Bitcoin, psychedelics and art with @FractalEncrypt

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.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, 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 the space and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is with Fractal Encrypt. He is one of my favorite artists, and I feel like this episode is well overdue. I've wanted to speak to him for a long time, and he did not disappoint.

We got into art, Bitcoin, LSD, other psychedelics, and freedom. I really enjoyed chatting to him, and I'd love to have him on the show again. If you haven't already checked out his art, I'm gonna put some links in the show notes, and I strongly suggest you do.

Before we start, I have an announcement. I'm pretty excited about this. I have a new sponsor on board, and I can guarantee you won't have heard of them because they are anonymous. They're not shilling anything.

They don't want anything. They have just reached out to me and said, "I want to take a slot." I've asked them if they have any message they want to give, and they've said not for now. The one thing that they did say is they really want to push value for value, and that they're happy that this show hasn't yielded to the yielding scams

or any of the other bullshit, and that's something that I take pride in. My sponsors that I have on this show, I'm very happy with, and, you know, it can always be tempting to go and take the sats up front to have a product that ends up shitting on listeners, but that is not something that I ever want to do on this show.

I also don't think it should be something that's happening in the space at all or that we should be standing for. The whole point in this is to get away from the Fiat fuckery and all the bullshit out there.

If we start allowing that, we're no better than the people who's power we wish to take. I could waffle all day about this, but sincerely from the bottom of my heart, to whoever this anonymous sponsor is, I want to thank you.

It makes a massive difference to my life. It makes a massive difference to keeping this show going. And I do want to push a little bit harder on the value for value. I will never have sponsors on here that are gonna hurt my listeners.

So if anyone is listening on fountain and streaming sats, then thank you so much. It really is appreciated. If you want to support the show and you don't already have breeze or fountain, you can reach out to me if you want some help setting it up or you can reach out to anyone in the community.

It is becoming easier and easier to use and every set helps. I also want to say thank you to my current sponsors. These two sponsors have allowed me to say whatever the fuck I want. They've not rained me in or tried to make me chill.

They've just said, do your thing and we want to support. And that is incredible. It's especially impressive for fast Bitcoins because I always say literally not to use them. Literally do not use a KYC service, mine at home, buy off BISC, do whatever you can to get those sats KYC free.

But I know that not everyone's gonna do that and that's why I have them as a sponsor. Of all the exchanges that I know, I trust this team the most. I think they're really cool. They are proper Bitcoiners and they do everything that they can to keep you safe.

They also do not want to hold your sats. They push you as hard as possible to self custody. So for those of you who won't listen to me or desperately wanna stack or have family members who just won't work out BISC and don't wanna do anything in cash and don't wanna do home mining or any of the other things that I suggest,

then the people to use without question are fast Bitcoins. Go to fastbitcoins.com. And finally, foundation devices, these guys are absolutely incredible. I chase them for many months to get them as a sponsor on this show and I love what the team are doing.

They are making the most cipherpunk hardened hardware available to fuckwits like me. It really is incredibly easy to use foundation devices passport. You can link this to your favorite desktop wallets like Spectre or Sparrow.

You can also use it with blue wallet or with foundations own app. Get your sats off exchange and onto your foundation devices passport. It is so simple to use that if you have any problem, don't even bother asking the team you can reach out to me and I can help you.

That is how simple this thing is to use. Go to foundation devices.com and use the code bit by bit to get $10 off your purchase. Final words before we jump in is just to say thank you to everyone who's been supporting the show, everyone who's been writing reviews and everyone who has given me feedback on ungovernable misfits.com.

If you haven't checked it out already, then please do and I'd love to have feedback good or bad. Enjoy the show. Fractal, can you hear me? - I can hear you good. I may need to put my headphones on.

Do I sound okay? Am I feeding back? - No, you sound good. - Oh good. Okay, cool, cool. All right, fantastic. Well, that's good. Yeah, sometimes when I know if you have the audio and the mic, it creates weird feedback, so.

- All right, this works on rock roll. - How is your lunch? You were making me hungry. I don't know why, but I just imagined you were having something really, really fucking good and I'm fasting.

- Oh no. (laughing) - We won't get too much into the lunch then, but I will give full credit to my wife who, you know, is constantly helping me do the things I do. She's like, you ate, right?

You're gonna eat before this thing, right? It's like, no, I didn't. I don't actually, usually remember to do all that stuff. So yeah, she helped keep me on balance and on point. So she actually made it, brought it up to me, made sure I was gonna have something before I continued my day.

So very thankful for her. (laughing) - That's awesome. I'll remind my mrs. about that and just say, come on, just take him up. (laughing) - For sure, for sure. I try to keep the balance, you know?

You try to keep it good, you know? I try to be valuable to her too as well. (laughing) - That's cool. And is she a Bitcoiner as well, or does she think you're in that case? - Man, I'm so proud of her.

She's come a long way. I think like, you know, she's still not, I wouldn't say a Bitcoiner, but she's fully in there. You know, like when we go out and some of her friends mention there into cryptocurrencies or something, she's like, oh, like she coins or a Bitcoin.

(laughing) And then you know her mom actually called her, I guess when the price went from whatever it was to 20,000 and she's like, you know, oh, you know, my mom called and said, you know, are you guys okay?

And it's like, just tell her like, hey, this is the time to buy, you know? You don't, and I was like, man, I'm so proud. She's like, getting all this stuff through as most as somehow. So even though like, I do think she thinks I'm a little out there sometimes, like she fully seems to be on board and get a lot of this stuff.

So somehow it's getting through. - I love that. Well, there seems to be some sort of correlation with like how artistic someone is, how crazy they are and how much they understand Bitcoin.

And like somewhere in the middle of that triangle are generally the most interesting people to speak to. I mean, this conversation it feels like is well overdue. I wanted to get you on the show for a couple of years now.

And then I was one of the guys running 21ism. Okay. - Nice. - So we had you in block four and fucking microchad MTC swooped in. And I was like, yeah, I'm gonna be speaking to him. You bastard, do that one.

And before I'd ever done the first time I really ever spoke to anybody in a podcast format at all. So that was pretty cool. So, you know, you're getting me a little more polished than maybe he did.

(laughing) - I've done too many of those more than one, more than zero. - Yeah, well, it was, I was very jealous of him. Luckily, I mean, I got to speak to Evan Caludas and that was a fucking cool conversation.

So that softened the blow. - He's about us. - I love Evan, he's so fucking cool. - Yeah, I got to see him talk a couple times. Yeah, I love him. - When your art came about and I first saw it, I mean, all of us, you know, there was at the time, I think four of us involved in 21ism.

We had our different categories. We had our art and video design and code. And we all, as soon as we saw your work, we're just like, this is really fucking cool and different. I didn't, I was like, is it a sculpture?

Like, I can't, I don't know what category to put it into. I think we ended up putting it into design. There's not a lot of stuff where the more you look at it, the more intrigued you are.

And that's something I've found with Bitcoin and it's something I've found with your work as well because the detail that you put into this stuff and the thought that's obviously gone in is mind-blowing.

And so, you know, that's why I was really interested to speak to you because a lot of people who are involved in Bitcoin, they just, you know, they say the power of the same old stuff and, you know, number go up and blah, blah, blah, but there's not many really truly deep thinkers and I have a feeling from looking at this work,

Bitcoin and all this stuff pulses through your veins. Oh, have I lost you? - I think it went quiet for just a brief a second, but I did get what you were saying there and I'm certainly honored and it's really amazing to hear what people think about the stuff that I make because pretty much all this stuff is made in a vacuum.

You know, I just basically sit alone in my room and just kind of work this out and sit in front of the computer and the machines and basically just make this stuff all happen in absence of really any commentary until it's finished.

Like I'm not the type of person that likes to show like progress work, like, hey, here it's coming along. This is kind of what it looks like because to some part of me feels like, you know, maybe that jinx is it or, you know, like what if you can't actually pull this thing fully off because I always try to work a little bit

of beyond my skill set. So it's like always a risk. Everything I'm doing is very risky in a sense. So it's like maybe I'll be able to do it, maybe I won't. So a lot of times no one gets to see anything until, okay, it's completed.

I've been trying to take some more progress shots because I've been making books that go along with the different sculptures. So for the people that buy them, I actually saved some of this and actually included in a physical book that they get along with the sculpture.

So that way if they have the sculpture on the wall and somebody comes over, they're having a whiskey enjoying it and say, hey, that looks cool. Well, you know, hey, you can check out the book and it basically goes through all the different details that are in the sculpture and then specific to them,

you know, the transactions that I sent to the network for their specific sculpture because each sculpture I actually do a Bitcoin transaction. So it goes on chain and kind of puts a certificate of authenticity on the Bitcoin blockchain.

So that way it's there forever. You know, a lot of art, it comes with the certificate of authenticity. It's a paper thing. You don't know whether it's legit or not. And that could get. - Can you hear me now?

- I can hear you. I see I was going along talking and talking. I had no idea we disconnected. (laughing) I'm sorry, it's almost definitely my fault. I've taken my VPN off now, but my internet here is a fucking disaster, but I keep moving every month or so.

So I haven't got like fixed lines. So it just is a constant nightmare. So I apologize for that. - Oh, no worries. My name has usually been a deal like that, but we just kind of got the Starlink.

Like we're out in the middle of nowhere out here. And I've been on- - Oh, nice. - We've been building my own routers and using a 4G LTE, like a cellular network connection on multiple routers and just creating on network here.

But we just got the Starlink, like we were only getting like 10, five to 10 megabytes per second at our max. And we just got this Starlink internet thing, I would say a couple of weeks ago.

And it's actually like, it's actually much quicker, but it does get interrupted by like things, I guess. Like we have a lot of trees, we're out in the middle of nowhere. So like, I guess, super cool with it.

