Robert Breedlove: 'Just Follow the Energy' on Bitcoin, Not the Price

The self-described freedom maximalist explains why he isn't put off bitcoin by its decline since last November.

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Robert Breedlove: 'Just Follow the Energy' on Bitcoin, Not the Price

Bitcoin is trading under $23,000 as I write this, which means the value of the world's biggest cryptocurrency has lost about $45,000 per coin since last November, when it was at about $68,000.

Though the recent slide in the price of bitcoin has sent many speculators scrambling back to fiat currency, it's done nothing to cool the fervor of Robert Breedlove, a self-proclaimed freedom maximalist whose Twitter feed is filled with encomia for the inflation-proof monetary system that has a supply fixed via the consensus of a decentralized, global software network.

"Unlike the US Constitution," he writes, "#Bitcoin cannot be amended—that's why incorruptible money is a greater instrument of freedom than the US Constitution." "#Bitcoin," he predicts, "will prove to be history's ultimate example of the old adage 'when you can't beat them, join them.'"

The 36-year-old former hedge fund manager and accountant by training is a leading thinker and writer in the bitcoin space, where he publishes The Freedom Analects and hosts The "What is Money?" Show podcast and video series.

I talked with Breedlove at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami this April about why bitcoin is the best hedge against hyperinflation, how Austrian economics informs his worldview, and why he believes bitcoin will inevitably become the basis of the global economy. "No one's figured out how to stop bitcoin, basically meaning turn it off," he says. "And so, if you can't turn it off, that effectively operates as this vortex of incentives. It's just incentivizing people to interact with it, to hold it, to save and build businesses on it."

The months between our conversation and today have not been kind to bitcoin, but Breedlove remains a stalwart defender, tweeting recently that "instead of focusing on price, just follow the energy," and pointing to a chart showing that bitcoin's hash rate—a measure of the total computational power being used on the network and thus a proxy for its health—has gone upward despite the price declines.

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Comments

[Nardz]

LOL

[mad.casual]

Yeah, it's pure clown world.

"Unlike the US Constitution," he writes, "#Bitcoin cannot be amended—that's why incorruptible money is a greater instrument of freedom than the US Constitution."

I feel like Robert DeNiro in Meet The Parents; "My nipples can't be amended Bob. Does that mean the incorruptible power of my nipples is a greater instrument of freedom than the US Constitution?"

[mad.casual]

Sorry, "Meet The Fockers"

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[n00bdragon]

How much Bitcoin do you think Gay Fonzie is holding? The desperation levels must be reaching critical.

[soldiermedic76]

I never quite saw how Bitcoin or other crypto currencies can have any value. Neither a GDP nor specie to back them up, how do the maintain value? Granted the fed and our government haven't been exactly responsible with our currency, but at least they have the power of the US economy and taxation to back them. I just finished reading a book on the French-Indian/7 years war, and it discussed fiat colonial currency and it's devaluation at the end of the war and how it lead directly to depression in the colonies despite increased trade as a result of the gains of the war. And the colonies at least had an economy and England, to back the value of their currency they created from nothing. Reading about it and blockchains seems mostly to be gibberish and again there is no real foundation for the currency.

[Get To Da Chippah]

Because value is subjective. Lots of people say Bitcoin is worthless, and lots of people were buying it at $68k per coin.

[SRG]

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[Overt]

"how do the maintain value?"

What is the value of a shell? What is the value of a lump of shiny rock? What is the value of 40 proof liquor?

All these things have had far greater value than their actual usefulness outside of currency. Even gold is largely useless to people struggling to put food on the table. Art is next to useless, but because it is rare, people spend enormous sums of money on it as a store of value.

In the frontier days, whisky was used as currency. It's use as currency didn't happen because it would make you drunk- that is its intrinsic usefulness wasn't its selling point.

Whisky was a useful currency because of what it could do as a currency. It represented excess productivity. You could choose to spend your time growing excess grain that would then be distilled, or you could instead spend your time with animal husbandry or blacksmithing or other specializations. But if you chose growing grain, whisky was a way to turn your excess productivity (a grain surplus) into a durable, divisible, malleable and portable store of value.

