Dropping out vs dropping fiat for bitcoin and FOSS

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.

Today's episode is with Matt Rose. He's the head of marketing for Foundation Devices. We talked about why he left the fiat marketing world, all the bullshit that he had to deal with, and why he's so excited about his new role and everything that's happening in Bitcoin.

We also touched on the new trend for people all over the world, dropping out or laying flat. This is a trend where people are deciding not to work anymore. They've been sold lies. They're working themselves to death, and they've had enough.

We discuss Bitcoin as a possible alternative to this and something that can bring hope to these people. And we also talked about some other open source tools that can help you with organizing your life.

I really enjoy getting to know Matt, and I hope you enjoy listening. If you haven't already checked out Foundation Devices, what the hell are you doing? I've been chilling them for a few years now.

They're fully open source. They're fucking beautifully designed. They're piss easy to use. Proper cypherpunk tools for fuckwits. I can use it, meaning you can too. And they've just dropped the price to $199.

There really is no better product out there. And for anyone who wants to ask non-technical questions, you can come to me and I will be open and honest about all the trade-offs. If you have technical ones, probably go to Q&A.

But check them out at foundation devices.com. Next up, we have S-X-6.store. Weird name, isn't it? But amazing product. If you want to keep your Bitcoin secure and you want to have a proper fail-safe, if your hardware wallet dies, if you're encrypted backups, get where or you lose them,

you should always have your seed stamped into steel. And not just any steel, you need this to be grade 316L. That is the stainless steel that can survive through fires, floods, and does not rust.

These things are about 25 pounds, or whatever that is, $30 for you Yanks. And they're fucking amazing. I have one in my hand as we speak. I absolutely love these. And the man behind them, Black Coffee, is a legend.

Check them out at S-X-6.store. And if you have any questions, you can reach out to me. Enjoy the show.

- Hey, Max. - Hey, Matt, how you doing? - Yeah, good, thanks in you. - Yeah, good, thank you. Thanks for jumping on. I feel like it's been too long. I'm trying to work my way through the foundation team.

And I kept seeing your Twitter. And then I saw the wayfinder map thing, and like a little compass at the end. And I was like, "Is this motherfucker involved in compass mining, or was he?"

And then I saw her on the foundation team. And I was like, "I recognize that guy." So I went back and I was like, "Ah, okay." So it's obviously not connected with those scamming compass miners.

- No, no, not at all. But yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show. Yeah, really excited to chat to you. And I'm also fairly new to foundation. I joined the team in April, I guess.

It's been awesome ride so far. - How did you find your way over to foundation? - I mean, I'll start at the little bit of background about me. I'm like a traditional creative agency advertising type of guy.

And the last 10 years I've been working in creative agencies more like on a corporate side, like social media and brand strategy for more traditional type of clients. And always been attracted to the innovation side of things and kind of marketing tech and technology in general.

And I think I was kind of slowly kind of edging closer and closer to the crypto world. And I actually ended up doing some kind of freelance consultation work for a couple of really scammy kind of web three kind of DeFi game for NFT companies.

And it was really like a quite a disillusioning experience. Like at first I was super excited and, you know, it was this whole new world. And then eventually off like working behind the curtain with some of these companies, I was like, there's no way I could recommend this to my friends, you know?

It's like, often you've seen behind the curtain like that. It's like, nah, I can't be involved in this anymore. Then basically I kind of decided at the beginning of 2023 that it's like, it's Bitcoin or bust for me.

You know, like this is kind of for me, the only part of this kind of industry that I'm interested in working in. So I kind of made it my goal that I wanted to work for, like a Bitcoin-focused company.

And I actually started volunteering a little bit at some other smaller startups. Like I'm not sure if you're familiar with OPA, Orangepool app, which is like a networking for Bitcoin. So I did a little bit of volunteer work with them in the beginning.

And then also with some other Bitcoin book publishers called Consensus Network. And I was kind of just happy doing that on the side, alongside my fiat job. And I thought, you know, I'm just gonna continue to get to know people in the Bitcoin space and community until I find the right fit.

And I think that's eventually how I started coming across like Seth and Zack and Foundation. When I saw the job post come up for marketing, I was like, this is, I have to go for this. So I just went like four.

And yeah, just really, really stoked to be part of the team. And I thought I knew something about Bitcoin until I started working with these guys. So it's been interesting. But yeah, they're great teachers and it's been awesome.

- Well, it's a fucking good team. Bitcoin Q&A is a really good friend of mine. And he's the man I always go to whenever I have like any sort of question on anything, just fucking knows his stuff so well.

And as you were saying there, like volunteering, people find their way into this is from volunteering, getting to know people and know that was it for Q&A. Seth obviously doing his podcast as well.

And it's like a bit of a rite of passage in a way is like, you give a bit of time, you show your skills. And then if you do that enough, generally you'll find yourself in the right place.

It's good to hear that's happened to you. And what a fucking team to be with. - Yeah, and all of awesome. And the brand and the company itself, I think is going from strength to strength.

And yeah, exciting things. We got planned for the next few months. - When you were trying to find your way into the Bitcoin world and you were doing all the web three stuff and all that kind of thing, like what was it that pulled you in in the first place?

- Yeah, I mean, I think where I first started getting into it was I was first of all just disillusioned and not feeling satisfied with my advertising job because I was working like throw away consumer goods products, junk food brands, like really fit consumer stuff.

