#725: Why Bitcoin Adoption Is Fragmented with Fernando Nikolic

**SPEAKER_1** (0:07)
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:18)
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:29)
I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. You probably should be.

**Marty Bent** (0:36)
Fourth turning vibes. I think that's an apt description of the times we find ourselves in right now.

**Fernando Nikolic** (0:44)
Yeah, it is. And I think the biggest difference between what's happening now compared to previous times that you can compare with is how information is being spread and consumed and because back in a day, right? Like, this is something that I've been thinking about a lot is, a lot of the reasons why these old institutions actually had such a long run before the Internet is because they were leveraging information in the symmetry, right? You can go all the way back to the church and they had like the, they had the only source of truth, right? Like they were saying, I don't know, we know what God wants. And if you want access to God, you got to go through us, right? And then governments had the same thing. They were just basically saying, no, no, no, we know how to control the currency and private banks don't know. You guys definitely don't know, we know. And all these institutions and media, like we know the truth, we are the unbiased ones. You guys need us to get to the truth and et cetera, et cetera. So all these institutions have been able to exist for so long because they were leveraging information and symmetry. And that's before the internet really happened. And right now, when we go through the four turning vibes, it's like, whoa, all these institutions are like crumbling up in front of our faces because everybody has access to free-flowing information and truths. And you see that all that four turning vibes comes from that, I think, from that, like, whoa, I didn't know that you guys were so insane, you know, and when things is transparent. So it's exciting times. I mean, yes, the time that repeats in history, but I think it's unique now because of the internet and the way we consume information.

**Marty Bent** (2:40)
That's what I was going to bring up. I mean, I think I've said it a couple of times on the show, but I think the internet age, whether it's the four turning, the sovereign individual, I think the sovereign individual, probably the most prescient description of what's going on now. But everybody talks about, like, oh, it's like the America is like the Roman Empire of modernity, and it's going to have a similar downfall. And I'm like, the internet is always that variable in the back of my mind. It's like, I think it changes things moving forward in a way that, or yes, there may be some parallels and similarities to civilizations of history. But I think the internet variable changes things moving forward, particularly the speed with which things happen.

**Fernando Nikolic** (3:28)
Yeah, and it's not necessarily like a disruptive thing. I think all these established institutions, they find a way to kind of like metastasize and shape shift. Because I come from, I started my career in the music industry, right? And I was working at Universal Music as a product guy.
And that was in the mid aughts, late aughts, like 2007 ish. And I grew up in Norway, so I was working at Universal Music Norway. And in Sweden, the Pirate Bay guys were like doing their thing. And at that time, they were being sued left and right by like Hollywood lawyers, music industry lawyers and stuff like that. And they were kind of like attacking the Pirate Bay guys in a way that showed how stupid and ignorant they were, because they were like, we got to shut this site down. Thinking like, okay, if we shut this website down, that's going to fix it. So they were like totally, they didn't know how to attack it. And I was in Universal Music, having these conversations with people inside. I remember these conference calls that we had with the London headquarters and stuff. And they were all just focused on destroying, quote unquote, the Pirate Bay instead of like, okay, what about taking a look at this technology and see why is this so successful and how can we potentially leverage it? I tried to say those things like, hey, we should maybe leverage torrenting to release like low bitrate singles or snippets of albums before we release them for real to get people excited. And they were like, no, no, no, no, we got to shut it down completely. And then later on, like I ragequitted the industry as a result of that. But later, I saw that they essentially bend the need to the torrenting technology. And they allowed Spotify to be built. And then Universal and Sony BMG and all the big four record labels, they all had a significant share in the listing of Spotify when they entered the US market. So they essentially metastasized into being the biggest shareholders of Spotify years later just for survival, right? So we're seeing a lot of these industries not necessarily being disrupted, but they're in the moment right now trying to desperately find a way to stay relevant.