EP36  Bitcoin podcast with Guy Swann

We'll start again. Guy, thanks so much for coming on. Like I just said, off air, your audio, your Bitcoin audible, and you going through all of these amazing articles has helped me so much. So I thought I'd reach out and for anyone who maybe hasn't heard of you,

then could you just do an introduction, please? Yeah, yeah. I'm Guy Swan. As I say, the guy who has read more about Bitcoin than anybody else, do you know? And I'm @thecryptoconomy actually on Twitter. I've been fighting about whether or not I wanted to try to change that handle to just

something like Guy Swan, since I've rebranded the podcast not too long ago. But the podcast is Bitcoin audible. And just like Max said, I read. I literally just read. I mean, I do a whole lot of discussion and commentary and stuff afterward as well for pretty much every piece. But

basically, there's an ocean of just amazing stuff written down in articles, whole books. I'm not sure how many whole books I've done now. I've done six on audible specifically that are for sale. I did Knut's first book, Sovereignty Through Mathematics on the show. I did 21

Lessons by Gigi on the show. I did two of Robert Breedlove's pieces, which are veritable books. I think I'm halfway through your Robert Breedlove master and slaves of money. It's such a good one. That was such a good one. I'm going to be sending that to so many people,

but all the people who sort of, they need a little bit more of a backstory and look at how going to the history of things, he's absolutely nailed it. Yeah. And just this, just that framing of like, and the way to actually attempt to calculate what was actually stolen and use it in the context of like these,

these people had their time enslaved. Like they were, they were literally working for someone else without being told. I love the whole framing of that. It's just amazing. But his other piece, Money Bitcoin in Time, I did in, I think in six different pieces,

because I think it was two pieces per section. But that thing's a book. I think it was like three hours and some change in total. And then what's really driving the cryptocurrency phenomenon, which is like Chris Dannon and the guys from Iterative Capital, which is like OTC desk.

And I think they do like financial services and stuff, but that was a brilliant piece. I think that one got that one came in at four or five hours too. But it was, it's all about like the history of like open source. And it really, it goes almost back really to the beginning of like

open cryptography and stuff, like back into like the 1930s and stuff where it really kind of like lays the seeds of where changes were diverging, they ended up leading to the huge open source movement in the 90s and then obviously Bitcoin and all of the stuff after. Yeah, people miss that. I think

it's not always obvious that, you know, if you say, oh, Bitcoin's 11 years old, they don't sort of think what went into it before then, because really, this is so much older, you know, the idea of having money that isn't the base is much older than having money that is and the idea of this open source

stuff, it goes back a long time. So it's great having these articles to explain that. Yeah. We're at 400 420 something. Actually, I think I may have just dropped the 420th read, which is a nightmare to try to keep track of on the back end. I've got two people now working

to try to organize and clean it all up so that bitcoinaudible.com is like a basically just like a library where people can just go and type in whatever article they want to listen to or that piece by Nick Zabo that they'd never read, which Zabo I hope to have his entire unenumerated,

basically every meaningful piece up there, I want to have an audio and he gave me free reign to just like, yeah, man, do it all. I got so many of the pieces from the Satoshi the Nakamoto Institute. I mean, just an ocean of stuff, but like I said, it's just so much of it

is amazing and has so many great perspectives on all of this, the technology, the history, the cypherpunk culture, and you know, the 30 years of like rich history leading up to finally landing on bitcoin. And it's just kind of lost out there, I feel like, you know, like, nobody has the time

to read all that crap. And they don't. So that's why I've made the show, you know, like everybody has time to put in some headphones while they're driving down the road or doing the dishes or whatever it is. And so I'm trying to, trying to make sure everybody gets those pieces because they're just

amazing. I'm so thankful that you have done that. I'm so thankful you're taking the time to do it. Because again, like I said, off air, for someone like me, my reading and writing is terrible. It just makes my life so much easier. And the information actually goes in better as well,

like, even if I'm reading something, and it might take me two, three times longer than the audio, I will not really retain any of that information very well, whereas the all audible stuff like, yeah, you can just have it on in the background. And it just seems to, you know, a week later,

two weeks later, I'll be having a conversation and I'm picking bits from these articles out where I just wouldn't have that with reading. So yeah, I'm sure I'm not the only one that this is, is so useful for. I'm glad. And the word keeps, keeps spreading, keep getting more and more

listeners that are interested in it. So it's, it's awesome. I get excited just to know that there's so many people who get value out of it, you know. But it's funny, like I'm for reading or whatever, I would say I definitely retain more when I read. But the funny thing about listening is that I'll

re listen to stuff like three or four times. So because I have so much time available to listen, but I don't have the time to sit down and dedicate to reading outside of the podcast, which is now it's like half, it's basically my job. I still listen to a ton of stuff. So, and I know a lot of

people are in basically that situation either don't have the time or just can't focus on it, you know, that kind of thing. So what was it that sort of tipped you over the edge then? What was it that made you start reading out loud? And it is something that someone asked you to do,

or were you just like, huh, no one else is doing this. Like this is going to be a useful thing for people. It was more of the second one, but there were actually a bunch of things that lined up when I finally broke down and just started reading, actually doing the show. My brother and I have

been longtime Bitcoiners and we've been fascinated, fascinated by it for, oh God, just forever. We got in right when we first heard about the Silk Road, just because that was what kind of put Bitcoin into like mainstream attention for the first time ever. And it was, I read the white paper that

night, my brother was majoring in economics and I was a huge tech nerd. I loved BitTorrent and the very, just the idea of how that network worked. And he would come back and we would debate about economics and all this stuff. And we just, as soon as we heard about Bitcoin, it was just like,

it was the culmination of everything that we were interested in at the time. And so years later, we had been trying to start a podcast forever, like me and him. In fact, we recorded there are like 10 lost episodes of some random podcast by us, probably like two or three years before I ever

even started Bitcoin Audible, or well, the Crypt economy at the time, but you know, Bitcoin Audible now. And I also was, I loved reading to my wife, she would always be like busy, like doing something.

And we would read, we would just read stuff regularly, like sometimes at night, sometimes just during the day. And I would sit and you know, sit and do all the voices and just read aloud, like stories or books that we wanted to get through. And so I was kind of like doing all of this stuff. And

I had been thinking the whole time, I wish somebody would just read these, read these articles, make it all available so that I could listen to it, because that's where I consumed most of my content.

It still is where I consume most of my content. And one day I was just so sick of having beat around the bush on actually publishing a podcast for four years. And I didn't have anything to read to the wife at the moment. So I was kind of in like a, a lull of wanting to read something.

And I just up shelling out, and I think my biggest Barry was just being nervous. Like, I was super insecure when I first picked up the microphone and was like, Oh, God, people might listen to me be an idiot, or say something stupid. And I just finally just like,

I was like, I got to get over it, or it's just never gonna happen. And the first like 15 episodes or so, I'm sitting on my bed with my iPad with the article brought up. And I'm just talking into my iPhone, the little recording like notes app or whatever. And that's that's how I did the

first episodes. And I just, I just went and published and I just, I didn't even share it out and even do anything. I was just like, screw it, like, I'm just gonna do it and see what happens.