But it's better than we had, so can't complain. - So you're building your own routers, what you're doing, PF sense, or one of those sort of things for privacy, or you just like tinkering with stuff like that?

- No, well, yeah, it has some privacy applications because then you can actually see every device on your network and what they're doing. And I just love to have that kind of visibility into stuff.

I was, the routers that I was building were basically based off of like a, like routers are basically multiple parts. You have the router that kind of transmits the device and then you have the modem that will capture the wifi signal.

So I would basically just buy the components for that and then just basically assemble them myself. And the reason that I was doing this was because there wasn't really a good commercially available 4G LTE router.

There's something called Mophie, which is pretty good. But it was based on one specific type of architecture and you could get a little better stuff if you do it yourself. So that was basically the home motivation.

It's just we're out in the middle of nowhere. So as much as I can optimize this stuff, the better. And yeah, I mean, for a while it was like, we were using something called HughesNet, which is a satellite internet provider and they cap your data at 50 gigs per month and we were just running through that like nothing.

So those things were, you know, and forget about running a Bitcoin node, like just the traffic of sending and receiving transactions and just from everybody else in the Mempool that alone just takes up so much bandwidth that I think like, I don't know, we would just blow through stuff all the time.

So at some point I was like, I found out, oh, people are using cellular SIM cards in routers to basically just trick the cell phone company into thinking it's a cell phone. And then you just use the unlimited data plans and it actually powers the whole house internet.

And I had no clue about this stuff, but it works. And we used that for years. Yeah, I was a really good solution as far as that goes. - Yeah, but the Tesla stuff seems to be the Starlink seems to be really fucking good.

I spoke to a couple of people who have got it and they've been raving about it. - Comparatively, it's night and day. I mean, like I said, I was getting like a good 10 megabytes for a second, if I was lucky, this thing easily is over 140, 150 most, you know, most of the time when I check it sometimes it's like at 90,

but sometimes it's at 250 or 300, which is like, you just would not even dream of that. And it's a factor of where you are. Like if I was doing an LTE network very close to the city, my speeds would be significantly higher, but it's just, you know, when you're stretching things,

you just make do with what you can and here happens for that. Honestly, I'd rather be in a situation like this where I'm out, kind of away from everybody and just connecting a little tiny bit slower to the world.

And you know, it's like, you know, your pace is slower, you're out here slower. Okay, can go with this. - Yeah, definitely, especially with all the crazy shit going on, I think the last place you want to be is in the city, you want to be far away and have some time to prep and plan and not be in the madness.

So I think a lot of people, especially Bitcoin is a thinking that way. And actually, I was looking at a styling myself because me and my misses have been building or restoring and building a 1960s airstream.

We've been building it for like, if shit really kicks off, we'll just move. And we've got all our stuff in there and yeah, ready to go. - Nice, that's awesome. Yeah, well, we started in a situation where we were in the city.

We actually, I had actually lived in an apartment that I burned down one time. And then basically my girlfriend at the time, like after I got out of the hospital, I was there for like almost the whole month.

I pretty much, the whole house burned down, but I also got burned like 30% of my body got burned off at like 30 feet burned and stuff. Yeah, yeah, I was in the hospital for like a month and when they actually released me, I was like not really ready to go.

Like I was, like my skin still wasn't really there. I didn't have a home because it got burned down and my girlfriend at the time, who wasn't my girlfriend for super duper long, but you know, it may be about a year or so at that time, a year and a half.

And I was like, "Well, hey, can I stay with you?" And she was like, you know, I don't know that we were ready to be at that place in our life yet, but luckily that all worked out and we got married and now it's like, I couldn't imagine life without her and stuff.

So it's like, you just go through these moments where like everything in your life is destroyed and taken away, literally like not even your health, you know? And it's like you pretty much bring something back from that state of nothingness.

It's a big confidence builder, you know? So I think there's a lot in life that I've been like intimidated by, but if you just keep kind of trucking on and just realize like, hey, that through action is the only way through this and, you know, this stuff doesn't build itself.

So also I think there's a bit of a drive to it. I don't think in many ways I could have stopped making art all of a sudden. So even though I didn't have much, even like at her house on her little table, I would just like fill up the entire dinner table with art supplies and art stuff.

And it was like, she had a one bedroom apartment. It just wasn't really ready for me there. So luckily we all grew together out of that place. And we ended up living like right downtown of Miami, which is like, I mean, when they have ultra music festivals, one of the biggest music festivals,

maybe in the world, but certainly in our country. And we were right outside of that where we could pretty much just parachute down from our balcony into the festival. And it was really awesome for the time that we were there.

But at some point, just every year, the rent kept raising, the rent kept raising. And, you know, sometimes they would just say, well, hey, we're kicking you out of the apartment 'cause we're coming back from France and now we wanna live there.

Or, hey, this or that happens, it was just so tenuous. You know, like you didn't have a security of knowing that you were gonna be there past the time of the lease. And some of the leases were even like I said, like, hey, well, if we decided to come back from France, and y'all just gotta figure it out.

So it's like, we bounced around a couple of little, actually bounced around in the same building for a few years because we really loved it. And just, it just felt so insecure that at some point, we said, look, we just need to settle out, find a home.

And we started looking and we were just so picky. I'm picky with everything in life. And just, it took us over a year and a half. We just didn't find anything. And then our realtor was like, "Hey, I think I found a place you guys might like."

And it was like an hour from where we were even looking to live. And so they bring us down there. We go, look at it. And it's just like amazing log cabin on a really big property. How's the noise?

This is in our area, like, I can't believe that. You know, like, it's just like, so we're like, all right, let's like, what's the deal on this place? This one actually looks workable. Like it actually had space to do stuff.

And they were like, well, here's the deal. The guy that owns it right now is a DEA agent and he got called to Africa. And he just has to sell the house right away. This is what they want.

It was like above what we actually had. And I said, look, this is what we have. We can offer this and see how it goes. And the guy came back. He said, well, hey, you know, it's close, but can you go up to this?

And I said, look, I can't like that's, that's what I have if you could take it cool. And luckily he was just like, all right, fuck it, I gotta leave the country. And we got the house. And without this house, I wouldn't have been able to put in my own laser cutter in this shed.

In fact, like the house came with the shed out back. My brother-in-law came by, he called it the murder shed 'cause it looked like it was falling apart. It was like full of spiders that would probably would murder you and like dust from like 10 years of who knows what like DEA got and gone in there and stuff.

So it was like, I was just going to throw it out. But my buddies were like, no man, this thing is, this thing is awesome. You just put, you know, just put a little money and work into this and we can turn this into like a workshop.

And I looked at my friend and I was like, are you sure? Like if you saw the shed, like you would not believe it. And he came over like every day for a month and a half or something, he painted it with me.

We put him, we took everything out. We put in a dry wall. We put in flooring. We put in AC like lights. And like he helped me turn that thing into a workshop. And soon enough I had a laser cutter in there.

And you know, just this whole thing comes from that. You know, so it's all just like one string of happenstances that brings us to where we are. That's what life is though, isn't it? We just sort of bounce through it and we don't always know where we're going, but it tends to work itself out

if you work hard and they're having the space to be creative. It's such a massive thing. Absolutely doing it on the kitchen table. Funnily enough, I almost burned down my house painting about, it's about three years ago.

And I was in the same, like I turned my whole living room into an art studio and I was painting on this table in the middle of the room and I was using alcohol inks and blow torches and I was high as fuck.

Just, it was my release. I was like, I just need a break from work. And so I just stay for the day and paint, get high, fuck around. And I was chucking all this alcohol ink on the painting.

And then I stupidly just grabbed the blow torch and was like adjusting some of the detail there and the whole thing just went boom. Like fucking up hit the ceiling, smoke going everywhere.

And I was an idiot, like I wasn't prepared, didn't have any fire hydrant or anything like that. And it's just like running back and forth with cups of water, just trying to put it out. And yeah, I cannot believe I didn't lose my house.

So yeah, I was close, but yours sounds much more scary. Oh yeah, definitely. Well, the thing is, is that stuff gets away from you quickly. And with mine, it was basically like I had some oil in a pan in the kitchen and like that caught fire.

And I just was like, oh shit. And you put the sink to put water on it and that will put this out. But oil and water and fire, it doesn't do that. But when I moved the pan and it wasn't a far move, it was like, you know, a couple of feet from the stove to the sink in that move, some of the liquid with the fire actually spilled out

on the counter or the floor or something. - Shit. - And when that happened, just the whole place just went up like so quick, it was crazy. Like it just kind of happened before I realized what was going on.

And luckily, I just, you know, I got out in somewhat in time, but it had already kind of like burned me a little. And at that point, I just called 911, you know, they came. But yeah, there was like no saving any of that stuff.

And even after the whole thing was over, it was like, you know, and the thing is, is I had used to do like a lot of like blotter art. Like I've done a lot of psychedelic artwork. So I had like whole collections of blotter art and all kinds of stuff.

So like when the fire department came in, they like saw the blotter art and they thought it was like, (laughing) and like they were going to actually arrest me and stuff at the hospital and like my wife at the time was like, hey, no, look, like this is his website.

Like he, you know, here you could see the artist just, this is just art stuff and look like, I was pretty much unconscious while all this is going on. But like I would have woken up with like handcuffs to the hospital bed on top of it for just my art.

You know, I guess it was a good story in a sense, but yeah, it was really crazy. I actually have like a DEA thing that they wrote up that said, you know, we busted the first active LSD lab in South Florida.

It's like, that's so funny. - All right guys, sorry, I mean, but you know, I guess art imitates life sometimes, so. - I wonder if that was the same DEA agent that you nicked this house off.

