In this episode of Bitcoin Spaces Live hosted by Bitcoin Magazine, hosts Christian Keroles to discuss his mission of giving every resident of Cool Valley $1,000 in Bitcoin.
I’m so excited to be here in a room full of hopefully, a bunch of amazing Bitcoiners.
It’s really exciting, and I want to say thank you to the Bitcoin community, and so many people, like thousands and thousands of people who have reached out.
It just seemed to make a lot of sense, considering the circumstances of the city that I took over and the direction that I’d like to see this city go.
P, feel free to jump in here, too, when you have a question.
JS: Once again, for me to get to that point, I can only show gratitude for the members of the Bitcoin community, who were able to educate me to this point.
P and Lamar Wilson and Bitcoin Tina, and just so many incredible people who are so much smarter than me have taken the time to either educate me directly, or even just to let me listen in on their conversations.
It’s imperative that I spend the rest of my life of doing what I can to facilitate this in the world.
I went from the private sector, entrepreneurial world to really trying to shape my career in a way that could allow me to have a positive impact on mostly, animals.
The circumstances that brought me back to Cool Valley, this is where I grew up, but I hadn’t lived here for some time, as I’ve been traveling and doing my thing.
I couldn’t think of a way that I could help do most of the things that needed to be done, unless I got into a situation where I could make some of these calls.
What are the first few things that you did? Because you did a lot of things that are out of the box beyond just this project to airdrop Bitcoin.
Also, my colleagues on the board Alderman, I just think they’re absolutely horrified by some of these ideas that I believe are just so necessary.
I think, the war on drugs is bullshit, a waste of time, waste of money and at its very worst, I see it as a pure evil way to imprison people for using drugs.
There was just this initial shock that, what the fuck is this kid doing? They see me as a kid.
I think some of them were waiting for someone younger to come into office and express some of their ideas, because we’ve been run by old folks for so long and it hasn’t been going the way we want it to.
Unfortunately, I’d say the most common thing that I hear is why are you giving people Bitcoin, when you could give them US dollars? I know that’s just an education thing.
It seems like, that’s not a valid criticism, because we all know if you give someone cash right now, or Bitcoin in five years, we all know what’s going to be more valuable.
I’m very small government and I just don’t like the idea of government getting too involved in people’s lives.
His name is eluding me right now, but he said something like, “Is it really our job to drag the unwashed masses, kicking and screaming into the modern era? I’m afraid that it is.” I definitely don’t agree with the premise of forcing anybody to do anything.
My OG Clubhouse people really care about – or feel I might be doing the right thing.
It means a lot to me to have you guys’ respect and approval, because like I said, so many of y’all taught me, and you’re still smarter than me, especially in this space.
I did say that if it ever came down to me, making sure everyone in my town gets this Bitcoin, or me being mayor, then I’ll just give them the Bitcoin and retire, because I don’t care about being mayor right now, as much as I care about improving their lives.
It’s a really foolish criticism, but it’s something that I hear a lot as well.
I certainly feel this moral imperative to help as many people get involved and understand Bitcoin as rapidly as possible, because cash and so many of the other assets that are available to people and that are presented as what it takes to be a successful human, that is say, investing in them are ultimately just melting ice cubes.
When we look at poverty in the United States, a lot of people are working, right? Most people in the United States have some income producing thing, whether it’s a job, an asset, or a mixture of both.
They feel like, “Oh, maybe I should buy stocks, or something.” Some people don’t even buy stocks, because they feel they don’t have enough money to do that.
That’s what it feels like, when they set aside some money and just leave it there and think when they come back in five years, that’s the same amount of money and it just isn’t, and it’s horrifying.
I was in Miami for the Human Rights Foundation’s event titled the Oslo Freedom Forum Miami, and introducing it on day one where the mayors of Miami Beach and the mayors of Miami.
It’s one of the things that attracts me to being the mayor of a small town of between 12 and 1,500 people, depending on who fills out the census.
If I have to go through the government, I really only have to convince four people and two of those people have to make a decision.
Y’all are going to have to tell me about Miami coin, but he still seems a really cool, open-minded guy.
