Bitcoin, beaches and dragons with @DragonBitcoin

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

Alright, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in this space, and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Today's episode is with Dragon. I always love catching up with him. He is the organizer for Bitcoin Beatra Tree, and he absolutely smashed it this year. In this episode, we talk about the Bitcoin circular economy, KYC versus non-KYC, and a quarter of a billion dollars.

Very deep in the landfill site in Welsh Wales. Before we start, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been supporting the show. It really is appreciated, and everyone who's been streaming SATs, sending messages, giving feedback, sharing the show with friends, and everything else you've been doing is amazing.

If you're not already using podcasting 2.0, I suggest you give it a try. You can use fountain or breeze, and if anyone has any questions on setting this up, I'd be happy to help. The reason I like podcasting 2.0 so much is I don't want this show to start taking on shitty sponsors, diluting the signal,

and going against what I think this movement is about, and what I think this movement is about, or certainly for me, is being able to speak truth, and it's not to ever be filtered. I want to thank my anonymous sponsor for allowing me this time, every episode, to talk about podcasting 2.0.

They have sponsored this show for six months, allowing me to talk to you guys about why it's so important, allowing me some breathing room, and to continue this show. So, to whoever you are, just know that it is very much appreciated.

I'd also like to thank Foundation Devices firstly for sponsoring the show. Secondly, for putting out such incredible hardware. This is the hardware I suggest for all my friends and family now.

It is fully open source. The design is absolutely beautiful, and their team is amazing. Not only have they been sponsoring this show, they are also putting out two incredible prizes for the Bitcoin mining month.

It is coming up next month, and two Foundation Devices passports are going up for grabs. During the mining month, I will be releasing more info on how and when you can win these incredible devices.

We will also be having Lily and Bitcoin Q&A joining us for the mining month. They will be talking about how to secure your precious KYC free SATs from your home mining, and we'll be discussing the Foundation Devices passport as well.

If you haven't already checked one of these out, you need to go to FoundationDevices.com, and if you just decide you want to buy one anyway, you can use the code bit by bit that you'll get $10 off your purchase, or maybe you want to hold out and see if you can win one of these.

Either way, if you have any questions, just reach out. I will give you all the trade-offs, be as honest as possible, and talk you through your purchase. And finally, FastBitcoins. FastBitcoins have been sponsoring this show for over six months now.

They are a Bitcoin-only exchange. Dragon actually works for them, but do not hold that against them. They're sponsoring this show, despite me constantly bashing KYC services. I've asked them before why the hell they want to sponsor this show with the content that I put out there,

but they are proper Bitcoiners, and they want this type of content out there, and they want the trade-offs to be clear, and they want people to understand. And they want people to hold their own keys.

So, for anyone who's listening and they don't want to take my advice and they don't want no KYC, then I really can only suggest these guys. They don't want you to have your stats on exchange with them.

They only support Bitcoin, and they are a property. They're based in the Isle of Man, and they are expanding at a rapid rate. If you're listening, you're still unsure of what to do and whether to go to them.

You can reach out to me, and I'll be open and honest about the trade-offs. Check them out at fastbitcoins.com, and enjoy the show. Morning, mate. How are you? I'm not doing too bad. How are you doing, mate?

Yeah, not bad. Sorry about that. I plugged them in, forgot to turn the switch on. Classic sort of retard stuff there. Standard, isn't it, mate? Yeah. I would have been a bit disappointed, to be honest, if something hadn't fucked up.

Yeah, if things went smoothly, you know there's a problem. You know someone's got a gun to my head, or something. Exactly. You've been compromised, man. If it goes perfectly, I know I'm just like logging in.

So how are things? Not too bad, mate. It's been a hot weekend, isn't it? Jesus fucking Christ. Like, that was mental. I think it was like 31 degrees in my house this weekend. Like, I can't remember it being quite that hot in this country before, but...

Hmm. Were you working from home, or...? On the weekend, not so much, mate. I was just... Oh, actually. Trying to keep cool, trying to not overheat. Luckily, I didn't have much to do. I think it's been random since the beach retreat in the weekends leading up to that and into the evenings.

You're always doing some random shit all the time. There's just something that you can always be doing. So for the past few weekends, it's been quite nice not to have anything to do. So just chill out a bit.

Yeah, you were very, very busy on the beach retreat. I kept thinking, "Oh, I'm going to get a little chance to have a sit and chat away." And then suddenly you'd be flying off somewhere to fix something else, or do something.

So it didn't seem like it was the most relaxing time for you, but it was excellent for everyone else. Yeah. Sorry, it wasn't. It genuinely is work. It sounds a bit round of my background event management.

So I've worked at plenty of events and you just get into a mode. It's on you or on the team to make sure everything happens. So you've only got one shot at it. So you've got to put your work mind on and just get cracking.

So you don't get quite as much out of it as everyone else who's coming there and just chilling. So that's kind of probably the thing I learned most this year. I learned a little bit last year, but this year, because it got a bit bigger, I think I'm going to try and get a bit more help.

I don't know if it's helped. I'd rather pass things over to people that can be trusted to just take on some kind of responsibility, to make the event better to add something on as opposed to one person trying to orchestrate all the different things that pass all that out.

And some of that started to happen this year, just naturally, which is, I think, a good thing for the event. Just let things go where they go naturally if you know what I mean. Yeah. Well, I noticed the change in.

Well, firstly, I think you had probably what? Two, three times more people. And then secondly, you'd put on the food as well. So like the trucks coming and doing the pizza and different things like that, which we didn't have before.

So all of these things, I imagine, yeah, need a lot of planning and messing around with. Yeah. And it's like, same with any event. If you turn up to an event, most people go, oh, yeah, I could organize this.

You know, it doesn't, it doesn't look like anything. Oh, there's a marquee. There's some barbecues or whatever. There's a few drinks. It doesn't ever seem like a lot. But any event manager will tell you is probably like 10 times the amount of work you think goes into an event when you attend one than actually does.

So it, yeah, it's, it, it's worth it in the end, you know. And did Bitcoin pull you out of events management then? Is that why you ended up with fast bitcoins and away from it? Yeah, that is a bit of a strange one because I, my background is events.

And I think up to about 2010, I was employed and then I went freelance self-employed after that, which probably wasn't the best idea in the world because I'm not a good salesman. I find selling myself quite, quite uncomfortable.

And I've worked with salespeople in the past and they're, they're a certain breed of people. They're very good and they're very great to have on your side, but it's not a skill I've got. So that never, you know, I did my own events and things like that.

I worked for other people over the years. And then I started a bit of a little side hustle with, and I'm embarrassed to say it, to be honest, but it is my path to Bitcoin was with binary trading.

I don't know if you've ever heard of that. It's the same as normal trading, but it's literally win or lose, you know, you trade for like five minutes or 60 seconds sometimes. Just saying the price of, you know, GBP, JPY will be up in 60 seconds.

And that was kind of like my introduction to trading and I love it. I like maths and things like that. So that was kind of like my introduction to trading. And one of the odd things on the platform was on binary trading, you can earn like 90% if you get the call right on the foreign exchange pairs.

And then probably about a year into doing it, this one popped up and it was Bitcoin. And it was really random because you could only get 50% profitability if you were trading Bitcoin, which is really odd to me.

And obviously I never bothered because what's the point? Trade in something for 50% when you couldn't trade something for 90%. But the random thing about it was all of FX pairs and trading all stopped at like five, six o'clock on a Friday.

You would see the only thing you could trade out of hours on the weekend would be Bitcoin. So that was kind of one of the first things is like, this is a bit different. Why is there, why is the rest of the financial will like shut down?

Bitcoin just sort of keeps on going. And I'll put a warning in here, like people don't go near binary trading. It's a zero sum game. It's like it is a waste of time. If you want to be a trader trade, but don't do binary trading, it's just it's kind of nonsense.

And there's just so many rip-offs in that market. And it was, again, it's embarrassing to say it. But you know, during that time I joined various groups for signals and stuff like this. We all know what this is like in the Bitcoin world and the crypto world.

It's there in the FX world, that's where it came from. And in those, someone put me on to a telegram bot that would trade Bitcoin for you. And like every day you'd get a little bit of extra Bitcoin.

So that was my first reason to ever buy any sort of bought a little bit from Coinbase. It took me about a month to get through their KYC checks. It was an absolute ball, like in a pain in the ass.

And then I put it on a high F on telegram. It's only like 25 quid and then I lost it all. So this thing rubbed towards me. That was genuinely my first introduction to Bitcoin. The first Bitcoin I bought got rubbed pulled.

Quality. When was this? That would have been like 2007, 2017. It was a good learning lesson, if you know what I mean. And getting over that sort of hill of buying Bitcoin. And it kind of got to the stage.

I did well in binary trading because I came back out with all my clothes on. I didn't lose my shirt. So which was great, but I wasted like nine months of my life trading binary options and going up down in the venture.

I just pulled the plug and said it's not this for a game of cards. There's just no point. And that's when I thought, well, the price of Bitcoin is just always going up. And this was in summer, 2017.