And I could never figure out why this wasn't fulfilling to me. You know, like I was, I was doing that for like kind of almost 10 years and just getting unhappier and unhappier doing it, you know.

And you know, a lot of what mainstream brands consider to be like brands with purpose, you know, is more like just, you know, virtue-signaling and green-signing and you know, all of this kind of stuff.

And it just is so fake, you know. And I, you know, was getting disillusioned with that. And I think I'm originally South African and I moved over to Europe about five years ago. And when I was here, I was actually saving up to buy like a secondhand kind of rust bucket kind of canal boats was to, you know, have vehicle ends on the weekend

and stuff like that. And I kind of almost had enough. And this was maybe about late 2019. And I had saved up enough to get that. And then I was chatting to a friend of mine and he was like, you know what?

You could actually buy some Bitcoin with this. And, you know, maybe that's a better investment than a boat which you're probably going to have to, you know, waste a lot of money on. And it's going to be a time and you probably won't be able to use it that much and whatever.

So he convinced me to rather invest in Bitcoin than to buy like a rust bucket boat, which I still want to do, but maybe later. - Maybe I have slightly less rust when you buy it. - Yeah, exactly.

And that was kind of my first entry into the space. And then of course, soon after that, I was like, you know, after hearing about Bitcoin, having Bitcoin, then of course I thought I was too smart for Bitcoin and I started getting into Ethereum and all of this stuff.

And I was even, you know, heavy into this kind of NFT craze in kind of early 2021. And also just witnessing those pump and dumps happen several times. I was also like, you know, this just isn't something I want to be involved with.

So kind of sold all of that and got out of that. And like I said in the beginning, this is kind of why I decided like, I just want to focus full on on Bitcoin and yeah, I'm not interested in working for the other side of the space.

- Was the NFT stuff, was the pull there because it's creative and you are a creative? I work as an artist in fiat land and I could see the pull. I could see technically like, as a Bitcoiner and been doing it for a while, why I was like, okay, now I think this is just going to be scammy, but I could see the pull as well.

Was it that side where you were like, oh, this is cool, it's creative? - I definitely was, you know, romanced by the idea of this kind of royalties, artists in general to kind of cut up middlemen and to engage directly with their audiences better.

So I did like that story and, you know, maybe in the future we see something that works on Bitcoin, you know, that could step into more of that and maybe that's a V4V value for value type of thing that develops.

But the other side of it why I was interested was, I think I'm also like that kind of person is a collector at heart, like I was always being collecting, trading cards as a kid and, you know, into that kind of mindset of collecting stuff.

So I think also something that appealed to me, you know, when I first saw it, I was like, oh, this is awesome. This is like digital collectibles, amazing, you know. It definitely did resonate with me on a few levels, but ultimately I was kind of seeing kind of the damage it was doing.

- Yeah, I do feel like there's at some point gonna be something there, like you say, I don't know what it's gonna be, but there are quite a lot of creatives in Bitcoin, really talented artists.

One of them who I work with a lot, Mr. Crown, I remember when all this stuff was starting up and I was just thinking, I mean, he'd never do NFTs because he's a Bitcoiner, but I was thinking it is a shame where you've got like these fucking talented artists who aren't gonna jump on this train, aren't gonna make the money.

And then you've got a load of scammers making fortunes, selling shit, and it does feel like at some point there has to be this payoff for the real quality artists who are doing that proof of work type of art and that people will want it and collect it.

And it works for physical art, obviously. I would like to see something in the digital nature. I don't know how it works, but it would be nice to see. - I think what was ruining it or what's poisoned, you know, that dream was the kind of speculative flipping, you know, where we're kind of piling in on a so-called artist

for the love of the art, what would they say? But it actually had nothing to do with that. And it was all about speculation. That's what kind of soured it a bit. And it's a pity, you know, because it's a mixed bag.

You know, you get well-intentioned artists, you know, who get pumped up by, you know, whole teams of speculators. - Yeah, it will come round, I'm sure. So this is all part of this just crazy fear clown world.

And it sounds like that's what you were trying to get away from with the marketing. And like the way you were describing it to me there of like the green washing and just fakery and stuff.

It just, it makes my skin crawl, you know, it's again, as a creative, if something feels fake when you're creating, it's horrible. It's also the force fitting of kind of political narratives into the corporate world as well, you know, like, it just, it becomes rarely kind of tires.

And, you know, when you have to basically reduce a lot of the creative, which can start out great, you know, like there's amazing writers, designers, creative directors within these agencies.

But after they've gone through 10 rounds of box ticking to say that, you know, we need to be this diverse and this inclusive. And what about this? What about that? And it's like, it really can destroy the concept because it becomes an exercise in corporate box ticking, you know?

- It waters everything down to just nothing. - What? - The one thing that gives me a little bit of hope is I do feel there's a little bit of a kickback. There's a little bit of like a kickback pushback.

It feels like more and more people are getting tired of it. More and more people are just like, ah, just fuck off, like this whole, you can't offend anyone. Everything is this woke culture.

Everything is like you say, this box ticking exercise. It's very boring and very predictable. And I think that's drawing more and more people into this Bitcoin world and a complete break off.

My hope is that then people like you get drawn into this Bitcoin world and their friends and other people who they may be used to work with go, fucking hell, look at the stuff you're creating.

This is really cool. And they get pulled in by this because they can actually create something that they mean and that matters and design things that are different rather than everything just being cookie cutter.

