it's so it's so uh paradigm shifting for us because we're so used to being so polarized and
being like oh these are my political beliefs and i disagree with you so we're we don't get along
we can't have relationship or whatever what i love about bitcoin this is my favorite thing actually
is when i go to my bitcoin meetups is and you know the first time we met in person it's like
we could we can connect at that level and then everything else is kind of secondary we can almost
like disagree on uh it helps like prioritize the the things that humans are engaging about
and it helps us realize like most of the stuff that we hate each other about on social media
aren't that important when it comes you know relative to the bigger fish that we have to fry so
you're right bitcoin is for everybody it's for enemies and you need to get comfortable if you
want to be a part of this thing with people that you don't like being uh also users of the network
hey welcome back everybody to altcoin daily my name is aaron today we're joined with friend of
the channel george mchale he is the co-author of thank god for bitcoin he's director of marketing
for btc inc which is the parent company of bitcoin magazine and bitcoin conference
he is a bitcoin expert in all regards in my opinion this guy's been in bitcoin a while
he has a lot of good insight to share i want to talk to him about bitcoin in today's video
george how are you doing today i'm doing well how are you alright thanks for having me on again
i'm doing great i'm looking forward to the bitcoin conference coming up um links below to
that i'll be there i hope a lot of people from our audience are going before we get into bitcoin um
you know why would you give us the pitch for the bitcoin conference in miami coming up in april
definitely so what's up all coin daily good to be back uh actually a lot of your audience
is coming a lot of people using that promo code so keep them coming love to see it 10
10 off yes it's coming up quick um the question was what is the number one reason yeah i'm
thinking about going why should i go i'm on the edge why should i go to bitcoin conference 2022.
so our our tagline is education celebration and hyper bitcoinization so if any of those
three things are uh attractive to you then you definitely don't want to miss the the conference
if you're looking to learn about bitcoin there is going to be content for you if you're looking to
celebrate what you have already learned about bitcoin and sort of the success of
bitcoin over the last 10 years there's gonna be a lot for you
and if you want to be a part of accelerating hyper bitcoinization then this is the the event
to be at because we really believe that this is a pilgrimage for bitcoiners like this is a movement
this is a global monetary reset of sound money and uh you know when 30 000 35 000 bitcoiners show up
in one physical location what we're doing is we're taking ground and we are accelerating
this adoption and we're making a statement by uh all of us gathering and descending on on one
city so join us in in miami beach it's gonna be uh unforgettable uh event we're gonna make history
there's gonna be massive announcements just like there was last year so if you're not there
in person you will definitely be hearing about what goes down hell yeah i have my ticket i've
used the altcoin daily code in the description below i'm i'll be there i hope you guys come up
and say hi but enough about that because i'm going to record a separate one with you we'll answer all
the questions for directly about the conference in a separate interview let's talk about bitcoin
bitcoin in 2022. first of all what are your feelings about bitcoin are you still bullish
man i hate to be a perma bull moon boy type but like i it's hard not to be bullish when
when you kind of have seen the events of the last really the last two years but even more recently
uh what's happened in in canada with uh people who disagree with you know the government essentially
getting cut off from their bank accounts what's happening in ukraine where um people are able
to directly donate uh bitcoin to to people relief efforts on the ground like these types of things
like we kind of take them for granted at this stage right we're you know 12 13 years into this
and uh we forget how you previously couldn't do this you couldn't just send money to the middle of
a war or you couldn't send money to people who got financially sanctioned by their governments and so
i think these use cases like look i'm a director of marketing so uh i i get like advertising and
all that kind of stuff and these types of events are the best advertisements for bitcoin they do a
much better job of of anything that that we can do as sort of professionals i guess so um i am
bullish i'm uh i'm also you know it's kind of one of those things where it's like bitcoin's success
does coincide with some chaos in the world and so like it's that it's that scene from um
uh from the big short where it's like just don't dance it's like that right now it feels
like there's a lot to be uh excited about but unfortunately you know it's the backdrop
is not so good i don't think it's like bitcoin is causing the chaos but bitcoin
actually is a lifeboat too or an antidote to what's what's happening
and i don't know i kind of feel like in you know bitcoin's 13-year history it used to be just like
one thing a year like uh using bitcoin for wikileaks because their payment uh was cut
off and they'd use bitcoin or maybe like uh silk road or or maybe like one business like
overstock accepting bitcoin and now it's just like ukraine and russia and canada and the truckers
and all these things are just happening and inflation and all this stuff just happening it's
it does kind of seem like bitcoin still is is uh needed and the fact that all this
stuff is happening at once is uh i just think it's interesting now totally is there from the ukraine
thing or the canada thing is there one thing in particular that you really think of bitcoin
bitcoin was is really can rise above here yeah i think so if you look back at bitcoin's history and
you remember the the wikileaks thing happened and wikileaks was like the first major flash point in
