Ep. 90 | Bitcoin, Family Economy, and Financial Sovereignty with Jordan Bush

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites), founder of Thank God for Bitcoin (TGFB Media), to discuss Bitcoin from a Christian perspective. Jordan shares his journey from missionary work in Uruguay to becoming a leading voice in the Christian Bitcoin space. The conversation covers currency debasement, ethical investing, practical Bitcoin adoption for churches and families, and how Christians can build financial sovereignty. Jordan also discusses his work helping churches, nonprofits, and families understand Bitcoin's non-intuitive benefits beyond "getting rich quickly." This is a deep dive into money, faith, and preparing your family for an uncertain economic future.

Episode Website

https://www.spearing.co/bush

Connect with Jordan Bush

Website: TGFB.com Twitter: @jmbushwrites Podcast: Thank God for Bitcoin Podcast

Jordan's Books:

• Thank God for Bitcoin (2nd edition releasing soon)
• The Orange Umbrella (Children's book - available for pre-order)
• Gospel-focused Bitcoin resources

Resources Mentioned

• Cash App - Custodial Bitcoin wallet (easy for beginners)
• Blue Wallet - Non-custodial hot wallet (recommended for self-custody)
• Cold Card - Hardware wallet for long-term savings
• Start Nine - Private server solutions for Lightning nodes
• River.com - Bitcoin-only exchange (1% fees)
• AZTeco - Bitcoin vouchers (non-KYC option)
• Square/Block - Bitcoin payment processing for merchants
• Lightning Network - Second layer for fast, cheap Bitcoin transactions
• Modello - Steel seed phrase storage device

Books Referenced:

• The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
• Thank God for Bitcoin by Jordan Bush and co-authors

Outline with Timestamps

00:00:00 - Introduction and Jordan's Background

• Growing up in a Christian family
• Drifting from faith in high school, returning in college
• The missions conference that changed everything
• Moving to Uruguay as a missionary in 2015

00:06:00 - Discovering the Currency Problem

• Venezuelan refugees flooding Uruguay
• Learning about currency debasement and hyperinflation
• How governments fund promises by printing money
• The connection between monetary policy and human suffering

00:08:00 - The Path to Bitcoin

• Opting out of Social Security as missionaries
• Looking for ethical investment alternatives
• The Coca-Cola dilemma: profiting from selling sugar water
• First hearing about Bitcoin in 2012 (and not buying)
• Finally buying Bitcoin in 2017-2019

00:12:00 - Going All In on Bitcoin

• Putting 85% of liquid net worth into Bitcoin in June 2019
• Why Bitcoin solves the Venezuela problem
• The philosophy behind Bitcoin: sound money that can't be inflated
• Writing "Thank God for Bitcoin" and outselling the Pope

00:19:00 - Bitcoin vs. Crypto: Why Bitcoin is Different

• The "telos" (purpose) of Bitcoin vs. other cryptocurrencies
• How altcoins are pre-mined and benefit founders
• XRP and the permanent seller problem
• Why every crypto trades against Bitcoin
• The insider trading nature of most cryptocurrencies

00:24:00 - Learning from Others and Making Decisions

• Tim Ferriss's approach to political decisions
• Michael Saylor and spending 1,000 hours learning after age 40
• Trusting people who make sound decisions
• The importance of mentorship and wisdom

00:26:00 - Historical Perspective on Money

• The Roman Empire's currency debasement
• How sound currency makes civilizations strong
• The British pound as a literal pound of silver
• The U.S. dollar's gold-backed origins
• Why soldiers refuse debased currency (historical pattern)

00:32:00 - Gold, Silver, and Bitcoin

• The physicality problem with precious metals
• Venezuelan refugees and the theft problem
• Bitcoin's portability: 12-24 word seed phrases
• Crossing borders with wealth in your head
• SEER training and torture-proof wealth storage

00:37:00 - The Canadian Trucker Protest Case Study

• Being declared enemies of the state
• Bank accounts frozen by government
• $900,000 in Bitcoin that couldn't be stopped
• Why churches need to think about this NOW
• Pastor Doug Wilson interview and the question: "What if you're cut off tomorrow?"