It's, it's weird when you think back to those times, like when you first sit in front of a microphone and how, how weird it feels, like how uncomfortable that feels. It is, I think after a little bit of time, you do just sort of forget about it. You forget it's

there and you're just having conversations. But yeah, I had a similar, similar feeling. I remember doing my, doing my, I remember doing like a couple where I'd rather than having any guests on. Like, I was trying to actually just talk about the things that were interesting me at the time or

things that I thought people needed to pay attention to and all this stuff. And then I remember listening back and just being just like, almost sick. I was just like, oh, that's my voice.

Oh my God. Oh my God. No one's gonna want to listen to that. And it's, yeah, it takes some time just to get to the point where you just don't care anymore. You're like, well, if someone likes it, then that's great. And then if they don't, then they can do one. It's funny. I didn't start

commentary on my episodes for that reason. That was actually one of the things that I think made it a little bit easier for me to start the podcast is that I was reading someone else's work. So I was just to the voice. And I had started into some commentary, like to just kind of talk about what

the article was about. They're trying to dig a little bit deeper or explain something if they just kind of passed over it, you know. And I remember like some of those early ones, I went on like 20 or 30 minutes worth of recording after it, but was just so uncomfortable about it and so nervous

that I would do just like you did. Like I would start listening back to you and I'd be like, what in the hell am I talking about? This is a tangent, like blah, blah, blah. And then I would just delete like 90% of it. And I cut it down to like two and a half minutes and then just be like,

all right, done. I'm just I'm done, publish, leave it alone. Yeah. And so when you first started it, like, it's by the way, like, I really am envious that you had a brother who was into this stuff as well. That must be when you're first getting involved and like you're interested in something,

it must be amazing to have someone to talk to because for me, until I found Bitcoin Twitter, I just talked to myself, like no one would spit no, literally no one cared. And I just wished so much that I had someone like you did. What was that like in the, you know, sort of early days where

you both were you both on the same page or because he'd done his economics degree, was he kind of like, yeah, I'm not sure about this, like, whether it's gonna gonna work or no, we were actually both like, as far as like intellectual curiosity, my brother and I are very much on the same page.

And we had been he was his economics degree actually led him to Austrian economics, not because they taught Austrian economics, but because he would argue with his professors and like, like, they would teach him something and he, he hates both of us do, like, when something,

like, when you're given two pieces of a puzzle and they don't fit together and he would catch these little contradictions and he would be like, wait a second, if what you said yesterday were true and you applied it universally, literally what we learned today couldn't be true. And then he would

come home, we were living together at the time in this crappy little corner of East North Carolina and barely making our electricity bill and he would come home and we would just argue about it, like, like fun argue, not like, like angry at each other, but he would just be like,

how could this possibly be true? And then like, we would start digging into it and we actually went into modern monetary theory at the time, thinking that because it's actually logically more consistent than Keynesian is Keynesianism is, because it doesn't contradict itself, it just believes something

that's stupid, like, like, the accident is wrong, you know, like, it just seems to be stupid. It's exactly it's, it's consistent using a wrong foundation. And so that was much more interesting to us, but then we were running into the exact same problem. In fact, one of the really popular

economists in the MMT theory, Warren Mosler, we actually had an ongoing email conversation with him back and forth, because my brother just emailed him one day and then we would just sit down and we would write up responses and we did this for months. And then we were just figuring out that,

like, all of this was still just wrong, there was still just something very, very wrong with all of it. And he stumbled upon, I think it was Hayek. Milton Freeman and Hayek were the first two that we really started to look at. And then, like, you know, the Ron Paul movement was all happening,

like, during that period too. So we were, it was kind of like coming at us from like a bunch of different angles. And then just as we were like, holy crap, this explains so much. And finally, it was logically consistent. It started from very basic understandable truths about what it

means to be better off or worse off, like what wealth was. And then it was like, and then there was Bitcoin. And at the same time, I'm like a crazy computer nerd. I love, like, BitTorrent, just technology. I'm just reading about that in my spare time. We're diving into Linux, like,

so we're in the open source thing, like, all of it aligned. And then there's the white paper. That night, we read the white paper and we're just completely lost. We were drunk, absolutely fascinated.

We were up until, I remember I went to bed and the sun had risen the next day. And we had just gone off all night about Bitcoin, about how, like, this was a game changer. This was an unbelievable breakthrough in network technology. This was Austrian economics codified into a network. Like,

it just everything about it would just, it was perfect place, perfect time. And we were right on the same page and we've basically been there ever since. Like, my enthusiasm does not seem to dwindle whatsoever. It's so weird that isn't it. I would say in everything else in the world that I've

ever been involved with, my interest is not normally held. And I start to pick more and more holes in the thing that I think is brilliant at the beginning. And this is the first time in my life where that hasn't happened. And it's such a weird feeling because I don't know if you ever get this,

but you ever just occasionally catch yourself and just think, am I completely mental? Am I so wrong about every single thing in the world that I'm viewing the world through a lens that no one else sees and is wrong? Or are we just like 10, 20 years ahead in terms of where the world's going?

Do you ever have those worries? Or are you sort of settled now and you're like, no, I'm confident?

I wouldn't call them worries. They have been worries in the past, but I do it about every other day just as a fun thought exercise. But without a doubt, there have been those moments that I don't think you, I don't think if you're not considering that, I don't think there's any way

to think to have ever actually found the truth. And I will regularly seek out something that deeply contradicts my opinion and see if I can, from an objective standpoint, let me just sit down, I mean, that's hard to do, but you know, as best I can, sit down and actually read this and see,

does this worldview make sense? Do their presumptions make sense? And because that is, that is particularly early on. In fact, that's kind of how I've really started to dig into the specifics of Bitcoin, because my brother and I invested in it at the very, very peak of one of the early bubbles.

And we had, like I said, we were barely making like our electricity bills, we had no money to it, like we were, we were as broke as broke gets. And but we took what little savings we had, which were, you know, family gift from a grandparent. And it was not much. And we bought Bitcoin at the very

peak thinking this was it, this is going to change the world. And then just blood for the next six months, nothing but down. And so like, here's my first foray into investing. And I'm all excited about this new technology. And I'm in, I'm over here literally vomiting in the bathroom, like,

because I'm losing everything that I had yesterday, like, and I think we, I think it was like a 93% loss at one point. Like, just, it was basically like, we had turned what was a significant amount of money to us at the time into nothing, basically, like something that would really come back into

water. Yeah, the water bill, like, and, and that was when I was like, okay, if I got in on like a vague understanding of this thing, and it was just a, it was just a dream, you know, it was just like, oh, here's this thing that's going to bring down the state and it's going to be independent global

decentralized money, blah, blah, blah. But I didn't know anything about it really. I read the white paper, like, that's not an in depth analysis, you know. And so, and I had a lot of motivation, because I was incredibly stressed. And I decided that I wasn't going to get out, unless I proved

to myself that I could kill it, that there was, there was clearly some sort of vulnerability, or that there was something in the economics of it that wouldn't work, blah, blah, blah, like, I was going to try to figure out if I could poke a hole in it logically. And I just started,

at the time, I didn't have anything else to do, really. So I just like went hard and was just reading and consuming everything I could get my hands on about Bitcoin to see if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life, and was a complete moron. Like you said, I'm just living in my own

little corner of my insane world, and everybody else knows something that I don't. Or if the opposite was true, that I just landed on a great opportunity, and just happened to be learning and interested in the things that, you know, like pointed me in this direction, and that there is

something real behind this. And again, I just started learning and reading and never got anywhere, but being more having stronger conviction. Like that was the only thing that happened consistently.

