Burn the bridge and bitcoin with @econoalchemist

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.

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 a Conno Alchemist. It's been too long since we last sat down, and I had to get him back on the show to talk about his amazing guides, mining, and the state of the world.

I love chatting to him, and I always appreciate how much detail he puts into these guides. It's helping so many people achieve better privacy and security, and also set up home mining. I really hope you enjoy the show, but before we start, I just want to say thank you to my show sponsors, and also to thank everyone who has been sending

sats in through the podcasting 2.0 apps. I love seeing the messages come in, and the support is massively appreciated. If, after listening to this show, you are considering upgrading your security, I really can recommend CASA.

I've been using them personally for over a year. They are a sponsor, but they're a sponsor because I chase them. I really love what they're doing. They make it incredibly easy to have brilliant security.

Multi-six very important for people who are concerned about $5 wrench attacks, and also just in case they lose a key, they always have someone there to hold their hand and make sure they don't lose those sats.

You can go to keys.casa and use the code bit by bit 10 to get 10% off, and you can always reach out to me if you have any questions, and if I can't answer them, I will pass you on to the team.

Next up, we have foundation devices. They are mentioned in this show, and they are my favorite hardware wallet. They are fully open source. They make things so simple for people. The QR scanning is beautiful.

The quality of the hardware is amazing, and my good friend, Bitcoin Q&A, is there as head of support. So if you have any issues, you just know that they are going to be sorted. If you go to foundation devices.com and use the code bit by bit, you will get $10 off your purchase.

And again, if you have any questions, you want to help linking this to a software wallet, or you just want to know a little bit more information before you buy, I'm happy to give you some info, or pass you on to the team if there's anything that I can't answer.

And finally, we have fast bitcoins. If after listening to this show, you just think, fuck, I haven't got enough bitcoin, and you want a fast, easy, and secure way to stack some stats, fast bitcoins really is the place to go.

They have an incredible team that really care about security. They put this first, and they push their users to take their stats off exchange as soon as humanly possible. This is incredibly important, especially as now we are getting into the danger zone.

I feel we are getting to the, now they fight us stage, it's just starting to begin, and you really need to make sure that you have control of your keys. So go to fastbickcoins.com, buy your stats, and then make sure you get them straight off into either your foundation devices or use CASA.

Thanks everyone for listening and enjoy the show. - Hey mate, how you doing? - Hey, I'm good. Can you hear me all right? - Yeah, I think we're all good. Can you hear any snoring in the background?

- Nope. - We're perfect then. It's nice to have you back on. - Thanks, who do you got snoring in the background? My little dog, the French little dog. - I got my dog in the background too.

- Oh really, what have you got? - She's like an Australian shepherd mix res dog. Yeah, she's a bitch. - They're quite big actually, aren't they? - Yeah, like 75 pounds. - Oh, what's pounds?

It's two American for my brain. What's that in kilos? It's like 40 kilos or something? - Oh, yeah, probably something like that. Yeah, that's a pretty good dog. We've got Ridgebacks that are similar, 40, 50 kilos, that kind of thing.

- Yeah. - Very nice. Well, I'm sure yours isn't snoring, but mine is. (laughing) So if you do hear it, then just tell me and I'll move him. - Okay. - It's lovely to have you back on. I think it was 2020, wasn't it?

We last spoke. - Dude, yeah, I think it was like the end of 2020. It's been a while. - Yeah, fuck. It has been, it has been. A lot has happened since then. A lot of the things that we were talking about have seemingly come true.

- Funny how that works. (laughing) - And you've been putting out shit loads of amazing articles that I haven't read 'cause I just can't be bothered and I'm not smart enough to get through them, but I just show them anyway 'cause I hear they're good.

- Thanks, man. Yeah, they're just there for when people need them. They're not there for like entertainment, you know? - Yeah. - It's like when you wanna set up a minor at home, like you're gonna want to have that guy to dig into.

Otherwise, like you're not gonna wanna sit down and spend an hour reading that. (laughing) - Well, I did dig in actually. I'm sort of half joking. I do sort of scan through them as they come out and that is a plan for me to do soon.

So yeah, it's not light reading that I'm gonna be doing, but it's so comprehensive. And like I said to you, the first time you came on, that's really so important for people to have. And I think if someone's struggling, what I tend to do is like either send any of your stuff or Bitcoin Q&A stuff and just say let read through this,

then read through both because sometimes like, sometimes that's what I do when I'm trying to set something up. I'll read through both of what you've written and then like I piece the bits together.

I'm like, okay, now this makes sense. - Right. - Yeah, I mean, a lot of the stuff is pretty technical and with the mining stuff, I was chatting to Lily the other day and she was shilling one of your home mining setup stuff, talking about having different VPNs running and having everything so that you're as secure as you can

when you're doing the home mining and all this stuff. And I don't think many people are thinking as deeply about it from a privacy perspective. A lot of people are just caring about, well, what's my hash rate?

How many sats are not thinking? Well, how useful are these sats gonna be when Trudeau and his merry men come on knocking? So no, I appreciate it. - Exactly. Yeah, you know, and that's kind of where I got my start in like, autistically outlining these guides is that, you know, I had to reach out to like several,

I had to take bits and pieces from several other guides and kind of put them together for whatever I was trying to accomplish. And, you know, like I would start a guide and it would say, oh yeah, just, you know, spin up a Raspian image on your Raspberry Pi and install the regular developer tools.

And so then I'd have to go find another guide to figure out what the hell that meant and, you know, figure out how to put those developer tools on there and, you know, so I just really try to like make it as detailed as possible and like answer all those questions that I know the user's going to have.

But, you know, even then like, there's no way to know like what operating system the user is using or what is unique about their specific situation. So, you know, it's impossible to cover every single base and in one guide, but that's why it's so awesome having Bitcoin Q&A doing his guides and me doing my guides

and having that overlap because in that overlap, anyone can find the information they need. - Hmm, yeah, it's so important. And a lot has changed since we last spoke not just with all the global shit, which we're getting onto in a bit, but it seems like you've gone really, really heavy into the mining side of things.

How's that been for you? - It's been good, dude. It's, you know, it's definitely becoming like more of my comfort zone. I think it's probably one of the topics that I'm, you know, most well known for among the people who know who I am.

And, you know, I take a lot of pride in, and, you know, I feel like I was able to contribute something and something that had like a big impact. I think the contributions I've made by documenting home mining process from start to finish has had more of an impact

on the space than any of the other work that I've done. So I tried to like nurture that a little bit more than like steel backups or hardware wallets or, you know, some of the other topics that I cover.

But yeah, it just seems like there's really been this renaissance with home mining. You know, it was kind of a completely empty space when I started looking into it at the end of 2020. And by the time I got my miner in January 2021 and published my guide, you know, the narrative was very different at that time.

And it, and that narrative has changed, you know, diverter really got that ball rolling with his mining for the streets guide. And, and then, you know, me putting out my guide just helped get that momentum going even more.

And now it's just to me where I'm standing, it seems like a like this unstoppable movement. And I love it because it's putting power back in the hands of individuals. And our governments are being the best like sales people for the value proposition here in an individual having power over their own money.

So sorry, was that mine? - No, that is, you'd be so proud of me. I have got five pixels in front of me all running Calyx and Graphene, the mine. I don't know how to fucking use any of them, but they look cool.

I feel really, really sigh for punky. So yeah, that is one of them going off. So I apologize for that. But yeah, I've just put the Calyx on the Pixel 6. - Cool, awesome. - Really nice, really, really nice.

It's quite sleek, like I'm coming from, like I was just running an iPhone and then having the Pixel 3s with Graphene just as like Samurai wallets and that kind of stuff. - Right. - But I'm now making this switch, which is, yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm missing it, yeah.

I think it's clean, it's usable. The only thing you might have some advice on this, the only thing I'm struggling with is like, I've got my Nim phone, then I've got my Doxed phone. - Right.