You got it cheap, you've tried to fuck you over and you're like, right, no, this is how life works is actually, I'm going to take your house for nothing. I love it, I love it. That is very interesting turn of events, I suppose.

- That's cool, so the plotter art, is that something you still work with now or like go back to or is that kind of, that's been and gone? - It's, we'll see, okay, deep, it's complex question because I feel like things always evolve and things are connected and, you know, I actually like took some LSD the other day

and I was kind of feeling like, you know, I don't want to be off-mission in a sense and my wife was like, what's off-mission for you? Like, and I'm like, well, you know, I basically like use the art as a vehicle to promote, you know, tools of self sovereignty that are like wholesome and good for people,

good for the planet, good for themselves. And I see like both Bitcoin and LSD as compatible, not only compatible, but I'm not sure what the word would be here, symbiotic is not either. Complimentary sovereign technologies that individuals can use to better themselves.

So, yeah, like I actually have, just like I have the Bitcoin mandala that basically goes through the Bitcoin ecosystem and the whole software and the coding and whatnot and kind of breaks down each little thing and puts them in perspective.

I also have an LSD mandala that does a similar thing with LSD, it basically has four rings, each of the four rings is related to one of the four atoms in the LSD molecule, so you have carbon.

There's 20 carbon, so there's 20 rings and the carbon ring, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen. So, each of those has a ring of stones that tell a story. There's actually the full synthesis of LSD in one of the rings.

So, if you follow the instructions in the center ring then you come up with 31,000 doses of high quality LSD. So, it's like these things are something, you know, and basically I get into this stuff in a sense that it's like, I feel a mission driven.

So, while I haven't really done anything with the psychedelic art for the past few years, I think in 2017 I started with the Bitcoin art and when I go into something I kind of go all in in the sense that it just, it just captured in my mind and my imagination.

So, I just have to go through all these different rabbit holes there and I haven't really finished with Bitcoin in the sense or LSD I suppose. There's just so much depth in each one. So, I think that there may be places to tell stories where maybe there's some connection that happens between the two.

There's also like reimagining of older work. You know, I've done that in the past where I kind of take something that I drew 10 years ago and like redo it with whatever my current skill set is and usually hopefully that's better.

And so, there's stuff that I've done in the past that I do feel like has possible expressions in the future both in terms of sculpture and drawing. So, I don't know, honestly, there's just so much that I want to do.

I'm not sure that I actually have time to actualize at all. So, I kind of have to also be ruthless in the sense of defining a path. So, I have to say, okay, you know, this is the mission here.

This is the story that I'm telling and then just stay true to that and then not get distracted. And there's just so many distractions in the world that it's like, you know, like sometimes I find myself, like in a position, it's like, should I take the time to like say, hey, I think X, Y, or Z?

Or should I, if that really doesn't relate to me in some way? Or should I just forget about all that and just focus on what I'm doing? And the answer is obvious, but just sometimes you just see stuff and it triggers and you're like, this seems dumb to me.

So, you know, whatever, I guess I'm a victim to that. So, I think it's a search personally to limit distractions, stay on mission, and you use whatever ability that I have to tell stories through visual media and just try to keep spreading the message that I feel is a benefit to the world.

And also maybe something that lasts beyond me as well. But, you know, like we only got a very limited time and it may not make it till tomorrow. So, you know, what you have is what you've done.

Hopefully, I'll leave something here that someone remembers. - Definitely, and I like that what you're focusing on is things that you think can actually make change, you know, whether it's psychedelics or whether it's Bitcoin, it's things that can really change people's lives and rich people's lives.

And they're both things that have, I guess, from the general public a very, there's a very negative spin on both those things. Even though the truth is out there and, you know, we know that it can help a lot of people, that is the general view.

And so, having someone who's focusing their art and spreading this message through art is really important because, you know, it can light a fire in someone. You know, you can sit and you can tell everyone for years about, you know, Bitcoin's the best Monday, it's got a half a clap supply, you know,

you can tell them all that and they don't give a fuck. And then they see something like your work or the same as psychedelic stuff and it can just capture their imagination and they need to go down that rabbit hole themselves.

I think certainly the people who I've managed to orange pill are people who have gone, okay, you know, you've triggered something, you spark something and then they go away and do a bit of research and they're the only ones who stick around.

- Right, absolutely. Well, I think, yeah, by having a different medium to tell stories, it's only to lend power to the, you know, to the message in that sense is you have some people that are very good orators, some people that, yeah, can do different medium to, I guess, spread whatever message it is that they feel.

But I once said that I think, you know, LSD and Bitcoin are two of the least understood, yet most powerful technologies on the planet. And I think that that's just very true. And that's one of the things that I try to de-disambiguate in the art is that our culture is telling us one thing about these, you know, LSD is bad,

it damages your chromosomes, it makes you crazy for life after you do seven things. You know, you're legally insane and Bitcoin boils the oceans that, you know, gonna make you lose all your money, it's gonna, like, use so much energy, we're gonna have to give up on New Hampshire and stuff.

And, you know, we're being fed these stories that are actually just propaganda through, for mechanisms that actually, the incentives aren't necessarily clear all the time and the messages that we're being given.

So you kind of have to look deeper in a lot of this stuff because the more you look at these tools, like psychedelics or Bitcoin, the more you find that these are actually something that can benefit your life.

Like you're almost being fed a line that, that leads you to destruction or leads you away from personal salvation. You know, for one thing, like psychedelics have like, you know, they've been doing this research where, you know, like, mystical experiences that are brought about through psilocybin or other psychedelics

and comparing them to mystical experiences through religion and things like that. So I find like psychedelics to be where you're getting a direct, unmediated, no-counterparty risk experience of whatever you want to say the divine is in quotes or, you know, instead of having somebody tell you how it is or what their experience is,

you actually get the opportunity to go out and have that experience for yourself and make your own determination based on that, instead of having to just be spoon fed a watered down version that doesn't even contain the Eucharist in essence.

You know what I'm saying? Hmm. Answer this honestly, am I a complete fucking pussy for being too scared to take LSD? No, in fact, I think anybody who doesn't have a sense of fear when they take it probably isn't approaching it appropriately, like these things are, you know, in those same studies

that I was talking about, those people would say that psilocybin, a single dose of psilocybin is among the five top most important things in their life, you know, along with the death of a parent or the birth of a child or a wedding.

And for some people, it was the most significant experience of their life. So if you don't have some sense of trepidation when going into an experience like that, you're not properly kind of focused in a sense.

And I don't think that not proper focus is a bad thing. Like I get annoyed by people that say things like, "Oh, I only take LSD for spirit." Or it's like that looks for spiritual reasons or things like that because I feel like that's a very elitist view and it gives up on the fact

that everybody gets what they need at the appropriate time. Like I don't like to discount the fact that some guy could be at a frat party on a Saturday night and with a bunch of his buddies drinking beer and somebody gives them a hit of acid and he has an experience that opens them up, changes his life forever for the good.

And, you know, like he wasn't planning on that, his set and setting weren't right, according to, you know, some people, but you know, that experience is still accessible just through sheer chance, you know.

So like you can't discount those and say, you know, there's only this one way to do it. It's like only my Bitcoin wallet. Is the right one to use? You know, it's like, no. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Like there's, there's opportunity, you know, like there's, but proper preparation, there's something to be said for that. Like it's, you know, by, by, by properly preparing your set and your setting, like, okay, you're creating a safe space for yourself.

You're not gonna have these distractions. You don't have your phone or somebody's gonna call you and say, "Oh, hey, I broke my leg. "Can you come pick me up and take me to the hospital?" Like, no, you know, you can't have yourself exposed to those type of environment or where you're walking around to the city

and you know, or you're driving, I forbid, you know, like properly set up your setting. You know, also the fact that we live in a world where you can't ascertain the quality of what you're getting to a very direct way, that's a huge impediment to many people.

So like if you have a situation where it's legalizing, you have a known amount of a known substance, that takes away a huge amount of fear about the process 'cause a lot of people, they might get something that's really good, they take it and they get into a loop about, "Oh, maybe I took something that's not good

"and it's poison or something." - Yeah, yeah. - Chipping out and it's like, they're actually on the best stuff ever, but they don't know. Because so like, all this stuff is a factor of prohibition.

By making this stuff illegal, we actually limit people from having these safe experiences. You know, my kind of just has always been that as society grows, like hopefully we'll create frameworks for working with these things.

You know, like hopefully every university will have like a psychedelic crisis center 'cause really that's what it comes down to is managing these like the crisis situations because usually those bad trips that people have are where the most personal growth comes from in some senses.

It's just that we handle them very poorly. You don't wanna take somebody in this very heightened state and put them into like a white hospital and then lock them down to a gurney and then put them weird things and stuff like IVs into them.

That's actually not an appropriate solution in that situation. There's much better ways to handle that that actually could lead to a lot of personal growth for that person by actually addressing the situation that they're going through, putting them in a safe place or they're not gonna hurt themselves

and letting these things play out in a safe and healthy manner. You're gonna have a lot more growth and you'll have something that actually the person can look back on and be like, "Yeah, that was scary as hell."

But, you know, there's that confidence building. Just like I said, where you come from nothing and you build back your life, like if you think of the psychedelic death and rebirth experience that a lot of people go through, you don't even have to have that ego death or death experience, but that sense of basically being torn apart,

like basically torn apart at the atomic level, shown what the universe is and basically being put back together in a sense and then coming back out of that, that in itself is very confidence building in the sense that, man, I was nothing and now I'm something and it's like, yeah, so I think you are probably appropriate

to have trepidation and there's nothing wrong with that and yeah, just everybody has to take their own time. Just like, you know, like these things aren't for everybody, I say, you know, like people have to self select and one of the things I like is for people, you know, to the idea of growing mushrooms because it takes a long time.