- Yeah, for sure. And there are so many talented people that are trapped in a kind of feared corporate world. And I think that they just don't know that this world exists. And yes, it is small at the moment, but as you say, hopefully it just goes from strength to strength as more people realize that there is more to life

than this feared paradigm and media paradigm that it creates. - And since you've stepped into this world, is it changed your perspective on any other things in life? It's sort of put orange tinted glasses on as you look at the rest of the world.

- Yeah, definitely. I think it definitely changes the way I kind of look at a whole bunch of things. And it can also be difficult, you know, times, you know, if I'm interacting with a lot of people who maybe I haven't seen in a while and it just feels like we're kind of operating on different kind of mindset.

It's like, I'm not sure if you've seen that meme where there's a guy and he's on the barbecue and he's like smiling and he's like, oh, that's cool. Did you see the game last night? You know? - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- So I kind of have that feeling quite a lot, especially when I run into like old friends and stuff. And I don't know, it is tricky, you know, because you definitely want to, you know, bring people along, you know, and kind of, you know, show them this kind of different way of looking at life.

But I think there's also just so much fear and people are struggling in their own way. Like it's hard to encourage someone to save and invest in Bitcoin if they can't even save at all. It just sounds absurd to them, you know?

So it really is tricky sometimes to connect to kind of an old life if you could say that. - I think that's like what most people are feeling. There's obviously some people who are in incredible jobs and have the money still, but, you know, I'm in the UK, you're in Europe.

The people that I spend time with who just have normal good jobs and families are really struggling. Like really, really struggling. Everything's going on credit cards. The quality of life is down.

People who used to go to, you know, like a Waitrose or a Marks and Spencer or one of those sort of shops now they're at Aldi. People who would just like go on a weekend and go and have a dinner or something, that doesn't happen anymore.

They're worried about their heating bills. They're worried about all this stuff. And as you rightly said, it's not actually useful most of the time to be shilling the Bitcoin because they've got so many problems to deal with.

And at the end of the month, when they've worked there 50, 60 hours and they've looked after the kids and they've done all the other shit that they've got to do and they're fucking exhausted and they've got nothing in their bank account and nothing ready to look forward to.

You start trying to explain Bitcoin to them. - Yeah. - It doesn't just doesn't go in because it's like they don't have the processing power. And I totally get it 'cause like when I found Bitcoin, I just left a job, which was a job I fucking hated and did for seven years and was exhausted.

And like I said, fuck, that's not doing it anymore. Got home, started painting and did that for like a year and did nothing else. And so I had the time. I was like, well, my mind's open to this.

I'm not under any real pressure. But yeah, I think maybe it's like, at the moment it's like people are stressed and don't have the time. Maybe they get to a point where they either get angry 'cause the next round of bullshit comes from lockdowns or something, tips them over the edge.

I'm not sure what that might be. The inflation gets so bad that they kind of desperately have to, but it's really hard to broach that subject. And it's almost like you can only see a lot of the other stuff as a normie once you've worked out the Bitcoin thing.

'Cause once you're like, ah, they're fucking lied about the money and they've really lied about the money. And this is how bad it is, what else are they lied about? And it's almost like you need that switch.

You speak to normal people about other stuff that you notice that might be bullshit. And again, they're not switched onto it 'cause they just don't have the time. - Yeah, this is also quite a nice segue into one of the other topics that we were chatting about in the DMs.

I'm busy working on an article like a blog post that I'll try to get out in the next few weeks, but it was basically having a closer look at this idea that Gen Z or people in general, working class people in the East in China, they call it lying flats or let it rot.

- Okay. - This is like a cultural movement where in response to corporate culture in China where they have 996 work culture which is meant to be 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, obviously very competitive, very export low salaries and a lot of young people, they just feel like it's not worth it

and it's better for them to lie flat as they call it which means basically just give up or most live as cheaply as possible, reject materialism. - Interesting. - Don't have it. - A lot of this.

- Yeah, I'll send you a link after this but it was quite interesting because the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party was kind of banning this or trying to suppress this movement because they were saying this is a bad attitude and this is like, this is not the way of people meant to be hardworking and proud of their hard work

and I think it's just going to show that it's like, you can only push people so far until they just realize that they're giving up. They're like treading water, you know? - It's interesting that that's becoming a movement in China, especially A, 'cause they have such a huge population.

B, because you'd think government have more control on them than pretty much anywhere else. I've heard it a bit happening over here and in America as well, just people sort of dropping out and just being like, fuck this.

Nine, nine, six, I mean, I do that, but I do that because I've got a family and half of my work I'm passionate about, half of it's fucking Delphiat bullshit but it pays the bills and like, the other half that I'm excited about but you've got to imagine that these young people are going and they're spending the majority

of their waking life doing something that's probably fucking boring and depressing and they're just watching that clock tick. They're not doing all the things that the previous generations did.

They're not going and spending time with friends and going to a party or traveling or doing the things that you would wanna do with your free time spending it with family. They're just in a fucking office with a screen in front of them probably doing some bullshit.

- Yeah, and a lot of them were sold a lie. I think we also got sold a lie as we're in the West that if you go to university, get your good grades that there's gonna be this amazing job waiting for you afterwards.

And yeah, that's true for like a few percent of the people but for most people there is that no dream job at the end of it. And I think that's also part of the frustration is that a lot of these people they studied really hard only to find at the end of that road that there was really nothing for them, you know?

