is gold and silver, they just ended up kind of coincidentally as the most common money and stores of value. I didn’t realize it was actually, there’s a reason why literally every culture on earth that develops to a certain point always adopts gold and silver as money. And I think that’s because of their characteristics. And the funny thing is my economics class I’m teaching right now, we literally just, our last lesson was on money and the origin of money. And what you see is good money always has certain properties.

So it can be easily divided and it can be carried around. It can be transferred. It keeps its value. It’s scarce. That’s a key part. It’s scarce. It’s fungible, meaning one gold coin is worth the same as another gold coin. They’re not different. All these are characteristics that made silver and gold money. It wasn’t like somebody from on high said gold is going to be the money for every culture. No, every culture realized gold just works out great, and so does silver.

And one of the main things is something you mentioned was the stock to flow ratio, which is just a technical term for how much is there, how much stock is there and how much is being added to it each year, whatever. And gold, because it’s hard to mine, you can’t double the amount of gold in the world overnight. It’s just impossible. You can double the amount of dollars in the world. That actually is possible to do that. And in fact, they seem to be doing that all the time. And same thing with silver.

And so that’s important because now what you have, it makes it hard money. It makes it so that it can’t be artificially inflated, which devalues the value of it. I mean, the funny thing is how Americans, and probably I guess everybody around the world does this. We grew up just assuming things cost more in the future than they do in the past. You hear your mom say, “Oh yeah, milk was 50 cents gallon or a dollar a gallon, or something like that.” And now I think it’s like $6 or $7 a gallon or something like that. And people just are like, “Yeah, that’s just the way it is.” Almost like it’s an economic law of nature.

But that’s only because the money is getting inflated, which means it getting devalued. So $1 today is worth less than it was a year ago or 100 years ago. That’s a very important aspect of gold. When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, he consciously knew all this and consciously designed the program purposefully to mimic gold. Now, he did see it as a currency immediately because it’s easier to transact in Bitcoin than it is in gold. If I want to pay you for something in gold, it’s a hassle because you’re in Texas, I’m in Ohio. If I wanted to pay you in something in Bitcoin, and you ain’t getting my Bitcoin, but if-

Devin Rose:

I was going to say anytime, Eric.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. If I wanted to pay for something to you in Bitcoin, it literally takes just a couple seconds to do it and it’s settled and you have it very quickly. And so I think that’s what we’re talking about, kind of the value of the intentional design of Bitcoin to make it mimic gold so it would be this good store of value. And store value just simply means that it will maintain its value over time. So the US dollar is one of the worst stores of value. Think about it, take $1,000 dollars, put it under your mattress, come back in 50 years and you’re not getting much with it. I mean, it’s going to be completely devalued.

Devin Rose:

And by the way, on those qualities of money, I really like Mike Maloney’s from Goldsilver.com’s, Secret History of Money Videos. You probably have seen them Eric. So he’s a gold, silver broker guy.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, I think so.

Devin Rose:

And he has this video series. Just search for Mike Maloney, kind of spelled like baloney. It’s really good. He then goes into how all the empires of the world have fallen in part because they begin devaluing and debasing their money.

Eric Sammons:

Oh, I have seen this series, yeah.

Devin Rose:

It’s really a great series. And speaking of the inflation thing, so here’s a book by Jeff Booth called The Price of Tomorrow, that Eric, I’m sure you’ve heard of, seen Jeff Booth before.

Eric Sammons:

Oh, yeah. Great.

Devin Rose:

And his whole thesis is about how with all the technological improvements that we have, things should be getting cheaper over time, not more expensive. It’s only because they are proliferating the dollar and debasing the currency to steal from us through the hidden tax of inflation that stuff is more expensive every year in spite of the tremendous productivity gains we’ve had, technological advances we’ve had. And caveat, Jeff is not Catholic, he’s from Canada. No offense to all the Canadians, but he takes some shots at, I don’t know, stuff that we as Catholics would disagree with.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

But we take the good from things. And things we disagree with, hey, that’s fine.

Eric Sammons:

Right. I also think I want to tie it right now into us being Catholic. And this is important because we talk a lot about Catholic social teaching. We have the bishops talk a lot about Catholic social teaching. They talk about economics a lot, and they give these. But I’ve yet to see one Catholic bishop ever talk about the immorality of the Fed.

And what do I mean by that? Specifically that when they create money out of thin air. And by the way, for the technical people out there, I know the Fed doesn’t literally print money. It’s all very complicated. But the end result is they’re injecting more currency into the system, more dollars into the system.

But the point is that that is a form of theft. It’s truly stealing. And so it’s immoral, in my opinion, when they create new money. Because also what happens is if you look how it works, it enriches the people closest to the money printers first, I mean primarily. And then the poor, the people, and even the middle class downstream, they’re the ones who basically, they don’t get the benefits of the extra money, but they do get the cost of it. And I feel like that should be something Catholics should really be screaming from the rooftops that this is an immoral practice, not just is it bad economically for the country, whatever. But it really does, it is a form of theft, really.

Devin Rose:

And the most egregious form because it’s invisible to most people. They don’t see it.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

I mean, Eric, I could not agree with you more. And I only think that our bishops, they’re just not savvy enough and they’re about three steps behind this.

Eric Sammons:

Right. I mean, I do think it’s ignorance more than anything else. I don’t think that they know all this and then they refuse to say something. I think most people are ignorant of this.

Devin Rose:

Right. And so it’s fooled them. And yet of all the things about helping the poor and helping the marginalized people and oh, look at all these terrible wars. Well, guess what? The fact that we can proliferate money like this is what allows us to fund these never-ending wars. And allows us to steal from all of the people, enriching the richer people, which Eric knows that that’s called the Cantillon Effect. The people closest to the money printer-

Eric Sammons:

Couldn’t remember the name, but that’s what it is. Yeah.

Devin Rose:

It looks like Cantilean, but I don’t think there’s an I at the end. So I think it’s Cantillon. But they get a shot at using the money first before it goes out to everyone, and all the prices rise. And so they get to use it. So it is, I don’t know, maybe in 100 years bishops will know about all these topics and they’ll speak out against them. But not to say that we’re prophetic, but I do think in a way it’s going to be us, we lay Catholics who are talking about this now raising the awareness. To where priests and bishops will eventually say, and even the Pope, “Oh yeah, this was the biggest theft of all time, central banking.” And we as Catholics didn’t stand up against it, and everyone got robbed and got poorer.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

I hope so.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. Here’s another example of how it harms the poor the most. The poor are typically the least sophisticated as far as being able to manage their money. And they also have the least access to investment vehicles and things like that. In a hard money system like gold for example, or Bitcoin, they would be able to basically just, they earn their gold. They put a little bit aside. And when I say gold, I’m not saying gold coins. I understand there’s systems where you have paper money that represents gold but actually represents gold, not the way we’ve done it in the past 100 years or more.

But they can save it. They can say, “Okay, I’m putting aside 5% of my hard-earned income. I’m a dad, I’m supporting my family. I’m not making a lot of money, but I need to save for rainy day. I need to save.” And so when they put it away, they know they literally could put it under their mattress.

They know in 10 years it’s still at least going to be worth as much as when they started, probably going to be worth more. What I really mean by that is they’re purchasing power is more. They can buy more in 10 years than they can today. If they do that with dollars, they’re going to lose out. And so what happens is the people who don’t have access to these different vehicles, investment vehicles, and things like that, they end up becoming even poorer over time. And also what it really is doing in America, it’s forcing people into risky investments. Nobody wants a savings account at the bank because they know it’s below inflation. You’re not even making as much as inflation is, and so you’re actually losing money. So then they hit to go into stocks and things like that and get more and more speculative, which is not a good … that should not be the standard. I’m not against investments and stuff like that. I’m just saying though, for a lower middle-class person, for example, they shouldn’t need to do stock trading in order just to stay afloat. Not even get ahead, but just stay afloat. And that’s essentially what they have to do now.

And so hard money like gold, like Bitcoin is really … So I really do feel like … It ties into Catholic social teaching a lot. You see sometimes Catholics, they talk about usury today in our circles, but I feel like the central banking of the basement of currency, that is a true form of usury where you really are stealing, you’re stealing from the poor to give to the rich is what you end up doing.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, totally. Their purchasing power should increase over time, and if they did, it would actually incentivize people to become savers. In our system, savers are punished instead, they want us to consume, which is also against Catholic teaching. To be just a consumer and throw away culture and all of this, it fuels so much stuff downstream that’s just terrible.