So say you have like a month or two months where you're actually working with this, you know, actually spores are basically just a potential for life, so it's like potential energy and you're turning it into kinetic energy by basically like germinating the spores and letting the macellia grow out

and then like actually like spawning that into substrates and letting, you know, letting that colonize and actually turn, basically, you know, turn trash into treasure, you know, in essence, like these mushrooms, they grow on compost or like decaying matter and stuff and you're basically like taking what was once life

and is now decayed and turning it into like this out chemical potion. And just this time that you have to go through that process gives you time to think about it and like you think about it a lot because you're actually interacting with it a lot and you also are directly responsible for bringing it into the universe.

So there's a connection with you and this substance and you also take away the issue that I mentioned before about you don't really know the quality of what you're getting like, oh, like I don't know if this LSD is good, like if you grew the mushrooms yourself it's, you can identify them just from a picture

on the internet, like this is what this is, it does, you know, like you can do it. It has the purple square print, like you can do self-identification and verify that what you have done is correct.

- Which says a stress out. - Yeah, yeah. So in terms of centralization, I feel like LSD is like a highly centralized thing, not, you know, it is what it is, but mushrooms are very democratized and decentralized in a way that it's just, there's, you know, there's kind of no stopping that, the mycelial network.

- That's true. Yeah, it's something, I mean, I listened to a talk from Paul Stamans on mushrooms and I've done a lot of like talking to people who have found it to be really useful for all sorts of different issues.

And like, I don't know if this makes sense, but I find like throughout my life effectively I've had different blocks. There are like a selection of those blocks where you change to a completely different person.

Like the person who is in that time is no longer around at all. And the things that happened then sort of no longer go through my head too much. But at the same time, there are maybe some boxes that have been shut and forgotten just so that life can continue, just so that I can function.

But they're still there. And I guess my thought is, you know, a lot of people say, oh, you can sort of fight these demons and you can break things down and then sort of let things go. And with me, my sort of fear is, well, what if I do open up those boxes using whichever substance?

What if I open them and then I can't get a lid back on them? Or what if I open them and then all the work I've done over the last decade to become different to what it was? Then what if that creates issues in my life today and then creates issues for my family?

And so I guess that's where the fear is where I'm like, I'm concerned that A, I see some really fucking dark shit that I don't want to see and B, I maybe make things worse. And so I guess that's the fear.

And then the hope side of it is like, well, actually, no, maybe I can confront a lot of things and maybe I can actually grow as a person and even the box I'm in now, I'll look back on and go, okay?

That was a former version of myself and actually I can become better again. So yeah, it's a constant loop of those thoughts, I suppose. - Yeah, there's so much to unpack. There you hit on so many things, you know?

First off, no one wants to take stuff and see super scary shit. That's like, yeah, that's like the main thing I think that people are concerned with is they don't want, you know, it's the unknown, they don't want to, it's like, you know, it's almost like taking a taxi, you know?

Like once you're in there, it's like, you're almost a plane, I guess, you know? Like once you're in the airplane, you lose control, you're basically like, there's no going back now. Once you're in the air, you're just there, you gotta trust what happens.

So that feeling of the unknown is something that a lot of people have to address. Now, some of the other things that you're asking, like what if I see something and I haven't experienced that instead of actually helping me grow as a person, what if that makes me actually devolve in some ways or become worse?

And that's actually a super insightful point that I like to bring up is that there's no magic bullet in the sense that you can't just take LSD or psilocybin and become automatically a good person or a better person.

You are just as subject to wrongthink as anyone else. So I like to give examples to people like in Bitcoin, there's like a lot of people that will fault victim to wrongthink in the sense that they see Bitcoin, they get excited about it, they know this is something really awesome.

And then they think, man, it uses too much energy, we should switch to proof of stake or like it's like slow and expensive technology. Like this other thing here is really awesome. So I should just go, you know, in this instead of Bitcoin.

So there's that wrongthink there. So psychedelics have just as much wrongthink that can happen. So, you know, like there's whole weird new AG movements that happen where people like, you know, and I like, I can't speak for the validity of this stuff.

I have friends that are into like Reiki and crystals and stuff and I actually love crystals for the geometry that I don't necessarily think they're gonna heal you up. They may have a beautiful.

But like there's a lot of wrongthink that is just inherent in being a human. So it's, there's nothing that's gonna save you by going into it. Now, I think like the benefit of psychedelics is that it gives you a perspective shift.

Like you're used to seeing the world as yourself and this is basically something that takes you outside of yourself and lets you look at yourself looking at the world in the way that you do.

And then you can judge whether you think that that's productive for you or whether maybe you have some blinders on that need to be removed. But I think like any tool, there's ways that you can use it properly and properly.

And you can also abuse it, you know, as well. The thing about abusing psychedelics is they usually like don't take that abuse for too long. They'll usually hit you at some point back. So yeah.

All right. You know, like again, eat 50 hits this time. Like, you know, that may not go so well. So like, yeah, you have to like be within bounds, you know, as well. So like every tool has its benefits and it's dangerous.

So it's all about appropriate use. And the problem is by having these things illegal, it's very hard to a certain a procedure for what this proper use is, as well as what places these should be done in.

And there's no consensus around these things. So it makes it very willy-nilly and dangerous for people that just legitimately want to investigate something about themselves. There's no reason that we shouldn't have body sovereignty to determine what happens within the bounds of the skin,

you know, that you were given to exist on this planet. You know, that's just a magic thing. - Especially with a tool that has the possibility of enriching people's lives. And that's the thing with Bitcoin and with psychedelics.

There are some drugs. I mean, I think everything should be illegal. I don't believe in any laws or rules or anything, to be honest, but with certain drugs, I can understand, I'm like, you know, cracks are not that great for people and just like the opioids and stuff like that.

You know, it's not that great and heroin and things that can fuck people up. But, you know, there are other drugs where I'm like, you know, there are some serious benefits here. And when they're not available and you know what you're buying, like you would with anything else, it creates so many issues.

Like people, most of the time where people die here in the UK, it's because they... Fuck's sake, where are you with me now? - Yep, got you, sorry. - Yeah, where do we cut off? - It just literally went off for a half a second there.

- Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I was just gonna say like here in the UK, most of the time there's a death. They think they're buying one thing and they get something completely fucking different.

And then it causes issues. - Which is the fact that we just talked about the prohibition causes, you know, this misidentification, which is super dangerous and causes these deaths. And, you know, like, and it's a good statement that I fully agree with you how like, I agree that all, like there should be all substances, should be legal.

Like yeah, it cracks like not really in my thing and heroin's not my thing. But I don't think other people should be not allowed to make that choice necessarily. I think like advocating for LSD and psilocybin is very easy on this path because as far as substances go, they're actually safer than even aspirin.

Maybe not quite as cannabis, but it's like they're so far on the safety platform. They have thousands of years of use of mushrooms and decades and almost a hundred years of use of LSD over millions and millions and millions of people, almost daily.

So it's like you have a really good reference set of, you know, whether this stuff causes, you know, issues where people are not and, you know, on a long time scale. So I like a lot of these things in terms of just determining safety and efficacy.

But I think what it comes down to, like we said, is body sovereignty. It's really not my right to tell other people what they can or can't put into their bodies. Like they could be, you know, mischievous with it as long as they don't harm anybody else, then really I don't feel like that violates, you know,

in any of the, you know, societal rules that we have. It's just like, hey, you know, it sucks for you. Then hey, I think that you have the right to make that choice. - Yeah, absolutely. It's crazy that it's even considered that someone else can make a decision on someone else's body.

It's fucking stupid. Right. And that's the point that I've had in the past couple of years to point we can't even imagine. (laughs) - Yeah. I mean, we can laugh about it now, but yeah. Fuck, you know, it was dark. - Yeah, it's been a scary talk.

- It was really fucking dark. Like around here, me and my misses were like, the only two people who believed it was an obvious thing, that people should have a choice over what goes in their body.

Like, we were really demonized and attacked, even by our own family and friends and everyone. - Yes. - It was scary to see how quickly it happened, but it makes it very obvious why a lot of these substances are illegal, is because if you have a substance that can make people think a little bit differently,

open up their minds slightly, make them question things possibly, and you're a government who has a certain agenda, you're not gonna want that to survive. You're not gonna want people to be using that because it's gonna break the illusion of what you're trying to do.

And it's the same with Bitcoin, it's the exact same thing. And that's why I think maybe there's this crossover, is that a lot of people that I speak to who are into Bitcoin, either smoke weed or have other substances that they use, and they tend to be a lot more like the degree of openness

in conversation is much greater than the average person. They're prepared to discuss things, they're prepared to think outside the box, they're prepared to question things so much that they go down that Bitcoin rabbit hole.

And they're prepared to say, well, is everything that I thought that I knew about the world completely fucking wrong? And that's really hard. And I think that that's where a lot of this crossover comes.

- Absolutely. And I think that a lot of that, like again, there's a lot of crossover in tie between do these things because that everything I've been told is wrong thing is one of those early psychedelic lessons that I feel like I got, like it's like, man, it's like, shit, everything that I learned my whole life,

I feel like maybe that wasn't actually all that there is. Maybe there's more here, and Bitcoin has that same thing where it basically opens you up to the fact that I think it makes you start questioning things in the same way.

There's a big crossover in the types of questions that you ask that are very fundamental to what the experience is on this planet, like what is time, for example, is something that comes up on say, it really gives you your sense of time is either dilated for the most part.

I think most people have like a dilation in the sense that it feels very long. You know, like the amount of time between, say an hour just feels like the eternity is whereas some you could also have it feel very short.

And then in the same sense, the, I think I lost my train of thought there. (laughs) - Yeah, the way that we perceive time questioning - Oh, right, so obviously and Bitcoin is like its own sense of a clock.

