Honest Money LIVE — Episode 001

all right what is up everybody bobby gray here founder of texan coin founder of american open currency standard and a whole bunch of other things joining you live at a very special time it's tuesday twelve o'clock noon in texas i think it's still the twenty second they tell me um This is a really big program for us today.

And we're in front of a lot of new people.

Normally, we talk with our community on Tuesdays, give them updates about what's happening in the crypto space.

Obviously, a lot has been happening in the world these days in that regard.

But this is a special episode today.

I've been wanting to kick off what we call Honest Money Live for a very long time now.

And I've been waiting because there's only one way to appropriately kick off a podcast series as important and as big as this.

There's only one guest that could possibly join us for the very first episode of Honest Money Live that would make this thing matter in any way whatsoever.

And they say you're never supposed to meet your heroes.

I've met mine before. a lot and he'll be joining us in just the next few minutes here today but first i want to introduce you to my new friend daniel mcadams of the ron paul institute daniel hello welcome good afternoon how are you today hello bobby how are you great to see you I'm also very good, Ben, but I don't know if you can tell how excited I am.

I've got this energy inside of me right now that has forced me to even dress up and put on a collared shirt.

This is big for me.

Normally, I show up in pajamas.

I was going to put a jacket on, and I said, no, that's out of character for me.

I can't go that far.

That would be untrue.

And we want to keep things real. real we want to keep things honest we call this you know proof of no edit because it's live and uh and i'll and i'll give people the quick backstory on kind of what has brought us to this moment here today Our friend Maddie, who's the producer of this program, introduced me quite a long time ago, maybe a year and a half, two years ago, to StreamYard.

And StreamYard is a platform that gives you the ability to go live.

And we didn't do it.

We brushed it off.

We were busy with lots of other things.

And I said, someday we'll check it out.

Well, we did it a couple months ago.

And the reach that you get out of going live is incredible. exponentially bigger and better than just posting a clip or you know a link to a video or something like that on on the social platforms and we said this is really powerful how come more people aren't using this platform this is amazing and so we need to do more live stuff well who's like crazy enough or brave enough or like you know straightforward enough to join us with this kind of program?

We don't know.

And so I said, man, wouldn't it be great if we could create kind of a safe space, a forum, an opportunity where people wanted to join us, they wanted to go live, and they want to live stream it to their communities as well?

I mean, that's the most important part of this, because we want to reach people.

We want to reach them real time.

We want to do it without having to worry too much about what we're saying, but we want to share our stories, our messages, and we want to get it out everywhere.

I said, I'm going to call my friend Daniel down there at the Ron Paul Institute, and I'm going to ask him if he would be willing to co-host this program with me.

Quite bravely, you said.

Yes.

Let's do it.

I said, look, there's an important message that we need to share with everyone.

I got this message in two thousand and seven.

It lit a fire in my heart from Dr.

Ron Paul.

And, you know, I've been doing this thing for a long time now.

I've been having a lot of fun with it.

But I said to you, I said, look, we've got to reach young people.

I don't know what it was that happened to me back in two thousand and seven when when I got bit by this bug.

But the young people are hanging out on X and they're talking crypto.

They're talking NFTs.

They're talking digital collectibles.

This is.

A topic that's, you know, I guess really... most well received by the younger generations and it's difficult for me as well because i come from that same world of gold and silver i mean dr paul taught me that honest money was real i could hold it in my hand it was tangible it was physical and it couldn't be inflated into existence and so you know i i embraced that and i was born at a really great time in where i grew up with tech But I still understand riding my bicycle around and drinking out of the garden hose and being out of the house all day and coming home for dinner.

And so I stand right there on that edge of both worlds, the old fashioned world of a time when things weren't so high tech and fast paced and digital, but this new world that we live in today where money is becoming increasingly digitized.

And so I said, we got to tell this story to young people.

We have to get young people engaged with the idea of honest money.

They may not be thinking about it.

They might be talking about futures and perps and options and all kinds of fun, newfangled stuff, things that I don't even understand.

But we got to get them hooked on honest money.

Tell me, if you would, a little bit about how you came to learn about honest money, the importance of, you know, equal exchange of value, and maybe even, you know, the backstory real quick with your relationship with Dr.

Paul.

Well, thanks, Bobby.

You know, I came about it in a roundabout way.

I mean, I'm a foreign policy guy.

I did foreign policy and civil liberties for Dr.

Paul on Capitol Hill in Congress for about twelve years when I went to work for him in two thousand and one right after nine eleven, by the way.

Talk about hitting the ground running when you're doing civil liberties.

Dr.

Paul was a relatively obscure Republican congressman from Texas who I discovered.

I spent a decade living and working in Budapest, Hungary in the nineties.

And I learned of and I had been traveling around a lot in the war zones in the Balkans, doing a lot of war reporting and things of that nature.

And I knew the the U.S. law of war was coming.

I knew it was going to be terrible.

And I discovered this neat thing called the Internet that was just in its infancy.

And they were running articles by this guy, Ron Paul.

And he was not only was he did he see that the war was going to be a disaster, but he was a Republican.

I was not really political, but I knew I wasn't a lefty, but I knew that this war sucks and this is going to suck.

So a long roundabout way, I came back.

I had my first child in the year of two thousand.