Then under it, it said, “Mayor says crypto is a revolution, or it gives them whatever.” You’re like, “I said, Bitcoin.” I love that.
We have so many amazing journalists in this country who actually work so hard to get the facts and facts check their facts, and then report those facts.
I just wanted to make that correction, because it’s just one small word, but it changes the meaning of what I was saying, CK.
When it comes to the hope for society to rise above some of the past evils we’ve been forced to deal with, that conversation needs to be had about Bitcoin.
I think, that’s a big part of what we’re trying to do with Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin 2022 is, we’re not necessarily having a conversation about the things.
I like to remind them about a lot of just misconceptions and ill-informed misinformation that typically gets shared, just casually, as if it is fact.
This is a little side note, but I was just talking to my friend, Sam Altman, who is not super popular in our space right now, but it just so happens that we went to the same high school.
I guess, do you think it’s possible for Bitcoin to shed crypto from its public perception? Just because I feel like, it’s something that to some degrees, I think that it’s the stress end effect for Bitcoin, like altcoins are.
I think, as more people get heavily into Bitcoin among that section of the population, that’s always where we’re going to be able to make that distinction, where it’s going to make the most sense.
What is going on, plebs? We’re going to take a break from our programming to tell you about the resurrection of our print magazine, starting with the El Salvador issue.
I’m talking four issues a year that contain exclusive interviews and profiles with leading Bitcoiners, actionable insights on the state of the market, breaking news and cultural trends, along with powerful photos and artwork from the best artists in the world.
I think that from a regulatory perspective and from other perspectives as well, I think that entities that would otherwise be trying and ultimately failing to influence Bitcoin more, instead direct their energies into the rest of the crypto space.
The thing that causes me existential pain, so to speak is that, thinking of the people who are investing in some of the more the worst projects and basically, just me knowing that they’re going to probably get rugged.
Again, I think, the Bitcoin Magazine, Swan, and many other companies, CoinChi, Rodolfo’s in the audience, area huge part of this movement.
I’d love to hear from anyone that you guys think is cool, because if I can get up here and talk the whole time, I’m for sure going to be the dumbest person in the room by the end of it.
It’s been really fun to watch your progression over the course of the year, getting to this point and glad to have you on team Bitcoin.
It’s like, heck, where do you draw the line when you’re giving people advice on stay away from shitcoins? Because when you think of some of the top 10 coins in end of 2017, early 2018, they were Cardano was a top four coin, went down 99.8%.
Still, whenever I get on the phone with my parents, I make fun of them and say, “You lend and people pay you in that shitcoin USD?” They just laugh, and I say, “But seriously.
You’re the kind of politician that the world needs, because you came into Black Bitcoin Billionaire, you had the idea, you talked it out, we counsel.
The fact, even if you are a small town mayor, the fact that you care for your people like that and want to give them value for their future, bro, is amazing.
I don’t know if you were here earlier in the room, but I keep thinking that I owe so much to you and to all the people who taught me, because y’all are the reason in many ways, why I’m not out here looking stupid, like shilling something dumb.
LW: We all in this together, man.
What can you tell us about those conversations? I’m sure Lamar can give color to sitting in on counsel per se.
The very beginning, the first time I’ve mentioned to anyone that I wanted to do this outside of my residents, who I’ve told them this since the campaign.
I member one night on Clubhouse, 50 or 60 people just offered to give some money, or to do anything they could to help.
This guy who I’m going to keep anonymous, because he prefers it that way, offered to match anything that I raised, up to a million dollars.
It’s thousands and thousands of people via phone, text, email, coming to city hall, sending me mail on Twitter and LinkedIn, and people want to give money.
Now that so many people do care about us, I think it would be really cool if this project does become a bigger thing within our community.
Bill DM’d me, saying that he’s from a neighboring town and has come to Cool Valley and checked it out.
I’ve talked to a bunch of people about this project, but we’ve got a miner, we’ve got some Raspberry Pis, I’ve got some guys in the mining industry that are willing to help get hardware out to us for the purpose of education programs to help young people and the citizens learn how to refurbish, repair, set up sustainable mining operations.