It basically is its own clock, this global clock that the whole world is running that it has its own sense of time and each tick of the clock is a new block and it's this immutable sense of time.

And both of these things make you ask like, what actually is this? What does this mean at different levels? And you start looking at it and the what is money question is so deep and, you know, psychedelic may bring you to that I think, but Bitcoin more so the what is money question is a really deep rabbit hole that it's just

obviously obfuscated from us just from basically and has been going on for so many decades that it's just ingrained now in the economics that they teach to us. And the way that the way that we're taught about the world, they don't really tell you how money is created in this world and how fiat works.

And that's all kind of not only swept under the rug, but actually they teach you a form of propaganda, the Keynesian, Keynesian economics to kind of prop up the system on itself. So the way that they're teaching you is purposely deceptive about money.

So these core questions about how we interact with the world and our fellow man, yeah, man, everything is like, it's all a lie like the way that we've been taught. This stuff is not actually as it is, but it's lies trapped in a sense of in a sense of truth.

So there is there's kernels of truth that are built, you know, these weird scaffoldings of deceit around. And so you have a sense and also I think there's a societal acceptance of things.

You have people that where they just, you know, you just tell them two plus two equals five long enough. Like eventually people will start to get it and just start parroting that. So I think a lot of these stuff that now are prohibitive, like we have the sense of the current thing now, like whatever the current thing is.

(laughing) I think like drugs, you know, in the past, they had their all, they had their version of this is the current thing, you know, like it was propagated in a different medium, you know, like we didn't have the internet, but through radio and newspaper and Time Magazine, like these are the different vehicles that they would

propagate the current thing and whatever it is, people would get mad at like McCarthyism or, well, you know, now it may not look so negatively on that. But yeah, like we have these different propagandas that we spread through our medias and it's just now we have a sense of people just don't even trust like media.

If you hear media, you almost understand it for what it is. It's like a mediation between you in reality. It's something, it's a third party in between you and reality that's basically spoon feeding you.

It's the same thing I said about religion before you have the priest telling you this is what divine experience is and this is what it looks like, but you know, actually get to experience that for yourself.

It's reserved for this sect, you know, only other people. - Yeah, it's weird and it's almost like this manipulation from a very young age about, you know, if you have to prop up a Ponzi, which is what our current financial system is, then you have to have people who are addicted to more.

You have to have people who want all the things and they want them now or they want them quicker than now. They want them yesterday. So then you have the credit and to get people addicted to that lifestyle.

And it was actually the thing that led me to Bitcoin was that I had this idea in one of my previous selves was that I have to fucking earn the money. I want this house, I want this car, I want this bike, I want, I'm not happy now, but I will be when I have this, this, this and I want control over my life

and no one can fucking tell me anything when I have it. And then I worked like a complete dickhead and didn't enjoy life at all for pretty much a decade. And then I got to that point and I was like, ah, here's the house, I'm in it, you know, there's the car on the drive, there's the motorbike.

This is the lifestyle, I've got these girls, I've got this, I've got whatever. And like everything that I imagined that I'd won and I think very much was shaped by society and TV and everything that I was thinking about was like shaped that way.

And then I got it. And then I was like, I'm deeply fucking unhappy. I'm not five fucking don't enjoy life at all. I don't want to be here anymore. That realization I think just completely threw me off.

Like I was just like, whoa, what the fuck is life about? And then dropped everything and dropped work and was just like really depressed, really fucking lost. And then luckily found Bitcoin.

And I think that was, I don't know if it was meant to be, I don't know what it was, but from someone who was like obsessed with money to then find, well, what is money? And then to find out, well, everything you were taught was a lie and it doesn't make you happy.

Anything that makes you happy is to have, feel like you have some purpose and find love with real connection with people. That's the only thing that makes you happy. So it's just a lie from birth.

And it's really fucking annoying because you see so many people chasing it. And when they get to the end, they're not gonna be happy ever. - I mean, that's the story that they sell us on every eight minutes in between, the programming that they're also feeding us is that you want more, you want this

and you're not gonna be happy until you get this. And in fact, your friends are gonna look at you and they're gonna think you're just not cool if you don't have this. So it's probably best if you just get two of them.

And you know still, that basically we're inundated with this type of stuff because advertising has become a science where they actually learn to figure out what kind of colors do certain things to your consciousness, what kind of sounds, you know, like what kind of, how long do you put someone on a screen

in this type of a position to make people look for another two seconds, you know. And all this data keeps getting aggregated and it gets even better and better as they start getting the ability to track your eyes as they move across different screens and stuff like that.

So it's basically weaponized time theft. And that's kind of how I was saying before that I'm trying to limit distractions, but it's just I'm a victim as much as anybody else because they're so expert at trying to harvest your time and focus at whatever they want it to be focused that it really takes a sense of willpower

to extract yourself from that and say no, you know, like I'm carving out some space to do what I wanna do now and actually be what I wanna be for a minute instead of having this dictated to me from above by fiat, by decree, this is what you want.

So I think yeah, I could definitely relate to that. And I think maybe like that's another reason I think for psychedelics for me, I can't speak to other people, but that sense where you said you looked at your, you basically got to the point where you looked around and you had the realization that this isn't actually

what I want is I feel like psychedelics help you do that at little mini intervals so that maybe, you know, maybe you don't spend 10 years going in the wrong direction. Maybe you can kind of short circuit that you can't always because you can't see where that maybe leads to.

You maybe have to actually attain those things that you didn't really need for happiness and go through the fact that you didn't attain the happiness to get that realization. But sometimes you can actually go through these things in your head like, like I think I've been people and felt things that maybe may have been outside

of what normally I might have thought or experienced through these tools. And maybe that gives you a perspective shift that might help you set your personal barometer in a way that may help benefit you.

So I think like not only using psychedelics, but using them regularly in a kind of like an organized fashion, not organized. And basically like a regimented pattern where people go through these experiences and there's levels of, I consider advanced use to be using these tools to gain some kind of benefit

and then actually integrating that insight into your life and obtaining the benefit. Don't just have an insight about how it can benefit you but actually integrate this into your life. And that's like a huge challenge for a lot of people is they'll take a psychedelic, have a huge vision,

be ready to change the world and then they'll forget it the next day and like they don't actually know how to take any action on it. And I think that's fine as an inexperienced user. But I think as you develop familiarity with this stuff and like a sense of adeptness, then you can actually start to utilize these things in a way

that maybe inexperienced people are not able to do. And then you can actually start to leverage them in a way that you can really benefit yourself. But even people that are doing good with it, sometimes you get that benefit and you just, you go back into life and you just, like I said, you get sucked into these distractions

and just what it is to be every day. And you fall back into negative patterns. So by going back into these spaces over time, it helps you to recalibrate. It's just like with Bitcoin, you know, if like you set up your Bitcoin node and then you like use it one time to send a transaction and then you just like never use it again.

Like, you know, like you kind of forget how to do it. You might get nervous next time you go to send a transaction like, oh damn, it's like, once I hit send, like it's never coming back to me.

What if I do it wrong? Like by using it a lot and getting a familiarity with how the system works. Like you can, hey, maybe have a beer or two and actually write your own transaction by scratching a notepad and then just send it not be like too tripping out about it.

You know, like you feel comfortable that this is going to do what you want it to do. And in fact, like, you know, if it doesn't, you're probably going to get an error. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah.

(laughing) - And error, give a code and fill you what you did wrong. You just got to figure it out and do it right. You know, do it again, do it right. The other thing with that as well is like, you know, you're saying if someone has an experience and then they think, oh yeah, I'm going to make these changes and they never do.

I do think that with Bitcoin, anyone who goes deep enough and who holds for long enough and starts to understand it properly, they do have this shift in the way they experience time. And they also, as long as you've been around for long enough and you hold for long enough and you don't have paper hands,

then it allows you the time to think. 'Cause like, I know that throughout my life I've had certain times not using any substances, but just times where I've gone, fuck, you know, I need to make this change or I need to do this or I need to stop doing this.

And then you go back into work and it's like, right, I'm up at six a.m., I'm doing a 14 hour day, bumb, bumb, bumb, and your phone doesn't stop. And you're busy, busy, busy. And then it's like, where, when, how?

You know, where am I going to find the time to think about this properly or to actually integrate this into my life? Whereas, you know, with Bitcoin, it should over time give you more time.

You know, it should over time give you the ability to think, well, I think I should integrate this into my life, I'm going to try it. And that's really cool to see because without it, you're constantly on this treadmill and the speed's just going up a little bit every year.

You know, it's just every year is getting a bit fucking harder to live. It's the opposite with Bitcoin, which is pretty awesome because you do see these changes happening in people and generally, I see Bitcoiners that I know and love doing better in life.

Their diet gets a bit better. They generally become, I think, kinder and more, have a bit more empathy for people like other than shit coiners and the fear of fucks. But it seems to have a positive influence on their life, which is cool.

- I think you just hit on a really cool correlation that I didn't catch before, but you actually said the same thing as I did with the psychedelics and put it into a Bitcoin perspective because I was saying that newbie users, they take it and they have trouble integrating the stuff

into their system, but advanced users are able to do that. And you just said that the people that stay in Bitcoin longer are able to, you know, they do this advanced use and they integrate it into their lives.

They become healthier. They have better relationships with the people around them that, you know, they feel stronger and they just seem to be having a better life. And they become more inquisitive and kind of how I was saying, you know, like, with the psychedelics, you have to kind of keep

going back into the space to get the most benefits. Well, almost like you're saying, like, you have to keep kind of consuming the Bitcoin content or like listening to podcasts or reading whatever interests you about Bitcoin or sending the transactions or getting into the code.

Whatever it is that interests you about Bitcoin, you have to kind of keep doing that. And it's through doing it that you get this benefit to your life. Like your passion becomes like a building block for your whole existence in a sense.

