100,000 Tech Layoffs This Week: Why Bitcoin Is Your Only Escape | Zuby

Jackson Mikalic (00:01.858) All right, we're back. It's the last trade special guests this week, Zuby and joined by my cohost, Michael Tanguma Zuby. Thanks for joining the last trade. Been following your work for a while now and it's, you know, quite a treat. It's kind of surreal to have you on the show. So thanks for joining us today. Zuby Udezue (00:18.373) Happy to be here, man. I'm glad you guys like my work, so thank you for inviting me. Jackson Mikalic (00:23.076) Yeah, for sure. And thanks again. So this is a Bitcoin podcast, as you may or may not know. We tend to be more topical as we were before we hit record here. We'd like to get into the weeds on what's currently happening. I think we're going to get into that a little bit in the back half of the show, but Zubia would love to better understand because you're a strong advocate for Bitcoin, for liberty, economic freedom. And I would love to just understand your perspectives, really how, you know, I'm sure it was a long journey to get to where you are today. And we love to understand just the high level in terms of your background. How did you start to understand what was actually going on in the financial system? How'd you come to Bitcoin? I think that's just a great place for us to start. Zuby Udezue (01:03.631) Yeah, sure thing. So for I'm going to assume listeners are not familiar with any of my story, so I'll give I'll give the quick version of it. So my name is Zuby by profession. I'm an independent rapper, author, host of a podcast called Real Talk with Zuby. And I also do public speaking and coaching. I was born in the UK. I grew up in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia. My family background is originally from Nigeria. I'm a computer science graduate from Oxford University. graduated from there in 2007. And by that time, I had already started my music career. So for a couple of years, I was juggling two careers on the side. worked in management consulting for a while in London. And I was also a rapper. And in 2011, I took the plunge to go pursue my music full time. So I've been self-employed since October 2011. 14 years at this point. I've been employed, you know, it all just started out with the music from 2011 to 2019. Anyone who knew me would have just known me for my music. And then I started to diversify more. I started my podcast in 2019, wrote my first fitness book and just started to talk more, share more of my views and perspectives about various things going on in the world. And that's when my audience really, really started to grow and millions of people started to discover me. I ended up doing my first time on the Joe Rogan experience back in 2019, as well as a lot of other major podcasts, particularly in the US, but also in the UK. And over the past six years, the audience has just grown and grown. A lot of people know me for different things. And now when it comes to Bitcoin, I already mentioned that I studied computer science, so I'm someone who's always been interested in technology and the future, computers and that whole field. I want to say I first probably heard the word Bitcoin maybe back in like 2012 or 2013 or something like that, but I didn't look into it. I didn't investigate. I didn't pay much attention. I thought it was just like, I don't know, some type of payment system like a PayPal or I don't know, some in-game currency or something. I didn't do any research at that time. Zuby Udezue (03:17.347) Now fast forward to 2017, I had one friend in particular who I know in the real life, but I was also friends with on Facebook and he was like constantly posting about Bitcoin and he kept like just posting and posting about it. And after being exposed to seeing it a few times, I remember I just had one day this is November 2017. So this is almost exactly almost exactly eight years ago. And I was like, you know what, let me I'm gonna I'm gonna block out an hour today and I'm gonna look into this Bitcoin thing. And I did it and within about 20 minutes, I was like, my gosh, I wish I looked into this earlier. And so I first bought Bitcoin in November 2017. That was the first time I remember it would think it was about $6,000. at the time, if I remember correctly, and this was just before the run up into December where it ran from like 6,000 to 20,000 in like four or five weeks or something like that. And I was like, my gosh, I'm a genius, right? Like I've unlocked it, infinite money glitch, like look at this, you know? So at the time I... I actually specifically remember I was running one of my pop-up shops promoting and selling my music and my merchandise. So I was in like a shopping mall in the run up to Christmas 2017. And I was just there like literally selling stuff all day long, selling my CDs, selling my t-shirts, hats, hoodies and so on. And then taking that money and like dumping it into Bitcoin. And I was just doing that like every single day. And so come December 2017, obviously there was that market top at that time, right? It reached 20,000. Like there was all this euphoria. was going like just a few weeks after I discovered it was when it kind of hit the peak market euphoria. You see what I mean? So there was this really it was a bit of a strange time and I wasn't earning a lot of money at the time, right? I'm just like an independent musician in the UK and then the market started like bleeding out and dumping. actually, I'm forgetting an important part here. Zuby Udezue (05:17.359) I want to be transparent. obviously, is like, you know, this at this time, it's not just Bitcoin that's going crazy, right? Like the whole the whole market is going crazy, right? Like this is when anything that's in the top 100, anything that's in the top, like 500, you could kind of just have thrown money into anything. And your dollar value is going to increase at least for this few months. And so there are all these like ICOs, you guys remember that, you know, the initial coin offering hype and all that was going on. And at this time, I'm not like You know sophisticated enough to know that okay long term, know Bitcoin is the winner and things are gonna lose against Bitcoin in Bitcoin terms I'm just like, my gosh, I'm just gonna like Anything I hear about I'm just gonna like throw a little know Put a couple hundred pounds here a couple hundred pounds there Whatever just like buy up the whole top 50 everything that's in the top 50 and anything that sounds interesting I'm gonna throw a little into and then of course 2018 comes and there's like the quick alt season and then the market just starts like bleeding bleeding, bleeding, Fortunately, by this time, I actually had a lot of conviction in Bitcoin. So even though the dollar price was dropping, I kept accumulating. Because I started reading books. remember I read a book called Crypto. The first book I read, I think, was called Crypto Assets. Then I read the Antonio Antonopoulos books. What's it called? What was the name of his book again? No, I think it's an Jackson Mikalic (06:42.35) Mastering Bitcoin? Zuby Udezue (06:46.339) earlier one, I cannot remember the name right now, but like I read I read two of his books, I remember I bought them and I read them. And I understood, okay, this is something that has a lot of long term potential. And I remember in 2018 and 2019, early 2019, the thing that was bothering me was like, I didn't have enough capital to put into Bitcoin as I wanted to. So I kept stacking, I didn't I didn't sell anything, right? So what I bought You know, even if I bought it 17k or 18k, 6k, 10k, whatever, I just kept, know, accumulating what I could on a regular basis, kind of a dollar cost average strategy. And as time has gone on, my conviction in Bitcoin has just grown more and more. We're talking eight years ago now. It doesn't feel like eight years ago when I kind of first got into this world. But as time has gone on and I've now experienced a couple cycles and the highs and the lows of them. my conviction has just grown more