My issue here is that the educational process with my board and the people that run the school, they think if I open up the Bitcoin network, it’s going to be like Ghostbusters.
The idea I had of you’re open is, we can get together and come over to town hall and hook up to the Internet there, and get some Bitcoin gatherings together, maybe get some – I have a couple of seniors doing a senior project, but just to collaborate and just keep pushing what you’re doing here to surrounding areas.
Then, I was just driving over to town to meet somebody and I was like, “I’m just going to drop in.” I drove up and Alderman, Don Johnson, and one of the other guys was sitting there.
Thank you for offering to help teach the people over here some of those skills.
It sounds, Clubhouse presented a unique opportunity to both talk to experts, as well as broadcast these kinds of conversations and ideas.
Once again, it felt like divine providence for me, for someone like me, because I’m already an accidental mayor.
It absolutely changed the entire narrative and made this project huge in a way that I never would have done myself.
I certainly never would have been able to do this for myself without the help of the internet and these public platforms, because I’m just too shy.
Because what it allows you all to do is to empower not only yourselves, but also empower your people with something that’s not stealing their time, and something that’s not stealing their actual precious work that they put in.
Now seeing these small communities and small countries being the ones that are taking on Bitcoin right now, because there’s going to come a time that everybody winds up capitulating.
I was just going to respond a little bit what Lamar said, because the way he said about the systems and people trying to have power over you is so true.
I’d rather just meditate and hopefully, give people some spiritual guidance so that we’re free to make our own choices.
CoK: They’re like that, because without real money, which we finally have for the first time in human history, the only way to secure your wealth is to secure power.
The majority of that is actually just trying to secure just wealth and means and preserve it and make sure that other people can’t take it away.
A lot of these bad choices are survival mechanisms. As Bitcoin releases them from that prison of having to do these things to survive, we’ll start to see the better side of human nature.
BW: I’ll just speak real quick from an educational perspective, because this hierarchical centralized power that Cory speaks to and Lamar is speaking to, it’s baked into all aspects of our lives, unfortunately.
It’s cool to see young minds get excited, because unfortunately, as we know, traditional education is very linear and it’s set up to get people ready to be controlled in a centralized, authoritative system, if you want to call it that.
SM: Hey, guys.
My dream project would be to have some solar setup here that facilitates even a small part of Bitcoin mining, even though, it probably wouldn’t be much.
I do know that about 15 minutes north of me, maybe even 10 minutes north of me, our big electric company out here Ameren does have a mining facility.
Bill, it sounds like you’re interested in mining and are familiar with the local area.
That aspect of it is still very new to me, and I’m continuing my education so that hopefully, I can really understand the mining aspect of it more.
There’s actually a gentleman, I think, in the audience who we were on a call talking about bio waste and agricultural waste and ways that we might be able to use some of the machines they have to create energy, create energy power plants based on that, and in combination with potential solar.
The idea in my mind is creating a prototype that could eventually be a residential, a power supply that’s working off at solar, a combination of solar and biofuel, or bio waste and put an asinine in the basement of every house in the town, something along those lines.
With some of these miners that are doing this actively in Texas and Wyoming, there’s a lot of expertise out there to help figure out how to make this work.
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They break down in easy divestible way what is happening on-chain, in the derivatives markets and in the greater macro backdrop context for Bitcoin.
As you look into the actual science and data that we have, it’s very clear that Bitcoin is actually good for the environment.
Ultimately at the end of this, we will look back and say that Bitcoin was likely the biggest accelerant for humanity in adopting permanent renewable energy, because the system of mining incentivizes that.
We’ve had these technologies, like solar and wind and flared gas capturing for a long time, but it’s not always financially efficient for any individual, or group to go capture that energy and use it.
We can get into that conversation, too, with these legacy systems. That’s a long conversation, but a lot of people don’t want to dive into the petrodollar.
I’m curious if you’ve had any conversations with administrators there about implementing some Bitcoin education, or mining education programs for the students there.
