Bitcoiners - Live From Bitcoin Beach

Did Bukele Prove Bitcoin Adoption & Financial Sovereignty Will Never Be Voluntary? | Trace Mayer

• Mike Peterson

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Trace Mayer, Bitcoin OG and advocate for monetary sovereignty, joins us for a compelling deep dive into the real-world implications of El Salvador’s groundbreaking adoption of Bitcoin. This wasn’t a surface-level chat, we covered everything from Bitcoin in El Salvador to the broader global reset many are calling the Fourth Turning.

We explored how President Bukele is reshaping El Salvador by combining bold leadership with sound money principles and how Bitcoin fits into that transformation. Trace shares why financial freedom is rooted in individuals taking control of their money, and how El Salvador is providing a real-world test case for that philosophy.

We also talk about the risk of centralized financial tools like ETFs, the importance of self-custody through initiatives like Proof of Keys, and how Bitcoin’s growing financial infrastructure, especially in derivatives and custody, is shaping the future.

Don't forget to subscribe, share this with your favorite fiat-loving friend, and comment below: Would you trust your government to hold Bitcoin for you, or is it safer in your own hands?

Learn more about Trace Mayer
https://www.trace.com/ 
https://x.com/bitcoinkn 

Connect with Trace Mayer
https://x.com/TraceMayer 
https://www.instagram.com/trace_mayer/ 

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Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:

00:00 – Why Trace Mayer Traveled to Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador
02:30 – How Trace Mayer Got Into Bitcoin and Monetary Sovereignty
06:15 – How Inflation Destroys Sound Money and Everyday Wealth
10:40 – What Monetary Sovereignty Really Means in Today’s World
14:50 – Why El Salvador Adopted Bitcoin for Financial Freedom
19:30 – How President Bukele Is Using Bitcoin to Change El Salvador
25:40 – Why Proof of Keys Still Matters for Bitcoin Users in 2025
30:10 – Are Bitcoin ETFs Threatening Real Financial Freedom?
37:20 – What the Fourth Turning Means for Bitcoin and the Global Economy
45:10 – Can the US Reset Its Economy with Bitcoin, Gold, and the Dollar?
47:15 – What Trace Mayer Is Building in the Bitcoin Financial System
52:00 – Where to Follow Trace Mayer and Learn About His Latest Work

Live From Bitcoin Beach

Trace Mayer:

I do to really mature into its destiny, but I think it's headed there, you know, and and If anything, it's inevitable now, so like we're just playing it out. Yeah,

Mike Peterson:

okay, we Good. Yes, we're good. 5432, all right, we got an impromptu sit down with trace mayors. So good to meet you. Yeah, wonderful. Thanks for having me. And I hear this is your second time here in El Salvador. Yep, you have a second

Trace Mayer:

time down in El Salvador. I've been very curious about what's been going on with the legal tender status and the on the field, adoption, and then also just the miracle that we've seen happen in El Salvador, cleaning up the gang problem, the violence problem, and having it go through this renaissance. You know, it takes a lot of courage to and political will to make something like that happen. And so it's nice to see see that actualizing into existence

Mike Peterson:

now. Definitely want to dive into that. I know, before we started, you were talking about, you know, you've always been focused on monetary sovereignty, and that being a focus that even predated Bitcoin. For you, this will be a little bit impromptu, because I got a call like half an hour ago, church mayors here, you got everyone podcast so from Roman. So, yeah, so not a lot of notes to go by, but we'll dive in. And I'm curious when, when did you kind of start following El Salvador? And actually, why don't for people, I know you're an OG in the space, but there may be people that have entered in the last couple years that aren't that familiar with you. So why don't you give a little bit about your background and your history in Bitcoin? Yeah, so

Trace Mayer:

I started a blog in January 2008 called Run to gold.com and that's where I talked about monetary sovereignty, the role of the monetary metals in terms of our political philosophy, how that forms essential checks and balances in the political machinery. And you know, really, when you look at Western political thought through John Locke and whatnot, University of Salman, aka, going up to England, over to the new world, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence. All these things are, you know, the culmination of some of the best of our thinking as a species. And so in chief among that, you know, when you look at the Civic realm, or the Civic plane of thought, what we use is money, or currency has to do with the very highest things with which the political elites are entrusted with for governing society, and so this monetary

Mike Peterson:

as far as the role that they play and the power that they wield, like that, is one of the

Trace Mayer:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're whether you're a king or in a representative form of government, like on that civic plane, if it's representative form of government or democracy, we the people are wielding that, that power, it's, you know, the power over the purse. It's this power over, basically how we chose to exercise our freedom in the past becomes the fruits of our labor, and we're storing that in something and that. That we're storing it in as a society, usually coalesces onto a single asset of some kind, and then that asset acquires a monetary premium, which, in the case of silver or gold, you know, then becomes where we're storing our value. And you know. And so we, you know, when we look at our agency, when we look at the philosophy of liberty or freedom, we have past, present and future. We have future represented by our life interests. We have the present represented by the great writ of habeas corpus, to present the body, to challenge your illegal detention. And then your past would be your property right. And chief among those property rights is going to be your story. Be your store value gonna be your money, because that money, or that currency, is what's being used in half of all the transactions in the realm. And so, you know, when we're interfering with that, we're interfering with economic calculation that the society is performing at the individual level across millions of people. And even worse, when there's confiscation through inflation, which is a form of taxation without representation or due process of law, you're able to just swipe millions of lifetimes worth of earnings