and more and just narrowed very specifically into Bitcoin, right? So starting more with the whole like, Bitcoin is cool, but then there's this whole cryptocurrency market and there's like all these other ones and blockchain and so on. And now at this point, you know, I don't typically use the term Bitcoin maximalist, but I guess, you know, someone could say that I'm a, I'm a Bitcoin maximalist at this point where it's just like, out of all of these, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of cryptos are now in this market. but measure it against Bitcoin. Everything loses. Everything loses. So there you go. Michael Tanguma (08:16.118) Yeah, we... We like to call them rationalists on this podcast because they create all these pejoratives around understanding sound money. And we just like to refer to as rationalists. I appreciate you running through that journey because I think it helps indicate some of your kind of like lens of the world that I would like to go a little deeper on before going more on the Bitcoin side. But funny enough, I came in exactly at this time, like to the days that you did in November. I remember sitting I'm from Texas, but was living in New York City. I was working with Adam. Zuby Udezue (08:20.641) Hahaha! Michael Tanguma (08:48.24) and I was sitting in orientation for we work to start and I was just market buying a theory and that was the first thing I bought in November Ran up and then similar to you I'd like looked at this within four weeks and I was like this can't all be worth something and I was able to get all out of all of it but the funny in into Bitcoin but the funny part of that story is like right at those tops are really the best time for somebody to get in and gain conviction it doesn't feel like it at the time but right at the top you're like well what did I do I got to like almost you get confirmation bias of like I need to confirm that this wasn't stupid and as the price is running down you're getting more convicted You're increasing your exposure and then you're solid the rest of the time It's the people that are get caught on the way up that ends up as exit liquidity because they sell too early They get into the other stuff. They think they're a genius and they never come back. So it's a it's a funny example But one thing I wanted to bring up is I'm curious like how Back in like call it 17 18 19 your content in your lens of the world if any has changed to what you're doing today being a prolific individual online and why I ask that is because it's fascinating it's the closest I've heard in a while. something like a polymath where it sounds like you're management consulting, wrapping, engineering. And the only thing I can come up with so far, because I've obviously chatted with you and looked deep, is that you have multiple multinational exposure, right, from Nigeria to the UK. And that generally helps make a well-rounded individual to see and be interested in different things. And I think something there, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, helps in also see Bitcoin because of Bitcoin being this quote unquote platypus that it just pulls so many different things together. how it works all the way to the way it impacts if it does work. Just curious like where that lens of being interested in a lot of things professionally stem from. Zuby Udezue (10:36.709) Yeah, that's a really good question. I think I'd have to go way back. I mean, I've always been a creative person. So when I was a kid, far before I was making any type of music, I actually wanted to be a cartoonist. So if you met me, I don't know if you met five-year-old Zuby, probably between the ages of like... five and 13 or maybe 14. If anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up or when I was older, would have said 100%, I want to be a cartoonist. I want to be a cartoonist for a living. Anyone who knew me as a kid would have known me for always drawing, constantly drawing, making my cartoons, creating little comic strips, making my own characters, all of that. So the creative seeds, I think, have always been there. I did play instruments as well. I used to play piano and even perform in recitals. I stopped playing when I was about 13 because I was in boarding school and I just got interested in other stuff and wasn't putting in the time to practice and keep improving. I played trombone for a while. And so I think the creative seeds have always been there. I've always just enjoyed taking something, just being able to conjure up something in my brain and then make it something real. I think that that's so cool. So whether it's a book, a song. a music album, merchandise product, like whatever it is, I just love creating things and putting them out there. You know, on a micro level, it can even be a tweet, right? Tweeting is like rapping, except it's way, way, way easier. It's very short. It doesn't even have to rhyme. So when I get people who are like, man, how are you so consistent with like putting out interesting tweets? It's like. I'm a rapper, man. Like, this is easy. So I just like doing that. And I love words. I love the English language. I love other languages as well. But I just think it's cool to be able to, whether in the written form or in the spoken form, just to be able to communicate a message, like make noises with my mouth that go out there and reach people. Zuby Udezue (12:34.457) and it means something to them and it can inspire or motivate them in some type of positive direction. So I think that's what it is. And like I said, I was a full-time musician for several years, part-time for many years before that. And then even after several years of doing that, after eight years of being a full-time rapper, I realized I was still leaving a lot on the table because while I love making music and I know how to make music and I know how to perform, I'm actually interested in more than just music. So actually like just being a rapper, I was leaving a lot on the table. So I was like, well, I'm also, I can also write, right? Like, why don't I make books? I'm interested in fitness. Why don't I make a book to help people with their health and fitness? So that's how I ended up writing my first book, Strong Advice, which went out there and he's, you know, helped a lot of people around the world. And I was listening to quite a lot of podcasts in, you 2016, 2017, 2018. And I was like, Why don't I, why don't I start my own podcast? I like talking to people. like talking to people about a range of different subjects and learning and expanding my ideas and bouncing ideas around with people. So I started my podcast, Real Talk with Zuby in January, 2019. And I've been running that, you know, releasing episodes every week since then. So I guess that's where it comes from. I think some of it is just innate. It's just my natural personality wiring, but then I'm very, I'm very people oriented, I guess. So I'm always thinking about what I can do that will reach or help or inspire or motivate people in some way, in some direction, help people understand the world a little bit better, help people get in better physical shape, help people have better and stronger and more conducive mindsets in whatever it is that they're doing. or even just help people be able to see things from a little bit of a different perspective. That's one of my favorite things about traveling and meeting and talking to so many people, because it just opens your eyes. Like before we started recording, I was talking to Jackson and he was telling me about his coming to Dubai a couple of times. And I would imagine that when you visited Dubai, it expands, it expanded your worldview, right? You would have had certain preconceptions and ideas perhaps about Zuby Udezue (14:50.543) the city or the country or the entire Middle East as a whole. And then you go there and you spend time and you're like, okay, I need to like reconfigure a little bit in my brain. And every time you talk to someone, every time you have an experience, every time you go somewhere new, it just increases