Bitcoin Audible

"They say the ruler is bent, then use the bent ruler to measure the table.

They say the clock is broken, then solemnly read out the hour.

They say the instrument is false, then ask it, with perfect seriousness, for one final certification.

This is, in itself, a form of bondage.

To measure gold in fiat terms is, in Jung’s sense, to deny the shadow: to denounce the paper system in public while continuing, in private, to let it decide what counts as value." 

~ Craig Tindale

1 BTC = 1 BTC. If fiat is broken, why do we still trust it to tell us what gold or Bitcoin is worth? Craig Tindale argues that even the rebels against fiat money remain captive to its grammar – measuring their escape in the very units they claim to reject. But is stepping outside the fiat frame really that simple, or does the nature of price itself trap us in ways even Bitcoiners haven't fully reckoned with?

Check out the original article: Stepping Outside the Fiat Frame by Craig Tindale (Link: https://x.com/ctindale/status/2040918715961901280)

References from the episode

My recent two‑part series Read episodes: "Number Go Down" by Allen Farrington & Sacha Meyers and "Modern Money Only Works by Cheating" by Tyler Durden – both great companions to this episode.

(Number Go Down: https://fountain.fm/episode/fLqds61ds9YbsnqGOkE8)

(Modern Money Only Works by Cheating: https://fountain.fm/episode/UN8NHIQ3tR9tdc9ER89h)

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)

The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)

Check out our awesome partners!

Become sovereign, hold your keys, be censorship resistant with the Bitbox hardware wallet. Get 5% off everything in the store with code GUY (Link: https://bitbox.swiss/)

Get ⁠10% off the COLDCARD⁠ with code BITCOINAUDIBLE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(Link: https://bitcoinaudible.com/coldcard)

Get 10% off the best Bitcoin board game in the world, HODLUP! Or any of the other great games from The Free Market Kids! Use code GUY10 at checkout for 10% off your cart! (Link: https://www.freemarketkids.com/collections/games-1)

"When you really dig into the heart of how finance, how our monetary system and how our political system work, and how deeply married they are, you begin to see something that's pretty disturbing. That cheating and manipulation aren't simply something that arise in bad behaviors. They're fundamentally required by the system itself. They're baked in. They are the standard. It is the law. And if that is our reality, then the only way we can actually restore honesty and sensible standards is to create a money that refuses to bend to the law. So the question is, have we done that?"

~ Guy

What if the cheating, the manipulation, and the bailouts aren't bugs in our financial system, but the very features that keep it alive? In this rant, I push back hard on the idea that "elastic money" saved us from the 2008 collapse, the 1929 catastrophe, or any other economic event we've "papered over", and argue it's the very thing guaranteeing a far worse one. Is hard money really the villain of the 20th century, or have we been telling ourselves a comforting lie?

References from the episode

The previous Read of "Number Go Down", the essay by Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/fLqds61ds9YbsnqGOkE8)

And the previous Read of "Modern Money Only Works by Cheating" by Tyler Durden (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/UN8NHIQ3tR9tdc9ER89h)

Custodia Bank's ongoing fight for a full-reserve banking charter (Link: https://bankingjournal.aba.com/2026/04/tenth-circuit-denies-rehearing-en-banc-in-custodia-banks-lawsuit-over-master-accounts/)

Affiliate Links

Become sovereign, hold your keys, be censorship resistant with the Bitbox hardware wallet. Get 5% off everything in the store with code GUY (Link: https://bitbox.swiss/)

Get ⁠10% off the COLDCARD⁠ with code BITCOINAUDIBLE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(Link: https://bitcoinaudible.com/coldcard)

Get 10% off the best Bitcoin board game in the world, HODLUP! Or any of the other great games from The Free Market Kids! Use code GUY10 at checkout for 10% off your cart! (Link: https://www.freemarketkids.com/collections/games-1)

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)

The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)

"The whole point of libertarianism is that we should recognise that we don't know how to plan the world. We don't know what the solution is going to be. You can't have a central planner decide it.If it was really just that libertarians understood how the world worked, then you could have a central planner. You would just need them to be libertarians. That's not how it works at all. It's antithetical to the whole concept.

That's why the Block Size War was such a huge success, because it did not hard-fork. It did not decide: 'Oh, if there is a schism in the community, one small group is going to be able to force it onto everybody else.'
And that's exactly the thing that you actually need to have society's rules be sustainable, because otherwise, that's all you get. You get people who will violently disagree about the tiniest shit, and then they will put a gun to everybody else's head, and they will say: 'You just got to come along with me or you're screwed.'"

~ Guy

Lately, it feels like an endless stream of noise tries to predict the death of Bitcoin. So I joined Rob Wallace on the Bitcoin News channel to cut through the panic and tackle the two loudest distractions: Google's latest quantum computing claims and the wild conspiracy that Jeffrey Epstein dictated Bitcoin's code.

We look at the actual physics of quantum processing to see if scaling qubits without catastrophic environmental noise is even possible. But the Epstein drama is what really gets me fired up. People are rewriting the history of the block size wars to fit a comfortable narrative. We lay out why he had zero practical influence over Bitcoin, and why some folks would rather believe an elaborate lie than accept the reality of decentralized consensus.

But we do not just stay in the weeds. I also share why I am incredibly optimistic about non-custodial scaling solutions like Ark, and how vibe coding is sparking a peer-to-peer renaissance. Big thanks to Rob and the Bitcoin News channel for hosting me!