Mike Peterson:

well, and it distorts everything too, because things that under sound money wouldn't be worth doing. All of a sudden, it's good to take on debt. It's good to leverage yourself. All these things that you know are are not good habits actually pay dividends under kind of a corruption, yeah. Hence,

Trace Mayer:

fix the money, fix the world. We get all types of misallocations of capital because of this interference in the currency or the money and the diminution of it, or the the the inflation of it. You know, when Faust, in Faust Part Two by Guta, it talks about Mephistopheles is asked by the king, he's like, Well, bring me some gold. And Mephistopheles is like, I'll bring you some gold and some more. And then the chancellor responds, like, well, it's not quite right, but I'll make it right, you know. So the Supreme Court, that's what they did in city versus Dover. That's what Franklin Roosevelt did in 1933 with executive order 61 02, that's what the legislative branch did, interfering with Americans ability to own gold for, you know, 40 years. You know, all of these things are attacks on our fundamental freedom as individuals. And then, of course, we have to figure out, do we believe that those are God given rights, or innumerable rights, inalienable rights, or are they granted as part of the political process? Do they come out of the barrel of a gun, like Mao says? And that's really the dichotomy that we're dealing with. And and so the money, and this, this principle of monetary sovereignty, that's why it's so important, is because it's operating on millions of decisions, all with the same instrument or unit of account.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah. So if you, if you get the money right, and you don't get everything else right, it's still going to go well. But if you can't get the money right, if you get everything else right, it's it's still going to be a failure, yeah,

Trace Mayer:

and that's because of your ability to perform economic calculation. This gets back into Mises and like, human action and Rothbard, like, you know, if we're not allocating our resources based on profit and loss, and how are we allocating them, and when we're allocating based on profit and loss, well, what's our unit of account to figure that out, like you look at International Accounting Standards. Like, international accounting standard number one is your presentation currency. Like, are you using as your numeraire? Are you using dollars, euros, yen, or gold ounces? And when you're using gold, for example, like, why do humans produce gold, and it's because we use it to perform economic calculation, sort of like we use steel to build things. We use we produce oil to like, power things. We produce gold to be the measuring stick to perform the economic calculation. And when we do that economic calculation in a voluntary way, in a peaceful way, then both sides feel that they're better off as having engaged in the transaction. Now we looked at El Salvador. How many transactions were going on in El Salvador where these gangs were pointing the gun or the knife at somebody, and the other side didn't feel better off as a result of that, and whether it's happening in that gang type context, or whether it's happening because you got some people behind closed doors just pressing Control P to print more money and confiscate a little bit from everybody else in a surreptitious way, which might even be even more deleterious on your ability to perform Economic Calculation than the gang example is because you don't even necessarily know it's happening To you, and so that that measuring stick is doing this, but you have no idea that it's doing that. At least

Mike Peterson:

with the gangs, you knew how much they were going to require every month. You had a pretty good idea, if

Trace Mayer:

you're if you're cooking pupusas. You had a pretty good idea how much you had to pay these guys to, like, keep them off your back. But, like, you know, you have no idea how much you got to pay the Federal Reserve people, yeah, and they're just doing the thing. Thing behind. And now we're learning from doja, there were like 14 of these magic money printing machines in different agencies. So now everybody had, like, their own little franchise, or just printed as much of this stuff as they wanted, and, and, but where's all that purchasing power coming from? And it's so it's a surreptitious form of theft that's coming from everybody who's using that instrument as a store of value.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, everybody who doesn't have access to the printer is basically paying for right? And

Trace Mayer:

that's where we get to, you know, monetary sovereignty, and the first principle of that is scarcity. And gold, it's scarce because of special atoms, you know, periodic table with Bitcoin, it's special numbers, private keys. And so we've been able to create that digital scarcity like purely with an Internet Protocol with rules that everybody's agreeing to, and then it's used voluntarily, so nobody's been forced to buy any bitcoin. And there are a lot of people who wish they'd bought something, right,

Mike Peterson:

or wish they'd learn how to handle it better.

Trace Mayer:

Yeah. These are all forms of human capital, you know, figuring out how to use a checkbook, figuring out how to make change, like, figuring out how to, like, do all the things like balance a balance your checkbook, pay, pay your credit card statement. These are all forms of human capital, all types of education that we have to develop and use. And it's the same thing with figuring out how to manage your private keys. And, you know, proof of keys day, like withdrawing all your Bitcoin from a third party into your own possession, you know, and it's in that, it's in that act of holding those private keys to the money, holding the utxos yourself in a sovereign way, whether those utxos take the form of a gold coin, or whether those take the form of, like, you know, Bitcoin, utxos, like that. That's, you know, where you get to flex your your muscles of monetary sovereignty is like actually taking possession of those utxos.

Mike Peterson:

So going back to one thing you mentioned, the proof of keys days. How do you think that kind of concept has been impacted by now the ETFs, by the government entities that are supposedly stockpiling Bitcoin. How do you see that, as far as kind of keeping to bitcoins ethos that we actually know who actually has real Bitcoin, that they're not creating paper Bitcoin?

Trace Mayer:

Yeah, I mean, that was part of the reasons I created it like was, hey, let's as individuals like flex our monetary sovereignty rights when we can. And it was modeled after Murray Rothbard anti banking League. He was basically, we need to withdraw our money from the fractional reserve banks on the same day, and maybe we can crash some of them because they're just engaged in fraud, right? Because they have a mismatch in demand deposits and and everything. So, you know, this is a, this is an excellent question. I

Mike Peterson:

mean, the original idea was that you had all these exchanges where people were holding their Bitcoin on the exchanges. You didn't know what kind of games they were playing.

