EP27 Bitcoin podcast with @selfbankt.

Welcome back to Bit by Bit. Today I'm speaking with Self-Banked, the mystery man with some of the best memes on Twitter. We recorded this episode a couple of weeks ago, but it's more relevant than ever. Just to give you an idea who we're speaking to, here's his

bio. All in, decentralise everything. No force can withstand the power of an idea whose time has come. Buying Bitcoin is the real protest, opt-out. This is something that I've discussed with friends and family for a long time now. With all the protests that are going

on and all the madness that we've seen so far in 2020, it seems that people have had enough. We now have a real way to protest. This is what Self-Banked is trying to do is trying to share this idea through his memes, trying to wake people up and trying to help

people. His pinned tweet, "Do you get the impression something else is about to happen? It feels like a wave is building, a mass awakening, a realisation that the system needs to be torn down and replaced. Gradually, then suddenly, we are witnessing a period of great fundamental

change." There is a mass awakening and although not everyone has put all the pieces together and found the solution, everyone understands that there are some major problems. Both Self-Banked and I feel that Bitcoin is the solution. We dive into that today and yeah,

I really enjoyed this one. The audio quality could be better. I've done my best to clear it up my end. I hope you enjoy. I really enjoyed chatting to him and I'd love to have him on again. Enjoy. How are you doing? Yeah, Max. I'm sorry, I'm late. That's all right. No

problem at all. Very kind of you. I was doing a little confarbeque out the back and it was a bit slow to get started. I know, you're still using coals, are you? Charcoal. Yeah, I was with a charcoal. I thought I'd do a drop properly. I'm too lazy for all that now. Now that I've

had gas, it's so much quicker but it is nice to have the coals. It is nice to have the coals and you really can smell afterwards as well, like you've had a barbecue after the coals as well. That's it. It's nice to speak to you because we've been chatting a little bit

on the group, which has been really interesting and I've been having a look through some of your memes, some of the best memes on Twitter. I thought, right, I'm going to have to get this guy on and talk to Bitcoin. Cool. I am honored. Thank you very much for the invite.

I'm very pleased to be here. Pleasure. Like I said to you, our fair, I don't tend to have this too structured. It's just a chance for me to speak to other Bitcoiners, people who are passionate about this stuff. If people listen, then that's great. A few people seem

to be enjoying it so I'm going to keep going. It's a chance to get to know some people. It's nice to hear from someone who's also in the UK because almost everyone is US-based that I speak to. This doesn't seem to be so many of us. No, I think it's going to grow

and I think there's this coin floor group that we've got going. It's going to have to grow here. They clearly are a lot of great people in the UK scene, but a lot of them perhaps do leave. Adam, you think that most people are sort of going across to America

once they've been in for a few years? I don't know. There certainly are people who have done that, but I'm just thinking about the future as well. People will probably move if they're very embedded in this. I think they'll be a tendency to up-stick. I mean,

I'd certainly be up for it. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? I mean, we'll get into a little bit more about how you found this and how long you've been involved and things, but I sort of before Bitcoin would never have thought of America as a place I would even

consider living. But the more I've been involved and the more I've sort of understood what the founding fathers wanted and the idea behind America, what it really should or will eventually stand for, I really, really like. I just wasn't really aware of it because it's not really

the way it's painted or necessarily the way it's gone, but the idea behind it's amazing. Yeah, I agree. Although it doesn't seem to be the best place for crypto and for Bitcoin at the moment. I mean, their logistics is not the easiest. It's not the friendliest part

from certain little hot spots like Wyoming. Wyoming. That looks interesting. Are we recording now or not? We are. Yeah, we're recording. I tend to do an intro before. Off-air, I'll do a little intro. We can just explain now. So, self-banked is the name you're going by

and for anyone who isn't already following you on Twitter, where can they find you? So, @self-banked and that's come banked with a KTE at the end of it instead of ED. I've been on Twitter for about eight or nine months now with a just sort of complete sort of Bitcoin

only, cap channel there. I just sort of, I got to a point where I just said to myself, I'll do one meme a day and then it's grown a bit. Yeah, it's the great ones on there. For anyone who isn't already following, go and do it now because there's some great

stuff on there. I really enjoyed it. How did you get into the memeing? Is it something that you've done previously in another sector or something? So, yes and no. So, I consult some Bitcoin in 2017 and bought a small commercial property