- It's a depressing thing to, like that's not what life as a human is about. Hard work's important, obviously. - Yep. - But you've gotta be working for something and if the thing that you're working for is literally being able to turn the fucking lights on and have a very small and shitty roof over your head

and there's nothing else. The only other thing you have outside of that 12 hours of work six days a week is doing your chores, keeping on top of washing, sorting out all the other bullshit in life that you've got to do with paperwork and fines and government intervention and just fuckery.

And what sort of existence is that? What are you aspiring to do? And when you can't even have the hope of like, oh, what if I do this for the next five years or I do this for the next 10 years, I can save up enough to buy a property and I can do this and I wanna build this.

It's like, no, you just fucking do that until you die. And so I totally understand people just dropping out. What would be cool is if there's some way of getting that type of person to find Bitcoin and find that maybe there's something different here.

- Exactly, man. And I think this is what I was when I was bouncing this idea around the set yesterday, we were laughing about it. We were saying, yeah, this is an important topic but it's also so dark and depressing.

It's like, how can we put a bit of money and stuff most of them on this? And it's exactly, as you said, you know, it's like Bitcoin does provide people with hope. It's like, it's a glimmer of hope, it's not a quick fix but it definitely does give you that glimpse of, you know, even if it's not gonna solve all your problems immediately,

it's like it's a little bit of hope for the future, you know? And so I'm still trying to work on how I can make this article or this piece a little bit more optimistic because it won't get really dark really quickly.

- Yeah, well, I think most of the stuff that we talk about in Bitcoin world is pretty fucking dark. Like we're here and Bitcoin's here because the world's dark and because we can't trust the come to us supposed to be looking after the money and their thieves and the stealing from everyone and they're fucking everything up constantly.

That's why Bitcoin's here. So like we talk about that a lot and that's depressing 'cause it's like at some point, you know, everyone's gonna lose everything and all the people that we know, all our friends and family who think they have pensions or think they have investments and think they have money are gonna have a rude awakening

and that's fucking depressing. And the fact that the younger generations are having it even harder than we did is fucking depressing but what's exciting is you do have this way out. What's really cool is just like separate economy.

The more I think about that, the more excited I get because someone who's like, what did you say? It's like lay down, lying flat. - Lying flat. - Yeah. So someone who's lying flat, maybe rather than just lying flat and just going, well, I'm not gonna earn anything.

I'm just gonna do fuck all with my life 'cause you can't do anything without money really. So maybe someone who's lying flat, if they have access to the into there, maybe they're a creative, maybe they can earn some SATs and maybe then government doesn't know that they have those SATs and maybe those SATs

become more valuable and then maybe they have some options and then maybe that gets them excited about doing another project. My hope is that it's not just people going, oh, I have some money I'll invest that people start seeing it like, there's this other world and that's the Bitcoin world and these are my skills

'cause some of these people are probably very highly skilled. - Yep. - They might be developers, they might be artists, whatever it is that they're doing, we need all those people. There's always gonna be people with SATs, especially as they become more valuable.

We're gonna need shit. Like if Bitcoin became whatever silly number you can think of in your head, I'm gonna be using it. Like I'm not just gonna be storing it for 10 generations after me.

Like I know a lot of people say that, but I wanna actually have some time with my family. I wanna actually enjoy my life a bit. I wanna take a bit of pressure off myself. So if I can pay someone who's otherwise gonna be lying flat to do my editing on the podcast or do something that is really time consuming and it helps them get some SATs

and helps get them out of this shitty situation, I'll definitely do that. - Yeah, well that's another great thing about the Bitcoin community is that they are eager to support each other, at least myself.

Like if I have a choice between supporting a Bitcoin business or the equivalent fiat business, I'm gonna go for the Bitcoin business every time. So I think that that is kind of cool. And I think there is a lot to learn and to grow within like a circular economy.

I watched a cool documentary the other day, which was, it was like examining like acidic, ultra orthodox Jews in New York City, how they keep their money flowing just within their community.

You know, and that's what they were explaining is that like that's how it's their community strong because you know, they're doing business with each other. They're keeping that money flowing within their community and it's one of the reasons why they all do pretty well, you know, because they also support each other so strongly,

you know, and I think that that's quite a beautiful thing as well, just looking at how strong their community is. - It makes a huge difference. Most of my Asian friends, they work totally differently and it's fucking smart.

They'll always be like, oh, I need a lawyer, my uncle. There's always someone in the family or one removed and they just do favors for each other. So it's like, there's never a payment that is taxed on both ends and government has their hand in everything and I do you a favor when it comes to me needing a favor, I'll do it for you.

Oh, I need a builder. Okay, that's my cousin. Need an electrician, that's my other cousin. And they just, nothing ever goes through the banks and the same thing with a lot of the loans and stuff like that.

It's like, they're not going to banks or putting things on credit card and getting charged 20% and they go into their uncle. They're borrowing at a lower rate and rather than him putting it into a shitty investment, he's still getting a better rate back and they know they're going to get it back

because it's family and you don't fuck around with them. So that's kind of, it's kind of like, it's not all Bitcoin knows. You sort of, there are definitely scammy people who've worked their way into the space, but for the most part, I could list probably a hundred people who I've interacted with over the last few years

who I'd consider like family and I trust them like family and money flows between us, favors flow between us. It's like, we just look after each other and that's just not something we find in normal world.