00:40:00 - Practical Bitcoin for Churches

• Starting with a men's group chat
• Creating a church economy (raw milk, chickens, services)
• The importance of practicing with people you trust
• Building a skills directory in your congregation
• Learning together as a community

00:43:00 - Square, Cash App, and Lightning Network

• Custodial vs. non-custodial solutions
• Square's Bitcoin payment integration (3% savings for merchants)
• Lightning Network as the "PayPal of Bitcoin"
• How to send Bitcoin invoices
• The trade-offs between convenience and sovereignty

00:49:00 - Bitcoin as Money: The Maturity Process

• Why Bitcoin isn't "use money" yet (and why that's okay)
• The baby analogy: growing into purpose over time
• Store of value vs. medium of exchange
• Why you should start saving in Bitcoin NOW
• The seeds analogy: you can't wait until you need them

00:56:00 - Addressing Volatility Concerns

• The marriage analogy: short-term vs. long-term thinking
• The children analogy: dealing with volatility to get the benefit
• Bitcoin's growth from less than 1% adoption
• Network effects and the runaway train
• The orange tree analogy: seasonal cycles are natural

01:04:00 - Bitcoin for Minors and Families

• Eli's question about buying and storing Bitcoin as a 16-year-old
• Cash App custodial account limitations
• Blue Wallet for self-custody
• "Not your keys, not your coins"
• Hardware wallets (Cold Card) for long-term savings

01:09:00 - KYC vs. Non-KYC Bitcoin

• Know Your Customer laws and their problems
• Buying Bitcoin from miners (no paper trail)
• AZTeco vouchers (Bitcoin gift cards)
• Churches mining Bitcoin with solar panels
• Sending Bitcoin to persecuted churches overseas

01:15:00 - Fees, Trading, and Long-Term Strategy

• Why Jordan doesn't day trade
• Paying for services vs. being the product (Gmail example)
• River.com: Bitcoin-only exchange
• The 1% fee for ethical business practices
• Avoiding the "get rich quick" mentality

01:19:00 - The Greatest Time to Be Alive

• Tucker Carlson interviewing Rich Lusk
• The church can't be stopped
• Opportunities for faithfulness in our generation
• Building the kingdom where God has placed us

01:20:00 - Where to Find Jordan and His Work

• Twitter: @jmbushwrites
• Website: TGFB.com
• Thank God for Bitcoin podcast
• Books: "Thank God for Bitcoin" (2nd edition coming)
• "The Orange Umbrella" children's book (illustrated, rhyming)
• Becoming a nonprofit to serve Christians better

Transcript

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites)

[00:00:00]

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): And when people criticize Bitcoin for not being able to, pay, for their haircut and Bitcoin, I'm like, you're totally missing the picture.

You're missing it. How? Like, how these things become money. We're watching in real time for the first time in a very long time. Something becoming money, this maturity takes time. It takes time for people to understand what it is, to be able to understand how to use it.

Nathan: So just got off of a interview where you got to ask me a bunch of questions and I was excited that I get to ask y'all questions. So give, uh, give life on target listeners your background, if

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Sure.

Nathan: uh, Christians that have been living under a rock.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Oh yeah, because that's the only, the only way you could possibly not have heard about me is if you were living under a rug. Yeah, right. Uh, so, no. So my, my name is Jordan Bush. Uh, I grew up in a, in a Christian family. Uh, my mom was a barely second generation Christian. My dad was a, was a first generation believer.

And so, you know, my life growing [00:01:00] up was going to church and had parents who, you know, had us in church whenever they could. And, uh, worked for a Christian, they worked for a Christian nonprofit organization called Word of Life. And so I grew up, uh, there and um, and so yeah, grew up in church, uh, made a profession of faith at a young age.

Uh, and then kind of as I got into middle and high school, uh, just got to the point where I just really wanted to be liked and really wanted just to be normal, was at a public school and, uh, and so just kind of drifted away from the Lord. And, uh, and then it was near right bef near. Come about a year and a half before I graduated.

Uh, the Lord just kind of really just stepped in and opened up my eyes and still wasn't perfect, but I definitely had a, a Christian trajectory. So, graduated, uh, went to Bible college. Knew that my parents were gonna make me go for at least one year, so ended up while I was there. Um. I was not, I'm not, just to give you an idea, I'm not a morning person whatsoever.

Just under normal circumstances. And, uh, and during this Bible college, like the Lord just was [00:02:00] opening up my eyes and, and just giving me new desires. And so we had to wake up, I think at like six 30 to do breakfast and all this kind stuff. I was waking up at like five on my own to go get alone and pray and read the scriptures.

And so just, and I'm just reflecting at this like, Lord. Checkmate atheist like me up at five to do this. Like, there, there's no other way to account for this. And, uh, and so, so that's kind of what was going on. And, and about halfway through the year, uh, the, the college that I was at did a missions conference.

And so again, I, I was a basketball player. I, I did not, I'm like, I'm not a missionary, you know, if you would've asked me, I couldn't have articulated for you what a, what a missionary was. I just knew that I wasn't one because I played basketball and didn't like to live in tree houses. So, uh, so, so we, you know, went to this missions conference and long story short, there was a guy there who was about, uh, five feet tall who grew up in the jungle tribe in the Philippines.

