Nic- I'm interested in the comment on a return to 'free-banking'. Have you given consideration to multiple reserve assets? For example 1) bitcoin 2) allocated physical gold that is digitized and using a blockchain for tracking 3) 'other'... my observation is most all central banks and many old money families own gold, and I wonder if this asset may be useful in the new digital banking world ?

we HAVE to bring the gold bugs on board. I used to be a gold bug that used to bash crypto. I was waiting for certain things to happen with crypto before I gave it credibility, and those things are starting to happen. Now I can defend bitcoin against almost any and all types of criticism. Currently, my allocation is bigger in crypto than gold-related assets. Also, I love PAXG lol

Ash is very, very good at his craft.

Nic is one of my favorite follows on both Twitter and podcast. His discussion w/ Lyn Alden on Swan Signal was incredible, highly recommend a watch: https://open.spotify.com/episode/56Az4Qfob2QJ4oiYmYPPli. He's one of the seminal thinkers in this space and someone I respect greatly. I hope I get his attention in answering some of my questions and addressing some comments. I would like more insights into Nic's view on a few of the statements made during this interview and stake some minor issue with some of the sentiments expressed, which I'll present here. There is no intent in generating any kind of drama from my questions, but I think value will be had with a respectful challenge to some points made. 1. Early in the interview Nic states: "It [Bitcoin] doesn't have any dependencies on really any outside systems. It is self-contained.". I think this statement is either too forward looking (he may end up being completely correct in the end) or a bit hyperbolic. The entire bitcoin tokenomic incentive mechanism is dependent on existing societal structures (either the fiat money rails used by miners & exchanges, developers, etc. to pay the bills and keep the proverbial lights on) and/or the supply chain of compute components that depend of fabricators in equally fiat dependent supply chains. To say that the system is self-contained maybe getting a little ahead of ourselves. But this brings up a more important point. How do we migrate from a system in which these ecosystems are so fiat dependent, for both ensuring network security to incentivizing developer support, to one in which the cradle-to-grave dependencies I itemized are paid for solely in bitcoin (true non-dependency)? How do we do this without/before hyper-bitcoinization? 2. I think we should reserve judgement on the idea of immaculate conception as it relates to distribution systems of different digital asset projects when imagining how "fair" we as a collective assess them to be. I realize that it's ultimately a subjective determination and will admit that the Bitcoin distribution model may be the "best" of the worst, nevertheless it's important to point out some critical nuances. For one, we know the developer(s) of Bitcoin were the first to "mine" the asset when at the time the difficulty was so minor one could do it with a laptop and a lightbulb's worth of electricity. At that same time the monetary incentives were NIL and the game theory moot. In this context of low compute requirements and electricity consumption it's estimated that early adopters, including Satoshi, mined between 150,000 to 1 million BTC, the distribution of which is entirely obfuscated. I'm not sure one can stand there and state equivocally to all objective viewers that this is a fair distribution mechanism when considering the endgame of hyper-bitcoinization, particularly to either naive or the technically challenge, who through no fault of their own end up with "sats" rather than bitcoins. Historical conditions matter. I acknowledge that current wallet distributions are improvements on this as time progresses (as you referenced the Gini coefficient migrating from 1 to some other value) but it's not a foregone conclusion that the trend of better distributions is assured or sustainable, particularly if as an asset class the wealthiest fiat holders do buy into the SoV narrative, that distribution could likely resemble what we already have in society. Aren't large fiat holders (private/institutional) presently in the best position to systematically accumulate Bitcoin? 3. At the current $200 Billion dollar market cap for Bitcoin the premium on block space is sufficient to drive behavior to high value transactions in exchange for secure settlement & liquidity. What happens when Bitcoin price appreciation brings the race of the digital asset space towards similar market caps (i.e. Bitcoin at $1 Trillion with alternates at ~$200 billion) and people are confident in securing their settlement / transactions on other blockchains without having to compete for block space? Aren't we just shifted in maturity with respect to the premium of any given block space? 4. As a general comment, the analytics being done by Nic and his group are incredible and ahead of the curve with respect to public transparent blockchain and how they are deconstructing traditional equity structures (including claims on cash flows, governance, etc.). This is the revolution that's happening from the ground up in the disintermediation of traditional financial instruments. Kudos to Nic for the vision and interest to pursue this subject. 5. CBDCs are indeed a desire to increase monetary goals of the central banks and obtain the telemetry from citizenry, data which we know that is already carried by Visa, MC, PayPal, etc. New masters, but one's with a Federal mandate, very concerning. That being said, CBDCs are likely to be necessary with respect to a fully digital global Fx market and the ability to interoperate value across pools of liquidity. What do you anticipate will happen to private stablecoins in the context of CBDCs if they become equally ubitquitious? Worse yet, what happens if VASPs are forced to remove fiat based stablecoins (those with fiat proof of reserves as apposed to algorithmic types) from their offerings / reporting to promote/force CBDCs? Once again, I loved this video and Nic. He's one of the few that I consider capable of answering the above questions in a thorough way with an informed view. I hope to meet him someday!