Now, I still have those thoughts, but for the length of time, like, we've, this was in, this was nine years ago now. So like the length of time that I've had people, I mean, imagine trying to tell somebody about Bitcoin back then, like you were an idiot. I got so many looks of

just like you pathetic fool, like, Oh my God, where do you like you're selling me a Ponzi scheme, like sort of thing. Like I've had so many people call me stupid, say, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. When are you going to sell all that garbage that you just, you know, like just over

and over and over again. So now it's just kind of like part of the part of the game. It's just kind of in the background now. It's like, okay, holding it to it. Yeah, I kind of expect that. I've been through two minor or three minor death spiral periods where everybody's like, it's all going to

it's all going to die because of the halving. And I'm like, no, no, it's not. It didn't the last two times is not going to this time. Have you noticed that's changed, you know, from, say, nine years ago to now the conversations that you're having with people who aren't involved in Bitcoin

much different than they were? Oh, yeah. Yeah, night and day, night and day. And in fact, like, I'll still get people who are like, yeah, you know, like they're reluctant or whatever. And particularly in like the finance space, if like reach out to somebody like who's

got a finance podcast or is a CFA like that sort of thing, they have quite a bit of disdain for it. And it kind of brings it kind of throws me back into the 2012 days of like, oh, yeah, it's been a while. It's kind of like a little bit of nostalgia for like, I don't care about Bitcoin. I don't know

why you would do anything. I'm, I don't invest in Ponzi schemes. You know, like, that's the sort of response I've gotten a couple of times. But everybody like in my life, like in normal people, and like just kind of the general public, it is not at all like people are interested. People

are curious. They don't think it's much, but they know it's not nothing. And that is literally night and day from the way it was the one I was first trying to tell somebody about it. Yeah, I can only imagine back then, because it, it is now, it's rare to come across someone who

hasn't heard of it, like at least that, like almost everyone, if you say Bitcoin, like they might have an opinion about it that's wrong, but they've heard of it. And I think that's almost, that's, that's the biggest hurdle really is just it's in everyone's subconscious now,

whether they understand it or not. And that's a big thing. Yeah. And when you're saying about all these finance guys, do you think that's because they don't want to understand it because they have, I don't want to say wasted, but kind of potentially wasted a lot of time learning about things that

maybe aren't going to be relevant and that maybe don't actually make much sense. But that's only because it's the very foundation of what they've learned that's wrong and everything that they've learned above that actually is useful and has made sense to them. And to believe that everything

you've done is wrong must not be a very nice feeling. Do you think that plays into it? I think, I think there is a hint of resentment in that kind of way. But I think it's more of

there, there is definitely an element of realizing that, well, and I think it's mostly subconscious, but a form of subconscious admission that they have to admit that they don't know a lot of what they think they know. If Bitcoin works, you know, like, it's just like, when you,

when you have like a framing of the world or a framing, like, like something that you think is true about the world and something is working or going against that and not failing, that's really hard to come to terms with. What we naturally do as humans is to just kind of stick it off in a

corner and kind of live with the contradiction. And, you know, we react by emotionally getting angry because we want to protect that, that identity that we have of ourselves in that world of you.

It's kind of like a form of self-preservation. Like, I can't, I can't hold a contradiction in my head, so I have to ignore it or just not talk about it. Like, just don't bring it up. I'm angry, you know, sort of thing. And I think there is an element of that. And it's also a little bit

of fear, I think, in the conversations that I have, because it, people think Bitcoin is such, in fact, I just had a tweet about this. I actually think you just did something with it. Is this this Eric Townsend one?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one where I don't know the guy, but what an arrogant thing to say. That's pretty common. That was my friend or, like, one of my family members said that I'll give him a slap and say, "I won't call you back at night."

But Bitcoin is really multifaceted. Like, his response was really arrogant, but I don't hold his position against him, to be honest. Like, because it's such a, he's like a financial guy. He thinks he knows finance and he thinks knowing finance means he knows what Bitcoin

is or why it's important. I think there's a bigger barrier to people who are really informed in one specific area, and then they think Bitcoin is part of that area, and then it doesn't fit into it. So they're like, "Ah, obviously it doesn't work." I think his being intelligent and informed,

educated on finance, is actually his biggest barrier to understanding Bitcoin, because he just thinks Bitcoin is finance. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a really good point. It's such a good point because there are so many different aspects that you have to understand. You have to be able to admit yourself that you're not as

smart as you thought you were, and that's something that I definitely went through, like trying to learn about this stuff. I went through a long time just being like, "Wow, I really fucking was wrong about almost everything." You have to be able to admit that you're not that smart, and some of

these guys always feel like they're the smartest guy in the room, and maybe that is part of their identity that they have to know, and like you say, it's one tiny, tiny part of it, and there's so much more that goes into Bitcoin. Yeah, and if you look at it from strictly like a financial

perspective, I mean, think about what you're going to see. You know, like a payment service, you'll compare it to that, or maybe like a profit and loss, like investment strategy sort of thing.

Those don't make any sense in the context of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is in a global retail payment service. Like, that's not what makes it interesting. Like, you can do that with like higher layer protocols and like lightning and stuff, but that's not its model. That's not what it,

that's not the innovation that it is absolutely revolutionary. It's in establishing a monetary policy where you don't have to trust anybody. It's not managed. It just is, you know, like that is what that is the real breakthrough of Bitcoin, but from a finance perspective, you know, this is

somebody who's probably highly revered in his social circles, you know, like everybody's like, you're the finance guy. Imagine like having to admit that you're wrong or don't know about Bitcoin or that your assessment that you wrote a whole book about is garbage. When, you know,

everybody thinks of you as the guy who's always got it right. And every time Bitcoin goes up a little bit, it's again just kind of slapping you in the face. It's like a, it's like that splinter that will not come out of your hand. And you just want to ignore because it's very,

very humbling. So many times, even times that I thought I understood something about Bitcoin or I thought I knew something about lightning or whatever it is, I constantly have to readjust and realize that I only vaguely knew this thing. I couldn't completely explain it to somebody. I

was like, crap, I really thought I knew this. Or like, there's some other trade off that I hadn't considered. Like, it's like trying to say you understand or know the internet. Like, it's just going to keep expanding and getting more complex and more layers. There's never really an end game

here, you know. And it is very, very humbling. Like, you have to be able to go in going, okay, I could be wrong. Where would I be wrong? I've had to do that over and over and over again. I'm sure there are old things that I've said on this podcast, even after I've already dug into

Bitcoin for years and years, this just completely backwards. And, you know, a year later, I didn't figure it out for a year later, reading some other piece and then something clicked, you know.