Uh, his grandparents were head hunters and just told the story of how when he was a little kid, this, uh, white [00:03:00] guy walks into the tribe and, uh, and just basically says that he's got a more important message than they've ever heard before, and that he wants to move in and live with them. And so long story short, even though they'd chased off people in the past, they allowed him to come in.

And, uh, so again, long story short, he ended up. The guy ended up preaching the gospel. Almost everybody in the tribe becomes a Christian. And this guy who was, you know, grew up and was teaching, uh, or sharing his story, ended up becoming a Christian, went to college in the United States. Whole, whole crazy story.

So he ended up, finishes his story, and he's talking about how he actually was the person, he became a jungle pilot, ended up flying in the first shipment of Bibles in his people's own language back into them in the Philippines. And he's just, as he's flying, he's like, I'm flying across these jungles and I'm just blown away by the Lord's kindness.

You know, just, and I'm like, who, who am I that, you know, I have, you know, that I have the ability to fly these in? Who are we that we're gonna have Bibles in our own language? Uh, and he just talked about how he just was overwhelmed thinking about like, what if this guy who, the missionary who would come in, uh, to, [00:04:00] to share the gospel with him, what if he just decided to do something else with his life?

And so as I was listening to that, uh, I just was thinking, you know, just. I just was thinking, Lord, I've wasted so much time. I grew up with 50 Bibles, couldn't give two craps, you know, like just could not care less. And, uh, for most of my, most of my growing up years. And so I just basically, as he's kind of finishing, I just said, Lord, you know, please let me go, you know, please let me go, go be a missionary.

Like, I don't wanna stay here in the States. Like, I just want to go, like if there's really, and, and his kind of climactic thing was he had this, you know, like the old printer paper where it's like connected on the ends and it's got the little stuff on the sides you rip up. So he basically, he, his climactic thing was, there are still, as of this was 2000, early 2007, there are still 6,000 languages that have no scripture in their language.

And so, and he basically said they're on these, on this piece of paper, and he threw the first piece of paper off and it grabbed the second and pulled it off, grabbed the third. It just kept pulling it. And there's like nine or 10 pages. And so I'm just [00:05:00] like staring at this from the front row and I'm just like, man.

All right. Like if that's true, I, you know, if that's true and there's people who have no access, they have no access whatsoever, then, then please let me go. The Lord was doing something very similar in the heart of, of my who, my future wife, and, uh, and so long story short, we ended up getting married, knowing that we wanted to be missionaries within about a year and a half of getting married.

Nathan: presentation.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah, she was at the co at the college. She was at the, we ended up being there at college, at senior and uh, and so we, we ended up getting married a few years later. And, um, and then within a year and a half of getting married, we started raising support to go be missionaries, uh, in the country of Uruguay.

Uh, so in 2015 we moved to Uruguay and, uh, and helped plant a church there. And so we were reformed Baptist at the time. Uh, ended up planting a, a small Baptist church. And, uh, and again, the Lord, the Lord was super kind to us. Um, we, we initially went there. Uruguay is a very secular country, uh, more than about half of the people, the population of [00:06:00] three and a half million would claim to be either atheist or agnostic, which is the highest percentage in, in South America.

And so we went there anticipating in 2015 being the Uruguayan Tim Keller, uh, you know, of going there and being very winsome and, and, you know, reaching the city. And, uh, and so then within, within I mean weeks we came to realize that, uh, as we were preaching the gospel, the, especially in the beginning, the overwhelming majority of people who were coming to our church weren't uruguayans, but they were Venezuelan immigrants.

And so there was just 60,000 Venezuelan immigrants that poured into the country over the course of a few years. And so I knew nothing about geopolitical happenings or, you know, why they were there. We just were trying to minister to them and their need. And so over the course of the next couple years, I started, I started to learn a lot more about just what had been happening in Venezuela and why people were leaving.

Uh, and just that at root, a lot of what was happening was a result of currency debasement.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): you know, the, in a world [00:07:00] where the currency is just either paper or digital representations of paper, uh, you know, the way that you get elected in democracies is to promise free stuff to people. And whoever promises the most free stuff wins.

And, uh, and so that's, and so

Nathan: obviously.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): never, no, we're way better than that. Uh, and so then, uh, over time, the way that you, especially in a place where you don't have the world reserve currency, uh, the way that you fund that free stuff that you promise to give people is just by printing more money. And so we started to see, you know, the effects of that.