Eric Sammons:

I think that’s a great point about the whole consumer culture we have because a lot of Catholics rightly decry our consumers culture and they should. But think of it, if I said to you, Devin, I can give you a hundred dollars today and in a year it’s going to be worth $80, when are you more likely to spend it? Now or in the future? You’re going to spend it now probably because it’s devaluing. If I said to you though that this $120 is going to be worth 120 in a year, you’re going to be a lot slower to spend. You’re going to still spend for necessities. It’s not like you stop spending. You need food, you need clothing and housing and all that stuff, but you are less likely to maybe get that impulse purchase. You’re kind of like, “Well, why would I get this impulse purchase?”

And I don’t know about you, but being somebody involved with Bitcoin, I have found that has stopped me from making purchases because I’m like, “I could put this in the Bitcoin and save and I know it’s going to be worth more in the future, or I could buy this thing that really gives me a little bit of entertainment or happens for a day or two, and then really, do I really care.” Now, to be honest, I still buy books like crazy. But other than that-

Devin Rose:

Sure.

Eric Sammons:

But the point is it naturally then it creates a more moral environment in my opinion.

Devin Rose:

And the phrase we use for that in Bitcoin or terms or in economic terms is time preference. We have a low time preference, which means we’re willing to forego gratification now for the future, which when you think about it, that’s very Catholic because we as Catholics in our life, what’s the future thing we’re looking toward? Heaven. Therefore we deny ourselves now of not only just sinful pleasures but also even of legitimate pleasures. Think about Lent when we deny ourselves in different ways or even an Advent because there’s something greater that we’re working toward. And I actually did a little game theory, so four of my nieces and nephews graduated from high school. I sent them a graduation gift and decided to send them Bitcoin.

So I explained to them what it was, got them set up with an account, and I sent them some Bitcoin and said, “You could sell it now and just cash it out and go buy that thing you want. But you know, might want to wait some number of months and see if it’s worth more then.” And from what I gave it to them to now, it would be worth 50% more. So if it were $200, it’s now worth $300. Interestingly, one of them sold, ignored what I said and instantly sold it and liquidated it, and took the cash. Hey,

Eric Sammons:

It’s fine.

Devin Rose:

Right. It’s fine. The other three I’m going to message because I’m really curious. It’s a little bit of an experiment, but I want to instill that in them because especially at USA college age, and it could help to form them and think, “Oh, yeah, wow, I’m going to lower my time preference” and think more long-term and think about all that that could benefit them in their life

Eric Sammons:

And think about how radically different that is from the standard of consumers and debt. The debt in this country is just ridiculous. I mean, obviously, I’m not talking about government debt. I’m talking about individual. Individual’s debt is crazy and that’s what happens. You go off to college, you get huge college loans, and then as soon as you go off into the workforce, you’re spending more than you’re making, your credit card debt is going like crazy. You’re getting a car loan, you get a house bigger than you can afford. All these things happen and you’re just crushed by this debt. I mean, I think we both know for a fact this has a real-world spiritual impact on people.

I mean, our Lord talks about money a lot and for a reason because debt and money problems often causes a lot of strife in marriages. It can lead people to withhold the gift of life. Not wanting to have children often through immoral means, even through moral means, natural planning. You’re kind of holding back because you’re so much in debt you can’t afford. But if your whole attitude is, okay, I’m saving, I’m not spending now, but it’s our system rewards consumers. And so that’s why getting off of this system, getting off of the fiat standard, fiat just for dollars to the Bitcoin standard or the gold standard in your mind, I think that … There’s a reason why two Catholics here are talking about this on Catholic podcasts. It’s not just Bitcoin geeks. We are, but because it really does have a real-world impact.

Now, I feel like to me that’s the number one kind of selling point for Bitcoin is that not that number go up, not that it’s going to be worth a ton in the future, but simply your purchasing power will go up in dollar terms because of the fact that the dollar is going down in value often. And so you can save, you can be responsible. I mean, it’s funny because my dad, I wrote a book on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Basics. It’s outdated a little bit now it’s like nine years old. I really want to write a new edition, but I just haven’t had time but I dedicated it to my father because he knew nothing about Bitcoin. I mean, he didn’t know any of that technology stuff. He wasn’t like an economist. He wasn’t in the gold standard Austrian economics. As long as I can remember, he taught me the value of savings and the value of being frugal with your money, not spending more than you have.

I mean, I have, a funny story I like to tell is when I got my first credit card in high school and he co-signed for it and it was like a $500 lender, something like that. He didn’t tell me that you didn’t have to pay off the whole balance each month. He made it seem like I had to pay it off each month. I had a credit card for years. I think I was in college, I might even have graduated college before I finally realized. I finally looked at the sheet where it said, minimum payment, $25 or whatever. I’m like, “Wait, what does that mean?” I mean, I literally had a credit card for years before I realized you didn’t have to pay off the whole thing. And that’s because in my dad’s mind, you did have to pay off the whole thing every single month. And that’s of course, what I taught my kids. And so that mentality of savings … It’s a very moral way of doing things. It’s the right way of living, but our system does penalize it at least before Bitcoin came around. And so I think that’s the number one thing.

But I want to also talk about the censorship-resistant aspect of Bitcoin and why this should matter for Catholics. So tell us a bit about how Bitcoin is organized that can government come in and basically shut it down, can it control it, what is Bitcoin’s kind of use case when it comes to free speech and as Catholic avoiding government oversight?

Devin Rose:

Yeah, overreach.

Eric Sammons:

Overreach.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, great question. So because Bitcoin is this peer-to-peer network of computers running all over the world, there’s no central server to shut down. And that means even if the government in the US said we’re going to destroy every computer running Bitcoin in the US, the Bitcoin network would still function and all the different nodes in the world. It’s almost like this little self-healing network of neurons. So the government can’t stop it. Probably if all the governments had colluded 15 years ago or 12 years ago, they could have, if they all got together led by the US and said, “We’re crushing this,” and they probably should have done that, but they’re not smart enough. That’s fortunate for us, but they didn’t. And now the cat’s out of the bag. So because of that, then, because there’s a decentralized party, if I try to send you money through the bank and it goes to the banking system, well, if you or if I’ve been secretly flagged as a domestic bad guy by one of the three letter agencies, maybe because we’re traditional Catholics or because we’re Catholic, well, then guess what? You can’t send money and your bank account might get closed.

Well, the Bitcoin, I can send it to anyone that I want. It goes through the network and it can’t be stopped. Now, governments can try to regulate it in different ways. They can disincentivize it by taxing it heavily or other ways of making it onerous, which our government has partially done. There’s some partial things that make it onerous. In other countries, it’s even more onerous. But stopping that underlying decentralized network, they’d just be playing whack-a-mole and never be able to snuff it out. And so that’s a big benefit that Bitcoin brings, especially if you are in a jurisdiction where … Our government’s kind of bad enough, but there’s other governments that are even worse,

Eric Sammons:

Right? And I think all of us, we realize, especially when Biden was president, that the government can turn very quickly against us as Catholics. And we saw the FBI was literally investigating traditional Catholics in this country just a year ago. I’m hopeful that they’re all going to stop under Trump. I think it will. But I think though there’s nothing to say that in five years, it won’t go back to that, and we’re the enemy again. And so it’s not just theory always, and in other parts of the country, it’s been real where Bitcoin has allowed people to have freedom where their government was very oppressive. And I think that’s a good thing. So I think that’s important for Catholics to be supportive of Bitcoin for that reason as well because it does give us the ability to circumvent in unjust governments essentially. Like you said, they can still do a lot. They can really make all the on-ramps, off-ramps, I should say, where you want convert cryptocurrency to dollars to spend or whatever. They can make that very difficult. And it’s not a panacea, it’s not a utopia we’re living in.

But at the same time, there have been real-world examples over the past 10 years and more of people in countries where they were able to use crypto and it really did help them. I mean, people have literally escaped from Afghanistan, for example, where they basically had their seed and that’s all they had on them, and they had to escape with none of their possessions and they got to Germany or whatever, and all of a sudden they were able to access all of their Bitcoin. And that’s huge.

Devin Rose:

That’s right.

Eric Sammons:

I mean, that’s huge.