- And so with data and stuff like that, my sort of like set up that I'm thinking as well. If I just keep running my Doxed number, which I can then tether off, if I'm ever using data or anything like that, I don't really even need a SIM card in the other phone.

And then I can just use that for any data and I'll run Mulvad VPN on both of them and it's kind of relatively good. But is there a smarter way that I can do that? 'Cause it's a bit fiddly, it's a bit, I don't know, not perfect.

- Yeah, I actually just got a couple of Pixel 6 phones as well and flash calics onto them. I got one for myself and one for my wife. My wife was also an iPhone user and I just kind of came to this realization that like, if I'm only taking measures to guard my privacy, but like most of my communication is with her,

then I'm leaking, I have a lot of privacy leaks by proxy. You know what I mean? So it was important for me to like get her set up with the more privacy focused phone, but to your point, yeah, I ran a couple of different phones for a while too and eventually I just ended up like completely letting go of my Docs number.

- Right. - And just using the other number now like, you know, with that, my threat model isn't such that I'm like, you know, doing El Chapo level operations that I need like absolutely like life or death privacy guard for, you know?

- Yeah, yeah. - So like I'm comfortable like using my phone number on my prepaid SIM to like take care of essential services that I need to take care of for my personal life. I just like, I don't use that number to like give to anyone that I interact with in the cryptocurrency space in the Bitcoin space, I should say, you know,

so I don't, I don't, even though it's like one device that I'm using with the single number, I don't like, I still don't mix that with like my name, you know, O'Connell. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And so, I mean, the only place where I see that crossover happening is like, for example, Twitter, if you don't give a Docs number, you tend to get kicked off almost immediately from experience and then some other services, you kind of need it.

So then I've used burner sims for those where I can, but then if it's paid, what we call here, pay as you go. So like literally you go in COVID safe with a mask on into a shop, you put cash down and you top up a SIM card with 10 quid or 20 quid or whatever.

And you have that amount of like call and data, but it's way more expensive doing it that way. - Oh. - Like this call that I'm doing now, I'm having to use my Docs phone to link to my laptop to make this call so that I have internet 'cause I have unlimited on it.

But I only get that 'cause it's Docs. If I wanted to do that, pay as you go, you know, I'd probably put 20 quid on it, we finish this call and then it'd be like, right, you're out, you're finished.

- Right. - And so that's kind of the reason. Otherwise you just go for a pay as you go all the way. So that's the issue where I'm like, it kind of feels like I need to. - Yeah, like what I did, you know, for like Telegram and Twitter and those accounts that like required a phone number, since I used to have an iPhone,

so since I still had that iPhone, I just put like, I used, like I wiped the phone, you know, factory reset. And then I made like a burner Gmail account and then use that and downloaded what is a Google voice.

And then you can get, I got a phone number through Google Voice and then like, I just used that phone number to set up Telegram and Twitter a long time ago and it's just stayed set that way all this time.

- Fuck, that's really smart actually 'cause they love anything that's Google 'cause it's effectively, they think, oh, well that's Docs then because it's Google, but because you've wiped it and you have it separate, then that works. - Right.

And I think-- - Yeah, that's pretty smart. - I think I had, I think you have to give Google Voice like another phone number now to get the Google Voice number. I think, it's just, it's been so long since I set it up, I can't remember it.

Or if I did use an actual phone number, like that phone number was discarded eventually when I went to Android and Calix and got my SIM card. And I should also say, like when I got the SIM card, like, you know, I didn't use real information to get my SIM card.

So there's, like even if someone goes to the carrier to like look up information related to that phone number, they're not gonna find my actual name, it's a fake name. - But they have your banking details presumably.

- No, 'cause I pay for it with like prepaid debit cards that I use lightning to buy that like pay-with-moon service. - Okay, all right, okay, I'm with you now, I'm with you. - So yeah, like I don't have any like financial transaction that's like linked to my identity, nor are my SIM cards or my wife's SIM card now.

Neither of those SIM cards are linked to our actual identities, but it gives us a phone number and I can like, I can give that phone number to my mom and she knows who I am and I can give it to my buddy and he knows who I am, but, you know, for, you know, and I can give it to like my utility company

and they know who I am, but if anyone goes back to like the carrier because for whatever reason that phone number is evidence and a crime and they like subpoena the carrier, the carrier's not gonna have my actual information.

Who did you give diverter's info or something? - Exactly, yes. - That's what I do. I give all of my info, I always put Q&A stuff down. - Good man. (laughing) - Go into restaurants, I don't even need to go into scanning QR codes willy-nilly and just putting his details in.

- Or did. - No, that's interesting though. But these are the links that we have to go to just to keep some privacy and, you know, as we were alluding to earlier, it's now becoming seriously important, like, not that it wasn't before, but this stuff is now getting to a point where we're literally seeing things play out,

the things that we were saying, oh, you know, we think governments could start fighting back against their people, shutting down bank accounts because they're going to protest, blah, blah, blah.

Literally happening. And so what we say on Twitter, what we say on social media, where we go, what we do, you know, it is being monitored and it does link to us. And if a government can come out and say that some truckers who are protesting peacefully, just literally asking to be left the fuck alone

and be able to live their lives without people forcing medicine, whatever you want to call it on them against their will, they're terrorists. And so it's like, well, what are we? Like, what are we going to be labeled as?

And I think it's going to be something very similar. - Yeah, you know, I've been saying it for a while, like people who want to use Bitcoin in the way that it was designed to be used in like adversarial environments, like they're going to have to get really comfortable with the fact that they are going to be labeled as terrorists,

they're going to be labeled as extremists, they're going to be labeled as criminals. And you just need to like come to terms with the fact that there's an entire world out there that doesn't want you to exercise privacy, they don't want you to have freedom, they don't want you to have autonomy over your own body.

And they're going to demonize you for it. So yeah, you know, like the more they do it, the more the word extremist, the more the word terrorist just kind of loses its value to me. Those words are now becoming more meaningless to me because they're using them so loosely.

Now, that doesn't mean that technically by the book that, you know, the government has now labeled those people as terrorists. So yeah, you know, they face the same consequences as like legitimate terrorists, which is the scary part.

So it doesn't take away the consequence, but like, you know, from like a day to day standpoint as an individual, like, I really don't care what anyone calls me, they can call me a terrorist, they can call me an extremist all they want, but you know, I know where my moral compass points and I know that I'm just trying to have the freedom

to choose what's injected into my body. And, you know, if you're going to call me a terrorist for that, then so be it. But, you know, I think the scary part is that there are now real world consequences for that.

And, you know, we'll see what happens in Canada here. - Well, I mean, that's the thing is that I'm almost certain that in the history books, even if we are labeled that now or in six months or a year from now, long-term people will look back and go, well, like you said, what matters more morality or legality?

It was illegal for whites and blacks to be in the same bathroom. Was that moral? No, it was fucking stupid. But that was the law. And so at that time, you would be acting outside of the law, but you were still doing what was right.

And so, you know, what these truckers and what you and anyone who's speaking out against the shit that's going on, what they're really doing is not just protecting themselves, but protecting their children and their children's children.

And they should be heroes. You know, that's really what they are because you're actually standing up. It's so easy to just keep your head down. It's so easy to just say, oh, well, I'm just going to play along with it, even if I'm not going to do it, or I'm going to get some false documentation so I can keep working.

And I'll do whatever I need to do just so that they leave me alone. It's like, well, you're not really standing up for anything then. And that's what's really important. It's like, if you don't have the bollocks to stand up for your own kids and the people coming after you, like what sort of man are you?

And they need to be protected. And that's why guides like yours are so important. - Yeah, you know, it's just, there's been this attack on the family unit for years and years. And there's been this attack on the strong male role in our society for years and years.