Chapters

(00:00:00) - The failure of central planning and libertarian ideals

(00:01:41) - Assessing the actual quantum threat to Bitcoin

(00:08:44) - Why quantum experiments lack genuine cryptographic proof

(00:20:06) - Prioritizing quantum resistance among protocol developers

(00:22:50) - Debunking the Epstein and MIT Media Lab narrative

(00:31:06) - The reality of the early Blockstream investments

(00:39:41) - Why the liberty movement split over Bitcoin scaling

(00:44:12) - Hard truths about network architecture and TCP/IP

(00:52:29) - Can Bitcoin truly separate money from the state

(00:55:08) - The friction of living entirely on a Bitcoin standard

(01:00:12) - Vibe coding and a new peer-to-peer renaissance

Guest Links

Rob on X (Link: https://twitter.com/_Rob_Wallace)

Bitcoin News on X (Link: https://twitter.com/bitcoinnewscom)

Bitcoin News Website (Link: https://bitcoinnews.com/)

Affiliate Links

Become sovereign, hold your keys, be censorship resistant with the Bitbox hardware wallet. Get 5% off everything in the store with code GUY (Link: https://bitbox.swiss/)

Get ⁠10% off the COLDCARD⁠ with code BITCOINAUDIBLE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(Link: https://bitcoinaudible.com/coldcard)

Get 10% off the best Bi...

Chapters

(00:00:00) - The failure of central planning and libertarian ideals
(00:01:41) - Assessing the actual quantum threat to Bitcoin
(00:08:44) - Why quantum experiments lack genuine cryptographic proof
(00:20:06) - Prioritizing quantum resistance among protocol developers
(00:22:50) - Debunking the Epstein and MIT Media Lab narrative
(00:31:06) - The reality of the early Blockstream investments
(00:39:41) - Why the liberty movement split over Bitcoin scaling
(00:44:12) - Hard truths about network architecture and TCP/IP
(00:52:29) - Can Bitcoin truly separate money from the state
(00:55:08) - The friction of living entirely on a Bitcoin standard
(01:00:12) - Vibe coding and a new peer-to-peer renaissance

"The idea that some authority can deduce the correct level of this balance is not merely wrong, it is not even wrong, it is methodologically incoherent. Asking for the 'correct' interest rate is like asking how much the color orange weighs." 

~ Allen Farrington & Sacha Meyers

What if deflation isn't the economic boogeyman we've been told to fear, but the very *signal* that progress is happening?

In Part 2 of Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers' brilliant essay, we dismantle the central myth of fiat economics – that printing money creates growth – and reveal why falling prices are the only honest measure that innovation has actually occurred. If the fiat prescription worked, where's the evidence? And why have central authorities never let us run the experiment?

Check out the original article: Number Go Down by Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers (Link: https://x.com/allenf32/status/2045477517201477686)

References from the episode

Part 1 of "Number Go Down" – make sure you catch it before this one. (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/fLqds61ds9YbsnqGOkE8)

"Bitcoin is Venice" by Farrington & Meyers – second edition announced for 2027. (Medium: https://allenfarrington.medium.com/bitcoin-is-venice-8414dda42070) (Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Venice-Essays-Future-Capitalism/dp/B09TTTGT11)

"On the Manipulation of Money and Credit" by Ludwig von Mises. (Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2212135)

And the companion Guy's Take coming soon on Bitcoin, Trust, and The Human Problem.

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)

The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)

Check out our awesome partners!

Become sovereign, hold your keys, be censorship resistant with the Bitbox hardware wallet. Get 5% off everything in the store with code GUY (Link: https://bitbox.swiss/)

Get ⁠10% off the COLDCARD⁠ with code BITCOINAUDIBLE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(Link: https://bitcoinaudible.com/coldcard)

Get 10% off the best Bitcoin board game in the world, HODLUP! Or any of the other great games from The Free Market Kids! Use code GUY10 at checkout for 10% off your cart! (Link: https://www.freemarketkids.com/collections/games-1)

"The fiat economist universally chooses to set the printing press to brrrrrrrrrr. While the enlightened elite watch their stock portfolios moon and their debts disappear, the common man is told to be thankful that he was 'this close' to the horror of living in a world where his wages bought more every year, and his government respected his private property. Imagine how hard it would be for that government to raise debt in such a world. It would have to justify its spending. We cannot have that."

~ Allen Farrington & Sacha Meyers

What if falling prices aren't the economy stifling nightmare that fiat economists claim, but instead is actually the only natural spending incentive of a real economy fundamentally?

Dive into Part 1 of Number Go Down, Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers' latest essay, where we dismantle the deflation myth, explore how hard money fuels real growth, and question why Bitcoin's promise hinges on surviving extreme stress. Could this be the key to a more stable, productive world?

Check out the original article: Number Go Down by Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers (Link: https://x.com/allenf32/status/2045477517201477686)

References from the episode

Give a listen to our two-part episode "Modern Money Only Works By Cheating" by Tyler Durden for the backstory on what the market's really pricing in Bitcoin. (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/UN8NHIQ3tR9tdc9ER89h)

Don't miss my audiobook version of "Bitcoin is Venice" by Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers – it's one of my all-time favorites and dives deep into these economic themes. (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/s6Fu2VowAddRACCCIxQh)

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)

The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)

Check out our awesome partners!

Become sovereign, hold your keys, be censorship resistant with the Bitbox hardware wallet. Get 5% off everything in the store with code GUY (Link: https://bitbox.swiss/)

Get ⁠10% off the COLDCARD⁠ with code BITCOINAUDIBLE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(Link: https://bitcoinaudible.com/coldcard)

Get 10% off the best Bitcoin board game in the world, HODLUP! Or any of the other great games from The Free Market Kids! Use code GUY10 at checkout for 10% off your cart! (Link: https://www.freemarketkids.com/collections/games-1)

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spiri...