Devin Rose:

And Eric, and that’s because of course, as you and I know, your private key, which is this long string of hexadecimal numbers and letters, is your secret Bitcoin address that no one else knows unless you tell them. It even can be made into this seed phrase that’s either 12 words or 24 words. So anyway, if you can memorize 12 words, which almost anyone, you can take your entire net worth around you all over the world, try to go through an airport with $10,000 of cash or gold bars worth $5,000 or maybe a little more than that, but you’ll be stopped. You’ll be questioned. We’re even questioned now, if you go to the bank and you want to withdraw 10,000 bucks, and they’re like, “Well, what are you going to use it for?” Well, you’re depositing 10,000 bucks. They’re like, “Where’d you get this?”

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, the banks are required by law, any transaction over $10,000, they have to flag it for the three-year letter agencies. And in fact, if you try to get around it by having a bunch of $9,900 ones, they’re going to flag that too.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, don’t try to be secret. This even happened when I tried to pay … Just briefly, I tried to pay down my mortgage, I came into a little bit of money and I thought, “I’m going to put some money down on my mortgage and pay the principal down.” And it was stopped because it was too much money. It was whatever-

Eric Sammons:

Oh, my God.

Devin Rose:

7,000, I don’t know how much it was. And they were like, “Well, you can’t do that.” And I was like, “Well, how am I supposed to pay down my principal?” We as Catholics too, you alluded to usury, we’re usually on the receiving end of usury. We’re usually the ones paying the usurious money to other people. I mean, we’re getting slammed. And you don’t really hear bishops talking about that as much either. Hey, if something like Bitcoin could get us out of a usurious system where we’re getting taken advantage of left and right, wow, that would be great to have.

Eric Sammons:

Now, one of the things, I don’t know if this happens to you, but when people find out I’m like a Bitcoin guy and cryptocurrency on stuff, I often have somebody come up to me and they’ll say, “Hey, what do you think about …” And it’ll be some coin that I’m not going to say what we call that because this is a family podcast. People can look that up, but some coin, some project, and they’re like, “What do you think about that?” And what I always, always say is just simply like, “Well, honestly, I haven’t done the research. I just stick with Bitcoin and maybe a few others that are well established.” But what’s your attitude? Because the fact is, for people to understand the technical, Bitcoin is an open-source software. What that means is literally anybody can look at every single line of code in Bitcoin, which is its strength, because if somebody would’ve found an exploit hack or something they would’ve found long ago, but it also means people can just copy it.

You can copy the Bitcoin code, I could call it Sammons’s coin and make one or two little changes, maybe instead 21 million coins. It’ll create, I don’t know, a hundred million coins and maybe a couple other little things. And all of a sudden I got myself a cryptocurrency. And so the fact is there’s now, I don’t even … I lost track long ago. Thousands and thousands of cryptocurrencies, some of them have been around for a long time, like Ethereum and have a lot of people, our friend Brantley is very involved with Ethereum. There’s other ones like that that have been Cardano and just Solano. I mean, they really are being used a lot. Some are just obviously 100% scams. Some are good ideas that just don’t have in a lot of ways, but they really just don’t work or whatever. What’s your general attitude towards all the cryptocurrency universe outside of Bitcoin?

Devin Rose:

And I went through a journey, which Eric maybe you also did of. First I was Bitcoin only and then was Bitcoin/Ethereum. And then I learned about these other alternative tokens, Altcoins.

Eric Sammons:

Altcoins. That’s what we’ll call them.

Devin Rose:

That’s what we’ll call. And then I owned 30 of them or 40 of them, or who knows, I could barely keep track of it. And then eventually I realized, oh … And for me, I thought what these other projects are primarily software tech projects, software tech startups, and some of them might end up being successful so far the vast majority have not been. And to justify needing your own different blockchain is a big hurdle to overcome because there’s a big deal with trying to set up your own blockchain or even to say, “I need my own token to accomplish at X, Y, Z.” We’re going to do Uber, but it’s going to be on blockchain. Well, what’s blockchain giving you there? And then yet another aspect too, and Eric, you also are familiar with this. A lot of these tokens have now moved to a proof of stake mechanism rather than a proof of work mechanism like Bitcoin has.

And the proof of work is these mining machines have to try to solve the problem. They race each other. And even if I have a million Bitcoin like Satoshi Nakamoto, it gives me no extra power over the network, no extra power to get more tokens. But with proof of stake, it’s kind of like a plutocracy or whoever has the most tokens, they end up staking them and then they get even more. So most of them, including Ethereum, which is the number two, have moved to proof of stake, which I view as a really fatally bad move. Other people disagree.

And so any other thing that I’d be interested in, I would want to see that it was proof of work and it would need to … In my view, Bitcoin has cornered the market now on as a financial asset cryptocurrency. It’s the one and only financial store of value, future money. But that’s not to say there couldn’t be another project down the line that could use a proof of work blockchain and do something that was really important, vital, whatever. I haven’t ruled that out. Some Bitcoin maxis have ruled that out. So what do you think, Eric?

Eric Sammons:

I’m with you a lot. I think a couple of things. First of all, from 2013 to about 2015, I was Bitcoin-only because I wanted it to be the solution to everything. I want it to be the currency that you … I mean, like I said, I was literally spending it all the time. I bring that up so I don’t cry.

Devin Rose:

30 Bitcoin.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Bye-bye, Bitcoin. But then from 2017 to about 2019, 20, I was very much into the altcoins and a lot of different projects, Ethereum, there’s one called Dash. I was really actually part of the team and everything with it. There was a lot of good people involved with it, and I think they had good motives, good intentions, and all that. It wasn’t a scam, in other words, because I think some of them are, but a lot of them aren’t. And I think it’s too easily people call things scams when really they just might mean failure. People fail. I mean, more businesses fail and succeed. Around 2020 or so, I did start to come more around to realizing, okay, there’s some reasons why Bitcoin is different from all the rest. And some of them I almost resisted. I didn’t want to believe this. For example, it’s first. And so that doesn’t seem fair that that makes a difference, but it does because it gives it the network effect. It gives it the fact that’s the one everybody decided. I mean, people deciding that is the one does matter. I call myself a Bitcoin semi maximalist. By that I just simply mean that I believe Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that is a true financial asset. It’s the only one that really can be considered like that.

I do think there are some projects that are interesting, but I look at, like you just said, I look at more like a stock then because it’s a company and the token represents buying shares in that company. And so yes, some will. And since it’s a business, some will succeed potentially, some will fail, some will go way up in their stock price or their token price and then come crashing down. That’s what happened to Dash. I got in, it was like $4, it went on to $1,500. Now it’s down like 25 or something like that. There’s no scam there. It’s just simply the business. Was the business model didn’t work. The market decided, no, that doesn’t work. So I’m not saying somebody can’t … By the way, I should made this going to the beginning. Nothing we say here is investment advice, whatever that thing you’re supposed to say, this is just Devin and me spitballing and giving our opinion. So if you go and spend all your money because of what we say, you’re an idiot. First of all, do your own research and decide what to do with your own money.

Devin Rose:

That’s right. That’s the proper disclaimer, Eric.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. But the thing is, all these other ones, if you want to invest in some small coin hoping that it’s going to take off, maybe it will and maybe you’ll be smart enough to get out when it does. It’s funny, I was talking to my son about this. He’s only 21, but he’s really into cryptocurrency and stuff too. It’s too exhausting. It’s too exhausting to always have to follow the latest on what’s this one doing, what’s that one doing. I’m more pro proof of stake than you are, but I do think proof of work is the gold standard, so to speak. And I don’t see how a project though, will succeed on something with proof of work outside of Bitcoin because proof of work is purposefully not that efficient from a software standpoint. You know what I mean? It’s like this critical database, dude. You don’t need all this proof of work there. There’s not a lot of use cases, in other words.

Now there is one huge use case, and that’s what Bitcoin is using it for, which is we have a scarcity. When we need a scarcity. Typically, in technology projects, you don’t want scarcity, you want abundance. And so I’m not convinced, and I will say I was a big theory and we probably should have gotten Brantley on here so he can go probe Ethereum. I was big on Ethereum for a long time. I just don’t know. I don’t see the use cases anymore.