So that's a really important piece that a lot of people have a hard time with, I feel like. Yeah. And like you say, because things change so quickly, you do kind of adapt with it. And I'm definitely sure the same with me. Like, things I've said on this podcast, things I've said

in the past, just in conversation and trying to explain this stuff, especially in the early days. Like, especially when I was really excited, you know, those first few months where like, it's really starting to click and you can't sleep and all you're doing is reading and

like watching and dress and tenopolis videos and being like, Oh my God, fuck, this is going to change everything. Like running around telling everyone and everyone's just like, yeah, fuck off, don't want to hear it go away. I don't care. It's not interesting. That time where you're putting

all these pieces together from the economy side and the computer science side and cryptography and all, you know, all the things you've listed there, you just sort of, you can't quite put them all together. And then finally, it clicks and I feel like, like you said, it's never ever going

to end. And that's kind of what's so exciting is that every day in this space, you're going in and learning something new and that I don't really know of any other industries like that. Yeah, I don't I don't know anything that's I would not be able to come up with anything that is as

multi-disciplinary as Bitcoin to like understand it in its full sense. And it's funny to try to think like, look at certain perspectives and see where people get it wrong. Like the crypto community, you know, the quote unquote crypto and like all coins get it. I think probably the biggest barrier

there is just understanding what money is, like what the role of money in history is. And if you start talking about like in the 1800s, they're like, it doesn't matter like they're, I mean, interested in it. And I'm like, you're not going to get it then. Like you're not going to understand

the fundamental, like if you go back 3000 years and start at the origins of money and the iterations that we've had through like the centuries, you realize just how powerful of a breakthrough one of the fundamental pieces of Bitcoin is just just the idea of a perfectly scarce monetary policy

is a breakthrough in and of itself. And then to do that, then in the digital space is a computer science breakthrough of of incredible magnitude. Like you're taught like in computer science, you get taught the Byzantine Generals problem or what used to as an impossible problem. Like,

it's a theoretical thing that just yeah, we'll never solve this. And then Bitcoin did it on top of having the most secure money, you know, just it just on top of each other on and on. And the game theory aspects of it, I've learned more about game theory since Bitcoin as I couldn't even

have I probably couldn't even really properly defined the term before Bitcoin. And it's been one of the most fascinating things to learn about. But I just don't know anything else like that.

That just is that deep on so many different levels. So I mean, after reading everything that you've read and being involved for such a long time, I know we're never gonna know. But if you had to just guess, do you think that Bitcoin was created by one person who is like just a savant genius,

like crazy, crazy, smart one person? Or do you think it's just because there is so much that goes into this? Do you think that it's more likely to be like a group that have worked together over over a long time with a sort of goal in mind? Do you have any sort of idea of what you would

have to guess? I would definitely well, not definitely. I think with a lot of the things that I've read the Nakamoto the Satoshi pseudonym was one person. Whether or not one person worked on the code is a different story. I could see them reaching out to one or two trusted parties and looking

for input on it. But what's funny is a lot of even some of the more profound aspects of Bitcoin were actually just a demonstration of not quite knowing what to do and just being incredibly conservative. Satoshi wasn't the most brilliant programmer in the world. It was better at the

engineering and the architecture, the system itself. In fact, there was a ton of the first iterations just for years was just cleaning up the code, writing it a little bit more succinctly, getting a easier way to do it that was less ambiguous, that sort of thing. And then some of

the things that he talked about with the money issuance and stuff, it was talked about in a way that I don't see an easy way to distribute it any other way. I don't really know how to do this fairly. So the only way I think that makes sense is to just have this programmatic thing that just

runs out eventually. And it just seemed like one of those things where when anything got subjective and Satoshi felt like he was having to do his own judgment or just guess as to what might be the best, he just went with the absolute simplest option. And I think that's actually in a lot of

the beauty of Bitcoin is that where he didn't quite have the answer, he just went simple and it turned out to be the best answer you could have made. And he seemed like that. It was just like when the op codes, when he found one bug in one op code, he disabled, what was it, 15, I think?

Like it just it just immediately just deleted them from the client is like, okay, well, we don't really need any of this crap to make the money work. We need to get what makes the money work.

He instituted the block size limit. Oh crap, I just realized there's this huge spam problem. Somebody could DDoS the whole network. Let's just put in a one megabyte cap. Like it was just again, it was like over and over again, it was just these, let's just narrow this down to the absolute core

of what it needs to be from as many different angles. I think he was just kind of like a renaissance man, just knew a lot, knew a little bit about a lot and could see this system that could exist with all this crap that he'd been reading on the cypherpunk mailing list. Like here's here's a

hash cache is like, damn, you could really use that for something. Here's B money. What a great proposal. There's some really interesting pieces here. There's big gold from Nick Zabo. That's an interesting element to how to do the database. Shit, you could put all this together. You know,

like I really think that's that's kind of what happened. Like you were saying before someone who's in finance can't really understand this and someone who's just involving cryptography maybe doesn't understand it. But maybe this guy, like you say, just knew enough about enough of them

and was conservative enough and smart enough that it kind of like maybe that's why it makes sense. Like I've said before, if you have to explain to a child like the current financial system or Bitcoin, I can't ever see that a child who is ever going to go, oh yeah, I'll use the other

one like Bitcoin sounds rubbish. They're always going to go with Bitcoin because that's the obvious, it's obviously better. If you just forget what you think you know, it's obviously better and simpler. Yeah, probably the probably the key point to that exact position is just that

like most people don't even realize that they can't explain our current financial system. Like because it's one of those things that you know, a fish doesn't think they need to figure out what water is. Like they're in the water from start to finish. So we accept the current financial

system and banking system as the one that works because it's the one that is. But I don't think anybody, even people that I've explained it to and have some vague idea and that we've talked about it before couldn't give me a really good explanation of how the financial system works. I really just

don't think like 99.5% of people can do that. So really, it's kind of a question of, you know, you can't explain Bitcoin, but you can't really explain the financial system. So when a kid asks, you have to finally come to terms with that is like, well, finance works with banks and you put

your money in a bank. And you know, there's there's always a why that somebody can't answer there. Yeah, it's so confusing. Maybe it's my conspiracy theory side of me. But I often think they've just made it this confusing on purpose because then no one's gonna like, no one has time to dig into

this and understand it and be like, fucking hell, this is just a massive Ponzi scheme. Like, that that's what it is. And it's so funny that when like you were saying earlier, especially in the early days, and I still get it now where I've told like people who are incredibly close to me,

people who, but practically family, and I've said like, seriously, you're getting on a bit now, you're looking at retiring, it'd be worth you having a very small allocation to Bitcoin because of X, Y and Z. And I will often get, well, it's just is I've been told it's pyramid scheme. And

what's so amazing is that what they actually are living in is the pyramid scheme. It's so weird. It's straight up though. Like, it is our financial system. Like, when you actually get back to the Fed, it's actually a really good example of one. Like, it's actually really

thoroughly like a pyramid scheme. You know what I mean? Like, it's not even like kind of, it's not even as if it's like, like one, it really just kind of is. It's the perfect one. It's the perfectly made pyramid scheme. You couldn't make a better one.

And no one knows. No one knows. Yeah. No one realizes. And it's unfortunate. Like, what I try to do, I've found, like, in talking with people that kind of have that reaction to it or whatever, is the best thing I can do is stay confident in my position. Because I feel like most people to get to entertain an

idea of they're much more concerned with the confidence of the people they hear the information from prior to actually doing any investigating themselves. So I usually, and I got really good at that in the early days when people just looked at me like I was an idiot or they was like,

this is a scam, you know? Like, no, it's just a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme, whatever. And I would just say, you know, I totally get like from the outside. It really does look like that.

