The Biggest Halving Party in Bitcoin History w/ Sean Harris

Halving Report Episode with Sean Harris:

Welcome back to another fire episode of the Halving Report! With your boy, Brad Mines, today we're chopping it up with the legend Sean Harris. From dominating the basketball courts to crushing it in the Bitcoin space, Sean's here to drop some serious knowledge on us.

00:00 Introduction and Background
02:16 Basketball Career and Bitcoin Journey
05:06 Organizing the Halving Party in El Salvador
10:12 The Significance of the Bitcoin Halving
23:13 Thoughts on the Recent Election in El Salvador

**Meet the Man, Sean Harris:**
Sean ain't just any former hoop star; he's a Bitcoin baller now. After realizing the game was rigged with endless fiat printing, Sean jumped ship to Bitcoin - the only game where the rules don't change and the cap stays solid at 21 million.

**The Main Event - The Halving Party:**
Sean's not just here to talk; he's here to hype up the biggest bash of the Bitcoin era - the Halving Party down in El Salvador. This ain't just any party; it's a celebration of Bitcoin's heart, the Halving, where the game gets tighter and the stakes get higher.

**Catch the Wave with Sean and The Meme Factory:**
- Hit up Sean on the Twitter streets: [@BigSeanHarris](https://twitter.com/BigSeanHarris)
- Roll with The Meme Factory crew: [@MemeFactoryTM](https://twitter.com/MemeFactoryTM)
- Peep Sean's shots on IG: [@shootersean30](https://instagram.com/shootersean30) and get the party deets at [@halvingpartymf](https://instagram.com/halvingpartymf)

**Don't Sleep on This:**
Mark your calendars and get ready to turn up for the Halving. It's more than just a party; it's a movement. Check out all the vibes and info at [Bitcoin Halving Party](https://bitcoinhalvingparty.com/). This is where history's made, and you don't wanna miss out.

🚀 SUBSCRIBE for Insightful Analysis 🚀

Connect with Halving Report 🎧

• Apple Podcasts: Listen on Apple Podcasts
• Spotify: Listen on Spotify
• YouTube: Subscribe on YouTube
• Instagram: Follow on Instagram
• TikTok: Follow on TikTok
• Facebook: Like on Facebook
• Buzzsprout: Listen on Buzzsprout
• Twitter: Follow on Twitter

🙏🌟 Thank you for tuning in to the Halving Report! Want to keep abreast of the latest in the Bitcoin world? 🚀 Then SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button NOW! 🔥

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I started buying Bitcoin back in 2019 once I realized that the US government was gonna print money forever.

Speaker 2: 0:09

What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Having Report. I'm your host, brad Mines. Today we welcome Sean Harris to the show. Thanks for doing this tonight, sean.

Speaker 1: 0:18

Thank you, brad. I'm excited, and the Having Report is a sweet name for podcasts, so kudos.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Yeah, man, I appreciate you saying that. I put a lot of thought into it and that's what I went with. Yeah, so this is for a little context. This is our first time talking. I heard you're the guy to talk to all about the about the Having Party going down in El Salvador. But before we do that, I was wondering if you mind just giving us a little bit of introduction to yourself and how you got into Bitcoin.

Speaker 1: 0:49

Yeah, definitely, my name is Sean Harris. I'm a former professional basketball player overseas and currently I'm living back in California. I'm from California, so I'm back home now working out here, and I just went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Back in 2017 to 2019 was when that kind of all went down. I started buying Bitcoin back in 2019.

Speaker 1: 1:17

Once I realized that the US government was gonna print money forever and that there was gonna be no stop to printing of the fiat, so and I knew enough about Bitcoin that you couldn't make more of it, you couldn't print any more of it and that there's a 21 million cap and that's kind of when boom it all kind of clicked. And then, once I started buying Bitcoin, then I really went even further down the rabbit hole of how to secure it, understanding a little bit more of the technical side, because I'm a basketball player, so I don't have the technical experience. I got the technical experience of a boomer and but I've learned along the way and so it's been really good for me and my knowledge only continues to grow. So I don't know if anyone's an expert out there on Bitcoin. We're all learning. It's very new, and so it's just it's really exciting to be able to be a part of it right now.