and started a little kind of restaurant. It's a tap-ass bar place and I just ran the social media for it and continued to do so and just sort of learned how to do a few graphics and how to communicate with an audience a little bit more than I had before. And I quite enjoyed

it and then, as I said, I just thought I want to do some evangelizing on the Bitcoin scene and try to communicate just a few of these ideas that I'm learning. More so for my understanding and my articulation of it really, but it's been great to have a growing audience. Yeah,

it's good fun. I suppose I'm addicted, you know, like my wife gives me a bit of grief but... Mine's mine too. Yeah, but it's for the greater good and at some point they will learn that I guess. Yeah, I think so. And yeah, I mean, just reading on your Twitter,

so you've got all-in decentralized everything. No force can withstand the power of an idea whose time has come. Bitcoin is the real Occupy Wall Street, up town. And I think that's very powerful that it seems there's a small core group of us who feel a similar way.

Once it gets under your skin and once it clicks, you can feel the passion and that's why I love having these sort of conversations. I love checking to other Bitcoiners who are on the same wavelength because there's not many other people in the world who, you know,

some of the stuff we talk about and the ideas we have talk to a normal person about it and they look at you like you're mental. It feels like it makes sense to me anyway and it looks like it does with you as well. So how did you first find Bitcoin? What was your story?

How did you find it? So just to kind of go over that as well, I agree that it's a very powerful kind of movement at the moment and it is quite difficult to integrate it into your sort of normal life. But it feels like it's gathering such a lot of momentum at the

moment, which is just really, really exciting. And so I discovered it's in like late 2013 early, early, early, early 2014. And so just really reading about the Silk Road at the time I wanted to buy some DMT after listening to the Joe Rogan podcast. I've never really

got the balls to do the buying of the DMT, but it was an opportunity to learn. I discovered the contour network and I discovered the cryptocurrency scene and Bitcoin was truly fascinating and then early 2014, I just kind of bought a few and I started to buy over that next

come 12 to 18 months or so. And then it got a bit kind of a bit compliant for a bit and obviously 2016 to 2017 happened. And then I ended up selling the majority of my Bitcoin in sort of mid 2017. And then we discovered it again, early last year, when the excitement

to grow again. And I just think it's more than money. I think it's very kind of political. And as I say, the movement feels very powerful and it feels like it's going to go somewhere really exciting.

Yeah, I think like you just said, it's not just about money. And again, that's a common theme. When you understand what this can potentially do, it's so much bigger. It's so much bigger than just making some money or having a slightly better payment system or an investment. This

is actually about completely changing the world and the way that almost is getting rid of the hierarchical structure, which is enormous. It's enormous. And it's a theft, isn't it? It's a theft of your time and your value and your expertise and your work. And it's horrible to see people get robbed like that. And this

rich and kind of poor divide is just grown and grown and grown. And it's quite obscene. And I think we have been offered a tool here that allows people to store their wealth and their value with a very high likelihood of it accumulating even more of that in the future.

And that frees people, I think, to focus on what they want to do with their lives, about what they want to do best. I do not have to worry about all these complex financial sort of vehicles that the traditional can legacy finance system encourages you to get into

if you want to make investments, which I think is a bit of a drain on people's time and the energy. I don't think it really kind of contributes to society. So yeah, I think it could potentially can change a lot. And I see it as more than a savings vehicle, but I do see it as a form of security for my future and my family.

That's a big point, really, is when you're talking about the legacy financial system, it's so complicated. And to my mind, I can't 100% prove this, but I would say that the level of corruption and insider trading and all the rest of it goes on is so high that

for the average person, you're almost guaranteed to fail. And even if you don't fail, you have to invest. If you are to succeed, you have to invest so much time and energy just to preserve your wealth, which you're earning most likely in another industry, you'd be better spending

that time specializing. And when you really break it down, it's a weird system to have a doctor having to then spend a load of time on their investments or trust a financial advisor who generally can't do the job properly, because if they could, then they would just

earn the money for themselves and invest in wisely and they wouldn't have to deal with other people. So you're stuck in between a rock and a hard place. Yeah, it's all very opaque. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors. There's a lot of extra fees involved. There's a high barrier to entry that cuts a lot of people off from the ability

to be able to store and accumulate their wealth. And typically, it's the opposite to that. It's a great leveler in terms of there is no barrier to entry, really, is there? I mean, as long as you've got the nouns to work out how to get your money on and off an exchange, there's

no sort of minimum that you really have to meet. You can buy 25 pounds worth of Bitcoin if you want. And that's the thing is I think a lot of people misunderstand or just not even misunderstand, just literally don't know because when you hear Bitcoin, you think that's one thing.