And lo and behold, through some great piece of luck, I went to work for Ron Paul as a senior advisor on foreign policy and civil liberties right after nine eleven.

So it was great.

And, you know, he was so twenty five years.

You're at twenty five years now.

Twenty five year, man.

Yeah.

Doesn't it go by in a blink?

It does.

It can't for sure.

But he was still a relatively obscure congressman.

And that's what we knew him like.

He was just, he was our guy.

He was just Ron.

He was just a guy.

He was just Dr.

No.

Dr.

No.

He voted no.

Exactly.

Right.

And then in two thousand and seven came and he just blew up.

And here we are sitting in the office on Capitol Hill and we're watching our guy, Dr.

No, become Dr.

Hell yeah.

And it was so it was amazing to watch.

I mean, from a distance where we were, it was just incredible to see.

And we were thrilled because, as you say, that message went out loud and clear, most of all to young people. who would drag their parents into our office and say, listen to what this man is saying about things like money and about foreign policy and et cetera.

So it was an amazing generational shift at that point.

What an unlikely pairing for a bunch of kids to be admiring and tuned in and like devoutly paying attention to, I don't know, that was twenty years ago, I guess.

So he was seventy one. you know this is uh this is really an incredible thing but he was saying the right stuff at the right time and you know i think i'm going to spend more time in a future episode looking back at really what the catalyst was for for that happening in in in i mean this is when so many people woke up like what was happening back then that we were all so ready to receive it.

I mean, if you had told me that stuff five years prior, I would not have listened.

I was busy doing kid stuff.

But all of a sudden, in two thousand and six, two thousand seven, two thousand eight comes around and everyone's ready to hear this message of peace and prosperity.

What do you think it was that was the turning point for people to finally be ready to listen to this obscure Dr.

No from Texas?

Well, I think a lot of it was the housing bubble.

You know, we'd already been through the dot com bubble.

It caught people unawares.

But in, you know, in oh seven and oh eight, you know, starting, you know, six really basically, you know, the entire the entirety of our financial system was exposed as being fake.

The whole thing is fake.

All the money is fake.

The Fed is fake.

Everything is fake except for the taxes that working Americans have to pay either directly or indirectly through inflation.

So I think that was a kind of a perfect storm for Dr.

Paul's message to take off.

Now, he warned, don't bail out these people.

Nothing is too big to fail.

Don't do any of this stuff.

And of course, they did the opposite.

And you know what hit the fan.

So I think that was an important catalyst.

Yeah.

But that's a sad thought to think that it's pain that brought about that awareness and created the momentum.

Do you think that we've seen something in recent times that is similar or at the same size and scale as the housing bubble was that got us all tuned in in the first place?

Has anything happened Since then, that would have caused the next generation to start paying attention the way that we did back in two thousand and seven.

Well, I think COVID was a big wake up call for people because just like the housing bubble exposed the financial system is being completely fake.

What happened during COVID, it exposed the state as being an instrument of tyranny rather than a facilitator of liberty.

And I think that was a massive wake up call for a lot of young people at the time.

Well, you're absolutely right.

And it's interesting now that we're getting more information about that deception today, which is always good.

It would be better if we had that good quality information five, six, seven years ago, but better late than never.

So this... podcast, this message is designed to connect those dots.

I mean, look, I would prefer if people would continue to wake up and pay attention and get involved without having that kind of crisis catalyst show up to kind of tap us on the head and tell us it's time.

But that's the problem that we have with inflation.

This slow-moving erosion of the value of our dollar over the last hundred and thirteen years happens so slowly and incrementally that we almost don't even notice it happening.

I mean, it's accelerating now, but if we could have more people paying attention without some sort of financial disaster being the catalyst for that, that would really be preferred.

The question ultimately then comes down to what happens next?

We've been talking about the failure of the dollar or the ending of the Fed for a very long time.

What is it that we get to look forward to when that thing finally comes to an end?

And wouldn't it be great if we had like, the expert of all experts the the original greatest of all time to weigh in and share maybe his ideas and opinions about what we have to look forward to as we embrace this exciting and strange future um i want to welcome to the show our very first guest um a personal hero.

I'm going to try not to fanboy like too much as we as we get into bringing our guest on it's going to be tough for me.

So I'm going to just I'm just going to skip it and say Dr.

Paul, welcome.

Happy birthday again.

And I want to thank you so very, very much for joining us today on this program.

It would be an understatement to say That what you did for me by inviting me to testify in US Congress back in two thousand and twelve, if you remember back to those days, that was the highlight of my career.

It's the most important thing that has happened in my career.

It is one of the most important and monumental moments of my life.

Getting married was really great.

Having a baby or two was pretty awesome as well.

But being invited to speak in front of you And the US House Financial Services Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee about alternative currencies and the roadmap to monetary freedom was by far one of the greatest moments of my life.

And I want to thank you again here in front of Daniel and the world for giving me that opportunity.

It has been such an important thing for me.

And I owe it all to you.

And so thank you and welcome to the very first episode of the Honest Money Live podcast.

We could not have done it without you.

That is a very nice introduction.

Let me tell you.

So I am very pleased to be on your program.

And I hope we have a good set off here to get this program going.

And I hope you have a very good time doing it.

