 Good evening. My name is Kevin Davani, total podcast, total Bitcoin podcast. I'm going to introduce, even though you already been introduced except Sven. I'm gonna do a brief interview, brief introduction. Sven, I'm gonna start with you with the youngest one, 23-year-old Sven Schneeters, who has a spectrum of research interests and is a writer of really fascinating articles and essays, partially also based on Austin Economics, limitless curiosity.com and his organizer of the Bitcoin Vienna meet-ups. Mr. Mark, Justin Wallek from Liechtenstein, you are from incrementum, wealth management and investment funds and you bring out also, you know, you publish serious reports in gold with trust and crypto research. Um, Manuel Anders is is one of the senior economists, FX analyst of Bayern, Landesbank. His research interests is Bitcoin metrics or Bitcoin metrics and he has a degree in economics, master's degree and also ranked as one of the best FX analysts worldwide by Bloomberg several times. Torsten Paulait is one of my favorite authors and and scholars and researchers. He is his latest book, which I really can recommend is Mit Geld zu Weltherrschaft with money to world dominance and yeah, you're the chief economist of the GUSA, the largest precious metal company in Europe and yeah, so what I want to start off is we've been we've been having, you know, great presentations on Bitcoin and gold. So I would love to start off with the with a quote from the Austin Economist Hayek, which he said a couple of decades ago, I do not believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government. That is we cannot take it violently out of the hands of government. All we can do is by some slight roundabout way introduce something that they cannot stop. So that was Hayek and just demonstrate his comprehension of the root problems, the structural problems, which also your book with money to world dominance with razor-sharp arguments really demonstrates and with logical and rational arguments. Would you like, Mr. Pollet, maybe start off, what what kind of monetary properties, fundamental properties, should a money have in order in a free market society? Well, I think most people would prefer a kind of money that is scarce, that is homogenous, so it's of the same quality, each unit is comparable and it is transportable, it's durable, it's transportable, mintable, so divisible in small units, and it also has to have a relatively high exchange value per unit. That is at least what we can learn from monetary history. Whenever people had the freedom to choose their money, they were looking for these kinds of properties and in the competition among goods for serving as money, people decided on gold or silver or even copper because these precious metals in comparison with available other goods back then obviously were the preferred means of payment. And now we live in a world where we have lots of technological innovations and for instance Bitcoin has to to some degree all these properties as well like precious metals and gold, for instance we have a constant supply soon or later as far as the output of Bitcoin is concerned. The thing is beyond government reach like gold, you know, you have to produce it, it's costly, governments cannot increase the supply of gold at will and so there are strong similarities. The big difference is of course gold is a physically available unit whereas Bitcoin is a digital unit and from my point of view, I think the matter can only be decided by a free market in money to give people the free choice what kind of money they would like to use in their daily transactions for storing of value purposes for the means of deferred payments. So free market in money should, for my point of view, decide the matter and the free market in money is nothing fancy so to speak and I try to outline that in my talk because a free market in money is basically what I call monetary enlightenment where people are free to decide what they would like to do with their financial assets, with their lives and I think exactly the concept of a free market in money should settle the issue. Do you think the fundamental problems with gold, maybe some other participant can contribute to this discussion when it comes to divisibility, fungibility, transferring via electronic mediums such as the internet, can I do this with gold? So maybe one of you could compliment this discussion. Mr. Walli. So I do think that the transferability and the divisibility is not such a big issue. It sometimes is brought up, but gold can be divided into very small increments in reality. So I think that's not a huge edge relative to Bitcoin. But what I do think is it leans itself and also again that I think one can learn from monetary history. It leans itself more to centralization. So it is generally or it always was more centralized going back to a bimetal standard, which then was, for instance, the US, there was a movement during the turn of last century to actually go to the gold standard. But not because there were such hard-money guys, but I think that people and banks and influential people wanted to have basically the hands on the gold and it was also the time when they started to make this huge 12.5 kilobars. Nobody can carry this thing around. So that I think would be an advantage of, for instance, a digital gold. But other than that, I think technically speaking, gold has no disadvantage in that on that end. Mr. Anders or Mr. Schneiders, what do you think would be the fundamental problems with when we look at the commonalities and differences, fundamental properties, monetary properties? Yeah, I think I agree with all what has been said already, but I think the decentralization aspect is extremely underrated. So if you look at monetary history and you see the current system, the fear system we have right now is at least in my view and many others, the result of the failure of the gold system. Because you cannot verify gold, as we've heard already in some great talks, you cannot verify gold by yourself cheaply. You have to trust a third party to do it and if you want to sell large amounts of gold, you have to trust the bank. So these two really big problems, which I don't see how gold can overcome because it's just because of the physical need to have gold, these