Speaker 2: 2:17

Yeah, totally agree with you and I'd definitely draw some similarities. But between you, I'm getting more technical as I go along with this stuff and you know it's just great that it teaches a lot of people how to become more technical and how to embrace this space, but I did play basketball.

Speaker 2: 2:33

Basketball was my favorite sport growing up. I still like to watch jump in and watch Steph Curry hit some three pointers from the three point line. So can you tell us a little bit more about your basketball career? Like what position did you play? What kind of player are you like?

Speaker 1: 2:50

Yeah, so I'm a power forward. I played at Utah State in the Mountain West Galagies and from then I just played all over the world. I played in well, not all over the world, but I played in South America, at the start in Columbia, and then made my way to Europe and played in about four countries in Europe. So just had a lot of fun. You know, it was fun for me, it was great for me to get to experience the world that it in, you know, outside of the United States, and to be able to speak another language and to use that language every day. So it's been really cool for me to just you know and to handle other types of money. I've lived in other countries where it's not the dollar, it's the Euro, or it's not the Euro or the dollar, it's the Colombian peso, you know. So I've been able to use different types of money other than the dollar and see how those you know, how those exchange rates work, why an exchange rate would change, and so there's a lot of cool things that I've been able to see and experience, and so a lot of my experience, I think, brought me to Bitcoin.

Speaker 1: 4:04

But ultimately you have to be humble to get to Bitcoin. You can't be prideful, you can't think you know more than anybody else. You can't think you know more than Bitcoin, that you're smarter than Bitcoin, because you're not, and you just have to be humble enough to know that. Your experiences have led you here. And you know a lot of people get prideful on what they've learned and it closes them off to learning new things. And to understand Bitcoin, you have to learn something new. It's just like the internet or like when electricity was discovered. If you wanna participate in this new shift, you cannot rely on what got you here to get you there. You have to level up and understand that you don't know as much as what you may thought you used to know. And so that's what's really good about Bitcoin is it keeps you humble, and as soon as you get cocky, it'll humble you again, and that's what it's done for me, and that's good. It's good to be humble and to keep learning.

Speaker 2: 5:07

And that's why we say stay humble and stack sats right, exactly. But yeah, no, your travels around the world, you know, Could certainly help. You know, help your understanding with Bitcoin and just seeing how you know different currencies being exposed to that, how they work, how they trade, right. So but like, how did you come to fall in to be, you know, the guy organizing this Having party down in Bitcoin Beach, elzante, El Salvador?

Speaker 1: 5:34

Yeah, so so we're doing the having party in in El Salvador. It's actually not in Elzante, it's gonna be in in a, in a Resort called Roy Alda Cameron, and that was just about an hour further away from it's about an hour away from Elzante, but either way, you know, I'm part of a group called the meme factory. We were around in, you know, we were around in in like 2020 is kind of when we got formed and we were out me, me that's what we were doing on Bitcoin Twitter, when any economist would say something that was not correct, which they still have incorrect opinions, no matter the PhDs that they have. We've learned, we've learned through the mechanism that anyone can learn through which trial and error, that we can learn through experience and a lot of us, you know, we like to combat their, their incorrect Opinions on Bitcoin, and we like to combat that with truth and with memes, and so that's kind of how we got formed is.