And it lasts long because I do know one thing.

You know the issues.

And that's very important.

Because we keep talking about all the noise that goes around in Washington.

And, you know, if you speak the truth, a lot of times you get into trouble.

And, you know, I had a little bit of that.

But you take an example like Thomas Massey.

It's almost, you know, just upside down.

The better you are, the more you believe in your oath of office, the more likely it is that you'll be blackballed.

So that's the way the system usually works.

But the motivations have to be looked at.

Why do they do that?

Why don't they encourage it?

Why don't they ever, why don't the people ask?

You guys took a oath of office.

Why do you do this?

Why do you vote that way?

But, you know, and that has to do with the media.

We need more people like you in the media and having programs and get people on and ask them, why do you do this?

Even though we complain about that, Daniel knows that we worked very hard when we were in Washington, not only to have our friends on and get exposure, but we really worked hard and we considered it a victory when we could talk to decent people who disagreed with us.

And I like, as a matter of fact, that's my favorite interview.

It's, you know, people who think they'll come in and they're going to be, you know, completely different.

But I think it's a challenge.

So I also like the kind that are really friendly and being nice about it and having fun.

That's one of my rules.

You have fun.

You have to be decent.

But our coalition building is something else.

You know, this idea that we should come together and sacrifice some beliefs so that you can have a unified party.

I don't believe in that.

I think it's having people get together.

And I agree on something without dealing with the disagreement.

And for that reason, we had about, I don't know, Daniel might be able to give us an estimate, ten, fifteen good people who I always thought, you know, a Republican conservative said, I don't want him.

He's a progressive.

We won't talk to him.

Well, we looked at it.

If we knew, we liked the progressives, if they were honest with their belief.

Because we could invite them into our foreign policy.

We could invite them into personal liberty, all of these things.

And that to me was a challenge and turned out to be a lot of fun.

And we met a lot of nice people that are supposed to be in the opposition party.

Look at what's going on today.

It's hard to build coalitions up there, I'll tell you. you get into big trouble so what they do is they don't instead of coalition they agree all to go home and don't spend too much time exposing themselves to the public and i was getting daniel today i said do they still get paid for all those days they don't even bother going out there so But I do believe that studying and understanding the issues and meeting other people and trying to get them excited about it, it's really challenging.

But I think it's very enjoyable, too.

You brought people together like I don't think has ever happened before in the political spectrum.

Old people, young people, people from all sides of the aisles.

Do you ever stop to think about what it is about your message that that resonated so well across the board?

I mean, obviously you must have an idea or two about why people get so excited when you speak.

Well, I do think about it, but I don't draw, you know, all of a sudden write it down and give people instructions, A, B, C, D.

But I think in human relations, the most important thing that happens, whether you're dealing with personal matters, family life or whatever, is to be honest.

And I think that's the most important.

Today, politics are run by dishonesty.

You can't believe anybody, really, in many ways.

So I think honesty is so well received.

And I think that is the reason When I went to, when I was campaigning internationally, we'd have large crowds, and some of them were on liberal campuses, but I was just marveling, and I would ask that question to myself, I wonder why they're here, and it to me was, it was different, because one time a young man came up to me and said, He said, you know why I like you is that you're so optimistic.

I said, I just talked to you for forty-five minutes, telling you how bad things were, and they're coming to get you.

We were joking a little bit.

But my rule is, and since you know me, at the end, I always want to have an optimistic answer to the problem because identification with honesty sets the stage for finding an answer and we're far removed in uh washington dc but that's why if anybody was interested in participating educational activity whether it's teaching or politics or whatever Telling the truth is very appealing and very noticeable.

And one time, you know, the young man was appraising me for, you know, my position on the Constitution.

I said, you know, this was right after the debate.

I said, well, you know, as soon as I gave that statement that you liked, you know, the next guy talked.

And he said the same thing.

He said he was a constitutionalist and all that.

I said, why aren't you talking to him?

He says, nobody believes him.

And that did set with me, you know, sincerity and belief and honesty is something and dishonesty.

You can't hide it.

So that's one good thing about human nature and humanity is that it's available.

If you want to find it, if you look for it, you'll find the truth.

You're absolutely right.

And I think that that's why we are doing this podcast live, because it's the most honest way to do it.

We don't have an opportunity to hit the pause button and rewind and go back and try it again if we make a mistake.

This is us, we're real people.

We have real ideas, we wanna share them.

And this live format to me is the best and the only way to do it because people know that it's real.

And we live in a world today where everything is fake.

I mean, it's getting almost impossible to discern the difference between real and AI generated.

I listened to a podcast that was completely run by AI, two AI bots talking to each other.

And so for us to get together and share just a little bit of our time to have a real conversation live, I think is one way that we can build credibility. and a good foundation for relationship with the listeners.

And if we start there, then the possibilities could be endless.

You mentioned optimism a moment ago.

I heard a really great quote that says, with gratitude, optimism is sustainable.

And so even though we have to talk about and embrace and discuss some of these dark things that are terrible, and many of them outside of our control, we can at least still be grateful for the many bountiful things that we have in our lives.

And through that, we can be optimistic about the future, especially if we're willing to roll up our sleeves and contribute to that bright future as well.

That's right.

And by parting words, most of the time with a speech is have fun doing it.