It's always going up. So surely it's easier to just trade Bitcoin just by Bitcoin. Wait for price to go up, wait for it to go up, sell it. Sorry, wait for it to go up, sell it, dip buy it.

You didn't just keep doing that. And that is what got me into Bitcoin. But I made the mistake of, although it could have been a whole lot worse, I made the mistake of taking all my money out of binary trading, which is pretty much the same amount I put in there, putting that into Bitcoin and crypto.

Unfortunately, a game of embarrassment. But the bit where I said I didn't do as bad as I could, I did somehow see the value of Bitcoin and put like 50% of my money into Bitcoin and split the other 50% up among various shitcoins.

And then as everyone did in the 17 bull run traded, thought I was a king, kept making the stake of trading altcoins to make more altcoins, sometimes more Bitcoin, but generally more altcoins.

And then we all got rugged in that bear market, didn't we? And some people did horrendously in that. I don't know how they managed to work through that bull run where they ended up with like 90% drawdown.

I've looked back at how I did over the time and luckily I never went below what I originally put in. So fair play to the people who went below what they put in and still hung around and became Bitcoin.

As I had a slight, slightly easier ride, although it's still horrendously painful, seeing how much money or Bitcoin you've lost. Yeah, it's never nice. Even now, like when you get to a certain stage where you're like, I'm comfortable with this, I'm holding for a long time.

And there's more to this than money. It's still like, yeah, this doesn't look as nice as it did a year ago. Like you still got that like number in your head where you're like, yeah, I'm a lot poorer than I was.

And it never feels good. No matter what people say, I don't think anyone has zero effect. Yeah, and randomly, you know, during the time before I went full on down the rabbit hole, you know, I concentrated on what I'd lost fear terms.

So what my portfolio was worth at the absolute top. But as time's gone on, the bit that really bugs me and the number I've got in my head is the Bitcoin value of what I owned at the time.

And I don't think I'll ever get back to that, which is really cutting. Do you know what I mean? I could have ended up with more Bitcoin late in the first few months of arriving even if I'd been able to predict the future like Mystic Meg and done that.

So it's weird now. It is more about, you know, not fully one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin, but that's the number I would love to get back to in my head is, you know, the most amount of Bitcoin I ever could have owned in my life that I fucked up and didn't realize the full value of it and how lucky I was at that time

to then watch it dwindle down. But again, you know, you realign and you look at what I could have bought if I'd gone 100% Bitcoin at the start and I'm beyond that now. So I've carried on stacking and various other things.

So I'm back to where I could have been if I'd been right at the start and not messed with old coins and things like that. So that's the aim now. I don't mess around with the shit coins. It's all about Bitcoin.

Yeah, it's an expensive lesson, but it's one that you have to learn. Everyone learns it in some way. And I think the lesson is you don't know what Bitcoin's going to do. Don't fuck around.

Don't think you're smart because you're not. And that's basically the lesson everyone has to learn at some point whether it bites you at the beginning or bites you at the end. Mine bit me like immediately.

So I was quite lucky. I'm like, um, because I came in what I started buying, which was like after about a 20% dip. I think it was from the top in 2017. And obviously not knowing fuck all about these markets.

I was like, Oh, that's good. That's a 20% drop. And everyone's telling me this thing just keeps going up. So that's amazing. I'll start piling in here and then it dropped again. And I was like, Oh, okay.

Well, I'll try and find some more down the back of the sofa. And then it dropped again. And I was like, Oh, I'll try selling some shit so that I can buy some more. And I just have that for like two fucking years of just pain.

And you're you're that example, you're the person who generally went. I had a drawdown on your fear. What you put in then. Oh, yeah, massively. Like, uh, yeah, like 80% or more on the old coins, obviously that I bought.

I just saw pain pain, but all I did is saw pain. There was no, I think there was one little bit of relief like for a month where things pumped a little bit. And I was like, Oh, I've only lost 70%.

That's when you know it's only 70. Yeah, exactly. I am actually really happy that happened because otherwise, like times like now, if all I'd seen is the good times, then I'd be shitting myself.

Whereas like now I'm like, Oh, this feels like home pain. This is what I like. You're just getting them into it. And it's, yeah, it's like, it doesn't matter what the price goes. I just kind of, yeah, you'd be lying.

And if I see a massive dump that I'm not like, Oh, shit. But really randomly I get. I some, I'm unsure at the moment. I think it's, I get a slightly worse feeling when Bitcoin pumps. I can't quite explain it.

It's that. Oh, shit. I should have bought some more. Oh, shit. It's going to happen now. Yeah, it kind of, it is a bit of that, but I don't know. It's supposed to the higher you push up the further you can fall back down.

I don't know what it is, but it's only, I've only noticed in the sort of past two years is when it starts going up, I start feeling a little bit uncomfortable going down. I'm like, I'm used to this.

I can deal with this. Like, you know, you just ignore it. I'm building. It's like when, when it goes up, it's like, Oh shit, shit might change now. You know, it might have an effect on your life or something like that.

But going down, you've already written it off or whatever. You just, you just carry on regardless, don't you? I played to you for like, like hanging on. Like I said, the people who hung on when they, when they genuinely drew down a lot and I don't know if I can't tell if I would have been here.

If I drew down 80% on what I put in, I might have thrown the towel in. I hope I wouldn't have. But same as you like that, that 2018 was then when I decided to create my website about Bitcoin to just try and advise people and things like that and help people.

And it was doing that that sort of sent me down the rabbit hole. And yeah, like you, I think if we'd just gone bullish for like five years and just gone on a ball run, I probably would have never taken that time.

So I do, do kind of like the built in pain that Bitcoin has because it does wash out the, the sector, if you want to call it that of people who aren't interested and those that like a bit of pain, hang around, learn more and become Bitcoiners.

Yeah, definitely. And so when you, was this the same website that I'm on now, which is dragonbitcoin.co.uk? Is that the one that you first set up? Yeah. And like, I'll apologize in case anyone goes there.

I did that in like 2018. So like, I don't think D5 is even mentioned on their INFTs, which is, which is quite telling. And I think even, well, it was one part. I think that when I wrote it, there's like one and a half thousand, two thousand altcoins.

I think we're on like 20,000 now. Yeah. Which is, which is insane. So yeah, I think when you write a website and you're professing to like, know something can help people, it forces you to make sure you're putting the cracked information on there.

But I'm sure it is, it is a little bit out of date. But again, I don't think anyone goes to the website, so I don't really care. I'm not, I'm not selling anything, if you know what I mean.

Well, in a way, it's not outdated because all the altcoins and all the bullshit you could have put on there are all fucked anyway and useless. So actually, you've done that. Well, I'm probably what the first person that's come onto this website this month, but you might ask a few after people listen to this now.

So yeah, don't bother. If people listen to your podcast, they'll find better information somewhere else. This is aimed at someone who's like, what's Bitcoin? And I don't think your podcast listeners are at that level, mate.

Thankful. And then you've got the local events and things like that. So you also got the meet up Bitcoin whales. Is that right? Yeah, that's not, I'm not definitely not going to take credit for that.

The guy who started that fair play to him started in 2013. And to give you some idea of where I was then, I think I looked into Bitcoin in like 2014. I thought this looks fun. I'll buy some shit.

That's too complicated. Move on. Carry on with your life and just completely ignored it. So I think I went to my, so we've got Bitcoin whales. You started back in 2013, and I went to my first meet up, I think it was in November 17.

And like I told you, I hate sales. I'm not that type of person. I'm not socially awkward. I'll talk to anyone. That doesn't really bother me. But you put me in a situation where it's like, this is networking.

At the time, I found that like really uncomfortable. So I take no pleasure. Like for me, network or something, your business sends you on. That you don't really want to do, if you know what I mean.

And to me, that's kind of what it felt like a meet up was. So I literally walked into the building, saw a few people, turned around and walked out and went home. I embarrassed about it, to be honest.

But I was just like, oh fuck this. I don't know anyone. Don't really enjoy networking. This isn't for me. And I walked out. And then randomly one of the other members got in touch with me because I was really active on Twitter at the time and said, the organizer, you know, do you want to meet up in Albuquerque?

So went and had a cup of tea with him and that was literally it. As soon as I know someone in there, it's like fine. Went to the next meet up. And then just as I sadly do, started to get more involved.

You know, we started organizing like two monthly events over the next couple of years. So we do a presentation every month and a meet up in a pub every month. And they were great. It was really good doing those.

It's hard work. It's all organic grassroots group, no budget. We're always struggling to try and find presenters. But we've got a good sort of group of people who keep coming. And it's important to have something for people who are new to bitcoins come to.

But then what was it? Like years have blended into each other. But was it like February, March 2020, COVID came? Yeah, it was about then. And that literally put the kite box on everything, didn't it?

So we've had no events pretty much throughout most of that. And we started coming back this year, I think we had Neil Wood fine from Unchained Capital. Capital come and do a talk for us. Great dangerous driver that man.

Yeah, I wouldn't lend him your vehicle. That's for sure. No. If you want it all back in one piece, like. Yeah, it turned up. And there's this beautiful new VW camper. And I was like, oh, fucking hell, that's lovely.