Trace Mayer:

Pretty much every year we've had some type of exchange get decapitated during proof of keys yet quadriga CX, like, you know, other ones, so, so the genesis for this actually came back, came to me like this was sparked by earlier activity in 2008 gather the gold antitrust Action Committee. They had republished one of my articles on the gold ETF, and that particular article, I'd gone through basically, like, line by line at the prospectus, and then, like, they don't have to have any of the physical gold, like, just grab up and and so

Mike Peterson:

they didn't have, they don't have to have gold backing the shares that they issue. Yeah,

Trace Mayer:

it's crazy. I mean, you should go read the prospectus, like on GLD and the spider gold, ETF, really? Oh, I mean, it's like, and then then they, like, found bars with the same serial numbers listed on different like, Vault receipts, like out of the Bank of England. And, I mean, there, there been a lot of shenanigans here and, and so what, what did we see out of this activity. Well, you know, the Chinese and the Russians, they're buying all this physical gold out of London and Switzerland, and then they're melting it down and recasting it with new bars, with new serial numbers. Why? Because they want to sever the those serial numbers that might be getting placed on, like, three or four different like, Vault. Vault receives. They were like, Yeah, we just like, give us the bar we paid for it. We're gonna melt it down, recast it, put a new series. Probably want to also make sure it's actually gold, yeah, yeah. And make sure it's actually gold, because there's the tungsten scare, because it has a similar specific gravity, specific weight as gold. And so, you know, this was the so when we're when we're looking at gatta's work. You know, over the last, oh, it's almost 30 years now, 1997 they get started, and you're looking at the central banks gold price suppression scheme where and Alan Greenspan testified twice before Congress that central banks plural, and these were Western central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantity. Should the price rise? I mean, yeah, it's wild. If you own a lot of something, why run a cartel to keep the price suppressed? And it's because their ability to print what we use as currency is infinitely more valuable than the price of that portfolio asset that they're suppressing the price on. And so okay, they're suppressing the price, but how are they doing it? They're doing it by taking the physical gold that they have and leasing it into the market, primarily through the bullion banks, who then sell it into the market. So the the lady in India, like mounts it into a bangle and takes possession of it, and so they can't get that physical gold back at at anywhere close to those prices that they leased it at. And so, you know, that's, that's what we found with with gatta, is that these central banks have a half to a third of the physical gold they claim to have. And this was as of, like, the mid 2000s you know, 15 years ago. And the situation, who knows what it's like now, and it, and it does look like the Trump administration's like, Hey guys, like in Europe, we want the physical gold. So start flying it all back here. And isn't that, you know, what wouldn't that be? The rational thing for any of these nation states to do is, you know, they want to have the world reserve currency. If they can't have that, then they should have as much physical gold as they can, and probably as much physical Bitcoin, which, you know, made me very curious. Like, why do we have such forward thinking people in El Salvador, in the government, that they're gonna start acquiring this magic internet money? Like, right? Usually, yeah, usually it's not the a team like running the running the governments, but in this case, like, not only are they cleaning up this, this gang mess, but they're also acquiring the sound money as an institution, as as a state institution. So it's wildly interesting to me. So

Mike Peterson:

when did you first hear about El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption? When was it when they made the announcement at

Trace Mayer:

the conference? Yeah, okay, yeah, I just read about it in the press, like everybody

Mike Peterson:

else, yeah. And what was your thought at that time?

Trace Mayer:

Oh, it's fulfilling what I've talked about like in 2014 I did an interview with Max Keiser where I talked about the geopolitical and geo strategic ramifications of bitcoin and how there would probably be some little, small country that would pick it up like a shield and perhaps even use it like a dagger. And sure enough, here we are, and that's exactly what they're doing, right? Because they now they've got this large mark to market gain on their Bitcoin Hoard. They're able to negotiate probably better interest rates because they're more credit worthy. Now, hopefully they can figure out how to get out of the underneath the thumb of the IMF. You know, they probably don't even have that much debt to refinance. I mean, I bet tether could, like, just refinance all their debt if tether actually wanted, yeah, and, and so obviously they have deep pockets. Yeah, well, I mean, it's you're talking about. This is a very small, relatively small GDP, $25 billion GDP. I mean, Wyoming, which is a small US state, smallest by population is like 30 billion GDP. So, you know, it like they, they could, they could re, I mean, they, they really can use Bitcoin to their advantage down here in a huge way. And and when you look at, when you look at our history, like when the Bank of England collapsed in 6096, they put in Isaac Newton as master the mint, and he developed the classical gold standard, and it laid the foundation for this huge explosion of free trade, of production, of capital allocation, like, you know, all these things that were positive benefits to society. So, you know, I see the same, similar type of potential down here in El Salvador, interesting, and they're acting on it, you know. And, and when you and then, you know. So I read about the press release, and I'm like, Well, I wonder what else happened to this country? Well, the Russians were over here, you know, with Communists and Marxist propaganda for like, 50 to 70 years, just all types of a mess. Yeah, right. And and so you have all that mess, and then you have this gang violence mess. And so, you know, you're,

Mike Peterson:

yeah, they were caught in the Cold War, struggled, and they went from that into the gang. You've

Trace Mayer:

hit rock bottom. You're coming out the top. Like a renaissance is beginning to happen. Like, what better foundation to build a renaissance on than sound money, and not the old sound money that's largely been trammeled and otherwise manipulated as much as possible by the central banks of the world. But like a new sound money that's largely held by individuals, you know, a market based money that's kind of crawled out of this primordial ooze, you know, like very exciting things to see happening.

