Mailbag, incl: What about Schrodinger’s Shares? December 7, 2025

(upbeat music) - A list, nap, production. - Cheers, Marka. - The S&P, the ISX stocks. - This is the Motley for Money, Mailbag. - Welcome to Motley for Money, our very special Sunday morning Mailbag edition. Special because it's Sunday. Special because it's a Mailbag. Special because I'm talking to this man, Andrew Page. The man better known to gods and goddesses as Ram. He is the god of vitriol. He is the man who knows nothing more than Bitcoin always goes up. - He is, of course, also the man who invented, who gave birth to, who nurtured, and who helped grow and prosper. The premier online investment club. Nerdistromand.com, Mr. Page, good day. - I love the intro. How are you, mate? I'm very good. - I'm very well, thank you sir. Welcome to, so quick chat acts. I have been in this for weeks like you're forgetting. We're in pre-record territory. Yes, every podcast is pre-recorded, but we are pre-recording podcasts for, kind of last couple weeks of December 1st, week or two of January. If you want your question answered, please let us know. If you have a topic for us to discuss as an ever growing topic, as you know, we're not gonna do topic or stuff, I don't know what you're gonna break on boxing damage, but I'm not gonna be here, so neither are you. So if you have topics you want us to talk about, things you want us to discover or discuss, please let us know [email protected]. Is the best way for you to get your comments to us. I will be very, very suspicious of Andrew Page, suggesting we talk about Bitcoin, but you never know. Also to Andrew up on the socials, on Twitter in particular, @sage_seemian, @strawmaninvest, I am at TMF Scott P, and the monthly full is @themonthlyfoolAU, all those good places you can find and guess, but [email protected]. If you've got a topic, if you've got a story, if you've got a question, you've got an issue, we'd love to know, 'cause we can make stuff up, but we don't much rather, talked about things that you want us to talk about, and if there are things that we've done in the past, you want more airtime given to, things you've always wondered, general questions, how on earth is the strawman become a billion dollar business? That's a great question for Andrew. - It's a very good question. - I would like to know the answer to that too. - Please, please let us know. Should we kick off for the first one, mate? - Yeah, let's dive on in. - There's one Russell. He says greetings and salutations to Scott and Andrew. Both purveyors of fine discourse on the mystic out of investing, and drivers of the most illustrious pot machine known to mankind, full on. He says, "My name is Russell, yes, you can use it. "I came for the discussion and stayed for the rants." I think that should be the motto of this podcast. Come for the discussion, stay for the rants. That would be probably the most appropriate and descriptive way to discuss monthly for money. What do you reckon? - Although, more often than not, we just jump straight to the rants, you know. - Awesome saying. You just do that. What's your discussion? You come for it, whether you get it off to a different thing. - That's right. - Thank you, Russell. It's very kind. The other day, he says, now, it gets very philosophical. Are you ready for some philosophy on the board? - Yeah, the best questions. I'm always up for a good bit of philosophy. - The other day I said, "Russell, I had an epiphany." Or maybe just a memory if someone else has said it. Getting on, I'm not as young as you, whippersappers. And I would like your opinion. Even if it's a straight no from Mr. Page. Even most people without a geek style background or concept of quantum mechanics have probably heard of Schrodinger's cat. In which the cat in the box is considered simultaneously both dead and alive. And it's only a point of interacting with the cat that its actual state is known. Okay, this is a simplistic view in case some of your listeners are quantum theorists. Anyhow, I've started to view my stakes in companies within this framework. Until I interact, I sell or buy, the actual value is either good or bad. And despite my best intentions, it's only upon that interaction that the true value is known. I'm a long-term investor. So day-to-day pricing is irrelevant. Love it, thanks Russell. And the value it brings to the table is my concern. So the state of the cat in that box is not something I'll worry about. Until I open said box. And I will only open the box when my other value judgments dictate. Thanks Russell. So this is the question now. Are shares really just Schrodinger's shares? - I mean, there is a black box component to it. We were talking of air about corporate travel. So for those that don't know, they've surfaced some fraud. The shares haven't traded yet. - Alleged to say at this point. - Alleged, thank you. And the only reason I mention it is that, that is something that you can beat yourself up for making a lot of mistakes with investing, but fraud almost by definition is impossible to see from the outside. Like, even those on the inside, most of the people there presumably would've missed any alleged sort of warning. By the way, I don't know how to change orders. This thing even came to light. - Well, what's the, what was the previous order to doing? Either in competent order. It's completely missed because it was easy to do, you know, I don't know, but my point is, is that there is, that's an extreme case, but there is always those elements to it. So it's, I mean, I love the metaphor Russell. But it's, I mean, it's a bit like a, it's a box that you can peek into and it's a box that will periodically release useful bits of information. But yeah, there are some things that you, we'll never know and can never know. And one thing that will remain forever unknowable is the future. So even as the future unfolds, or you know, as we proceed through the present, you know, things become known, but then there is always, well, what then? And what then? So there is, this is, what I love about quantum mechanics, I used to really geek out on this stuff way back in the day. But the, the, what it really sort of tries to do, is it forces you to imagine the world, the universe in probabilistic terms. It's not the mechanical universe of Newton, right? That, you know, it's entirely deterministic universe. It's, it's probabilities. And, and where the metaphor works really well with investing is that that's the case with investing too. People think if I've got the right process and I've got a good strategy and I've got lots of good information, I'm going to do really well. We actually probably will do really well, but doing really well doesn't mean that everything goes your way. In fact, we talk repeatedly on this podcast of like if you're good, you're right 51% of the time. Exactly. And that's all you need to be. And, and that's, I think that makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. The other thing that's, I mean, probability is really going to mess with your mind, right? It's, there's a thousand different examples. It's like going to the casino, watching a rule that we're watching the, watching the land on black a thousand times in a row. And you like, the human brain will go, well, it must be red next time. Oh, you might say it must say black because it's always been black. Right, right. But it's like, well, you know, assuming there's no funny business going on, it is, it is a 50/50 chance every single time. And where that can, so let's say you do have a good process, let's say you do have a good strategy, good information, all of that kind of stuff. Even one that you could, I don't know how you could ever know this, but let's say you could with a degree of certainty, you know, that you're going to probably be right 70% of the time. Let's say that doesn't mean that the first 10 investments you make all go terribly badly, which is really going to mess with you in so many different ways. You know, it's like, and it's, it's hard, right? Because you can go, well, I'm doing everything right. And yet you, you would assume that if I'm doing everything right, then this seven out of 10, like for the first, like I'm going to get seven out of every lot of 10. But no, it might be that the first 50 were all, yeah, yeah. And I can't do the maths to my hand. Whatever the next lot were to make to make the numbers. It's why you've got to roll the dice. And then enough time is for that probability to sort of do to surface. And it's just going to, it's going to force you and it's to tweak and change. Oh, what are the time unnecessarily? So there is nothing more frustrating than doing something sensible and not being rewarded for it. And watching other people do really dumb stuff and being massively rewarded for it. Which happens all the time in markets, right? Particularly from our vantage point. We see it all the time. It's like various fads and hype cycles will come and go and bull markets will run. And you know, there's, you start seeing it, particularly on social media. These influences out there, you know, as if it's just, oh, just do this and look how well I've done. And they don't even fudge in the results. It's just sort of like in that very narrow time period where they've done a certain thing, which has just happened to have worked really well, which anyone with any sort of experience and perspective and a bit of context with God, this is not going to end well. Negatively geared, multi leveraging, investment properties might be a gazing sample, right? It's like incredibly well for a long time. Right. Yeah. So some of us are actually going, it doesn't seem like it's soundly based. But who's the idiot? I don't know. But this is my point. It's very, very difficult. All of this stuff and I'm babbling too much. Only just sort of say, yes, it's a probabilistic game and it's going to, it's going to be, give you a lot of head fakes. Yeah. Russ, I think you're right, except I think you're also entirely wrong. And only because-- So that's very shredding, you know? It isn't really, you go with the right and wrong at the same time. So, yeah, only because you, the box is transparent when it comes to shares because the price is disclosed every single day. So the final price you get on some point when you eventually sell, you can't control. Now, I'm going to sell on the 14th of September 20, 48. That's trading. What's the price going to be? I want you to lay open that box, right? But I get quoted the price. The cat is dead, alive, alive, alive, dead, alive, dead, alive. I can choose to transact any one of those days opening the box, knowing what's there. Not what will be, but what is. And so in this way, I say it's both completely true and completely untrue. The future is trading as cat because you can't know. The only thing I would say is in at any answer, you can exactly know what you can buy or sell for in the public market assuming the markets are open and trading as normal. So there is, there is kind of both going on there. And I think I love the long-term view. I love the fact that your day-to-day movements don't matter. And that's absolutely true. We've talked a lot before about, imagine your portfolio was transferred to cash next morning, let's call tomorrow morning for the sake of a Sunday morning mailbox. If you've literally seen this on Tuesday or Friday. But the idea of kind of, you say, great. Okay, now, I can buy today, I can sell today. Here's the price, there is the market. I have a buy order, a sell order, ordering the system, someone's put some limit orders in there. And I know exactly what I can get for my shares if I press the button now. I know exactly what I can buy them for if I press the button now. So it's kind of both. I think your value, and you put it at the end. I will only open the box when my other value judgment's dictate is exactly right. Not to me to worry about, I think it's also true. So if your point about trading as cat is, I don't know what the future holds. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to fret about it. I think that's perfect, right? It's exactly what you should do. But I do think to the extent you know how dead or how alive the cat is getting dark all of a sudden, at any particular point of time is you can take an action right now in the full lines of what you can get right now. Doesn't help you with the future. So you're right in that sense. It is definitely trading as shares at that point. But there is a slight difference, which is at any point in time, you can know exactly or as you just can't know the future state of the cat. And that's probably, again, I'm not trying to be deliberately painful. It's just that idea of there was a bit of both in that in that conversation. I think the difference too is there was a reasonable, though very imperfect way, Andrew is seven out of 10 of kind of going, is the cat likely to be alive in five years time or in our case? So the shares likely to be as valuable or more valuable in five years time. Now, no perfect solution. But again, trading as cat is either 100 zero dead or alive. And it is unknown, well, there's no way to kind of go, well, I put the cat in at this point, it was eating this much, it was this fat. And I was, I mean, this many days. And again, I don't get to my car with dark or something on. You know, whatever those things are that contribute to the likelihood of death is, you know, again, you can know those things. Shrating as cat is a perfect theoretical, you know, kind of a philosophical idea. But there are some differences that shares that make a difference. In other words, if you can get your head around, a process that works for you that tends to generate returns over time on average, then you can kind of apply a probability to trading as cat. And again, I'm torturing the metaphor horribly, but you know what I'm saying. So I love it. I think you're exactly right about the future. And as a reason to not fret, trading as cat makes perfect sense. But you can, I believe, I wouldn't pick socks if I didn't think so, put the odds in your favor and move in that direction. So kind of a bit of both. Does that make sense, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely it does. And actually what you just said there is antithetical to a very core piece of modern financial theory, which is the random walk hypothesis, which basically says you can't know it's a random way. Yeah, right, exactly. Which, you know, otherwise referred to as the efficient market hypothesis, which I reject. (laughing) And a lot of people do. And it's interesting because there are plenty of people out there that do it. I mean, it's sort of like, it's very intellectually satisfying the way of looking at the world. But I think it's also somewhat defeatist as well. Like it's just, it's not to suggest for a second that you can bet or invest with perfect foresight and knowledge, but of course you can put the odds in your favor, right? There's nothing to stop you being struck down by some horrible illness, but gosh, you can certainly put the odds in your favor by avoiding certain lifestyle choices and eating well. And you know, it's. And let's move the odds towards. That's what you're trying to do. I just favor avoiding death altogether, but you can absolutely say, you know what? I can put it off. I can live a healthier, happier, probably longer life or making some decisions that won't solve every problem, but will make things more than just the average random chance to your point. I mean, a really basic example. Do I think, if I was to go five years into the future, what is the likelihood that Telstra exists? Now, I'm not a fan of Telstra, right? I'll put that out there. I'm not even being overly harsh. I mean, I'm fine in forever, they do. But it's not an exciting company. It really hasn't grown for a long time. But it's not like I'm nostradamus to go, "Well, wow, that'll be around in five years time, right?" Whereas, you know, start up X, Y, Z that's just landed, you know, with a really impressive pitch deck and, you know, full of pith and vinegar from a founder that's managed to scrap together, you know, 10K to start the venture. I was like, "Are you gonna be around in five years?" I don't know. I mean, clearly, I don't think it's a controversial thing to sort of say that, well, one is far more likely than the other. Now, you could wake up tomorrow and Telstra has gone bankrupt and, you know, turns out that this kid has just started the next video. - Exactly. - So, it's not impossible. But, of course, I just reject the idea that you can't tilt the odds in your failure. As long as you see it as a probabilistic thing and there's no recipe for success, other than just trying to, again, make things, I was talking about on-strom any other day. You want to try and put yourself in a situation where you give luck a chance to destroy. - Yeah, yeah, that's true. - You know, there's this idea that you make your own luck or you put yourself in environments where you can never be sure of the outcome. But if you never walk out your front door, I mean, you're never gonna experience anything. It could be a horrible experience when you go out the door. It could be the best thing that you ever did, but you've got to do it, right? And that's, just bring it back to investing here. It's like, put it all in cash if you want. Open up a high, you know, yield savings account. Put it there. It's like, you have very good probability without getting too macro and, you know, to my normal stick. You have pretty good probability that the money will still be there and we'll generate the interest that it generates, right? Very, very, very high probability of that. At the same time, there's almost a zero percent chance that you'll build any meeting for wealth over a length-- So they will, right? That might be a period of time. There's certainty. There's uncertainty and there's risk. And they're all very sort of related, but different kind of concepts. And that's what we're trying to do here as investors. We're trying to reconcile things like volatility and risk and uncertainty in a way where it's just nothing guaranteed, but in a way where we can play with loaded dice for one of a better terms. So that-- I love the loaded dice. I was going to make it point out that you've let me straight into it, which is, there's a couple of really important things going in our favor, right? The first is shares have tended to generate on average significant real vendors after inflation. About 6% a year above inflation, according to some critics we started, I think it's two years old now. - Dividend is reinvested, but-- - Right. Yep. And that's, you know, about nine percent, about 6% above inflation. Compound that for a lot of time and you're going to make an absolute fortune, right? And so that's-- and that's the average. So start-- you know, you're starting from-- and invest-- you're not starting from zero. It's like half the skip below zero, half is going above zero. The average investor will get-- how-- what's that shouldn't say, will. Has historically, and I suspect in future will, get about 6% after inflation. - No, no, I can't. - That's not correct, you're there. - Please. - The markets will, on average, deliver that kind of return. - Thank you. - I'll have delivered that. The average investor will probably lose money. - Slightly different. - Average investor losing money? - No. - Get less than that. - So-- - Maybe not lose money overall. - So it didn't-- was it Vanguard or someone did a study? - So when it can't-- I hate the term, as you know, but the most rich online investors don't make money, right? Because where we suffer from all of the usual behavioral biases and stuff. So you say, I'm being a bit of a pedant here. So the market will give you the opportunity to get a very attractive rate of return on average. But only the person who's getting that average rate of return is the person who buys sits on their hands and doesn't do a damn thing, which is a very, very rare individual. Am I being a little bit too-- - I would be surprised to have a huge investor didn't make money. So we'd be surprised if the average investor lost to the market. - Sorry, that's-- sorry, you're right. - Okay, cool. - That was our last money, okay. - Yes, okay. - Sorry. - No, I agree. And chopping and changing, paying fees, you're absolutely right. There has been absolutely showing the average, so Morgan House will publish one. The average market is X. The average fund does X less something, and the average investor does the fund return less something more. And that's absolutely-- - First is fees, second is activity. And you're absolutely right. So that, yes, my broad point was the average, the market will go up over time. I suspect it always has. I think the average investor will probably make money over time. And so you kind of, that's the first load of dice, right? You're starting with a number that goes up over time. I can't, I can be really careful. I'm not guaranteeing or promising anything. You're starting with a dice that says, the average investor will likely, has likely made money just by investing. So you're already starting with a positive expected return. Then if you can just as you say, get out of your way, you get the average. That's even better. So you got a double benefit. And then if we believe and we think it's true, if an investor can with a little bit of experience in education, a little bit of skill, a little bit of effort and kind of, you know, determination and discipline, kind of, I mean, Roger Montgomery got a lot of money for ages. You used to say, how do you beat the market? You buy the market and sell the airlines, right? We were just, and that's kind of both funny and probably true. But more over time, expand that out a little bit more. If you can do a half decent job of finding companies that are on average, better than the average and valuations that are on average, better than the average, you don't have to push, you're not going to be buffed tomorrow at all. You're never going to be buffed, right? But you start with a number that goes up because the market tends to create value. You don't do anything stupid so you get the market return. And then if you're able to pick stocks and want to pick stocks and can pick stocks and do a little bit more than that, then again, just by avoiding the rubbish, you should be able to do relatively well. By the way, that's my big tip. Let me do a baseless and ridiculous prediction. I suspect Ram at some point, someone will invent the technology and the market mechanism, mostly fees to allow you to effectively go index less X, whatever that is. So ETFs, as we know them today, here's the bundle. I suspect within, I'm going to say 10 years about a suspect within five. You can create your own ETF, which would be, I want to buy the market less the airlines, less the miners, less the banks, or whatever it is. And with a presser button, not much of the way of fees, you get exactly that. And if you could find a way just to do that, you get better than average. Assuming you take out the bad stuff. And then if you apply a bit of stock peeking skills specifically on top of that and say, you've said a lot, I'm not buying the market and I care what the market does. I'll get the market plus something by buying the best companies at good valuations. And that's to deal with that. So the combination is loaded dice. Just not being stupid, getting the market average. So market average being positive and being able to kind of effectively load your own dice. You get a couple of weights you can put on the outside of the dice, put on the right dice and the right places. You'll get a better return than you otherwise would have. And I think that's that combination and factly that multiplication of those factors is really where the good investors make their money. I'll throw in a quick fact to it and then we can move on to the next question. I love this one. I just had to look it up quickly. So we often talk about Peter Lynch. He's a great investor. He ran Fidelity's Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990. It was just a legendary period because he averaged 29.2%. Is that stupid? Right over that. You know, that's a lot went on in that 13 years, right? Yeah, right. Including the stock market crash of 1987. Although we could talk a lot about that. And the hyperinflation oil shock would have been the very beginning. So it was offered to really significant periods. Oh, just you knocked it out of the park. In other words, if you put a thousand bucks into it, you would have had $28,000, 13 years later. It was an incredible return. But at one point, so the legend goes. He interviewed an internal study and that found that the average investor in the Fidelity Fund lost money. Wow, that's not easy. And it's like, wow. And the reason was, as is always the case, is it will ever forever be true. When he had a great year, everyone piled into the fund. So that is the other thing. When we say average, 29.2%. And this is the place of the market average as well. It's never. You never had a single year that was 29.2%. Would have had years that was up 400% in the year that was down 70%. So this is an average. And so even you're hitching your wagon to a rocket ship and you still lost money because why? You're packing. You're buying high because you're greedy. And you're selling low because you're fearful. And it's the hardest thing to blaze Pascal. The hardest thing anyone can do is sit in a room and do nothing, right? And that was a lesson in that. - So that's my recent rant about the Vanguard index chart. I said, I'll just do this. But who would do that? That's the point. - That's the point. - That's the thing. I'm sorry, the Fidelie Express is exactly that. - Yep, yep. - Mate, let's get a question from an anonymous, listen, who does the right thing and put anonymous plays at the top of the email. So