the resolution of your worldview. So if you kind of just stick in one little corner of the globe and you isolate yourself and you don't talk to many people who are not exactly like you, then you're bound to have what I call like a low resolution worldview, which is like, it's just very blurry. You might have an idea that other places exist, but your understanding and perception of them is not accurate. It's just very blurry. There's going to be a lot of biases. It's all based on hearsay or random things that you've read in the media or someone has told you. But that if you actually go there or you interact with people, then over the course of time, can sharpen up that image a little bit. And I think that's true of everything. There was a time when none of us had heard about Bitcoin, of course. And the first time you hear it, you've got a very fuzzy picture, very, very fuzzy picture. Maybe you've just heard a couple of little tidbits, seen some headlines from people. You don't really know what it is. And then the more you learn, the more you study, the more you just spend time in this world, you get a sharper and a sharper and a sharper picture of what it is. and why it's important to the point that when you then talk to someone who has that very blurry worldview, even on this particular topic, you're like, what do you even, they'll say things and you're like, what are you even talking about? And I'm sure you guys deal with this all day long, right? Anytime you mentioned Bitcoin on a public forum or to someone who just has not done any research on it at all. You get, oh, it's a Ponzi scheme. Oh, it's exactly the same as a tulip bubble. Oh, it has no value. Kind of the very typical talking points. It's only used by criminals. And you kind of have to be patient and try to deal with it. But yeah, that's a bit of a long answer. But I think all these things are connected. Michael Tanguma (16:52.086) It's... Michael Tanguma (16:56.546) No, well, they very much are because what I hear is a lot of internal like... looking for the truth, like truth seeking and curiosity, right? That's how you get to like a well-rounded version or understanding of the world, Bitcoin. But it's funny you bring up Dubai because describing the view of Dubai, you could be talking about Bitcoin in the sense of the same kind of like, not heuristics, but like mental models, a lot of people will patter or have heard, they'll say without ever knowing or ever touching it, right? Without ever buying or ever looking into Bitcoin, saying without ever visiting or doing any research. And I think when you really came on the scene for me, at least on radar was a lot of your Dubai tweets about 12 to 18 months ago, because we had spent a lot of time out there and you're constantly combating, well, everyone's saying, it's this, this and that. And then you're there and you're like, this place is, you know, it's not perfect, just like Bitcoin's not perfect, but it's not what everyone's nothing is, but what everyone's making it seem. And you see these parallels in Bitcoin because when you start to understand, like there's a certain status quo that the market Zuby Udezue (17:39.713) yeah. Zuby Udezue (17:50.641) nothing is. Michael Tanguma (18:02.383) has in keeping things the way they are, whether it's the West, don't know, vilifying or demonizing in the Middle East is a great example, but it's directionally right. In the same way as like TradFi, villainizing, demonizing Bitcoin and what it is and what it can do, there's reasons for it and it takes independent thinkers, rational thought to go out and try to express that. then, you know, we're very short independent thinkers in 2025. And I think that's probably the summary of like how I really respect the stuff you've been putting out is because it takes sticking your neck out. out there for the right people to see it. And I don't think, unfortunately, everyone's going to see all this stuff. I just think we're in a renaissance of rational thought, and Bitcoin's going to help usher that in. But there's so much inertia in the status quo that it's TBD if everyone will move over into understanding the world and the way it works versus the way it's been taught to us as working. Zuby Udezue (18:52.365) Yeah, 100%. And I believe that's always been true. I just think that's always been the case. This is just one iteration of it. Something that came to my mind as you were talking there, is there's something that's kind of funny about it because a lot of people would know and would consider me to be a conservative thinker, especially in the West. Jackson Mikalic (18:52.719) Yeah. Zuby Udezue (19:17.345) You I've spoken at conservative conferences and you know, a lot a lot of conservative podcasts and so on and something I've said on a few different podcasts, which is related in what you were just saying is that most people are conservative and when I say that I don't mean it in a strict political or even a social sense. What I mean is most people are averse to change. Most people seek the status quo and anything that is actually different and kind of like out there, like people are extremely resistant to change. I mean, most people don't even want to move house. Like even if you off, like most people don't want to move house. Most people don't want to move city. Most people don't want to leave the country that they happen to be born in, anything like that. Most people are actually very conservative in their behavior. If you want to see what they're going to, you know, we're all creatures of habit. If you want to predict what someone's going to do tomorrow and what they're going to think tomorrow, you can just look at what they thought yesterday. And that's typically the case. I think that's why part of why Bitcoin is just so radical and why it's so hard, why it can be so difficult to like orange pill people to use that term, right? To just get people to understand even someone who really, really like needs Bitcoin, right? Like someone who would really, really benefit. It's extraordinarily difficult to get them to... Not even to buy in, but just to do the research, do the learning. Just suspend what you think you believe and what you think you understand, and just humble yourself, and just open your mind, open your eyes, and just listen. Maybe you'll hear all of this and you'll still decide that it's not for you. To be honest, if someone reaches that conclusion, in most cases, I'd say they probably haven't quite understood it, if they think it's totally not for them. But yeah, that's the case. think it's just that it's that inertia. It's just, you know, people are stuck with the status quo, even if the status quo is not working for them and they are constantly complaining about it. And there's this sort of escape hatch. Most people still won't take it. And that can definitely be frustrating, but maybe on a long enough time scale where we'll reach a phase where far more people will understand it. But even those who don't or who have been opposed to it. Zuby Udezue (21:42.811) will kind of be forced to. I could see that happening in the future where there's not really... If at this stage you're still totally resistant to the internet itself, sure, you can live and you could function, but you're kind of forced, at this point, you're almost like forced to use the internet. And I could see that happening with Bitcoin at some point in the future. Jackson Mikalic (22:06.35) Yeah, there's lot of great points there. And I was curious to tie in a few things because Zuby, you said at the start of the show that you graduated as a computer science major from Oxford in 2007. And then you also made a point just now that people are typically resistant to change. And to tie a few themes together, I'm curious if graduated in 2007, at really the start of the great financial crisis. I'm not sure if that impacted you at all or if that impacted any of your peers or family or friends. And then also to tie that into just the idea that like pain sometimes can be one of the best teachers. Right. And