It's a bit, it's a coin. That's all someone's going to think, and I have to have one of them. That's the least amount I can have is one of them. And then they look at the price. Yeah, I think we have to change the unit bias from Bitcoin. That needs to come pretty quickly.

And then this is where all the shipcoins have really made such a lot of headway on this variability to trick people into thinking they're getting something quite cheap because the unit bias is more of something which is more and more worthless. But yeah, so the Sats

narrative is perfect. It's going to be a really big kind of accelerated for things, I think, as of course, of the COVID virus. Yeah, that's a really weird one. Within the Bitcoin community, not so much outside, but outside we're both in England. We're not

too far from each other, actually. And the people that I deal with day-to-day normal people are all still shitting themselves about COVID. That's the general feeling for most people I speak to, whereas within the Bitcoin community, half the people think, "Okay, this

is a really ideal way to take control of more power. It's a way to take people's liberties away. It's being used to attack its citizens." And then on the extreme end, a lot of people are saying, "Well, actually, this might be engineered so that we have an excuse for

the issue that we have the bubble that was building anyway. And we've all been watching and we all know, can't go on forever." So there's a varied viewpoint within Bitcoin, but it's so different to what I see outside. Is that the same with you?

It's difficult to know what people are thinking about it, really, and it's difficult to know what's acceptable to talk about. And how far does the conspiracy go? I really don't know. What you said, I think that was very good. I think the "everything bubble" is going

to be popping pretty bloody soon. And it is bloody convenient to have a way to an excuse and explain that to people. Oh, it was the virus. That's what your entire small business networks for three to four to five to six months are, however long it's going to take.

The initial reaction to the virus was quite delayed, and it wasn't adequate. And then it's being compensated for by an overreaction, which is heavy-handed and probably kind of disproportionate to the extent of the mortality rates and the healthcare implications. I mean,

and so I work in healthcare. So my direct experience in this part of the country is that most of the hospitals are much below the capacity that they were expecting. And there's a lot of doctors and nurses who are sitting on their asses not doing very much. And we're not doing

the urgent healthcare that we should be doing, and people are suffering really more from that than from COVID. Very close friend of mine has just had his operation cancelled, and he was meant to be going into cancer treatment for a major operation. Yeah, that's all, he

is getting pushed back, and he's having all sorts of problems with it. And when I look at the mortality rates, and I compare them, and I know this is insensitive, but I compare them to say people dying of hunger every day. It's tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny numbers. And that's

not to say that, you know, it's not to say I don't feel for the people who are suffering, but we don't shut down an entire economy when, whatever it is, 20, 25,000 people a day die of hunger. Why do it for this? It's strange. Well, it doesn't make sense at all. And it's

just been very, very convenient. I mean, there's a great way to stop the protests that have been going on over the past couple of years. Although it's nice to see them starting to crossfire up again. Yes. So, yeah, it was, you know, all those Hong Kong sort of protests

there. Yeah. Nice and quickly. And the band clash, practically, you can't use cat almost anywhere right now. It's just perfect. Yeah. You couldn't make it up. It makes me so happy that we have both the internet and Bitcoin. Because if we didn't, I think I'll be jumping

out of a window right now. It would worry me too much. I agree. I think it gives me a lot of hope. It's given me a lot more optimism about the future. I mean, it gives me a bit of insecurity as well, because the personal responsibility that it engenders in you can

make you get another threat sometimes. Yes. But if you can get a handle on that, and obviously you've got to get a handle on the volatility, you've become pretty mad for that quite quickly, I think. Yeah. Well, you have to or you could interlay as one or the other. Yeah, which is

cool. You know, just it's a weak hand eliminator. Yes. Exactly. We're getting a higher floor to the price because of more huddlers coming in and the weaker ones can drop it off. It's pretty exciting. I mean, I heard there was a podcast I heard just this afternoon that

knew what Bitcoin did one about Bitcoin trading. And it took something that I hadn't really heard about much before, but the extra selling pressure from the futures markets, like in a bit max, seems to be actually increasing quite exponentially at the moment, which is

a bit scary on the selling side are you talking about? Yeah, because these exchanges, they sell their fees. And so they sell income in fees that they've accumulated from the traders. But it's a new sell pressure for Bitcoin that has grown quite a lot with the leverage. Don't