And so you can see it works. Like you're saying with these Jewish communities and Asians and it's just smart. I don't know why we don't, you know, we don't do it generally. Like British people are just fucking stupid.

(both laughing) Yeah, man, it is tricky. And I think, yeah, I mean, the fiat machine does seek to isolate people, get people more and more dependent on the states. And that's, you know, also another thing about, you know, incoming CBDCs is that, you know, people are going to take them because it's going to be their lifeline, you know,

they're not going to be able to turn to anyone else to get their groceries except by using the government CBDC or UBI, whatever it is. So yeah, it is a tricky situation. Yeah, there is hope though.

I've been looking forward to seeing this article and maybe some meaning needs to be done around this 'cause it does seem like there's a fit for these lying, flat people. And I don't think it's just happening in China.

I do think there's quite a lot of it going on in America and the UK as well. Maybe there's some art to be created. Maybe there's something just to pull them in a little bit. In the West, you know, I think I saw a couple of, I don't know if it was a Forbes or Bloomberg article or something about it or Atlantic that was calling it

like post pandemic, like great resignation, quite quitting. I've heard that one, yeah. Basically people in corporate, they would just do the absolute bare minimum until they get fired, you know.

This is just, I guess, another consequence of people having no sense of purpose in their work, you know, and no reward for it either. - Yeah, it's really clever. I don't know if it, when I say it's clever, I don't know if it was planned or not.

But the type of people who are doing the quiet quitting and the type of people who would normally complain about corporations and greed and all that kind of stuff tend to be more of that kind of left-leaning type.

And they tend to be the people who are least interested in Bitcoin. Although they say all the things like, I never be able to afford a property and I'm like, yeah, I mean, maybe not. Why do you think that is?

It will always be like, it's greed and, you know, we need to have more of a social society and blah, blah, blah, blah. They always go that way. But it's very difficult to explain like, or no, there's a reason that your mum and dad could buy a property for like two times their salary and now it's 10 or 20.

It's not that they're that scarce and the population has grown that much. That's not the reason. Like, it's almost like it's the polar opposite. The way that Bitcoin is viewed by most people is the total opposite to what they've been sold as the solution to the problem that's been created by the same people selling them that lie.

Just really clever, they've kind of like boxed them into this, whatever that type of person does, they get fucked and they're sort of doing the battle for the people who are fucking them.

So I don't know whether they planned it that way. - It really is ironic. And yeah, it's crazy the way it is, you know, this kind of socialist kind of mindset does advocate for the very thing that's causing the problem.

- Yeah, and it's always like the people out of university. It's very, very rare. Like, I didn't go to university. I started working really young. Most of the people who I know who took that path because they've worked from young, they tend to not believe those things.

They tend to be much easier to explain Bitcoin to 'cause they've seen like, ah, fucking work all month and then I see it at the end and the taxes come out and when everything else is done, I don't really have anything left over.

It didn't used to be like this and they sort of have a bit more of a understanding of it, like a gut understanding. It's almost like it's trained into them. And the same thing with the kind of climate narrative stuff.

Like we've got all these cameras going up everywhere and anyone who's driving in a vehicle older than X or you know, the MPG isn't as good as this. You get like charged and everywhere you go, you get charged.

I saw a brilliant infographic the other day that apparently South London, they were rejecting all of these cameras in scanners and like so many of the scanners were being destroyed and taken offline in the whole of South London.

So I was thinking about like visualization of people actually resisting this oppression. It's very cool. They were taking cable cutters and cutting all the wires to them and then they changed the structure of them so that all the cables were like housed so that you couldn't use a cable cutter.

And then they started going up and spray painting the lenses constantly. And the other thing they were doing is just setting fire to the whole post like pouring metal all over it and then just setting fire to the thing.

It's fucking awesome to see. The problem is part of the population is like, yeah, fuck this, this is stupid. Like why are we gonna pet you? Where do you think paying you money is gonna sort this problem out?

Like obviously not. But the other half, especially those type of people who are like more on the socialist side and they're like, yeah, but you have to do it because you know, the world's gonna end.

We have to do this, did you not hear what Greta said? So they then get behind it. I guess like a cultural battle, neither's quite right. You've got like the extreme on one side that's like everything's a scam, everything's a hoax.

We're not doing any damage to the environment, fuck off, blah, blah, blah, like they just don't believe anything. And then you've got the like Greta lovers and they're like on one, another extreme standing in the road, pissing everyone off.

And the truth is sort of like somewhere in the middle. It's so polarized that it's almost impossible to get either person to sort of go, okay, I can make peace with these other people. I can sort of have a conversation and maybe we can have a solution.

Yeah, it is super tricky and especially as people, you know, get locked into like social echo chambers and that sort of thing, you know, they get more and more radicalized on their particular niche.

And I guess it happens to all of us, you know? So it is to your point, definitely something to be aware of, you know, trying to keep some balance, you know? - Mm, I find it with myself a lot.

I always have to question because like, Bitcoin is pretty echo chamber-y. (laughing) There's definitely, yeah, there's like certain things that just come through. It's like, everyone has to be a carnivore.

The whole climate thing is an absolute scam through and through, you know, just so many different narratives. Am I just believing this because my friends believe it and the people I associate with believe it or have I actually done the research?

(dramatic music)

We're back. - Yeah, I don't know what happened there. (laughing) - Good man. - Yeah, so I mean, we talked about a lot of the sort of more depressing parts of society and that there is some hope.