so Bitcoin in many cases isn't about whether people want to embrace it. It may be more about the need of having to embrace it and information and circumstances are changing over time in the sense that the economy, the economic outlook of the United States and many of the Western nations is continuing to get worse. Inflation remains elevated and purchasing power, which is ultimately the most important thing. Can people actually preserve their wealth? Many people are struggling to do so and their wealth is being eroded over time. And so I'm curious if like at any part in your journey, whether it was back in 2007 or if it was in 2020, how did pain, whether you experience it directly or you saw it firsthand with family and friends, specifically in like the financial sense or the economical sense, maybe shape your worldview and influence your thinking on Bitcoin. Zuby Udezue (23:34.981) Yeah, that's a really good question, Jackson. OK, let me answer it this way, because I think maybe my background and my global perspective plays a role here. So as I mentioned before, even though I haven't lived there myself and I didn't grow up there, my family is originally from Nigeria. So as I understand it, my parents have told me this history because they've been alive for much longer than I have. When Nigeria gained its independence from the UK, I believe that the Nigerian naira was equivalent in value to the British pound. It was one to one. Today, I don't even know. Can someone Google what the exchange rate is between the British pound and the Nigerian naira? Let's see what it is today. Jackson Mikalic (24:28.57) about 2000 to 1. So 1lb Sterling 2000 Naira. Zuby Udezue (24:31.377) 2000 Okay, and we know that the pound itself has lost more than 50 % of its value within that same time frame so Whilst I have not experienced hyperinflation myself I have seen in my own lifetime I remember when I was a kid and the Nairo was something like I think it was like 50 I remember it being like 50 naira to one pound, and then 100 naira to one pound, and then 500, and then 1,000, and now it's like 2,000 and something. And I have lots of family back home in Nigeria. And Nigeria is not even like the worst country economically in Africa, let alone in the world. Sorry, guys. Is my camera OK? It's flickering on my side, but I want to make sure it's OK. Jackson Mikalic (25:22.018) Yeah, all good. I'm seeing that too, but it's fine. I can hear you. Zuby Udezue (25:25.777) Okay. Yeah, so I remember actually, funnily enough, when I was in my mid-teens, I had a couple of friends in my school who were from Zimbabwe. And I'm sure you guys know about the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe. I remember my friends coming into school with 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar notes. And I was like, dude, like, you've got a hundred trillion dollar note. Like, what can you buy with that? And he's like, dude, nothing. Like, you can't buy anything with this. I think their inflation hit... What was... I think their inflation hit like a quadrillion percent or something like some unfathomable number to this day. They still don't have a proper currency. Right. Like and this is decades ago. So I have seen inflation and the damage and pain it's caused not just in the West where we have quote unquote stable and strong currencies like the US dollar and the British pound, which have also been merked. But when you see people dealing with the Nigerian Naira Zimbabwean dollar the Turkish lira in recent years, and you just see the pain that it causes, it makes something like Bitcoin more obvious. There's a reason why Nigeria is one of the top countries consistently for Bitcoin usage and interest. think Turkey is also up there as well. So in many ways, it's actually easier to explain Bitcoin and its value to someone in Africa or certain parts of Asia than it is, or maybe South America, than it is to a typical Brit or Australian or Canadian or American because in the West we have this weird, I think it's called a region beta paradox where there is pain and people are feeling the pain, but the pain is not significant and immediate enough for them to make a change. So everyone complains about the results of inflation, right? Everyone. It doesn't matter where they are in the political spectrum. It doesn't matter how wealthy they are. Everyone is like, man, like just compare the prices now to what things used to cost like 10 years ago. And it's crazy, even five years ago, everyone can see, you know, people using terms like cost of living crisis, there are people, you know, trying to blame it on corporations or this or that, but really what it is, is just infinite money printing, right? We know how this works, pounds, dollars, euros, yen, it doesn't matter what it is, they just keep printing and printing and printing. So every month, every year, the value of those currencies is going down. So, Zuby Udezue (27:47.301) The reason I was so quickly sold on Bitcoin once I actually looked into it and understood it is I already had a decent awareness of the problems of the central banking money systems and the ravages and damage that inflation can cause. So when I'm reading and I'm hearing that there is a currency that is limited in number, that is decentralized, that is not owned or controlled by any government or central bank, which you can use, can send, you can buy a cell peer to peer without a middleman all across the world, 24 hours a day. Where do I sign up? Like for me, was like a very easy sell because I already had like the, I was already kind of geared to accept Bitcoin, right? Because I wasn't coming from the perspective of, like the current financial system is perfectly fine. So. What took me a little while to get my head around was the idea of something digital being limited, because that's different. We're used to everything that's digital being, you you can copy and paste to infinity. So the idea of something being digital but limited, I was like, that's new, that's different. But apart from that, it made and it continues to make Bitcoin like a very obvious play to me. Jackson Mikalic (29:10.488) Yeah, I mean, that makes a ton of sense. And thank you for sharing that. you know, while we haven't in the U.S. lived through anything like that in terms of hyperinflation just yet, the pain that we're experiencing in the U.S., you know, in the UK, even, you know, in other in other countries, I don't know if how the UAE's inflation has been over the past couple of years, but I imagine it's not immune to it, just like any economy isn't because Zuby Udezue (29:35.569) The Durham is tied to the dollar. It's pegged to the dollar. Yeah, 3.6. Jackson Mikalic (29:41.558) Right. OK. So then it is. Yes, it's being devalued as well. And so, yeah, I it ultimately does become just, think, a matter of economic financial survival. And Bitcoin really insulates people from the pain that they're otherwise going to experience. mean, just firsthand looking at insurance premiums on homes, on health insurance, on vehicles. cost of living as it relates to rent, to buy, to purchase groceries. mean, night and day, what that looked like even just five years ago. And so for me personally, this was part of the reason why was curious to hear your perspectives on that was because I didn't fully understand. I didn't fully understand this until like 2020 or 2021. Um, and maybe I still don't fully understand it either, but I understand it a whole lot better than I did before I experienced 40 % of the dollars being created in about an 18 month span. Right? So. This is the unfortunate reality that we live in, but you also, we all are living in the same circumstances and we all have the access to the same amount of information and the ability and the tools and technology that exists online. And so I'm curious, one of the pieces that you had published recently Zuby was just specifically for Gen Z men and your life advice to them. And one of the things was learn about Bitcoin. And I'm curious, just like, how do you think about the