And you know, this attack has come in the form of like poisoning the food supply and just like reducing the genetics of males in our society to the point where now we have several governments that are descending into tyranny.

And there's no strong men standing up or there's very few strong men standing up, you know? The indoctrination that's happened in our school systems. Like, I remember when I was very, very young, school was a very lively activity and there was a lot of discussion and communication, but as cell phones started coming out,

the discussions all kind of vanished and evaporated from the classroom. Kids weren't willing to speak any longer. So it was really interesting. Like, we gain these communication tools. You know, I'm talking like late '90s, early 2000s.

We started gaining these communication tools and we stopped communicating verbally. And go to a classroom today and like the kids are like masked and put in clear boxes and it's just, there's absolutely no communication.

So much so that the children these days are now developing speech impediments because they have a mask on their face for so long. And yeah, you know, it does take, you either got to be crazy or brave or maybe a little bit of both to like stand up against this stuff, but you know, my wife and I did it.

We stood up, we would go to our son's school every day and they said he had to wear a mask and we were like, you're not putting a mask on our child and we were arguing with the teachers. They ended up booting him out of the school and you know, that was right around the time we were like, screw it, we're moving out of the city.

We're out of here. You know, we weren't gonna continue living our lives that way. We weren't gonna be treated like biohazards. So yeah, I mean, I guess on one hand you can say that was like a cowardly move because in a sense we kind of ran from it.

But like on the other hand, like, I don't know what any other rational human being would do who's like trying to raise some kids in this society. Like you don't want your kid to wear a mask.

I didn't want to wear my, I didn't want my kids wearing masks. I didn't want them being treated like biohazards. I didn't want my employer to make me get a vaccine. And these were all things that I was faced with.

And so I made the decision to opt out. I was like, this isn't the kind of life we want to live. So we're out of here and we moved to the country. So I don't know. I guess one person might say we ran and hid, but I have found a lot of freedom and we're all a lot happier where we are now.

The kids don't have to wear masks. I don't even have a fiat job anymore. So I don't have an employer telling me what to do. It's great. - That's incredible. I remember when we last spoke, you'd moved, I think it was from Denver, I think you said, and then gone to Wyoming and then Wyoming.

Actually, the laws weren't as favorable as you'd have hoped to try and help you set up what you were trying to set up. And then you moved back again. So have you now moved again somewhere else?

- Yeah, dude, we've bought and sold like four houses in the last three years and yeah, we've finally settled. So yeah, I mean, we moved to Wyoming when we saw Caitlin Long give her speech back in like February, 2020 about the laws they were passing.

We wanted to start a Bitcoin ATM business. So we went up there and dude, like, it was around that time Coinbase came out and said that they were working with three letter agencies and I decided that KYC wasn't an option.

So yeah, we ended up moving back to Denver after a year of living in Wyoming. And then we were in Denver for like a year, year and a half and like all through the pandemic and things just kept getting more and more weird.

So yeah, we decided to get out of there too. And now we're out in the country, like, we're way out there. - That's awesome. And so left your feet at job, taking your kids out of the school run by tyrants and you're now full time in Bitcoin land, which is fucking incredible.

- Yeah, dude, we manifested the things we wanted. We found our dream home. We've got like, you know, we don't have a lot of land, but we've got enough land to, you know, we've got all our chickens.

We're getting goats this spring. I've got my shipping container that I'm gonna build out for all the a six. Yeah, dude, like we're making it happen. The kids don't have to wear masks in school.

They don't use fluoride in the water treatment. We can grow our own food. And yeah, and like, and now I just, I'm working with upstream data and I'm affiliated with them. - That's Steve Barber, right?

- Yeah, yeah, helping roll out like the black box for the home miners. - Awesome. - And then doing guides for Bitcoin magazine and then, you know, just trying to pick up whatever I can on the side to pay the bills.

But yeah, we've fully converted over to like a Bitcoin standard. You know, we're using bit refill gift cards to buy our groceries. I'm using BISC to sell the Bitcoin that I make every month to pay our mortgage.

Yeah, you know, we're doing it. We're making it work. - That's so cool. Yeah, that really is the dream. And it just shows it can be done. You know, that sounds like a pretty shitty time. Sell your house, move your whole life, try and set up a business.

It's not actually for small businesses. It's only for the big ones who want to comply and work with three letter agencies. You sell again, you move back, then all this fucking COVID bullshit happens and they try and put masks on you and inject you with things that you shouldn't be having in your body.

And you've got through it. And that just shows that that's what some of these Bitcoiners are made of. It's like, we're made tough for stuff. We won't yield. And now you're in a much better position and I can only see that continuing.

So that's really fucking cool to hear. - Thanks, man. - So the ASIC. So talk me through like, what's the plan? You've got your chickens, you got your land. And then obviously you've got your ASICs gonna be built in this container.

Have you got any plan for using the heat or doing anything with that? Or is that just gonna be separate to the farming side? - Right now, I don't have any plans to incorporate the heat. So I'm gonna have both immersion and air cooled in the shipping container.

But really, I'm just gonna be like, I'm just gonna be evacuating that heat. I wanna do both because I'm kind of in this position now where like I'm trying to help homeowners, that's kind of really become my main focus.

And if I'm gonna be the guy who is there to like answer questions and offer support and write the guides and talk people through the process, then it would behoove me to understand what people are dealing with.

And a lot of people are going immersion. So I want to go immersion so that I can better understand it and so that I can be a resource for people that want to do it in the future. And also, I do think that efficiency is gonna become more and more important as more hashrate comes online and the difficulty gets higher.

In order for me to continue doing this in a way that makes sense, I'm gonna have to really focus on efficiency at a certain point. And if you're just running like one ASIC, two ASICs, you have a Fiat job, you're paying the power bill out of your pocket.

Like, you know, you can get away with like less efficiency. But, you know, I've got like a petahash worth of ASICs that I'm gonna be building out in this garage and it is going to get more and more expensive to power them.

So at a certain point, it's just gonna benefit me, even if it's like a 10% efficiency gain or 20% efficiency gain or whatever I can achieve through immersion, I'm gonna need every bit of help I can get in the long run.

- Yeah, well, that's what I keep hearing from people is that the longevity of the machines is probably gonna be better because they're more consistent, the temperature, less dust and all that sort of bullshit.

And that the efficiency of the miners is also increased by doing it. So it does seem, even if you take out the equation, all the fucking noise and heat and bullshit that you get with the fans, it just seems like it's the way to go.

You know, if you have the capability of setting it up, that's the way it seems. And the other thing is that all this talk of these new miners coming in and more and more money being thrown at it by these big, I don't know what other other way to call them, but like warehouse miners, you know, like big companies

who are coming in, what's your thoughts on the hash rate and what's gonna happen over the coming years? Like, do you have any concerns about being like a smaller miner where presumably you can't write off the cost of the hardware and probably have access to capital like they do and some of the other things like

how are you thinking of competing there? - Yeah, it's interesting, you know, 'cause at a really small scale, like the name of the game is in competition. You know, the name of the game when you have like one or two Asics at home is to just dollar cost average through your utility bill.

But once you get up to a certain point, like I'm like getting up to now, it's, you know, you have to, your energy bill is so much that you can't just pay it out of pocket. So you do have to sell some Bitcoin in order to pay that energy bill.

Unless you have income in some other form, like what these large mining companies are doing is, I imagine, is that they're like selling equity in their company and they're getting that venture capital investment to like pay the electric bill so they can mine this Bitcoin and then hold on to it.

You know, you hear about like Riot and Marathon never selling a single set. Well, they have a lot of operating expense and that has to get paid for somehow. So if they're selling equity and, you know, raising capital by those avenues, then the way I see it is like these publicly traded miners are, you know, they're more likely to wind up

in the regulatory crosshair. They can't just go rogue and make some brash decision like I can as a completely independent miner. They have investors to answer to. They have other people's money at stake.