A big part of that hope for me is the open source movement. Have you got any thoughts around obviously foundation doing their part, but is there any other stuff that you're looking at within the open source and Bitcoin world where you think, you know, this can really help people and this can really drive things forward?

- Yeah, for sure. Foundation is coming into an interesting time as a company. You know, I like to think of this, you know, next phase as almost like a chapter two. And basically, I think we're gonna be, you know, really working on this idea of, you know, why open source matters using open source

as that fertile ground to allow freedom to flourish. And basically aligning ourselves closer with the broader freedom tech community. And also, you know, I can't say too much now, but you know, there's gonna be some big stuff coming from foundation that redefine the category a bit.

And all I'd say for now is that it's gonna broaden the horizons of foundation quite a lot. So yeah, writing, but yeah, we'll keep you updated on that. - Yeah, I might have a few ideas on a couple of things, but yeah, I know that about you guys.

I know that you're always thinking about things a little bit differently and pushing the boundaries. And from my previous chats with Zach and nattering away to Q&A about different things, I do have really high hopes and I do always feel there is a bit of a different view from you, maybe a bit more of a long term,

not just catering to the small group on Bitcoin Twitter and just like doing the normal stuff that everyone does, it feels like the team that's behind it. This is more about getting to the masses and making these cypherpunk tools readily available.

I always say like cypherpunk tools for fuckwits because I have one and I can use foundation and it's fucking brilliant. I love my passport, it's so easy to use and I don't feel scared about telling friends and family like yeah, get one of these things.

Like I helped you set it up, it's not a problem, especially now with Envoy. Whereas, you know, a couple of years ago trying to get them to use other hardware wallets or other bits of software, it was just, it was stressful even for me suggesting it because I'm like, I know this is the best thing for you.

I know using open source stuff is the best option, but you're just gonna fuck this up. - Yeah, that's a good one. And it raises a good point actually, is that we need to strike the balance between keeping the Bitcoin maximalist community, you know, happy and growing and still connecting with them.

But also, we need to find ways to reach that average guy who's stuck on Coinbase, who has been intimidated to take that first step into self custody. The Bitcoin maximalist community is pretty saturated, you know, already when it comes to wallets, you know?

So I think that the growth opportunity is in reaching, you know, the hundreds of millions of people who are stuck on exchange and then using that as just a launch pad into a broader open source conversation.

You know, all of these other aspects of our digital life, you know, where we have a lack of sovereignty, a lack of freedom, you know, and what are your rights as a citizen, you know? So I think we're gonna see a whole bunch of interesting tools that are, you know, really more practical, that are designed to empower your digital life

in interesting ways that are maybe, you know, utilizing Bitcoin, but also Bitcoin and JSON stuff too. - Yeah, it feels like there's definitely gonna be a movement around ownership of data, managing passwords properly and encryption tools and all this kind of stuff does feel like people are gonna start becoming more aware of it.

And it's really cool if there's a way to shoot one people into it and go, "Okay, let's start with just keeping your Bitcoin secure." And let's not do it in a way that's, you have to sit and use command line and everything seems really scary and stressful.

And I mean, that was my experience coming in. I found it really stressful. I was really excited and really passionate about what it could do, but as a non-technical person, I was shitting myself all the time.

I was like, "Oh my God, what have I gotta do? "I've gotta read through this guide." And, you know, back then, everything was really technical and stressful and you make one mistake and you lose all your money and you're like, "Oh, you know, you can understand why a lot of people "will like fuck that, I'm just gonna leave it on an exchange

"or, you know, I'm gonna use the most simple possible solution. "I don't care if it's open source. "I don't care if this has the Bitcoin ethos. "I don't even know to care." That's what most people I think are like.

So if you can make it the most simple and beautifully designed and easy to use, but at the same time, it is open source. It is really secure and you do stuff the right way, but people don't really need to know that at the start.

And then they start to learn like, "Oh, fuck, that's pretty cool. "Look at these other things that I could do. "Oh, now that I have my money secure "and I know I absolutely know I control this, "what else can I control?"

And that's like that gateway. - Slowly but surely, you know, the UX of all of the Bitcoin companies and tools is getting better and better. And hopefully as we see the UX improve, you know, in foundation stuff, it's saying that we focus a lot on and we've been upskilling a lot, you know, making some new hires

into the design and UX department, you know, to work on Envoy and work in passport, you know, just to get our UX even better for this reason, you know, to try and make it better for people to avoid mistakes, try and make it as hard as possible for people to make mistakes so that they are safer, you know, by design.

- Yeah, so these adjacent technologies that people might start learning about and caring about, are there any on your radar that you're particularly interested in? - Well, one of the things that I've been, you know, as a side hobby of mine, I was researching this idea.

It's called PKM or Personal Knowledge Management. And hopefully this is just a fancy way of saying note-taking. And, you know, like I was always, but who was using like Evernote and to try and archive and organize my notes.

And I think as we enter this kind of new era of AI, I think that there could be some really interesting stuff around open source AI tools, you know, where people are honing and crafting a personal AI unit, you know, that is kind of trained on stuff that you care about, that you can own the data, that you can kind of train yourself

as opposed to just feeding open AI or kind of giving everything up to open AI in terms of your kind of what you could call your personal value or your personal knowledge assets, you know?

So I think that that's interesting to me. But yeah, I don't know, a couple of stuff, you know, I think that I'm still, you know, learning a lot about privacy. But this tornado cache verdict that happened last week was also partly below, you know?