Speaker 1: 6:40

It was like, hey, we're gonna have some fun, we're gonna meme these guys and they're not gonna be able to respond to us or beat us because we have memes and there's more of us than there are of them, and so we just started memeing. We, we would meme each other in our group chats you know more than we would meme anybody else, but we would still have fun with it and we started memeing and eventually you know one of the guys, pedro, who you actually had on your podcast. He, he had a meme that needed laser eyes on it, and and one of the guys other guys named chair force put laser eyes on his meme. And Then chair force came up with the idea after that to do a thing called laser ray until a hundred K, which was put laser eyes on all of our profile pictures.

Speaker 1: 7:29

And until a hundred K, bitcoin till Bitcoin hits a hundred thousand dollars. Not that we're gonna sell, but it's just like, hey, let's, let's do something fun until a hundred K. So you know, and so we did that in our group, just us and and then it caught fire. And then everyone said hey.

Speaker 1: 7:45

I want laser eyes, I want laser eyes and so then we started boom giving everybody laser eyes, and then we kind of got a little bit more notorious after that, because, you know, everyone has laser eyes nowadays when they when they signal that they're in Bitcoin, and so it was really fun for us and we were new I, you know not new, but we were newer. I feel like we're, we feel a lot more experienced now in the Bitcoin world, and From then, you know, it was just like in 2020, I, I was really excited for the having, and so you know and I say this, I've said it multiple times but what did I do of during the having in 2020? I went on YouTube and I watched Anthony Pomfley I know, crack open a beer and it was not that fun, and so I was like this needs to be bigger. It happens once every four years. Like how are we not gonna celebrate this? This should be something that should be celebrated. It's something that, in my mind, it was obvious it will be celebrated, and we're early enough and we're fortunate enough as the Meme factory, to be the guys that did laser eyes and to throw the having party.

Speaker 1: 8:56

So, you know, no one else was doing it and I'm not a I'm not a software developer, and so I always wanted to give something back into Bitcoin. I wanted to build something on top of Bitcoin, and I always felt inadequate because I don't know how to code and that kind of it kind of made me either sad or irked me. It was just like a little bit of both. Like man, if you can't code, you can't help Bitcoin out. But it's like, yeah, you can, you can help Bitcoin.

Speaker 1: 9:24

I was, you know, maybe you can't. Like who can help? Bitcoin doesn't need help in general, but if you, if it did need help, it's like, yeah, we were memeing, why don't we do a bigger meme and throw a having party, you know? And so that's that's kind of how it all came across. And and then El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, and so then it just Made perfect sense, like we got to do this in El Salvador, and I've spent some time in Central America, so it made even more sense for me personally because, you know, it's like let's get back to some of my roots in Central America and and I love it and I'm excited it's just an excuse for me to go back to El Salvador and have some fun.

Speaker 2: 10:08

So that's kind of where it all comes from yeah, no, that journey makes total sense to me. And if I could just touch note on your laser, that laser ray to 100K was such a great campaign for Bitcoin and I think Pedro mentioned that Michael Saylor had laser eyes within like a couple of days of that going around, which is super cool and notable. Right, he's often someone quoted quite often in this space amongst Bitcoiners and, yeah, I know the having party seems like it's going to be a lot of fun. I was, you know, browsing the guest list. There's a whole slew of great people and, like you said, yeah, I have had a couple of your folks on it. Rdbtc, he's part of your gang.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, rd, he's part of the gang.

Speaker 2: 10:57

Yeah, rd, yeah. So I've been following him for a long time actually, and I had him on the podcast a long time ago, but I've loved his work for a long time too. But yeah, so like maybe we can touch you know why and just kind of break it down simply Like why is the Bitcoin having such a significant event?