Like you're able to focus your passion and it bleeds into the rest of your life. Like, why do Bitcoiners get interested in like what they're eating so much? Why is there so much emphasis on like, like different food types and like different exercise regimens or maybe like self sovereignty tools,

like guns or, you know, like these other things, like why are people interested in all these different things when Bitcoin is not really like, it's like a monetary thing? Like how does it bleed out into all these other facets of life?

And why does it give people these like first principle outlooks? But the thing is, is it doesn't happen for everybody. So you have this core group of people that are advanced users and they're kind of getting the benefits of what goes on.

And then you have people that get into it and they get confused by wrong thing in some way. So they get spun off into the shit coinery or they believe BSV is the actual Bitcoin or they believe you know what I'm saying?

Like they fall victim to these false narratives. And they're definitely doing crack though, not psychedelics. You pay for those mistakes, you know? You pay for those mistakes with your time, your energy, your life force, your finances.

So, you know, you have to kind of be, you have to have a deep sense of skepticism and ruthlessness and reality and just say like, does this pass the acid test? And what I'm looking at like is like, you have to don't trust, you have to verify, you know, like these first principles thinking of Bitcoin,

you know, with everything in your life, you should be doing that. And I think that's one of those lessons of Bitcoin is yeah, be a little skeptical. Like, you know, people can tell you XYZ, but just, you know, you can't believe that.

You have to verify. - Yeah, it's true. And the other thing that I noticed you said at the beginning, you were saying about like basically when we're gone, what do you leave behind? Is it your art?

Is it your message? Do you affect the world in some way? And hopefully it's positive. With your art and with what you're doing, the messages you're putting across, what do you think like, if we go further into the future when we're not here anymore, let's say like, you know, 100 years from now, do you ever sit and think this little group

of fucking weirdos who are the advanced users of Bitcoin and who are lurking on Bitcoin Twitter and, you know, fucking around with it and trying to push it forward and evangelizing it? Like, what do you think we achieve if anything?

And where do you think this goes? Like what are the implications for our children and grandchildren? - I mean, to me, I believe we're basically seeding the whole future of, you know, what humanity is gonna be in the future.

I think like what we're doing now is one of those revolutionary moments where maybe we take back, you know, money from the government with our sly roundabout way and maybe this empowers people like all across the globe in some, you know, major way that actually unifies us as people and not like entities of a government.

You know, we're not like little pawns inside some other big system where actually each peers. So, I mean, I tend to be overly optimistic, I think when it comes to Bitcoin because I like the amount of research that I've done and looking into Bitcoin has just reinforced a feeling of confidence with me in terms of what Bitcoin is

and what it means for humanity in the future. So I just feel that that's one of these things that is gonna be here for many centuries. So while I hope my art will last anywhere as long as Bitcoin, I don't think that that's possible, but I hope it sticks around for a while.

I, you know, I spent many years on Grateful Dead toward just selling my art and like parking lots all over the world for just a little, you know, keep me on the road basically to get from this show to the next show and even that just felt so amazing because I would run into people all across the world

and then maybe like wearing a piece of jewelry that I made or, you know, like how to piece of my art in their home, you know, it's very deep connection that you have that creates this like little global web that, you know, is people that are somehow like-minded and also support your vision.

I just very, very rewarding and it also like, it just creates this deep sense of community for me. So I enjoy that. I hope I get to stick around a long time to enjoy more. - Yeah. Well, that community is incredible.

Like talking from personal experience, I've never, never had like a closeness with people like I have with Bitcoiners. Like it is very, very different people who have become really close friends now, effectively their family.

I've not really had that where I know like if shit really hits the fan, I can make a phone call and some will be there and they will help me. And vice versa, blood makes you relatives and loyalty makes you family.

And there's definitely seems to be a loyalty here. I don't know whether it's because we're on a common mission. I don't know whether it's because there's an element of trust, even though this is like a trust system.

I don't know quite, I can't put my finger on it, but there's like a brotherhood here where people are just prepared to go to the end of the earth for each other. And I think that's where you get shit done.

Like I, that's part of the reason where, yes, obviously Bitcoin is technically brilliant and it's the best form of money and all these things, but if you didn't have that brotherhood, fuck all would get done.

Because you know, you have to have people on the front line who are, many of us literally prepared to die for this thing because if we don't win, we know what happens, like the fucking creepy weirdos who wants to inject us with DNA therapy and all this stuff, like they're the people who control the world without this thing.

And so yes, it's why I think, you know, especially the art is so important. It's why 21 is informed in the first place was like, we want to get this message out in every way possible. And it doesn't just have to be nerdy articles or like podcasts or stuff like that.

Like it can actually just be someone to see something and they can picture paints a thousand words and it can really pull them into this community. And I think once you're here, especially freedom loving people, you don't leave.

You just don't want to leave ever. - I think there's a good filtering mechanism that if you realize you've run into a stranger but they're Bitcoin only stranger, that they've gone through some trials and tribulations to get to this Bitcoin only mindset and there is a brotherhood that like our sisterhood,

that is formed at those levels of just okay, this person has somehow like come to this decision that whatever else is out there, they're just, you know, Bitcoin only like that is a filtering mechanism.

And I definitely see that you're able to jump into conversation with those people quicker because it filters out like a certain level of small talk bullshit that you don't have to go through with them to actually connect on a deeper level.

And they probably would like to connect at a deeper level. You still have to trust and I'm still have to don't trust and verify with each one of these individuals. Like, you know, and there's a, you know, at Samsung now, I said it, I had never heard this term before but he called it orange washing

where like shit coiners will pretend to be Bitcoin, orange wash themselves as Bitcoiners. - Yeah. - Never heard of that attack, but that's like so genius. So yeah, like there could be like imposters out there but it's at least like, it's at least one high filtering level where you know you've gotten past a certain level

of bullshit that you can maybe connect with this person and it does lead to these deeper connections that yeah, people where there may be one stranger is kind of moved relatively quickly into a place where you feel some sense of common ground and I think that's a huge benefit.

And I think like you were saying like using different mediums like I'm really happy that people for, you know, like the stuff that I do as far as like the art because for me it's like, I just kind of have to do it anyways.

You know, like I'm just going to make what I want to make because someone once said to me, like if you don't see something in the world that you think should be there then it's your responsibility to make it.

So that's basically what I spend my time doing is just making the stuff that I feel should be in the world that it's not here, like something that I would want. So it's always gratifying when other people kind of feel some sense of connection to what you're doing because in a sense it's like just basically

like a peek into somebody's unconscious and really like, things like this are kind of interesting where we're just talking, like I don't usually think of anyone as being interested in anything I have to say.

And in fact, like I never put pictures of me on the internet or any kind of like, like I try to hide as far back as I can from the art. Like I just let the art do what it needs to do because that's actually what I think people should be interested or hope that they'd be interested in.

I feel like the art has my message distilled into a way that's cohesive and a way that I'd like to present. And it probably speaks better than I would anyway. So I just try to like, you know, be as quiet as I can.

So I think these are interesting opportunities for me to kind of break outside of that show because I don't usually go there. It's usually like what people get to see is, well I do, I guess, make snarky comments on Twitter a lot but other than that, I'd be our speaker itself.

Yeah, well, you know, like I said, you're at the beginning, I really fucking love your work. I think it's got a special quality to it. It does tell a story. It's just got so much detail. And you know, you're saying, oh, I don't know if the art is going to stand the test of time with Bitcoin, I think specifically your work.

It will be there because you're creating, I don't know if you would call it a sculpture but to me, that's what I feel it is, is like that explains and tells the story of Bitcoin in such a clear, like you can just look at that and go like, whoa, what the fuck is this?

And to me, it's also like this idea of, you know, saying about time. It tells the story of like Bitcoin has its own version of time, like it's block time. And it's like kind of what we sort of run on basically now and you can look at it and it's like, actually looks like a clock as well.

And so there's something beautiful for me with that. It's like, I'm looking at this clock but it's not the clock of the old Fiat world. It's not the clock of those fucking lunatics. It's the new clock, it's the new world.

And it's just got this special quality. So yeah, I really do think it's going to sound the test of time and I can't wait to see the new things that you're coming up with. And yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you, mate, I know we haven't really gone that much into the Bitcoin stuff or gone that deeply into the work.

But I think most people who are going to listen to this sort of senior work already and yeah, it was really nice to just get to know you a little bit. - Yeah, man. Thanks very much. I definitely appreciate it.

And yeah, I mean, I think I certainly hope that you know, very, very like deeply meaningful to hear something like that. That you know, I certainly hope things would last because obviously Bitcoin I feel is going to be something that last year for us.

And really the stuff that I do specifically, the Bitcoin sculpture that, you know, pretty much we're talking about here, like that is, it's me in some sense, but it's really, it's everything that people, everybody in the community has put into Bitcoin thus far.

So like everything that's in the sculpture for the most part isn't something that comes from me, you know, like the time scales and the calendar nature that comes from Satoshi, you know, the Merkel tree layer that kind of goes through all the different pillars of Bitcoin and why the different things are important.

Each one of those is because someone took the time to sit there and go out and explain what this is, why it's important, why you should care about this. So I was able to take those things that I actually went and did those people resonate with me and bring this into my heart and actually turn it into some vision that I have

and then put it back into the world so someone else can kind of get the same thing. So really what I'm just doing is taking what's already out there in the community and putting my own little spin on it and putting it right back into the community.

So what's there is really not very much me. It's almost entirely you, you know. - Yeah, that's very cool. I know you said you don't talk about what you're working on currently but can you tell me, is there anything that particularly is interesting you at the moment?

