In this seminar, we apply the economic way of thinking to figure out the opportunity cost of a century of fiat money. How would the world look like if it had hard money over the past century? What would be the impacts on capital accumulation, international trade, poverty alleviation?

In this episode we discuss the link between fiat money and fiat food, based on the latest chapter from The Fiat Standard, available to subscribers on saifedean.com. We discuss: fiat’s encouragement of high time preference thinking causing soil depletion and bad food choices; why fiat governments heavily subsidize fiat foods to make inflation look better; and how a hard monetary standard incentivizes eating real food and regenerating soil.

I joined Tom Woods to discuss current trends in Bitcoin, whether it’s in a “bubble,” what its advantages are, what the future may hold, and why all of this should matter to libertarians.

Peter Young hosts a debate between Saifedean and gold investor Mark Valek on the monetary status of precious metals. Has bitcoin obsoleted gold as money? Is gold being demonetized? Do gold’s uses in jewellery and industry help or hinder its monetary status?

We discuss the economics of energy, based on the chapter on the topic in my Principles of Economics textbook, which is available to subscribers on saifedean.com. What is the economic rationale for consuming energy? How has energy use increased the value of human time, helped end slavery, and improved living standards? What does this teach us about bitcoin’s energy consumption? What are the real costs of low-energy alternatives to bitcoin?

We look at the economic problems of cracking down on bitcoin, and how that’s working out for governments trying it. What can we learn from prohibition of drugs & alcohol? Will India’s recent ban on bitcoin be as big a historic mistake as staying on the silver standard in the nineteenth century?

Are markets efficient? How do we think of this question from an Austrian perspective? We discuss how the absence of constants in economics has always been the problem with all quantitative approaches to economic questions, and what bitcoin means for this.

Professor Steve Hanke has many decades of experience studying currencies and fighting inflation, but does not see value in bitcoin. He joins Saifedean and Hong Fang, the CEO of OKCoin, to discuss Bitcoin’s value, whether bitcoin has intrinsic value, if bitcoin is just a speculative bubble, and if a currency board would work for a digital currency.

In this seminar we discuss chapters 4 to 7 from my book The Fiat Standard, the forthcoming sequel to The Bitcoin Standard, available to subscribers on saifedean.com. How does the fiat standard work internationally? We look at how mining fiat by lending it incentivizes international financial institutions, how it shapes international politics and the domestic politics of developing countries, and how it has prevented economic growth in poor countries.

As insurance industry giants begin to enter the bitcoin space, we discuss the implications for bitcoin’s proposition as a store of value. Will the satoshi rate become the new risk-free rate? Are there any good reasons for bonds to exist in a world in which bitcoin works? What is the case for holding gold in a bitcoin world?

This week we host the poster child for carbohydrate deficiency, carnivore elite athlete, orthopedic surgeon, author, and bitcoiner Dr. Shawn Baker! We discuss Shawn’s personal experience as an athlete, and his professional experience as a surgeon, on the carnivore diet, the rationale for eating meat-only, the health benefits, and why dietary interventions are far more effective than public health interventions. We also ask Shawn’s views on sourcing meat, the environmental impact of meat production, fasting, coffee, and wine.

This week we discuss: What are shitcoins good for? Can shitcoins help bitcoin scale? Do shitcoins take market share from bitcoin, or from each other? Plus, find out why backing gold with bitcoin is far more likely than backing bitcoin with gold!

Should you borrow fiat to buy bitcoin? Is it better to sell bitcoin or borrow against it? In this seminar we discuss optimal fiat strategies for bitcoiners, and the risks involved, based on Michael Saylor’s comments in seminar 34, and the early chapters of The Fiat Standard.

In this seminar we are joined by Stephen Chow, founder of Chow Art Fund, whose mission is to embrace the bitcoin standard in order to sponsor living artists to create masterpieces, and @FractalEncrypt, an artist who has produced a magnificent bitcoin full node sculpture.

We discuss last week seminar with Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor. We go over his strategy for buying bitcoin and wether it works for everyone. Do his actions and analysis contradict the bitcoin stock to flow model? Finally, we discuss how we can reconcile the stock to flow model with praxeology and the Austrian economics we cover in our courses.

In this podcast we talk to Peter Young, a regular attendee of our seminars and student of Austrian economics, who has spent a lot of time traveling to North Korea. Peter gives us his perspective on the communist economic system and how it functions, through the lens of the Austrian economics.