seem completely allowed on these trades. Yeah. I suppose you can look at it two ways. One is it's a concern that you're going to have more people showing this market and you're going to have that sell pressure. However, the fact that it's holding up so well under

that stress, you can look at it the other way and say, well, that makes me quite confident because at the end of the day, the people who physically hold their keys are the only people that matter. If you run a node and hold your own fees, you matter. And no one else

fucking matters at the end of the day. No, I agree with you. And also, I'm given a great bit of confidence by the fact that Bitcoin is just so down small. Literally, any other major asset class just needs to catch a cold or just to sneeze. And so Bitcoin on the back

of a little bump from a drop in one of those other large asset groups, like gold or property, for instance, I mean, we could 10x overnight, you know, we could jump hugely. Absolutely. The rock in the ocean of value. Yeah. The only way is up, really, on the long term.

That's certainly the way I see it. And I mean, what are your thoughts on outside of Bitcoin? I don't know how much you look at these markets for you. Just mentioned property. Do you have a view on whether all of this money printer buring away is going to inflate assets one

more time or do you feel that there'll be a complete loss of confidence within the next six months to a year and actually all of that money will most likely flow to assets like old and Bitcoin? It's a great question. I'm not a macro economist and particularly qualified

to answer it. But my feeling is that there are a lot of smart people in the central banks and they'll pull all the levers that they possibly can to keep it going as long as possible. I mean, one last time. But I mean, I do think more people are starting to wake up. I mean,

it's still scary. The amount of people who are asleep, you know, the amount of people in this country who just don't think and they're sheep. And, you know, that is quite scary. That is quite that does give you some concern. But I think I think people are beginning to

realize that there's a lot of corruption involved in the legacy finance system. And I think this everything bubble has been getting out of hand for at least a couple of decades now. I mean, certainly hitting certain generations, particularly hardly in terms of income jobs, their likelihood

of getting a property or getting on the ladder, you know, has been so unfair to a certain generation of people. And I don't think people can really can tolerate that. I completely agree with you. And I'm somebody sat here on the next property investor and

developer. And it's served me well to ride on the coattails of these bubbles. However, I do see that it's causing a huge amount of problems for. I mean, I am one, but for a lot of people, it's I've seen it's very, very difficult for them to get on the ladder. And

when they are, they're having these schemes that I don't think are going to serve them particularly well in the end. And they're buying what I believe to be a top market or getting close to like you said, you know, maybe there's one more cycle, but they don't

understand that interest rates in mood. And they don't understand that these things are actually liabilities, especially when they've only got 5% down. It's what is really worrying actually. And I mean, you can't realistically say there's much chance of property going

up anymore. Really, can you? I mean, inflation, yeah, certainly, certainly not like we've seen over the last 30 years. I don't think anyone is stupid enough to not question that. You know, if we see property prices double from here, I don't know, I can't see it personally,

I think it's I think it's unlikely. People would have to question it. And like you say, the difference between income and actually what these properties are going for compare it to the generation before the millennials. It's just worlds apart. It's absolutely worlds

apart. You know, and we actually have very, very low interest rates that make it easier for them, but even with that still unattainable. So, yeah, I think you're right. Hello. Hey, yeah, so I'm not sure where I lost you there.

Yeah, you lost me. I'm a battery charger came out of my phone. A little USB-C charging port is getting just a bit too fucked. I've heard they've had some vulnerabilities with those USB-C things. Have they? Yeah, it's not supposed to. I don't know if anyone has

them serve me well. It looks like that's going to be the main reason for going to the next phone is just the charger port is this crap. Have you tried this Grappino-S? Yeah, I've got a Pixel 3 XL that I picked up on Amazon just and so just they're going to be used

to one. And I, one of my lockdown projects was the Grappino-S and it's good, man. It's really good. I'm using that phone maybe 50% of the time. I still am relying upon my previous Android phone primarily because of my banking apps and a slow transition off Google. It

takes some time. I'm slowly moving away from Apple. I've got the same. I've got a Pixel 3 but I had some problems setting it up on my Mac. So I'm getting an old laptop to put a bun to on and I'm trying to just get rid of trying to go just Linux and graphene because

yeah, I think that's the way to do it. That's definitely the way to do it. I mean, the surveillance kind of capitalism stuff is most definitely here. So, you know, the tells from the crypt sort of podcast, metadata, open-ons have really opened my mind to how much you need to do to

try and go just to try to get a cloak stuff. I'm not there. It's a process but I can see the path and I'm making steps, Linux as well, on the laptop and graphene. Yeah, like you say, it's a slow process. I mean, I think sometimes, especially from Bitcoin

to it, you have a lot of people who are either developers or very, very technical. And not all of us are, you know, I think we're all going for the same goal as self sovereignty and we don't want to pay a company to spy on you. You want to have some privacy but

it's hard. It's the same thing. The whole system is designed to track and monitor everything you do and say and it's really, really hard to actually get that privacy back but it's well worth caving.