So, you know, Galaxy Digital put out this report and in it, they estimated that by the end of 2022, up to 45% of Bitcoin's hash rate is going to be controlled by publicly traded miners. And when I hear that, it's like, well, I'm not so sure that's really a good thing because when push comes to shove, yeah, when push comes to shove,

like are they going to make decisions that are in the best interest of the investors or they're going to make decisions that are aligned with my ideals of Bitcoin, which is censorship resistance, you know, which do you think is going to go by the wayside?

- Well, we know which way that goes. A hundred percent could, you just have to look at the incentives and where the pressure will be put. I had an idea the other day actually, I was chatting to someone about and maybe this is something that someone like you or Steve Barber, like you could make it happen.

You know, when we're talking about these massive companies controlling more and more of the hash rate and obviously that's a problem, then you have the home miners that really generally, especially in Europe, they have power costs that are just so disgustingly high that it puts most of them off.

It's like, fuck, I can't really be bothering with that. And then I was thinking, well, what about if there was a box, like a black box, but an immersion version where businesses, 'cause obviously businesses can write off their electricity costs.

If you were to say, right, you're using this amount of energy. If you say, well, one miner will add 5% or 10% of your total usage, then you can easily put one of these machines into an office or warehouse or any type of business.

And you can write off all the energy. I know it's a bit of tax fraud, but, you know, at the end of the day, there will be people who will do it. And that would massively decentralize everything because there are so many businesses that are struggling, especially the smaller businesses, you know,

all the legislation and everything that's going on in the world is basically crush small businesses, help Amazon pretty much. So is that possible to make something really simple and someone can just plug this into a business and just it's gonna be better for everyone?

- You know, I think it is. And I think there's a lot of really smart people working on it. You know, there's that French company. Ah, the name is escaping me right now. But you know, they're working on like a system, an immersion type system that connects to like your boiler system.

And the heat from the A6 is gonna be used to, you know, use the radiant heat to heat up the office space or the home space. There's coin heated on Twitter who's trying to make like a like a six A-sick hot box.

You know, so I think we're a couple iterations away, but I think the trajectory is clear, right? - Yes, but specifically pushing it to businesses. This is what I'm thinking is like, if you consider that, I mean, how many Bitcoiners are there in the world?

It's tiny percentage of people. And then how many of those Bitcoiners actually have any understanding other than just owning it on Coinbase or anything like that? And then of that tiny, tiny group, how many are actually gonna bother to try and fuck around and set up mining and all this stuff?

Like it's tiny amounts, but how many small businesses around the world have been fucked by regulators, fucked by the money printing, fucked, left, right and center. And if you just explain to them, plug this box in, right off the cost of the electricity, you can sell it for pounds or dollars or whatever bullshit you want,

or you can learn about Bitcoin and keep that. And effectively, you have free power. Like there's millions and millions and millions of these businesses with technically free power. - Yeah, I think the unfortunate truth is that they're really not gonna be left with much of a choice except to do something like that, right?

You know, just look at what's happening in Canada right now with the emergency measures and putting cryptocurrency under the same umbrella of treatment as like terrorist financing. At a certain point, you know, businesses are, I think Bitcoin is going to win by default simply because it is better money

and businesses are going to come to that logical conclusion. If they wanna keep doing business, if they wanna stay open, if they want to have any sliver of freedom left, because they're not gonna be getting it from their government, you know, they're only gonna be losing it there and their money is only gonna be losing value.

So it's just, I don't, you know, I'm biased, obviously, you know, Bitcoin started making sense to me a long time ago, but I don't understand how anyone can operate in this world and not see the trajectory we're on, not see what's going on around them and not like come to that realization, that logical end that Bitcoin makes sense

and Bitcoin solves a problem that they have. - I think so and there's only so far you can push people, even the sheeple, there is a point where they go, hang on, I've done everything you said, I never got my freedoms back, I'm sick from the shit that you've pumped into me, I lost my business or I'm close to losing my business,

everything around me is so fucking expensive, I can't afford to live, the quality of my food's gone down, the quality of my livelihood, like everything I'm doing has gone down, I'm stressed, I'm angry, and then someone says, well, why don't you just plug in one of these boxes in and write off the costs and they're like, yeah, fuck it,

why wouldn't I do that? Like, it's not like they're doing anything for me, it's not like I've got anything to lose, everything's already been taken, it's very dangerous to take everything from it.

- Exactly. - That's the game they're playing, like they're getting very close to getting to a point where the average person would just say, but there's no chance I'm gonna win this game, I'm gonna flip the board and I don't give a fuck where the pieces go, let's just see what happens, and I think we're not far from that now,

and that works in our favor, like the more we can get these miners into normies' hands, the more that people start, I don't know what you'd call it, it's almost like bootlegging, or like it's a bit out-lory, but it's pretty simple, it's clean.

- It's mining for the streets. - That's it. (laughing) - Exactly. (laughing) - It's exactly that, yeah, it's really exciting, I hope it goes that way, because all this professionalization and everything, like, yeah, I mean, it's good for the price, but-- - Is it though?

- It is kind of worrying, I think it is, like there's a lot of money there, it's shit, and it pisses me off, but certainly short term, it is good for the price, it would be good for the price long term, I mean, if people are too relaxed about this and just care about chasing the money,

and like, oh, we'll just let whatever regulation happen, oh yeah, let's just say yes to everything, just whatever, whatever, whatever, just to get the money in, then that will backfire, because then a technology and a money that was fuck you, money, suddenly becomes cuck money, and all these businesses start controlling

and blacklisting and whitelisting and all the bullshit that they'll try and do, then how valuable is that? Well, nowhere near as valuable as it would be if we can keep things decentralized and keep those fucks out of our system.

So yeah, short term, long term, no, probably not. - Yeah, I just, you know, I don't know, I kind of like look at how we were down what, like 40% from the recent all time high, we've had all this money pumped into it by venture capitalists and large firms, and they're using it to regurgitate

the broken legacy system, and they're like taking the KYC AML square pegs, forcing them into these round holes, and man, I just, I can't see it ending well. So like you said, like long term, yeah, definitely not.

Short term, I don't know. It's, I wish it was different, but you know, it is what it is, and try and make the best of it. - It is what it is, but you know, as hard as they push on that side, we can push harder.

They're playing old games, you know, they're playing in their system what they're used to. They don't understand what they're doing here. It doesn't seem. And so, yeah, short term, it will be fine, long term.

I'm pretty convinced that they will lose, but I do get frustrated with a lot of the lapping. I do get frustrated with the focus. I don't know, like even in the short amount of time that I've been involved, it feels like less and less people really seem to be bothering, really seem to be doing what I feel is right and necessary.

And there's just a lot of posing, a lot of, like I was speaking to Samurai the other day, and he was like, you know, this Bitcoin fixes this meme. It's like, has it, because it's been around for 10 years, has it fixed things?

Like, we've got some crazy shit going on in the world. Has it fixed that? Well, no, it hasn't, it just, all it is is the ability for individuals to try and make changes, but stop fucking lapping.

- Right. - I don't know. - Yeah, I heard that. I heard that sound by, it was, it was motivating. It was really good. - Yeah, well, he gets a lot of shit, you know, for some of the stuff he says, but he's not wrong, you know?

And these guys have been around for a long time. They've seen how things are moving. And I guess the longer you've been in it, you can see a bit more clearly how far it's come from that sort of cypherpunk ideals.

And, you know, I don't think there's anything you can really do about it until people get burned, you know? Like with this stuff with the truckers now, I mean, what's gonna happen to all these people who have donated and all these people who are saying, oh, you're fucking KYC'd at birth

and all this bullshit that's going around on Twitter, it's like, yeah, that was really funny, wasn't it? But now you've sent KYC'd coins to someone's node, which is gonna be tracked. And they've got all your information and they're calling you a terrorist.