Devin Rose:

And Eric. So I also was. I mean, I was huge Ethereum. I was like Ethereum was the way it was touted as the world computer. One brief thing for the programmers. With Ethereum, you can write a Turing complete software program that can run the Ethereum blockchain. With Bitcoin, you can’t. It’s a very limited script. So from a computer programmer standpoint, Ethereum is way more interesting than Bitcoin.

Eric Sammons:

And I looked down on Bitcoin for years because of that.

Devin Rose:

Oh, yeah. And Ethereum still looked down on it. It’s like Bitcoin is awesome. It’s stuck in the past. That’s actually a feature in my view. And maybe we could get Brantley on here, but one of the differences is when Satoshi launched Bitcoin, well, no one cared about it but him and eventually a few others, how many say … I’ll try it out with you. It was worth nothing. But then over time, people started joining it, and so it’s as close to what I would call a fair launch project as it could get. People found out about it, people started using it. And then the key thing was Satoshi who has about a million Bitcoin, he disappeared. And the million Bitcoin has never moved.

Eric Sammons:

I strongly believe that he’s dead …

Devin Rose:

… it’s never moved.

Eric Sammons:

I strongly believe that he’s dead.

Devin Rose:

Well, in-

Eric Sammons:

I know, no way to know.

Devin Rose:

You think that he’s dead? Huh, Eric? But Ethereum, and all these other projects, what do they do? They do what’s called a pre-mine. Meaning they allocate a percentage of the tokens before they ever launched the project to the venture capitalists, to the founders. So Ethereum has its Vitalik Buterin, it has its Jo Lubin, these other guys. They weren’t public with this, but it came out they had an enormous pre-mine for Ethereum. I don’t know what the percentage is. It’s something big. Do you happen to know, Eric?

Eric Sammons:

I don’t. I don’t. Just to be clear, I don’t think a pre-mine in of itself is immoral as long as everything is transparent. As long as you’re not lying about what people are getting. It’s just like a stock in a company. I was involved in a startup in the one I was talking about, the web hosting company, where I got stock in it for working there before it…

And it never went public, but I had the stock in it. And if it had gone public, I have founder shares. Our first 20-some employees, we gave them all stock in it, and I think that’s fine. There’s nothing immoral about that, but the problem is when people don’t know that… You need to know exactly how many there are of the token, and basically, what was distributed before it was open to the public.

Devin Rose:

And the fact that you and I don’t know that for Ethereum, even though we were big in Ethereum.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah.

Devin Rose:

Right?

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

Obviously, they didn’t want that to be public.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

So the reason this comes up is because Ethereum is the number two cryptocurrency. And has been for seven years, or however long.

Eric Sammons:

Yes.

Devin Rose:

So, it’s a big deal. I guess what I think about with it is time will tell. Time will tell. Right now, for the past two years, Ethereum’s value compared with Bitcoin has plummeted.

Eric Sammons:

Yes.

Devin Rose:

Oh, sorry. Ethereum went to Proof-of-Stake, and it was supposed to usher in this new era of Ethereum being awesome. Instead, actually, Ethereum’s lost value. So I’m like, “Great. Let’s see what happens. Let’s let the market decide which has the most value.”

Eric Sammons:

I have yet to see a crypto project that really has had a real world usage that really hits. The big promises like, “We’ll do smart contracts. We’ll have contracts for mortgages,” and all this stuff. But the fact is, is that there’s not a use case for that. Ultimately, people aren’t really wanting that, and there’s so many difficulties with integrating it with the real world in that situation.

And all I’ve seen is the major use case for these projects is just so you can defy trade between them. Okay. I mean, that’s nice, and maybe somebody make some money on that. I mean, that’s all an internal. For it to go big, it has have a use case outside of the digital world, outside of the crypto world. And that’s what Bitcoin does. It has a use case outside of the digital world. It actually lets you store value for a very long time, and not lose the value.

Devin Rose:

Right.

Eric Sammons:

So our point is neither of us are really recommending go trade these other cryptos unless you’re a degen who just wants to have fun, and do your trading. I mean, whatever. So let’s get back to Bitcoin though now. I want to talk about some of the objections that we hear in the Catholic world, particularly, on it. There’s been objections since the beginning. I mean, we’ve heard them all, and they recycle. I mean the funny thing is they’re usually the same, and some of them just has to do…

I have empathy for this objection, I will say. This is probably the one that I’m like, “I get where you’re coming from.” You and I are tech geeks. We’ve lived in a digital world in a lot of ways. Young people, particularly. But a lot of people are like, “You can’t touch Bitcoin. You can’t hold it. You can’t put it in your safe. It doesn’t really exist. It’s not real.” I think in our traditional Catholic world, we both would probably agree that there is a problem of our world becoming less real.

One reason we go to traditional Latin Mass is because it’s real. I mean, you got the smells, the bells, this physical and spiritual combination. Bitcoin, though, it doesn’t exist in the quote, unquote real world is the argument. So how can we really put faith in it as something? So, Ethereal, how would you address that from a Catholic standpoint as well?

Devin Rose:

Yeah, that’s a good question. You’ll hear it formulated as, “Unless I can stand in front of it with my gun, and protect it-

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

… it’s not real,” and there’s Catholics who say that. And I understand, also like you said, why they say that. But just like you can stand in front of your safe that has gold in it with a gun, and protect that gold, you can stand in front of this little piece of paper that has your private key on it. That’s your little Bitcoin bank account, and either way, gold and Bitcoin are what are called bearer assets. Meaning, they have no counterparty risk. They are, itself, money. If someone conks you over the head, and they get past you and your gun, and take your gold, they have your gold. Sorry.

If they take your little sheet of paper with your private key, they’ve got your Bitcoin. They took it. So you can defend it. Now, a corollary is, yeah, but it’s not real. It requires electricity, and it requires the internet network to be able to function. And I agree with that. It does require electricity, and it requires some sort of networking. But when we’re hedging bets, if we get to the point in our society where we don’t have electricity anymore because we bombed ourselves back to the Stone Age, you’re right. Bitcoin is not the thing to worry about, you know?

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

Time to craft weapons out of rediscover brass, or whatever, and attack each other with swords.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. The thing is everybody’s bank account goes to zero then, too. I mean, that’s the thing is we don’t recognize how much of our assets are digital today. Any money you have in the bank, it’s not real. I mean, it’s as real as Bitcoin. It’s less real than Bitcoin. And so you lose all that, and even if you have some golden stuff, now you got to trade it. Which means you could get it stolen from you. I mean, there’s just so many problems. If the grid goes down, Bitcoin is not the solution.

Devin Rose:

No.

Eric Sammons:

People talk about Bitcoin like it’s a hedge for bad times, and it is. But there’s 1,000,001, more than that, bad times that don’t include the grid going down.

Devin Rose:

Yeah. It’s a big spectrum here. A lot can happen along that spectrum.

Eric Sammons:

Right. And like I said, if we’re at grid down scenario, we’re not caring about anything other than just survival, and almost everything you possess is worthless at that point.

Devin Rose:

That’s right.

Eric Sammons:

Unless you can burn it for fuel, and to keep you warm.

Devin Rose:

Yeah. It’s like if the grid went down for a month or something, something like half the world’s population dies, or half America dies. Yeah. That’s an objection, and I get it. How to say this? I don’t think there’s going to be Bitcoin in Heaven. The streets aren’t paved with Bitcoin. They’re paved with gold. Granted, this is a human construct. But so is the Federal Reserve note with the pyramid, and the eye, and all of the crazy stuff on our dollars. Right?

Eric Sammons:

Yeah.

Devin Rose:

It’s like if you’re willing to save in dollars, in Federal Reserve notes, you should be willing to save in Bitcoin. We are a digital society now, and that’s not bad. We want to make sure we have real touch points with real people, and real person go to mass, and you have to have confession. It can’t be virtually. I mean, yes, it’s very sacramental, our Catholic faith, but that doesn’t preclude us using Bitcoin.

Eric Sammons:

Right. Right. Another thing I’ve heard is that one of the complaints is just the idea that somehow it’s immoral that people have gotten richer from simply buying this digital asset, and doing nothing. Literally, the work it takes to buy a little bit of Bitcoin. It takes, what? 10 minutes to set up your Coinbase account, or wherever, and buy some Bitcoin. And then all of a sudden your $100 you spent is worth $300 in a couple years. There’s definitely a segment of particularly traditional Catholics, but Catholics who would say, “That’s immoral in and of itself because you didn’t know work for that money.” What is your argument against that?