two problems lead to decentralization, as we've heard, and that's where the government comes in and just can pressure these central points, these few central points and then the gold standard basically ended and we cannot get this control back as we've heard with this great probe. There is no, we don't have the means violently to take it out of the hands of government. That's a really naive view and obviously the government won't adapt the great monetary policy, so that's also not an option. So I think the only option, as has been argued, to get this free market and to really have this awesome economics world we want is with Bitcoin because only with Bitcoin you can secure your coins by yourself and you also can verify everything by yourself with your own note really cheaply and that's the major difference. I haven't seen anyone basically argue against it or bring up any innovation in gold which would basically like make it on par with Bitcoin, let's say. Thank you. Mr. Anders, do you have any comment? Yeah, I agree with that and actually what you see with gold that it's the technology, the innovation is going in the direction that it's getting easy and easy to fake gold, so it's not even getting better, it's actually getting worse. So and as I said in my talk, I mean the only real way to validate whether you have real gold is with smelting furnace and I don't know whether you have a smelting furnace for your gold or whether whoever does this but yeah, but if you want to compare full validation, you have to compare apples with apples. So if you want to validate or if you compare it with the full validation of a full note in the Bitcoin network the only analogy is smelting furnace, there is the full validation. If you're talking not probabilistic, saying okay, this method for like a few hundred euros or something with electricity and stuff like this is 90% correct, 100%. So it's about the real-time validation that everybody, anybody who has a full note can verify validate compared to gold. I mean the question is how do I say how to validate the purity, authenticity of gold every time? Maybe next time you're in Frankfurt, I'm going to invite you to our people who make sure that the gold that is being bought from customers and is being sold to customers has the right fineness and it's pure gold. It's a relatively easy undertaking and you don't have to smelt all the bars and coins to prove whether it's 100% quality of gold that you would expect. And on top of that, I said I'm not going to talk about my book, you did it. I love it. Ten years ago, roundabout ten years ago, I did a book, it's called Monetary Reform and in that book, I tried to outline how a free market banking industry would look like where you would have credit banks on the one hand and deposit banks on the other hand. In a world where we would have, let's assume people would decide to go for gold then you would have gold deposit banks. You would just deposit your gold in the form of bars or coins or whatever and then you would get on your iPhone or your Android Sony system an application where you can actually see how many ounces or grams of gold you have in your account and then you can easily bank without moving any physical gold. That's basically the underlying idea. Of course you have a counterparty risk but then you have competition and these deposit banks would compete for reputation, for best quality like it is in the case of, let's say, holiday traveling and aircraft producers, etc. The point I think you raised is a very important one and that is the role of government. You know, it's very unlikely that we get sound money if we don't roll back the state. If you support Bitcoin, you may know or you may not know that you actually have to advocate the rolling back of the state. The state is the territorial monopolist of coercion. It is the final decision maker about conflicts which occur amongst his people and the conflicts between the people and the state itself can be decided by the state and you can imagine what the outcome will be the state will become ever more powerful and that is, I think, an aspect that we shouldn't ignore if we really want to advocate for sound money whether it's Bitcoin or gold or silver or whatever we have to roll back the state. In the format we know it today as a territorial monopolist. I think that is basically the real challenge of the issue we discuss. Can I just add something? I will invite gladly Professor Paul Aitunumbak who is doing the validation of gold and we are doing it like this. I know we are not supposed to shield any business but the binary is also one of the biggest gold dealer in Europe so I didn't get this information from random sources but from those people who are really into it. Perhaps we will talk about this later but the point is full validation 100% is the only way, there is no other way then you don't have 100%. What are you doing? If you want to have 100% validation of gold what are you doing at Degusta? We sell bars with the imprint of Degusta and they get the best prices. When you come and sell a bar to Degusta the imprint is Degusta, you are fine. If you come with a bar with the imprint of Comerzbank or UBS or Bayern Elbe we are going to smelt it. But not because we don't trust the fineness or the weight of the bar but just because we cannot resell it. It is like branding. I am sure UBS will do the same. They are going to smelt our bars. They are ways to test the quality of the bar. We buy for instance Krugerans and Philharmonics from Austria and we don't smelt them. We buy from the German Kaiser Reich lots of coins, thousands of them, we don't smelt them because our numismatic experts can exactly tell you about the quality of these coins. Yes, they can approximately, it is probabilistic. We are talking about 100%, if you want to compare it to the full node you probably don't know the full validation process of the full node. I don't know, but we are talking about 100%. And of course you are not doing this probably Bayern Elbe is also not doing it only on demand because it is not economically viable to do this. If you have an imprint and you are trusting in it of course you are not doing it. But his point was that this is the major advantage between gold and bitcoin that you have a way