And then me as like a philosophy nerd and as a, you know, somewhat, you know, financially interested person. We just started to think about the consequences of this on everything from missions to, you know, just churches back in the states and all this kinda stuff, and just started to go down the rabbit hole of trying to understand, you know, monetary history of, of the, of the world and especially the last a hundred years.

And, um, so yeah, so that was kind of a, a big as I'm just pastor, you know, helping pastor this small church and just, you know, just blatantly in the [00:08:00] background. I'm just kinda learning about that and just chewing on that. And uh, and then as of right now, uh, we ended up launch was short, ended up leaving Uruguay, uh, partially because we became Presbyterians, partially because, you know, other, a number of other things.

Uh, but one of the things that we, you know, that I just got into, uh, was bitcoin. I got into Bitcoin in 2019 and, uh, just started, it, started doing it because after being a missionary for four years, uh, I hadn't even looked at our retirement account. I hadn't even thought about it. Uh, our mission organization, thankfully forced us to have some sort of, uh, retirement account through a fidelity and, uh, so it was like a 4 0 3 B is their equivalent of a 401k.

Uh, and so I, I hadn't even looked at this thing in four years. And so in 2019, I just thought to myself, well, this is, this doesn't seem very responsible, so I better start, try to, you know, start trying to understand investing and, uh, talk to some family members. They were like, Hey, get some good dividend stocks, get Coca-Cola, get some of these [00:09:00] things.

And um, as I was thinking about that, I just was thinking about the prospect of investing in Coca-Cola and I was like, so if I'm gonna look back in my life, uh, you know, I'm gonna get to the end of my life and look back and realize that, okay, I was able to retire because I made money off of selling sugar water to poor people.

I was just like, I don't wanna do that. You know, and so just this, I, the concept of ethical investing just, you know, really began something that I began thinking about. And right around the same time I started looking for other things and ended up finding Bitcoin. And so as I was just trying to study it and understand it, um.

I started thinking about it, not from the standpoint of how, you know, can I get rich quickly, even though obviously for everybody, that's where they initially, you know, are looking at it. Uh, but over a relatively short period of time, I started thinking about it, uh, from a number of different lenses. And that led to getting involved with other Christians who were into Bitcoin.

We ended up writing a book called The Gospel according to Bitcoin, which just basically gives a, a, you know, a history, brief history, ninth grade level, uh, history of what money is, how it [00:10:00] works, why it matters, uh, and so anyhow, that, that just ended up being where I go. And then from there, the book ended up selling way more copies than we thought the claim to fame as it came out the same week as a book by the Pope.

And we were outselling the Pope. We said, take that Bishop of Rome, uh, you have no authority here. Uh, and then the Lord's just done some crazy stuff. So today, I, I run, uh, it's called Thank God for Bitcoin, uh, or TGFP media, which exists to help Christians. Um. And, and others understand and use Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere.

So, um, so we write resources, write books, and do events designed to provide opportunities for churches, nonprofits, and anybody in between small businesses to understand the non-intuitive reasons why they should care about Bitcoin that have, that have nothing to do with getting rich quickly, so,

Nathan: Yeah. So, you know, just pulling up, I don't know what month you said you got in 2019, you know, that looks like it's hovering, uh, at the beginning of 19. You know, [00:11:00] it's at, uh, three grand a Bitcoin, you know it, and towards the end of 19 it's, seven. So even in that 12 month period over. Over a seven.

So even in that 12 month period, if it's the beginning, you're doubling your money. then today, like at this moment, even at the kind of a low for the last month, we're at 93 a Bitcoin. So if you can, you know, buy in at that and then hold, you know, which is, is the, is the way

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: Um, it, it is, uh, very, was very profitable.

And then, you know, I guess the discussions, one of the things I'm curious about is the, you said you kind of just like, I, I found Bitcoin and it ended up buying it. So like what talks, let's zoom in on that

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: moment

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: personally.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: I like [00:12:00] to try to do with this podcast too is I, I know that financial, this is not investing advice.

This is not, you know, at your own risk, blah, blah, blah. Um. of our listeners are, have agency and, and all that.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: I really like to understand, you know, what specifically you did and why, like, 'cause that's your story.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: there's

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: things. What you, you have all these experiences. Why did you do it?

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep. Yeah, so good. Great question. So, uh, again, I, I mentioned, I mentioned this basically my, my wife and I, um, when we were, when we were missionaries. One of the cool things that, uh, working for a nonprofit or especially a religious nonprofit, uh, gives you the opportunity to do is opt outta social security.