Like outside of the art, is there something that you like particularly have focus on within Bitcoin at the moment, like lightning or privacy staff or, oh, it seems like you're a private guy, like what are your thoughts around stuff like that?

- Outside of art, something's going on outside of art? I don't know if I know any of that. (laughing) I mean, isn't life art? So yeah, no, and it's not that I don't talk about like what I'm interested is more a lot of times yeah, if I'm in the middle of working on a project that I'm just not sure I'm actually gonna be able

to pull off, I'm hesitant to share that because it creates expectations that I'm worried I won't be able to achieve. But yeah, right now I don't know where we cut off before, but I was starting to talk about the different full-note sculptures that I had made and the different materials and getting them over time kind of changed.

Were you on the call for any of that? Was I talking to myself? - No, really? I think you were talking to yourself. - All right, well, we'll try to jump into that again because it's like, yeah, okay, so yeah, okay, so with the different full-note sculptures, it's a series of 10.

Each one of them is kind of unique in its own way in the sense that numbers one through three were based on the original design that I did. And then I kind of got bored with that and said, oh, you know, I wanna do something more and better.

So I totally redesigned a whole bunch of it before I produced number four. And then from that, I kind of been iterating off of that design from number four through these last six or seven of the sculptures.

But just the process that I've gone through, each one of them has been, it's like its own huge challenge. Like with each one, I kind of tried to go a little above my skill level. So for the very first one, the way that I was able to get the wood was much easier, but as the pandemic went on,

it just became harder and harder to get any kind of material. So at first I was able to just go to local lumber yards and get wood, then that became hard to find stuff. And I had to start going to like yacht building yards and actually finding nicer woods to get anything at all.

And then even those places stopped having anything nice. And I got some point, I don't know, I say middle of last year, I would go in and they just have like really crappy wood that just, you know, you didn't even wanna use as the base to make any art with.

So I was like, man, this is just really crazy. So I had to learn how to like finish the woods and do all kinds of like staining and finishing. And I had never really gotten into any of that before.

So each time I was doing it, it was like a little outside my comfort level. And then when they had the big Bitcoin Conference 2021, I was like, I wanna do something dramatic. So the other ones I've done in wood, I was like, let me see if I can make one entirely out of mirrors.

So it took me like months to just figure out how to actually work with the mirror and make it do what I wanted to do in essence. And it was the least technically competent and professional podcast in the world.

Sorry, Mae. I lost you just at the point where you were saying that you couldn't find the same quality of wood and you were learning about staining and finishing it. And then you were moving on to use other materials and then just bang, gone.

Yeah, I was like, this is hilarious because we went through the like hope. And you know, obviously at the beginning, I dropped out at that thing. And then right as they get into that, I don't think, you know, the internet wants to, the secret government doesn't want the internet to know about this shit, but I'm like, no,

I'll jump back into it. 'Cause my point was basically that I built my skills by going outside my comfort level. Like if I just do the same stuff over and over, like, okay, you had some success.

People seem to like the number one sculpture that you did. Like I could just keep copying that and get away with that. That may be okay for some people. But to me, I just, I think I like the sense of risk.

Like you might fuck this up horribly to the point that you can't even, like you gotta throw the whole thing out, basically. So, you know, because within those risks, you have the opportunity that maybe you'll reach some level of greatness.

Like, and maybe sometimes you don't like fully get every single thing that you thought, but by reaching higher than what you are normally able to get, I think like that's where I'm able to kind of keep that sense of vibrance and interest for myself in the projects as well as like having that bleed out to the rest of the world.

Like I think people become interested in it because like, I'm still interested in it in a sense. Like each one is like, it's my baby, you know? And each sense like, you know, like everything that I have, like everything in my whole world is kind of focused in on this one art piece.

And there is nothing else. Like to me, that is what I'm doing. And that's what I'm focused on. And I'm hoping that, you know, by the time I'm finished, that this is gonna reflect that. And if it doesn't, then I'm literally gonna just throw this whole thing out.

So it's like, you know, by taking those risks, I think it gives you that opportunity for taking advantage. So as the project started with the very first one that I did, it was something that I had never done before.

I had done a few multi-layered wood cut pieces before, but I hadn't done anything disembitious. It was like the first thing that was like 20 layers. And it was really like way above what I probably had done up to that time.

But I learned a lot in doing it. That was like, you know, like I can do this better. You know, like there's a lot of room for improvement. So after making the first couple of them, you know, I was able to totally redesign it in a way that it actually just, it made it easier for me to tell the story that I wanted to tell in a way

that was more effective and also easier to put together. For example, like the very first ones, I used a lot of circles and circles are very beautiful. But the problem with them is that there's just nowhere on there that you could tell this is the beginning and this is the end.

So by creating little shapes within this circle, you kind of create markers because with my stuff, if you have it mispositioned by even a millimeter, it's just not gonna work. So I have to have things super precise.

So I learned that I needed to put little markers in there that made it easier for me to make sure that each layer was exactly where I wanted it to be because I actually had things that I did throw out because I put it together and I noticed, oh, this is actually either totally wrong or it's wrong, but a few millimeters.

And so yeah, those pieces I had, I put in my fire pile and you know, hang send these back to where they came from and got a triac dent. And so each one as I was going like, you know, the very first one, I just pretty much took the wood that I got from the lumber yard and I did some sanding on it,

but I didn't really know much about how to like properly treat wood. But as I was doing more and more with the wood, you know, I had to educate myself more. So I learned about sealing wood and making my own like finishes and actually getting better quality woods and how to work with them.

But at the same time as I was learning this, things started to become much more difficult to obtain, you know, with the pandemic and whatnot. So I was finding that I couldn't go to the same places and still get the same types of wood.

There was, I live in a pretty big, or not in but near a pretty big metropolitan area. So we do have some really cool wood shops there. And I was finding some really nice stuff at the beginning of this project late 2019, early 2020.

But as I was going to those same stores as the pandemic drove on, like I just, first of all, they just stopped having any variety at all. And then the stuff that they did had was just a very low quality.

And I just kind of got into a position where I just wasn't sure what to do. I still wanted to make cool stuff, but I didn't want to make, you know, what I wanted to last hundreds of years with materials that just I wasn't feeling good about.

So I started looking into, you know, what else can I do besides wood? And I had done some, some mirror cuts previously and some older art that I had done. So I thought, oh, you know, it would be cool to do like this whole thing in mirror.

The mirror stuff that I had done in the past, the engravings on the mirror, they didn't show very well. So I wanted to do something that would actually make them super visible on the mirror.

And that turned out to be really tricky. So I had to actually change the entire way that the design was created because the way that the laser read it in the way that I've always done on my previous designs changed.

Because it has two ways that it does stuff. One is just basically called a cut where basically the laser just traces the path and it just goes along the path of whatever your design is. It's very fast.

And then there's a second option where it's called scanning where it just kind of goes back and forth. And the scanning is super slow. So I just never used it 'cause I just thought that it just takes like 20 times as long to do the designs as the other way.

And a lot of times it's not even as nice but with the mirror, it turned out it did it super duper nice. And that was actually the way that I was able to get the engravings to look good. And then I had to paint them in a way that was gonna work.

And so finding out what kind of paint worked with the mirror was crazy because some kind of paints actually would go in and like destroy the mirror. I guess it's made out of certain things and certain kinds are just totally compatible.

So I like tried 20 different blacks and I've got all these different things I'm testing out and different methods. It took me months to figure out how to do this thing in mirror but by the time I figured it out, it was actually like a week up until the Bitcoin Conference which was July 2021.

I don't know, I had a week left but since I had already developed like the skill set and done months of testing in that week, I was able to just, you know, do nothing else and actually finish the sculpture in time to bring it to the event.

And I was like, okay, I want this to be very dramatic. So the mirror thing was definitely crazy. Once I actually put it together, I had never actually like done this before but my own art, I bought like white jewelry gloves so that like scratch resistant gloves so that I wouldn't mess up the thing that I was working on.

I got like nervous because it was too nice. You know, like I'm going to mess this thing up. Like I can't even be working on this thing. And yeah, like it was just crazy. Like when we put it on auction and sold it, like it was a Saturday night and the Bitcoin Conference was amazing.

Like everybody's like super high vibes. They're like, yo, let's go out, let's go train, let's go party, let's do this and that. And it's like, y'all are crazy. Like I have this sculpture here that's not even mine anywhere.

I have to get this home. I need the Brinks truck or something. So I was just really intimidating to think about. I have to drive this thing home and it's not even mine anymore. So I'm safe, got that thing shipped out but that kind of started me on a new path 'cause I was like, wow, this mirror thing was really neat.

Like now like, like what can I do next? So then I found out that you could do color, you could get colored mirrors. So then I basically started playing around with different color mirrors and seeing how they look when you layer it.

So I did another month or so of testing with these different colors. I actually have some pictures on my Twitter. I had done these designs, this little fuck your shit coin key thing and people really liked it and it turned into the Bitcoin infinity keys but that was actually just from me testing

to see how the different colors of mirror look because yeah, I could've just cut a little square and stuck them together and see how it looked but I wanted to actually have a design in it.

So I just made the little Bitcoin thing with the fuck your shit coin design. It's just a throw away thing. I didn't really think about it and then just use that to make about 20 different sets of color combinations.

And by doing that, I was able to, 'cause not everything looks good. Some pull it together, some don't. And the guy that actually bought number eight at the conference, at the Bitcoin conference, they announced the El Salvador legal tender thing.

So that was just around the same week that I was gonna start his sculpture and he was like, oh, hey, you know, I guess somebody had put a message in one of the Bitcoin blocks right after that announcement.

So we actually put that into his sculpture. So then I was able to use some of the El Salvador colors in the sculpture that he wanted like blue gold not silver. And yeah, so that one came up really cool as far as the colored mirror.