younger generations and the importance of embracing Bitcoin? relative to my perspective is equities, real estate, all the other asset classes are at all time highs, as is Bitcoin, right? Everything's at all time highs. But the difference is that Bitcoin is still a $2 trillion asset. It provides a lot of properties that are inherently unique to it as a form of money that cannot be debased, it can't be seized and confiscated. Whereas these other asset classes sit at tens of trillions, hundreds of trillions of dollars, far harder to actually preserve and grow wealth. there than it may be for Bitcoin that's still new and has a very limited amount of adoption globally so far. Zuby Udezue (31:47.461) Yeah, sure. Well, look, I think in every generation, there is a significant and unique investment opportunity. Obviously, for boomers all across the West, was real estate, right? Like people who were able to buy houses decades ago, almost like no matter where you bought it or what you bought, like there was a time where was like you almost just, you couldn't really go wrong. For my generation, millennials, and I'd say the generations above and immediately below it. The opportunity, know, for Gen X for sure, there was a big opportunity with like the whole internet boom. All of the tech stocks and all of that, like a lot of people in that generation were able to ride that wave. And I think for millennials and Gen Z, Bitcoin is really that play. It doesn't mean that it's only accessible to them, but we're more... Millennials aren't aren't digital natives per se because we're kind of like we're the last generation that was kind of experienced life half before the internet and Half after it becoming ubiquitous same with smartphones. Whereas with Gen Z and younger like they're truly digital natives So the idea that someone in Gen Z like a lot of people are gold bugs for example And I think gold is the second best form of money that's ever existed but the idea that like Gen Z or Gen alpha are gonna be like super invested in gold. Like to me, it's just, it's just obvious that Bitcoin is like going to be for them. Like for those who choose to do a little bit of research and understand it. And also if you want to talk about accessibility, this is again, something that a lot of people don't understand. it's too late to buy Bitcoin. I don't have a hundred, a thousand plus dollars. It's like, you know, we're still so early that people don't realize that Satoshi's exist and that you can invest $1, $5, $10. However much you want to invest or buy, you can. And so there's never been something that's like more democratic than that when it comes to investment opportunities. You don't need to be an accredited, accredited investor with a high net worth. You don't need to be in a certain part of the world. You don't even need to have like a bank account. You don't even need to have a bank account to buy Bitcoin. You could literally be in like a village in Nigeria with your like mobile phone and you can, you can buy and you can old Bitcoin. Zuby Udezue (34:12.165) You could be in Vietnam. You could be anywhere. And there's nothing else that's like that. Even normal stocks, need to buy, you need a brokerage account. You probably need an address, an email address. You probably need a bank account so that you can transfer money in and out. Like, there's a lot of barriers to entry. Whereas with Bitcoin, it's literally for everybody. You could be a seven-year-old and you could buy and you could hold, could be, cool, I'm gonna put my five bucks. into Bitcoin and I'm going to hold that. that's why I think the term that comes to my mind when I think of this for everybody, but especially for younger generations is just the concept of an asymmetric bet. Okay. So even if someone doesn't have a hundred percent conviction, and I think it's probably hard to get a hundred percent conviction until you already own some Bitcoin and you have for a while, like the potential upside of having some versus the almost inevitable downside of not having any. Again, it just strikes me as like something that is that's quite obvious, right? It's just like, why wouldn't you like it fast? Let's fast forward 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now, someone who's 15 years old right now, 10 years time, they're going to be 25, 20 years time, they're going to be 35. They have the power to put themselves in a significantly better position via Bitcoin, which didn't exist before. This opportunity wasn't there before. Bitcoin is still going to be there in 20 years. so not just for them, but for all of the generations after, for their future children, this is why I'm just so bullish. This is why I'm an advocate for Bitcoin, because it's not just about like, money. It's not just about having numbers. It's not just about number go up, right? That might be the thing that attracts people in. But it's like, why do we even need money to begin with? We need money because we need to survive. We need shelter. We need to buy food. If you want to have a family and raise children, it costs money. If you want to be able to pay for health care or emergencies, or you want to be able to travel to do anything, whether or not someone likes it, you know, you need to have money. So if you're going to have money in the world, which we have done for millennia, Zuby Udezue (36:36.229) thousands and thousands and thousands of years we've had money in different forms, why would you not choose one that works in your favor rather than against you? Why base everything on something that some random person, not even an elected person, right, like a small group of individuals somewhere can quite literally just hit a button and they can hit a button that just drops the value of all of your savings and earnings by 10%, 20%, 50%, 90%. Like, hello. Yeah, so that's the way I view it, man. Michael Tanguma (37:09.41) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (37:13.803) Yeah, there's two things. to call out or pull on there. One of them is, I love the notion of asymmetric bet. I've used that a lot and I've started to think about it in a different form because I think the way you were referencing it and the way I historically had was it's asymmetric into the upside and then obviously the downside risk. So the upside is your purchasing power increases to the point you made 10%, 20 % loss in purchasing power to the downside. But I think what's even more pronounced is the fact that you don't even know if your counterparty is in this new world or solvent. because the amount of debt that exists in the system, no matter what country you're in, what investment you are. So you don't even know if it's 10 % or if it's zero, because where we're going, there's gonna be a lot more goose eggs in people's allocations, whether it's the bank doing a bail and shutting down. I don't think fully people appreciate that. The other thing you referenced, the notion of financial literacy and... unit bias. think they are huge problems for Bitcoin in the sense of we run a Bitcoin, I think the only one still to date, Bitcoin denominated venture firm. And one of the things that I've wanted to invest in, I've called out, I'm gonna call it out here again, is I want a like SATS denominated global exchange. It can be a regional exchange, but there needs to be something where somebody can buy $5 or $500 and see a certain number of Satoshis, like they see an altcoin, go into their wallet and see that price appreciation all the way down to individuals in their piggy bank. being able, their parents can set them up and then click a button. They can see their stats and instead of going by the cookie or whatever it is, they see that value appreciation and they can learn to save because I think that is like the true lacking thing from, there's been, there was a line of demarcation between like millennial and Gen Z around savings. When you remember you could get some nominal form of capital in a savings account where today that doesn't exist. And so people conflate investing with effectively