We are rejoined by Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor, who has read the first part of The Fiat Standard and shares some fascinating feedback on it, including how to think of time preference and bitcoin. We also discuss Bitcoin for Corporations, the conference Microstrategy organized, and how he sees the bitcoin corporate wave advancing. What are the assets obsoleted by bitcoin? What are Michael’s mental models for thinking about bitcoin’s price, his thoughts on price prediction models, and whether he thinks we’ll see another big crash in bitcoin.

In this seminar, we look closely at the concept of stock-to-flow, comparing it across bitcoin, gold, silver, other metals, and altcoins. We go over the data from The Bitcoin Standard, and look at more recent numbers for silver, and explain why attempts to monetize silver and platinum failed, why mining asteroids would not eliminate gold’s monetary role, and what actually could do it.

How would the free market have handled a respiratory illness? After a year of evidence, including my personal experience with the illness, we discuss the effectiveness of individual and public health precautions and interventions.

This week we host Philipp Bagus, the economist who wrote the definitive Austrian treatment of deflation, In Defense of Deflation. We discuss the history of anti-deflation thought in economics, the different kinds of deflation, the consequences of deflation, and whether this is a problem for bitcoin. We also discuss Philipp’s views on bitcoin, as well as his work on the Euro.

In this week’s seminar we discuss reddit’s attack on hedge funds by buying Gamestop stock. How the analysis of hard money in The Bitcoin Standard can help us understand why these short-squeezes will be self-defeating everywhere except with bitcoin, because of its unique Number Go Up technology. We also discuss deflation, monarchy, and more fun!

We are joined by Austrian-school economist Per Bylund to discuss entrepreneurship as studied in the Austrian school tradition, and how and why the treatment of this topic differs from mainstream schools of thought. Per is a Fellow of the Mises Institute and Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship & Records-Johnston Professor of Free Enterprise in the School of Entrepreneurship in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University.

Stephan is a patent autorney and Libertarian scholar, from whom I’ve learned a lot over the years. Although he is not an economist, he has made a very important contribution to economics by providing the best alaboration of the case against intellectual property.

In this podcast episode, Saifedean discusses chapters 3 and 4 of The Fiat Standard with subscribers. These foundational chapters explain how the fiat system functions with analogy to Bitcoin, studying central banks as nodes and examining their core functions, explaining how lending in fiat is the equivalent of mining in bitcoin, how it translates to supply issuance, and how to understand price inflation in fiat.

In this seminar we are joined by Preston Pysh, an investor and podcaster who has produced excellent thought-provoking research on bitcoin. We discuss Preston’s journey from value investor to bitcoiner, and how he bridges his Warren Buffet background with being a bitcoiner. We also discuss his fascinating mental model for thinking about bitcoin bull runs, and whether this bull run will be similar to previous ones in being followed by a big crash, or if this time will be different.

Discussion of the economics of time, based on chapter 3 in Saifedean’s forthcoming textbook, Principles of Economics. Why is time the ultimate resource, and how does money affect time preference.

In today’s seminar, we discuss why bitcoin’s price matters, what bitcoin skeptics get wrong about it, and what it means to the success of the network. We also discuss the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s new guidance allowing banks to use public blockchains as settlement infrastructure, and how it agrees with The Bitcoin Standard’s thesis.

Thomas Semaan is an ex-student of Saifedean who has been active in the Lebanese bitcoin scene. He joins us to tell us about the Lebanese fiat crisis, how bitcoin has helped him and other bitcoiners, and compare its effectiveness to political activism and delusions of reform.

We are joined by Bitcoin trader and analyst Tone Vays, to discuss professional trading, amateur trading, bitcoin trading, and the likely course of the bitcoin bull market.

This week we are joined by Russell Lamberti, macroeconomic analyst from the Austrian School, to discuss the global macro outlook, and how bitcoin fits in.

“For the reader who has become familiar with the operation of bitcoin, a good way to understand the operation of fiat is by drawing analogy to the operation of bitcoin using concepts like mining, nodes, balances, and proof of work. My aim is to explain the operation and engineering structure of the fiat monetary system and how it operates, in reality, away from the naive romanticism of governments and banks who have benefited from this system for a century.”

In today’s seminar we discuss Microstrategy’s latest issuance of notes to finance more purchases of bitcoin, and what it tells us about the state of fiat markets and bitcoin. We also discuss bitcoin price bubbles, and how they relate to halvings and the stock-to-flow ratio.

Jeff Booth is a long-time leader in the tech industry and the founder and ex-CEO of BuildDirect, who recently wrote The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation Is the Key to an Abundant Future. He joins us to discuss inflation and deflation, why deflation is the natural state of markets, and how a hard money like bitcoin fixes much of what is wrong with today’s world.