You know, as we get together, sincere, you have a sense of satisfaction.

And one thing I discovered on the campaign, the national campaigns, was that I did shift an attitude or respect in one way for young people.

Because young people are only young people and they're bad people and all they do are drugs and, you know, all that nonsense.

And a bunch of them do.

Some of them do.

But I bet you the majority of the parents in this country don't. are very loving and caring about their kids.

The big problem that we have is that the indoctrination in government schools, that's why I'm interested in homeschooling, the indoctrination in the schools, this makes it really tough on the parents and the kids.

But in these campaigns, even though I could be on a very liberal campus, I always come back thinking that young people have open minds.

Their minds aren't cluttered.

And I keep thinking, and I would kid, and maybe this is not fair, but I would say, I think I'd rather talk to these young people.

Their minds seem to be open.

I think the businessman that's been around for a long time and knows how to work the government, I said, that doesn't work because they're set in their way.

That doesn't mean we don't give up because I had.

No.

Leonard Reed taught me that if you present the truth, people will finally come your way.

You don't have to shake them up and bang on them.

I said, he said, if you work hard and you have a presentation, they will eventually start asking you a question.

I said, you know what?

He was right.

I had two congressmen come up to me and ask me, why are you voting this way?

And they really move their positions over to a different place.

So that to me, you convert or convince one, two, three, four, five.

And then somebody like you, Bobby, Along the way, you had your ideas.

But all you can think, now you're doing something very special.

You're reaching out.

And the one thing you're going to lose track of, let me guarantee you, you'll never know how many people you've influenced.

And you influenced ten people today.

And what are those ten people going to do?

And I consider them, in my mind, my definition of the remnant.

There's a remnant out there that know and honor the truth.

And you don't know how many there are.

But I really have a lot of optimism by having talked to a lot of young people and the chamber of commerce people are only looking for the for the next bill the funding bill or how much money are they going to get for their roads or something well come on they're they're busy i mean who has time these days to sit down and crack open a book on austrian economics like who's the who's got that kind of time we're we're we're just spending all that we have right now to keep treading water so that we don't sink.

I mean, people are working two jobs.

Moms and dads that want to be involved with the education of their children are having to make a decision between that and a career that's putting food on the table.

And I look at that as being the reason why we're having this conversation today, because their goals, their dreams, Their futures, their savings have been inflated out from under them, and they don't even know how or who or why that's happened.

What do you say to those people that want to open up their ears and their minds but just don't have the time?

Well, they have to be open.

They have to get interested.

And of course, I think what you're doing now and what you've done throughout your life, I'm sure you have passed this message around to somebody.

Your kids have been influenced and all this.

So I think the main thing and the other lesson that Leonard Reed taught me, he says, don't worry about numbers.

You don't work on the assumption that everything is the dictatorship of the majority.

Right now, I think we do.

You have all the mobs getting together, all the special interests.

As long as they get to the fifty-one percent, they're going to get their largesse and whatever they're wanting from the government.

So I think that is something that's very, very important.

But I think they're out there and it has been taught biblically that there's always a remnant that will maintain the truth.

And I think from my estimation, I think the remnant is growing.

And I'd like to think personally, a personal thought and impression is I wonder if I've ever had anybody helped somebody to join the remnant.

That doesn't mean that we have the truth because the truth is Total truth, perfect truth is unknowable.

But I'll tell you what, direction is important.

If you're moving in one direction and you're working for truth, that is the challenge to the people who have arrived at a different position because they believe truth doesn't exist.

They are truly, to use a word, nihilists, nihilism.

What do you guys do on talking about truth?

And, well, we follow the Constitution.

Well, that reminds me of the time I... brought up the subject of, why don't we vote on this war that you're going to send to?

Why don't we vote for it?

And the chair of the committee said, oh, we don't want to bother with that part of the Constitution anymore.

That's nihilistic.

We can pick and choose, I guess.

So I think if you look at the positive, matter of fact, I do it for selfish reasons.

Because if you looked at all the problems and didn't have an understanding and didn't have an alternative, that could depress you.

I don't have enough time to be depressed with the issue.

And I'm not going to change them.

And if I change one here, I don't have to worry about whether he converted a hundred or two people.

If I did do a very good job, that means I have to work harder on presenting something I truly believe in.

And that's one thing is people can't, can't tell me or imply that I'm making it up because I may be wrong at times, but I'm very sincere because I really believe that peace and liberty is an answer to all the problems that we have.

And I think that's what all life is about.

You know, the challenge, if we didn't have that, it wouldn't be much easier. humanity and that so i think uh the the issue of good and evil bad and good at all i think it's very important i think that's the motivation and i think everybody's going to be forced to pick a side but uh there's a lot of people will uh pick the side of this you know of uh of not trying to figure out what the truth is because, oh, somebody will cheat there, so I have to cheat.

They have all kinds of excuses.

But I think that plus enjoying the issue because I'll come away today enjoying being with you.

Believe me, there'll be things I'll pick up from that.

And you seem to be a happy guy. so i'm a pretty happy guy a long time ago that if i was not having fun while i was fighting for freedom then i was doing it all wrong and that spoke to me and you know the other thing was spending spreading the message of peace and prosperity but my way of doing that is with honest money For me, for a very long time, that was gold and silver and copper.