And I'll even just kind of like hammer that sometimes to be like, oh, no, I totally get like that. That makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense that you would see that to begin with. In fact, most people do. But I promise that it's not. If you ever want, if you ever have any

questions about it, I'm free to explain it. It's a it's a bit of a rabbit hole. But you know, you know, do as as you wish. And I would never recommend that you invest in it without knowing it, you know, without like when you still think that it could be a pyramid or a Ponzi scheme,

don't put your money in that if that's what you think. But if you have the time and you ever get interested, hit me up because I promise you it's not. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's definitely a better way of doing it. And it's certainly not the way that I started doing things, especially when I

was like overly excited about it, because it was just like, how frustrating is it? Because when you truly believe it, like, Oh my God, it's going to change the world. It's amazing. And then everyone's just like, yes, scam. And like, it is so frustrating. But it's after a while. And what you're doing

is I think just the best thing. And I almost now I'll actually just say, yeah, yeah, don't buy it. If you don't understand it, don't buy it. Like that actually makes people want it more. It's not for you. They're like, why? You wouldn't understand. They're like, it's pretty complex.

Yeah. And that's a show. What that is though, is that you're showing that you're confident that you don't need them to buy it, you know, like, which is usually something like if you're in like a multi level marketing scheme or a Ponzi scheme or something, they're desperate. You've gone to buy

this. You know, I'm invested in this. And if you don't buy it, it's it's going to die or something. And I just don't have that. Like my conviction in Bitcoin is I'm not worried. I'm not worried if the people around me believe in it or are going to buy it because I genuinely think it's inevitability

when we have unless something in amazing comes along in comparison to the legacy system, the legacy system is blatantly and painfully unsustainable. And Bitcoin is painfully sustainable. You know, like, yeah, it just bitcoins going to keep working. And I'm not going anywhere. So do what you will.

Exactly. And the other the other point with that is, you know, when people say, oh, yes, it's a scheme and oh, you're wanting me to buy it. And I've had actually people say that to me, like in the early days, probably because of how excited I was again. But like now I think back

and I'm thinking, do you really think that you buying like a few hundred pounds or, you know, even a whatever they whatever they buy is going to make any difference to my investment on something that has a market capital, like 140 billion dollars, like unless you're unless you're Warren

Buffett, or like, you know, I don't know that you've got like a cheeky 30, 40, 50 billion shoved under the mattress, it makes no fucking difference at all. Don't care. I'm not selling you mine. I'm just saying you should buy some. No, you can't have mine unless you're paying a hundred

thousand dollars a coin. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's like you said, that confidence comes at a point as well. Like it's kind of like a dick move. And you know, people probably hate me later on, but I do get to the point with people where I'm just like, you know what, if you're going to treat

me like an idiot, or you're going to just like scoff at things and not really be bothered, you don't really deserve this. Like you don't, you know, a lot of people are putting a lot of time and energy into learning about it and building it and being involved with it. And I'm, you know,

I've kind of got to the stage on like, I'd rather the people who are involved who are actually making this thing better and going to be worth more in the future because of the things that they're doing. I'd rather them have it. Like I don't want someone who doesn't really care and sort of slags

it off on just like that. Don't bother. Keep your fear. Yeah. Yeah, there's like, like that's been, like that's the way I feel most of the time about it. Like particularly when someone treats me particularly, like just like you dummy kind of kind of attitude, you know, I have a very intelligent

family member, I guess you could say, not not a close family member, but who has basically treated me like that for a long time. And good meaning, you know, like not trying to like be really demeaning, but was really demeaning. And just pretty, just pretty arrogant. And I know that's the way like,

I feel like I want to do that so bad. But at some point, I know, at some point, I'm like, okay, like, I know what it's like to stand where you are and think that the person I'm talking to is investing in something incredibly stupid. Like, I know, I mean, I still

have that. I mean, I'm not demeaning or just snotty to anybody. So, you know, they're responsible for that. But like, I'll see people like investing in, you know, thinking that the stock market is a safe place to put money or that, you know, bonds are good, like negative interest, like, you know,

not just not seeing the bigger picture, the huge cracks in all of the financial system. So I see people making decisions that I would just never, I would never touch for a million years. And so like, I know that feeling of standing where they are. And I hate, I do hate, it just

makes me feel disgusted to think that that's the way that person sees me when we're having that conversation. But then at some point, I just have to be at peace with it. You know, and I think it just became so common in the early days that I just was like, you know, it's okay. Like, time is

going to make this is going to either prove me like I've been humbled by Bitcoin. Like, you know, Bitcoin has slapped me a couple of times in my history and punched me in the gut really hard.

And so like, you know, I like at some point, you just got to get passed at all and just be okay with the way they think about it. And if it works, you know, I'll be right. And I'll be thinking, I'll be thinking day in and day out, I freaking told you so, but I won't say it out.

I want what you can say is just when they come to 100,000 of coin, you can say, okay, I knew this day would come. So what I've done is I've made 420 episodes on my podcast explaining to you why you should have bought this when I first told you and why you still should. Here's the link.

That's like such an easy way to just be smoked without being smoked and still help them. Hey, man, I've now still a good time to get in. There's never a bad time. It's the future. It's like saying, oh, I can't invest in the internet. It's 2002. And the bubble already passed. It's like,

no, it's just, it's going to be the new infrastructure. So, you know, figure it out. There's plenty to learn. So what do you see, like, you know, in the future and without going like too crazy forward?

If you say like, in the next five years, let's say, where do you see this space? Like, it's obviously early days, but there is a core group of people, certainly on Bitcoin Twitter, and I'm sure others lurking in the telegram groups and everywhere else that are like absolutely

obsessed with this stuff and like believe like we're having this conversation that this is the future and that all these amazing things can be built with it and on top of it. And what do you think is happening in five years?

I think we in five, it might be in less than five years. Like in five years time, we may see and like the real, real push in the infrastructure inversion. Like, I think Bitcoin is going to be kind of a combination like as an allegory to the internet,

it's going to be the TCP/IP and the Linux of the internet. Most people don't know that Linux is like 80% of the internet because they have a Windows computer or Mac, you know, like people don't think about it as a front facing operating system, but they don't realize that the servers

they're connecting to are running a version of Linux. And many of the OS's that they use Android is built from Linux. Mac is Unix, like the core of the internet is Linux. And then in that same way, TCP/IP isn't something that people like directly interact with, but all of their services and

their apps and everything speak that language. You know, that is the language of the internet. And what we saw before were all of these closed off isolated networks, these intranets, a huge top down AT&T phone network, like all communication networks were owned. Like they were centralized

and they they were permissioned. You had to be a subscriber, you had to be a like you couldn't innovate on the AT&T network. Like you couldn't offer voicemail service to your to your friend down the street. Like AT&T owned the services on the phone network. So if you wanted to try out

voicemail, you couldn't do it to two customers. You had to do it nationwide or not at all. Like you just you just had to make a billion dollar investment in some new feature on that network.

But huge barrier to entry. Huge barrier to entry. And then obviously nobody in their homes can provide a service backwards through the phone. You can't do anything with your phone. It's not a you don't you can't host from your from their phone network. And then one day just the internet

started to build up and these connections started to get made and people started to use modems and this word processing device should showed up in people's homes. Like they had computers and everybody was fascinated that you could just type a thing up. Word processing used to be a

giant business. Like like an industry of people who typed things literally and then it just disappeared. Like now everybody just types. And and then at some point the thing just flipped. AT&T's phone network was no longer an analog network. It was analog at the last mile. Your grandma

still picked up her corded phone in the kitchen. But it went to a hub that turned it into TCPIP packets and then sent it across the country and turned it back into analog phone at the other end.