But then I was in the position again of like, hey, what can I do next? So the next one, I started actually trying to hand make some of the material. So I did a whole bunch of different handmade materials to do in the sculpture.

I had done some color shift materials. Like have you ever seen those cars where they drive by in the colors? - Yeah, like flip-paint. - Yeah, so I had done some of those. I had done a bunch of different mirror reflective colors.

A whole bunch of, what I ended up doing that the guy liked was a rainbow holographic layer that was kind of black, but depending on the sunlight, it would create these really cool rainbow holograms.

So at that point, I'm kind of like custom making my own materials to put in the sculpture. So it's like each, at each step, it's like, what else can I do to make this absolutely as hard as possible on myself and put yourself into like a dimension where you just don't know if you can actually do any of this and how's this gonna work?

And is it gonna be okay? But that's the only, I was really like, today at this point, like number nine, that one that I did that was probably the most experimental I've ever done. That was probably the one that I'm most happy with as of now just because it looks the coolest.

But honestly, anytime I see one of them, the guy that owns number six, he had lent it to me to display it this year's Bitcoin conference. And the thing is, as I make them, and as soon as I make them, I pretty much box them and ship them out.

So I don't get a lot of time to sit with them to see how they look. So when he gave me number six back, so I could display it like at the conference, which was because I was supposed to have number 10 done, which is part of this story, but like just couldn't finish it in time 'cause I'm so slow with this stuff.

I'm like again, working way outside of my depth here. And so I was hoping to show number 10 at the conference, didn't finish it. Begged, Eric, if you would please, please, please, let me take his sculpture off the wall and bring it to the convention center.

And luckily he was like, yeah, cool. And man, when I saw number six, it was like, dude, this thing is really amazing. So I think when you see, you know, like just being in front of it in person, it's like, it's really a lot different than seeing it online or in pictures.

'Cause I got a whole bunch of pictures, and I try to take good pictures of it, but I don't think the pictures that I take actually-- 'Cause I suggest this. Cool, yeah, as it actually like feels to stand in front of some of these things.

So I think like, that's really cool. So now I'm working on number 10, and it basically got to the point where I'm really not able to get hardly any wood at, or I guess let me back up a second.

So when I posted a video of number nine, I had been talking with the guy that bought number 10 already in messages, but then when I think when you saw that, he was like, okay, cool, yeah, I wanna get number 10.

And I was like, all right, well like, do you want me to do it in wood or in mirror? Because you know, I could do it in either, I can even mix it if you want some of both. Like, you know, kind of what do you want?

And he was like, well I want silver mirror. And I was like, oh cool, that's gonna be easy. Like, I already did the silver mirror, I know how to do this. I'm gonna like bust this out, it's gonna be really quick and easy, and I'm not gonna stress myself out.

Like I always do on these things, like this is great. So I was like, yeah, I'll be done. Like January 15th, you know, of 2022. I was like, I'll be done January 15th, should be, should be, all right, I think I told him I start January 15th and I'd be done by April.

And so I basically, and then he tells me, hey, you know what, instead of mirror, can you do wood? And I was like, yeah, of course. You know, like kind of whatever you want, I'll, you know, I'll do.

And so he's like, yeah, wood. I'm like, okay, all right. So now if I'm gonna go back to wood, I have to do something like, that's super awesome. Like this is the last one, number 10. And it actually felt a lot cooler because going back to doing it in silver mirror, like I already did that, like,

I don't like to go back to doing the same things. I like the challenge of it. So by going back to wood, it kind of brought a whole new sense of challenge. Cause it's like, okay, now you have to do wood in a new way that's like really amazing because this is the last one, you're never gonna make another one.

So it all comes down to this. So the whole journey's been really amazing. So just to actually get the wood has been crazy, you know, like it became impossible to get it at the local lumberyard.

So I started looking into like, what else is possible? And I found these places where they make architectural wood panels. And this is like, if you go into like a lawyer's office or a yacht club or a fancy restaurant and they have wood on display there, this is the place where they actually make those things.

So I actually found like a wood manufacturer in my area. And actually a couple of them and went into them and actually like talked to the guys, they brought me around the factory and showed me how they make it and actually let me pick out all the different types of wood species that you could never even imagine

or never get at any kind of like lumberyard, these places to have everything. You know, they'll kind of make it there for you to order. You know, you can't just buy it off the shelf. It takes them a little while to make it, which it is what it is.

But this gave me access to work with woods that I've just never even had access to before. So when I got just the bare woods, it was like, whoa, this is amazing. I've like never seen wood this pretty before.

You know, and I haven't even done anything to it yet. So like I put it on the laser. I'm getting ready to cut it. And I realized like, the stuff is like so good quality that it's a little thicker than my laser can cut.

And I was like, damn, like, I don't know what I'm gonna do here now. So like I had to go back to them and say like, hey, like, this is really super good quality, like wood, but do you have one that's like a tiny bit thinner?

And they were like, no, this is all we got. So like fuck, I was like, all right, well, so then I had to go to the second place that I found. And luckily they had, they had just the exact thickness that I needed and the kind that I've kind of been used to using.

And they even had like cooler stuff and gave me a better price. And that place he also accepted Bitcoin. So it was kind of like meant to be. But it did put my production back by several weeks 'cause I had to wait like almost a month for them to make the first ones that I couldn't use and not had to wait like another three weeks or so

for this next place to make it. And now, okay, so now I have all this amazing wood like bring it home and it's like, I need to start figuring out like what to do with this stuff. So what I was doing with the other woods was I would seal it and then I would laser cut the sealed wood and the benefit of doing the sealing first

is that the laser and wood creates like smoke and a foot patterns that go onto the wood. And by sealing it first, I can actually just wipe it off and it looks clean and beautiful. So I don't do that, it's like a mess.

But apparently not every sealer is laser friendly. So like the one that I was using in the past, I didn't like exactly write down the name of it. So I had to go to like the all the stores around me by every single kind of clear coat that they have painted on, tested, see which ones work, which ones didn't, basically none of them worked.

I had to like go back into my old emails and try to find like information on what I was doing. Finally, I found the brand, I went and bought it, that one worked. I was like, fuck, thank God.

Now I need to like write the shit down. Now I know what it is. But so like took me all this time to find that. Now I have the clear coat and I spent a whole bunch of time learning how to basically make the wood look like a mirror by doing like really high gloss, high gloss clear coats with like polishing and buffing and all this stuff.

And it turned out, it takes me like a couple of days basically to get each piece of wood ready where before I would just buy the wood from the lumberyard, bring it home, throw it on the laser and start cutting in five minutes.

Now I'm like, even once I have the wood, I'm still like almost a week or two away from, you know, painting it, having it ready to go onto the laser. And I kind of thought like at that point, I'd be done like once I laser cut it and I have already polished it and made it look super crazy, you know, shiny, that I'm gonna be happy with it.

But I was like, you know, I feel like this could use something a little better here. So now like the past few, the past two or three weeks, I have the whole, all the pieces cut for number 10.

And I also have a whole bunch of pieces that I cut that were like little heirs, like little shit that goes wrong. As I said, I throw all those out. So these I'm using for test pieces. And I got the same kind of clear coat that they put on, like Lamborghinis.

And I've been-- - I've surrounded it for something, or-- - It's basically like an automotive clear coat. I think it's a urethane is actually like what material it is. And it's like a really super clear, super clear high gloss clear that it just has a really nice like stay, like, you know, I kind of put it in anyways.

It's a fancy clear coat that basically when I put it on top of the laser cut wood, what it does is it kind of flows and it creates like little bumps and ridges that go into the laser cut grooves of the wood.

So it follows all the patterns. And it creates this really amazing play of light. And one of my sculpture teachers many years ago taught me that sculpture is in essence like you're playing with light, like three dimensional, like the way that the light plays off the different surfaces is what catches people's eyes

and what makes them look at things in essence. And this whole thing basically, all the really fine details that are laser cut into the wood, each one of them has these really beautiful, clear like hills and valleys that just hug them in these really sexy ways.

And I'm just super happy with it. I just saw the first piece like two days ago and I'm really happy with how it came out. Like, yeah, it took me like four months longer than I thought it was, but I kind of don't care in the end because really the end result is all that matters.

So I don't mind taking a little extra time and testing stuff out and failing. Like, yeah, I failed a lot of stuff. I didn't like have the right clear coats for a little while, but eventually you get it.

So I'm very optimistic. We'll see how this one comes out. I don't want to jinx nothing, but I'm like 90% there now. And I feel like we're getting really close. So yeah, I'm really excited to share some pictures of this one. It's done.

I always like over underestimate the timeline. I think it'll be done. I thought I was supposed to be done again by the end of this month, but we'll see. We'll see. - I can't wait to see the pictures.

I know from fucking around with resins and different things like that, that it's usually particularly difficult to photograph anything where light reflects and moves. And you see these kind of patterns.

You never quite can get it with a photo, but nonetheless, I really look forward to seeing it. - Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I always have to deal with the fact that the photos are subpar to the actual real life experience, but I'll do my best.

- Awesome. Well, listen, mate, thanks for coming on the show and for putting out such beautiful art. It's been really cool chatting to you. And yeah, as I say, I can't wait to see the new pieces.

It comes out and you're welcome on the show anytime to shoot the shit. I've really, really enjoyed it. - Well, fuck yeah, man. Thanks so much for having me. I had a great time and definitely looking forward to doing it again.

- Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that one. And I'd just like to say I apologize again for the audio issues. Now I have this new sponsor on board. I am hoping to upgrade my router and do whatever I can to try and sort this problem.

I still haven't managed to get to the bottom of it, but it is incredibly annoying. So I'm trying to improve here. And yeah, I really appreciate everyone sticking with the show and everyone who's been giving feedback.

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Thanks again, stay ungovernable.