Gold was always the money of kings, silver was the money of the gentlemen, copper was the money of the marketplace, and debt was the money of slaves.

And I decided right after we met, right after you lit that fire in my heart, that I was going to be the guy that was going to do something about the money.

And I was successful with it.

Successful enough, of course, to get invited to speak in front of your domestic monetary policy subcommittee.

But I had a lot of fun doing it.

I traveled the country.

I brought my children along for the experience.

I mean, it was a great time.

And I'm sure we connected with a lot of remnants and outsiders during that journey as well.

And we had just an absolute blast doing it.

You got to have a great time while you're fighting for freedom or you're doing it all wrong.

See, I had a similar experience that you talk about.

The timing is a little bit different because I was interested early.

I got exposed to Austrian economics early and I was reading intensively along with my medical career and that the predictors, Mises and Hayek and the rest, Senholz and Rothbard, They said this thing, this auditory system can't work.

This Threatened Woods will go and it won't be because they're going to vote it.

It's unfoxorable, which is we could apply that today.

So it was going to go.

And that's why I jumped out of my chair on August fifteenth at eight o'clock when Nixon gave a fifteen minute speech.

And I had the same type of thought that you just said that you want it. you wanted to learn more and pass out that message and that is when i was really busy and it was a hobby to read about economics i said you know what i i'm going to work harder at spreading this message because I was really excited about it.

And I more or less dedicated, it was a personal desire on my part, but I said, you know, I'm not that good a speaker and this sort of thing.

I made all kinds of excuses, but I was totally surprised that, you know, Because I was conditioned early on when I thought I got to spread this message.

I would be happy if I got fifteen or twenty people to a college campus, people where they had libertarians.

And I said, so that's where I was.

I said, I'm going to do it.

And then I met Leonard Reed and he really encouraged me a lot.

So I spent a lot of time.

That to me was, in a way, and you expressed it very well, because it's so big it isn't like uh you know i want to oh well Pick out some other thing.

I want to work on farm policy or something.

I want to dedicate my life.

Everybody eats food.

So we do that.

But dealing with the monetary part, you deal with every single thing.

It's the exchange.

The exchange you see.

We exchange personal things, attitudes, and friendship.

But in economics, the biggest issue is the monetary issue.

Because whether you have a gold coin in your pocket or not, monetary policy speaks.

And I think there's been some good taste moving along in that issue as well.

Well, we talk about all these different branches of evil.

And for every thousand that are hacking at a branch, there's one Dr.

Paul that's striking at the root.

And that's the money.

That's the money policy.

That's the dishonest money that dishonest people really embrace.

They love it.

Honest money is tough.

But the last time you and I met, I don't know if you remember, we were in your office.

I said to Daniel, I said, Daniel, I need an opportunity to try to win Dr.

Paul over to this exciting realm of cryptocurrency.

I gave you a physical coin, I put it in your hand and I said, this is a bridge. between two worlds, this world of gold and silver and physical things that we can hold and lock up in our safe, and this new digital realm that's very difficult to understand, very difficult to comprehend, but is getting the young people engaged and excited today.

I want to have an opportunity to try to win you over to what all these young people are excited about with bitcoin and cryptocurrency and and i will say that i don't think that i was entirely successful with that task i don't think i won you over but i do think i educated you a little bit about that topic and What I tried to explain to you then, and I want to share with our community that's listening here today, is that young people aren't buying gold and silver the same way we did.

My daughter will never own a safe.

She's not going to have this physical thing.

Everything that she has that matters to her is going to exist on her phone in her hand.

And so as I take this message forward and I try to ignite that fire for honest money in the hearts and the minds of young people today, I've got to speak to them in the language that they understand.

And that brings us into this strange world of cryptocurrency.

I would love to hear your honest, unedited, raw thoughts on crypto in general.

Do you have any...

I have to be careful.

I have to modify my answers because I know where your position is.

I don't want to offend you.

I want to have an honest conversation.

That's the absolute requirement.

I want to hear it all.

All we've got is the truth.

Let's hear it any way you like.

Our philosophy solves this problem totally and completely. because you might have an opinion on crypto and you might think it's best for you and your kids to do it this way.

But you have to have some rules.

The one rules are that everything has to be done by free choice.

If you have a government, look at the government hasn't given us a free choice on our gold.

They took the gold away and we weren't even allowed to own it.

So you have to have freedom of choice and your answers have to be very voluntary.

You can't force it on other people.

And I add one more thing, that if you're trying to promote such and such issue, it has to follow the principles of natural law.

Because natural law has been the oldest principle that the human being has ever had to sort out truth and fiction, and the lion, and the natural law.

And I say, if you have a system that's slightly different than my system, but we agree on a natural law, that uh we're not a lot a lot we're not allowed to lie d deal or kill and we can keep our own opinions and then how do you how do you change my mind by persuasion volunteerism there are answers to come together so i think that uh that solves all the problems uh but uh a lot of people what's this natural what's this you know like when i went to congress they said why are you always talking about the Federal Reserve?

So now the people are talking about, why are you always interested in natural law?

Because I think it's very important, like in spiritual things, I think that's a major issue in monetary issues, you know, just being honest.

And I think freedom of choice is just so important.