Devin Rose:

Yeah, and there’s a real Catholic teaching here that I’m sure it’s from Aquinas with regard to the meaning of the word speculation, and that speculation is immoral. And I got into a big discussion with this with another Catholic who’s a financial advisor named Andy Flattery, and he’s on it-

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. He’s been on the podcast before. Andy’s great.

Devin Rose:

Awesome. Yeah. I now call him the Gentleman Speculator because that’s the name of his podcast, but he put Speculator in the title. But one, this is not speculation. Two, I’m not buying Bitcoin in order to get rich. That might end up happening. All I’m doing, just as if I bought gold, or I bought that acre of land, or bought that cow, I’m hoping to preserve purchasing power knowing that the government is going to steal from me. They’re very open about it.

“We’re going to steal from you. It’s just a question of how much. Our goal is to steal from you 2% per year. But it might be 10%, in reality, or 20%.” “Okay. Thank you for letting me know you’re going to steal from me. I’m going to try to not let you do that.” And there’s legal ways they let you, right now, try to not let the people do that. So I’m going to buy a scarce asset, Bitcoin. If they devalue the dollar so much that that Bitcoin goes up in nominal terms of dollar, well, okay. That’s not my fault that they tried to steal from me. And I have a little thing that, whatever they try to steal from me, it does the opposite. It sounds like, in fact, we’ve done something smart. And if we’re rewarded for doing something smart, well, great.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, and that is my argument, too. I’m like, “Do you think it’s immoral for somebody to buy an ounce of gold, and hold onto it? And if that value goes up, is that somehow immoral now? What if it went down?” One thing I told my economics class last week was that an ounce of gold 2,000 years ago could buy you a nice toga. An ounce of gold today can buy you a nice suit, and it’s retained its purchasing power over time. But gold, for example, I remember the first time I bought an ounce of gold was like 20 years ago, and it was $300. It’s now about $2,600.

Did I do something immoral? There’s literally no difference, morality wise, in the action of buying an ounce of gold and buying 0.01 Bitcoin 10 years ago, and it’s gone up. Same with buying land. Now, you might work the land. But you might just buy the land, and not work it. You’re just buying it because you’re like, “Okay. I feel confident that in 10 years my purchasing power from this land is going to be worth about what it is now. Maybe a little bit more.”

Now, of course, the reason I think people talk about Bitcoin differently is because, of course, it has such dramatic volatility, such dramatic price rises, price losses. I think that’s simply a factor of it being new, and you have a small market that starts off. I mean, literally, it was just Satoshi at first. Then, Hal Finney. It got the OGs. The Roger Vers, and people like that getting involved early on. But now, it’s growing bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And so the volatility, I think, over time will decrease.

Devin Rose:

Yes.

Eric Sammons:

And so, yes, it is true that you could buy some Bitcoin at $1,000, and it goes up to $10,000 within a week or two. I mean, literally, stuff like that has happened. And so, is it because it’s a lot that somehow that made it immoral? No, it’s just a matter of, I just think this is going to retain my purchasing power over time. And in fact, part of the reason Bitcoin has gone up, not the only reason, but part of the reason is because simply the value of the dollar has gone down. I mean, just like gold has gone up for the same reason.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, gold’s gone up, too. It’s just gone up less.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

And Bitcoin is a free market. It’s global, and it’s 24/7. And the financial wizards have not yet gotten in place all their little tricks, and contraptions, and derivatives to control and manipulate it. And they do have those things in place for different asset classes. So that might happen. Bitcoin will even out over time, but I think people get a little bit of sour grapes because they didn’t get in on it. They don’t quite understand it. And so it’s easier to say then, “Well, it must be a scam, or it must be immoral.” And I’m going to have a moral high ground by saying, “Oh, look, you’re buying it.” And then they see how much it goes up, and they’re like, “Oh, well.” There’s a cognitive dissonance, and a human nature to just want to dump on somebody.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. We’re going long here, but I hope you don’t mind. Can you stick around for a little bit longer?

Devin Rose:

Eric, we could talk about this topic for the next three hours, and we’d have a lot to talk about.

Eric Sammons:

Yes, exactly. I do want to cover some more stuff. When I get geeked out, you just keep going. A couple more objections I want to talk about. One, is I’ve seen people say Catholics, non-Catholics, that they still believe it’s hackable. I haven’t programmed in a long time, but you still are involved in that world. Is the Bitcoin hackable?

Devin Rose:

The short answer is no. The longer answer is there could be a bug, currently, that’s not been found, or a bug could be introduced with a change in the code that could allow an exploit to happen of some magnitude. So it’s a possibility. And then in the future, if they ever come out with quantum computers of any reality and size, not only would Bitcoin be hackable, but every single digital system from your bank account to the website would also be hackable.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

But like you said, it’s open source. There’s $1,000,000,000,000s of dollars behind it. So the incentive to hack it, if there was an exploit, is very high. If North Korean and Russians are allegedly going after things that are worth $1,000,000, or $10,000,000, $3,000,000,000,000 would be a nice honey pot for them.

Eric Sammons:

Right. I think one thing people who aren’t programmers don’t understand is that, when you have code, your code solidifies over time. The more it’s used, the more people are accessing. Particularly, open source code where everybody can see it, and everybody’s looking at it. And to me, what I would say is the hackability of Bitcoin literally goes down every day, and it’s gotten to a point, now, where it’s practically impossible.

I’m not saying it’s theoretically impossible. I’m just saying that the fact is there’s so many people who have looked at the code. So many people who’ve tried to hack it. I’d also say there’s incentive structures, though, to prevent certain types of hacks in the sense of a mining attack, or something like that. You literally devalue what you’re stealing if you steal it. If all of a sudden it came out that there was a mining company that grew so big, and they figure out a way to manipulate the blockchain, manipulate how it was happening.

As soon as that happened, the value of Bitcoin would just plummet. And therefore, what they did would literally be worth nothing. So they don’t even have an incentive to do it. Their incentive is actually to be honest. Not because they don’t have the fall. I mean, they have the original incentive as much as the rest of us, but they’re actually incentivized. So you have these two factors that you have, code that everybody has seen for 15 years now, and people were incentivized to try to hack. Maybe grab a few Bitcoin here, and there.

But you also have an incentive structure where any attempt at a major hack from a government agency to take over mining income, something like that, actually ends up devaluing it as well. And people don’t understand how many people see this stuff. I mean, just there’s so many people who are aware of the Bitcoin code, and you mentioned earlier Bitcoin being ossified. That is a feature. Any change to the code, if it’s anything other than the most minute tiny change, there is a huge fight, and debate over it. And it’s likely it won’t happen. I won’t get into the block size wars from years ago, but-

Devin Rose:

Or the ordinals at war now.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But the point is, is that that’s a good thing because you don’t want your money to be changed. If all of a sudden somebody said, “I’m going to change the property of gold,” we’d all freak out. If alchemy was really true, and you could change the properties of gold. Let’s say they said, “The boiling point of gold, we can change that.” Well, that, I’d be worried about the value of my goal because I don’t know what that’s going to do to it. I might think, “Oh, that might not have any impact.” It might have a huge impact. I don’t know.

Devin Rose:

Yeah.

Eric Sammons:

And so the same thing with Bitcoin, and that’s what people might not understand in a project like this. There’s nobody in charge.

Devin Rose:

That’s right.

Eric Sammons:

And that’s a good thing, and in fact, all of us are in charge.

Devin Rose:

That’s right.

Eric Sammons:

So then if the people who are involved with actually changing the code, they’re like, “Hey.” They get a little arrogant like, “We’re going to do this,” and all of a sudden everybody’s like, “No, we’re not going to do that.” And-

Devin Rose:

The majority of the 10,000s of miners, and people running nodes have to accept the software change. And see, I’m going to run that on my node. I have a little miner in a little solo lottery miner. We won’t go into details. And if I don’t want to run it, I won’t run it. And that’s that decentralized resistance that it has. Yeah, and you’re right, Eric. There is the theoretical 51% attack where a government got controlled.

51% of the mining power. They could choose which block was next on the blockchain, even if it broke the rules. And they could make it where they took people’s money, but they would waste a lot of money doing so. And they would destroy their own value. So it is great because Bitcoin aligns all these incentives where even when people are acting in a self-interest, not in a negative way. Just in the self-interest. The miners, the node runners, the people using it, it benefits the system, and makes it stronger.