Mike Peterson:

So how do you square what's, what's happening on that? And I'm just curious, for somebody who's who's coming from the outside, who hasn't, kind of lived through the history here, how do you square that with with the reports in the press that this is a dictator, and this is, you know. An oppressive government and those sorts of things. I'm just curious, as a Bitcoin or coming in from the outside, how do you kind of square those things together, or what? What's your perspective on that?

Trace Mayer:

Yeah, I suppose even, even more fundamental than just an outsider would be, you know, I'm very much Ron Paul libertarian. Yeah, you know, I donated to Ron Paul in his 2008 campaign, like the Libertarians and the communists are kind of the only two that are really ideologically anchored into something in the political in the political sphere. And so coming from this, like libertarian viewpoint, if there is a proper role for government, protection of life, is pretty high on what would be an authorized right that you could delegate to someone else right because, because that's the whole concept of limited government, is that individuals are endowed with rights, and then they can, they can delegate those rights to someone else to act on their behalf. And the right to self defense is, you know, huge, like we should all believe in that one and that we can delegate it, yeah, and so, you know, when you have a population that's being terrorized by these like gangs that are, you know, murdering people, murdering babies, like I watched the interview that President bukele did with Tucker Carlson, and just talking about, like the the nature of this lawlessness and this violence and in the spiritual kind of component that President bukele is kind of phrased it in. And we're seeing similar types of things in Mexico, like when you, when you have that type of stuff going on, you know, it, does it bring like, that's where the that's where the rubber meets the road, in terms of libertarian philosophy, right? Because, like, yes, we should have due process. Yes, we should have, you know, individual rights and everything. And at the same time, we need to be protecting against this type of behavior that I think all of us can agree is completely atrocious and has no place in a civilized society. And so how do you go about actually cutting out that cancer, you know, and and that's what's interesting. Like, it President bukele appears to have, like, physically subjugated a realm of hell, like physically subjugated that into the SACOG. No, no,

Mike Peterson:

I mean, and I asked just because having, having lived here, lived through those bad times, raised my kids here, like you felt it here, for the people here, there's no question that he did what was needed to be done, and that it's been a huge release, 92% approval rate, yeah, and,

Trace Mayer:

and, like my, I mean, my my dad was at the Battle of docto, the fiercest, most bloody battle in Vietnam. Both my grandpas were at Omaha Beach and at Utah Beach. You know, both my dad and my grandpa were in communications. So like the Viet Cong knew that the guy at the front of the platoon trip the trip wire, the grenade rolled out at my dad's feet. It was a dud, like the German sniper, like shot the telephone pole that my grandpa was on, stringing the telephone line and like barely missed getting shot in the head. Because of that, when we're in the middle of war, you know, hopefully we can retain some of our principles even in the midst of war. Yeah, and, and that is what's very interesting with President bukele, even his Twitter bio philosopher king, right? Like, it doesn't seem like he wants to have a Jake like a Jacobian revolution here, like the reign of terror in France. No, no. It seems very much that, like this is a principles based, like, holy war going against these guys and and these guys, like, look at what they've done. And it's atrocious behavior. The very worst that, that probably comes out of human beings, when you think, yeah, and

Mike Peterson:

it, I mean, it affected people at all levels. Every part of their life was impacted by this sense of fear and control that things. 3 million

Trace Mayer:

of them left like you couldn't have economic calculation going on, yeah, you know? So there's, you know, you look at it and it's like, man, that's just that is incredibly interesting, courageous and admirable, that someone would actually go up against that. I mean, well, everybody thought

Mike Peterson:

it was impossible. Everybody said there's no way. Other governments have tried it, but nobody came in with the full force and determination that this had to be you had to be all in in order to win it, when

Trace Mayer:

we had to be all in in 1945 Yeah? Like my grandpa had to be all in when they, like, jumped off of those amphibious landing craft and ran into the machine gun fire, yeah? And, I mean, my grandpa was behind the front lines, like, coming to. And he was a high value target up on the telephone line. I mean, you have to have cur, you have to have courage, you have to have admiration. You just have to have just an unbelievable amount of might and willpower to like force your vision for what needs to be in the world against that opposition, right? So, I mean, I look at it, and it's like the gangs were, like, way worse dictators than it seems bukele ever could be accused of being. If you even want to, like, try and go down that road, but if you're trying to go down that road, like, what are you trying to accomplish? Like, you're gonna side with the MS 13 guys. Like, I don't think they have very much public support. No, no, you know. So, so, I mean, I look at it as, like, you know, there are a lot of people that can be critics of people that are in the arena, but what have they actually accomplished? Like, what?

Mike Peterson:

Like, they're very, very easy to be a keyboard warrior. Yeah? Well,

Trace Mayer:

there's, there's a scoreboard, yeah, and there's points on it. And President Bucha, he's put a bunch of points on the scoreboard, a ton of points, points that a lot of people thought were impossible, yeah, to put on the scoreboard?