Volunteerism.

I mean, what kind of a world would we have If everybody accepted just that principle, you know, that you're responsible for your own life, you can't steal.

But the one thing that I was impressed with is the conclusion of this freedom.

And the college kids were like it.

I said, it doesn't tell you how to do your life as you're old and all this.

And they like that.

And then I said, one thing is, if you have freedom of choice to pick and choose, the responsibility is on you.

And then I said, but if you go out and...

You wouldn't have income taxes and all that stuff.

That's good.

So if you did that and you have a problem with your business, you cannot crawl to the government to send a congressman down the street to steal from him.

The natural law is good.

People say that's true.

But they think you're talking about, you know, the fraud, the fraud.

Food stamp program.

They stole a couple hundred thousand dollars, you know, that kind of fraud.

No, it's it's it's and it's a whole thing of the laws that are very important.

And most people accept that.

Most governments accept that.

Oh, no, you're not a lot of murder people.

All that. but they don't let you do that.

You can't do that.

You have to apply the rule to the government.

Just think of what would happen if we enforced that law today or the principle and they understood it, that the government could lie, could cheat, could steal, it couldn't kill.

What kind of world would that be?

It would be peaceful.

Well, here's the problem, Dr.

Paul.

I think if I heard you correctly, I think that you left the door wide open for us to continue to explore the idea of cryptocurrency as honest money.

Because you said we have to do it voluntarily.

Nobody can force us.

We can't force each other.

We can't lie.

We can't cheat.

We can't steal.

And we can't kill our way into prosperity.

And if we stick to those rules, then we can have a conversation.

See, I don't have a lot of trust in our government.

Maybe, and I'm not trying to win you over, but maybe it could be digital.

I have one more question for you before I say thank you.

I'm forty-six years old, Dr.

Paul.

You're forty-five years older than I am.

Oh, that's scary.

If you could be my age right now, would you...

Take on this challenge of spreading the message of peace and prosperity through honest money if you are forty five right now.

Well, since I started when I was in grade school because I was learning to save pennies and nickels and learn about silver, I couldn't leave it.

I tried to improve my ability to spread the message and meeting and talking with you again.

I said, that's what encourages me.

So I think it'll remain that way.

I can't because it is so important.

It's a measurement of value is what it is.

And you can't measure value because then you would believe in tariffs and wage and price controls, regulations, etc.

Picking winners and losers.

So the whole thing.

So I would say that I would look at it.

It's probably I was at that age.

I don't know when I really.

I did figure out how old I was in nineteen seventy one.

I don't know.

But anyway, I can't remember when I didn't have some.

I'm part of that philosophy, even as a young person, because I was one of five boys.

We were all born into depression.

And then we remember, well, it had a lot of influence on the friends and neighbors and church members that went off to war, World War II, Korea War, Vietnam especially.

But they were brave. building my information that I had.

But I still ended up saying, measurement is good.

Just like we want to measure the truth, there's a natural law, which is pretty universal if we want to be.

So if you want to measure truth, this is a job and a half.

Once again, it looks like an overwhelming job.

So I was pleasantly surprised because, quite frankly, if somebody would have come along, say, in the late sixties, even though I was interested, if somebody said, Ron, what I predict is that within a few years, you're going to have large crowds come together.

I said, forget it.

It ain't going to happen.

So sometimes there's controls out there that aren't totally in your, put you in charge.

Other events, events, you know, are able to affect the way we end up doing things.

Here's my challenge.

My challenge is that I don't want my life's work to be foolish or even thought of as being impossible.

I want to believe that. that I can make a difference by spreading peace and prosperity with honest money.

If you look me in the eye right now, you tell me, don't bother.

It can't be done.

Give up today.

Just go get a job somewhere and plug yourself back in. then that would be an interesting thought.

But I don't wanna go forward thinking that this is stupid or impossible.

I wanna believe that I can have honest money in my lifetime.

Well, I think what you're doing and you're all well on your way.

I think you're doing a great job, but there's going to be a lot of unknowns.

Who knows?

No, I wouldn't put it on you.

I was going to say, who knows?

You might be president someday.

I wouldn't want to wish that on you.

You want to hear a funny story?

Here's a quick funny story.

I tell people the first time I met you was in Las Vegas at Freedom Fest in two thousand and nine.

But that's not true.

I actually met you at a book signing event. in Austin, Texas, a year before.

And I'm sure you don't remember.

I said, Dr.

Paul, don't fix everything in government.

Leave something for me to do when I become president.

Oh, boy.

Sounds to me like you're having a good time.

I'm having a great time.

And I was hoping to ask you to consider the idea of passing the torch to me.

When you're ready to pass that torch of honest money, I want to throw my hat into the ring.

And I want you to consider that maybe I'm the right person to hand that torch off to.

And if you're not willing to do that, I want you to at least tell me that I need to continue to make it my work to spread the message of peace and prosperity with honest money.

Well, it's available to you now, and I don't think I have enough clout to dictate who's to come.

You do, Dr.

Paul.

You really do.

I think you're well on your way.

You'll do things differently than I will.

In the mornings, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do.

Some days I like to try to jot things down, but it's difficult because I have trouble with these computers and all.

But I do a lot of writing and all.

But I don't know what I'm going to do when I get a spare moment, but I'm going to do something.