So like if you become, if you become a pastor or a missionary or something like that, or work for a Christian organization, you have from the beginning you have a two year window with which to, to file for, to, you know, [00:13:00] opt out of social security. So we ended up doing that. And then the, our, that was not our, our missions organization was not happy about that decision.

Uh, but they were like, Hey, this is your decision. If you're gonna do that, you need to start saving money every month. And it was like a pretty good chunk of money relative to what we were making. So I just, you know, we just started living frugally and I just, you know, we're saving, um,

Nathan: basically gave you a Christian discipleship not consume everything and,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): correct. They, they basically just said,

Nathan: that you weren't giving it to the government. That's obviously gonna

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yeah. Yes, ex. Exactly. Well, well, and to be fair.

Nathan: to pay into it.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Correct. But to be fair, what I will say is the, their, their, their motivation. So like, they didn't necessarily have like the first principles, see the big picture of where this is going. What they were looking at was, we had missionaries who opted out of social security back in the forties because they were dispensationalist who thought the rapture's gonna happen, we're not even gonna need to save for retirement.

And so [00:14:00] they saw a lot of people get wrecked that way, who they, they got to the end of their life and then either

Nathan: end, guys.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): and the world didn't end. And so they had, they were reliant on, you know, just people to continue supporting them. Um, and so, so that was, that was part of what was motivating them. But in, in my case, again, I'm sitting here like, you know, I, I'm looking at this a hundred, you know, 70 years later from, from when they're at number or 80 years later.

And I'm just like, guys, like this is a Ponzi scheme. Like pon, social security's a Ponzi scheme, but it's gonna run out. Money's gonna run out in 2030 according to their own numbers. So

Nathan: Yep.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): just like, this doesn't make any sense. So we ended up just taking, you know, setting aside from like 20. Uh, man, 20, I guess 20 14, 20 15.

Just started setting aside money every month and, uh, ended up, oh man, it's painful. I ended up, there was a couple times where we, you know, took a few thousand dollars and invested in, in something, uh, that if I, I'm like, oh man, if I would've bought Bitcoin with that, I would've had a lot more, a lot more Bitcoin, uh, but just ended up just sitting on a lot of it.

Uh, which again, was not very smart, [00:15:00] just keeping it in cash. We were getting murdered, purchasing power, but I didn't know any of that at the time, so we're just like saving up money and just setting it aside. And so, um, when I, when I heard about Bitcoin, I heard about Bitcoin in late 2017. That's the first time I actually bought some, I'd obviously heard about it before that.

Um, I think my first touch with it was 2012. Uh, I had heard about it on the news and then went into a silver broker, uh, in Florida to get, uh, with like a 2,500 bucks to get silver. One ounce coins.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): I walk in the door, there's a girl sitting behind the computer. This is 2012. It's a girl sitting behind the computer with a, with a buy Bitcoin sticker on the back of the old gray computer monitor.

I walked, I looked at it, looked at her, walked right by her, talked to the guy and said to the guy at one point, uh, as I was buying my, uh, maple leaf, uh, silver, one ounce coin, I said, Hey, so Bitcoin, huh? And he goes, it's really interesting. I think Bitcoin was around two or 300 bucks at that point, and I [00:16:00] just had no framework for owning it.

I'm not a technological person, uh, by nature. And

Nathan: said really interesting, you didn't buy.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): no, I did not buy, I was just like, Hey, that, yeah, I agree. It's interesting. Now give me my, you know, give me my 35 silver ounce coins or whatever.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): And, uh, and so then it was, so I ended up. Not buying any until 20, 20 17. Still only bought like a couple hundred bucks worth also bought, you know, $50 worth of Ethereum, $50 worth of, uh, you know, uh, not Doge, what's the other one?

Um, XRP, all these ridiculous things like, like a sprinkling and all these things. And, uh, and so then obviously the Bitcoin crashed in December of, you know, went up to 20,000. Uh, in December of that year crashed down to I think like nine or something. And then shortly after that, after it crashed, uh, I was, I was the, at that point, the very content number two guy in our church.

There was another, uh, man and family who was kind of, he was the, the main pastor. And so they had a family emergency in early [00:17:00] 2018. Ended up having to leave to go back to the states. And so I ended up over pretty much overnight becoming the, the only pastor of this church. And so pretty much for about a year, everything just went, got put a year and a half, everything just got put to the side.

I didn't even think about Bitcoin, didn't think about, you know, any of these other things and just focused on trying to pastor the church in Spanish, deal with all the, all the crazy things that went with that. So by the time 2019 came around, Bitcoin was kind of had woken up. Um, I started really buying it in 20, in May of 2019.