Mike Peterson:

No. I mean, when it, when it was rolled out, I had my doubts. I'm like, the governments have tried this before. You know, they come in, and then that winds up being worse than ever after. So it, I think most people had doubts that he could actually do it, but he persisted, and it seems that

Trace Mayer:

they proceeded. There was not a lot of collateral damage among civilian populations or whatnot. I mean, look at, look at the terrible atrocities that have happened in like Afghanistan, for example, trying to have our conditions based withdrawal and other things. I mean, it's just, oh yeah. Statecraft is messy, I think, is the, is the, the underlying theme of this is that it can be very messy. And, you know, you you want to hope that the people that are engaged in it are well intentioned and well meaning, and that they're somebody that you can morally feel, that you're kind of delegating some of your inalienable right to, and that they're not going to abuse that delegation, yeah, in some type of an immoral way, you know, Because what? And because, I mean, we look at Korematsu, you know, Supreme Court case about the detention of the Japanese during World War Two, or we look at ex parte Milligan under Lincoln, you know, even the United States, we've, you know, we've, we've brought, we've done, we've done Constitutional and Human Rights questions. I mean Hamdi, the Hamdi case, one of the terrorist cases. Now, you know judge Boasberg going head to head with Trump on this alien enemies act stuff. And you know these are, you know that we can all criticize people in the arena, but like, you know they're putting points on the board, and in some cases, you know, they're, and I do, and I do think that they're well and they're often well intentioned, you know. And I think

Mike Peterson:

it's good to have people call out the other side and the question things that, to some extent, I think we do need people that are willing to to take the other side so we can have these type of conversations.

Trace Mayer:

Well, that's why, you know, that's why our institutions are so strong is because of this freedom of speech and and didn't we see, like over the last few years, how weakened our institutions become when there's censorship and silencing? Definitely, you know, I like

Mike Peterson:

It's and we're still we're seeing it in Europe right now, it just keeps getting worse. We're seeing

Trace Mayer:

it in Europe. The UK has got 11 105% excess death on zero to 11 year old kids like why? Why are kids dying at such a high rate in the UK right now? Did censorship play any role in that? You know, so sunlight is the best disinfectant. That's why the first amendment that's why communications is so critical to the functioning of a free and open society, but just society in general, because when we're not able to share ideas, you know, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna have a hard time figuring out how to do things better than we did before.

Mike Peterson:

No, 100% I'm curious another issue that, sorry to hit you with all these. But I know these are things that you, yeah, impromptu, but I know these are things you've thought deeply about, and so I don't feel like I'm backing you into a corner. You know, another criticism of Bitcoiners of El Salvador has been them buying Bitcoin when the money that they use to buy it is the people's money come from taxation. Lot of it really borrowed from and so just curious as to how, how you think about those things, and then how that would transfer over to the talk about the strategic reserve in the US, you know that talk of them accumulating Bitcoin. Just curious to hear your. How you think through that as a libertarian.

Trace Mayer:

So, so the question is, like, what, like, what administrators of the institution of state are doing with resources that they've acquired somehow?

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, yeah, studio people that the government shouldn't be buying Bitcoin because they shouldn't be holding funds to begin with, that they should just take the, you know, limited amount to execute the duties that they need to execute.

Trace Mayer:

Yeah. So I think this is where you know that the study, like the Austrian School of Economics, one of the things that really attracts me to it is that it talks about how things are not how you wish they'd be, yeah. And, you know, often we look at, you know, the laws of physics, and we might wish that the laws of physics had been different, but the laws of physics are neutral, right? Like, gold is a neutral asset. It don't really care what your intentions are. It doesn't really care what you're planning to do with the thing or not doing with the thing. And the more Bitcoin becomes decentralized and resilient and all these things, the more kind of impervious it becomes to the intentions of the people who are actually holding it, whether for good or bad, you know. So you know, as we're seeing more of this nation state adoption, I think that just shows more of the maturity of Bitcoin, the more of it stepping into its destiny with this seventh network effect of world reserve settlement, currency status, you know, and then it's becoming a neutral instrument to whoever's using it for whatever purpose. So you

Mike Peterson:

don't, you don't see it as good or bad, but just something is inevitable, that it's going to move in that direction, something that's

Trace Mayer:

neutral. Yeah, gold is neutral, like everything is nothing, until you make it something. And so, you know, oh, now we're going to say this is a conflict gold, or this is a conflict diamond, you know. So we're gonna make something and then attach it to the thing, and, like, try to attach this story to the thing that's that story has nothing to do with that thing. You know, we created the story and then attached it. And so, you know that that's how I see a lot of this with Bitcoin, is like, why are we trying to attach like, a story to the thing that doesn't have anything to do with the thing. And now, if nation states want to move in and start acquiring Satoshis, you know, because they're digitally scarce, and it's becoming the selling point, you know, I, I think there's a place for that, and that's what I talked with Max Keiser like, you know, in 2014, about 11 years, about was this like geopolitical and geo strategic ramifications Now, does that align with someone's personal feelings or sentiments? It may, it may not like, does it matter? Not really like, hopefully, right? Because then gold and Bitcoin are bigger than just like, one small segment of humanity that may think and feel a particular way. Well, that makes it part of becoming more decentral just becoming more mature. It's just what it is.

Mike Peterson:

So back to El Salvador, have you? Have you used Bitcoin here? No,

Trace Mayer:

I haven't used any bitcoin here. Come on now. Well, unfortunately, I'm American citizen, and there are a lot of tax ramifications with Bitcoin, and so it does not get nearly the day to day currency usage from me as it probably should.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, fair enough. I know for for us, US citizens, there is that

Unknown:

it's a terrible price we pay.