Well, Dr.

Paul, I want to say thank you so much.

I love you.

I love your family.

Please send my love to your wife.

I am so grateful for what you've done for me and my family.

We will never forget it.

It will always mean the absolute world to us.

And I will endeavor... to continue every day to work hard for keeping the message uh that you brought to me all those years ago alive and well and um and i'll work diligently for it every single day and i want to say thank you again for joining us and helping us kick off this episode um i am forever grateful thank you for having me on today Well, Daniel, we got a little bit of housekeeping to do to wrap up our show.

We're trying to stick to an hour-long format.

I can talk, and I'm sure you can talk forever about anything and everything.

But we want to be respectful of people's time.

It's the lunch hour in Texas.

And so we want to keep it to a minimum here.

But you and I made a deal.

And in the spirit of transparency and honesty and being upfront with our audience and community, I want to share with them the basics of the deal and let them know that I reached out to you and I said, look, I want to put this podcast together.

But I know that asking people and inviting them to come into this unknown format live is uncomfortable.

I want you to co-host this thing with me.

I want you to help create kind of this environment of trust where people say, OK, well, I know this guy and I know that guy, and that seemed to be OK.

And so let's try it out.

We'll see what happens.

But I offered to make a donation. to the Ron Paul Institute for each episode of this podcast that you helped me put together of ten thousand dollars.

And the goal is to do an episode of the podcast every week.

Wednesday is the preferred day.

I don't know if noon continues to be a good time for you.

It's all right for me right now because I'm in Gulf time at the moment trying to get out of the Middle East before the fireworks start going off again.

So wish me luck on that one.

But I wanted to...

Do that right now.

It's one thing to say that you're going to do it.

It's another thing to actually do it.

And I want to ask the people that are tuned in to participate with me as well.

This is the same thing, if you remember, that I shared last year at Dr.

Paul's ninetieth birthday barbecue.

I said, look, this is our opportunity to fund the next chapters of freedom and liberty.

And I reached out to you, and I said, hey, we've got this Nectar Pay thing.

It's a non-custodial crypto merchant service thing where you don't have to worry about fees.

You don't have to worry about getting deplatformed or having funds frozen.

It goes directly into your wallet.

And it's called Nectar Pay.

It's nectar-pay.com.

And you set it up.

We did a demonstration of it at your event last week in Washington, DC, which went off without a hitch, which was great.

But I want to encourage the people that are tuned in right now to scan the QR code that's on the screen and to make a donation along with us.

We can't do it by ourselves.

You guys are doing the real work over there at the Ron Paul Institute.

You need funds to make that happen.

And we want to make that contribution to make it a little easier for you to do the work that's so important.

And so we've got a screen here.

I don't know if our producer, Matty, has it up on the screen.

He's got it right there.

But I told you I'd make a ten thousand dollar donation.

And so if you could plug in the ten thousand dollar number there and then I'm going to hit the donate button. and that'll bring up the invoice and payment screen.

Let's do USDC on EVM there, correct.

And this payment option is just for me folks.

So if you want to join while you're watching, please scan the QR code in the bottom right, because that one will give you a donation screen as well.

So I'm gonna pull up this, I'm gonna scan it with my camera.

I'm gonna pop in the amount and I'm gonna hit the send button And in mere moments, the screen should refresh as soon as it's done here on my wallet.

I've got a confirmation number over here.

I did USDC on base.

What do you make of this crypto stuff, Daniel?

It's fascinating.

I mean, one of the reasons one of the things that fascinated me when you invited me to get involved in this is simply because I love learning and I don't know as much about it as I as I would like to know.

Younger generation does know better.

So I hope to learn a lot just from spending time with you and the guests that we're going to have on the show.

And, you know, hey, it's a good day when you learn something.

I'll tell you that.

It's unstoppable money.

There is nobody standing between me and the Ron Paul Institute.

I had the ability to make the donation directly.

It got there.

It's on that wallet.

I gave you a coin.

I said, don't lose this coin.

Please keep it safe.

That is your wallet.

There's no custodian.

There's no one in the middle that can stand between you and that value.

And so it's weird, it's different, but we're trying to teach people about cryptocurrency because I personally believe that it is the most honest money that our civilization has ever seen.

I know that's a big thing. thing to ask people to accept i don't expect to do it in the last five minutes of our first episode but like you said as we have more time to have this conversation with other people as well get their thoughts and their input then uh then hopefully we can um you know start to flesh out this idea and come to a conclusion that maybe crypto just might be the best money that planet Earth has ever seen.

All right, so I think that's it for our first episode.

What do you think?

Comments, questions, feedback?

How did we do?

Look forward to hearing from people.

I must say, first of all, thank you very much for your generous donation.

We appreciate it. very much and it will enable us to do everything we've talked about uh which is bring people together from very diverse backgrounds uh the other thing when we were in dr paul's office was fascinating by the way because there's a lot of back and forth and give and take in that conversation but the one thing that you absolutely both agreed on is that we have to find a way to keep the government out of this and i think right you very very clearly articulated to both of us that is your goal with what you're doing and that certainly resonated with both of us Well, that's a big thing and that's a big part of our conversation because I started Texitcoin because I saw the foundation that was built by the Bitcoin community.