So it wasn't quite at three. I think it had gotten back up to nine by the time I was looking at it again. Um. So I, I just started doing some investigation. Uh, I was like, what is this thing? Uh, you know, again, I was a philosophy major, so just trying to understand. I like to understand a little bit of everything, uh, just to be able to have, just to be able to get my hands around it.

Just, you know, get my mind around it. Like what, you know, what is this thing? Why does it exist? And, um, and so I just started doing some basic research there. There was a couple podcasts that [00:18:00] were out, uh, that I just found that were at, right at the right time that were helpful. And so within, again, we would not recommend that necessarily everybody do this, but this is, this, again, you asked me for my story.

Within about a month, I had put about 85% of our liquid net worth into Bitcoin. I did like a month worth of, of deep dive. And then was like, all right, this is, I, I buy in completely to the thesis and uh, and I'm in.

Nathan: That's in 2019

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): in like June, June, 2019. I, I had like 85% of our liquid net worth and, uh, which again wasn't much 'cause we're missionaries re remember,

Nathan: Yeah.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): but just, you know, had conviction.

Nathan: It's returned a little better probably than Social security investments.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Just, just to touch. Yeah. Yeah. So, so did that. And then, um, and then just had more, I had like some more cash. I, I think I had like an ounce of, of gold. Um, you know, just again, we're overseas so that the precious metals thing was complicated. Like it's, it's gonna be difficult for us to cross [00:19:00] borders through the airport with large amounts of that kinda stuff.

So Bitcoin made sense in that front as well. Um, but really I just, I just had more money that I just was like kind of playing around with. So I, I had like a short crypto phase where I was do, trying to do some trading. Uh, messed around with 20 x leverage, uh, got got wrecked and that ended up, don't do that.

Uh, by the way, uh, so just ended up playing around. Still knew, knew that Bitcoin was the only thing that mattered, uh, or the only real thing in the crypto space, but

Nathan: of the things, 'cause you said XRP, that craziness or

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yes,

Nathan: like, so talk to, talk to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yes, yes.

Nathan: why you say that

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: say Bitcoin.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes. So, uh, so much of this comes down to, again, like the, so t telos is a, is a word. I mean, just like, what is the end goal?

Why does this thing exist? And so what, what you find out is that Bitcoin was created and, and kind of the connection to my world was. After I'd already bought some and was already kind of sold on it. I started thinking about it and just realized that like, okay, so wait, Bitcoin was [00:20:00] created to be money that a government couldn't hyperinflate, that a government can't create more units of the way that governments can create more units of fiat currency effectively.

Endlessly. And so that when, when that clicked for me and I realized like, okay, wait. This is actually a totally unique thing. It's like a technological achievement. It's like a, I mean, I think Bitcoin's gonna win a Nobel Prize or some sort of equivalent prize someday just because of all the different disciplines and what a revolution it is.

But one of the things that I realized was. Holy cow. Bitcoin was created to solve the problem that destroyed the lives of all these Venezuelan brothers and sisters of ours who had to flee their country. And so just the, the real world application and, you know, resolution of this problem, it just blew my mind.

And so as I started to, to look at all these other cryptocurrencies, I started to realize, wait a second. They were not all created with that end in mind. And so the way that you can see this, the way that you can, I can prove this is because every other cryptocurrency di wasn't created until 2011. So [00:21:00] Bitcoin had about like a two and a half year head start.

And the reason why that date of 2011 matters is because the first time Bitcoin monetized was in 2011. The first time anybody used Bitcoin to buy, uh, actual real world, you know, goods somebody used, they paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas. And so it was right after that happened where it clicked with all these nerds.

Who could, I mean, you could spin up a cryptocurrency in 15 minutes. They just realize, wait, we can, any of us can create our own currency and basically be, we can basically be our own federal reserve. Why would we not do this? You know, we can make it, we can basically make ourselves create our own currencies and be millionaires within minutes.

And so that's where you start to see the explosion of all these other cryptocurrencies from Ethereum to XRP, to all these things. They, they weren't, like, they have, there's people who will defend them and saying, oh, this is programmable money, or this is, you know, the future or whatever. But in all of these cases, they [00:22:00] all have pre minds.

Okay. Which means that, you know, they create a fixed amount of the supply. So they create like, let's say a billion tokens, and then they, they give two thirds of the tokens to the founders, to the early developers, and then to some celebrities or people who are well respected in the hope of pumping these things.

And the whole time they ended up, as it starts to pump, they start dumping their own, their own shares. It's effectively insider trading. So they're like dumping their own shares onto the market.

Nathan: So everyone is like that.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): That, that's, that's literally how all of them work. So like XRP, they're guys, they're, uh, I can't remember. Uh, Brad Garlinghouse is one of the founders, isn't it?