Well, in terms of the implementation of it, it's great that people have made these guides and the YouTube videos that explain it all. I think it's not hard to be honest, we probably all enjoy that and techie side of flashing the phone and all that shit but it just needs

to think about the, you know, and so those key kind of processes that need to take place in the background that you need to think about things like, are you registered, is your name or an email address associated with this phone in any way? Is mine associated with the purchase

of the custom card? How do I kind of top up the SIM card? Am I going to have any Google apps on there? I mean, yeah, there's loads of little things to consider. If you mess up just the one of them, then essentially you can be trapped. So you've got to get it all

the way and I think I've just take a bit of thought and maybe just kind of more communication with people. Yeah, having these groups, I mean, obviously we've got now our group. I've just joined recently, which is just our UK one and having those kind of communities with people on Twitter

and being able to just reach out when we get stuck on things because everyone has different areas of expertise and we all have a common goal. So it's really nice that you can reach out and people are very helpful generally.

Yeah, I mean, it's a great community. I really do think it's a very supportive community. It's inspiring. There's some smart motherfuckers out there, man. I mean, it's just really humbling.

I went for the Lightning Conference with us here at the Berlin Wall. There's just such a lot of brains out there. I mean, it's really quiet. I mean, if anything, it's experiences like that that have made me quite, and to quite so kind of bullish as I am, just because

I've seen the intelligence behind this. I've seen the thought behind it. I've seen the kind of people behind it and don't think that these guys can all be wrong. I'm with you there. There's many times, I don't know whether you've had the same thing, but where you lay there at night and you think, what am I doing? Everyone in life

thinks I'm wrong. Everyone in life thinks I'm an idiot. They think I'm crazy. I would think to myself, I'm not smart enough. I've made a mistake. There's obviously something I'm missing here, but then you say you go to bit devs or somewhere like that and you meet

these people who are working on this and you think, yeah, maybe I'm wrong, but all these people in this room are wrong. I've never met a smart group of people in my life and I've been involved with a few different industries. They are on a different level.

There's some really great thinkers out there. One of the other reasons why the sector is going to grow so much is the educational aspect of it has improved such a lot in the past couple of years. Level of the conversation and the crystallization of the arguments and

the memes and the points has just become so good that I think that was something that wasn't really around when I first got into it. It was just Andreas Antonopoulos, you know, there was a lot of people talking about it and you hear a wide sea of voices, but we've

all got the same sort of hymn sheet. Yeah, definitely. So when you first got it or you first got involved, you obviously said, you know, you do some research and self-growth and all that sort of stuff. What was the point where, because speaking to you now, I can tell

like, say, this is more than just making money to you and more just an interest. This is something bigger. What was the point that made you click? Was there something where you just, or a time where you just went, "Holy shit, this is big." You know, what was it that really grabbed

you like that? Or was it just a lot of things all put together? I don't know. I can't answer that particularly well. It was just everything. It just sort of made sense to me on a lot of levels. I felt that, you know, some of the angst and uncertainty and some of my observations over the past 10 to 15 years about the inequality

of society and the increasing kind of division and of the potential for conflict. And this wasn't getting any better. I just, yeah. And to as we said before, there was a lack of hope that I had before, but this gave me that hope back. I mean, obviously, I want to make

money too. Yeah, we all do. But I do feel it's quite a lot more than that. And I'm not sure how it's going to pan out. I'm not sure. I think there's going to be political parties that start to move into this. But there was a new political party launch just last week

called Progressive International. I'm not sure if you've heard about it. But I have to happen. And so I don't really know that much about it, but I know they've got a very cool looking sort of social media thing going on. They've got a great website and they've

kind of cloned their social media across lots of languages. So they're a global kind of political party who was trying to be an umbrella organization for lots of activists, outsider, can groups around the world. So, you know, they tried to, they tried to kind of suck up the environmentalists