Good interview. I'm surprised that someone who is very knowledgeable in the space like Nic doesn't know that Celsius Network not only created leading in this space but is also the biggest lender too. They are far bigger than BlockFi. They offer higher yields and lend at 1%.

Very, very valuable conversation, much thanks to Nic and Ash! Nic, do you have a view or data on the trend of amounts of btc in cross border transactions, such as from developed economies to emerging economies? I.e. how far are we in people switching to btc to send money home etc? Thanks.

"Credit is the foundation of civilization" That's a tad overstated....

This guy is a wizard!

45:50 If the belief and trust in golds value could be removed from it's atoms you'd get BTC.

Thanks for having me! To RV subs: all my commentary and published work is available at niccarter.info. If you have any questions about anything I said in the episode feel free to email me at nic [at] niccarter [dot] info

Excellent interview Ash and Nicolas! Liked the discussion on CBDC's (well, this is a concern!), their paradox, and the "idea" of stablecoins as tokenisation of bank balance sheets. Interesting - second RV Crypto guest who is not saying that BTC is the new dollar, but a dollar "distributor" or legitimator. Which to me seems more sensible. This guy is smart and a great guest. Thanks.

Nic is hands down the best commentator in this space. Can't recommend his work highly enough! I especially like his paper called "A Most Peaceful Revolution". A fantastic read (see the medium link below). I also enjoy Castle Island's podcast "On The Brink": https://medium.com/@nic__carter https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-brink-with-castle-island/id1480586463 Bring Nic back as a regular!

This was a good interview. Nick obviously understands this financial segment more fundamentally than even most any in the crypto world. His perspectives run much deeper than simply the technology.

Well done Ash! Nick is a rising star worth following going forward.

Great interview. Ash Bennington rocks. Two additions to his "greatest hits:" 1. Bitcoin "Terminalists" 2. Enantiodromia ... Jung's identification of the tendency of a thing to become its opposite. Look forward to following the crypto stream ...

So who's next after Venezuela? Share of respondents who said they used or owned Crypto Currencies: Turkey 20% Brazil 18% Colombia 18% Argentina 16% South Africa 16% Link below https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1310520191646707712

Best crypto interview I've seen on RV so far. Please have Nic back on every few months.

Awesome to see Nic on, one of the best writers in the space.

Great to have someone who really knows their subject and isn't caught up in DeFi and dreaming. Great interview.

Great interview but one point of note, BlockFi is not the largest Crypto lending platform it is Celsius.Network who have over a Billion under management

Nic's comments on crypto enabling dollarization of foreign countries plays into the Dollar Milkshake theory quite well. You would get effective abandonment of local currencies in favor of US dollar backed stable coins which would drive demand for dollars and hence a dollar spike. We really have a binary set-up here. Dollar secular decline vs dollar spike (possibly followed by collapse) as other currencies are abandoned or collapse. The secular decline/inflation camp (which Julian appears to be in as well as others) assumes that the system works as it always has and the pivots in asset trends up/down make sense according to what has happened in history. The dollar milkshake theory, if I understand it, looks at the demand for dollars ultimately overwhelming the availability but driven by debt. But the crypto dollarization argument provides a direct mechanism that we've never seen before that could drive it. Fascinating!!!!!

Excellent interview, thanks. It will be fascinating to see how the SEC, CFTC etc. deal with non-sovereign digital cash in the coming years.