I don't really know that. So well done. Dear Surs, says our anonymous, we're rather in trouble or we're gonna get a compliment here. Hi, here we go. I humbly bend to the knee and kiss the ring of the Motley Fool Money crew. Guardians of good investing and destroyers of bad financial decisions. Let me say one more time. You don't have to say nice things about us. It just helps. I've got a question, says our anonymous questioner, that might keep some Aussie investors up at night. And I will say at this point, we are not tax advisors. However, the question is how does US state tax apply to Australians who hold larger amounts of US shares both inside and outside super? There's a lot of chatter online. Just if you hold more than 60,000 US dollars in assets directly, the tax man from across the Pacific might come knocking when you're no longer around and snatch up to 40% of the total. But how does that actually work in practice for Aussies? And is it different if those US holdings sit in an SMSF instead of being owned directly? Is it something you consider in your holdings at all? I would love your wise brackets, general close brackets, counsel and perhaps a little reassurance on this one. Thanks, anonymous. I got no clue. Right, I'll go first here. It is not something that keeps you up at night, but it's something I think a bit about from time to time. It's absolutely true. American investors have a $13 million effectively tax-free threshold for their assets. Australians don't, unless you have a tax treaty with the US that incorporates this and ours doesn't, you absolutely are exposed to estate tax. If you hold more than 60,000 US dollars in US assets directly, I am not a tax accountant. We will have tax cancel listening. And if you want to, feel free to write in, allow us to pre-recording this and get those quickly, so we can cover it. I don't want to give you tax advice. Couple of things I will say. Yes, you are absolutely required to pay it. I don't know how easy this is to avoid. I don't know how easy it is to, you know, for the yanks not to know you're dead. That's a question I'm not going to go into. And I would never ever suggest you avoid or evade tax. Minimize it, for sure. Don't avoid or write it. Get yourself in trouble. Someone will tell me that avoid and evade different legal meanings I don't care, you know what I'm saying. The rate is up to 40%. It is a, I mean, quickly pull it up here because I did have it. It applies. The starts at 18%. 18%. Thank you. There you go. There you go. 18% for the first 10,000 bucks. Now you get $60,000, effectively tax-free. So it's a bit like marginal taxes, not the average, but total US dollars, too, just for correct. Thank you. That's one better for the exchange rate going down. There is some discussion. You mentioned a discussion online. There is a legal view. I believe, well, I shouldn't say I believe. I don't know if it's been tested in court. That an SMSF, the trust owns the shares you don't, you're the beneficiary of the trust assets. And because the trust doesn't die, there may or may not be tax payable at that point. So the trust distributes your assets. You don't, it doesn't go through a usual process. Probate is the process and get another lawyer. Probate is the process of someone who dies having their estate distributed. As you will know, from hopefully everyone knows this, if you've got a self-made, if you've got any super fun, you should, I won't say must, but effectively must, in my view, have a binding death nomination of one sort or another. Why? Because your will does not-- so your super is not performed part of your will. Your super is distributed independently of your will partly because you don't own the assets. Super fun owns the assets. You're all the beneficiary. And so it's treated differently. There is a view that super-annuation assets or assets owned by any other trust or companies don't have the same legal obligation. Because the trust doesn't die, the company doesn't die, just the individual dies. The shares of the company, the trust that owns the shares, may change, the beneficiary of the trust may change. That in some views don't cause estate tax to be levied. I don't know, and I'm not going to make any assurance. I'm not going to give you any opinion. I'm just going to say that, yes, it's something I have thought about. If I was going to sell my US shares, particularly my Berkshire shares, that would be probably the single reason to do so, to avoid that. Because I don't really want to have to pay estate taxes up to 40% and I was probably going to have what's at-- I don't have a million bucks with the US shares, US dollars to pay 40% estate tax. It's marginal tax rates applied to the average tax rate to be different, well, go to the details of it, but for what it's worth. So yeah, I don't know the answer. You should be aware of it. You should know that it's a very real risk. You should know that it's held in your own name. It's a very real risk. Whether or not the shares could be sold before the death was notified to the US authorities, maybe something that you may or may not want to look into. Whether you should, as you get later in life, transfer those shares, sell those shares, think about a company or a trust structure, soft managed superfund, or non-soft managed superfund, I don't have strong answers for you. So please be aware of it. If it does impact you, please go and get legal and financial advice. So I don't, I'm not aware of it being tested in court. I don't know whether in practice that just means it never gets applied or whether it actually does get applied. But it's a very, very, very real amount of money. I mean, if it's a million bucks worth of against marginal tax rate and it's progressive, so it's not an average. The 40% over a million dollars is not 40% every dollar over a million. Sorry, every dollar over a million. It's not 40% on the whole thing. Because it applies like marginal tax rates to an income tax in Australia. So yeah, looking here, for example, if you had a million dollars, you'd pay $292,000 in a state tax on the base in the average. So that's a 29.5% odd tax rate. So yeah, it's real. I can't give you advice on what you should do. If you have Australian domicile ETFs, it doesn't include those. If palette then non-US domicile ETFs, it also doesn't capture that. So if you own an Australian domicile S&P 500 index fund, for example, there's no estate tax payable. Again, according to my understanding of the way this works. So that's a summary. I don't know if it's hopeful. I'm not going to give you the reassurance you're looking for anonymous. I would absolutely suggest you ask a tax account to give you advice, but be aware of it. Again, as we've said, lots and lots and lots of times. Do you want to pay tax? No. If you've got a more tax to pay, is that a good thing? Sometimes yes. If you can earn more, look, if you own your video shares over the last 15 years, you've got 100 times your money. And you know what? You're not going to get the whole Intelstro Remzal example. So listen, if you're happy about paying the tax, but man, there are bigger problems. If you're investing in a low return or equal return, US asset to Australian asset, you've got to pay your straight tax on one or not the other, then yeah, you're going to be worse off than you if you invested in Australia. So there are very real considerations. Yeah, it just basically means if you're going to invest directly in the US, go for something with some pretty good upside potential, I guess. Yeah, or a structure or get advice or sell it before you. No one knows that when we go fall off the purge, but if I was 98, I'd probably sell our US shares. I'll say that. Okay, yes. Because you know, there's no risk, no risk at that point. You're not buying green bananas anymore. Buy green bananas. Should we go to the next one? Yeah. This one comes from someone who calls us VC Echo. So there you go VC. Gracious greetings and salacious salutations to the gods of the pod, the omnipotent providers of knowledge, the men that have a page in every book. And as for you, Scott, I'm very disappointed. (laughing) I've got Bitcoin several months ago since VC. I've been riding the wave of good fortune until very recently when the price plummeted and I couldn't see or find a reason for it. After listening to recent rant session, I mean, treasure trove of a macular well-organized and articulate nuggets of intellectual gold, there it was, the betrayal. Scott bought Bitcoin. Tell your fault. Sending the world into chaos, neither universe, crashing financial markets, the world over, and bringing Bitcoin almost to its knees, at least got only bought a small amount, preventing a total collapse. Yes, okay. Thanks, Scott. Yeah. Then to the RAM, a capital T capital R, I've written article the other day, spelling out the four year boom in crypto-winter cycle and leading into a more stable period, where Bitcoin may vary a little, but we won't do the massive volatility of the past. Could this be the weight of adoption or the catalyst for mass adoption? I don't know. The thing is, we've got 16 years of history. Less, really, because it didn't, for the first year or so, it didn't trade. It wasn't, there weren't exchanges, right? So we have very, very limited history to extrapolate and people do love to play with the data and, you know, hear these patterns of three years up, one year down and less than that. And there were the other great one was with the halving, you know, there's these halving trackers and so I didn't get into what the halving actually is, but, you know, and there's, we, this is also, this isn't a Bitcoin thing, this isn't an investing thing. The human brain is a patent spotting mechanism. It's what we do, we spot patterns. And it's very, very biologically advantageous to know that, you know, it's this time of year that the fruit blooms on that tree and this is when the buffalo come through and, you know, to identify spotting and no patterns is to give you a predictive capacity. So it's incredibly important. The trouble with it is, is it backfires all the time? (laughing) We see patterns that aren't there, right? Even get into all the pseudoscience nonsense of astrology and the rest of it, you know? And I mean, there was fond of saying, there was plenty of cultures around the world that thought if you were just, like, sacrifice, you know, some kid that, you know, you might make it rain. And it's like, well, works. Most of the time we've done that. And you're, again, we're seeing, we're just seeing patterns that aren't there. So, I don't think that's a causal. Yeah, all right, there's completely coincident. What's that website? You'll remind me of this, is this great website. Oh god, yes, you took, you took, I'll find it. Okay, so basically, it just, it shows the relationship between all these really weird things. And it would, it would make you think that there is a very real pattern there. One of the classic ones in the stuff market relations. Spurious correlations. Yeah, and you'll see all these patterns that go, oh, wow, the one in the stuff market that's semi-famous is the hemline indicator. Which talks about the length of, well, it's pretty sexist, I suppose, but there's a very, the length of women's skirts and the hemline. Yeah, you know, is it like they were long in the 50s and in the 60s, they got very short. Anyway, some genius like plotted it against the market and said, you know what, whenever we start seeing many skirts, the market's in a good mood. That's the time to invest. Now, it's completely spurious, right? It means absolutely nothing, but we see this pattern that's here. Now, let me add, maybe there is validity to this pattern. I just, you know, when Scott said a moment ago that the market always goes up and it goes to this amount, it goes chance to go up by this amount. You caught yourself pretty quickly 'cause there's no guarantee in that. But there is more validity in that because at least with the stock market, there's 100 plus year, in fact, many hundreds of years of history. But even if you want to go to modern times, there's a hundred years worth of history. There's like, I might start to put some stock in that as pattern. Yeah. You're 16 years in an entirely new technology, a thing that most, but when I say most, like 90% plus of the world has no idea of what it is. I was joking off air about the latest ABC thought piece. You do it. I'm not gonna mention the journalist name, but he's embarrassing, right? And he's like, how can you infer any kind of pattern on it? So it's got, this stuff is interesting, they see. But I would ignore all of it. I just, here's my thesis on it, right? Do I think that there is a value proposition in an incorruptible, open, neutral sound money for the world? I think so. And I think the world is slowly waking up to that. I think if that is something that we see increasing adoption on, you're probably looking at something at the very