At some point the the the the incredible efficiency gain and openness of the internet of that open protocol for any type of communication not just one type of communication all communication

was so unbelievably better than the analog centralized alternatives that there was just this tipping point where you weren't communicating if you weren't on it. And there was just an explosion like everybody now connected at any edge of the network was a service provider if they wanted to

be could make a website for three people who were interested in their website could host a podcast that's just for Bitcoiners who happen to want to listen to articles. You know like that was never possible before in the age of closed off owned like permissioned networks. And that is exactly

what we have in finance today. We have closed permissioned internets everywhere. Zell can't send money to PayPal. PayPal can't send money to cash app. They all have to go back to the banking system and then settle to the fed wire system. Like they're all layers on top of each other and

all the stuff at the edges is completely disconnected. They're all isolated networks. But with square and with strike. I think we are seeing the beginnings they're going to be able to talk to each other.

Square Jack says publicly on Twitter that it's not a question of if it's a question of when they make settlements in Bitcoin and Lightning available. They're going to do it. So do you think that there's going to be an infrastructure inversion like there was with

you know the phone companies sort of treating the internet like it was nothing. And then everything being you know everything's on the internet. Everything goes through saying TCP/IP or like Skype and all that sort of stuff that that flips. That's what we're going to see with finance.

And they're almost these kind of you might still have banks of some sort for a while or you might still have some of these services. But actually they will be rooting payments through Lightning or some other second or third layer or something. And everything will be built off the top of Bitcoin

basically. Yes that is what I think. And we for a long time the average consumer will just they'll just be like okay all of my apps got a whole lot easier. I don't know why payments go through faster now. These are a little bit less. It just work. And they send

$20 from from Zell to PayPal and then to Cash App. And it's just $20 through the whole trip. They never know that they're using Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is settling those payments because the cost

and the time and and the the risk actually of trying to make that settlement through the banking system is orders of magnitude higher. I mean just with a normal credit card payment you're looking at 2% 3%. Like huge plus like 15 cent per transaction. Like the the ability to use that

infrastructure is just it will literally change everything. I think we will use dollars for many many years without realizing that the only reason we can send it from point A to point B is because there's Bitcoin moving in the back end. Yeah it's it's crazy to think how much change there will be

but it's also it is kind of the logical progression. And like you say just it's so much more efficient and and it's final. You know the settlement people people often say to me like oh yeah well I can send a bank transfer in the UK and it comes through in minutes. I'm like yeah but it doesn't actually

it's just an IOU through someone through someone through someone it's not not actually getting that value. Yeah that's the difference. And it can make things like I kind of have this vision of there being a world where you know that you were talking about before the fact that you've been

able to start your podcast and I've been able to start mine and there's pretty much no barrier to entry. I'm kind of hoping that that kind of rolls out where you know we had all these problems with Twitter and we kind of still have all these problems with social media and not really owning your own

content and stuff. I'm kind of hoping that the dreams that people are pushing of everyone own in their own data and and maybe something being done with lightning or with Bitcoin and the stuff that Microsoft are doing. What's your thoughts on all of that? Do you think that sort of stuff can

be built on it as well? Absolutely. Yeah without doubt that was one of the first things that I was like really getting excited about like some sort of potential for that kind of a thing. And I think again we're seeing a if you look at it it's the same story so many times. I think the fight between

decentralization and centralization happens on many different layers and multiple timescales and it kind of moves in a two steps forward one step back kind of thing that we we make these big leaps into this whole other network and then even though we have something as decentralized

and broad and as difficult to shut down as the internet we still find ourselves now congregating around all these central servers that hold all this data the centralized closed off networks like I can't make a Twitter post that sends to somebody on YouTube you know what I mean like again we're

in this situation where we have these closed networks and the network owners are the ones that decide what we can do and there's not this open standard protocol but I think it's just kind of the stages of development of figuring these problems out that the centralized solution is just the easier one

so that's the first that's the first stage of the next thing and then inevitably the centralized solutions become unsustainable they get bloated they get technical debt they get you know financial and authoritative debt like where same same things that happens with huge governments the bigger they

get the suckier they are and then eventually they fall they just collapse under their own corruption and inability to do anything but walk forward and get bigger um and then we start back from scratch you know we kind of like move this whole process over again but that we're making

progressive steps towards increasing decentralization and I think it's pretty clear that the social media behemoths is one of those places where we're overdue for built-up pressure to make a change and I think that will absolutely be part of I think Bitcoin and Lightning will be critical

to actually finding a decentralized way to fund and like like capitalization of that sort of thing is the problem and now we have a new money a permissionless money that anybody can tinker with it makes that possible I find it inevitable that there is a solution to that period don't know how

long it takes but I think it's there yeah it's um it's that sort of that dream of just having the ability to own all your own data have control of it completely that you can't be censored that your money can't be censored your speech can't be censored if you want to try an idea you can do

it if someone wants to invest in that they can invest in it and I just feel like so much of what happens in today's world is just blocking brilliant ideas because of monopolies and you know all this regulation and all this stuff that is supposedly there to protect people but it just feels like

it's it's slowing everybody down and just it drains the passion out of people so if we can get to that stage where all of this stuff is like usable to most people I just think that the things that can be built are going to just blow our minds and it's so exciting that's what keeps me so

interested like the investment side of it is is cool and like I genuinely believe it's the best investment on the planet I can't think of something else that I look at and is even close but I know that that's a long way off but this stuff is like you know if it works the world is going

world's going to be like a place that I'm excited to live in not like a lot of the time I don't know what you find in the States but here just find it so frustrating just I feel it is very claustrophobic it's not built for people who think outside the box or just just want to try stuff everything so

slow moving it is frustrating yeah it's like the legacy system is just being drug through molasses like like everything is like it's just like a grueling trudge and I totally agree and I think

so much of it is like bogged down by I mean the whole slew of things but like they all feed on each other they're they're all like a feedback loop of like a bad foundation to the whole system but it's like excessive bureaucracy the bad money that causes unbelievable debts it creates

consumerism and destroys just the very idea it doesn't I mean think about what a collapse in the monetary system would do like when when prices are trying to correct what they do is it specifically rewards the people who are frugal and are responsible and don't have a lot of debt but instead had

lots of savings and they have been they have been the one that has ones that have paid for the last three collapses yeah because everybody all the people who went into debt got bailed out so everybody who would have changed what they did now just got reinforced that they should continue to do

to do the irresponsible thing they should continue to do the corrupt thing they should continue to over leverage because last time I was the one that got paid and the guy who saved was the idiot definitely and it just destroys society yeah and even the people who have invested in in assets

you know I was in property business before this and you know a lot of what I did really really was actually quite responsible like I took massive amount of lending and and took on risk and and it paid very well because all these assets just go up in value because the more inflation we have

the the more people profit and the if I had taken the advice from my grandparents I'd have done terribly it would not have been good and I've just been going through this book the fourth turning William Strauss which kind of I don't know if you've read it but it kind of hints at why

these cycles happen and this sort of incentive structure I haven't read that one specifically let me write that down the fourth turning I'm actually going through something called the third wave by Adam Toffler right now and so this this sounds exactly like something I know the name

it basically predicts it's written a long time ago it's like early 90s I think it was written and it's basically made these predictions that pretty much are all coming true and they're talking about how you know where we where we will be around this time and sort of between it says between