for 150 euros to have 100%, certainly 100% and with gold it costs 700,000 to have 100%, probably less for 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%. I think you are not an expert at the end of the day in terms of proving the quality of a certain piece of personal metals nor I am. We are going to settle that. I come to your place and you come to my place. You don't want to talk with our gold dealer. He is not a nice guy, I have a lot of discussion with him that is the only thing that we agree on because he is unhappy with our bitcoin research. But he is going to love to talk to me, I am sure. But be that as it may I mean there are various qualities a good must have to become money. The quality and the fineness and the weight of a certain piece of gold or silver is one issue. The other issue is for instance the time-tested qualities. For instance gold is with us for more than 5,000 years. There were many innovations as far as the monitor system was concerned and is concerned. We simply don't know. I take the position of advocating a free market and money. You would never find me in a talk or presentation calling for a gold standard. You wouldn't as far as I remember and I am over 50 now. Maybe when I was young I did it but I don't do it anymore. I think that issue should be decided by the free market. I cannot give you the answer but I think it is important to have a free market. Personally I have a certain inclination and that is towards precious metals. We are all biased somehow so I am a bitcoin biased. This is why I wanted to go through the fundamental monitor properties because if it is a free market the people will then be attracted towards the best money which has the best monetary properties and that is definitely finite scarcity or in gold's case relative scarcity fungibility, divisibility, portability, recognizability. There is a list of that is actually you listed also in your book and what I find interesting is that Mr. Pollet you say in your book you mention sort of cryptic in this case Bitcoin is something revolutionary and it could mean the end of the state which the opposite would be a feared world currency and a feared world government and the potential is there if there is not a spontaneous emergence of a free market would it be gold and or bitcoin? Maybe one more aspect you talked about the validation of the quality of underlying precious metal that is one issue certainly from the point of view of money users another important aspect is of course the increase in the quantity of money there might be people who would love to have a money that increases at relatively small rates over time like gold for instance the gold supply on this world increases by around about 2% on average in the last 100 years it may be that people decide on having a money that increases slightly a quantity of money that increases slightly that they would prefer such a money over a constant supply like bitcoin I don't know I'm just saying that is another aspect which will decide about what money will be in the market and yes, I think if bitcoin would really get its breakthrough and people would flock to bitcoin and all transactions would be would become anonymous the state would no longer have the possibility to tax turnovers incomes and whatever the state as we know it today as a tax receiver would basically come to an end that would be a private contractual society a private society then a completely new system would be put in place that's for sure I would agree and I wanted to add what has been said before that we won't have a new monetary system let's say a gold standard without rolling back the state as was said here but I don't I think it's naive to think this is possible with let's say the conventional mechanisms we have so we cannot vote to make the state smaller we can try but it's really difficult and I think naive to think it's going to happen this way that's why people who are advocating for bitcoin are basically saying the state doesn't have any more money to finance itself and then it's going to shrink by itself because no money is going to be given to the state and thinking it's going to be the reverse order that we can shrink the state and then implement a new monetary sound money system I don't think it's feasible and to the raised point that some people might prefer is that it might be true obviously and everyone is advocating for free market money competition is great but as we've seen I don't understand why someone would hold an asset over a long time which has an inflation rate of 1 or 2% if you could hold an asset which doesn't have an inflation rate at all which will be bitcoin when all the 21 million will be mined for even 1 or 2% inflation rate but that's probably going to be proven if we have this free market which I'm obviously advocating also for right I have a bunch of questions myself but I think we should maybe transition to the questions from the audience I'm just going to take the first one get it out of the way how does mining of gold how does mining of gold compare to mining of bitcoin in terms of negative ecological impact actually I with the presentation concerning this and there are estimates that the mining currently of gold takes around 3 times the energy compared to the mining the energy that is spent to mine but obviously this could change and also rough estimates but just think that gold is just mined like this for me the more interesting point here is the difference that with gold you have the case that you need to carry your energy to the mining facilities to the mines and with bitcoin you are actually mining where the energy is the cheapest the excessive energy that is actually used in mining cases right so the also what kind of energy is used also very important so it's first amount is less much less and also what types of energy are used it's more in favour of bitcoin because of the last reason that I mentioned I agree and I would add you have to not only look at mining mining gold and mining bitcoin you also have to look at transactions and transactions obviously cause a lot of energy in bitcoin and it costs to really take the physical gold and ship it somewhere that's really costly and this is also something that is often forgotten if you look at the impact of mining