Good luck, fucking good luck. You think it's funny, but it's not funny. Like how long have people been warning of where this goes? And now we're starting to see it. And maybe people just really need to get burned.

They really need to see, ah, this isn't a joke anymore. - Yeah, I kind of feel like there's this, you know, we're on like un, what's the term? We're, I kind of feel like-- - Uncharted. - No, not uncharted, but like shaky ground.

We're like on shaky ground right now. Like I think a lot of people's like world view and their like comfort with KYC has suddenly been ruffled to say the least. And unfortunately, I think it's only in times of extreme situations like this where people kind of have that aha moment

and they can put two and two together despite the fact that so many people have been like eloquently articulating exactly how this was gonna happen and what the dangers were. And just being called fudsters all along.

Yeah, you know, unfortunately it takes a really extreme moment for people to realize. And I think right now it kind of seems like people are understanding that it may not be a good idea to be on that list.

And I think that's only gonna get worse, man. To tell you the truth, it's gonna get worse before it gets better. - Oh yeah, we've not even started. We've not even started. It's right at the beginning of where, I don't think they're even really starting to push back.

They're just starting to flex. - Yeah, it's, you know, bank accounts are already, you know, it's already happening in Canada, but it's just a matter of time. If it's not the vaccine, it's some other form of compliance that will bar you from financial services.

So like the tools are out there right now to start using this stuff, to start understanding this stuff and to the guides are there and the people are there. And enough voices are still available to be heard.

Like, you know, what happens when I say something too based and I get canceled from Twitter? You know, there goes like my access to 20,000 people that were following me for information about interacting with Bitcoin in a way that keeps it permissionless.

Yeah, there's plenty of other information out there, but like in this fight, I think we need every voice we can get. And it's only a matter of time before people like myself are either canceled or censored or like my account is nuked and I have to start from zero.

So I guess I just want to encourage people to like, you know, take a look around and get as much information as you can while you can get that information because there's gonna come a time where you're out on your own and you don't have those resources easily available like they are today.

That's very true. And the cost in energy to make the quality of guides that you're making and spend the amount of time and effort, it's huge, like there's massive amount of energy that goes into that.

The amount of energy for Twitter to switch you off is literally flicker switch you've gone. And so there's an asymmetry there which is not something that we can really be if we play their games.

Like if we're on their platforms, there's no way around that they can just switch you off. I guess, you know, some of this self-hosting stuff is interesting, making sure that we have backups of everything so that we can just use the next platform is interesting, keeping in contact, having like a group of people

that you can reach out to if the information comes off that it can be sent. Like we have to think outside of the box because I think you're right, it is definitely gonna happen. On the other hand, again, you have like the good and evil.

If the evil is them taking good information off websites that people would find useful, the thing is that a lot of the stuff that two years ago was really fucking difficult to do. It's got so much easier.

And so we've got sort of this battle where I do think we win. Like I do look at the tools that are available now since when I started and it's just worlds apart, Sparrow and Spectre and, you know, some of these wallets are just so good.

What foundation devices are doing is so good. The guides are so good. Everything is, yeah, just so much more simple and better. - Yeah, absolutely. Dude, the first Bitcoin node I built was a complete nightmare train wreck clusterfuck.

Took me two months. Like it was awful. - What did you build? - I was just-- - Raspberry. - Yeah, I was trying to put Bitcoin Core with the graphical user interface on a Raspberry Pi with a little like HDMI monitor.

Dude, it was a horrible experience. But God, we've come so far. And that wasn't that long ago, you know? It's accelerating really fast. And yeah, I definitely think that's a good thing. And I think it's important to keep that momentum going and just make sure that people understand how valuable this stuff is

and how quickly things can turn on you and how quickly those conveniences that you've grown used to can be used against you, can be weaponized against you. Money is a weapon. And when you're relying on a third party financial institution, like, dude, that weapon is gonna be used against you.

- Oh, 100%. The good thing is, you know, all of these tools can act as shields and it's simple enough. Like, there's not that many tools you need to make yourself have like a parallel system, something that can't be touched and right.

And, you know, a decent hardware wallet, link to a decent bit of software like Spectra or Sparrow. You know, maybe you have one home miner and you're just stacking, accumulating, doing that.

I mean, there's not that much more you need to do. You run a node. I mean, there's like the Tanto if you just want something that's plug and play. Raspberry Blitz is really solid. It's getting easier and easier to have one of those.

I mean, I kind of feel now with the guides and things like that, anyone who's relatively tech savvy can go from zero to hero in a week. If that's what you really wanna do, you wanna spend a bit of time and just care about your privacy, care about your future, you can do that.

I don't think it's unachievable for anyone. - Yeah, absolutely. You know, and it's just a matter of making that first step and making that second step and making that third step and just continuing to do incremental steps until you get there.

You know, this, like, I think there's kind of like this false summit in privacy where it's like, there's always gonna be something else you can do to like harden that privacy and keep doing more, but don't let that stop you from just getting started.

You know, just do something to get started. Like just stop using Google services for starters. Take it from there. - Yeah, exactly. And a big theme on this podcast, especially, because I've been working with The Mashed Adele and doing a lot of other stuff outside of just Bitcoin and privacy is, like you said,

don't become obsessed with perfection. I mean, a lot of what I'm doing now and a lot of what people around me are doing is like, okay, you have your Bitcoin, you find somewhere to stack non-KYC if you can, you make sure you're comfortable with your security, you run a node or two, whatever it is you need.

And then don't over-complicate things. Like you don't need to be obsessing about stuff all the time, 'cause there are other attack vectors that are really important. It's like, there's no point in running 15 nodes and having every bit of software and being the most private person in the world

and all these different phones and constantly updating and constantly changing and multi-sig and this and that, if you are a fat fuck that eats a load of shit and you're in a rental property in the middle of a city where the police can come and take your funds, how hard and are you to the world if you're doing that?

Not very, like it's fine. You can say on Twitter, like you're a fucking rock star, but at the end of the day, you're not and you're gonna get taken out. So a big focus has been building communities of people in these messages where we say, right, we'll bounce ideas off each other, we'll help each other with like farming,

making sure that we understand the best ways to grow produce, keep chickens, do some home mining, do some self-defense, gym stuff, meditation, anything that's like, how do I start from the person and make myself the toughest motherfucker, the most difficult to attack possible?

And I think it's time a lot of Bitcoiners start to consider this because we live in meat space, not everything is online. - Right, no, that's a really good point. And I'm an advocate for 3D printed guns and gun rights and people like using those guns to protect their keys and their keys to protect their coins.

And yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for taking a self-defense class. Like your threats are not just coming through the computer. Like you said, you gotta be ready to handle what's gonna get thrown at you in the physical world too.

So there's a lot to be said for that. - And the food, like, so I was really happy to hear that you've got some land and you got some chickens and that's so important. Like if we were just gonna feed ourselves in industrial sludge, not that I really can say that I'm doing that at the moment

'cause I don't have any land 'cause I did sell my house so that I could buy more Bitcoin. But that is the plan is to get some land and to be able to grow because then you know what's going into your body.

And I don't know, like it just, it feels like when we're saying we want to not rely on anyone with all the stuff that's going on with the supply chains and we know that a lot of these corporations and governments really don't care about you or your health.

It's like, you need to probably take these things into your own hands. And yeah, you can do the self-defense class and you're gonna have a load of 3D printed guns but if you are really unhealthy and unfair, you're not gonna last long.

(laughing) You know, you're really not gonna last long and what's gonna happen with all the medical stuff? Like, are you gonna be allowed into a hospital? Well, if you're not, then you probably need to be considering doing some type of course to make sure you can keep yourself alive or making sure that you have basic first aid training,

that kind of stuff. These are the things where these, you trade all your Bitcoin just to have that knowledge like fuck, I need to resuscitate a family member or I'm bleeding. I need to make sure that I can bandage these wounds.