Joe? Something is another one. These guys are permanent sellers of XRP. They will never purchase XRP, and they're, and so what are they doing? They're, they're pumping, they're telling, oh, we're, we have all these things with these banks. They're gonna start using XRP, or they're doing these things. Oh, look, look, there's, we're waiting on this news.

And so you just get in now and then just get, you're gonna get a pump. And in reality, everything in the crypto world trades off of Bitcoin. Everything. [00:23:00] People, everyone, all the traders, everybody, the game in town is accumulate Bitcoin. If you don't realize that's the game. It is the game. Everyone know, like all the guys who are the founders of all these other projects, they're trying to accumulate Bitcoin.

And when they sell, when these guys garlinghouse, all these guys, when they sell, one of the things that they're buying in addition to yachts, in addition to all these things is Bitcoin. Because they understand, they, they, they don't buy their own propaganda, the vast majority of them. Uh, and so for a lot of people, like that's Bitcoin is the real scarcity.

Bitcoin is the real thing that has censorship resistance that's been demonstrated for 16 years by the fact that China's tried to ban it seven times and failed, uh, because they can't enforce the ban. And so there's just a whole, a whole bunch of reasons. And again, I get a hundred percent I sound like the the crazy person.

Yeah. You've drank the Kool-Aid for just Bitcoin. And yet over and over again for the six years that I've been in this industry, I've seen the people who are in here. I've seen the incentives and every single time the incentives go exactly how you would expect them to go if Bitcoin's the only game in town.

[00:24:00] And so I,

Nathan: and

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yeah.

Nathan: that's essentially, um, whenever I read four hour work week, right, they say, you know, he said, Tim Ferris said, and I think that guy has a lot of.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes.

Nathan: Uh, good things that are thought provoking from a philosophy

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: things. Even though we can acknowledge, hey, like his, he, he, he looks at things from a different angle and I like reading things that then

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Challenge.

Nathan: my own universe. And one of the things he said, he is, I never consume any US presidential, political, stuff ever.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: He's, I just, he's like, it's so much theater, it's so much. So what I do is I call people When it's time to vote, I call five people and say, who you voting for? And then I vote what they say, you know, and he is like, I, I basically outsource five get to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: so much [00:25:00] time and energy into, and so for me, in a lot of ways, I, I don't have time right now to spend months researching

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. Yep,

Nathan: I can listen to. know, was it Michael Saylor

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: and say, that guy thinks about the world

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: a lot of the ways I like to think about the

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Mm-hmm.

Nathan: And I heard him say, who after age 40, spends a thousand hours learning anything new

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: in the population. And I think it's probably half a percent

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: the population that will spend a thousand

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: like, I've spent whatever, 10,000 hours

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: at

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: and this is it. You know? And so it doesn't mean that like, I guess I'm okay with, um, I'm okay with, uh, talking to people that I like, can look at the, their life and be like, this person makes [00:26:00] decisions in a sound way.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: And so, and they've made this decision

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: I don't have, and we have to do that, I

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Everyone does this. Whether they recognize it or not. Everybody does this, right? Yeah. It's just everybody.

Nathan: I am. Asking you

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: 'cause I want to know, like, what is it for you that made you say, I'm

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes,

Nathan: That's it,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yes. And so some of this, again, there's, there's a positive case and then there's a negative case, right? Like the same way if somebody asks you, you know, what's the great commandment? Okay. So like, you know, there's a positive answer. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And then there's the negatively framed version, which is the 10 Commandments. Like, don't do these things. And so part of the, part of the thing is just, I mean, part of my journey was just. Recognizing the lay of the land of just like, okay, so what are the, what are the threats even before Bitcoin ever exists, even if you don't like Bitcoin, let's just put that aside for now.

Like, what are the problems that exist that you have to reckon with, even if you think, even if you don't agree with Bitcoin, even if you don't think that that's, you know, you got one of, you're afraid of solar for layers, or you're afraid of [00:27:00] getting hacked or, you know, whatever. Like there were still as, as I was researching, there were just a bunch of problems that are just, that are just out there that have been problems for thousands of years as, and they've been one of the big things that leads to the end of civilizations.

So including the, the most important ones, the, the biggest ones, the most powerful ones that have ever existed. And so. Part of the thing that I went part of the rabbit hole was like, okay, so the Roman Empire, why did the Roman Empire collapse? There's a whole bunch of reasons. There's like, you know, societal degradation, degradation and all kinds of stuff.