only I think it took three years to get gold back from that I'm told it could have been made possible in three months but now Mr. Wing I realise you know to put in these bitcoin propaganda people you know just facts you know I think it's very naive to come up with numbers about what does it cost to produce a certain good I mean we live in an economy where people have a certain demand and producers try to serve the customers you know like people love to go for holidays to South America and we have airlines who offers flights from Frankfurt and London to Buenos Aires for the enjoyment of the people and you may well say okay you do not like people travelling from Frankfurt and London for making holidays in what was that Argentina you know but if you come up with such a statement you come up with a dictatorial statement because I don't like that you travel there and therefore it is bad what you are doing I mean if sound money has a certain price you know if you dig gold you would do that only if your return on investment is at least as high as investing in whatever Apple stocks or production sites in China it competes the production of gold competes in a free market with the production of all other things and just as a return to your provocative statement I mean do you know how many people how many families make their living in working in mines earning incomes earning incomes to sustain their families and if you I don't know I couldn't answer that question as well and I don't know about the toxic exposure what I am saying is we are talking about a free market product so to speak and there are people who love to demand gold and there are people who love to produce gold and mine gold and make a living from it and this is the fair situation as far as I can see I think if you point out it is a certain bill to be paid for producing gold that leads us into a completely wrong direction I mean I don't know why this just stating the facts is I didn't so the point is for me if you have two sound money technologies and you have one which uses a different set of energies which are more beneficial less risks then why don't you choose the one with I mean not on a personal level I think society or humankind will converge anyway towards the more efficient one but I found it extremely interesting because I was actually expecting when looking at the numbers there that Bitcoin would use much more energy than gold so I think generally speaking you don't actually need new gold mine to actually sustain a gold standard because the fact that the new gold which is mine is only so small and relatively speaking to the already existing gold you're not dependent to have this gold but it will be a byproduct if you reinstate theoretically whatever if the market if we ever have such a thing for free money chooses gold then the monetary premium will rise and then these activities will be here obviously I guess but to your point and I think it is a valid one or an interesting one I think it's good to state in regard to Bitcoin mining that is excess energy which is consumed so the total number of what so whatever the energy consumption is in my view not the relevant number the relevant thing to look is what kind of energy is consumed and energy cannot be transported electricity cannot be transported easily through long distance it cannot be stored and so on so one can see Bitcoin also to some extent as like a global energy arbitrage so if some at some places there is a very cheap energy which cannot be transferred to urban places you mine it and you have a monetary value which is basically like energy I think and you can transfer this energy very easily via the Bitcoin network and this is I think interesting thought which I just wanted to also stress here but on the other hand I agree with Thorsten this is something which is overlooked I know somebody who wrote the so-called Schwarzbuch Gold so very critical analysis on the mining situation and even she the author said the situations aren't fun there but a lot of countries who are dependent on that that if you would take that away from them you wouldn't actually enhance the situation of the local people so these are quite complex questions I think one shouldn't look at this too simplistically and again I mean there are many things we consume we produce where I'm inclined to say well is that really necessary is the energy we use up for producing these stuff really necessary this is my personal point of view but I would never ever come up with prohibiting these things in a free market society the question is what kind of consequent damage is this the fiat system it's the right of the consumer and the producer to come up with the production of this good this is what the free market is all about and if Bitcoin causes a lot of energy and people love to get hold of ever more of Bitcoin so we have to agree to machines taking up a lot of electricity that's it I wouldn't come up with a moral judgment about it this is the result of a free market society and if you don't want a free market society then you go for communism and in communism you can go for prohibitions you can put people on campus who would love to get hold of Bitcoin that's the alternative this argumentation this is just my purpose to lay bare the underlying principles but back to the money thing again we don't know the technological properties people would prefer and getting a free market and money is really desirable and if you say we cannot roll back the government then we are in deep trouble and you are a young guy and I was a young guy many years ago and there was still the Berlin Wall and my teachers in school told me oh this wall you know will never come down of course he was a communist teacher I realized that many years later and then I was in Portugal and then on the 9th of November 1989 I was looking I was on the beach, you know cafe bar and there was a TV and I saw many people on this Berlin Wall hammering down the plugging holes into the wall and I couldn't really understand what was happening and sometimes things happen because they cannot be sustained and it catches most people by surprise when it occurs and all I am saying is I cannot promise you that this is going to happen but if we adhere to the idea of enlightenment like the Prussian