gambling. Michael Tanguma (39:10.639) And that's the big problem with like most people look at Bitcoin as crypto and a trade and these are just fundamental like aspects of society of like if you don't know and you can't save and have optionality in the future you're kind of just rubbed you rubbed yourself because you can't build you can't plan you can't go and think about getting married having children anything you build in a business. So yeah they're important aspects that I think are still so foundationally like broken and they're the other side of Bitcoin. It's hard to see Bitcoin if you don't understand that like they're different things than investing and then just storing wealth. you Zuby Udezue (39:40.849) Yeah, absolutely. That's a very good point. Jackson Mikalic (39:46.04) Yeah, one thing that caught our attention this week was just the surge of layoffs that is happening at the largest employers here in the U.S. and multinational corporations, you know, employing people all over the world. And, you know, there's a couple of ways to slice this. The first is that. There are a lot of people who are now fearful that they're next on the chopping block and for good reason, right? mean, this is when you're looking at this numbers, you have UPS, Amazon, Intel, Nestle, and Accenture in the top five and probably accounted for in these 15 companies, a hundred thousand layoffs that just happened recently. And so naturally a lot of people are in a position of fear and they don't want to be next. And for good reason, right? Because this is ultimately how they're getting their livelihood, feeding their family, you know, being able to do whatever they like to do. The flip side of it is, there's actually a really encouraging aspect of this as well, as funny as it may sound, because what this is ultimately signaling to me is the fact that for people who are more entrepreneurial minded, there is going to be more and more asymmetric opportunities to start a business or to join a business that is, taking full advantage of all the technology and the rapid rate of artificial intelligence to name one in terms of how much you can do as a business that used to require 10 people that may only require one or two. And so I don't know if you guys agree with me necessarily. Like I don't know how this is gonna shake out in the next five to 10 years because there's going to be a lot of people who lose their jobs. But there's also going to be a ton of opportunity for those who can think adversarially, think proactively and can embrace technology and really have an opportunity to bring their ideas into the real world and to start a business. Like I just think of myself in middle school or high school, just having have different ideas for like an app, an app or a website or things like that. And some things I pursued, others I didn't or most of them I would hit a roadblock in the sense that I didn't really have a technical background and the ability to really act on any of these ideas. And so now I think of Jackson Mikalic (42:00.558) firms like Replet or Lovable, where you can code up a landing page or you can code up an app in one day if you want to do so. And so I'm curious, like what you guys think of it? Zuby, really love, you know, you're just mindset in general. You're such a positive person. And I think we need to have more people like you who are able to like take a look at something like this, but really think about more critically how this could end up being a good thing for people. So I'm curious what your thoughts are there. Zuby Udezue (42:26.715) Yeah. Do you want to know what worries me? Jackson Mikalic (42:30.681) Yeah. Zuby Udezue (42:32.717) I'm naturally a very optimistic and positive person. And what you've just shown me is actually one of the things that does genuinely concern me a lot. So I have a kind of a double concern because when I get concerned as an optimist, it makes me think, gosh, like this could be really bad. Like if I think this is not good, this could be really bad. What worries me with this? Let's say the trend towards automation or AI replacing people's jobs and so on. What doesn't concern me is like the super long-term perspective. What worries me is the short to midterm transition period. So as you mentioned, there are people who are very entrepreneurial and they have that type of mindset and they're self-starting and they're go-getters and they're proactive and they're creative. I'm not worried about them. I also know human beings enough to know that that is not the majority of the population. So I do have a concern if these types of layoffs are happening or this is to accelerate, I do have a big concern for just kind of like the typical person or the typical family of what they're going to do. I don't know. I don't know. Like I hope that... I hope this is one area where I really want to be wrong. Like I want to be wrong and I hope that it's I hope that it's rosy. I just think that I'm worried about the speed and the acceleration that this could happen and people not having the time to adjust. As we've said, you know, people are, people are slow to change. And I don't think that there are enough, I don't know what exactly needs to be in place, but I don't think there's enough in place. And I don't think enough sort of thinking has necessarily been done as to, okay. If as many people are predicting, know, even someone like an Elon Musk, who's very good at seeing the future, if he is predicting that, you know, millions of people's jobs could be replaced by AI and so on. Let's say that prediction is accurate and that is to happen. I'm not, I'm not convinced that we have like a good solution and plan for that. I think people are kind of, kind of saying like, this will happen and it'll be okay for some people because you know, they'll take advantage of all this stuff. Zuby Udezue (44:56.943) But it reminds me a little bit of the kind of learn to code thing where it's like assumed that everyone is going to kind of very quickly be able to adapt and just kind of reconfigure around this new world. And I'm just not so sure about that. So I want to be wrong. I'd love to be like overtly optimistic on this one, but of all the sort of potential threats that are coming down the pipeline, this is one that genuinely I'm not worried for everybody, but I'm worried for a lot of people. Michael Tanguma (45:27.521) Yeah, I echo that sentiment. I'm pretty even-killed, positive and negative, optimistic, pessimistic when I think it makes sense. And this is one that's really, it's accelerating fast. Like yesterday, seeing it today, it just came out that Google is giving like a voluntary kind of leave if you want to take off and whatever severance. The reality is, when I was looking into this last night, that nobody can actually put their finger on why Amazon's laying people off. Like lot of people are saying it's for AI compute and to basically take those dollars they're spending on a per hour basis for employees and move them to data centers. Other people are saying XYZ, it's already AI automation. I'm fairly confident it literally has to do with they understand inflation, they understand inflation's persisting, and their unit economics are broken and they have to figure something something out. Like it's just as simple as that. It's only going to accelerate. And then to Zuby's point, people are not equipped with the agency. Like Jackson was very, I think you're positively being optimistic and maybe slightly wishful thinking, but the reality is people just don't have the agency that you described. This is what ZERP has provided. ZERP coupled with management consulting, coupled with technology companies, you kind of got almost paid to not work. They call it the golden handcuffs for a reason. In Silicon Valley, they have the part where they put you on the roof. There's a whole slew of people that have worked at these large companies that actually do not know how to do anything outside of their exact sliver. And this reckoning is coming and it's going to be very dark, very