Oh, well, I've got loads of Sats and they're in multi-sig, but I'm still gonna die. So, you know, I think there needs to be more focus and that's why we've got this meshedadel is like to talk through these ideas and to plan for these things that are inevitably gonna happen.

It's definitely good to be having those discussions and bringing attention to it, you know? And it's, yeah, it's sovereignty means a lot more than

just stacking Sats, right? - Yeah, as good as that is. (both laughing) So, what's your like favored stuff that you're working with at the moment? Do you have favorite bits of hardware or software that you're using?

Has anything changed since we last spoke for your set-ups or what you kind of suggest? - I mean, I try to use Sparrow Wallet like everywhere I can possibly use it. So, I just did a guide recently on this device called the Apollo.

It's made by a company called FutureBit. And at first I was kinda like, eh, I don't know. The idea is that it's a full node and a miner in a small device that does not consume very much power.

It's like 200 watts. And at first I was like, you know, I was kind of thinking of it in terms of like, well, you know, if I spend the money on the Apollo, am I ever gonna earn that back with like three terra hash from this thing?

You know, I just don't really see how it's very viable. But dude, I've gotta say, like after getting my hands on this thing and then talking to the founder, John Stephanopoulos, about, and like just kinda understanding his vision and understanding like the importance of decentralizing hash power.

And, you know, thinking about 45% of the network hash rate in the hands of publicly traded miners versus like having 10 million of these Apollo devices spread around the world. Like they're not gonna be able to control Bitcoin if there's enough hash rate out there in the hands of the many.

And, you know, and then just this year in the last, you know, two and a half months, we've had five block finds on Solo CK pool. And yeah, that's great. And they were all like running like really small amounts of hash rate, except for one, he had like over a pet of hash.

But, you know, just in light, like when you kind of put all that together, then like this, and then I looked at the Apollo and I was like, "Dude, this thing is actually really freaking cool."

And so I just, I got this set up just now over the last couple of days. So I've got it sitting here in my office. I remote into it from my desktop. And I can put, I can use the Bitcoin node that's running on it to like back up my Sparrow wallet on the desktop.

And then it's got like this web interface you can log into and you can like configure your miner and tell it which pool you wanna point at. So here I am like throwing three tera hash at CK Solo pool, just, you know, for the gamble.

And it's only like costing like $5 a month in electricity, but it's decentralized hash rate. And it's running a full note that I have like doing all the backend work for my desktop wallet.

I think it's awesome, you know? I think a lot of people are gonna like it. So that's like-- - You've got an article on it, did you say that? - Yeah, I just sent it over to Bitcoin Magazine to get published yesterday.

So it's gonna take like a week before that gets out there. - Okay, 'cause I was just looking on your website trying to find it and I was like, oh, I can't actually see. - Oh, yes. And I'm actually like-- - Sounds interesting.

- I'm actually like migrating my website. So I've got like, if you go to like AkanoAlchemist.github.io, like that's what my new website is gonna look like, but I just need to like finish.

So I've been using Wix and they don't allow you to like export your website data. So I literally have to rebuild all of my guides by hand in GitHub repos. So it's just taking me a while to get through all that.

- Yeah, Wix, I had exactly the same thing. I built my original one on that and I was just like, fuck, I just have to leave all of this. Luckily, Mr. Crown is an angel and built my new one for me and it's awesome and I love it.

But yeah, I know your pain, it's fucking annoying. They just keep you locked in. - Right. So yeah, I mean, future bit is one device I'm stoked on and then I'm actually like waiting for my black box to show up.

So upstream data got the first black box shipped out and they're sending it to me. So feel honored for that. I'm stoked to be getting this thing. Part of the reason is so that I can help Steve put the startup documentation together for it.

But the black box is just, for any of your listeners who don't know, it's like this instant home mining problem solver. You can just set it outdoors. You don't have to worry about duct work or installing ventilation and it suppresses the noise so you don't have to worry about bothering your neighbors.

You just need to have an electrician run an outlet for you and plug it in. So yeah, really looking forward to that. And then I got on the Tonto presale as well. So I'm waiting for that to come in as to the Ronan Dojo full node.

- So nice. Yeah. I'm hoping for a case, 'cause I've got all the internals, but I'm hoping for a case just because it does look beautiful. - Yeah, yeah, they've done a lovely job on that. This other one that you were talking about though, the one with the miner, was it three terra hash?

That sounds interesting. I'd quite like to have a look when you've got this article and find out a bit more because in theory, I think you're right, it would, if it's easy enough for people and it's got a slick user interface, you could get many, many people plugging these in.

And as long as it, I mean, is it like horribly loud or what? - No, dude, it's sitting next to me right now. Yeah. - Oh, really? It's less loud than my dog. - Yeah, it's quiet. So I've got the Apollo sitting there next to a Raspberry Pi 4 that I'm running next cloud on.

And the Raspberry Pi 4 is like twice as loud as the Apollo. - Oh, shit. - Dude, yeah, it's quiet. - That's interesting. - Yeah, and it, dude, like after opening the box, 15 minutes you're up and hashing.

You open it, you plug it into power, you find the, if you're just remoting into it, like I did, you just plug your ethernet cable into it, get on your desktop from the same local network, type in the IP address and you're in the user interface and you can copy paste the pool you want to mine to, reboot it and you're done and it's like,

dude, it was a, it was a really awesome experience. And, you know, I think a lot of people are gonna like it, especially now that it just kinda seems like, with all these solo block finds this year, it's almost like re-validated people's confidence in having a smaller amount of hash rate, you know?

We're before they would just write it off. - Do you believe? Do you believe they were solo mined? Do you believe there's no fuckery? 'Cause it seems a bit unreal to me that there's been so many in such a short space of time, like it seems highly improbable, but I'm not smart enough to do the maths

to find out quite how improbable that is, but do you have any thoughts around that? - Yeah, I think it was legit. You know, I don't have any reason to suspect that there was any sort of foul play there.

You know, like what's the, if you think about like what the benefit would be, you know, I guess. - The pool, the pool would get a load of eyes on it and it might draw more hash rate over to it, which would make them more.

- Right, like it could be like an advertisement for them, right? But like-- - That's the only thing I can come up with. But like, you know, someone on the pool has to find a block in order for them to get paid at all.

And so I think really what's happened is that CK pool started getting more hash rate. And if you kind of like zoom out and look at how many blocks they've found total for how much hash rate they have, like they're still finding like the same number of blocks that they quote unquote should be finding

based on like Bitcoin's overall network hash rate and the hash rate that they're providing, right? So just being like the high variance pool that they are, they may go six months without a single block find and then they can get five block finds within the span of two months.

But if you like zoom out and kind of average everything out, that variance, you know, it averages out to like, well, you know, they've been doing this much hash rate. Overall network hash rate has been this.

So therefore they should have been getting about this many blocks. And if you look at it from that standpoint, they're right about where they should be. So yeah, I don't think they were, you know, doing any underhanded or like,

you know, scammy kind of advertising by like magically making blocks appear because the other thing you can do with CK solo pool is you can take that address, the Bitcoin address that the block went to, that's the user name.

So you can go to your web browser and put in solo dot CK pool dot org forward slash users forward slash that Bitcoin address. And you can see it'll print the metrics, the stats for that minor.

And so every time one of these blocks was found, I would do that. And like sure as shit, every time it was exactly what CK pool dev was saying on Twitter, it was.

- Can you imagine winning? Can you imagine that happening when you, 'cause a lot of these, or the ones that I saw were like these little USB drive things, imagine fucking winning that and you're doing it solo.

That is like proper lottery stuff. And I suppose maybe that's the way to look at it. It's like, you know, if you're running one of these things with a couple of terra hash and like you said, it's five dollars a month to run it, but you have a node anyway, then how many people do the lottery?