And then I saw all the wheels were just fucked. Things basically on fire, just like an absolute mess. And there's Neil next to it. Like, yes, this is me. Fair play to him. Like he definitely rolled up in memorable circumstances.

Like, I feel sorry for fair play. Like it sucks when you go to something and it starts off shit. Do you know what I mean? When you've driven for hours and you're literally two meters away from where you go in and you fuck it up.

But yeah, at least he kept positive for the rest of the event and did a fantastic talk. I know a lot of people appreciated. So at least he turned it around. I hope you enjoyed it. But don't think he was the only one.

I think other people had some wheel incidents down there as well. Yeah, well, it was a bit rocky. We were taking it as slow as possible. You came in a different way. It wasn't rocky. I had a massive vehicle and it was quite easy to not drive into things.

But a few people decided they didn't want to go with that. So drove into things on the way in. Just to announce they've arrived. Yeah, I'm here. Flames. Exactly. But yeah, it was a good talk actually.

He did. I couldn't participate. So it was like everyone was scanning the QR codes and setting up multi-sick and doing all. I think it was on blue wallet. They were doing it. I remember now off to my head.

But my camera on my phone was so shit. It couldn't even scan the fucking QR codes. Jesus. That's proper low time preference stuff. I'd brought my shitty old phone fucking work. Too much offset marks.

But it was cool as to see, I think that was one of the cooler talks to see because everyone was working together to set up these multi-sigs. I only saw the star because I had other things going on afterwards.

So I had to get ready for it. So I kind of missed out on it. But it looked really good. It's actually, that's probably one of those I've regret because I would have liked to have done that.

We've had issues of trying to set up multi-sig for Bitcoin Wales. So the fact he got people to sit there. Three of them do it. And within a matter where they're all done and sorted and everyone's tested it was like, yeah, that's something I should have would have liked to attend.

Yeah, it definitely feels like that's the way forward. It's getting easier and easier to set up. I quite like this two of three set up. I think it's quite nice. Like some of the more complex stuff, I'm like, mmm, I'm not sure that's really necessary.

I mean, it's, you're security can be so good with single-sig anyway. But if you want to step things up and do the two of three, it does seem with things like Sparrow and Spectre and Blue Waller and the hard way of getting better and seat signer.

And some of these other things, it's like, it seems like this is probably going to be the standard going forward. Yeah, it could be. Like you said, I think single-sigs fine. You know, it all depends on what you're doing and things like that.

The first time we've needed one is as a meet-up group. We had a donation, so it made sense to do it that way. As it's worked out, we know the person who's got a donation, so we've ended up not doing them all these things and he just gives us a bit going every time we need it.

So because it was so, yeah, don't trust verify, but yeah, we trust on that one because we know it worked out pretty well. But yeah, with the meet-ups, we're trying to get back into them. We had the guy, James Howells, who lost 8,000 Bitcoin in the Newport landfill.

Join us. I think he last Wednesday night to do his talk and that was pretty fascinating to be honest with you, mate. I was kind of mind-blown at some of the things he was saying. Oh, my God.

Is it true that he's still digging and still trying to find it? No, he's got a whole, so the council won't speak to him. He's now got another plan with backed by VCs and experts of land reclamation, AI and all these analysis things to go in and do it.

So he's got a plan, a better plan than he's ever had before, and it's all fully funded with insurance, many in case they fuck the place up. But the problem he's got is a new book council won't speak to him.

There's a possible other thing he did reveal, it's not really public at the moment as to one of the reasons why the council won't speak to him. There could be some dodgy dealings in history that could be dug up in that landfill.

But generally speaking, ultimately, I think it boils down to civil servants, councils are utterly risk-averse, and at the end of the day, they do not give two shits about anybody, they don't give a shit about you.

So I think it comes down to what price point is going to force their hand. You know, there's like a quarter of a billion pounds or dollars, I think dollars sat here at the moment. You know, so if Bitcoin quadruples, that's a billion dollars.

You know, we've cancelled with a 300 million pounds a year budget. You know, at what point can they stop saying we won't have a conversation with you, James? I think that's the bad bit. You know, at the end of the day, the civil servants have a conversation with them.

It's not like someone's lost their laptop. It's like someone's lost potentially a quarter of a billion dollars. And you can get some of this if you like, you know, you're a stakeholder in this.

You've got the land, so me being me, I'm just mercenary about it. I've told him the best thing you can do is to just bribe the people of Newport. Oh, yeah, well, it's always the best way.

Yeah, it turns to money. You know, he's doing some great things. He's trying to give some to charity if he gets it. And, you know, 50 pounds where everyone in Newport and things like that.

But I just think just be mercenary, be brutal. You know, you've got eight thousand bitcoins there. You know, if it takes six thousand Bitcoin given to the people of Newport to get them to start lobbying their counselors and also voting for the counselor that says, I will try and dig it up.

I think that's your best chance. And so what? You give away six thousand of your eight thousand Bitcoin. You know, if you get a million or two out of it, your life's changed. Carrot or stick approach.

First, blackmail them and threaten them. And then if that doesn't work, or is it the other way around? Maybe be nice first and then threaten and blackmail. Yeah, I'd go in nice first and he's done that.

He's, you know, he lost us and realized in like 2014. So it's like eight, nine years now. And, you know, he's even got the guy who used to run the tip on his team called Gwen, who's responsible, thrown as his hands open effectively.

But even him, like, I think everyone in the council's word went out last week. No one in the council's allowed to speak to Gwen. You know, these are just, yeah, you can manage to do that.

But you can't manage to have a meeting with someone, you know? Yeah. So I think turn it on them. What, what do they all want? They all want their position of power. So threaten the removal of that position of power.

And the only people that can do that are the citizens through their voting. So I've even suggested to him just go on as a, as a one, what's it called? A one topic, candidate yourself. I elect me to be leader of Newport on the council.

I will do only one thing. That billion dollars that's in the landfill. And I'm going to give you all like five grand if I find it. Yeah. I'll be interesting to see how it plays out. My feeling, my feeling is they either have something like you said that they really don't want dug up.

So it won't be. Or even if they were to find it, it's probably fucked anyway. Because presumably it's on a hard drive, which has been under there for however many years. And my guess is that's probably fucked.

And also being selfish, I'm sure he's a lovely guy. And I'm sure all the people in Newport would love a few grand. But kind of hope it doesn't get dug up because Paul went out for the homies.

And those coins just be gone. He has taken the loss last for sure. But no, randomly, you know, he's got the people on who recovered the hard drives from, was it the Challenger Space disaster?

The one where the thing like broke up in the atmosphere and came down to earth in pieces. They recovered like data out of that. And as far as they're concerned, it's basically that circular wafer in the hard drive.

It doesn't matter what happens to the rest of the hard drive. As long as that circular wafer hasn't been cracked or smashed. As far as they're concerned, the data recovery experts, there's a very high probability it's still there.

Because it probably hasn't been crushed. It's in a box that's pretty solid. You know what I mean? A hard drive enclosure. No, I would say odds are reasonably good for that hard drive still in there.

And the other random thing that he said is not like they're trying to like put things like a 20 gig hard drive. It's not like they're trying to pull 20 gigs with a data off it. This is just like a wallet file.

And it's like in theory, it should just be one tiny spot on that wafer or whatever it's called, that they can pull off, which increases the chances again. If you're trying to pull 20 gig off a potentially damaged one, you might miss some of it and you can't recover it all.

But this is just a very small file on a 20 gig hard drive. So that shouldn't be an issue. Whether or not they'd do it. Pass. I think it all comes down to price of Bitcoin. You know, that will be the driver and hoping that the price pushes up enough so that pressure

pushes up enough so they can try and find it before 20 years and that wafer has deteriorated beyond the point of it being recoverable, which I'm sure can happen at some point. But no, I think, you know, 10, 20 years is still recoverable.

But one of the other blows my mind to think about it. But this guy was on his mind and node. He had four connections, I think. And he was really confused because he knows Bitcoin can connect more peers than that.

So he was testing all his ports, put forward and everything like that and couldn't solve it. And it was only after he realized there were only four people mining Bitcoin. That's when it hits you.

You're like, holy shit. So you're talking Satoshi how someone called Drew, I think, and another unknown. And those were the people he was in theory. He was connected to at that time because he was mining like two or three months after the white paper was put out.

And he mined for about three months. And he was just mining at night, working on his computer today, switching to mining at night. And then I think as Mrs. got pissed off with the noise of the laptop at night, so we had to stop doing it.

And then it was only years later, he realized the drive had gone. But to understand a little bit, the guy's a network engineer and like so was someone in Italy and they generally have computer crap lying around their desk everywhere and they try and clean up and stuff like that.

So I can never understand how he did it. But yeah, blew my mind. There's not many. How many people in this world can say with some kind of level of certainty that they were connected to Toshi's node?

Yeah, that's crazy. I didn't know it was that early to be fair. It's only when I started, like, because none of that gets covered in the newspaper reports and things because normies aren't interested in that.

That's not really that exciting. But to me, I was like, oh, shit. Damn. So he's like, no, on this on that hard drive, there should be a list of the IP addresses in a folder as well for those nodes, which he thought was quite interesting.