and the extinction rebellionists and the the end the Fed lot. And the, you know, all these people who get out on the streets to, you know, taking a protest and happy and for the past few years that they're trying to unify their vision a bit more. And it's obviously

very new. But I don't know. And so when I saw it, I thought, Oh my God, something like this, if they were just to, to get them, if they were just to get the orange pill, you know, yeah, if they were to develop an economic plan that integrated Bitcoin, this could be

a whole new political agenda. This could be a whole new direction, because there's this level could be global. This is a, this is a, a combination of lots of movements. And they're essentially all a bit alternative. For sure. Because, because the other option,

and then probably the option I see is more likely, but not necessarily good is that if the entire system collapses and everyone loses all trust in all government, which they fucking well should do really with what's gone on. But if that does happen, there's going to

be a lot of unrest. And for the people who haven't been involved with Bitcoin, there'll be a sort of a scramble, and it'd be very good for us financially, but I don't necessarily think it'd be very good for the world. So that idea of integrating it, you know, this

is a separate financial system. If we can integrate it into some of the systems we already have and just replace, you know, who's currently governing us financially, it could potentially be much smoother. But I don't, I don't know how it happens, because nobody knows how it

happens. I mean, I think a parallel sort of evolution, doesn't it? I mean, we have to grow the alternative society and economy alongside the one that is currently there. It's not going to be a digital, black and white shifting, it'll be. And so the people will opt out of

the legacy system and they'll transact, maybe not exclusively, but to some degree and force certain things on Bitcoin, probably like me. And I think that'll gradually, hopefully that's gradually going to grow. And I mean, we'll have the peaceful revolution that Nick Carter, you know, has suggested about, which was really beautifully done.

He's got some wonderful rights, I really really like it, for sure. Yeah, I mean, that's what I think most of us hope for is, you know, for it to be as peaceful as possible. And really, you know, when you're talking about voting, I think a lot of us do

see stacking sets as a vote. And the more people who realise that, that every time that you're stacking sets, every time that you are taking money from the traditional system, you're putting two fingers up and saying, fuck you, I'm not having any more. I want how I don't trust

you. I want to trust in maths. I want to trust in physics. And I don't want to trust a load of people who keep taking the piss and keep of using the trust that gives them. And it doesn't necessarily need that many people. And it's just a few of these, like you're

saying, these fringe movements to say, nah, we're out, we're finished. Things can move very quickly. Yeah, no, I think we're at a stage in my mind where we need to try to step outside of the Bitcoin, sort of, we just try to step outside of the echo chamber and try to focus on targeting

some other echo chambers. I think that's extinction rebellion and those like you mentioned. Well, I mean, I've been thinking about those, but they're again thinking about it a little more. Maybe if we are trying to allied ourselves with organisations, which are fringe and pretty

fiery, and people want to ban anyway, that might not be good for the sector. I'm not sure. I mean, I don't want to go down the vanilla caffeine tech route the whole time. I want it to be a little bit of a social sort of revolution, but I think we've got to be careful that we get into bed with as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, it's a complex thing, but luckily, we're not in control. Nobody's in control. It's going to do its own fucking thing, really, but I'm going to be leaving from the sidelines and just doing whatever I can to contribute to the conversation.

Well, these memes are a massive part of it. I had cypher diaries on the other day, and there's a really awesome guy, and there was a bit in the story, and he's saying, you know, this isn't a war that is fought with guns and bullets. This is a war that is fought with ideas and memes. And it's so true. It's so true.

Well, they're very powerful, you know, that like little mind viruses, and we'll know the power of a virus right now. Yeah, and the government, we can all see through that propaganda. I think, you know, it's very barren, and we've heard it all before, and there's nothing

new. So yeah, people can switch over to Bitcoin in terms of the conversation, and so they can just come drop in to our social media, and they can see what we're doing and what we're talking about. And I hope that continues. I hope there's not the deep platforming that

people are a bit worried about. It's difficult to know how far above the parapet that you prepared to put your head. That's why I've stuck with the anon thing. I mean, I'm sure someone could find me out if they wanted to, but it just means that I don't have to worry

about it too much. I don't have to worry about the implications of what I tweet or say or what have you. Yeah, I'm in the same boat, and it does worry me, if I'm honest. It wouldn't have worried me a couple of years ago, when I was single and I had no, you know, I didn't