But one of the reasons why they collapsed is because their currency collapsed. And one of the reasons why their currency collapsed is because in order to like pay off their debts, in order to try to, you know, do, do all these kind of things, they, they started introducing, uh, non precious metals, a greater percentage of non precious metals into their monetary supply.

And so by the end of it, the money, I mean, their, their currency barely had any silver at all in it.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): this is just something that happens as cultures decay. Uh, you know, they're, they're founded on these things that make them strong. One of the [00:28:00] principles that makes nations and, and Empire strong is a sound currency.

So, you know, the United States reached, uh, global reserve currency status because, uh, they had a fully gold-backed currency. Uh, they had a number of other advantages as well on the, on the heels of World War ii. And so, um, even though there were people who didn't trust them, you know, it there, you know, the United States with their, you know, the lion's share of the world's goal at that point, uh, was the 900 pound gorilla in the room that made the decision that everybody else went wrong with?

Um, the same thing. If you go back another generation, another a hundred years, this, this is true of the British Empire, right? Like they had the strongest currency in the world. The British pound was literally a pound of silver, uh, you know, like a, a big, a big block of silver, what, you know, amounted to one pound.

And so they had their, one of the strongest currencies in the world. You go back before them to the Dutch, you go back before them. Like you can just follow this, this is a, this is a universal, uh, principle of money. Money, and, and. Civilization is whoever has hard currencies, sound scarce [00:29:00] currencies, currencies that are backed by something that is scarce, that's, you know, real, that, you know, people value.

Uh, those, those currencies and those civilizations are going to be around a lot longer than those who don't, uh, because fundamentally sound currencies or scarce currencies, they, they put a premium on the value of your work. Right. Like they, they basically treat your, your work as if it matters. Um, and rather than just basically saying, you know, uh, in the case of fiat currencies, the government can just create effectively a trillion units out of nowhere and steal purchasing power from you by virtue of doing that.

Um, and so the more that I, the more that I researched the history of this, I realized, oh wow, okay. So this problem that Bitcoin is purporting to solve is not a novel problem. This is a thing that's been happening for literally thousands of years. We can, we can demonstrate through all, all through history of where this is a problem that ends empires, empires get, you know, get, have too much debt.

Their currency gets to the point where in the case of, uh, in the case of Rome, that their, uh, their soldiers refused to accept, uh, the, the [00:30:00] currency anymore. It got so debased that they refused to accept the currency. And so you can imagine, you know, you can look at, this has happened with other empires.

This happened on the, uh. You know, a number of places around the world. But so like one of the ways, when I look at, you know, what is the, what is the root of the, of the United States strength right now? It's in large part, there's multiple answers, obviously, but the United States military, right? We have a geopolitical presence all over the world.

Well, as like the, the debate of the United States currency and the weakening of the currency is, it's an existential threat to that, that strength all over the world. And so as that strength breaks down and you have an ever increasing, uh, you know, your liabilities in terms of like pensions to your soldiers and all these kinds stuff, as that starts to whittle down and the soldiers start realizing, they start realizing, wait, dude, like we're getting paid money.

That's, that doesn't have anywhere near the purchasing power as it was, as it did when we signed these contracts. You just have people who, you know, this, this starts to, starts to decay and starts to break down and ends up [00:31:00] being a Trump, you know, a big fall historically. And so I just looked at this and I was like, okay, that's, I see that.

Like I see that that's a real problem historically. This is a problem. This isn't the Bitcoin bros making this up in, you know, trying to act like this is, you know, this is some bitcoin, some novel solution to this novel problem that we've never seen before. This is a problem we've seen over and over again, uh, that's born of hubris and born of, you know, governments try acting like they can, they can avoid the way that God's designed the world to work, which is sowing and, and reaping.

Um, so that was, that was one big thing. Another thing was just practically, uh, I, I mean, as missionaries we had to deal with moving money and the challenges of moving money around the world. It's a big problem for hundreds of millions of people all over the world just trying to move money. Whether, whether you have family who's moved to a different country and you're trying to send money home to your home country.

Or something along those lines. It's, it's a very difficult problem. Um, currency, the basement, every country in the world really is, is on a, is on a fiat currency. Uh, and so their money is [00:32:00] losing pur purchasing power, uh, over time and for everyone, but the dollar, it's, it's happening a lot more quickly than it is to Americans.

And so these are, these are all real problems that, um, that exist that you have to find some solution for the solution that probably I would imagine many of, of your audience and, and a lot of you know, Christians.

So it's, it's one of these things where gold and silver are great.

Nathan: you for a second.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Oh,

Nathan: if you,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): can you hear me?

Nathan: I saw you reach up and do something and then you came back, so maybe

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): good.

Nathan: the last 1