Because in theory, you got Toshi's IP. But I wouldn't have thought for a second that IP is going to actually help in ID in Toshi. I'm sure he's figured that or they figured that out. That's the wrong place he's tripped up.

He's gone, fuck, I forgot to run a VPN. Perhaps Toshi is bribing you for counsel. Don't answer the phone. James is phone calls. He literally got my address in that landfill. Well, actually, it's James who secretly is stopping it as well because he buried his misses under there after she stopped in mining.

It could well be like, but yeah, amazing story. I hope we hear some more from him in the future about retrieving that, but we'll just have to see. But yeah, mind blowing that that was in Wales as a young guy at such an early age experiment and playing with Bitcoin.

The biggest thing to ever happen in Wales, I think. That's fast forward 100 years, mate. Who knows? Genuinely could be because not a lot else happens down here, to be fair. Bitcoin, Beatra Tree?

Well, yeah. Yes. Yeah, I suppose. But we're only in year two of that. It's up there, isn't it? Actually, after this year, I think it was with the weather. I think we had the hottest day ever recorded in Wales on our last day there, which was pretty mad.

But it's made me scared because we were lucky last year with the weather. Yeah. Great. Even better weather this year. On the last day, it wasn't because I was kites. Well, I wasn't kitesurfing.

I was standing on the beach watching open arms kitesurfing. It was fucking miserable and pissing with rain. What? Last year? I blocked out from my memory, I think. It was pissing with rain.

It was like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to go out kitesurfing. I was like, you're a fucking lunatic, mate. But I'll watch. I'll watch you. Are you like, other Ryan? Yeah, it was pretty miserable.

And then, yeah, trying to get the tents down and stuff. And it was just, everything was soaked. But the rest of the time was really good. It was just that last day. Yeah, I can't. I honestly can't remember.

And we all kind of bailed quite quickly on that Sunday morning because it was like, Evan's got a long drive home. Yeah, we were the last people there. It was me, open arms and self-banked.

Everyone else had fucked off and we were just there. That's why I can't remember it raining. I think you probably guys, you guys got the rain. I don't think most of us. Yeah, that teaches you for hanging around me.

Should have bailed and started going home. But yeah, you're right. The rest of it was amazing the weather. I was then having a trailer lesson from Dewan on the last day. So, when I arrived, he was like, you looked so fucking stressed.

Honestly, I felt sorry for you. And I was like, I was to be honest, I was pretty stressed. He was like, right, I'm going to teach you. Do you want to have a little lesson? And he took like an hour, hour, an hour and a half out of his day to get me round and round that really tight bit of the front

where the office was, keep going round there and teaching that with your vehicle and what you're towing. Yeah. Jesus, mate. That's a, I'm impressed, Max. Yeah, well, he was so was I. And then he said, yeah, normally, you know, you wouldn't be doing that after, you know, for a few weeks, but I'll just throw you in at the

deep end and then you can get around that. You can get around anything. And I was like, okay, fair enough. Well, I feel a bit more comfortable going back now. So, yeah. If you can drive around that little turn in circle, mate, I generally wouldn't like, I drove a campervan and I avoid a drive around that turn in circle.

So yours is like a body half an extra length. And it's what's got the pin in the middle or articulated. 25 foot at the back. Sold that for a laugh. Yeah. It was very tight, but yeah, kind of them to help me, but it was fucking stinking hot.

We were doing it. What's your plans for the next one? I mean, obviously it's started to ramp up quite a lot this year. It was great the year before, but really I think this was sort of the start of something bigger and everyone that I've spoken to anyway really enjoyed it.

So you sort of got any thoughts for next year or any plans that you're thinking of outside of hopefully being able to chill a little bit more? Not so much. At the end of every event, we do the questionnaire to see what people thought to try and get some feedback, which is really important.

So we learned some things about that. Like people are doing a bit more non-Bitcoin related activities and things like that. But no, at the moment, the event's not happening next year. I'm only saying that because we have only dates booked in until you've got dates booked in and you've ticked a few boxes, then it's not happening.

At the moment, I'm up for doing it again. I need to have a chat with our friend at the site and just see what their thoughts are on it. And you know what the site's like, it can handle far more people than we rock up with.

But there's that balance of when does it get too big? And I think we're probably on it. I don't really -- I don't think we need more than like 120 people there. I think that gives you -- there's enough people to talk to.

You're not getting an opportunity to speak to people that you want to and things like that. And most events, particularly, they'll generally be profit-making and the idea will always be to maximize it.

But this event isn't about profit. It doesn't make any money or the money gets spent on the event. I don't make any money from it. I just give it my time to organize it. So it's not like we're under any pressure to make money.

I don't see the beach retreat as a vehicle to try and make money. That doesn't mean it never will be. Never say never, but it's certainly not part of a plan at the moment. And it becomes a different event when you've got to make money.

You know, I don't -- I think we'll avoid that. And from my experience in events, the best thing you can ever really do is have slow organic growth. And it fits in with Bitcoin being low-time preference as well.

I'm pretty sure we could like get a huge sponsor and try and get like 500 people up there and have a little mini Bitcoin festival or something like that next year. Don't necessarily know that the site would be up for that or could handle that infrastructure-wise.

It might freak a lot of people out, but it would be a different type of event. You could do that really. I think this one needs to stay as what it is and just slowly grow up to whatever a good capacity is and then hold it there.

And then in theory, what will happen is we'll get rid of the tickets quicker as more people want the tickets and hopefully we'll get better. I was going to say a better quality of Bitcoin.

The quality of Bitcoin as we've had over the past two years has kind of blown my mind. You know, we organize this and just think Bitcoin is going to turn up but to think that people who are very active, you know, even including yourself, you know, with your pods.

Probably mainly you. Mainly you. Open arms does its little bit to help Bitcoin. I'm just just throwing in there. Like, just keep up because I want it to come next year. But like, generally speaking, I think that's the thing is just slowly grow, let it be organic and see where it takes us.

I'm kind of, I'm not a fan of organizing by committee. That's just because of my event backgrounds. Yeah, yeah. It's just, it's not the greatest way. But I think there's perhaps some kind of like hybrid where there's a few people that perhaps want to be involved a bit more and take on some organization before the event.

And I think that's probably the best way to grow it. Just let it grow naturally. See what happens. Don't try and make money out of it. And cross our fingers for good weather. Yeah, well, I think, I think you're right.

Like it's, the reason I came back was that it did feel a little bit more. I don't know. It just felt, when I go to conferences and I don't go to many or even like the developer conferences and stuff like that, the feeling I get.

Like I get a bit of anxiety. I don't particularly like speaking to too many people at the same time. Like one on one is fine, a couple of people find much more than that. I'm like, I don't like this.

And when I go in, it's like bright lights. People walking around with name badges. It's all very structured. And I just, I don't know. I actually don't enjoy that experience. I find it a bit, I don't know.

I sometimes feel like I just want to walk straight out when I go into one. And it's not a reflection on the people who are organizing it. All the speakers or anything like that. Like sometimes these things are amazing.

It's just for me, I'm like, I don't really like this. Whereas when you're outside in the fresh air and there's loads of space around and you're in natural light, you've got the sea there.

It just instantly drops my level of anxiety. And I feel like the quality of the conversations is way better because people are just that bit more relaxed. There's none of that networking feel like you can get sometimes.

Like sometimes you have a conversation and you know maybe they want something from me or they want something from the person next to me. And you can sort of feel it. You can sort of feel there's a bit of digging there.

Whereas I've never felt that when I'm in Wales. I've just felt like whoever it is I'm chatting to is just interested in the conversation. And I guess that's why you're saying about it. You don't want it too big because otherwise maybe that changes.

Yeah, there'd be potentially too. It's nice to walk around. It's like, I might not know you, but I've seen you twice already. You know Max or something. By the end of the weekend, you recognize everyone.

And you will get past a certain number of people where you can't do that. But I'm kind of with you. Conferences are great. We're really lucky. We've got some like the Honey Badger, Bitcoin Miami, the advancing Bitcoin in the UK.

And they're great events. And go into not any of those for different reasons. But go into like I think Bitbrom a couple of years ago in Birmingham and coin faster. A couple of times up in Manchester.

And the meetups is that I find I enjoy the times when people aren't presenting. It is like in the bar or outside having a SIG or whatever. That's where I get the most value at these because I can stand there and get to know you Max.

And we can find out that we've got a couple of things in common. And then when I'm speaking to you on Twitter three weeks later, I'm not, it's not a non-Avy that I'm talking to. It's like, I know this person and I've got to kind of read on whether they're a con artist

or someone that I want to have some kind of friendship or relationship to. So like that's the best bit about the conferences, I think. And that was kind of one of, there was a few things that sort of motivate me to start the beach retreat.

But that was one of them. And I guess it's that, yeah, I just find it a bit nicer than the more relaxed times when you've got nothing to do. Another beach retreat is kind of even better. So at a conference, you know, it's whatever nine to five and there might be something going on in the evening.