care. I was just like, do we want to be a knob bothered? But now I have other people in my life. Yeah, sticking your head above the parapet is worrying. But you have to because this is so fucking important. And if you're going to bring children into this world, it

has to be a better world. Yeah, no, I agree. That's a great point. But also, I mean, I've got a lot of respect for people who are not anonymous in this sector, you know, people who have their own name and their personality out there and their identity. Some people

put their families out there, which is kind of cool. I'm not quite there yet. But it's great that people are doing that. And it would be good to try to normalize Bitcoin a bit more for people by having this conversation out in the open. But I haven't quite worked

it out in my own head yet. So I'm going to continue with the anonymous vibe for at least a bit longer. I think that's why it's certainly until we can, like you say, just refining the meme, you know, you made a good point about we all know that it's bullshit. And it's not

just Bitcoiners. Like, if you speak to certain in England, you speak to 80% of people. And like when politicians speak, or you know, when these things happen, they're like, they know deep down is bullshit, but they don't know there's another option. So it's maybe

is it showing that there's another option? And it isn't just some nonsense. Because that's what most people think of Bitcoin. If they really understood it, they're like, Okay, all right. Well, because if there's no other option, you kind of just have to go along with

it. I mean, I used to, I was just like, I just don't care who's in, because they're all lie. I don't care. I just don't care. They're all lying. But now there's this. So it's, it's, you know, how do you think we other than the memes? Or is there a way to

refine these things to a point where just the average person can, can understand this stuff a little bit quicker? Because it's so much time we have to put into understanding it. That's the problem. It is a lot of time. I mean, the amount of time that I've spent

just reading or listening to podcasts about all this stuff is quite crazy. And I'm still learning, you know, you never stop. But I mean, I've got, yeah, it's great that you've got people like, like, kind of Peter McCormack doing more Bitcoiners, kind of beginner guides

saying, you know, launch that sort of condensed version of all 12 down to one sort of episode. I mean, it's all about, what about trying to crystallize it and refine it as much as you possibly can, so that you can make those kind of referrals to people who ask you, you

know, you're the Bitcoin guy, and you want to give them a couple of good links, a little bit of a can soundbite chat. You want to be directing them to the reliable exchanges, sort of locally, and give them, you know, some hardware and some software decisions or options

to think about. But I mean, yeah, I mean, it's not, I think, I think, I think we're getting a lot better. And it's becoming obvious to me where to direct people now and how to introduce them to Bitcoin in the most efficient way. I mean, I've been having that conversation

with quite a lot of people over the past few weeks. More and more people are coming to me and asking about it, which is great. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't, and so my non-Bitcoin, social media thing, like, I try not to post any Bitcoin stuff, but unfortunately

I have to say something does can come true. But I try not to push it down, people who throw up so many things, but there's only do know to ask me if they've got any curiosity and a lot more people asking me lately, which is very bullish, you know?

What's the average, what's the reason generally that people are coming to you now? Because I assume, like you say, people know when you're a Bitcoin or people know generally and normally no one gives a shit, no matter how much you tell them or, you know, try and help them,

they don't care. So what's changed? Is it the virus or is it something else? Yeah, I think it's the virus. I mean, economic lockdown has given people a lot of time to think and to look at this quasi sci-fi dystopia that we're living in and see the obscene money

printing and just do some, you know, some kind of bar mats, kind of masks, you know, masks on it and realize that this is not adding up, you know, this just doesn't work. And then the Bitcoin price has been a little bit interesting this past 12 months, you know,

we went up to 14K. It's, we haven't, and so just have the hardening, we've had some big events that hit the media again. I think, you know, people who are smart, have had their ear to the ground for it for a bit and they're beginning to hear the sound of the train coming

up again. And so they're just thinking, I want to piece, I want a piece of this and then I can help to onboard them. And I'm very happy. And so I can coin floor is where I'm directing the UK people who are asking me about it. Because I think they've got a pretty

good service at the moment, it's, it's brilliant. I had OB on a couple of days ago. I haven't actually released the show yet. But I was really hoping because I'd heard, I'd heard him on another podcast before and I was like, you know, this sounds like a really awesome

thing that he's doing. And I loved it. He was just Bitcoin and I loved that it was dollar cost averaging or pound cost averaging. And I was just like, please, please, please be a real Bitcoin. It don't be a fraud like a lot of the other people in the space. And