Speaker 1: 11:20

Yeah, this is. I think this is the biggest thing that I think a lot and this was one of the reasons, too, I wanted to do a having party was because it seemed to me like the having was this signal of what Bitcoin represents, and a lot of people don't catch that. You know, if you and this is the thing, the thing that I say to everybody right, you ask your family, you ask your friends what their opinion is on Bitcoin and they'll tell you they've heard of Bitcoin now and whether it's a good opinion or a bad opinion or uninformed opinion, which more often than not, it's an uninformed opinion on Bitcoin. If you go one step further and you ask them what do you think of the having, then it's silence. They go the what you know. They have no idea of what the having is, and so their opinion on Bitcoin, what they thought Bitcoin was is nullified. In my opinion, it has no credibility until you can understand what the having is, because, to understand what the having is, if you don't understand Bitcoin, you don't understand the having, or, sorry, if you don't understand the having, you don't understand Bitcoin, and so and so there's so many things to me that make a lot of sense and obviously you know people are going. Well, what is the having? Right? If you're going to keep saying this word over and over again, people don't know what the having is.

Speaker 1: 12:40

The having is every 210,000 blocks, which a block comes once every 10 minutes or gets mined every 10 minutes. Every 210,000 blocks, which, which equilibrates to about every four years, the issuance of Bitcoin in the subsidy of each block gets cut in half. In other words, every four years, the amount of Bitcoin that gets mined gets cut in half, and there's only going to be 21 million Bitcoin that are ever mined. We're sitting at just overnight, you know, over 19 million, between 19 and 20 million Bitcoin that have been mined so far, and so that means that there's about a million Bitcoin a little bit over a million Bitcoin left to be mined, and every four years, that amount gets cut in half, and then in half, and then in half and in half, and so Bitcoin was released in 2009. In 2012, we had the first having there was 50 Bitcoin in each block subsidy, and then 2016 and 2012,. It was the first halving, so then it went to 25, in 2016, then it went to 12.5, in 2020, the last halving then it went to 6.25, or six and a quarter, and then now in 2024, in April coming up, it'll get halved again and the block subsidy will be 3.125, or three and an eighth.

Speaker 1: 14:03

So what does all that mean? Right, what it means is that Bitcoin is not this thing where, as demand increases, the amount of Bitcoin also increases, because if you think about anything else that we've ever had in the world before, if the demand increases, if all of a sudden this jacket was worth a million dollars, will you better believe that every manufacturer in the world will be making this specific jacket and the demand would increase and the supply would also increase to match that demand. The demand would kind of come down and the price would come down. And so the thing about Bitcoin it has an inelastic supply or the supply does not stretch. The supply is inelastic and it's controlled by the halving, because in the first epoch of Bitcoin, between 2009 and 2012, there were 10.5 million Bitcoin mined. And this is the beautiful thing about the mathematics is there are 10.5 million Bitcoin mined and if you add up every subsequent epoch after the first epoch, they will add up to 10.5 million or just under 10.5 million Bitcoin that will be mined afterwards because of the halving. That's mathematically proven. It's just math, and so that's why there's 21 million Bitcoin, because 10.5 was 10.5 million. 21 million, bam, and so it's.

Speaker 1: 15:28

You see guys like Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan saying well, what if Satoshi comes back in 2140, and presses a button and prints more Bitcoin and says he can't, it's controlled by the halving. The halving makes it so you can't have more than 20, we won't even get to 21 million. It's an asymptote, and if you don't know what asymptote means, pause the podcast, google it and then look up. It's a line or curve that ever approaches a line but actually never touches it, and that's what the 21 million limit is bound by, is bound by the halving, and this is the whole thing about Bitcoiners is 21 million means everything, and so it's like death, taxes and 21 million because that is the most beautiful thing about Bitcoin is it is truly a money that has no inflation, and that's what Satoshi figured out was.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Well, what is one of the reasons, other than being peer to peer and you have this trust that you have to rely on? Another thing that he made with Bitcoin was we're gonna have a limit and we won't be controlled by policy makers that can constantly increase the overall broad supply of money, which is what goes on with the dollar is the broad supply of money is constantly increased. We don't know at what rate. We can't audit the Fed. The Fed has never been audited before since 1913. And so the halving. I know I'm going on a huge rant right now.

Speaker 2: 17:03

I love it, I love it.