And then I watched when the banks showed up in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen and really hijacked that conversation.

And I'm sure you know how that feels.

When Dr.

Paul built this revolution, this love-olution that was happening, and then all of a sudden it was the tea party, and it was this thing, and the buses started showing up, and we're like, who are the guys in the suits?

What are they doing here?

We got backpacks and flip-flops, man.

This is grassroots.

And you know what it feels like when a real, honest, decentralized, from the bottom, the ground up movement gets hijacked.

It's a painful thing to watch.

I watched it happen with crypto.

And I said, man, you know, crypto doesn't really have... a voice.

It doesn't have somebody at the helm.

There's no Satoshi Nakamoto to steer the ship back into this realm of decentralized peer-to-peer honest money, this technology, this financial technology that gives us the ability to take the banks out of the money and currency equation.

Let the banks do the banking stuff.

They don't need to be involved with currency. let the people do that if we've got some high-tech thing that makes money fast and voluntary and and digital and borderless like sounds great to me but crypto needs that voice and i want to be that voice for crypto it may take you some time and all the other people listening in to understand why this matters, why it's so important, what's really at stake.

But I want to have a conversation with those people and I want to win them over to my way of thinking.

And I'm going to be patient and I'm going to be diligent and I'm going to do it with a smile on my face because if you can't have fun while you're fighting for freedom, then you're doing it all wrong.

Okay, so the last couple minutes of our proposed format, and we're down to the wire here, we wanna do a giveaway.

And to kick off the first episode, why don't we do like a thousand dollar USDC giveaway, but there's a catch.

And the catch is that we're only going to do the giveaway on X.

And the reason for that is because we're trying to boost our way up the algorithms and get the social media overlords to pay attention and to share this message far and wide.

And so we want to disconnect right now all the channels besides X.

And if you want to participate in the thousand dollar USDC giveaway, and we'll do a giveaway at the end of every one of these segments, then you got to join us exclusively on X.

I don't know how to do it.

It was Maddie's idea.

Our producer and trusted friend, Maddie, I don't know what you got to do to make that happen, but start disconnecting channels and we will continue this conversation exclusively on X.

And I don't know, we'll give people thirty seconds or so to make it over there.

So if you want to participate, Maddie, you want to jump in here for a second and tell us how this is done?

Because I have no idea.

There he is.

Matty, what's happening?

Welcome.

We can't hear you.

You're very muted right now.

Hey there.

I'm Matty Allen, the humble producer of this amazing show here.

And I'm so excited for us to be doing this giveaway.

And people are now going to be switching over and watching exclusively on the Texacoin X.

I'm going to finish removing the stream from the other stream. seven or eight locations that we were streaming from.

And here in just a moment.

So the way this will work is you have to comment on X and we're now collecting comments.

You type HML, which stands for honest money live.

Go ahead and enter that into the comments on X.

HML will enter you for the one thousand dollar giveaway.

Yeah, love it.

Okay, so we'll give people a couple seconds to catch up and do that.

Daniel, is there anything else we need to talk about before we say goodbye to you?

And thank you very much for sharing your hour with us today.

No, it's been great.

It's been fantastic.

I look forward to the new episodes.

I mean, I'm part of the show and I appreciate that, but I'm also- You are part of the show now.

This is our show.

This is great.

I think it's going to be fantastic.

I think people are going to be very interested.

The message is going to go far and wide, man, because we've got guests lining up already that have millions of followers on YouTube, millions of followers on X and other places.

Let's talk about that real quick.

Matty, did we confirm that we're going live tomorrow with Gary Franchi of Next News Network, or is that unconfirmed at the moment?

We are confirmed.

We're confirmed.

Join us tomorrow at noon with Gary Franchi.

Gary and I go all the way back to the very beginning of this story.

We met in two thousand and seven as I was getting started with the Liberty Dollar.

And as I was tuning in to watch America, Freedom to Fascism.

If you remember that film, Daniel, did you catch that one back in the day?

I was in the film.

I thought, wasn't it?

Were you really?

I thought so.

No, but it was a great film.

I know Dr.

Ball had a big role in it.

That was when I first encountered Dr.

Paul myself, and I'll never forget it.

So we're going to be joined by Gary tomorrow.

And then we've got Farouk from Decrypt.

Is it magazine or media?

Decrypt.

And also from, I can't remember the name of his other program. rug radio.

I think that's lined up for the following Wednesday, Wednesday the thirtieth.

And so we're trying to bounce this conversation back and forth between libertarianism and free market economics and also the crypto community.

So we want to talk to people from one side of the spectrum to the other, get their input on the future of money and see if we can get that fire lit in other hearts as well.

Okay, let's do it.

HML is the comment that you need to put into the TexitcoinX live feed.

Is that right?

That's right.

I'm seeing a lot of them now.

Time is up.

HML, let's draw and find out who the lucky winner of the thousand USDC is.

Litecoin strategy.

Please DM the Texitcoin Twitter now.

You have one hour to DM us so we can get your information and get your price to you.

Daniel, I want to say thank you very much for trusting me and joining me and Dr.

Paul today to kick off Honest Money Live.

Thank you so much.

And we will see you again very soon.

Thank you, Bobby.

Look forward to it.

All right.

You guys have a great day.