And definitely scary, you know, for someone working in this industry. So I think that, you know, I would also want to see more privacy stuff keeping going even though we're facing challenges.

So yeah, there's tons of space, you know, in the Freedom Tech umbrella that goes, I would say slightly beyond Bitcoin. Yeah, definitely. I mean, privacy is really what I'm focusing on and have been for years now on this podcast because to me, it's the most important aspect of Bitcoin.

What needs the most attention? You have so many people who are touting around, "Oh yeah, I've got freedom money." And you're like, "No, you fucking don't." You bought it on Coinbase. You've got it on your ledger live.

You're completely tracked. This is not freedom money. Freedom money is something completely different. It's Bitcoin that you've acquired without KYC in yourself. You've either mined at home or you've bought with cash.

You know, you're using tools like Whirlpool, you're using Postmix tools with Samurai and you're doing things in a way where you're keeping yourself private and stopping yourself being attackable.

I think a lot of people overlook the attackable side. They're just like, "Oh yeah, well, I've got nothing to hide." And it's like, it's not really just about that. What if your government turns nasty?

You know, like, if you're talking about the people lying flat, what if they start adopting it and they listen to the fucking shill fluences on Twitter who are just saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, go to Swan."

And that's all you need to do. And it's like, okay, but if you tell them that that's freedom money, you can put their lives in danger. Legitimately, you can put their lives in danger. Or do you want to tell them the truth, which is if you do that, it's not freedom money.

There are tools that you can use afterwards that can help you, but it's not the same. Here's what you want to do if you want to watch your back. I like to see that more and more, I mean, Q&A's definitely been very helpful to a lot of people in explaining and writing guides.

And Seth is always out there explaining to people. So that's really helpful. It does feel like more people are starting to care. I know it's a big part of what you guys do at Foundation is trying to make those tools available.

So do you feel like we're on the right track with that? Do you feel like we're going in the right direction? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think next year, it's going to be a huge year for Bitcoin.

You know, definitely I feel a little bit that we're still in the kind of bear market vibes, you know, where general sentiment is low and it's a little bit tougher on social. And, you know, I think people are struggling.

And I'm hoping that, you know, next year is going to be a bigger year. We're going to be able to get so much more momentum around this conversation, getting victory after victory, to kind of make some bigger progress, not only in terms of the tools, but also just the culture, you know?

And it'd be cool to see those overlapping technologies get a bit more attention when you were explaining there to me about using not open AI as in the company, but like really open source AI and being able to organize things better.

Like that's really exciting. For someone like me, I always struggle with keeping notes and organizing thoughts. And I find I forget so much stuff because especially when you're interested in loads of different things, it'd be amazing to have a way to organize those things

and own that data and always be able to access it because that's really life-changing. You don't have to keep learning everything twice. There's so much stuff with Bitcoin where I'm like, "Oh, I did that two years ago.

Let me see if I can redo that." Or at the moment, I'm learning screen printing. And it's quite like technical in the way that you have to do things in a certain order and certain measurements and blah, blah, blah. And you do one of the techniques and then like a month later, you're coming back to it and you're like,

"How the fuck did I do that again?" Oh, let me watch another 12 YouTube videos so that I can remember. If you had a way of organizing it and AI putting things out, like I can only imagine that saves huge, huge time.

Yeah, I mean, these kinds of technologies and even if it's not AI, even if it's just a regular kind of knowledge management tool, like Obsidian or Notepad in general, physical knowledge, these are all extensions of our mind.

It's the way that we extend our thinking beyond our physical body. I think it's a secret to very creative people. Like I remember listening to a podcast the other day and famous creatives like Jerry Seinfeld, songwriters like Taylor Swift, this is their secret to creativity.

They use note-taking in very powerful ways. Where every day they're noting down these small thoughts that they have, putting it into their Notepad, whether it's physical or digital and then using their time to refine.

They don't sit on a blank piece of paper and say, "Okay, now it's time to write a song." No, it's like they're making small notes about thoughts over weeks and weeks and weeks, categorizing those into lumps and plusters.

And then when it's not all the time, they've already got so much of this raw material to shape. This is the secret behind a lot of very creative people is how they do this kind of amazing output.

And I think AI can really supercharge that a lot and even better if it's an open source or even private personal AI model. Yeah, that would be amazing. Because I think the note-taking is how you do it, the way you manage it, because I do it, but I just have a huge stack every six months.

I buy myself a new, you know, those moleskin diaries? Like a little bound. You have the same ones. Well, I just have a stack of them, though. Like I have a stack as tall as me of fucking moleskin diaries.

And then it's like, I have a thought and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, what did I do with that thing?" And then I'm like, "Well, I'm not going to look and read through, like, a hundred moleskin diaries.

That's not going to happen." So then it's always like, "Well, you're back to the drawing board." Whereas if I had that using software and I could then search maybe a key word or there was a way that it would categorize things, then suddenly all that information, which is not useless because sometimes I pick it up

and I look at old sketches or designs or things like that with my art. And then I'm like, "Ah, okay, that's now helpful." But it's only when I'm like, "I'm just going to have a flick through, like, over an evening," then suddenly something clicks.

It's not really useful if I have to just, like, if I'm on a specific subject, I need some knowledge. I'm like, "Well, it's somewhere in there, but fuck knows where." Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is tricky and in modern life, we're so overstimulated.