Speaker 1: 17:06

But the halving. It represents the scarcity in Bitcoin. It represents that there is no other altcoin. That means anything at all, because you have Bitcoin and you have the 21 million. So if there were other altcoins, then that would add to the 21 million. You don't need any other altcoins. It also means that when you watch these altcoins so the altcoin season, which I was accustomed to hearing about in 2017 when I started hearing about Bitcoin when you hear about the altcoin season, it means that they all pump because of Bitcoin's halving, because what happens when a halving occurs is half the supply gets, half of the issuance gets cut off overnight, and what would happen to the price is the price goes up, and that happens every four years. You see the price of Bitcoin go up, and so then what does the halving also tell you? It tells you that Bitcoin is ultimately scarce. It tells you that there's no other altcoin out there including the dollar.

Speaker 1: 18:04

What else does it tell you? It tells you that that it's okay that Bitcoin is volatile. And that's what helped me was when I learned about the four-year cycles of Bitcoin that, well, it goes up a ton and then it goes down, but it hits a higher, high and then it hits a higher, low and any of the volatility in between I'm okay with, because I know I'm holding it for longer than four years and so then it makes me okay with the volatility. So I go okay, it's scarce because the having there's no other altcoin. Because the having there, the volatility, I'm okay with it because I know that what's programmed in Bitcoin is Volatility, the volatility to the upside, which I want as, especially being young, my my 30s I want volatility. Maybe if I was in my 80s I wouldn't want volatility and maybe I would, but it all volatility is for any, for any investor Volatility. If something's too volatile for you, that doesn't mean you get zero of it. That just means you position size and you scale back a bit To get some, to get less volatility in your portfolio.

Speaker 1: 19:09

So Bitcoin is telling you all these things through the having and you know, you know people, and so this is why one other thing that it tells you is, as you learn about the having, you have to learn about mining and you have to learn about the difficulty, adjustment, which people say well, you said that it haves, but like, what is the thing that makes it so it happens every four years. Like why doesn't it speed up? Why doesn't it having speed up? Well, the having doesn't speed up because of the difficulty adjustment which is also programmed into Bitcoin, which is basically, as more hash power or more miners are added to Bitcoin, then the hat, then the difficulty adjustment will increase. So it keeps the block time about every two minutes, and as the as hash power or miners decrease, then Then the difficulty adjustment also decreases to keep block time about every ten minutes. So it tells you all these things and it tells you that there's no other altcoin, it tells you that it scares, it tells you that volatility is okay and it tells you a little bit about mining of Bitcoin. So now, once you learn what the having is, now you can have an opinion on what Bitcoin is, and Normally, when you understand what the having is, it makes a lot of sense and you start buying Bitcoin.

Speaker 1: 20:27

And so that's my one of my goals with having party is hey, we know about Bitcoin now every one of their mom knows about Bitcoin but do we know about the having? Because if we don't, then we don't really know about Bitcoin yet. So let's educate people a little bit more. Hey, we're not gonna educate them by necessarily explaining the having. Like I just explained to you, we're gonna educate them by throwing an awesome party and having fun Celebrating this thing called the having. And then people can go do their own research and they can explore what the having is, because we're Celebrating it. And then I go what are they celebrating? Why are all these people coming to El Salvador and what's going on? And and then, hey, now you can learn about the having and it's okay. And and Bitcoin is okay because you're okay with understanding what it really is, not that it's some speculation, but that it's actually something real with real fundamentals behind it, like the have.

Speaker 2: 21:23

Definitely, and I think you know what you guys are doing there is is more of like an awareness campaign, because ultimately you're not gonna be able to Help people fully understand Bitcoin or the having, you know, sitting down face-to-face for, you know, five or ten minutes. It takes longer than that, right. So so just you know, planting that seed there. But you know for myself, you know one thing I like to do with with my guests is obviously sponge as much as I can it. You know From people that are more eloquent than I am about Bitcoin, and you know a couple things that you just said stood out to me, and the first thing was the supply issuance is inelastic. That word kind of stood out to me because it's a common critique or fear of Bitcoin. Is the issuance. Could that change? Could Satoshi back come and change that? It's a common misconception that's pushed by people that have more validity than they should, like Jamie Dimon.