Bitcoin isn't terribly different. Bitcoin is useful because it is malleable, divisible, durable, portable, and scarce. We have excess energy and it is sometimes spent to secure a ledger of accounts. Every bitcoin was created because someone had excess productivity that they could have spent on anything, and they chose to spend it on securing the blockchain. This tradeoff is what makes it valuable. Someone had to say, "No I am not going to spend my surplus energy on web hosting, I am going to spend it validating and extending this ledger of accounts". That keeps the currency tethered to the productive abilities of the economy it represents.

Currency is an abstraction. That is its purpose. As a result, value is not always straight forward. But Bitcoin checks many of the same boxes as any other item used as currency in the past.

[Nardz]

What's the difference between bitcoin and Tom Brady's NFT?

[soldiermedic76]

Except most other currencies in the past we created either by a trade guild, or a government, both of which guaranteed, in theory, the value of the currency. Whiskey was a way for over the hill planters to market corn to distant ports, it had value because it could be sold to traders further away or used for barter. It was not so much a currency as it was a marketable commodity that was useful in barter. I have 40 acres in the Appalachians, I grow corn with my wife and six kids, but I'm the main employer. I distill that corn, trade it to another farmer or trader for other goods I need, he then ships it down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans and sells it for hard currency, some of which he then uses to buy more trade goods, which he then ships back up the river to do it all over again. The process can take months, even years (especially in the early days when it was mainly conducted by man powered keel boats). The value of the whiskey invariably gained value as it traveled away from the point of origin. But in the end the value was based on currency backed by the US government. Interesting enough, this trade structure also is how we learned to charcoal filter whiskey. The whiskey was stored in oak or other wood casks. After they were emptied the insides were burned to clean them and the casks reused. Eventually the traders noticed the whiskey stored in used casks for the journey was mellower and tasted better, from the charcoal in the barrels. So, they began storing and aging the whiskey in burned casks, giving us bourbon and rye whiskey we know today. Fresh whiskey is clear, like all distilled alcohols and pretty harsh. The over the hill whiskey trade gave us modern whiskey distilling. Really, before this rum was far more popular in the US, especially east of the Appalachians. The New England colonies were among the world's leading rum distillers. Made with molasses imported from French and English sugar colonies in the Caribbean. The American Revolution, Napoleonic wars and Haitian Revolt drastically reduced our supply of molasses about the same time as the Ohio country was being settled and thus whiskey replaced rum as our liquor of choice.

[soldiermedic76]

A similar thing happened with tea and coffee. The stamp act, American Revolution, Napoleonic wars and War of 1812 (which really could be classed as part of the Napoleonic wars) drastically reduced our access to tea, and we instead started importing coffee from the coffee plantations established in the Caribbean. Thus coffee became far more popular than tea in the US.

[mad.casual]

Unlike soldiermedic, I'm not so much bugged by the conundrum of value as I am the outright lies and overt oxymorons that members of the BTC/Crypto community between actively endorse and passively propagate. It's pretty much the same shell game that wuflu panickers were using to simultaneously sell increased mask usage, increased vaccine rates, increased death rates 'with' COVID, etc., etc., etc. Just substitute "Crypto!" for "Science!", fudge the definitions of 'decentralized', 'M0/M1/M2/M3', and 'anonymous' the way we fudged the definition of 'vaccine', 'with/of', and 'PCR Positive', and... step 4: Profit!

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Follow the energy of the Biden administration, not the policies!

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

The energy arguably sucks even worse than the policies!

[SRG]

He's either a pump-and-dumper who got in early and wants to get out at a nice high price, or he bought high and is in the rationalisation stage.

[Boognish]

This guy is very unconvincing. "Building narratives" with little substantive arguments beyond "digital gold". Disappointed in Nick's conciliatory tone in this softball interview.

[Seemoreglass]

Like Boognish, I was also disappointed in Nick not checking Breedlove on some of his bs, especially his theories on how inflation works..but, most of the energy emitting from the bitcoin camp is feigned/forced enthusiasm with the sweaty assuredness of a mlm.

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[Alex]

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