Eric Sammons:

Right. Right. And I think that’s important. We’re not claiming perfection here, but I am claiming that it’s incredibly strong. Incredibly resistant to any type of technological problems.

Devin Rose:

Yeah. Oh, and, Eric, I hate to interrupt again. Not to dump on Ethereum, but this is the thing with Ethereum. Ethereum doesn’t have a hard cap of $21,000,000. We don’t have a hard cap, period. They make major changes to their system based on the committee that decides they want to do stuff. And they roll it out, and you don’t know what’s going to happen in a year.

Eric Sammons:

Which might be fine for a software project, but that’s not money.

Devin Rose:

That’s right.

Eric Sammons:

It’s not hard money. It’s-

Devin Rose:

It’s not ultra sound money, Eric. Sorry.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, right. Yeah, it’s not sound money. It’s just a fiat system, which fiat systems work for certain things.

Devin Rose:

Yeah.

Eric Sammons:

But let’s be clear about what it is, and what it isn’t. The last objection I want to talk about was I’ve seen Catholics, some Catholics who are maybe more into conspiracies than others, talk about it’s a one world government type of currency. The fact is Bitcoin does strive to be a global currency in the sense that everybody in the world could be using it, and the whole world could be on this Bitcoin standard. And I think I understand why people are concerned about a potential one world government, UN, all this stuff, the globalists, Klaus Schwab, all that stuff. I don’t discount that as real dangers.

Devin Rose:

No, I don’t either.

Eric Sammons:

But why is Bitcoin not part of those dangers?

Devin Rose:

Yeah. And by the way, I’m laughing just because in my book, Eric, I’ve got a bunch of conspiracy stuff, and some of it ends up becoming true. So I’m about as conspiracy theorist as the next guy. And the funny thing is though that, ironically, Bitcoin is the opposite. No one can stop me from using it. It’s exactly what the globalist totalitarian people don’t want you to have. They don’t want us to have our own money.

Having our own money that we can control is the very last thing that they want, which is why the thing that they want is the central bank digital currency. Which is the doppelganger evil twin of Bitcoin that you don’t control. They control it, and they control what you can spend your money on, and whether you can spend it, and how many tokens you get each month. So it is the polar opposite. Now, some of my friends have said to me, who are Catholic, “But we don’t know who Satoshi was. Therefore, of course, it was the CIA.”

Eric Sammons:

Right. I’ve heard that from many people.

Devin Rose:

Right. Yeah. The first argument is, “Well, even if that’s the case, the code’s open source. And so, it doesn’t matter.”

Eric Sammons:

They shot themselves in the foot.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, which they wouldn’t have done.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

Two, I’d say when you look at Satoshi’s emails, they read like it was a real person. You know what I mean? And now, those emails were released, all these other emails. You could see this forum post before, and whatnot. But it seems like he was a real person, or is a real person. It’s right to be afraid of these globalists, and these totalitarians. They’re bad people, and they want to control you. And you see them all the time. They’re trying to not let farmers inherit land, and-

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

That’s what they’re doing. But Bitcoin, even though it’s digital just like a central bank digital currency, they’re the exact opposite things.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

What do you think, Eric?

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, and that’s what I wanted to bring up was the central bank digital currencies. This is a terrible analogy, but like a knife. I can use it to cut butter for my bread, or I can use it to cut your heart out. And so a digital currency, depending on how it’s used, how it’s set up, it can be used different ways. A central bank digital currency is extremely scary, and dangerous. It would be a central bank literally being able to control your money at a very finite level. They could say, “No.”

You go to the gun store, “I want to buy this gun.” And they see that, and they flag it and say, “Nope.” And your money just doesn’t work there. The things I’m saying, examples, are actually real world cases that they’ve said as a positive thing. They could also, for example, say, “You get your paycheck in central bank digital currency. You get your $1,000 paycheck. You have to spend it within three months,” because this whole Keynesian idea of spending, juicy economy. So you literally have to spend. So it’s like what we were talking about earlier about we’re incentivized to spend. This would be like, “No, you’re forced to spend.”

Well, a decentralized digital currency like Bitcoin, and Bitcoin really being the only one that matters. Nobody controls it, and so nobody tells you how to spend it. I could send you Bitcoin right now, and there’s literally nobody in the world that could stop me from doing it no matter what, if I know how to … There’s certain aspects of this. You got to know what you’re doing. If you’re using an exchange at Coinbase … I could send you money Bitcoin through Coinbase, your Coinbase account, and that all is fine. I’m not against that. But there is a level of control of that. They’re like a bank. You should realize it.

But I know ways and you know ways to receive that we could send it, nobody could stop it. That’s exactly why the globalists hate Bitcoin.

Devin Rose:

Yes.

Eric Sammons:

The one world government people, Bitcoin is literally probably one of the chief enemies of one world government.

Devin Rose:

Yes.

Eric Sammons:

And so when people say that, I try to keep a straight face, but I almost have to chuckle because it’s literally the opposite. I understand it because you don’t understand. People don’t understand how the technology, and I get that.

Devin Rose:

They do. And Eric, you posted the most mild post on X a few weeks ago that was like, “Hey, Catholics, check out Bitcoin.” And immediately there are people, well-meaning Catholics who don’t understand, who are leveling these objections.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. Okay. So I want to finish up here with a little discussion of, with Trump being elected, there’s huge excitement in the Bitcoin world because Trump came out very pro-Bitcoin during his campaign. He made some promises about things. And a lot of the people who surround him are very pro Bitcoin. The guy who just was appointed the Secretary of Commerce literally owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. And R.F.K is a big Bitcoin guy. Vivek is a big Bitcoin guy. All these guys around him are very much into this. And so people are thinking this is going to be good for Bitcoin in a lot of ways. But what I want to just ask you about is the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. This is a bill. It’s been introduced by Senator Lummis. Is it Lummis? I think it’s Lummis-

Devin Rose:

Lummis.

Eric Sammons:

… of Wyoming. Yes. Of Wyoming. And the idea is to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And there’s a real … And Polymarket says, I think there’s a 38% chance it’s going to happen, and Polymarket hey know what they’re talking about. But the idea … So why don’t you explain what that is and whether or not that’s a good or bad thing for our country and for Bitcoin.

Devin Rose:

Oh, man. Yeah. So Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. We have a strategic oil reserve, which Biden spent down to almost nothing, by the way, to keep prices low for political reasons. Leaving that aside. Allegedly, we still have gold stored as a gold reserve.

Eric Sammons:

Relax, baby, it’s all there.

Devin Rose:

Whether that’s still there or not is a conspiracy that could be true. I don’t know. They haven’t let me go look at it, but-

Eric Sammons:

Or anybody else. Go let Rand Paul look at it. That’s what I want.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve would be similar, where the US would simply buy Bitcoin up to a million, let’s say, under the plan that I had seen over the next few years. And then all of a sudden we start to have something that’s backing our money supply. We start to have something that could eventually be used to retire some of our debt. Imagine that. In other words, it actually could be the beginning of returning our country to a sound money standard, which is crazy. Because without this, the idea that we’re ever paying off our debt … We’re never paying off our debt.

Eric Sammons:

No.

Devin Rose:

Forgive it.

Eric Sammons:

We’re never shrinking our debt.

Devin Rose:

No, we’re never shrinking it. And the goal, when you understand this better, it becomes apparent their goal has never been to pay off the debt.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

Now, would it be good for our country if we did this? Yes, it would. Would it be good for all the people in our country if we did this? Yes it would. Would it be good for the people who want to go to war whenever they want and get us involved in wars? No. Because long term what this would cause would be a constraint-

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

… upon them. Just like gold used to be a constraint. They don’t want a constraint. Or there’s people who don’t want the constraint. Which is why I wonder if this will ultimately go through because there’s very powerful people who this is anathema to.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

So what do you think, Eric?

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, I have similar thoughts. A couple things. I think it’s a great idea. I hope they do it not because that’ll make the price go up. It will make the price go up. But that’s not the reason. But because to me, I look at it like this. You have the U.S. government up here and Bitcoin is this little bunch of … For a long time, bunch of libertarians and anarchists and programmers who are kind of this little project they were doing for internet magic money. And you have the all-powerful U.S. government that just controls the world. We’re the American Empire. And I feel like if the U.S. government establishes a strategic Bitcoin reserve, it’s almost like flipping it because now all of a sudden the U.S. government is beholding the Bitcoin rather than the other way around. Bitcoin has never been beholding the government really.