Speaker 1: 22:18

Yeah, like.

Speaker 2: 22:18

Jamie Dimon and others alike too. But the other thing that you mentioned, oh, that it's volatile. Another critique that it's volatile, but, like you said, how do you describe it? It's volatile to the upside Correct, yes, inelastic. And volatility to the upside is two things you said that definitely stood out to me there. My next question is I want to ask you about what your thoughts on the recent election that had just occurred in El Salvador. I know it's not really a huge surprise that Bukele won, but if you had just had any general thoughts or comments around what's occurred there, yeah well, first of all, congratulations to Nye Bukele for winning the reelection.

Speaker 1: 22:58

I'm excited about it and I understand that, you know, as Bitcoiners, not everyone is into politics. I'm not really into politics that much, but what I do recognize is a man who's doing good things in a country that otherwise had been shut off from the world, that had been written, you know, been written off and had been gang, you know, just been this gang territory. So, because I lived in Honduras, which borders El Salvador, I lived in Honduras for two years, and so for me to see, I live in the most dangerous city in the world and I've seen those type of things that these gang members that are murderers and rapists that they do and you know, I haven't seen them personally, but I have seen the effects of what they've done and I have seen, I have seen dead bodies in the streets from people murdered by gang members personally, and that affects you, you know. And so I guess all I can say is, if I was the president of El Salvador, I would be doing exactly what Nye Bukele is doing, or at least I would hope that I was smart enough and savvy enough and strategic enough to do what he was doing and is doing, because the things that he's done are seem like miracles and you know, getting the gangs off the streets, making his country safe, making it so his businesses aren't extortioned. And then, on top of that, what does he do? Does he make his own token and does he print his own El Salvador dollar? No, he gives his people money that cannot be controlled. He gives them freedom money. He gives them freedom in terms of safety, he gives their businesses freedom and he gives them money. That's, that's freedom, money. And so all of these things that he's doing. And then he's building these, these eloquent building buildings with great aesthetic, and so there's just a lot of cool things in my mind. That that he's doing. That I'm pretty happy about.

Speaker 1: 25:00

And I understand that some people may think he's a dictator, or you know he's a tyrant, or that is opposition he throws in jail. You know, I haven't heard of any of these things myself and I've been down to El Salvador twice now. Or you know, or that there's no due process. You know, I understand, I understand, you know, and people may think that I don't understand. I understand it and I understand it very well. You know, I'm from the United States, but I've also lived in Latin America before, and if you talk to the people that are in Latin America, you know to come with your Western ideals about how a country should be governed when the country is going through a crisis doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. You know extreme. You know extreme times call for extreme measures, and that's what he has to do in his situation and it works.

Speaker 1: 25:52

And so if something's working, let it work. That's just how I look at it. You know what, if something was broken, you have to fix it, and it was broken, and I think a lot of people are happy. A lot of Salvadorans are happy, and you see the diaspora that has moved out of El Salvador to the United States and other countries, moving back, and people are proud to call themselves Salvadoran now. And he's giving. He's letting the free market work its way through with Bitcoin, with businesses. He's trying to attract good talent. He's making his country safe. You know I'm all for it. So I think that's that's where I stand, and I hope that he gets five more years, like he has, and it's even better. We'll see what he can do the next five years.

Speaker 2: 26:40

It's definitely exciting. I think there was no surprise there with the landslide win. Definitely interesting. You know, totally agree with you know extreme times come for. You know call for extreme measures right. And you know if you got a country just ridden with crime and gang and murders, you know it's just all around not going to be good.