2000 and it's 15 and 2025 and that that is the the winter that is where things go really really bad and you know the last time it happened is like World Wars and things like that because things you have like basically it's talked about like a spring summer autumn winter and you have these cycles

which each generation is sort of involved in and that that they sort of make this prediction that we are at this time now where things can't continue as as they are and things are going to burn down and yeah it kind of makes me pretty excited that we've got Bitcoin because otherwise

I'm reading through this and I'm like oh my god we are screwed things are so bad I'm really scared and then I think oh no who got Bitcoin like I think that's going to help quite a lot I truly think it's it's a game changer in that entire like specifically in that sphere of problem

like that is what it's built for you know like that is where Bitcoin shines and provides the most value when trust breaks down when you don't know you don't know if your government's going to be there tomorrow when you don't know if your bank or any businesses are going to be there tomorrow

like when you have not if you're going to be allowed to leave the country or what's which area is going to have political unrest and which doesn't like that is where Bitcoin it's so clear that Bitcoin is the most valuable asset you could hold on and I totally agree though that like it gives

you kind of a sense of peace that like it's so easy to look at the world and be like everything's gone to hell there is no future to look forward to and then when you really dig in and learn like what Bitcoin is about and what it could make possible you're like I think we'll be all right

I think we'll be all right it's going to be messy it's going to hurt and it's not going to be fun but we're going to be all right and it makes me feel it makes me feel good it gives me that that warm and cozy feeling when I go to sleep yeah which is nice because yeah it's easy to get

depressed about all this other stuff otherwise it's you know especially with all this stuff that's going on with Covid and all this you know everyone in England's gone absolutely mental you know and it's the idea like you were saying before you don't know if your government's still going to

be there in the morning well fucking wish they wouldn't but they are and you don't know if you you don't know if you're going to have a job you don't and you don't know if you can even go and open your business because you're being told by you're told by the people who are running

a Ponzi scheme oh not only are we going to steal your money like sneakily but also I know you've worked really hard to start this business but now you're not you're not going to be running it tough shit yeah and like the fact that they have that nice and crazy and people love it here

people love it I get texts all the time from people going oh my god it's amazing the NHS are doing this like tracking app and they're gonna be able to track us and tell us who we've been around and oh so brilliant and it's for the safety I can't believe they're talking about seizing the

lockdowns you know are you mental it's a complete disconnect complete disconnect it's because it's I think if everybody was actually paying the price for it it wouldn't be the case but yeah particularly here we've got unemployment we've got like I mean just subsidize out the wazoo we're

burning the currency as fast as we can to try to keep things afloat and what's happening is they're subsidizing everybody not wanting to go back to work like there there's a there's read an article just the other day of people like interviewing they're worrying about going back

to work in the sense that they just don't want to work and they're getting paid more just to home it's like you realize that is impossible to sustain like nobody has any idea what this actually costs and that's why everybody thinks it's great like they're I support it sure money right

it doesn't cost me anything yeah of course it doesn't let's shut down the economy for six months doesn't cost a dime you should be asking where that cost is because it costs hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars to do this and it's gonna hurt like we have to pay for it it doesn't hurt

bitcoin though and that's it doesn't it doesn't this is good for bitcoin yeah money printed over is is good for bitcoin it's great for bitcoin and I actually think that it's starting to help people wake up a little bit because that is quite an easy or relatively easy conversation to have like

when someone goes oh yes good there's more funding for this and they'll be like if you just literally be like oh where does that money come from oh well you know it's it's there to protect the people and it's like yeah but where does it come from like it's not from behind the sofa

like Boris Johnson hasn't just reached into his pocket and just like pulled it out where does it come from and when you go down that route and if someone is actually prepared to ask themselves the question it doesn't take too long for them to go oh okay like that's not great you know maybe

it would be better if I had something that has a fixed supply it's actually a feel it's actually very helpful to explain it to people because things are just getting so crazy that like even people who aren't interested in this stuff like have to question it yeah without without doubt I

think that's a huge element to it and I've had so many more people um kind of around me that I wouldn't think we're interested and or even thinking about things in that context and now they very much are um and I think it's also kind of human nature when things are going okay it's just like

you know like let's say you need to fix something in the back you know you can fix something on your deck or whatever because it's like wiggly or something like that and and you just keep putting it off because it's fine you use it it's no problem or whatever and you keep putting it off and you

keep putting it off and then there's like a hurricane tomorrow it's like oh crap here's this whole list of stuff that I really have been needing to get done that I'm now in a really bad position because there's a freaking hurricane coming tomorrow and you go you go ham for like 14 hours and you

fix all of those things that you've been needing to fix um and that's what it is I feel like we've been for two decades really um we've just kind of been in that situation of like we should fix these things uh but god I just I wish it was already done I wish we could already just get past this

we'll do it tomorrow like and now people are kind of waking up and the pressure is there and they're seeing that there is a fire and it's spreading and they're like holy crap holy crap I am not this is not what I where I thought we were going to be now I need to make a decision I need to look at

the world with new eyes and look at my situation where are we really um because we've just kind of been drunk this whole time ignoring all of our problems yeah it's easy to ignore them when uh when times are good it's easy to just uh you know when like we said when property prices are going

up and the stock market's going up and you know your your wage is going up or the the the numbers that you get on your pay slipper getting up but maybe not your purchasing power but you know people don't think about it that way it's easy just to just carry on and not think about these things

because why should they yeah yeah it's easy to ignore it just pushing in the background until so money prints six trillion dollars and they're like wait a second what the hell they're like a trillion it's that bigger than a billion like yeah yeah it's the the amounts of

money like I can't wrap my head around a little bit sorry I said just a little bit just a little bit just a little bit it's just it is so hard to even start to wrap your head around like how much money that is and like what that really means because it's just not the sort of thing that we deal with

in our day-to-day life like to even think about numbers that big you just you just it's hard it's hard to really wrap your head around yeah it really is um and it's certainly it certainly opens your eyes when you start asking those questions and start looking at it

um that's why i was i'm so excited that uh like swan and cash app have done and there's like a couple others now bull bitcoin um i think is doing it like there's this push for dca my sponsor is dca as well coin four just coin four has dca now yeah yeah coin fours dca and they'll do it from

your bank so you just you just set it up from your side so like if you ever want to just close it down it's easy there is a push rather than the pull oh nice dude that's great it's it's awesome like i was really excited to have them on board because i agree with you like dca is just the

best way it's so good yeah dude it's just so nice and and with like like any capital that comes in because of the podcast i've just been using swan it's since swan bitcoin landed i was just like yeah boom i was there immediately um and i was so jacked because i actually had this they did this a long

time ago um with there was a there's a cool app called long mower um and it would round up all of your payments to the next dollar and then every time you had five dollars it would just buy you five dollars with the bitcoin and for like three months i was ecstatic because it's the easiest

way to save ever like i don't have to think about it and like for for as long as i like kind of got lost down the oh i'm going to trade and make more bitcoin and then got punched a couple of times instead uh did it was just so nice to finally have i mean i was that's one of the most exciting

for being such a mundane thing of just being able to invest and not think about it um it's incredibly comforting to have that back so what happened with swan like did they adopt you did you adopt them you now share a family name how did that happen um it was actually a running joke uh early

on we had nothing to do with each other i just i knew a couple of the guys on the team um and uh apparently most of the people over there were listeners of bitcoin audible and um and then as soon as they dropped a brady from uh i spoke with brady and cori at some point but me and brady

