First class to faith in Bitcoin | Ricky Zhang
Joining the show is Ricky Zhang, who was previously a successful travel creator, racking up 19 million views on YouTube sharing his experiences jet-setting around the world. He also built Prince of Travel, a business helping people maximise credit card points and miles: unlocking travel, including first class flights, that most would otherwise think unattainable. We speak about Ricky’s transition from CEO and travel creator - and the hedonistic influencer lifestyle that accompanied it - to hosting a daily live show Age of Abundance that while simple in its design, sees him think aloud, attempting to find clarity in the financial and technological shifts we’re living through. The crux of the discussion is Ricky’s newfound faith in Bitcoin and how he sees it as a solution to the current woes in our financial system, where the ability to expand the money supply drives inflation, a higher cost of living and inequality he thinks has become grotesque. The line I keep coming back to: “We don’t see the counterfactual, right? We just see the current state and we don’t see what the cities could look like if we did in fact have sound money, if we did in fact have incentives that pointed in the direction of low time preference and a longer time horizon.” — Ricky Zhang, Orientation, Episode 1 Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (01:18) Leaving Prince of Travel, and the stillness after (05:40) Seeing the earlier self in hindsight (09:33) Activation thresholds: how a transition starts (12:45) Agency, disagreeableness, and who moves first (15:25) What the debt-based system actually is (21:10) The visible signs of a fraying system (28:48) Why Bitcoin, and why not something else (36:23) Neutrality, nodes, and Satoshi's anonymity (42:34) The hard questions: crime, bubbles and Ponzis (48:52) AI, work, and the vanishing junior job (54:06) Polarisation, young people, and the third path (59:00) Where we find meaning (1:07:26) Closing thoughts, and where to find the show