Mike Peterson:

But, yeah, I never would, I never would have thought that we'd have the day where, you know, people are trying to get away from that passport, but you see more and more Bitcoiners that. Well,

Trace Mayer:

I don't know that it's a good idea to get away from the passport. The passport comes with its privileges. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I you know, but the worldwide

Mike Peterson:

taxation thing is something that's, yeah, yeah.

Trace Mayer:

I mean, it's, it's, and everybody's got to do their own individual calculus on whether you want to, like, keep the passport or not keep the passport. And I understand the sentiment if somebody wants to turn in the passport, but, I mean, I'm 10th generation American. My 10th great grandfather was William Bradford, who came over on the Mayflower. And, I mean, I, my fifth great grandfather was in Washington's army, you know. So there's a legacy, yeah, that I have with, you know, these individual rights and, and we're also at a stage in humanity where, like, you have to lift, where you stand, like, if you're if you're El Salvadorian, it's good for you to be in El Salvador and lift El Salvador. If you're Brazilian, do the same thing. If you're American, do the same thing. I think we're, we're this being able to just run away to, like the new land. I think that that's largely kind of. Uh, becoming a thing of the past, you know, because the world has become so much smaller and more constrained, and through treaties and legal agreements and the passports and everything, and so you really have to figure out for yourself, like, do I want to be an American with a passport? And that means, like, okay, you know, like, it didn't look very good with Obama, right? And it didn't look very good with Biden and, you know, but Mr. Trump's come in and he's trying to do the thing, and, you know, go to go to war, you know, against the deep state and all this stuff. And, like, have a refresh of America, like a new golden age, you know. But if you turned in your passport, okay, you took your jersey off, yeah, yeah, took your jersey off. And so if you took your jersey off, like you're not American anymore, you know, so you want to pardon for something like not paying your taxes, right? Like you took your jersey off, that's, you know, you you weren't part of the team. And I think that's what Elon Musk was saying, is, like, you know, being part of the team comes with its privileges, and so, you know, I think it's, it's an important thing to figure out, like, you know, like, what? How does somebody want to structure their life and everything? But when you give up that passport and you were born with that type of heritage and that legacy, and you decided not to do anything about preserving it like you didn't get in the fight, it's kind of cowardly, yeah, right, and so, you know, and that's one thing I think President Trump, I think everybody can kind of agree, like, President Trump's not a coward. Fight, fight, fight, right. Get shot in the air. You get back up there. I was surreal. That was surreal, yeah, like, so, so he's not a coward. So,

Mike Peterson:

I mean, how many people would do that? Like, I've been shot, and that, that is their reaction is to,

Trace Mayer:

I mean, it's really kind of like, wow, but, but that's, that's American. Everybody loves a winner, like the fastest guy on the track field, like the, you know, that's, that's to be American, yes, to be the winner, right? That's so American, and not to be the coward, you know that. So, so when you're looking at, you know, World War Two, or you're looking at the Constitutional Revolution like holy cow Valley Forge like Man, they were under desperate circumstances, right? Washington's army. I mean, it was, it was perilous Lincoln, you know, the so, you know, it's, it's very much courage, like Courage is, is fundamental to this kind of American DNA, and that's one thing that's great about President bukele, like who their right mind would decide to go try and lock up all these terrible drug cartels. Oh, it's just impossible. Oh, there's just nothing we can do about it. He goes and does it, because that's what Americans do. Yeah, I don't know if you've ever read the art of the deal by Trump, but in there, there's this part where he was doing an interview after he had built the skating rink, and he didn't get to operate at the skating rink. He didn't get to make any profit on the skating rink. He just got to build it. He didn't even get to really make any money doing it at all. And the journalist asked him about this and and like, so why'd you build the skating rink? He said, Well, my daughter wanted to go ice skating, and there wasn't a skating rink, so I built it. That's the American spirit right there. Yeah. You know, if there's something you don't like, yeah, go and change it, right? Like, I mean, that's American and and you have to have courage to do that.

Mike Peterson:

No, that makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. Now even I'm just thinking back to kind of living through the period here with where the gangs really controlled everything, and I would get so frustrated, because as American, that is your like, let's fight back and and to see the kind of overwhelming kind of control that they had. And as an American, I couldn't understand that. I remember sitting I was so like, the injustice of it, like, riled me up so much that I was like, went out on the street with my machete. Was just like, sitting there, my wife's like, What in the world are you doing? She's like, I can't let them think that I'm afraid. Like, and she's like, have any ever heard don't take a knife to a gunfight? I was like, yeah. But I I feel like I somebody has to show that, that we're not living in fear and and I think that is something that that comes innately, like in the the American DNA. And I think, and I, and I think we're seeing that in El Salvador here, that they are, are having now that internal fight and realizing they don't have to be captive to and let people control their lives like that. So

Trace Mayer:

yeah, and. Really the most important, the most important battles are in the battlefield of ideas, because only ideas can overcome other ideas. Yeah, power and force are impotent against the power of ideas. To quote, Muses and so, you know, this is where, like in this battlefield of the ideas, is where we can really have change and affect. You know, minds and hearts and so that, you know, that's exciting to see that happening here in El Salvador. You know, now, all of a sudden, bu Kelly's visage is getting painted on, you know, places in Central and South America. It's like a beacon of hope for the rest of the region. I mean, this is phenomenal. You know, if we can have that instead of shady Che Guevara and communism and Marxist, yeah, like, all the better whenever

Mike Peterson:

I travel conferences, whatever, and you're in an Uber and and speaking Spanish to the person, they're like, I live in El Salvador. And they first thing, they're like, Oh, bukele, we need to bukele here. It's, it's, I mean, it's universal. I don't care if I'm In Miami or if I'm in Argentina, like, that's the reaction. Well,

Trace Mayer:

and we're in a fourth turning, aren't we? Yeah, you know. And it's a big one. We have a lot of seeds that got sown in the previous one, you know, back in in the mid 40s, and so WTO and like Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan, China, Israel, you know, we have a lot to deal with in the sport turning and it's going to take a lot of courage. And I think we're, we're going through a great game in history, whether we want to or not. And so what's, what's going to happen out of this, you know, and we look at the UK, and we look at Europe, and just, do they prize freedom? Do they prize freedom of speech and all these things? Not so much. And yet, we're seeing here in Central and South America, you know, this renaissance coming out of this little, tiny country, and then it's starting to spill over into other countries. And that's a that's a hopeful message, in my opinion. So that's one of the reasons I'm curious with what's going on in El Salvador,

Mike Peterson:

kind of digging in a little bit on the fourth turn. I'm just curious as to, how long do you think we have for this to play out?

Trace Mayer:

Be another 10 years? Another 10 years? Yeah, it'd be 2035 Yeah. Could be another 10 years. Hopefully it doesn't escalate. You know, when you look at kind of the timing of this one versus the last one, we've already had more kind of bloodshed than we did the previous fort turning. The previous fort turning was catastrophic. You know, hundreds of millions, if you count all the, you know, starvation and everything, in addition to just the wars. So, you know, hopefully we don't have have something too crazy, yeah, as a result of this fork turning. But we better strap in. It's getting crazy.

Mike Peterson:

Yeah, I keep, I keep wondering if we're gonna make it through this one. You know, is Bitcoin, the tool that helps us to reset without the violence, or is that just part of the what you have to go through? So I

Trace Mayer:

don't know that we have to go through it, but humanity seems to take the hard road often, and which is unfortunate. Nevertheless, there's Trump is a quite a deal maker. You know, he's shaken stuff up a lot. The big confrontation, I think, is going to be US China. And so he's already bringing that one to to the fore with with these tariffs as we record, I think he slapped 125% tariff on Chinese stuff. So

Mike Peterson:

which I don't understand how the Chinese think that they're gonna win that. I mean, we, we buy so little. I mean, they buy so little from us compared to what we buy that can be replaced to the place. So

Trace Mayer:

yeah, it, yeah, it's, I don't think it's ever quite a good sign when we're when we're seeing trade barriers, or even worse, currency controls and stuff like this start to go up travel restrictions in what we saw, you know, over the last five years with travel restrictions was completely atrocious to like a free and open society and the free movement of capital and labor around where it needs to go. But you know, if anything, we're we very well could see a new golden age for America. You know, if we've got the dollar, and then if America's got the physical gold, and then the Bitcoin, like, what's the fourth search result? Like, nobody knows, nobody cares. And so let the euro, yen, Yuan, all scramble and fight for fourth place. But you know, if America is dominant with those top three, then capital is going to just naturally accumulate and aggregate into the into that area, and with stable coins extending the reach of the dollar, you know. We could, we could we could see, we could see America have a new refresh.

Mike Peterson:

So you don't think it's too positive way.

Trace Mayer:

No, it very well could be the next, the next couple 100 years, of like American kind of dynasty. Yeah. I mean, China's in demographic decline, like Europe can't seem to figure out how to make more kids and yet. I mean, you look at the GDP of Europe versus the US over the past 20 years, like, where's all the innovation and the creativity coming from? So, yeah, I mean and, and America is able to be so self sufficient, you know, it's huge, and its map is just amazing for it.

Mike Peterson:

And so we have so many natural advantages too. Yeah, all the

Trace Mayer:

natural advantages, like, It's America. Warren Buffett, never, never bet against America. Pretty good advice. Well,

Mike Peterson:

I could talk about this all night, but our air conditioners out in our studio here, and I'm sweltering, so we won't keep you too long, but I do want to hear what are you doing these days? You were like, all over on the scene, early days in the Bitcoin space, but you've been kind of quiet the last few years. So I'm just curious to let people know what, yeah, we're doing, what you're working on, what you're excited about, we're

Trace Mayer:

building out this six network effect. So that would be the financialization. So primarily figuring out how to how to financialize Bitcoin, so getting it to get more integrated with our current banking and financial monetary systems. So that's like repurchase agreements, derivatives, puts, calls, futures, stuff of that nature. And so yeah, it's, it's, and it's going well, like Bitcoins, a lot deeper and stronger in its liquidity, and it's in its markets than I've kind of would have expected at this point in time, and it seems to be growing just at a rapid rate. You know, the the prices is going up. But more, more fundamental to that is just the overall market structure is so much deeper and so much more solid than it was. So what's

Mike Peterson:

like once one example of something that's maybe happening behind the scenes that you think people aren't aware of that. You've been kind of surprised by,

