Saifedean Ammous [2:05:00]: I think you’re more likely to be taking the leap in the unknown when you have a little bit of gold in the mattress than when you don’t — I think this is the thing. Like, if you look at the late 19th century — and I discussed this in The Bitcoin Standard — that was arguably the most innovative period in human history. There’s qualitative evidence: look at the world around you today — pretty much everything that we use was invented in that period — the car, the airplane, the telegraph, the telephone, the camera. Pretty much modern life, the late 19th century, the period between 1870–1914, because the whole world was practically on a gold standard, the whole world was using the same money, and the whole world could save in the same currency. That meant that two bicycle shop owning brothers in North Carolina could go and try and fly, even as all the scientific experts in 1903 were confirming that the possibility of flight has been debunked as unscientific. Thomas Edison said, Not in a million years we’re going to be flying. Lord Kelvin also said it’s never going to happen. The New York Times said it’s never going to happen the same month in which the Wright brothers did it, and they continued to deny that it was going to happen, even two years after they did it. But why could they do that? Because they had savings in gold. They had the security with something that you know is going to be there, and then you can take a risk with the stuff that is extra. I have, say, three years expenditures in gold under my mattress, and I know that I could take a risk with everything else because whatever bad things happen with all of my dreams like even flying — think about how insane that is — I still can go back to the three years of gold that I have saved.

https://chowcollection.medium.com/saifedean-ammous-bitcoin-anarchy-and-austrian-economics-lex-fridman-podcast-284-38fa04b12a31