least, which puts it on par with gold, which is what, 30 trillion US dollars market cap at this point in time versus Bitcoin, which is under two trillion US dollars at this point. It could have happened. Time is going to end, let's be honest. But for now, give it, give it, give it a sports time. It could be anything else as Facebook said. And I'm going, so that's, that's kind of what it is now. And let's just say, just for the sake of argument that that's a reasonable viewpoint. It's kind of like, well, if your view is that this thing will be worth millions per coin at some point in the not ridiculous future, buy it. I guess it's going to drop. And this is the other great parallel with the share market, like the share market drops all the time. And I'm not talking about a day where we're down 0.8% of a percent. I mean, like 20% corrections, you see virtually every year, if not every other year, 50% corrections. You generally see what is it made every six, seven, eight years, something like that. Yeah, yeah. You know, like 30 months is the average market correction. Incredibly mature, long-lived, well-established asset class. And by the way, for the same reason, right? It's all sentiment. It's just all pure guesswork and sentiment. I just wanted to share market thing. I wanted to pick this up for a sec. Actually, two things. On Spurus correlations, you will see a graph that says, from this year, 2012 and 2021. The internet access rate among US citizens is perfectly correlated with solar power generation of Honduras. There you go. Which is brilliant, right? Must be true. There's a million of them there. That's such a great website. Think about the share market. And this is not to defend it or make any prediction other than, not only has it gone up for 120 something years, but there's a fundamental reason for that, which is actually demonstrated by company profitability. And so again, I'm not saying, it doesn't mean it should keep going, but either. It's just when you look at 100 trees. That's 120 years. That might just be XYZ. I mean, the might be is at the level of company. Maybe company profit plateau. Maybe it falls. Maybe all sorts of things happen. It's not just a case of price went up, so price will keep going up. It's the fundamental underpinning was the profitability. And the underpinning of that is the ongoing advancement of human civilization. Productivity, invention, growth, all those wonderful things where they make us far, far better off. And I've said, I don't mean about, I was going to go back to Bitcoin, I will. But I've said a million times. If you think this is peak humanity, if we never manage to invent another machine, ever find a way to improve productivity, ever find a way to grow the economy. Yeah, silly shares, because the past is different to the future. Even if we're on the cusp of 50-year dark ages, like that's probably a good move as well, right? Exactly. Exactly. But I was, by the way, from the world we're all dead. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Anyway, the Bitcoin thing, your point, and as a fundamental one, is back to the Bitcoin proposition doesn't change. You made this point of fear. The Bitcoin proposition is exactly the same as it was when the price was 25% higher, except that I bought, which in which case, that's perfect justification. But the broad idea, regardless of what you think, you talk about why you think it's going to work. My bet is more heavily on the adoption than the fundamentals. No, because I think the fundamentals are bad. I'm just choosing not to worry about that. Because it doesn't, if you've got a bit of a natural one, drives the other, though, right? Well, people are only going to adopt because they see the value proposition. Or perceives the value proposition. Or perceives incorrectly, even if they. Correct. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just, my view is just literally the case of, will the church in Bitcoin grow? If it does, there are more people wanting, more people wanting to the price goes up, right? It's the same as, honestly, and this will be offensive to some Bitcoin holders, and that's fine. I don't mean it offensively. You just have to take an exception. People don't drink more Coke now than they used to in 1905, because somehow Coke is healthier or better for you, or refreshes better, maybe slightly less, well, because it'll probably be a Coke candidate back in the day. But the broad idea is. You're not more energy, right? But the idea was like, why do people drink Coke, firstly, what do you Coke at all? Second, why do they drink what they used to? Comes into a few things, right? But it's largely, we've all agreed, not even agreed. We've all believed individually. This thing is worth drinking. It appeals to my sense of whatever I do, like all of us, just enough of us. Right, enough of us, yeah. And so that's good point. So, to me, it's like, you know, whether Coke genuinely is more refreshing, is kind of not even really the point. People think it is. And if they think it is because it is, that's great. If they think it is, it's not, that's great. They're still drinking the stuff, right? They're still drinking the black stuff. I'm a very big fan of Coke. Coke zero for the record. And that's, it is what it is, right? If you proved to me that Pepsi was objectively better for you or tasted better on some sort of objective measure or something else, I would still drink Coke, right? Why? I would do it rationally. I would rationally, I couldn't ever justify it. But I will, 'cause I just like the flavor and I've conditioned myself to believe it's a thing and that's what I'm gonna do, just going to, right? And so that's, and again, it's not too, I don't say that to, to spin in the eye of the Bitcoin or to our, just, it's just 'cause of the money is the money, it's a better money, it's therefore it's a better money. It must therefore win. I don't believe any great idea is must win because they're great ideas. I just don't, they may. You've got a better chance of a good idea of winning than a bad idea. Totally. Yeah, absolutely. But the conviction of that idea, right? Let me, let me offend some other people. How big is religion? I hope you have the masses, right? Like, is there a God, I don't think so. You may disagree and if you do, that's fine. That's your choice. If I don't think there's a God, another people do. And the church grows. Does it matter if I'm right or wrong? Does it matter if you're right or wrong? It does, well, anybody lives, it probably matters 'cause it's not the perlite gates or there's, you know, six foot of dirt above me. But either way, it's like, the belief that it's true is all that matters. If I was going to bet in 1500 on the growth of the church, I didn't have to do it because I know there's a God therefore it's worth betting on. I went, well, hang on, if the opium, the masses is the opium for the masses. And more people are going to get a church and they did 104 years ago. Then if I could monetize that I would have, 'cause that was an easy bet, right? If Bitcoin is religion or if it's money, it doesn't really matter in the context of the final value. 'Cause by the way, it could be the best money in the world if everyone goes, yeah, but now we don't want it. It's better. I don't care. All right, there's not worth anything. If it's a complete scam, but if I love it, the price is going to go up. Now it's neither of those things in my opinion. It's not the only choice of money, that's not a scam. But that's kind of, for me at least, that's kind of, and that's why I've bought a small amount. I haven't bought any more since I initially did a bit over a month ago. No, a bit less than a month ago, sorry. You could tell when I bought by the way, 'cause that's when the fall did actually start in VC. So you're absolutely right. I can't tell. I kid you not. Well, it wasn't the actual, it was the tent, just for someone to laugh at me. It feels great to yourself, 'cause it'll amuse you. It was the tent of November. And so I'm looking at the US dollars 'cause that's what tent's to be talked about in. And the price was on that day. I don't know, I don't know. I don't actually know the price I paid, so I bought a fraction, I don't know how I'll be going. $106,000 US dollars on Monday, the 10th of November. Ah, you're well away from the top there. Well, not the absolute top, but it was, if you look at the graph. $26,000 something was the US dollar top. But it was the bump up. So if you look at it, go down there, bump up. Ah, buy that. Down from there, so. Well, I'm almost disappointed. I thought you were done much more than that, that's it. What a, what a do you love, though? This is, let's say, a two final. But the two top stories, actually, the three top stories is fascinating, right? And this is, the algorithm does the algorithm things, but it's not deliberate. So when I did a Google search for what the first was, Michael Sailer put his Bitcoin price to reach $21 million. The next one is Bitcoin price plunges towards $85,000 as traders brace for a big week. And the third one is Bitcoin sell off. The correlation between crypto assets and equities. And that kind of cat we capture it's the entire Bitcoin conversation, right? Like, I know among the hard cores are the stuff, but that's at a general level. That's the entire story is like, hey, it's going to the moon. Oh, it plunged. Well, maybe it's just like stocks. And that's kind of feels to me like a very, very nice three article summary of the popular view of Bitcoin at the moment. I mean, it's exactly that. And this is why it's worth broadening this out. 'Cause I don't know, there's a lot of listeners who couldn't give us stuff about this, and that's fine. But it's still the same. I may mention the other week with Commonwealth Bank, at $192 is the 52-week high. And then in a very, you know, space of a few months dropped to $140. Now, if I got up there and on the ABC news and said it's a scam, it's a Ponzi. I'm like, you know, well, dude, that's just volatility. It stocks, what are you worried about? It's the same kind of thing, right? And it's like, if you're, if you were trading it, you've lost money. But if the thesis is untouched, you know, I don't, there's nothing that's changed. You and I will remember this, 'cause we were around at the time of many of our listeners. Well, I remember distinctly, 'cause I'd just graduated from uni with a degree in microbiology of all things, which I've never used. I've found myself working at a broken firm. And everyone was talking about the internet. I wanted my head on what that, I know you told me what it is. I don't know if you told that this doesn't matter. But in my head, I want that to be the wolf of a Wall Street. I want you to be in this boiler room, you know, bashing away, and I like, it's, I know, it's not okay. It makes sense. It wasn't nearly as fun as well in the movie, made it out to be. (laughs) But, but, like the excitement, the hype, was it? Yeah, yeah. And, here's the thing. It was true. - Yep. - It was actually, with our vintage point in 2025, I was like, you were all right. - Yeah, exactly. - This is before even smartphones, right? And it's like, you know, the biggest company on the planet, I think was Microsoft at that point in time. Now, a few years later, the whole thing had collapsed. 