But it's pretty structured. You know, you have an hour lunch or something like that. But at the beach retreat, there's a few things on during the day. But you know, you can talk to people at any time a day or night.

And it's cool when you, the way I parked my camper van this year. It's like you roll over and pull up the blinds and you look down and you can see like 20 of the Bitcoiners being led down the beach to do a Wim Hof.

Cold water thing at like nine o'clock in the morning. And I'm sat in my bed going, oh shit, man, I should have gone up and gone down to that. That looks good. And it's like, it's just stuff like that.

You just won't have happened at a conference. But it's not to take anything away from the conferences. They are important. But I think I would rather go to an event like this. And randomly, I don't know which one it's called.

I think Bitcoin Zitterdell just happened, I believe, over in Switzerland. And I'm seeing some cool ideas they've got there. And I would describe that as it looks like a, kind of like a beach retreat on steroids.

Okay. There's obviously fair bit more money involved and things like that. But kind of like the same philosophy everyone's camping in the field. And they're there for a few days. And I think there might be more talks on what we do.

But yeah, I hope we see more of these types of events where people can just go and chill out, relax. And meet other Bitcoiners because I think the network is probably the thing most of us can do to help Bitcoin.

Most of us can't develop or necessarily start businesses and so on and so forth. But we can't like strength in the social network part of Bitcoin quite easily. And the thing that I've noticed for two years now doing this event is that Bitcoiners are generally sound.

I've not, can't remember any of the events where I'm like, shit man, I do not want to talk to you. I wish you weren't here. Everyone's been sound. And actually one of the funniest ones I think was last year, because I hadn't met MTC before, only on Twitter.

And he's quite toxic on Twitter. And he's like, book done, it's like, okay, this is going to be fun. And then he meets a nice guy. It's like, shit man. It's like, don't judge people by Twitter.

We all have our ways of being online and I love his way. I love seeing the shit he gives people. He does it in his very own way. But you'd think meeting him, man, that guy's going to be like, I don't know, toxic or hard work or something.

I love the guy absolutely sound does. And that's what I've experienced with most Bitcoiners. So I don't think anyone listening to your pod will believe all this toxic maxi bullshit that seems to have taken off over the past two or three months.

But it is that it is absolute bullshit. Even people you would call toxic in Bitcoin, like they're not toxic people. They're toxic towards shit coiners. They've seen it done it and they're fed up with it and they're sick to the back teeth of it.

And that does make people understandably toxic. I am very toxic towards the Bitcoin SV people. So we all have our own little, our own little things that we like to go after. But yeah, I think that's the thing I'd encourage everyone is like, don't do not be put off by Bitcoiners.

Go out and meet them. Go to a meetup and you'll be very surprised of things that come of it. Like the amount of, I think just last year, you know, the amount of people who got something very beneficial from the meetup, and it like surprised me towards the end of the year.

I won't say who it was, but a couple of people did these, I think for their works, these end of year surveys, where you like, you've got to evaluate how your year is gone. Like what we are, what we are good bits, what you're bad bits.

And like both of them said, the beach retreat popped up very regularly on the positive side of things. So it's like, shit, my mask, that's pretty cool. I never expected that it would be a highlight of people's year sort of thing.

Although to put into contact, this was when COVID locked down in Toronto, I think we probably could have all the piss up in back seats in my car and everyone would have enjoyed it. Just actually it's all getting out there.

Join those locked downs was great. But a couple of people said that to me and I have seen other people who have said, you know, they were inspired and a couple of people are going to kick up the ass to do stuff and they've gone on and they're now working in Bitcoin.

That's what I really love. Myself organised it, I won't get any of that out of it. I really hope that the people that come get something out of it. I think that's like the best thing that can happen from the events like this.

It's nice to have a few days hot, like really nice to have a few days holiday. But it's what comes after the event from that event that I hope will be sort of more impactful to Bitcoin in some way.

Yeah, meeting people in person just makes such a difference. Like you say, once you've looked in someone's eyes and you've had a conversation and you've spent five minutes with them, for the most part you can work them out and sort of see, you know, is this someone I align with?

Is this someone that I have anything in common with? Is this someone I'd want to speak to again? And you can learn in five minutes what you probably could or certainly I couldn't learn from months of interaction on Twitter because everyone has their persona. I'm a dyslexic fuck.

So writing anything or reading anything just like it doesn't work in the same way. Like for me to have a conversation by text is like not pointless, but it's close to pointless. I don't really understand anything about the person and I don't really feel like I'm conveying what I want to convey.

Whereas that little five minutes, like you said with MTC, it's like one of the nicest guys in Bitcoin. Such a lovely bloke worked with them loads with 21ism and other bits and pieces. But online you'd be like, fucking hell, this guy's a bit extreme.

And one of my favorite things with MTC is to ask him because he gets banned from Twitter all the time. It's like, what do they get you for today? It's like, I really don't know. What did you do? All I did was say that Christine Lagarde is one of Satan's whores.

And I was like, well, that's actually completely reasonable. He's like, I know, well, anyway, I'll be back in seven days. No, he doesn't stop him. No, I'm going to be me. I'm going to say exactly what I want. If you pan me, I'm just coming back.

It's like, if I can Bitcoin every 10 minutes, another one pops up like, no keeping that man down. No, exactly. And also, like, I know you had him on a pod recently. It was awesome to hear about border wallets.

Like, you know, he told me briefly, I think the same as you. He sent me details for it because he wanted to do a presentation at the thing and get some times. It was like, yeah, of course you can.

But I didn't look into it. And it's only like after hearing his talk and hearing other people talk, more so on your pod because I was running around a bit when he was doing his talk. So I had the quiz straight after, I think.

But yeah, like clavish it, man. You know, that's cool idea. I love these cool ideas coming from Bitcoin is. And it was, it fell. I think it was very nice that he and the time ins all lined up, I imagine as well.

So it was a bit of coincidence, but it was really nice for him to unveil that and, you know, get people involved and do the talk about it at the beach retreat. That was really good of him, I thought.

I want to see more of that. I want to see more Bitcoiners rocking up to the beach street. So in last year, you all gave me this idea. This is what we're doing. Things like that. Take off that would be pretty cool.

Yeah. Well, I think that's where these collaborations happen. You know, the in person stuff. And when you get to know someone, the idea starts spinning. And I think that is naturally how it happens is when people are meeting up and they come up with ideas

because the conversation is just different. You know, Twitter is someone puts a post or a meme or something and someone throws a comment and it's joking. It's fun. And for the most part, not that much seems to come out of it, but you put a group of Bitcoiners together

and you find out what the pain points are or what it is that you'd like to see within Bitcoin and you have someone smart like an open arms lurking around and he'll be like, "Ah, yeah, well, what we could do?" And that's how these things kick off.

And randomly, there's a couple of things there. Twitter is great, but there's no body language, no nuance. You're limited. So there's only ever so much you'll get going through it. But as a sort of an example of how the events developed, it was never meant to be any talks last year.

It was, you know, let's just get a few Bitcoiners away and go camp for a couple of nights. There's only open arms booking on and going and doing something to talk about, do something with lightning. It was like, "Yeah, well, not me. Might as well."

Yeah. So technically, it's open arms as fault that we've now slowly merged more into the conference side of things and having talks and stuff like that. We'll never become a conference. But yeah, I think that was probably an open arms then.

But I like the way we do it as well. So we don't go what talk should we have at the event and then try and ask those people to come. I've generally, again, because I've only got so much time, there is no budget. It's more a case of, "We just see who books on."

Yeah, yeah. Once we've got a number of them booked on, and during that process, someone will say, "I'm up for doing a talk," or whatever, and then try to manage some kind of schedule. And I was kind of aware it almost got to the point of being a bit too much this year,

because I really don't want it to be a conference. I'm really, really, really, really sold on that. It is not going to be a kind of conference. I don't want more than two or three hours a day where you've got to be sat listening to someone.

No, no, no. And the talks at the night as well, I thought that's something we can improve on and get better. But yeah, the event will only be as good as the people who turn up, which is a reflection on Bitcoin, really.

The first year, I'll never forget, sat with the open arms explaining how to do join market in the command line. And we're all sat in this. It was lovely weather outside. We're all crammed into this little room.

And just slowly, as the time went on, people were just leaving one by one until it was me and I think two other people. I think it was Tim hanging around with a lot of questions. That's it. I remember rightly.

Yeah, that's right. And then I'd made the mistake of bringing my laptop. So I was like doing it on the laptop and fucking around. And then someone was over my shoulder and they were like, "Yeah, no, you just need to type this."

"Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh, no, you missed that." And then I was like, "Listen, mate, I don't think you understand. I'm a fucking idiot. I'm not a developer like you are." So in the end, I just went, "Oh, fuck it. Just use it on my laptop.

You show me what you're doing." And so we were going through and open arms is giving instructions. This guy's typing and I was just standing there thinking, "Do you know what? I think I might go for a swim."

[laughter] No disrespect to open arms. It was very hot. That was a small room and I was hung over like a bastard from the night before. So I think about an hour or so into it as I can't stay awake.

I've got it. I just got to go out. Which is one of the good things, at least we're not in that small room anymore. We're down in the market with a bit of airflow. But speaking about that one from last year, I swear I think open arms stole some money from me.