Like how many people go out and do their numbers every week and you know, you have a chance, but it's very small, but if it pays off, it's fucking huge. And I suppose maybe, you know, you're not going to want to do that with your whole mining operation because you might mine for years and years

and never get anything and then you're fucked. But you know, with a few terra hash, like just for some fun, I don't know, it's kind of cool. It's just like it brings a bit of excitement into life.

- Yeah, absolutely, man. And that's what I'm doing with this Apollo now. And it's awesome. I like it. - I might have to do something similar. Just yeah, just for a bit of fun. I mean, that's another thing is, you know, how long until there's a lot of fun and cool things in this industry, like there's so much that goes on

which is just not seen by outsiders. Like something like that where you could say, well, okay, you have this thing running and you know, it's going to cost you X per month, but you could win big and here's how much you'd win and here's how it works, like the basics behind it.

Like that's quite an exciting, like truly random opportunity to make a huge amount of money. Like life change you money for most people. - Right. - That really is. I think a lot of people would find that fun, not just nerdy Bitcoin.

It was like, just everyone loves gambling. (laughing) Pretty much like, it's fun. So yeah, I mean, how long until the average person starts doing that? Yeah, it definitely feels like that's something that more and more people could do.

- I think this is kind of the direction that Jack is going to take his new company block because they kept talking about like the exact words they were using was Bitcoin mining system. And to me that said, they weren't just building an ASIC.

You know, I think they're going to do something similar to this where it's like a smaller low power device. They already got the go ahead from Intel that they're going to be like one of the first customers from the ASIC chips that Intel is going to make.

And yeah, I think we're going to see a lot of hashrate get distributed and dispersed among a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons in these sleek little devices I can just sit there quietly and run in the corner.

- That's going to be so exciting to see. I'm really looking forward to seeing what Jack does now that he's been unchained from Twitter and it seems as though, like I don't want to jinx it, but it seems as though he's going to do some really cool stuff.

And yeah, there's a lot to be excited about. There's a lot that I can see coming down the pipeline that really is going to shake things up. And yeah, hashrate is probably going to explode and maybe that makes it a little more challenging and anyone mining has to be a bit more efficient.

But at the end of the day, more hashrate is a good thing. - Yeah, I agree. I think it is. Especially when it's in the hands of individuals. - Yeah, a big sign to see what happens with that.

And also what happens with Intel, like just generally like what doors is that going to open once we have another competitor. I don't know what we're going to see, but it feels like it's going to shake things up.

- Yeah, you know, I think one thing that I would like to see shaken up is like, you know, Bitmain and MicroBT or closed source hardware. So like the whole industry is running on closed source hardware that like is kind of against the ethos of this space, right?

Like it's mostly about open source, except for when it comes to miners and we're just going to have these two centralized companies that we don't really know what's going on in there. And so, you know, Jack and Block talking about doing this all open source, I think is a very good thing.

And I hope that kind of sets like this expectation from consumers of like developing preferences for open source hardware when it comes time for them to make a purchasing decision. And, you know, hopefully it makes enough competition with Bitmain and MicroBT that they consider opening their doors a little bit

and letting us see what's going on in there and open sourcing their hardware too. It's just like... - That's a really good point. I'd not even really thought about that. Like we give so much shit for anyone who's not fully open source and there's so much talk on Twitter and everything.

And it's like, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. I think that is the ethos of Bitcoin. And if you're not fully open source, you should be strongly considering it.

But yeah, like you're right. The whole network is reliant on these two behemoths in both of them are closed source, which, yeah, it deserves more attention. - And dude, that's why I keep my mouth shut a lot of the times when there's like these debates flared up between like foundation and cold card.

And it's like, like me as like a content creator, you know, I'm going around telling people like, yeah, get a Google Pixel, that's closed source. And yeah, get a what's minor, that's closed source.

But then I'm supposed to like make this exception when it comes to cold card and have like a different set of standards for the hardware wallet. - Yeah. - So for me, it's like, like dude, I totally, like I totally understand like it was weird to them to like switch their license.

And I totally understand what people mean by saying like, it's common clause, it's no longer free and open source. Like I get the semantics of the definitions. But just as like someone who is going around telling people to use closed source hardware, like the Pixel and the miners, like I just, it doesn't feel right to me

to like treat cold card differently, you know? And so that's why I've been trying to just kind of stay out of all that mess. - Well, it's wise. I mean, I stay out of it as well because well, firstly, I'm not knowledgeable enough to really bring anything new to the table or like say anything that hasn't been said.

And secondly, I just vote with my feet. Like, yeah, I'd rather my hardware while it is fully open source. And to be honest, I just find foundation to be a lot fucking easier to use. Like I still have cold cards, like I still think they're good.

If someone said to me, you know, oh yeah, should I just get rid of my cold card? Like no, like, you know, it's pretty extreme. It's a good device. It's just like, what would I actually suggest now?

I mean, I would say foundation. Like, 'cause it's just more user friendly and it's open source. But yeah, I mean, the whole beef, but it's the same with all of the, you know, the coin join stuff.

It's like, I use Samurai, like I use Whirlpool. The people that I really respect and trust in the space also use it. And then if I have problems, I reach out to them. But if someone from the other team is like, attacking them or like, there's this back and forth, I'm like, I don't really care what anyone uses.

Like, I don't give a fuck if you want to go and use Wasabi or you want to go and use anything else. I don't care. Like, it doesn't affect me what someone else does. And I don't care how nasty or rude someone is.

Or like, you know, people get annoyed if for a dolfo is like rude to them on Twitter or block someone's like, don't care about that either. Like, either someone makes good products and I want it or they don't.

And even if Samurai wants to be a complete cunt to me, even if he like literally phoned me up today, I was like, your dog's ugly, you're a fucking prick and I hate your podcast. I'd be like, little cheers, that's really hurtful, but I'm still gonna use Whirlpool because it's good.

So you know what I mean? Like, so it's, yeah, I feel like it's a lot of energy that goes in, but I mean, I also love that people are so passionate about it. You know, you need people to be passionate and having these arguments.

- Yeah, absolutely. You know, I use the tools because they work, not because of the personality that's on the team developing the tools, you know? - Yeah, but yeah, you make a good point.

I mean, there's, I think a lot of the time, it's easy to jump on the bandwagon. Like, when there's these arguments going on, it's really good for engagement. It's really easy to jump in and just repeat the same old thing, but like you've just pointed out, there are other bigger problems where, you know,

like you're saying with the mining stuff, there are massive problems that need to be addressed, but they just don't get the attention. All the red versus green stuff, like loads of attention and like, sometimes the insults and stuff can be quite funny, you know?

Everyone's like piling in, it is quite funny. Like sometimes a lot of the guys from the Samurai team, like send me memes and stuff. And like, I do have a giggle, but it, yeah, I think it's just sometimes it is too easy, isn't it?

It's like, it's the perfect engagement farming and we need to keep our eyes open. And there are any other things that you're considering like that, like you've just sort of made me think about that for the first time.

Are there any other things where you're thinking there are major flaws or things that we need to be thinking about that concern you and you don't think get enough attention? - Oh geez. I mean, yeah, I wanna say, yeah.

I guess I wasn't really thinking of any off the top of my head though, but you know, I mean, I'm a no KYC advocate or as Butetan is declaring I'm an ethical Bitcoin advocate.

And I hope that the recent situation with the truckers at least like highlights, you know, what can go wrong? Like sure, you should hope for the best, but you really should be prepared for the worst.

And you know, I just think the whole like KYC Bitcoin phenomenon is this continuing like sinkhole of logic,

like what is this saying? Like only a full looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart, like smashing the buy button on cash app and apping into a Bitcoin position. You know, those are like dopamine hits.

Those are dopamine hits. Those are emotional stimulus. You know, you can't really speak logically to someone about the dangers of that when it's making them high, you know, they don't want to hear it.