We have so much information thrown at us that it's like the skill of being able to organize one's knowledge is so critical because we are just overwhelmed. You know, we've never had just so much knowledge that we try cram into our fragile human brain and see what else.

So is there anything that's usable at the moment, not necessarily AI, but any software that's open and useful? The one that I like is there's one called Obsidian. Okay. Obsidian's pretty cool because it's offline, so it kind of feels secure in that way.

You know, if you're taking notes, you're not necessarily uploading it to a cloud somewhere. There are versions of it. If you want to have the mobile one sync to a cloud, you can do that. But at the moment, I'm using it just in the offline mode.

And it can do interesting things. Like everything's in kind of like a markup language. So you know, like markup text, so you're not worrying about formatting. It's just the raw kind of ideas there.

And there's also ways to link the notes together. And basically after I'll share a screenshot with you after it, but after you've been making a couple of notes like this and linking them, they've got a kind of cluster visualization mode on it, where basically if you imagine all of your moleskins, they were all kind of linked,

where certain ideas are now naturally clustering together without you sorting it. You start to notice patterns. You start to see connections that you didn't at first realize where connections.

It's a fascinating way of kind of almost externalizing a thinking process, you know, which is quite cool. And I'm definitely not an expert on it. Like it's something that I've just been trying to learn about, you know, the last few months.

So I'm still a beginner, but it is one of those things where it's personal. It's like how my notes kind of system would look, maybe completely different and completely different structure to the way yours might look.

But it's fascinating just watching the kind of notes begin to cluster, begin to almost organize themselves. And then from that, you can kind of shape it and prune it to kind of help you get stuff done.

Because another problem is that you get people who are just taking notes for taking notes sake. So that's the other side of the coin is like actually thinking to yourself, why am I taking these notes?

What are the projects I'm working towards? Like if I was trying to get this article out about lying flat movement and about quiet quitting in its connection to Bitcoin, you know, this is my goal.

So over the next few weeks, I would basically have that set as my goal and then try and cluster the ideas and the notes around that goal until it's time to refine and have the post ready, you know.

So you could have other other projects and goals which are not necessarily around publishing and media. Like you could have what I've seen people talk about having an instruction manual for their body, you know, where they basically write down things that make them feel good.

Whoever more about like what is actually working for them, digestively, mentally, you know, like what's working, what's not working. You know, there was a, the Tiago Forte, who is a guy who wrote a book on the subject, he was diagnosed with this really kind of weird throat issue where he was losing his voice

and he had this pain in his throat. And he was seeing specialist after specialist and no one, none of the doctors could help him. And he realized that he was getting these thousands of notes from these specialists all contradicting each other.

And he realized that no one is going to be able to help him unless he takes charge of all of this information. So he basically started this process of linking the notes, externalizing them, organizing them until he basically solves his own issue.

But it's like, it just shows how powerful this kind of tools can be in, in like refining your thoughts. And it doesn't necessarily have to be about publishing. It can just be personal things.

Like in his case, he solves a serious health problem. Yeah, that's interesting. It's just about like collating. Like, do you still find that you will reach for a moleskin and you're right physically in there and then transfer over to the computer?

I usually use the moleskin only for like to-do list. Because I find it, I'm like, I love to do list. So like, I usually kind of would do on a Monday morning, like set up my to-do list for the week and take that off as I go through the stuff.

What I'm using Obsidian for is more like generalized interest topics, using that to try and find interesting connections and angles and just archive my own personal interest. So that's really, I don't use the moleskin for that stuff.

Moleskin is just for to-do lists and in general notes, like say, I'm on a meeting with you or someone and I need to jot down a number or a name of something. I just use the moleskin for that.

But if it's more like concept work or that kind of stuff, then I put it into long-term into the Obsidian vault. I'm going to have to download that and have a play around. And I'll also send you a couple of tutorials on it that help.

And it's definitely, I get quite a lot of, you know, enjoyment from it, you know, in terms of just watching some of the topic areas grow and change and just seeing links come together. Very cool. Yeah. Maybe that'll be what the moleskin ends up being.

The best thing in the world is, I don't know if you find this, it's so fucking sad, but when you've done a to-do list and you like physically tick, it's different on computer. Like if you physically tick something that's done or cross it out when it's done on a to-do list, here's me such joy.

It makes you hear this fucking pathetic, but I love it. I'm an ADHD kind of person, so it's like, I definitely love that. It gives me momentum, it gives me that kind of dopamine momentum to do the next task.

So I totally get what you're saying about taking off stuff, it definitely feels great. Is there anything we haven't covered, like, I think we've, we've had a good conversation there, we talked about all different things.

I've learned something, I'm going to be downloading this Obsidian, hopefully sorting my life out. We've covered a little bit of what might be happening at a foundation, but not too much to give anything away.

Anything else that is on your mind at the moment, any topics you want to discuss? No, I think that's it, man. I mean, I've loved this conversation, it's been cool. I'm definitely going to be, you know, following closer on ungovernable misfits, and hopefully we'll meet at a conference one of these days.

Yeah, definitely, that'd be really cool. I'm going to try and make my way out to the guns in Bitcoin one next year, I think. So I don't know if you make your way there, but if not, maybe one of the European ones. But yeah, I've really enjoyed it, mate, and I appreciate you coming on and everything that you're doing and everyone's doing it

foundation. It's really cool. And yeah, welcome on any time. Brilliant. All right, man, take it easy. Cheers, mate. Cheers, mate.