Probably still owes me about £2 worth of Bitcoin from his Bitcoin ATM. I'm sure I swear money in there. Yeah, still £22P from me as well, the fucker. Oh, that was probably his little game, isn't it, man?

Just wins us all with his Bitcoin ATM. But I'll forgive them of that and take it as a charge for making the event better. It's down this route of trying to get people to share their knowledge.

Yeah. No, it was great. And I'd like to have the talks outside and people can dip in and out and they can still be in the sunshine and sort of lean in and listen. And I think all of that is really, really good.

So yeah, maybe next year, if there is a next year, I might do a little privacy thing or something like that. I think that would be a good one to do. I think, and like I've said before, you don't want to be doing works.

You don't really want to be doing pods down there. No, no. Stuff like that. But it's more a case of trying to take advantage of having so many Bitcoiners in there. You can do that by setting up podcasts with them over the coming year and things like that.

So yeah, I'd very much encourage you, if you've got knowledge on something and you don't have to be the clebrous person about it, as we saw with my block stream center, like presentation this year, you don't need to be the expert on it.

And, you know, I'd love it if you were up for doing some privacy. I think that's one of the things I'd like to do next year is get some more privacy stuff. But it all comes down to who's coming and who wants to do something like.

Well, you had some of the best people you could ask for. You had Brother Rabbit there. One of the wisest men I've come across. He's just relentless in all the telegram groups. He knows so much.

But I'm not sure if he'd want to do a talk or not. But absolutely fucking incredible that guy. He'd be good when I think you mentioned, who was it? Was it walking past him and recognised his voice?

Oh, really? Well, no, I think you said in the pod, I don't know whether it was empty or someone or Antimus walked past him and said alone. He was like, "Oh, shit, I recognised your voice, you brother."

Maybe it was Antimus, probably Antimus. Yeah, I think it was actually. But randomly that same thing has happened to me with Bitcoin Q&A at an event. Sat down talking to somebody like, "I fucking recognised your voice.

I know you know what I mean." Because you've got no idea what they look like, but their voices are so... Well, I wouldn't even ask to say unique, but you just twig who it is straight away.

Yeah, when you've heard their voice enough times, you just know. Yeah, when you've spent God knows how many hours listening to podcasts with them on and stuff like that, it's a weird one.

But one of the other random things that we did this year with the event was because we got the marquee donated by a friend of a friend up there. And we asked everyone to donate some sats for it this year, and we raised about 1.3 million to give to the guy's daughter.

Like, it's not pounds, but I wish. I don't know if I'd give them a mate, to be honest. I do pay off my mortgage. Just 1.3 million sats, but that kind of thing, man, I'd like to do. I'd also like, so we pay the campsite, we pay the butcher to get some food, a baker to get some stuff.

I want to pay, let's get some ice cream delivered next year, the pizza guy. Next year, I want to make more effort. I think we kind of orange pill to a couple of them who didn't take payment in Bitcoin from us this year.

I think next year, I'd actually like to make the effort and say, look, I'll buy 300 sausages off you, but I'm going to pay you in Bitcoin and try and do it that way. The inspiration for this event all came from the Bitcoin bushmash in Australia.

And that's kind of been one of their things, is to try and inject money into the local economy as such. That's something I'd like to do, and try and orange pill people at the same time, and hopefully get them on board as Bitcoiners, but we'll see how that happens.

Who knows, we could have that little peninsula up in North Wales as like the El Salvador of the UK or Wales, and turn into a Bitcoin peninsula or something. I don't think that's going to happen, but...

Well, to know, mate, there's a lot of money around there, and there's a lot of like, boaty type of people and that kind of stuff.

Do you know what we could do? Like what we could do is like next year have like a two hour slot one afternoon where we make the effort before the event and to a local business owners or something can say, come down.

We'll do a presentation on Bitcoin and you can just chill and have a barbecue and loads of Bitcoiners. And something like that would probably orange pill more people than you trying to do some online media campaign or Twitter advertising and stuff like that.

And then they go away, they orange pill their family and other businesses in the area and things like that. So maybe that's an idea to try and... What's it called? Outreach. Let's do some outreach work at the event next year and try and orange pill more locals.

Yeah, well, it's a bit like what Texas Slim is doing with this beef initiative. I don't know if you've followed that at all, but getting ranches involved and having that sort of understanding where it's not just going out and chilling

and just saying, Oh, have you heard about Bitcoin? It's like, can I understand what you're doing as a rancher? Can I understand why you're doing it? And you very quickly speak to anyone basically or very quickly get to a point where they have a pain point and it's to do with money or government or banks, like basically everyone.

And so, you know, trying to create these relationships where then they get orange pill and they're like, fuck, actually, I do need Bitcoin. This is amazing. And then so the ranchers will sell their meat to Bitcoiners for Bitcoin.

So it helps them. And then the Bitcoiners get good quality grass fed beef. And yeah, I think something like that where if you could team up with a local butcher or whatever it is, you know, people in that area,

it could probably work pretty well. That to me as a proposal to try and jumpstart a circular economy makes far more sense to me than what I feel has sort of seems to be getting more and more attention over the past year is retail as accepting

Bitcoin or lightning or Bitcoin as payments on the high street effectively. You know, Bitcoin is getting credibly excited about it. And I don't know, I would describe myself as possibly a bit more of a pessimist than an optimist.

But I just don't, I just don't see it. I just don't see, you know, your day to day payments via Bitcoin in, I'm talking mainly in the UK now so a developed country with really good financial infrastructure. I have little reason to spend my Bitcoin in my local

spa or something like that. Now, if it was, you know, buying her knee or beef direct from the producer for Bitcoin and I knew they were, they were stacking no sat, not all of it, you know, they got cost, but they were a Bitcoin and they saw the value and it wanted to snack it. I'd much rather do that.

I'd actually do that. I might even be persuaded to spend and replace, which I think is a bit of a is not not a great thing to be perfectly honest.

How do you think that just because of the added KYC or what's your, it's just not, it's just not natural. It's, it's, it's, it's essentially it's not natural. You're just doing it for the sake of doing it.

You know, if I'm going to send someone a Bitcoin and then immediately buy that Bitcoin back, you have got the issues of, you know, capital gains and KYC and various other things, but I think it harks back a bit to the Bitcoin cash, spend it, replace it, spend it.

It's, I don't see Bitcoin like that. Bitcoin to me is saving. I'd like to save whatever I can afford in Bitcoin. I have no inclination to, to, or motivation to want to spend my Bitcoin unless it's with another Bitcoin and it's supporting the key.

I think that's the key. It's just your local shop. It's, it's an example. I literally have a local shop. Like, I want to say, it's near. I could go there on a daily and spend lightning and I don't.

And if I, if I did, I'd be doing it for the lols, the experience, the fun, but I wouldn't really be pushing any kind of circular economy whatsoever. And I think that's where I've got, I feel a bit pessimistic is it's the retail side of accepting Bitcoin payments is being pushed by Bitcoiners.

And I don't think that's the key to success. And I think we've seen in the early days of Bitcoin, Roger Villa doing that, and a lot of, a lot of merchants ended up having a bad experience and walking away from it.

And hopefully we've got lightning. So we don't have those 10 minute block times. We don't have the high fees. So we actually have a tool now that merchants can use to accept instant payments.

But until their customers ask them, and I mean, a fair number of their customers ask them to, to be able to pay in Bitcoin, I don't see merchants adopting it on any kind of scale.

And until it's on a scale when it's or there's demand for kind of scale, then it's nice, don't get me wrong. But I don't, I don't think it really starts a circular economy or anything like that much rather pay Bitcoiners for product or service.

I sort of agree with you, to be honest, because if it's just a sort of big faceless corporation or shop where the majority of it, they're just going to convert on the back end anyway, straight back to fiat slave notes anyway.

Then it's kind of a bit gimmicky to me. It's fine. It's cool. And it probably saves them some fees. And eventually I can see that making a difference. And they'll be like, Oh, hold on. We're not paying all these processing fees. This is maybe better.

But it doesn't excite me. But if you have someone like a rancher or someone who's a small business owner who generally get fucked by the government, like, if you're a small business owner, life is a lot harder for you than it is for these big corporations.

And, you know, over the last couple of years, a lot of them have just been decimated. And they're just average people who just get fucked all the time. If someone like that understands, well, there's a value to something that acts like cash that can't be taken.

That if they want can be off the books and that over time keeps their purchasing power. Like, they're not just getting raped all the time. Then that sort of person, if they understand that, then I'm like, actually, I'd quite like you to join our ranks because you're a good person.

You understand these things and you're probably going to hold. So with them, I will make the effort and I will pay in Bitcoin. And the other thing is I keep almost every penny in Bitcoin anyway.

So if I can pay, often I need to pay in Bitcoin. And so, like, you know, photography the other day, I paid them in Bitcoin. I orange-pilled them and they got it and they were cool.