But in the sense of, “Who’s got the power here?” It’s like Bitcoin and a decentralized network that nobody owns all of a sudden has a lot of power. And I think that’s a very good thing. But I agree with you that powerful people will know that. And so the fact is that Bitcoin is the peace currency because if you had a country that was truly on a Bitcoin standard, they couldn’t just generate and print a bunch of money for their wars. But I still think it’s got a decent chance to go through because ultimately it would coexist with our fiat money printing system.

Devin Rose:

Right.

Eric Sammons:

So it’s not like they would have to stop printing money. But I do think over time it would start to … There’d be this movement towards, okay, a sound money system, which is the ideal, which is what we want. I think it would be a good first step towards that.

Devin Rose:

Well, right, and as a first step … Did you read a Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin?

Eric Sammons:

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Devin Rose:

So at the end of that book … Which by the way, that’s a great book. Everyone should read it. That’s reading advice. I’m a reading advisor. He says, “What on earth are we to do?” And this book preceded Bitcoin by decades. But he said basically, here’s the steps in order to get back on sound money and how we would’ve to phase it in. And he used gold and silver because that was all there was. So I’m hearing a similarity to what you’re saying. It could be the first step that phases in something that ultimately works.

Eric Sammons:

And it almost sneaks it in. I think Senator Lummis knows this, but she’s not going to say this part of it. But it’s like it kind of sneaks it in the sense of, ‘Okay, now we’ve kind of established Bitcoin as a true asset that we’re kind of judging our other assets on. We’re judging our fiat system on.” And there’s not talk about it would help pay down the debt. I don’t quite understand that in a sense like, “Are you selling it then?” But the whole point is to not sell. We don’t want it to be the oil reserve where you just spend it all and then you just go back to where you were.

Devin Rose:

And see, Eric, this is a problem because some people … Actually, most people don’t know this, but we know this. The U.S. government has Bitcoin because they’ve seized it from people.

Eric Sammons:

200,000.

Devin Rose:

Yeah. 200,000 Bitcoin, which is a significant portion of the network of total amount. And they’ve seized it from people. Well, the Biden government started moving some of it around, tens of thousands, and the idea was maybe they were going to be selling some of it, and we’re pretty sure that Germany sold all the Bitcoin that they had seized from their people. So these governments are so stupid that they’re selling Bitcoin for dollars that they can print. But one of the issues would be then … Well, yeah, the Trump administration or whatever is favorable to Bitcoin. But what happens if other people come in in four years and then they can just sell it, right? And they can just sell all of it and waste it. It only takes one irresponsible, ne-er do well’s son, to blow the inheritance and to comeback as the prodigal.

Eric Sammons:

I haven’t read the bill, but I would hope that you would put in some … I know the government never has any constraints, but you’d at least make it more difficult for them to spend it like, “Yes, we’re going to buy this.” And I want to say I do have a moral problem with them using that 200,000 as the beginning of the strategic reserves because they’ve talked about that because they seized it from people and they stole it in other words. That’s our nice word for stealing. Now, it might be a situation where we can’t do anything about that. So it’s a done deal. And so if you’re either going to sell it or keep it in the reserve, okay, fine. It’s not going back to the rightful owner either way.

Devin Rose:

But Eric, it would be a good use of some kind of time lock. It’s like-

Eric Sammons:

Right, yes.

Devin Rose:

You buy the Bitcoin, we’re putting it into a multi-signature. It’s going to be time locked for like 20 years. No one could touch it.

Eric Sammons:

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That would be great. I don’t think they’d ever do that, but that would be fun. Now, okay, we’re going to finish up here in a minute. But I already said once, and I’ll say it again, we’re not giving investment advice here. Do whatever you want with your money. We don’t care. Don’t be immoral with it. That’s the only thing we do … Don’t do that. What would you suggest to somebody though who said, “I don’t know anything about Bitcoin, but I am interested in maybe getting started, maybe putting a little bit in.” I always tell people never put anything in that you aren’t willing to lose. Don’t put in your kids’ food money in for this. But I want to hear how you start people off because I know what I say, but how do you start people off?

Devin Rose:

Okay, we’re going to do this by generation. So Eric, for boomer generation, I say Bitcoin now has these ETFs, exchange traded funds, IBIT and FBTC. If you’ve got a stock account or have a retirement account, buy some of the Bitcoin that way. Now you and I know it’s not real Bitcoin, it’s an ETF.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

Even doing that is a big jump for most boomers from what I’ve found.

Eric Sammons:

Yes. But it’s something they know how to do. They know how to call up their broker or just go onto their online account and say, “Yeah, I’m going to put a thousand dollars into this ETF.” Because it just for people to understand what ETF is, it essentially trades exactly like a stock for all practical purposes, but it tracks the price of Bitcoin because if you buy a hundred dollars ETF, the ETF manager has to get a hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin to back it.

Devin Rose:

That’s right. And then for Gen-Xers who are the coolest generation like me and you. Now, it’s like, “Okay, yes, we can understand how to buy Bitcoin.” And usually when the price goes up like this, and I’ve started getting messages from friends and my Normie friends saying, “Oh, this Bitcoin looks interesting, what should I do?” That’s when I say, “Open up a Coinbase account, which is just like a bank account. Put some money into it, put a hundred bucks into it, 50 bucks, 30 bucks, and buy some. If you want to get fancier, go with Swan or River or Strike or one of these other apps that’s more Bitcoin only. But that’s even another level. And if you want to get serious, yeah, look at what you got and put in 1% of your portfolio and just start watching the price and watch the news and I’ll invite you into my signal group of local Bitcoin dads and we will go from there.” So what about you, Eric? Do you have any tips?

Eric Sammons:

The ETS are relatively new, but I agree. So I haven’t recommend those a lot, but that’s exactly what I say for people who are probably boomers or just very much in that world and they’re not going to be tech world. Coinbase is always my go-to, because it’s the most user friendly, it’s the most established .It’s a public company now. It’s been around for 13, 14 years. I’ve had an account with them for … My first Bitcoin I ever bought was at Coinbase in 2013.

Devin Rose:

Mine as well.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. Now, here’s the thing. We acknowledge that the beauty of Bitcoin is that it is free. It is not free to buy, but freedom free. And you’re able to have total control over it that nobody else can take it from you. But that’s not true when you hold it at Coinbase or an ETF, especially. You’re not even yourself. But basically you do have a level of trust in Coinbase. If Coinbase goes under, if they’re doing shenanigans behind the scenes, you could lose your Bitcoin.

And I always tell people that, but I’d also say the same thing is true about your local bank. Same thing is true about a lot of things. So it’s like the risk level is no different there. And then when somebody is a tech person, they really are into it, then that’s when we start talking about hardware while it’s actually holding your own Bitcoin that you control and that … Now here’s the thing, there’s a risk in that though. There’s always a risk. You screw up and you can literally lose everything. If you lose your seed phrase or something like that and your hardware device gets damaged or something like that. If you just screw up in how you send it. You could send all of your Bitcoin into the ether and it goes away forever.

Devin Rose:

Yeah.

Eric Sammons:

I don’t know about you, but every single time I do a cryptocurrency transaction, I do 15 checks before I hit send. I’m always checking, “Okay, is the address …?” It’s not super user-friendly when you get deep in. Coinbase is very user-friendly. It’s no different than using a bank Coinbase. If you use it Coinbase, you’ll be fine as far as don’t be intimidated. What I tell people starting off, I say, “Just go Coinbase. Get a hundred dollars worth or if that’s too much $30 worth. Or if you’re well off, $500 worth whatever. And then just kind of watch.” Because usually what happens is you always get the same thing happens.

Often they’re buying it when there’s a pump going on, and so it does go up. All of a sudden their a hundred dollars becomes 150 like, “Wow.” In a week. And they’re like, “Holy cow.” Then a year later it’s $70 or something like that, and they’re like, “Oh crap.” Some of them then sell.

Devin Rose:

Mm-hmm.

Eric Sammons:

But then all of a sudden, a couple years later, it’s 200, 300, $400. And I always tell people this, “If you bought Bitcoin in the history of Bitcoin, it always will be worth more five years later.”

Devin Rose:

That has been true for any period.