99.9% of all internet companies went to zero and never recovered. Even the big ones got wiped, like, really just crushed and took 10 years to come back. But, it was true. And if you had bought Microsoft at that point in time, you made an absolute fortune. Now, how much doubt and fud, you know, did you have to experience along the way there? And this is why I'm very fond of saying this because I've already had it happen. You know, you got lucky. You got lucky. It's like, that does not sound like lucky to me to say, resolute on a high conviction on a view of the future, when everyone in the world was calling you an idiot, when the price is falling and crashing down, it's hard, you know? And it's sort of like, if it was easy, we'd all do it. And so, I guess we won't talk about this for too much longer, other than to say, and again, whether this is Bitcoin or if it's a tech stock or it's investment property or anything like that, know what you own and why you own it. Why are you buying this thing? Has anything changed? Does it still represent value? If the answer to all of that is yes, then just ignore all of this stuff. And unfortunately, or fortunately, well, actually I said to you off air that, you know, one of the good things about Bitcoin is I don't have to worry if the CEO is committed for all of it, if earnings were missed, like, you know, it's sort of like, well, nothing's, nothing's changed. So why would I change my view on that? In fact, if you're at a point in life where you're looking to continue to, if you're looking to stack, this is a gift from Evan. And I can tell you that shop, I'll show up, promise you after this, the best investments I have made in the world. Yep. One of them is actually Bitcoin. It dropped 50% after I first bought it. It was 50K, I think, with first purchase. Aussie Dollars would drop down to 25 cars. I've done. It sucked. No, yeah. I mean, well done. But, yeah, it sucked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I bought catapult and I bought it a bunch of time. I watched that thing drop 50% a whole host of time. Stealth Group, a recent investment. Relatively recent investment. It really great. First purchase that at 12 cents, you know, a month later, it was at 8 cents, you know, the 25%. This is the power for the course on all of the best investments. And if you're going to be the kind of person who freaks out because of a price drop, you're just not going to make it. Now, very quickly need to add. If you freak out because something has fundamentally changed with the investment thesis, that is very appropriate. And you should freak out. And you should be decisive and quick in your actions. So if you told me today that something has gone horribly wrong with the network and I still, for some reason, had an opportunity to sell it to someone else I would in a heartbeat. But if nothing's changed, then I'm not going to change. And that's true of your investments. Yep, 100%. So VC has a little spleen to vent. Can I also take this time to point out how every since currency is like the US dollar. And even the Australian dollar were taking off the gold standard. Money looks more and more like monopoly paper. With low and behold, the bank keeps giving out more and more of their buddies under the table. In real life, that haven't been trying to hide it. Sure, a currency picked to the goal center wasn't stable money, but it was a downside better than what it is today. Hence my lamenting feelings that I don't have more free monopoly monies is to put towards my set stack, which I don't even want. I often say, I am absolutely sure. I will be having a conversation with my future grandchildren at a point in time. And that'll be like, grandad, what? Are you telling me that commercial banks just created money out of thin airs? Like, yes, they did. And wait a sec, were there a council of 12 elders that would convene in their glass fortress once every six weeks and decide the price of money for the entire country? Yes, they did. That sounds like I'm so pure madness. There's a fever dream of a mad man. How did anyone think this was a good idea? We're going to look back on this in the same way that we look back on bloodletting. Like, what? That was the recommended medical practice. It's like, bleed someone, you know? And, you know, anyway, it's my view with time. Time will tell, but it's just like, I think as an, and this is just a general comment about investing. I think you need to be an independent thinker. Like, doesn't mean you're going to be right because you're in a lot of independent thoughts out there that are completely bonkers. So it's necessary. What's the term for it? It's sufficient, but not necessarily. It's not sufficient. Sorry, yes, it's necessary, but not sufficient. So if you're going to be someone who just runs with all of the other lemmings, well, you're probably not going to do too well. If you're someone who goes, you're a complete contrarian on every mainstream established thought you're probably also not going to do well. But what you must do, you must be able to reach your own conclusions and stick to them as long as the facts and the reasoning stand up. That again, houses, you know, equities, magic internet beans, you know, it's always true. So don't, and in this space in particular, there is so much guff and noise, and it's just nonsense. It makes it particularly hard. So just be careful out there. Motley for money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at full.com.au/listener. And we will do, at some point this year or early next, we'll do a sound money episode. You want to talk about this off air? And it's kind of, what I like about the big, when you buy Bitcoin or not, it's kind of, I might say it's irrelevant, because if it goes up a lot, it matters where you bought some or not. If it crashes, then it also matters. But what I like about the questions is the way our listeners are thinking through the implications of the topics. And I hope that if we can kind of keep the Bitcoin processizing down a little bit, but helping some of these questions, I think it's actually a useful framework for thinking about the way the economy works. And you made the point lots of times about just the role of money. And how money works, the things we take for granted, I ask, even if you end up with Bitcoin, thinking about this stuff kind of matters. So I almost made it to the age of 50 working in finance. Exactly. Dollars were my stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And never knew what money was. I mean, bar is to admit it. I thought it was something. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So look, says, good morning/afternoon. Lord, page rammer, and King of Philly Scott. Feel free to mention by now if you're idea. Thanks, Luke. Long-term listener of the pod machine, but a first time questioner. Thank you for the hours of entertainment education each week. Your passion keeps me company during workouts and makes me feel like I'm channeling the ultra-fit super straw man. Yes, he is a marathon runner. I don't make him anymore. I'm a 25 year old investor. He says, insert bugger you here. Yo, I would do that. Look, I just call you a bastard. You know that. With a long term horizon, my focus is on allocating income to diversified growth stocks and index tracking ETFs. With the goal of gaining more financial independence later in life. I get to say really that sentence again. Because you know, we spent a lot of time talking about the individual bits and pieces of investing. But kind of the why. We've all got our own wise, but just think about my focus is on allocating income to diversified growth stocks and index tracking ETFs with the goal of gaining more independent, more financial independence later in life. I just think that's really great. Luke says, I understand. That's a neighbor's freedom, right? Control over your own time. Is the most wealthy you can be if you've got that. What are my favorite lines of yours? Never having to sit in the alarm. Right. You've said it before like that. That's when you have to sit in the alarm. That's when you made it. It's like that's. It's not a complex in that. You're going to have, if you have all the toys that will self sit in the alarm, I'm not sure you've made it. I mean, you could have made it. You just chose different things. But yeah, I love it. Yeah. Luke says, I understand or have convinced myself I understand. Many of the arguments for bitcoins potential as a superior currency or monetary system. But here's my hurdle. My money is split into two buckets. Spending money, which practically has to be in Australian dollars, and long term savings, which is currently in stocks and ETFs. My questions are one. It's probably about the thinking that I listen to him. If Bitcoin's long term case is purely as a currency, what's the motivation to allocate surplus cash flow to it now, rather than allocating that cash flow to stocks and ETFs? Yeah. Is the only real investment thesis that becomes a widely adopted digital store of value like gold? Or is there a deeper justification to buy and hold that I'm missing? Yeah. That's my job. So there's what it forget about Bitcoin, as you say. There's what it might look like as an end state under a sound money global system, however that is instantiated. And there is the path to get there. So if we clicked our fingers and that's just the money that the world used, there is no, you are far better off continuing to invest in productive enterprise. Because you will get outsized returns. Now, what's different? And it's very difficult for us to understand under our fiat regime where we engineer and desire to erode our purchasing power by between two and three percent each year. But if you think about a sound money, which is basically means you can't change the money supply, actually what would happen is even at the end state, you would still increase your purchasing power by whatever productivity gains humanity managed to unlock, which is a thing of beauty, which is historically somewhere between two or three percent, something like that. So you would still have benefit in doing it. And that's a risk-free return as well, which would be really great. But we are just sort of really, really unique point in terms. I say we're like, you blink, it didn't exist that long ago. Now it exists, right? And it depends on what stats, no one really knows, because this is what happens with a permissionless open network. We don't really know exactly how many people have opted in. And if we are going to start counting up wallet addresses and things like that, are we counting off the punter who's just put 10 bucks in on Coinbase and doesn't really know or the hardcore has got 90% of their wealth stored in it? And that person who splits their one wallet in a 10 different parts with less money in each is more wallets, but there's not really more people, more money, it's just a spread of the asset. So I've heard, I mean, people have done surveys and all kinds of things and clever chain analysis work. And the estimate sort of is somewhere between 40, I think, and 150 million people. Australia's population is 25 million people. Let's put that out there, right? Interestingly enough, I was looking at Vietnam the other day. 100 million people in Vietnam, 40% of them are between the age of 13 and 45. And they have one of the highest penetrations of Bitcoin in the world. This is what's weird, because when we're talking about ASX listed whatever, it's got a very small addressable market for those stocks, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that international money managers can do it. But if you're talking about something outside of the ASX 300, it's a very small market. This is a market, literally, the total addressable market is 8 billion people and growing, right? So very, very, very, look, I'm speaking about both sides of my mouth. On one hand, more people own it and own it seriously than there are people in Australia. It's already the 10th largest currency in the world, which is always a stat that floors people. And that's just converting every dollar to the US dollar and looking at the total amount and existence. And it's ahead of 160 other odd currencies out there in the world. But apparently it's still a scam, according to the ABC. Anyway, as that continues to grow, well, assuming it continues to grow, well, the number of units in existence can't change. It's kind of the whole point for one of the points, right? So it's sort of like, if it's going to be a currency for the world, it has to be worth a lot more than $2 trillion. This is market cap. It probably needs to be more than $100 trillion, right? And so that's why it's so interesting at this point in time. It's as we go along that S curve of adoption and we go from 4% or 5% of global population to 80% of global population using it in some way shape or form. I mean, the only thing that's left to give is the price. And in fact, the price actually becomes in itself meaningless at some point because I'm not actually exchanging it for one particular fear of currency. I'm just using it as money. So it's a real head fake. It's going to screw with your brain. But it's outsized returns now because of where we are on the S curve. The person who bought it in 2013, just to pick a random date, put in a hundred bucks and they're now worth whatever amount of $100 million. Those days are gone, right? That's not going to happen. And I'm a big bull, as everyone knows, right? So that rate of growth cannot be sustained. Yeah, Michael Salem himself, big, big, obviously advocate for it in corporate America. And he's saying, yeah, it's going to be diminishing returns as, I mean, I've used the term S curve. It's hard to do in auditory format, but it's like shapes like an S very, very slow, exponentially rises and then exponentially plateaus off at the other end because trees can't grow to the sky. Where at the bottom of that S curve? And if this is the question, right? You know me, mate, I'm just very big on asymmetric returns. So there's no guarantee that it works. It could fail. And if it fails, you're going to potentially lose all your money. If it doesn't fail, you're probably looking at something that's 10 to 100x return over the next several decades. It seems like a, it's why I always say it's like, you know, I'm not advocating for anyone to back up the truck and put their life savings into it. But if you don't have 1% of your investible funds in it at this point in time, you were missing a trick to my way of thinking. Anyway. So it's my idea. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to say what you just said differently and maybe just wasting everyone's time. But effectively, look, there's an option. You could probably say more concisely than I managed to do it. There's an option phase and there's a maturity phase. Yes. So think about it. Think about it like this. And this is not even, there's no good analogy because to Ram's point, there was a finite amount known now. Even though it's not all mine yet, there's a finite amount of Bitcoin. And it's not many 5% of it is, right? The rest is going to trickle out over the next 120 years. Right. And there's not, there's a finite amount of gold. But we find it and liberate a different rate. So there's no, there's no easy, there's no easy analogy here. The, the simplest one to your maturity point, Luke, is even though they're printing Australian dollars in US dollars, I don't, I don't, don't at me with the actual monetary base rate growth, Andrew. But let's do in the growing, the growing, they're both inflating at similar rates, right? That's why over time, the US dollar and Australian dollar don't diverge enormously and permanently in a single direction. Because they were changing one, they mature, right? You can buy US dollars at the same rate. Right. You can buy US dollars with Australian dollars, buy Australian dollars with US dollars. But the number of people who want it have kind of got them already in both cases. And yes, they'll change a little bit, somewhat changed that one for the other. But kind of, that's the maturity phase you're talking about, Luke. And there's no good example. But I'll contrast it with the volume, not the price of oil in the 20th century. Yeah. We went from no oil at the beginning of the 20th century to millions of barrels a day by the end of it. Okay. And that growth, no one, no one, there was no price for oil because it didn't exist in usable form in 1900. 100 years later, it's powering the world economy. Now, again. You can buy a 44 gallon drum for 50 bucks. No, whatever it is. Right. Wow. So, so that's, and you can reduce more oil, drum or oil. It's not, it's not, it's not nowhere near a perfect analogy at all. My point is that during the adoption phase, had there been no more oil discovered but lots of uses for it, you would have seen the price skyrocket. Okay. Why, for the reason that Rams talked about, people find utility, the horrible economics word, just means there's some value in it in its use normally. And it's in its ability to be used. And so they want it. And they want it in larger numbers, while it makes sense. And at some point, you go, huh. I've got as many US dollars as I want. So, for me personally, I have as many US dollars as I want. That's about 50 bucks in cash in my bedside drawer because I've had it in my wallet when I've got back from overseas. I need to buy more US dollars. Why? Because I don't have a need for them. Am I a level of insurance? It's a gift certificate you can only use in the American shopping mall. And I've got as many Australian dollars as I want, for exactly the same reasons. And that's that, that's that maturity. So, my view, Luke, I don't have any way near the conviction of Ram on Bitcoin as everyone knows. But the motivation to allocate surplus cash flow to it now, to directly your question, is that Bitcoin's valuable rise, where more people want the same limited amount of demand. I've talked about population housing a million times, right? Nine people, ten houses, prices go through the floor. Eleven people, ten houses, price go through the roof. There's 21 million Bitcoin. Not all available, but effectively. It's 95% of it's available. If more people want it, what else can happen about the price go up? Until the number of people who want it, have it or can, you know, afford it and change their labor for it, but put that aside. That's the maturity phase. Everyone's now using Bitcoin. Like I said, everyone's showing you, will the people use more Australian dollars in the future? A bit more. But, you know, we've got as many as we want. So, working in, there's no adoption. We're making, we're making about six to seven percent more every year. Right, exactly. And that's the last. Yeah, right. But that's, that's the idea. So, if, if looked to your question, if demand for Bitcoin itself increases between now and maturity, the price will go up. And at that point, when the demand and supply plateau, whenever it has the Bitcoin they want, or you know, can afford again in that kind of same context, it will plateau. And that's, so that's the answer. At some point, Bitcoin becomes like money. We're able to say better. I would agree if it does happen, which is it's not going to be debased. So, but effectively it's money, right? This is, if they stop printing more Australian dollars today, Bitcoin and maturity and Australian dollars are identical. In, again, different new systems, blah, blah, blah. But for all tens of purposes from a valuation perspective, they're the same. If I said to you, actually in future, everyone will use super dollars in Australia, rather than normal dollars. And I've got 20 million super dollars over here. Do you want to buy some? Yeah, yeah. If they go from that worth not, well, no, I've got to buy super dollars, that's a stupid idea. Also, then you go, huh, turns everyone's using super dollars. Y'all might get some of those, please, Scott. I say, well, see, you wanted to, but turns out I've sold them all already. Other people have got them. If you want to get them off, then you got to pay more for it. You go, bugger. At some point, they reach a plateau. Long answer. Rams already covered it. During adoption, if it happens, the price of Bitcoin should grow much more quickly than, well, dollars by definition. But the demand for it will go up. The price will go up. When it hits maturity, when everyone's got, when it's stable, you know, stable state, if you like, the pricing quotes will plateau. As Rams said, at some point, maybe just, you know, talk about dollars. But either way, at that point, that is, Bitcoin will operate like money only with no additional, what's the right version? Yeah, I'm talking about the, the, the accretion of value doesn't happen once you hit steady state. And so that, that, that, there's two, think about two stages. Look, and if Rams write, the adoption phase will see the price skyrocket. And when it's finished, when everyone's got as many as they're going to have, then it just becomes a steady state. So at that point, personally, me, I have, I have a very small number of Bitcoin around a few. I think, I don't, I think you've said around my, I'll put words in your mouth. I'll ask you the question instead. When you are convinced that the adoption curve has completely plateaued, I would suspect you would invest some Bitcoin in shares or other productive assets, rather than Bitcoin. Oh, the majority of my wealth. Yeah, for sure. Exactly those reasons. Because at that point, the value of the asset should grow faster in purchasing power terms than Bitcoin. And that's all you want to do. You want to maximize your purchasing power growth. That, that's all any of us doing at any point. And me, I have a very small number of Bitcoin as I said. But largely, my purchasing power growth is through shares. Now, if Bitcoin is going to grow faster than shares, and I should work with Bitcoin. And when it's stock growing faster than shares, I should watch shares again. And that's, that would be the journey. I think that yours is just around. And I would echo completely. Well, the shares are great in allergy. I mean, why are Apple shares worth so much? Yes. Yes, correct. There's only one Apple in the world, right? Not the fruit, the company. Exactly. There's only one company that makes iPhones, right? And, and that's why it's worth so much. There's only one company in the world that makes really great chips that are good for AI. There's only one company in the world that's effectively the gateway to the internet, which is Alphabet and Google. Like, that's why they're worth the same thing. Where it gets really just insane and just hard to wrap your head around. This is, they say there's nothing new under the sun, but every now and again there is. This is the first time in human history where we've actually engineered perfect mathematical scarcity. So there it is. Let's, let's look at gold. Let's say the price, the gold's kind of a lot lately, right? So let's say it goes up more, let's say 10 X's tomorrow. There will be a supply side response. All of a sudden, every single gold miner will ramp up their production massively. And don't forget it, most gold miners have tenements that out there that are just not viable. They're just like, it costs us $5,000 to get an ounce out of the ground. So why would I do it if I can only sell it for $4,000? Those dynamics change radically at a higher price. So generally, when you're talking about commodity, not generally, literally every single time when you're talking about commodities, when the price goes up, it induces a supply side response. Gold sector is going through the roof. One of the gold price goes up. Coordination on the gold medal sector is going to be like, hang on, I can y'all spend some time doing this. It's worth my while at scale, particularly in Africa. That goes bananas. Well, you mentioned oil. What has happened at the use of oils gone through the, we're using more oil now than we have ever used. Not like a little bit more than 50 years ago. Like orders of magnitude more. And yet it's kind of in inflation adjusted terms never been cheaper. And that's because there's a supply side response. So this is what's interesting. I mean, you know, there's 50 million people in the world who are worth more than a million US dollars. So not every millionaire can even hold one. And then there's about four million that have been, anyway, I won't keep hammering the point. That is why. And if you don't think adoption is going up or whatever reason, then don't buy it. But if you do think it's going up, then, you know, there's only one thing to correct because nothing else can change. One will be quite a question to finish off from. And I'm going to ask you to keep level headed. It's not a complaint. I can't promise that. I might have to interfere. And my latest charge photos attached. This is on an audio format. There is a very, very, very, very cute puppy dog. It's all I'm going to say to you. So, and well done. I've got a little guide dogs and things. So maybe you're training guide dogs. Which is if you are, those are brilliant. So thank you. Cool. Firstly, I'm female and older than you both. So I must be likeable. You're absolutely right. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. As long as I'm happy, envious. I appreciate female listeners around. I both do. And female investors. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sending in the photos. They're very cute. I'll send them to you separately. I'll be able to see this very, very cute puppy dog. A little golden retriever, I think. Very cute. Secondly, I love the pod machine, to them. You have both been very informative over many years now. I listen to your words of wisdom while I volunteer. Here you go. While I volunteer raise guide dog puppies. Very cool. I couldn't do it. M says yes. I am sending them back with tears in my eyes just as they are growing up. And then I get another one to do it all again. Please keep up the puppy stories because it always gives me a chuckle. Ram dog barking in the back and I wasn't deliberate. But it was nice and coming beautifully handy. I couldn't do that. Could you do it? I couldn't raise a puppy. Then send it off. But I'm glad you do it. Thirdly, thank you for making broad-based ETF investing. Seems like a really good choice for me. Rather than something only the ignorant would do. I love the idea of researching companies. But honestly, playing with puppies and training them is more appealing. Smiley emoji. I don't love you without that either. Now to my question or discussion. It's Bitcoin, but not really. I understand the problems with Fiat currency, says M. There are enough examples across the world as to why it's not great. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a hard money system. And not prone to the same problems. Very appealing. What I don't understand is. If it was to be adopted worldwide. What is to stop us becoming a feudal system again. Where those who have everything can own those who have none. Bitcoin, you say, can be divided more and more. Unlike, say, land that a landlord won't part with, or to a lesser extent, gold. But how is creating smaller pieces of pie different? To creating more pieces of the pie by growing it. As we do with Fiat currency. I'm sure this is a simple explanation, but I just can't see it. Cheers, M, and my latest charge. Photos attached, which I was just talking about. Well, there's two questions there. I'll do the second one first, because it's super easy to do. Something that is infinitely divisible is not infinite in quantity. And a very easy way to explain this is to say, if that were true, I could order a pizza from dominoes and feed the world. I just divide it into eight billion slices and we all get pizza. There is only one pizza, right? So that is something that I. Technically, it was not very useful. Yeah, I mean, but it's exactly the same thing, right? It is different if I multiply the number of pizzas. If I make eight billion pizzas, now everyone has a whole pizza. And it kind of diminishes the value of the pizza in a lot of ways, because there's no scarcity to it. So what you would want to. We don't want to feed people. I'll say we shouldn't. There is value in 38 billion people, but the analogy that breaks down at that point. I mean, people. I've mentioned it before that some big coin have been lost and sometimes people get worried about that. It's like, "Oh, what happens when it's all gone?" You could run the entire global economy on one big coin. Easy. You know? It doesn't matter. It will adapt to the level it needs to do. Whether it's 21 million. Why did Satoshi decide 21 million? There is some mathematics in terms of the halving schedule that kind of makes it a nice. There's some elegance to it, but it could have. It could have been 42 or anything, right? As a nod to Douglas Adams and he tried to go to the galaxy. It doesn't matter. What matters is that it's immutable, is that it doesn't change. In the same way, is that you can in barrel be one of the best builders on the planet by using the imperial. and I can be a great builder using the metric system. Can I say, I just have a massive tangent. I've watched a couple of home improvement DIY videos. And the guys were just like, "Oh, that's five and seven sixteenths of an inch. Should I make this one over here three?" Who uses inches? A fraction of an inch for God's sake, people. I know the yanks do their thing. But who wants to add five and seven inches to six and four inches and try to work out how much. Just move on. It's such a great analogy, really, because when you speak to Americans, they're like, "How do you do it?" Like they can't get their head around. That's true, I suppose. And it's just fair and high in social media. Or Aussie dollars and Bitcoin. It's sort of that there is something very potent and powerful about the status quo in the case that, you know, you and I could be speaking French right now. Right? I just, it would be very hard and take a lot of work for us to sort of get there. That was the puppy dog again. But it doesn't really matter. It's kind of abstract in a way. So hopefully that answers the question. It doesn't matter, right? It just doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. I could elaborate, but for the sake of brevity, I'll leave it there. The other point was, "Oh, a feudal system." You might have to flesh that out for me. Why would a hard money standard inevitably lead to a feudal system? I think one of. I don't know. My interpretation of M's question is, one I had myself, and you don't have to debate this a little bit. And I think what catches people up is that somehow a new system implemented now. I'm only arguing with you ages ago. If you were going to try and get widespread adoption for a new brand new digital currency better than the others, these better do it. We swap everyone's assets so they currently exist for their proportional share of global wealth and just replace one for the other. So if I'm more on Buffett and my wealth is 0.5% of. Let's make it up, half a percent. He gets half 10 to the bitcoins. And my wealth is 0.1. So I get 0.1 of a bitcoin and around the cost. If you just replace one with the other, it would seem somehow more appropriate because that is the status quo. I suspect. It seems he was starting from a fair starting point. Right, but I think that's the point. So I think the idea and where M is. If I miss the interpreting, I apologize, because I miss the representing, I apologize. It feels somehow. And maybe this is the privilege of being wealthy in the first place. I say wealthy in a global context, not in a personal context. It feels like if you say, "We should have a brand new currency." But people have already got it. They get more. You know, Michael Saylor is. If we're going to be Bitcoin, he's going to be wealthy in Bitcoin then he wasn't dollars. Yeah, right? Because he owns a larger proportion of the new thing. And so there is a sense from M's perspective. And I think M. You might also be a little bit misled by the final number. Because I feel like I set number of them. Those who got a bigger number. Those who got a bigger amount of the fixed number feel somehow, like it's less fair. But the idea of kind of the distribution of Bitcoin being different to the distribution of fair currencies, plural, is something that kind of. It just feels uncomfortable. It feels like if you got to create something new, don't do it in such a way that. That there is inbuilt. What's the right word? You've reasonably objected the word fair before. But there is a distribution in a quality to Bitcoin that if you're going to do something from scratch, you wouldn't choose to do. You wouldn't choose to. If you're a bit. As much as you like Bitcoin, and I said the point about you know, people are early and they deserve the wealth. And I don't necessarily disagree with that. But also, I suspect knowing you, mate. If you started with. You've got to say, you've got to say, you've got to take care of the world. Hey guys, look, the fake currency you got suck. We're going to replace them all. And the fair is where to replace them all is either. Get the same way everybody, because that seems the fair is where to do it. Or if you're not going to do that, you're going to say, "No one's going to be worse off the better off. We're just going to replace one for one." That's probably the most reasonable way to put the word fair at the side. To do it. So we don't lose a win buy. We just replace one with the other. We're going from pounds to dollars in Australia. We kind of went. You've got to leave. But the exchange rate is this. Six minutes is now five cents. You've all got six minutes each. How many six minutes you've got? You've got that number of five cent pieces. Let's get on with it. And no one will lost. They just transferred. But if I'm interpreting you correctly. That's the problem. I think that's where it seems like. It's like we're creating or encouraging or allowing or just accepting a system that would in its adoption have in built in a quality in a way that feels like the early and the rich get most of the Bitcoin where we. In a perfect world would have an alternative option, I suppose. And even if I'm. I can't ask you because you're not here alive. I hope I'm doing that justice. But it feels like, you know, imagine it would land, right? But we've all decided to create a privately owned land. And you're going to get this much. And you're going to get that much. You're going to get that much. Hang on, why don't I get. You know, just because I had, you know, that early I was using that land. And you said, "Okay, you can have it now. Squad is right to Australia. It's a great example, by the way." And they changed the small. Well, they called this small. Something at? To basically say to the. You kind of have this massive amounts of land. We're going to make you give some of that land back and redistribute it more fairly in the 1800s in New South Wales from memory. My Australian history is failing me. There was a. Not a wrecking, but a redistribute at some point. Like, okay, you got there first, you got this massive tractor land. Everyone's missing out. That's not fair. We're going to make it less unfair. I can understand how someone coming to Bitcoin is like. But I think on this new system means that those have already got lots of them to keep them. And they kind of get to be rich and the rest of us. And from a purely investment perspective, you know, just a viable way. But as a social level, you wouldn't ever design it this way. You wouldn't say brand new money. Whoever gets their first gets most of it bad luck if you weren't there early. But again, it's your point. Is there another option? I mean, there is. I get the point. I get the point. I suspect that. How would you do? Let's say that I decide to immigrate to the US. And I arrive in the US and I go, wait a second, there's 330 million people here. And they've all got land. I don't have any land. New US dollars. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm one 330, 330 millionth of the population now. I should get that much land. Yeah, someone, someone give me your land. Like, I don't think anyone would go, yeah, that's perfectly reasonable. Yeah. You know, and it's, whether it's land or whether it's apple shares or whether it's, I mean. But if the government also, your home set right, I'm just, I think it's devils advocate or just the other side, which is. It also would be true if there's 330 million people, the government said. So what we've decided to do is replace US dollars with US megabucks or Trump, let's call them Trump bucks for fun. And what I just want to do is, imagine this, because most countries around the world do reset their currency every 30 to 30 years. Like, that is, that is the standard. We're in a very, we're at the tail end of the currencies, which don't do that, right? Well, I said Trump said, okay, what I'm going to, so Trump bucks, we're going to give you a dollar together tomorrow, right? And what's going to happen is I'm going to give 10 times as many Trump bucks to people today to my campaign. And five times as many to people who vote Republican and everyone else can share what's left. You're like, well, that's not fair. That's not, and that's kind of how people are seeing rightly, but also as you say, probably unavoidably, the rise of Bitcoin, which is at some point, if we do adopt Bitcoin as a global currency, which is your expectation. We get to a point where the distribution of that is unideal. Like, it's a fair, not going to just, it's none of those things. They'll have massive amounts of that. But that is the world we're not going to put a value judgment on it, because it's just, that is, I mean, forget Bitcoin. It's true of every asset and thing of value on the face of planet Earth, it is not distributed equally. So it's an unfair comparison, I'm not saying you are ever making this, but it is an unfair comparison to say, there's some platonic ideal out here, in which nothing else in reality is ever conformed to. But you should, and this should conform to it. It's kind of, it's a double standard in a way. The other thing is just to look at the history of money, and money has always been an emergent property that just is. And this is what's, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to use this term. It's why the emergent of Bitcoin is so beautiful. And this is why I'm so much against all the altcoins, and almost is crypto. When you look at almost all of them, they have all got a VC back up, who have restricted a certain amount of coins to themselves, who have gone out there and pumped it on social media, so that they can dump it on some poor sucker and walk away, and walk away with the thing that actually has some value, which is the US dollars, that they're trying to get. Here's something I created for free. Me and Scott have got monthly for money coin. We're creating it. We're doing a launch. We're launching a crypto token, and by the way, we use some zero-knowledge proof system, which makes sure that we must the identity of it, so it's got far better privacy assurances, and people in the know what I'm talking about, because there's plenty of cryptos out there that make these kinds of things. And then you would look at that and go, "Wait, so you guys get right out of the gate? You get something?" That's every other crypto right now, right? This thing was the person who created it walked away without ever caching in a single one. They stood it up, and they gifted it to the world, and they said anyone in the world can use it. And right now, for anyone who's complaining about its unfair, it's like, "I would just remind you that 95% plus of the world does not have any." So you can complain, or you can front-run the vast, vast, vast majority of the people. And here's the other thing I always. I hear you, but that's the problem she doesn't find, rather than the solution. You can be one of the feudal lords. There's no feudalism in that analogy that meme is all that. I'm just saying, I'll get to the other point. I'm just saying if it's something that you're worried about, then you can do something about it. You can't do. I can't go, "Oh, I never invested in Apple. Apple's now worth 300 trillion, whatever it is, and I should have some." And all the people who took the risk, and they didn't know it was going to be the company it was going to be, and