But if I could go to Tesco and they've got like fucking BitPay or something on the back end and they're just going to convert it, I'd just be like, absolutely not. Why am I going to go and do that? Because getting KOC free sets is not the easiest thing in the world in the UK. So I put a higher value than spot price on them anyway.

So the spend and replace thing doesn't really work for me. So I would still use slave notes over the Bitcoin in those situations.

But I think really what needs to be hit on and what I'm seeing with this beef initiative and what could potentially happen like in that peninsula is that these smaller businesses understand it and they get onboarded.

And then it is like the start of this circular economy, which is really, really powerful for many reasons. One of them being that it makes it more and more difficult to actually control this thing.

That's such a big theme of this show and something that I push all the time. In fact, actually the first time when I was aware of the Bitcoin beach retreat, I was chatting with it. I can't remember the guy's name, really nice guy. And it was the first time I'd smoked a joint in fucking like over a year.

And I was hired as a guy, getting a bit paranoid. And this guy, that's just a really nice guy, like nothing against the guy. But he was starting talking about, you know, I think KOC is a good idea.

And you know, because how else are you going to stop the criminals and blah, blah, blah. And so I'm having this conversation with him.

I think he'd said, oh, yeah, I know of the podcast. And I was thinking, well, you fucking obviously don't because you would have heard me. And my thoughts on this. Then I thought, well, hold on, I reckon this bloke might be a fed.

What if he is trying to convince me to use KOC and that no KOC is bad, the control is good, and he's trying to mind fuck me. And then I was like, right, I'm going to jedi mind fuck him back and make him understand even though he is under him.

He is under cover police that he's wrong, but I'm not going to let him know that I know that he's undercover. So I had this fucking weird conversation with this guy, this sort of two conversations going on in my head at the same time.

It was fucking weird. I want to know who that is. I can't remember his name now. He was lovely, like nice guy, but I just, and I think some of it was just me being high as a kite.

Probably didn't help. Yeah, I was probably, he probably had just mentioned it once and I'd got it in my head and got super paranoid. But yeah, so I was, I was trying to get him to change his mind and actually go against the police.

So, I don't know how that worked or whether he was undercover or whether I was just high as a kite. I don't know. And then like, the whole K, like, I'm not an advocate of KOC, but any stretch of the imagination, even though I work for an exchange.

I think I saw a tweet earlier today, basically just someone absolutely slate in KYC, you know, there's no use to it at all. And like I'm 95% on board with them. But the conversations never seem to come up amongst Bitcoiners is there's a lot of examples KYC has actually saved people a lot of money.

And this also explains why the banks are so shitty when you're trying to send money to an exchange is because they're dealing with all the scams. Like, there are so many little, you know, Janine next door has been ripped off. Like, and Bitcoin was the tool that was used to do it.

We, various exchanges have safeguarding, you know, you'll speak to someone who's who's open to support ticket and you'll ask them, you know, what you're doing and so on and so forth.

And you'll realize they're being scammed. And it's only through various things that have popped up in the KYC or AML checks that has made you go is this person being scammed. That's the only benefit I can find out of KOC stuff is that it puts some kind of barriers in there to check that your grandma aren't being scammed.

And as much as we don't want to admit it, there's a shitload of it going on. Like, there's so many scams going on. So that's not a justification of KYC. There's other ways of achieving that.

But I think it's important to kind of like recognize that it does save some people some money. Sure. Yeah. And there are a lot of scams that go on because once it's sent, you can't fucking get it back. So it's a useful tool for that.

My view on it is like it causes way, way, way more harm than good and puts a lot more people at risk than they would be without. But at the same time, I understand that a lot of people, that is the way that they're going to come in because that's how they feel comfortable.

What I try and do with this show is just say, look, your best bet is to buy some in cash off another Bitcoin. If you're onboarding someone, then sell them a bit for cash, just like that's your duty as a Bitcoin.

Or sell them a little, you know, 25 quid, 50 quid, 100 quid, whatever, get them onboarded and get them playing around and using it rather than straight to an exchange in an ideal world and try and build this circular economy.

But, you know, I am realistic and understand that the majority of people aren't going to do that. They're going to come in through KYC services. I did it. I came in through KYC services at the beginning because the person shilling it to me was like, yeah, go on to this exchange and buy.

Okay, yeah, that's what I do. It's not even a thought. It's not even something that crossed my mind that maybe this would be better to approach it in a different way.

And it's only through time and getting exposed to other Bitcoiners and starting to understand what this thing's all about that you're like, oh, maybe I'll be best not doing it.

But you still have to take that first step and not until you own some Bitcoin, do you actually bother to do any research really because you're like, you have skin in the game now.

So there is no perfect way for everyone to come in and there will always be exchanges as long as there is still a government and legacy systems there will always be KYC. So I think it's just our duty as Bitcoiners is to explain to people, here's the trade-offs. That's what I do with people now.

I've had people who have come to me and they said, I want to put sometimes a fair whack of money in and I'll go through the trade-offs with them. And for some people, they're like, well, I actually want to pay my taxes. I want to do this. I want to buy something with it in the future.

I don't feel comfortable holding it, whatever it is. And I'm like, well, I'm not sure this thing's for you, but if you have to, then you can use an exchange. But other people are like, well, I thought this was cash. And I'm like, well, it's only cash if you use it like cash and if you get it, no KYC and no one knows you have it.

And they're like, oh, yeah. And they're like, oh, well, that's what I want. How do I do that? So everyone's different and there's always going to be those options. I don't think it's right to attack people on either side of it. It's a personal choice. And that's how it's always going to be like, stop.

I don't know when people force something down someone else's throat. If someone says to me, oh, well, I really want to use Coinbase.

I'm like, that's fine. You can do that. I'm not going to force you not to. I'll be a hypocrite forcing you to do anything because this whole thing is about freedom and just advising you. It's not what I would do.

And it's the regs. At the end of the day, we were going back a couple of years, we had some leeway where you could sell someone up to £500 a day with a corn. And to the average Joe, that's more than enough to stack KYC free corn. So it's all on the governments and the regulators being absolute cocks and an overdoing it.

And we all know the effectiveness to stop money laundering of KYC. It's like someone percent or something. It is all a waste of time. But yeah, the biggest threat to me is the honeypot of data that exchanges have got on me.

Plus the... I don't think well, the best way of describing it is, but the overzealousness of exchanges to comply so they don't get into trouble means that they go beyond what they're required to do.

And the best example of this, I think, is Coinbase. I got the email from them last year or something like that saying over the previous financial year you've sent received or traded more than five brands worth of cryptocurrencies as they put it.

And we've sent your details to HMRC. You're like, "What the fuck?" So HMRC haven't asked you for my details. I haven't crossed over anything as far as HMRC has concerns, but you've gone and told them you could have kept all the data on me if they ever inquired about me.

You didn't do that. You put a package together and you sent it to them. It's absolutely disgraceful. It's utterly disgraceful that they do that. And that's not you like rocking up to Coinbase and buying five grand in corn and pulling it off.

That's five grand of cumulative trading. So you could just put under pound on there and buy sell, buy sell, buy sell Bitcoin enough times to get over five grand. The next thing you know, you are on the HMRC database is being a Bitcoin.

At least they're reasonable though, HMRC. Lovely bunch. I haven't had much interaction with them to be honest with me. I try to keep my head below that parapet. It could always happen. Who knows? What is it the state's just employed like 87,000 IRS agents if we see like 10, 20,000 HMRC inspectors being taken on.

Particularly if they're being armed like the Americans that we know it's hurt. So they don't have a bat on or something. Yeah, I mean, that does seem that's the way it's going to go. Going back to the circular economy stuff, it's like each to their own.

If you want to use exchange, fine, but really the circular economy thing excites me because in theory, you can have a minor or two in a community. You can have producers of meat fruit or veg or whatever it is people need and you can have an economy start to grow where people are moving this Bitcoin and product around.

And it is truly outside the system. Like it's truly not linked at all. If it's done properly and if people are educated from the start that this isn't just come in by, oh, it's going to a million pound.

Will you go and buy a fucking Lambo if it's well, this is just a separate system. And if you're a bit sick of the system, if you're a bit sick of getting fucked over, and you don't really trust the fuckers who are making their decisions.

Maybe give this a go. Maybe you don't have to put all your money into it. Maybe you can just say, well, yeah, 5% of my inventory of me. I'll sell that to Bitcoiners.

And then, yeah, okay, when someone comes in and they want to buy with Bitcoin, I'll take that and maybe I don't even keep all of it. I only keep 2% of it and over time that goes up.

And they're like, this thing's all right, you know, just seeing that slowly like grassroots thing happen. I think that's a way more natural thing. You're not then going to have people going, fuck, I've chucked 10 grand in and oh, now it's only worth two and I've lost my life savings.

It's like, oh, well, I sold a few sausages and, you know, I've got a bit of Bitcoin and I'll see what happens. And on that one is like, I know a merchant who accepts lightning payments and sells Bitcoin.

They've had the option to as part of basket Bitcoin service to stack their commissions or to not convert any payments or product into fiat. And they've never done that. You know, most of these businesses or can ones will be advising them. No, just it's a sell. It's a lot easier for your accountant and so on and so forth.