weird. The best mental model I've had is we end up with this stablecoin, UBI stuff that's gonna get started porting out to people. And people are gonna have to get some money from the government in that way globally, but they're also gonna be basically exposed to any Michael Tanguma (47:23.598) whims or requirements that you need to access whatever. And this kind of ties into AI and AI being naturally inflationary with the amount of energy. And I kind of see AI into being like a public utility type of good. But then you need these like tokens to use it, which are these stable coins. But to Zuby's point, like this is happening too fast. People are not prepared for it. And I think these layoffs are effectively the largest, most sophisticated institutions understanding that not only is inflation persistent, margins are compressing and they have to get ahead of this or their business They're going to rug their whole business because what existed or worked before paying somebody's $80,000, $180,000 is not going to work in a highly leveraged economy, very high in debt. We have to print more to keep it going. They're not dumb. They know inflation is continuing to run. It's only increasing from here, just given the way the structural setup has happened post 2020. So it's not, it's actually not positive. The best things I think from perspective is you want to hold a higher, a harder form of money in a deflation. especially around technology because that currency is gonna allow you to buy more more services. It's also gonna allow your savings to go further because if you're sweeping more of your nest egg, your retirement or your just personal account into that, that's gonna insulate you in some respect. The other side is to become, know, joke like ungovernable become, you know, get some agency, like figure out tools, figure out how to build things, look at what Zuby, the portfolio has put together, like anybody can do this, but it truly requires independent rational thought. And again, we talked about it earlier. It's just most people are lacking it because we've kind of been bred in this society to not do any of that. And it's gonna be time. I liken it to gravity or going to different planet basically. Like if you go into a sound money planet where you have to build businesses, it goes back to accountability and meritocracy and that's not what we've been in the past 30 to 50 years. And it's just gonna be very disruptive for a lot of people. And then a lot of people are gonna be able to thrive because they have that agency. But it's gonna be a bumpy volatile ride. Zuby Udezue (49:22.789) Yeah, it will be very disruptive. Jackson Mikalic (49:22.926) Yeah, I guess the outcomes are going to look. The outcomes are going to look different depending on who you are as a person, where you live and your generation as well. think it ties back into Zuby. Some of the points you made for Gen Z. mean, sounds pretty bleak in terms of both of your perspectives and maybe I'm giving a little bit too much credit to high agency people. And the reality is that to your guys point, a lot of people aren't like that. A lot of people are just, you know, career man, career woman want to work the nine to five, be able to spend time with their family. Not everyone wants to start a business, not everyone wants to take risk. And I can appreciate that. I can also appreciate the fact that those layoffs are going to be incredibly disruptive and very challenging to people that are more established. So if you have a family and you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and you have a lot of financial responsibilities, and that's going to be a lot more stressful, and there's going to be a lot more worry about a potential impact to your life than if you're, you know, 15, 18, 22, 25, right? And you have less responsibility. You're likely not married. You don't have children and maybe you don't have that much debt. I mean, depending on what your circumstances are. that will ultimately allow you to be in a really good position. And so, you know, I don't know how to fully parse that out, but it's almost like, you know, I think the... Millennials, Zuby, you and Marty talked about it on your podcast. Millennials have had a tough go at it in terms of just things that have happened over the course of their lives. But every generation has challenges that they have to face. And Gen Z have been growing up in a world where there's just a lot of political tension. There is just instability in markets that previously were fairly stable. And the economy outlook is maybe more uncertain than it ever has been, at least in quite a long time. the Jackson Mikalic (51:18.158) you where I'm trying to stay optimistic is at least for the people that felt like the odds were always against them. And they're growing up in a world where it's like, how am I ever going to be able to own a house, get married, have children, do the things that I want to do, travel the world, whatever it may be. Well, you know, if you have Michael to your point agency, if you can think creatively, if you can surround yourself with the right people that also can think like this as well, then there may be really a big opportunity here ahead for those that can do that. Zuby Udezue (51:46.797) Yeah, I think increasingly, you can't just kind of accept the default. You can't just kind of do what the majority do. You know, I think we've lived in this for most of my life, right? If you just eat how the typical American eats, like you're going to get fat. If you just treat money the same way you spend it, go into debt, use credit cards the same way, kind of just like most people do, or just kind of just do the default thing, like you're gonna get in trouble. I think maybe, you know, I didn't exist in this time, but you know, maybe if you could go back to like the 1950s or the, know, certain times, like you could kind of just do what most people were doing and you, it would be okay. Like it would be all right. Like you'd be healthy. You'd get married. You'd have kids. You'd be able to buy a home, whatever. Like you could, you didn't need to think outside the box too much. think increasingly, and this is something I particularly would want to stress to younger people. Like you mentioned, Jackson is like, I just think increasingly you're going to have to think outside of the box. and do things a little bit differently and atypically in order to not just survive, but in order to thrive. Like if you really want to be successful, however you measure that, if you want to be successful, if you want to be healthy, you're going to have to do things a little bit differently. If you're on social media like most adults are in the world, if you want to have a healthy social media experience and you don't want the smartphones and the algorithms to fry your brain, you have to be quite intentional. You can't just be like mindlessly doom scrolling and falling into every otherwise like it's going to affect you and you see it affecting people. You see it hurting people's attention spans, right? They're just getting that tick tock brain and they can't concentrate and they're constantly feeling anxious or angry or upset because they're kind of just being pushed around by the algorithm and pushed about by the device. As a wider perspective, Zuby Udezue (53:38.787) and this comes onto the AI and automation thing as well, is I'm generally a believer, like I'm not in control of the world, of course not, and I wouldn't want to be, but I'm generally a believer that technology should serve humanity rather than the other way around. And I do have some concerns that we're kind of moving to a point where a lot of people who are making decisions and who are in positions of power are kind of losing sight of that, and they're not thinking of like, Okay, how can this technology like really, really make life better for tons of people? And we're moving into the stage of people are just kind of like doing things because it can be done. And it's just like, let's just chase that and go down that and to