Eric Sammons:

Or you can buy the better thing because that’s the cycle. But I always say five years. It always, in every single case, and I don’t think that’s going to stop. It won’t be up as much, but I do think it’s going to … I personally think, again, not investment advice, but I do think there’s a decent chance you could lose 80% of your value on paper. It doesn’t matter if you don’t sell. What was it? It was 60 something thousand, 64, 69 … I think 69,000 went down to 16,000-

Devin Rose:

That’s correct.

Eric Sammons:

… in a two year timeframe. This is just recently. So imagine you bought a hundred dollars worth at 69. I don’t know … I’m not going to do the math on the top of my head, but when it’s down to 16,000, the a hundred dollars is now what? $30?

Devin Rose:

25 or $30.

Eric Sammons:

35, $30. So it’s a lot. And so that hurts to see when you open up your app. So don’t open up your app.

Devin Rose:

That’s right.

Eric Sammons:

The idea is whatever you put in, you need to have a long timeframe. You need to be thinking, “I’m not going to touch this for anything but the absolute most emergency emergencies for at least five years.” And I’m not one of these people who think you just hold it forever and never … I mean-

Devin Rose:

Nope. Use it when you need it.

Eric Sammons:

Life isn’t about that. Life isn’t about accumulating assets. Life is about living. And so my thought is always that I know where it ranks on … It will be the last thing I spend. I’ll spend other assets first.

Devin Rose:

Yes.

Eric Sammons:

And also it will only be, might be assets that aren’t true necessities I use it for, but I’ve got that planned in advance.

Devin Rose:

That’s right.

Eric Sammons:

“Okay, if it gets to this price, I’ll sell a little bit off because the wife always wants to go to vacation, whatever.” Something like that.

Devin Rose:

It was actually this with my wife, same thing. It was like, yeah, I had an agreement with my wife that I would sell some. And by the way, I gave $5 to a friend however many years ago, for coffee, to pay him for coffee. And he messaged me the other day and was like, “You know where that Bitcoin you gave me, it’s worth $35 now.”

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I have sent Bitcoin to so many people and I stopped doing it because one reason is I noticed that nobody … They almost all lost it because they just didn’t know how to … And I realize the better thing to do is just educate them, let them buy it and things like that. But yeah. And it’s funny though, the few who do … There’s an exchange student who lived with my sister, and he was from Italy and he was into Bitcoin and I just for fun, this was 2015 or something, I sent him a hundred dollars worth or $50 or something like that, worth of Bitcoin, just because we were hanging out. And I was like, “Oh, yeah. I’ll send you something just for fun.” That’s worth a lot of money now because I think Bitcoin was about $500 then or something like that so it’s probably worth thousands of dollars now, which is great. I don’t mind. It’s not like-

Devin Rose:

Yeah, that’s a 200x.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. Yeah. And I know he kept it because I saw him. Actually he came back to the country for my niece’s wedding and he kept most of it. So yeah, I was like, “Good for you.”

Devin Rose:

You’re his Italian godfather now. You’re his American godfather.

Eric Sammons:

Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so the last thing … I do want to mention in is your book Chasing The Seeds. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about it? Because people have been listening to us for this long, they got to end up being buyers of this book.

Devin Rose:

These are the true believers, and it’s on Kindle for 99 cents, and the paperback is $13. So this is a fiction series. Ages 14 and older can read it. So 14 through adult. And it is realistic fiction. So it’s like real world. No one has magical powers. We’re shooting stuff out of their hands or something. And it tracks a 20 something year old computer programmer from Austin who discovers a clue or riddle in his deceased father’s bookshelf, a book. And it puts him on a scavenger hunt across the world to try to find out who his father really was.

The character’s best friend is Catholic. He meets a young woman on the way who’s Catholic, and he’s being chased by a rogue FBI agent. So there’s your conspiracy theory that’s not really even a conspiracy anymore.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah.

Devin Rose:

And so the goal of the book is … There’s some stuff with Bitcoin in the book. There’s Catholic stuff in the book. The main character is an atheist, but this is going to be a series. Matter of fact, I just sent the second book to my editor who’s going to start editing it now.

Eric Sammons:

Nice.

Devin Rose:

It will probably be a five or six book series. As the books go along, it will get more and more Catholic.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

But not in a way that’s hitting you over the head.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

More in the organic way that someone could become Catholic and what could happen to society. There’s these dystopian fiction books and that kind of thing out there. Think about this as Catholic dystopian fiction.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

It will become that as the series goes on. And I wanted something for my son to read who’s a teen and adults who would enjoy it. I thought about actually giving him this Homestead series. Angel Studios is coming up with this movie Homestead. But the books, from what I can tell, is post-apocalyptic which I like, survivalist and it’s Christian, but I look more into it and it’s more Protestant Mormon.

Eric Sammons:

Right, yeah.

Devin Rose:

And it is got a bunch of profanities. So this book, my series will have zero profanity, zero blasphemy, zero sexual stuff.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

It’s clean. And Eric Sammons read it and he did not think he was going to like it.

Eric Sammons:

Here’s the thing. Okay. I did read it and I gave you a review on Amazon. My biggest concern when I hear Catholic people writing fiction books is, “Okay, this is going to be those terrible Protestant Christian movies that are about the message, not about a story. And they’re just preaching the whole time. And they’re cringe worthy.” And when you told me about the book, and I was like … And you sent me a copy, I believe. And I didn’t even pick it up for a little while. I was nervous. I’m like, “I like Devin. He’s a good guy. I don’t want to have to hate his book.” And so I was nervous. I’ll be the first to admit it, but it was good. I liked it because it doesn’t do that. It has the Catholic stuff in there. You being a former atheist, it helps you to understand the atheist … You make the atheist realistic.

It’s not like hitting you overhead. I also was chuckling because being involved in the Bitcoin world for so long, there’s a lot of non-believers, let’s just say, in it. A lot of people who are not Catholic, not Christian or anything like that. And so if they are reading it, I think it’s great because it’s going to … And the funny thing, you didn’t do a lot in the first book, which I think is on purpose, right?

Devin Rose:

Yes.

Eric Sammons:

Because you’re just kind of saying, these are Catholic people, whatever. It’s almost like an aside, they just happen to be Catholic.

Devin Rose:

Yes.

Eric Sammons:

But as a Catholic, I read it and I’m like, “Oh.” I did see where some things were going a little bit.

Devin Rose:

Right.

Eric Sammons:

But I think somebody who’s not Catholic might not quite pick all that up.

Devin Rose:

And it’s to bait them in, Eric. This first book is the bait for non-Catholics.

Eric Sammons:

Right.

Devin Rose:

And-

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. And also there’s a huge twist at the end, near the end, which I actually was a little surprised by.

Devin Rose:

And that’s impressive, Eric, because I thought that you actually would probably pick up on some of these things.

Eric Sammons:

I picked on some of them, but I didn’t think you go where you went. That was the surprise. And you went there.

Devin Rose:

We’re going all the way with this, Eric.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. You did. So anyway, I recommend it. I’ll put a link … Where’s the best place for you to buy it? Amazon?

Devin Rose:

Amazon. As much as I don’t like Amazon, like the next Catholic. Yeah, it’s on Amazon.

Eric Sammons:

Okay. Okay. So I’ll put a link to it there. Yeah, it’s a good book. It’s enjoyable reading. It’s not super long, this one. And so yeah, it’s just something enjoyable to read. And like you said, teenagers I think would enjoy it as well. In fact, I should get my fifteen-year-old to read it. I think she might like it.

Devin Rose:

Yeah. Brantley Milligan’s teen son read it. So you need to get yours and see whether they like it.

Eric Sammons:

That’s right. Exactly. So did Brantley’s son like it, do you know?

Devin Rose:

Yes. Positive review. I don’t think he wrote a review on Amazon, but Brantley being a theorem guy, like, “Okay, it’s fine.”

Eric Sammons:

Oh, I hope Brantley watches this because we talked about him a lot.

Devin Rose:

Yeah, we can tag him on X with it.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, right. Exactly. Okay, well let’s wrap it up here. I thank you for spending so much time on this. I hope this was helpful to people who are just kind of … Catholics, particularly, who are interested in Bitcoin, hear about it and want the real information about it. So I appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Devin Rose:

It was awesome, Eric.

Eric Sammons:

Okay, until next time everybody. God love you!