And what this merchant got in touch me about two months ago, fair play, obviously spotted a dip and I've been talking to him for like two years now just keep dropping. You know, he's never seen my opinion change and keep telling. I'm still here.

You know, he put a fairly considerable amount of money into Bitcoin a couple of months ago, way more than he ever would have stacked via commissions or selling products or service to the few Bitcoin.

What's his name and address? I'll DM you, mate. Brilliant. Thank you. It's like you're trying to advise them where to go and things like that. It's like, yeah, just, you know, if you go here, you're going to get reported to HMRC.

But I think that's my thing with a circular economy is that if they're not a part of that, then they're just instead dumping those stats on the market. So every time you go and buy something, you're just putting sell pressure on Bitcoin.

None of them. I feel quite confident in saying that none of them are keeping the stats because I know that the few who are will still, there will be some of them that they won't make me wrong.

The absolute majority will for accountants and accounting reasons. And for not necessarily being a Bitcoin, we'll sell that stack straight away.

And I do wonder that once the hype has died down where they got to train their staff on how to accept these payments and so on and so forth, where you get one come in a month, if you're lucky, what's the point?

There's just no, you know, I'm being mercenary as a merchant here. Now you do anything for a reason. You're a business. You've got to run efficiently. And I just don't think, particularly in the UK, we're there yet, but I think it can be a bit of a test bad for things.

Because when you go into other countries like El Salvador, perhaps the Central African Republic, I think it becomes a different story. And then it becomes as payments or the payment network.

Yeah, and it depends how it's implemented as well. It's like, if I was to store and I'm paying what 2% or whatever it is that they're paying to MasterCard Visa and I think, you know, 3% or 4% on some of the credit cards and stuff.

If someone's using lightning and I'm not being charged anything, that's quite attractive if the volume's big enough. If it's one person a month, it's like, so fucking what? One person a month buys a bag of crisps and, you know, I save 2% on 50p.

Well, I don't care. So that's not going to bother them, but if you have massive volume and they're not being charged those fees and they know it's instant settlement, and if the people who are going in there and they're using lightning, if you can do that in a way that's actually private,

if you could just go with any wallet and you can pay and you can have some KYC free sets and you can pay for whatever shopping you want, well, suddenly that person has privacy where it's becoming more and more difficult to do it with cash.

And a lot of places they just don't accept cash. They make it very, very difficult and you can only see that trend continuing. So, you know, I would quite like to see it just even if it's only that reason, even if it's only these shops can save a few percent.

And if they've got a big turnover, well, actually it could be quite a decent amount of money. It could make quite a big difference to their lives and potentially could bring the costs for the person walking in there, and the cost down, and that person gets privacy if cash gets eradicated or phased out.

So, long term, it could be very good, but I do agree that at the moment it's kind of, yeah, I'm not bothered. Long term makes absolute sense, but, you know, is there finality when you emerge and accept Bitcoin payments and does instant conversion?

I'd say it isn't because you've got a middleman somewhere. I don't know if you do this today. I'm facilitating that, but that's most of them. You know, it is going back to that. It's only the guy selling beef or honey for Bitcoin that are not converting.

Every other general business will be instantly converting. There'll be a charge associated with that because no one's going to offer them that service if there's no money in it for them. So, that could be 1% or 2%.

And then once you've instantly converted, you know, there's no finality of the money in your bank account. It's probably on the exchange or the middleman that you use to convert it. And at some point you're going to pull that off.

It might be once you've accumulated, like, £100, which might take 2 months. So, it could actually take you longer to get your money if you're not holding it as what we know works and that is fine, which is as corn.

Then it isn't quite as final. But, yeah, it's one of those things. That's just me being Mr. Passamistic. And I think also having seen volumes of going through our merchants at FastBitcoins where, you know, people could buy Bitcoin and they could use Bitcoin to spend via the Lightning network on the same terminal.

And the ratio difference between those two is I wouldn't even tell you it because there is no ratio. It's all quiet. There's no one spending.

So, I think having seen some of that, like, inside, like, the reality of what volumes of merchants will see, the amount they'll take in spending is just beyond insignificant to the amount of people that will buy Bitcoin off them if they were selling it.

Like, utterly insignificant. So, yeah, it's a shame. But I'm still up for, you know, all I want to do is get rid of my cuck bucks at the shop and I will continue to do that until I think that's it. So that's the problem. What's the solution? The solution needs to be.

They need to encourage me to spend my SATs more, which means them probably give me a discount, which means I'm taking a bit of a hit, but they're willing to do that because they want to stack those SATs.

So you're talking about everyone being aware of the value of SATs, you know, all of them, you know, being a kind of accepted thing and we're not there yet.

And I think I was reading digital gold by Nathaniel, something or other recently, and it talks about Wences, career, career as the Zappo founder, really early. Orange killed a lot of Silicon Valley and this comes back in like 2014.

Like, even he, he's saying back then is like, I don't think the payment side of Bitcoin is, is going to take off until we've got like a billion users. I don't think we've got a billion users yet and I'm kind of wouldn't disagree with what he's saying. It's that tipping point, isn't it? You need to, we need to get over a tipping point.

And I think that may be the solution. So everyone as you were carrying what you're doing, keeps shilling Bitcoin number go up, Lambo's moon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's keep bringing them all in.

And we'll lose some of them when they lose their shirt and it takes a dump, but enough will hang on. And I think that cycle is just set to keep on repeating me. That's my positive thought for the day.

Yeah. I'd rather that like, I think it's important to be realistic about where we actually are so that we can see where we're going. I think the hype is fine, but it's nice to just be realistic about these things.

I don't think we're anywhere near a billion users. I'd be surprised if we're, I mean, I don't know the numbers. Maybe 10 million people use it and do they really use it or if they just bought and they've held on an exchange.

I mean, how many real users are there who are running a node and actually messing around with their wallet and have any idea what they're doing? It's not, it's not many. I think that's why, and we'll probably close out on this because otherwise I waffle for the rest of the day, but I think maybe we could try in that little peninsula.

Maybe we should start thinking about just something grassroots if it is just getting a butcher to understand and finding out where their pain points are and how Bitcoin might be able to help their business.

If we start with that, then maybe it can spread and that's a much, much better way of doing things. Sell it to them on, you can keep this off the books, Mr. Butcher. Exactly. Yeah. That may be like the biggest things for Orange Pill, a lot of them.

It's like, I've got no cash, but if you want this, totally off the books might be of interest to sum them as a way to stack anonymously as well, because obviously that's what they're doing.

They're not trying to avoid pain. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Here you are, exactly. Yeah. Here you are, Mr. Butcher. Here's samurai wallet. Have this on your phone. Let me send you a set the butcher up with a nice little pain in.

Off we go. That's my, um, my task for next year then. I'm trying to get involved. Do it, man. Do it. That would be a good slow progression, always getting a little bit better and doing something different, man.

So maybe that'll be one of our things. I'm going to go and look at a map of how big that peninsular is. Yeah. What's the feasibility of this? Yeah. Good idea. We're starting to think about it, isn't it?

All right, mate. Well, good to chat to you. Thanks for coming on. And I would say to anyone listening to this, make sure to go and check out Dragon's Shitty website and also to find out more on the website.

Find out more about the next year's event. Um, so obviously you haven't put the dates, but I really do recommend to anyone listening to check it out. I really think it is the best event that I've ever been to in Bitcoin.

I will continue to go and, yeah, you really knocked out the part, mate. So thanks for all your work that you're doing with that. I really appreciate it. No, thank you for doing what you're doing, man.

I think like those of us who can't code, we've got to find what we can do. If we want it, we don't have to, obviously, but if you want to contribute to Bitcoin, you can find what your skills are and do that.

Mine's events. It's got nothing to do with Bitcoin as such. You know, you do your thing and everyone does that. Don't have to be able to use command line to be able to contribute and push and help Bitcoin along in some way.

So, yeah, thank you for coming again, mate. I appreciate your support. All right, mate. We'll speak soon. Take care, Max, to that. Thanks for listening and thank you for supporting the show.

Every time you share episodes with friends or family, it really does help. Every time you stream sats or send boost on fountain or breeze, it really excites me. It's really cool to see the support, see the messages and know that what I'm putting out there is reaching people.

So, thank you so much for that. Everyone who's been giving me feedback on ungovernable misfits is also appreciated. And if you haven't checked it out already, go to ungovernable misfits.com.

Make sure to tune in for the pleb mining month. It is starting at the beginning of September and we are going to be releasing content every single day of the month. We're also going to be having prizes, including S9s, fan shrouds, foundation devices, passports and much, much more.

Anyone who has questions, they can reach out. The best thing to do is go to breeze or fountain and send a boost. Any of the boost that we get are not going into my pocket. They are all going to pay for the shipping and for all the other costs of putting on this mining month.

We'll get to those first, but if you haven't got any sats to spare, do not fear. You can also reach out on telegram or twitter or any other communication channel you have me on. And we will try to get to all the questions.

Our telegram group now has over 30 of the plebeest miners out there. They are absolutely incredible and they are dying to help other people get on board and really decentralise this network.

Thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you on the next one.