go down that without just pausing and thinking of like, okay, why are we doing this? What guardrails do we need to put in place? How are we going to handle the transition? And I say this all as someone who's like generally very like pro technology for the most part. But if a technology is going to just be harmful to people, let's say, like if it's, that's why I'm just like, well, why are we doing it? Or when there's a lot of debate to be had about the upside versus the downside. I just think that's where we are. And like, I think so much of it is happening so quickly. I mean, even if I just go back like, let's just go back to like 2018, 2019, you know. pre-pandemic. This wasn't on many people's radars. These conversations were not happening a lot, even seven, eight years ago. You hear the way people are now talking about AI and this and that. If you said chat GPT to someone in 2019, what the heck is that? You know what I mean? So the speed of it is pretty crazy, just how quickly. things are changing. We've seen a lot of technological changes in our lifetime, but yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. I think we're gonna have to kind of watch it play out. Like I'm not in control of this. So I don't know how it plays out, but I would certainly recommend to people to like stay nimble, be good at learning, and be willing to think outside of the box and perhaps take some unorthodox paths, which might be quite different from the path your parents, great grandparents and great grandparents took. Michael Tanguma (55:55.502) Yeah, it reminds me of a favorite toilet. What's obvious is obviously wrong. I think using that as a heuristic is generally pretty good. It's randomly Bezos had this quote. They'd asked him how he came up with his insights. And he said that every time he read the board meetings or whatever shareholder, like any meeting he went into, he would read the memo as every line, line by line, it was wrong until he could prove it was right. And that's how he'd come up with interesting ways. So it's just like looking at it, like inverting basically everything. think the one thing that is actually incredibly positive is that if we take the directional heuristic that on long enough timeframes, power and technology effectively decentralizes like the fractal, like people get more empowered, whether you think about like gunpowder, printing press, Bitcoin, anybody can open up a bank account similar with like AI models and technology and the internet and your voice being able with a smartphone. Obviously it works two sides, two ways. But if you take that notion, I think a lot of the things we're talking about from a Western bias, right? Where we grew up, where we understand it's gonna be very disruptive to the status quo of somebody that was a management consultant making $120,000 a year. Now it's automated and doesn't know how to do anything else. But the flip side of that is there's billions of people that don't live in that world. they're gonna get exposed to a lot of asymmetric tools when it comes to the internet AI and Bitcoin that are gonna be able to live in an America addict world where they're gonna be able to live by the things they produce and create value protect it and that is to Zuby's point earlier on a long enough time horizon this ends up as the Like the panacea the the medicine we had to take to get back to Just more congruent world or way of the universe is supposed to be without centralized control of capital effectively and that's a form of know you could say kind of slavery when you think about it because if you can create the money and create how people need to work to get the money you ultimately control them that's the thing nobody talks about and so I do think that there's a positive aspect to this but for certain individuals it's just not going to be positive and you got to know that and be preparing for it. Jackson Mikalic (58:05.316) Zuby, I know you have to run. We're coming up on the hour here. If you have just like two or three more minutes, I would love to hear before we let you off the hook. You mentioned in a tweet recently that going from 100K to a million is much easier than going from zero to 100K. I inferred maybe there's a couple of different ways you can infer what that means. I inferred it was related to the Bitcoin price. And so I'm curious just if that was the case and why you're motivated to say that. Zuby Udezue (58:34.436) It's true financially. It's true of followers on social media or anything like that. And I think it's true of the Bitcoin price as well. I think it's really the power of compounding and the power of knowledge and just the path that things tend to take. Like many things in the world are not linear. Right? Even when it comes to technology, there's that S curve, right? So it's not like a linear growth. Things go through this S curve. it can take, know, okay, well, I mean, we can talk in real terms. Okay, let's say we are talking about Bitcoin. It took 16 years to go from zero to 100,000. I don't think, I could be wrong. I don't think it's gonna take another 16 years for it to do a 10X from this point. when it comes to my own experience on social media, it took me, I joined Twitter in 2009 and I hit 20,000 followers, I remember specifically, February 28, 2019. It took me 10 years to get to 20,000 followers and then two years later I hit a million. And I'm not like the only one who does this trajectory. A lot of people who have become millionaires will say, it was harder to go from zero to 100K, because you're not working with anything, right? It's just a grind, everything's against you. There's a sort of escape velocity where once you have, like if someone has 100,000 to invest in anything, let's say, then... It's not that hard to turn that 100,000 into 110, 120, 100, but if you're just starting out and you're like, you have a hundred bucks to your name, or you're even in debt, you're in the negative. Zuby Udezue (01:00:32.348) It's just a lot lot harder to grind up to that point where you can start to make the capital work for you, right? If you want to take an extreme end, mean you see You know look look at where some of these like billionaires already I mean if you already are if you're already worth like hundreds of millions or billions then what's making another million dollars like you can you can literally do it in a day just by like having having having like just earning interest on your on your account or whatever it is. So so anyway, the the the tweet was intentionally vague. I did want people to apply their own bias to it because I knew, all right, some people are going to think this is about followers. Some people are going to think this is about Bitcoin. Some people are going to think this is just about money, whatever it is. So it's intentionally vague. But I think that there's truth to it applied to. a lot of different scenarios. So that's why I put it out there. I just thought it was interesting. Jackson Mikalic (01:01:33.082) Well, you caught my attention. Well, Zuby, I know it's late for you over in Dubai. Thanks for joining us today. Glad to have finally met you. Been following the work for a while. So thanks for all that you do. for anyone who isn't accounted for and that million followers on Twitter, we already want people to reach out to you or follow along. Michael Tanguma (01:01:33.12) Love it. Zuby Udezue (01:01:53.091) Yeah, sure. You can find me on all social media at Zuby Music. That is Z-U-B-Y music. I'm on X, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, all of them at Zuby Music. And if you like what I do, then you can check out all of my work on, I mean, both my music and podcasts or all over YouTube, all over. Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you choose to listen. If in doubt, just search my name, Zuby, Z-U-B-Y, and you will find me. Jackson Mikalic (01:02:26.308) Thanks, Zuby. It was a pleasure. Michael Tanguma (01:02:28.087) Love it, thanks, Suvi. Have a good night. Zuby Udezue (01:02:28.432) Thank you guys, I appreciate it. You too.