bitcoin and it was when satoshi was still around and um satoshi infamously was like oh no we've you
know kicked the hornet's nest i can't remember the exact quote but um he was kind of worried about
it was like too early in bitcoin's history for for all that attention i think what we're seeing
now with i think canada specifically and just how quickly they came down on peaceful protesters and
started cutting off uh bank accounts of you know grandmothers donating forty dollars to
uh to these protests that that level of financial sensory censorship at the government level i think
is it's just amazing to look back at wikileaks versus now and realize like okay now we're
actually ready and um you know there's some things that we learned i think along the way
i think the distribution process of bitcoin was a learning point we're not bitcoiners as a
community we're not we're not perfect obviously uh so we have some things to to iron out but
um i'm most excited about how again how how good of a advertisement that was for bitcoin like hey
the money in your bank account your fiat bank account isn't actually yours the government can
decide that they don't like you and shut you down to later today right so um i don't know if i'm
like excited about that it's kind of like for me personally i'm like oh dude i got to
get my stuff together i got to learn more about the privacy features of bitcoin um but it was
definitely a wake-up call and and a um real-time advertisement for how powerful bitcoin can be
and i just think like you know sometimes i hear people with you know in my opinion
half-baked critiques like oh you know bitcoin's getting political because you know they think
the truckers are of a of a certain political side um but i just think like you know this
could happen if you think that the trucker thing is maybe more of a conservative thing
which i don't necessarily think it is but if you think that you know the same thing could happen
for uh like a black lives matter protest or maybe like if this person like trump was in office they
cut off the funding you know bitcoin is here for uh for everybody just like people say that putin
could use bitcoin to avoid sanctions in russia but you know the ukrainians are currently using it
to help their funding so it's you know it works for works for everybody who needs it
amen yeah bitcoin is for enemies and that it's so it's so uh paradigm shifting for us because
we're so used to being so polarized and being like oh these are my political beliefs and i
disagree with you so we're we don't get along we can't have relationship or whatever what i
love about bitcoin this is my favorite thing actually is when i go to my bitcoin meetups
is and you know the first time we met in person it's like we could we can connect at
that level and then everything else is kind of secondary we can almost like disagree on
uh it helps like prioritize the the things that humans are engaging about and it helps us realize
like most of the stuff that we hate each other about on social media aren't that important when
it comes you know relative to the bigger fish that we have to fry so you're right bitcoin is
for everybody it's for enemies and you need to get comfortable if you want to be a part of this thing
with people that you don't like being uh also uh users of the network
now talk to me about being a bitcoiner and specifically would you describe yourself as a you
know bitcoin maximalist or bitcoin maximalish or i mean there is that strong community of you know
people who are only bitcoin most of them are good people some of them can be toxic i think the vast
majority are great people but uh talk to me about you know why you're a bitcoin only type person
or how you see see that in general yeah so i definitely think there's a spectrum and um the way
i like to describe it so so co-wrote the the book thank god for bitcoin i have like a church pastor
background um super interesting side conversation we should talk about it sometime but i do look at
sort of this conversation through an evangelical uh or evangelist i should say lens right
and the way i describe it is um i like to try to be seeker sensitive and that what that means is
there are people out there who have no idea what bitcoin is who are just learning about crypto and
some bitcoin maximalists might come along and say oh you're just a [ __ ] coiner or whatever
and my approach is more like well does that person who is you know just trying to figure out the
ecosystem do they even know what you mean when you say [ __ ] coiner because i have my doubts
um i know when i first started in bitcoin uh in 2017 i sort of dabbled in a bunch of different
coins and where i found myself going was those are not that interesting to me personally um i'd
like to describe you know all coins and everything outside of bitcoin as like look if you're a trader
uh that's probably cool it's you know i just it's not for me uh or if you're a gambler frankly like
if you like to just be like hey i'm gonna throw some money over here and see what happens like
great um i don't i don't come as um hard on like the moral sort of judgment of like oh you're a
[ __ ] coiner so you need to like dismiss you out of pocket i i i'll make some exceptions for
people who like who do like legitimately promote scams there are like legit scams in the space that
need to be called out need to be addressed and confronted but i don't i don't think that it's
like the type of thing where we need to uh be overly i guess judgmental for lack of a
better word i think what needs to happen is people need to be educated people we need to
have conversations with people again most people that you call [ __ ] coiner don't know they're a
quote-unquote [ __ ] pointer so that's kind of my approach so am i a bitcoin maximalist i only hold
bitcoin so whatever that means i understand what bitcoin where bitcoin maximus are coming from and
i actually would say even the most extreme people on the spectrum the toxic bitcoin maximalist
i equate them to kind of just use this analogy further to like the the fire and brimstone type