PlanB is the pseudonym of a Dutch money manager and quantitative analyst who has produced a numerical modelling of bitcoin’s price based on its stock-to-flow ratio, after reading about it in The Bitcoin Standard.

Alex Epstein is the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress. He joins us to discuss his work on the importance of energy, and in particular fossil fuels.

In today’s seminar we host Stephen Barbour, founder and CEO of Upstream Data, Inc. We discuss Upstream’s unique products which allow for mining bitcoin off of methane gas that cannot be sold economically otherwise. We also discuss the economics of Bitcoin mining, the difficulty adjustment, and different energy sources.

In today’s seminar, Saifedean discusses his new book The Fiat Standard, on which he has been working for two years! You can read the first chapter, and sign up to receive a new chapter every week, on saifedean.com!

This week, we host Robert Breedlove, one of the sharpest minds thinking and writing about the deeper implications of bitcoin. We discuss Robert’s work on the parallels between the number zero and bitcoin, how bitcoin is digital alchemy, fiat money and slavery, and bitcoin as our most brilliant idea.

We are joined by Dr. James Todaro MD to discuss fiat medicine and fiat science, and the free market alternative he is pursuing. James is a bitcoiner and medical doctor who conducted highly important research this year, and saw it censored and attacked by media and scientific authorities. James later helped uncover a completely fraudulent article based on fabricated data published in The Lancet. Six months from its publication, we reflect to see what this study and its retraction teach us about fiat science.

In this week’s seminar we begin by discussing bitcoin’s price rise light and how the analysis in The Bitcoin Standard has held up since then. We then move on to discussing Coronahysteria and how so many otherwise reasonable people have been scared into believing ridiculous hysterical nonsense.

In this seminar we are joined by Jordan Schachtel, an investigative reporter who has covered the global coronahysteria crisis from its genesis, and proven one of the very few people who has thought and written about it rationally. Jordan discusses the lack of evidence for the interventions being presented as the cutting edge of science. He shares his investigations into some of the leading alarmists and the incoherence of their hysterical messages. He discusses the origin of the hysteria and the horrific impact it will have on people worldwide.

In this seminar we host Michael Goldstein, @bitstein, of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. We discuss our two favorite topics: bitcoin and meat. Michael curated justmeat.co a page with very rich resources on meat, including the amazing story of Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. We are also fortunate to have among our attendees in the seminar Timothy Allen, filmmaker, adventurer, and photographer who has spent years traveling with nomadic tribes in the Arctic and worked on the BBC’s Human Planet documentary. We discuss the diet and health of meat-eating tribes as described in Stefansson’s and Timothy’s travels, the joys of moving reindeer across Siberia while eating raw frozen fish, and the arctic version of red wine.

We are joined this week by Stephan Livera who moderates a debate between Saifedean and Alex Gladstein, of the Human Rights Foundation, on the question of whether bitcoin is a democratic technology.

After five years of eating nothing but meat, Saifedean explains everything he learned about how to grill a steak, and why to grill it. Being well-nourished with meat is the best way to avoid getting addicted to highly-addictive processed junk. In this week’s seminar, Saifedean discusses the most important things he learned about sourcing and preparing meat to stay healthy, as well as some of the most relevant readings that have shaped his thinking on this topic, and the connection between fiat money and fiat food.

We are joined this week by Pierre Rochard, of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, to talk about: The fixed supply of bitcoin; How bitcoin differs from other moneys; The significance of having a supply that can be verified cheaply; The importance of savings; The difference between savings and investments; BitcoinAcks: Pierre’s new initiative for open source financing of bitcoin development.

We host Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy, the publicly traded company that announced it was making bitcoin its primary treasure reserve asset, and purchasing 38,250 BTC (~$425m). Saylor explains how this was a deliberate decision to put the company on a bitcoin standard.

Mining of coins is more similar to a sports competition than mining. The reward is like a trophy, it is fixed regardless of how many competitors take part. Whereas in mining of natural resources, the more miners participate, the more output is produced.

This seminar focuses on the economics of energy. How does the economic way of thinking help us understand the energy market, and recent events like the California blackouts. I discuss the content of the economics of energy chapter in my forthcoming textbook, Principles of Economics, and how marginal analysis can help us understand the limitations of unreliable energy sources, as well as the world’s continued reliance on hydrocarbons for energy.

Main points on Monarchy vs Democracy: Time preference; Security of property; War; Democracy has perverse selection; Democracy legitimates government; Kings don’t owe anybody anything; Rise of civilizations under monarchy.