So yeah, I think there's just always a lot of work to do with refining the no KYC tools and just getting the message of why out there. And it's hard to, it's fucking hard to talk to someone who's all doped up, man, but you got to keep trying.

- It is, it is, and I've been trying to so many people about this over the years and saying, you know, no KYC is the way to go. And, you know, it's definitely a theme with this show. And I would say almost all of the arguments for KYC Bitcoin pretty much come down to convenience.

The ones that make sense, like where I can go. Yeah, fair enough, that makes sense. Like, look mate, I just can't be asked. Yeah, but you know that this could be a problem further down the line, don't care.

It's like, okay, if you don't care, fine, that makes sense. That's a reasonable argument is that you're too lazy and you can't be bothered. But a lot of the other arguments just don't make sense.

They're just, there's no logic to them. And the only other one where I found there is logic, and I'll probably get a load of shit for this, but the one that I do think there is logic is the people who say, look, I'll have one for in and one for out, meaning I have some no KYC coins, which is my fuck you money and I will pull it

and I'll do everything else. And you know, that's my outlaw money. But I also, as an investor, I want a small amount or some KYC coins, which I'm not gonna touch, because I may be interested in the lending services in the future, or I may do something around that in the future.

And then it's like, would I do that? Well, no, not personally. I'd rather have the no KYC stats, but can I see that that is a reasonable argument where someone says, well, I'd rather put my money here than the stock market.

I'd rather put my money here than in property. And one day I wanna lend against it. I wanna borrow against it. I wanna have a mortgage with it. I wanna do whatever I wanna do. And I wanna go into the old shitty fucking legacy bastard of a system.

I wanna use that and the likelihood is they might say, no, we only have these whatever white listed coins. I can understand people's arguments there. And I do think it makes sense for some people.

But I think people have to own it. I think people have to accept that, yeah, these are cupped coins. They can come and get them from me. I'm not some tough man that when they knock on my door and threaten to throw me in prison, that's gonna say, oh, I was a boating accident.

No, you're fucking not. You're gonna be put in prison. They're gonna take your house. They can take everything from you. So you will lose them. But that's the risk that they have to weigh up of, well, do I have some KYC coins?

And as long as people are honest about it, I think that then you should say, okay, fine, that's your personal choice. - Yeah, dude, absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. And I don't think you should get any shit for saying that either.

I was just arguing with the guy on Twitter. He was like the CEO of the company that does like the KYC compliance for the Chivo wallet and El Salvador. And what you hit, the point that you hit is like, well-informed people make good decisions.

And as long as they understand what they're getting when they're going down a KYC route, like that's one thing. Like, putting a substantial portion of your wealth in Bitcoin and then leveraging that later to do something like buy your first home or whatever.

Yeah, you know, that's one way to use Bitcoin and you certainly can do that. And a lot of people do it. And if they understand what they're doing, that's one thing. But what really drives me crazy is when people sell the idea of fuck you money, they sell the idea of censorship resistance.

They sell the idea of permissionless. They sell the idea of Bitcoin, but they deliver a KYC product without just making that distinction without like educating the user about really what they're getting into.

That's what drives me crazy. Like, don't go around telling people that they're buying Bitcoin when they're buying Bitcoin exclamation mark trademark. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. It really needs to be stated that you don't get those properties if you have the KYC coins. But then conversely, if you do buy no KYC and you do put them through Whirlpool and then you sit on them and then you decide, oh, I want to buy my first property or, you know, I want to borrow against these

because I have something I really want to spend my money on. Don't be shocked when you go to the bank and you say, right, I want to have a loan or, you know, the Bitcoin bank that's giving out the loan.

I want to have a loan. They'll say, okay, can I have proof of where you got the funds from, please? Well, no, not really. Yeah. Okay, I can see they've been through coin join here because we can see that.

Whether it's right or wrong, we have an opinion on that and we don't like that. Right. Can you prove, do you have a record showing where you bought them from, where you had the money to buy them from?

Because that is what the compliance isn't going to get easier. It's going to get harder. You can't just go and buy a house. And like, if I went to go and buy a house tomorrow and I said, oh, yeah, I've got these, I want a loan against these SATs, they're going to ask me where the fuck they came from.

So it is just, you have to understand that trade off as well, which is why it's different for everyone and the whole arguing between like, what's real Bitcoin and what's not. It's like, it has different use cases for everyone.

And some people just don't care about fucking money. Or some people do, but they only care 80%, or 50%, or 30%, whatever their trade off is. So yeah, it is, you're right, it is about being clear and bringing these things out into the open, but not just like, not just calling everyone a fucktard

and all this stuff that's just all you see is like, you're a fucktard, you're a fucking retard. You don't know what you're talking about. Oh, you're a cuck. It's like, not everyone is a fucktard just because they want a percentage in K-wisied coins.

Like, even if I don't agree with it myself, like, it is a reasonable thing to do. And people will say like, oh, you can just put it in the stock market. It's like, yeah, sure you can, but if you have half a brain, you know that the stock market is fucked.

Like, eventually it's fucked. Like it's, it's, there's the foundations, it's built on sand. So you're really gonna risk that. And are you gonna get the returns that you get with Bitcoin? Very unlikely.

So if you do want it literally just to increase in value, well, what else is there? Like, really, what else is there? And if you're saying, oh, well, I'll only gonna buy no K-wisied coins or nothing, then it's like, okay, well, you need a proportion of money and something that can be traced.

Where'd you put it? Property, pff, that's gonna be fucked. Stock market, that's gonna be fucked. Try and start a small business, good luck. Right. So what else is there? Okay, I'll put some K-wisied coins.

I'll just keep them in a hardware wallet and I'll wait 10 years or five years or whatever it is someone wants to do. Like, it's not, I don't think that's wrong. I just think it's different to what you or I might want.

Yeah. And I, you know, just, just to be clear, like I used Bitcoin that had been through Whirlpool to finance the purchase of my house, the one that we're in now. Not that like, I paid for the house outright.

You know, I have a mortgage, but I had to come up with earnest money. We had to put it down, payment down. And a lot of that money came from Bitcoin. And so, you know, I just want people to understand, like, 'cause you hear this argument, like, like, well, how are you gonna buy a house with no K-wisied Bitcoin?

As if as though that's like, like, there's some finality to that argument. Well, I just want people to know, like, I am living proof that you can do that. Like, you can use non-KYC Bitcoin to get the things you want in your life, like a house.

Is it for everybody? No, absolutely not. Do I spend most nights, like, wide awake in bed, wondering when the feds are gonna kick my door in? Yeah, sometimes I do. Me too. I mean, in this day and age, I don't think that's like a very uncommon fear to have, right?

Like, you put one Facebook post online that is out of sync with the government's narrative and you have the cops knocking on your door a few hours later. You know, but, you know, all I'm trying to say here is, like, the world is your oyster and you can do anything you wanna do.

There are consequences for your decisions, though, so you gotta make good decisions and those are gonna be different for everybody, like you said. Those are wise words. I have to say, I think that is probably a good place to wrap this up.

I think everyone can follow their dreams. Everyone can do what they want. No one should feel like they need to fit in and do what the crowd is doing. And yeah, it just goes to show that you've done it.

You've literally, you've gone onto the Bitcoin standard. You've changed your life around. You're working in this full time. And I hope that inspires other people to do the same. It's really fucking cool to see.

- Definitely. - Yeah. I, you know, love chatting to you. I'd like to get you on the show again. Sooner next time we left it a little bit too long, but yeah, it's inspiring, mate, I really mean that.

It's fucking awesome to see. - Thanks. I appreciate it. Yeah, and you know, don't feel bad. There's been a lot going on. We're all busy, so just stay in touch and let's chat soon. - Definitely.

If you just stay on the line for a couple of minutes when we close us out, so make sure to get the audio. But yeah, thanks again, mate. - Yeah, dude.