a sort of like, "Yeah, to those who sacrificed go the spoils." That's a separate point. I also reject the idea that it leads to any kind of feudalism, because think about what. If you're angry at this as a potential, your blood should be boiling at the current system that we have. That's the key. I agree. I'm not saying this is some beautiful utopia, and there'll never be a hungry child or disease in the world. Humans will be human. There'll be all kinds of wars and horrible things that happen. But at the moment, we live in a system where if you happen to have a special license from the government, you can create money out of thin air. We live in a system right now that if you happen to be one of these institutions and you're completely reckless with that power and blow yourself up, we will bail you out and we will socialize those losses and spread it amongst everyone else. We live in a system right now that the more money you have, the easier it is for you to get more money. In a sound money system, that's not true. If I buy 100-bit coin today, and then I go into a coma for 50 years and I wake up and it's the global reserve currency, and I sit on my hardware wallet. I've actually done nothing, right? I've actually put no claim on the things that genuinely matter in this world, which are the tangible, the land, the goods, the services that I can buy. These are the things that have value. Money of all descriptions, whether it's a bail of tobacco or it's the Australian dollar or it's Bitcoin, this is just a ledger that helps us keep track of things. It's an accounting tool. It's all it is. So if I sit there in the future with my 100-bit coin and I don't spend it, it's like, you can call me a feudal lord, but I've actually not done anything. In fact, the only way to realize the value of this thing is to trade it. I'll buy that mansion off someone and I'll give them some Bitcoin. And guess what? When you do a trade like that, both parties walk away happier. Someone's got the Bitcoin that they wanted. They can now preserve their economic energy for a future use and time when they decide they want to redeem it. And I get to have a house. And so this redistribution, this is why it's good when we have all these people from the early days selling and buying it to new people. And I will no doubt sell down some in the future, spend it more appropriately and positive in the future. And that's how you go. That's how you go from one person's hard computer, churning away mining and generating 50-bit coin per block to something in which everyone in the world can use it because you must spend it to get any value from it. If you spend it, you actually distribute it to someone else. And the final point, I can make 50 other points, but I'll shut up. But I think this will be the final point I make is let's say I am the, I am the 799th million, 999th person to adopt, right? I'm the last person on planet Earth, and I go, right, I give you this. This one is a Borneo. I'm going to use Bitcoin. And for some reason, I've got a wheelbarrow full of like greenbacks, but no one wants anymore. And I go, I guess I'll adopt it. But I'm still massively incentivized to do that because I'm now going to go to a currency which no one wants to accept anymore. And even if there was some institution keeping it alive, well, they're doing what they've always done with fair money, just completely printed out of thin air and dilute everyone to a system which is completely fair and transparent and unscrupulous, which no one, whether your Donald Trump or Elon Musk or Warren Buffett, no one can absolutely screw with it. And you will get, as I said before, perfect assurance that your economic energy is, is, is preserved perfectly, and that now you're in a network of 8 billion people. So it's the utility has just gone through now. The utility is not as good as it will be, right? Because only, you know, 3% of the world actually value it. So so now I've got that and all of all of humanity is combined collective entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial spirit and inventiveness now accrues to the money. So I'm just going to get am I sit, sit there with my 100 Satoshi's, which is a millionth of a Bitcoin, and I will, I will capture all of those productivity gains. So now what I do it, the best analogy to give here, it's really hard for us to amount, we have just a 20 million, 25 million, obviously we're not, we're trying to around and you're right, I don't, I don't say that in a mean way, we just, we just, zoom out, right? And then look at the greater context, you're in Venezuela. Is it the Bolivia? What's the currency they've got there? Whatever it is, it's what I think you believe that Boulevard. What does everyone do in Venezuela? They switch to the US dollar, right? Now, when they switch, when they switch, do they go, I'm just going to wait for the currency to depreciate a little bit, and then I'm going to sell my US dollars back into the Boulevard, no, it's a one way door. You opt out and you never opt back in. It's not, and no one in, no one of it is well, they go, oh, I should have done it 10 years ago. Oh, well, it's too late. I'm not going to do it like hell, yeah, I'm in a sinking ship here. It's leaking. This is a terrible thing. The government constantly confiscates it and devalues it. I will, the best time to switch is as soon as you possibly can. That is when you switch, and that will be true of Bitcoin. And frankly, it realigns the incentive mechanisms. It doesn't give people of wealth increased power, which was what you have at the moment. It's such, it's such an ethic. Like, honestly, my north star here isn't, I want to pump my bags and be mega rich so I can buy a Ferrari and never work again. Like sound money will bring, will usher in a far more egalitarian, fairer world for all. And that's why I get how people like, I just get bit angry because I read it only this morning of this ABC article calling it just a tool for criminals. How can you be against a money for the people that is incorruptible, that is anyone can voluntarily opt into if they want without coercion or without force. And like, you're against that. That's just like the weirdest thing in the world, right? And it's like, and if you are going to be, and again, I say, if you are going to be worried for whatever reason in your head, you think it's grossly unfair, well, buy some, get ahead of the queue or shut up. Not, not to you, Em, and not to you, Scott. I just, to other people who like to, to do this because it's just, I just don't know how else you do it. I just don't know how else you do it. So, Em, I think I, I sympathize entirely with your view from some sort of social fairness perspective. As I said, if there's a benevolent dictatorship, you wouldn't choose to say, you know, I will, I will hand out Bitcoin's unequally, and I will hand you a map around but work with you for a second. But in the same way, you've also got to split up all the land at the same time. It's on the same company in the same way you wouldn't say, okay, I'm going to start tomorrow. The Warren Buffett gets more of the, more of the greenback dollars than anybody else does. It's no more or less fuel in my view, Em, and it might be the breaking up the pieces that has maybe tripped up a little bit. Bitcoin's far from perfect. It's better as a money. And and around about fair or fair or fair or fair or that's the key one, right? So, the, the lack of debatement would be better and fairer. It's less likely. And it's the middle class who wins that one. I've said before, the poor don't have any money to spend. So, with saving in dollars or Bitcoin makes no difference. The rich will be slightly worse off because I don't get the benefit of the money printing. And the middle class are meaningfully better off because they're the ones with a bit of cash in the bank that's been debased every year. They would actually get real value for their savings. So, that's why I'm not, I'm not a politician will be, will be, will not, will not be able to spend recklessly without restraining. Right. So, I'm not here, I'm not here for the mission per se, but I absolutely think that sound money and whatever for me is better. But here's the thing, Em, at just my last point, whether it's Bitcoin or whether it was a sound Australian dollars with no money printing. Now, Bitcoin has some technological differences that I don't get caught up in. But, but as a concept for sound money, if we just simply said tomorrow, there's no more Bitcoin and no more Australian dollars, whatever we've got is what we've got. It would be no more or less futile than Bitcoin. The Lord's would be different people. The Lord's currently live on point, Piper and, you know, to rack and Moulvin and wherever it is in your, in your Adelaide Hills and where is it in France? Am I getting free mental? You know, wherever the expensive place are in your capital city, right? They're today's laws in Australian dollar terms. It's very likely that if and when Bitcoin was to, frankly, as soon as it happens, the more likely it is that it's meaningful change in those who own, because the latter adopters won't get as much. If my kind of Brooks keeps his money in Australian dollars and Andrew Page keeps his money in Bitcoin and Bitcoin wins, then my, Andrew is buying my kind of Brooks's waterfront mansion for, you know, half a Bitcoin and then he's got 85 Bitcoin by then. And that's just how that's how it nets out. And so the Lords would change. And it would be no more or less futile than it is now is, I guess, my key point, mate. Just looking at the distribution of the two separate types of assets, there would be different people on different different parts. If you're a distribution of, you know, who has got how much of what the proportions would be different and the names would be different, but it wouldn't necessarily be any less unequal. I might not be out there. I don't really know how this net's answer is ownership of Bitcoin as it continues to get adopted. I suspect I suspect the person who has the most Bitcoin probably end up with more proportional wealth than the person who has the most dollars today. But I also suspect that broadly, at least early on, it's likely to be a steeper curve for the first one percent, but then flatter there after the cash currently is or money currently is. That's actually value, land shares, money, money, whatever, remembering, of course, by the way, all the other assets, land and shares, just get measured in a different currency at some point. So that you don't really distribute the land, you don't distribute the currency. All you're actually redistributing is the ownership of the money bit. And the money bit's really small. The physical cash component of the two different types of systems is relatively small. So I'm absolutely with you. If I was going to create a brand new money, I would want it to be more equally distributed because that is just a fairer thing to do for society. The reality is, A, it wasn't developed by any one. I mean, it was by satoshi, but the Bitcoin adoption is not driven by anyone. No one says who should have how much of it? Is it worth objectively worse than the distribution of cash dollars wealth today? In some countries, yeah, probably because they probably have less inequality. Other countries much better. But either way, it's a really great question. And if it makes us talk about wealth inequality, that's a really, really good conversation. I don't think it's a Bitcoin conversation. Any more than it's a dollar conversation, any more than it's a. It's a world conversation. It's a, it's a, it's a age-old problem. There's so much stuff. We all want it. How do you split it up? How do you do that? And the other thing is we're not doing it. Bitcoin doesn't create or stop it. It's just, as you made the point. It just says, I'm here. I am here. If you want, you can adopt me in, in part or in whole. So you can see a guy that's very lovely, so quite effective. Adopting a guy, don't. You can do that. And again, that's, that's why it's so like, how are you against like, I am not into beanie babies, but some people love it. And the vital thing I'll just say is just like, just on the criminal kind of thing too. Now, criminals use the internet and they use our roads and they use hospitals. I just, I just, it's such a stupid argument. You know, because if we're going to ban anything that criminals use, no, I know. It's still right there. It's the article. I was so just ill-informed. Well, I shouldn't complain this way. It's so cheap. This is, this is, this is 1994 and people going, why would I want the internet for? I'll leave you to my credit card, isn't it? We will find out in 31 years, whether or not this is 1994 and internet years. Until then, mate, thank you for a great conversation. Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, this is for, for throwing your questions at us. Until next time. Full on. Cheers. on one.