Our goal was to educate all the students about Bitcoin and actually, to give them some Bitcoin as well.
Then the principal got freaked out, because she was afraid of COVID, even though we were outside and everyone had masks and all this stuff.
I will say the good thing in Missouri is, Missouri makes it very easy to have a charter school, or to homeschool your kids, or to create a new school if you want to.
How do you parse your duties as a mayor and your advocacy for Bitcoin and getting Bitcoin into the hands of your citizens now? It seems to me that a lot of people who come into the Bitcoin space take up the Bitcoin agenda of spreading adoption as one of their primary focuses.
I’m doing that, because I believe government is so inefficient and giving large amounts of money to government, even the local government could just be a death sentence to that money.
Me wishing for them to be financially well off, that’s almost more coming from my soul, from my spirit than it’s coming from my job responsibility as mayor.
You’re such a good spokesperson for Bitcoin, that I just wondered if you try to segregate these kinds of identities at all, or if you’re just taken with this one task of spreading Bitcoin and helping your citizens that way.
You’re right, it is a lot to handle; dealing with my personal life and dealing with being a mayor and then dealing with all the other things that go on.
Thank you for just being so progressive in your philosophy and leaning in on something that you really believe in, being unapologetic about all the things that Bitcoin can be to so many people.
Just a little earlier, you were speaking about the – as an environmentalist, you were speaking about the energy aspect in how the FUD around how Bitcoin will eat up the world’s energy and so forth.
If there were someone who is full of energy FUD, but sincerely wants to learn and will put in the work, I would tell them to one, follow Bitcoin Magazine, subscribe to Bitcoin Magazine.
For an even deeper dive, I personally really enjoyed the paper that Cash App put out in partnership with I believe, it was Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment fund.
It’s a shame to hear that that event was not totally expanded, that you were doing out there at Cool Valley Tech, the school that you mentioned.
I know that Bitcoin fits perfectly into your objectives that you want to do as far as writing the past wrongs and enabling citizens to have freedom via Bitcoin.
This is why it was so important for me to set up the trust, the trust fund aspect of it, where they are going to receive their asset after five years.
We do have a relatively low median income, but a lot of that too, is we have a lot of older people that live here and they’re retired.
We have a lot of people here who are just, they’re retired, so they’re not earning as much as they were, but they have a nest egg.
Who knows? With all the support we’re getting, maybe I can come back and give them more than a $1,000.
CK: I feel like, if you’re in Bitcoin for four to five years, if the cycles continue to play out how we’ve seen them in the past, there’s no way that you haven’t at least 10, if not more.
Those talents leave to go to bigger cities for job opportunities.
I think that our town overall, with this one particular small town, it’s really important to understand that we’re probably a bit of an anomaly when it comes to most statistics.
I hope that it attracts a few people as well, who are hoping to better their lives and see that as an opportunity to do so.
I have toyed with the idea that I want people to do one social good in order to access their Bitcoin, but I don’t want to put that in there anymore, because I don’t want to exclude a single person.
At some point, all of our writings and findings will be made public and I will for sure keep everybody in the loop as to when we’re going to do that.
I want to give you an opportunity to just chime in before we close it out.
NVK: Hey, I was just really enjoying a bit of a fresh air from a politician.
Thank you so much for the knowledge over the months, man, and for your work, all the stuff you do, like being a pioneer in this space.
Jason, why don’t you close it out? Why don’t you just give the spiel one last time, what you’re doing as the mayor and close out with any last asks for the audience, for the Bitcoin Magazine.
My goal in my term here is to push freedom forward by empowering the residents who live here to take control over their own lives.
I just hope to facilitate that here and hopefully, play a small part in facilitating this technology of Bitcoin around the world.
I think, I’m going to open this up to more people, to more organizations, to more people in the community.
Thanks for doing what you’re doing, sticking your neck out, being a pioneer here and being an awesome accidental mayor for Bitcoin.
I’m grateful that you exposed me to this community, because I’m meeting people that are just so inspiring.
You can use Strike and pretty much buy in Bitcoin with your credit card.
Everyone else on stage, thank you so much for providing your insights as well.