Trace Mayer:

well, I mean, you look at just the call option, you know, the amount of volume that in liquidity we have in in the Bitcoin derivatives market, so much more than we had even just one or two years ago. And now, with the ETFs coming on board and and the options markets getting built out around the ETFs, like you know that we don't have nearly this type of on any other coins, like Ethereum would be the next closest, and it's like not even a 10th probably of Bitcoin size in The derivatives market. And so being able to get this type of scope in our derivatives markets with Bitcoin, I think, is just like, it's phenomenal for where we're at. We're only 16 years into this, yeah, right. Like, no markets is like, holy cow. Like, how do I and and? And it's not just selling call options. I mean, we got, there's put, there's put, volatility being sold out there too. And selling puts completes the market, you know, who's going to be that buyer, last resort? And so people are selling, you know, physically settled puts, and, and there's a, there's a gigantic bid under Bitcoin at these levels. So, you know, this is all, this is all very, very exciting, you know. And so building out that six network effect is, is primarily what I've been focused on doing over the last, the last few years. For example, I led the I led the round, and custodia, the bank. And so, you know, we marched up to the Federal Reserve and we're like, Hey, give us our fed master account. And they said no, and so we sued them, and and that's actually up on appeal. And Paul Clement, who, who did the are

Mike Peterson:

they? Is the government still fighting it? Or are they with the new administration? Have they? Well,

Trace Mayer:

we have stand because so he has got standing to sue the Fed. That's kind of a hard thing to get, yeah, to get standing, standing against the Fed. And so, you know, we're, we're kind of, we're making several different arguments there. Paul Clement, who did the chevron case, he's written one of the amicus briefs, and then two other Deputy Solicitor generals, this could actually be a very interesting case for the Trump administration to scope out executive authority relative to the Fed. It's kind of an esoteric area, but if they think about it, I think they come to that conclusion. And but yeah, I mean, are these Federal Reserve Bank presidents? Are they superior officers under the Constitution, or are they inferior officers? You know, are they just carrying out a ministerial duty to. Like, give us a Fed master account, or are they exercising like, superior officer type responsibilities in denying these fed master accounts? And if they're superior officers, well, then why aren't they held to the accountability of superior officers? So it's gonna be kind of, it's definitely makes a good entertainment value. So

Mike Peterson:

is that still proceeding right now?

Trace Mayer:

Oh, yeah, yeah, it's up on appeal right now. Okay, so, and, yeah, I told Caitlin, I'm like, I want to see this thing all the way to US Supreme Court. It's great entertainment value. So we're gonna, we're gonna have fun with these Federal Reserve lawyers, and who knows, like, maybe, maybe we could get subpoena power for some of the facts we need out of some of the various senators that are sympathetic to our cause. But, yeah, I mean, it's fun, like Bitcoiners, like, you know, we, we went from this little magic internet money with, I mean, I first started talking about it at less than a million dollar market cap. Now we're at 1.7 5 trillion. We have some resources now. So we get to go play the game, right? Like we get to play the game. So, you know, kind of like what you're doing down here, there's, you know, you have something that you wanted to, you had a vision. You wanted to actualize something like now us Bitcoiners are getting to actualize the things that we want into the world and kind of be those force agents and those forces have changed. So, you know that that's kind of what we're doing. Some of that stuff building out, you know, the derivatives markets and Bitcoin related stuff. Then I've got some other investments and stuff that we're also building out. So, you know, just stuff we want to actualize. Like, if there's a like, I want to build the solutions. I want to, you know, this is a fourth turning the cements wet, like we can build the new things we can, you know, actualize the new world that we want to see.

Mike Peterson:

Awesome. People want to follow you or get the

Trace Mayer:

Bitcoin knowledge podcast. So bitcoin.kn maybe I'll bring it back. Everybody I talked to is like, you gotta bring that thing back. And so it's like, okay, how

Mike Peterson:

long has it been on hiatus?

Trace Mayer:

Well, I would always go out to the Bitcoin conferences and I'd record like 12 episodes. Yeah, I didn't have a fancy studio like this. The podcasting has come a long way. It's just in the last few years. And so with all the COVID travel restrictions like, it kind of got put on pause, put on the back burner, and then life gets busy. Yeah? Well, that

Mike Peterson:

was part of the reason we started this podcast here, because it was like, we're in this place that we have all these incredible Bitcoiners coming through to our doorstep. Yeah, we don't have to go somewhere else. So, yeah,

Trace Mayer:

yeah. So that's kind of Yeah. So it's, you know, if I bring it back, like, that'd be one place to follow. Other than that, it's, I guess I got Twitter, but I haven't been there either. Like, I guess it's bad for one's mental health, so I'm just gonna not there very often. But anyways, yeah, if the podcast comes back, that'd be,

Mike Peterson:

well, you're welcome to come down here and we'll have the air conditioning working next time. And you use the studio, you come down here and have the people come to you. It was phenomenal

Trace Mayer:

out there on the beach, yeah? Like that feature, yeah? The black sand, like, oh, and the waters, like, sunset tonight, Oh, beautiful. Like, Pina Colada is great food here is phenomenal. Yeah? What's nice? One of the things is really nice about El Salvador is that both the food and the people are real. You know, it's not like LA where the food's more real than the people. You know, we got real people here in El Salvador, so

Mike Peterson:

friendly, willing to help you with anything. They're friendly. Yeah, talk. You can talk about, but not friendly because they want something out of you. They're just friendly because they want to help. They're excited that you're here. They Yeah, genuine, yeah.

Trace Mayer:

So yeah. It's very, I like it. It's great, awesome.

Mike Peterson:

Well, excited to have you come back. You know, they do a couple amazing conferences here every year, so that'd be a good time for you to come back and you get in here in the studio and bang out 12, you know, 12 interviews. So it's, uh, it's always welcome. We always love to have travel, you know, Bitcoiners that are in the area come and you make use of the studio. So awesome. Open invitation. Thanks

Trace Mayer:

so much for the invitation. Sounds like a great thing to take advantage of. Yeah. Appreciate your time. Cool.