preacher who's like if you don't repent you're going to hell right there's something that you've
got to appreciate about the conviction of that fire and brimstone preacher who's like this is
what he like believes right like get your life right or if you die you're gonna be very sad and
you're gonna hell like whatever like theological conversation you wanna have about that but that my
point is there is a spectrum and i find myself trying to be again seeker sensitive that's why
i come on your show you know i think i think a lot of people in your audience are probably
just curious and they don't necessarily make the distinction between bitcoin and everything else
uh and unless we talk about it like there's just you know these conversations aren't taking place
do you think that in the past couple years and every cycle something like this happens
but particularly in the last couple years you know ethereum and other like open source data
platforms so gain popularity nfts have gained popularity the meme coins like dogecoin gained
popularity in you know if nothing but speculation some of them do you think stuff like that helps
people get turned onto bitcoin hurts people coming into bitcoin or has you know no great effect on it
yeah that's a great question so i think that it helps in the on the longer it helps people
like eventually get to bitcoin in other words i think it's a bit of a gateway drug
so it helps in the sense that if you're if you're me from my perspective i want people to
to realize that bitcoin is its own unique thing and there's something special like going on with
it and so if somebody stumbles upon bitcoin through the ethereum rabbit hole or through
the dogecoin rabbit hole or they see elon tweeting about it or whatever and they're like what's this
and then eventually they find their way to bitcoin to me that's helpful
um i'm also very anti-like you know government intervention and regulation and stuff so i don't
think the answer is like oh we need to crack down on all these you know there's too much chaos it's
the wild west or whatever so i think there there is this tension of like the wild west is good the
free market is figuring itself out uh people just need to kind of just find their way to bitcoin and
maybe it's going to be painful along the way right because you know most people
didn't have a good time with dogecoin um and and so like i just think that um at the end of the
day my whole thing with with the entire ecosystem is like what i what i wish would happen is that
the people who are idle ideologically aligned that we need a monetary revolution the fiat system is
broken that we need sound money that we need to get the the money printer out of the control of
central bankers there's a lot of us in the broader sort of crypto space who are aligned on that
but i feel like our attention and our focus and our work is so divided amongst all of
these projects and i feel like if we can all kind of come together uh on
and build on on bitcoin that's the ultimate dream so is that you know to uh optimistic probably
but again i think uh if if if there wasn't somebody who was trying to educate
me on bitcoin then you know i probably wouldn't be here so i'm just trying to kind of pay it forward
mm-hmm what are your thoughts for let's let's get to the obligatory price prediction question what
are your thoughts for 2022 like are you you're bullish on bitcoin how bullish are you george
i mean look i got my price prediction so wrong last year that i hesitate to even put a number on
it what i'm learning is that the having actually really matters and when people say it's priced
in it's it doesn't seem like it is priced in so i'm more like confident bullish on the next
halving cycle that we're going to see exponential growth just like we have
historically but i would be shocked if we did not hit 100k by the end of this year and uh and
hopefully much higher but again i said that last year so take that with a grain of salt
totally that's kind of bullish so nobody wants to give a price prediction we've had plenty of
bitcoiners and crypto people on i always ask them you know especially bitcoiners
give us the price prediction they all just roll their eyes because they don't like you know just
thinking like will clemente who's a great guy and an analyst he didn't want to give the
price prediction because the market was down and yeah dude i think that's bullish though that no
surprise okay easy again yeah still got my laser eyes nice uh any final thoughts on bitcoin or any
final thoughts for the altcoin daily audience um you know just just keep uh keep tuning in keep
researching and i think um check out the book honestly if you're if you're into understanding
sort of the moral implications which is really the our argument in the book is that the fiat system
is broken and we spend probably 80 percent of the book just talking about the current
monetary system and then the last two chapters talking about why bitcoin is the solution so
those would be my final thoughts so i don't have to be that religious to get value out of the book
no not at all in fact i'm not even that religious i don't go to church or anything like that anymore
i used to be a pastor so i understand the bible and the jesus narrative and all those
things and i still find a lot of value in sort of having a moral compass in terms of just really
practical tools for humanity like you know don't kill people don't steal all that kind of stuff
is still helpful and so when you apply sort of biblical principles to how we're living life
today there's a lot of parallels with bitcoin i love it check out the book get the book uh
meet up with george and i at the conference ten percent off get your tickets below and uh
100k guaranteed this year straight from george's mouth thank you just kidding thank you george oh
and everybody make sure we're going to drop a video very soon george is going to answer all
your questions about the conference being released within less than a week from this video so make
sure you tune in for that one too i'll link it below eventually but anyways thanks guys
thanks george thank you like the video everybody if you're still listening like the video all right