philosopher Emanuel told us and if we want to improve the living conditions on this planet if we want higher living standards for many people fewer wars better health for the people then we have to get rid of the state as much as possible and so I encourage you all of you to embrace this idea that this might be possible someday and hand in hand the opportunity for better money would arise I completely agree I think my argument just was Bitcoin is actually fulfilling this role Bitcoin is actually trying to trying to shrink the state trying to get some freedom back for the people I don't see I mean I hope there is but I don't see any other way to do it I don't see people in power giving up their power voluntarily because they think it's such a great thing that people should have more liberty I think Bitcoin is the only way and this is I'm not obviously against shrinking the government I think my root is different let's say if I may add something also I agree but I think from a practical point of view we are nowhere close to getting rid of the state and I also am not 100% convinced if that is actually the right way to put it and I would I guess you would agree but I would say I would emphasize on decentralizing governance which is probably a similar thing but I think it's less radical for a lot of people who cannot imagine that there is no state but you actually want to localize governance and that's why I'm more sympathetic to Bitcoin from that point of view because it's obviously a decentralized system and that's what you want to have on a monetary view and that's what you also want to have on a government point of view Well let me just add something because there's a question maybe I want to tie this in with my personal question because your book Mr. Paulett lays out the real structural problems without euphorism it doesn't circumvent it there's no, you know, there's like rational logical deductions and facts so it's a waste of energy fighting against the established system so we create new structures and systems so the old ones become obsolete so we have principles of aggression, violence and coercion committed by the state and the government in collusion I don't know who owns what whom is it the central bank in control of the governments or the governments in control of the so it's a holy grail or the holiest grail of all taboos so the fastest way to defund the state by Alex Vetsky, thank you for the question what is the fastest way to defund the state peacefully Well if you guys come up with a perfect Bitcoin for instance, we have it already we have it when we are close when we are close, fasten your seatbelts well I would say you know an economist which influenced my thinking very much comes from Vienna from your city Ludwig von Mises and often I'm asked, you know what did this guy do what impressed you most and I'm inclined to say well he understood that our actions that human actions are basically driven by ideas we do things because we have a certain idea of how it plays out you know, we embrace socialism once we get convinced that it creates a better world a more social world then people go for socialism and if they have the idea that a free market system capitalism brings peace and prosperity they will go for it so at the heart of human action at the heart of human development on this globe are ideas that would be the answer given by Ludwig von Mises and I think he is right for logical reasons and we have to change the ideas and what you guys do at your conference is hammering home better ideas you are in the business of spreading and making spreading better ideas making people familiar that there are other solutions better solutions for the problems they would love to solve and I think that's the way forward if we don't succeed I think we are going to end up with a world currency and a world totalitarian state I think this is pretty obvious and this is not a gloomy scenario it's just a logical deduction if we continue on this planet the way we handle political issues the monetary system, the banking industry we are going to end up in deep, deep trouble and so more than ever it's important to come up with good ideas and that's one reason I think it's very important to support the Bitcoin community or the crypto unit community because I think they play an essential role in providing good ideas to spreading good ideas and it doesn't matter whether I'm a gold fan or a silver fan or Mark Warlech is a determined gold bug it's all about changing ideas changing ideas I think that's the most powerful instrument and tool we have and from little what I gathered in the panel discussion this morning it seems to me that central banks and government representatives don't have convincing answers they have certain phrases they repeat and they do it greatly and effectively but they don't live up to the to our convincing argumentation and that is something I realize so we are in a stronger position and if we succeed in getting better ideas making the greater public aware that there are better ideas we're going to succeed and you are a young guy what Mark Warlech said is the first step towards getting rid of the governments that we see secessions like we see in the European Union Great Britain gets out and maybe we see something similar in Spain maybe the Scots I don't know maybe Bavaria in Germany for instance in the United States in the Sessionary Development Burglian in Austria maybe that is the step towards rolling back to the state I agree I share the same hopes and I do think with events like this we can convince more people our ideas are better our arguments are better that's obviously what I think but the beauty behind Bitcoin is that you don't have to convince everyone you can build this alternative monetary system and even if all of the central bankers come here and listen to all of these beautiful arguments and they don't believe it they are not convinced it doesn't matter that's the beautiful thing it cannot be stopped even if all of those great people think it should be stopped it's the wrong idea it doesn't really matter thank you so much to all the panel discussion participants I think we have really empowered and educated our audience and the general public on the principles of Bitcoin and Gold thank you so much