after chatting to him, I was like, yes, yes, I can find it feel comfortable sending people to this guy because he really actually gets it. He cares. And that's so nice to see. It's good. I think they're doing everything they can do right. I think it's pretty damn

hard to do a Bitcoin company in the UK. A couple of homes and I were going to be launching a lightning exchange, a lightning on ramp. You know, financial conduct authority and getting a now registration with the government and stuff. And I was prepared to go on with

it. But my partners were a bit reluctant to pay YCP for quite low denomination sort of lightning buys. And we're delighted to put things on pause for a little bit, or maybe to try to kind of pivot into something else. But I mean, it really is, it's an absolute

bloody ballache to get through the regulation and legislation in this country. Europe, I think, is even worse because of that. A&L5D stuff. So what hope is done to have this longest running UK exchange that's doing everything you can do right, I think is awesome and we

should be supporting companies like his as much as we possibly can, really. 100% and I like that it's only dollar cost averaging, you know, when you're first signing up because, and it's only Bitcoin and it's only dollar cost averaging because that is for 99.99% of people the best, the safest way to play it. And that's the only option.

So it's like, if you're sending a friend or family there, you're like, you know that, okay, they can't actually fuck this up. Whereas you send them to the other shitcoin casinos and it's just so stressful because you know they're going to come back and go, oh, I bought

XRP and you're like, oh, I'm sorry. Jesus Christ, I spent so much time explaining. Yeah, no, it's pretty simple system and for it to be in GB pounds as well with the UK faster payments thing is fantastic. Because I mean, I've been converting to euros and

doing kind of separate transactions since the beginning. Yeah, it's a pain is a bit of a pain. I mean, it's pretty much the norm for me now. But yeah, it's not really, you don't really want to have to be explaining that to people who you know probably are going

to struggle with it. And it's Yeah, no, it's just as a and it's nice to have something in the middle because what I'd done before I'd spoken to I would be what I was doing to everyone was first, it was like, you know, the normal shit coinbase crack and whatever.

Yeah. And then I was like, I can't do that anymore. So then I was helping people by I was buying for them on their behalf and holding their storage and all that and then that got too messy because it was friend. Yeah, because it was because it was friends

and family and I was like, you know, I don't feel comfortable doing this anymore because it's at my risk. We were doing that under your ID. Yeah, I was doing it all undermine and and I thought in the end, I was like, you know, as much as I want to help these people,

I can't do this, but I didn't want to send them to conveys. So then I said, you know, what I'll do is everyone, you need to go on this. And I was trying to send people over to do that, but it was too complicated. And they just couldn't like, it's not that complicated,

but it was too complicated for people coming into the space. So I only recently sort of tried best, but I must admit, it was a lot more. It was a lot easier than I thought it was. Yeah. But I think that for some people, they do encounter a little bit of an issue

just with a certain, you know, with a certain kind of vendor. If you've got a good vendor, I mean, the infrastructure of it seems to work a dream. It's pretty good. It's just not, it's just not slick enough. It scares newbies. But once you've once you've used it a couple

of times, I absolutely love this. But to have coin floor, which sort of sits in the middle and it's just perfect for onboarding newbies. Yeah, I'm thankful to have it. I agree. I agree. Yeah. They're doing a great job. And hopefully the coin scene will be

benefiting from that. Yeah. It would be nice to at some point, maybe do a meetup or something like that. Obviously, after all this stuff is over and people don't have out their houses, but you know, it would be cool to do something. I agree. That would be cool.

All right. Well, is there anything else because we've sort of, we've cut out a couple of times and we've gone through, I think most of the subjects that I personally wanted to go through and we've covered a broad, there are a lot of different topics. But is there anything else

that you sort of wanted to touch on or anything you felt we hadn't discussed that you wanted to go through? No, not particularly. It's been a great conversation, Max. I've really enjoyed it.

And so thank you for taking the time. And yeah. And so good luck with everything and keep doing what you're doing. I will do. And yeah, it's been a pleasure speaking with you as well. And we'll catch up, I'm sure, on Twitter and on our other, on other meetings and all that sort of stuff. But

yeah, it's been great to chat properly. And thanks for what you're doing and making these incredible memes and spreading the message. And can you just say again, I'm going to put it in the show notes again, but where people can find you. Put a self-banked with a KT at the end. Fantastic.

All right. That's brilliant. Thanks again, and I'm sure we'll speak soon. All the best. Bye.