the really good friends we hung out at bitcoin 2019 um we i actually stayed with him um and he does their um i think he's like marketing or something over there i don't know he's he's the one doing all the work yeah i'm gonna tell i've got i've got cori on in the next couple of weeks so i'm gonna

tell him that i'm gonna say you said that don't don't tell him i say cori wasn't doing anywhere it's like no they're sharing but uh yeah they just reached out to me randomly because we had this kind of ongoing joke that they uh i was suing them over using the swan name um and uh and then just

randomly out of the blue they sponsored the show for a little while and that was great and i've been love and working with the team but more than anything i just i just wanted to have a bitcoin savings thing um and i i love that as soon as they landed cash app did it bull bitcoin did it i think they

were like four i can't remember i can't remember which other ones i had like i'd been writing them down at some point but it was like dca was a thing and i'm like we are going to be the whole floor baby it's the best and and having that you know it is nice to have sponsorship from them but then

like with swan bitcoin and with coin floor here you can you can just say to people if you're you know if someone's saying to you okay fine all right i give in where can i buy bitcoin you can say with confidence go to one of these two companies you know that all they can do is buy bitcoin all they

can do is dca it's so hard for them to fuck up that's the beautiful thing is like you send them to like con base or one of these places and like they're gonna come back and tell you oh my god yeah i bought the new thing it's xrp it's amazing or like some other bullshit and you're just like oh fuck like

how have you messed this up whereas this they cannot mess it up yeah it's so good yeah yeah i uh like i said they supported the show for a while but i don't even like i like no disclaimer like they don't support the show or they don't actually sponsor the show anymore i just shield them because

i i genuinely think it's the best place to send people to get bitcoin for exactly that reason they're just going to go and get bitcoin they're not going to get told to buy aragon and cardano uh and double your money you can stake these coins like you know they're not going to be oh god don't

even get me started but they're basically not going to get robbed yeah so yeah bitcoin only baby this that's that's the way i go since super just simplifies the crap at everything yeah and from what i understand swan has got some of the best um rates as well like i've listened to a couple of

episodes and then dug in a little bit like it just seems that they've they've looked at the space and gone like what makes sense a little bit like you know with bitcoin is like Satoshi going like what is the most obvious best thing that i can do here and they've done that and like it just works

yeah yeah so i do a 0.9% fee if you uh 0.99 whatever 1% fee um uh if you like pre-pay or whatever but that's pretty significant because a couple times that i'll sell with cash app if i'm like moving stuff in and out like something that i got in as donations and i'm like paying somebody i'll

usually still have to do it in dollars um and uh so like if i cash out with swan uh with cash app um like depending on the amount like it can actually be like a 3% fee um but i think 2% is pretty regular i think it's like anything over like 50 or 100 bucks is 2% um but yeah swan does a good job i don't

know i'm i hope they're doing great and i hope they stay in business forever because they do have some pretty low phases and you can't get that on dca with anybody else as far as i've searched so far no it's it's really really good it is really good yeah it's and that's the kind of that's the

kind of businesses that make me more bullish like when i see that some seriously smart people are starting some businesses and doing things right because they clearly understand how important this technology is going to be and that it's the future and they understand that that long-term reputation

is much more important than just making a quick buck um that makes me very very confident yeah yeah the fact that they would explicitly turn down business because they know it's not a smart long-term solution and that they want like trusted customers there are a handful of businesses

that really in the last year have come up in the bitcoin space and like really kind of showed their hand of like we're here for bitcoin we're here for the long haul like we're very very serious and dedicated to this and i think those reputations are going to feed back on them like i think that

is going to be there i think that's going to be really their calling card in the future because one of the big things about bitcoin is that a trustless money and is actually something that's really good at rebuilding it's a great foundation for trusted business relationships and a trusted

economy like because we have trustless money we can actually build sustainable relationships and not worry about um not worry about getting cheated on the back end somewhere you know what i mean like and we also know that you know when we hand over bitcoin to somebody else there's no

going back like i have to be okay with this person i think reputations and like integrity is actually reinforced as important in the ecosystem in the economy to a much much stronger degree than one that's based on authority because if you just think you'll you'll go with a you know

fdic insurance is a good example you'll just go put your money in a bank because you're like well the government's going to pay me like imagine getting free insurance like imagine like somebody we could come in like you just had a liability insurance for your car because the government

guaranteed it for the other person and you just didn't have to buy and you didn't have to care about being responsible or you know making sure you didn't bump into somebody or something oh the government will pay for it if anything ever goes wrong like is it a horrible moral hazard um and

sound money really creates it realigns that relationship that you actually want to trust a good relationship with businesses that you work with as opposed to just kind of like not caring you know yeah i completely agree and and i've just from my little bit of time on bitcoin twitter and

like chatting to other bitcoin as it was weird as i've i've felt so much more trust with those people a lot of them are anonymous and you know or soon anonymous and you know we haven't met in real life a lot of them but the trust that you build through these people when you see that consistently

they do what they say they're going to do and and and they don't fuck around which is basically what i'm used to with with every other business i've been involved in it's just loads of just people weaseling around trying to fuck each other over constantly lying that there's no integrity like

it's it's really frustrating and it's a completely different world which is so nice like whenever i'm collaborating with other people or doing anything in this space like everyone's so helpful and everyone sticks their word because if they don't they get serious shit for it you get you get

serious serious shit if if you mess around and and don't keep your word yeah yeah and i i truly think that that's actually at the heart of um i think it's part of consequence of the responsibility that you feel in bitcoin like when you know you're like everybody everybody is here for such a

meaningful reason you know like it's not most of the people like most of the bitcoiners i mean there are speculators through and through all over the place but that's mostly that's a big reason why i get sick of crypto and why the bull markets fun as they are price-wise they kind of suck when it

comes to signal to noise-wise you get a whole bunch of dumbtards who are just running in and think they know everything and they're just they couldn't care less about bitcoin like right now you know in the in the heart of the bear market is when everyone you talk to is there because they

they get it you know because they know why we're here you hold a 70% loss and you build in a bear market when you know what you're doing like or when you when you really care about it um yeah and it's great to be able to build those relationships and actually meet people have people i've never

met i consider like some of my best friends like really close people that you know i've maybe had a zoom meeting with or whatever and over and over again like you and i like this is the first time we've chatted which is pretty long overdue to be perfectly honest yeah for sure and uh but like

like we can i don't know we could just it's like we're on the same page you know and i find that constantly with people in this space yeah it's awesome it's shared values and yeah and just that's that goes a long way whereas you it's quite rare to find that in sort of i call it normal

life but it's not so normal it's rare it's rare to find that and i was going to ask you actually because you said earlier you're quite like techie you've always been involved in this kind of stuff like i'm trying to put together a kind of i don't know whether it will be like once a month or like

some some sort of group where we can jump on a live chat or something and have a shared project um i like so my thing is i really want to put BTC pay server on my website and that's my next so like my last thing was start to run a node and and before that was to get graphene on this phone

and but i'm kind of i'm doing it all alone and i'm not the most techie person like i'll battle through but i'm trying to get everyone i speak to now just to like put a list of things that they're interested in or might want to build or learn about and then like it'd be quite cool to get

some like-minded bitcoiners on and just you know build some build some stuff and help each other out if that maybe is something you're interested in no that's actually that sounds awesome actually and i would love to go back through the BTC pay server process from scratch because i had a lot

of hiccups early on and i don't remember it's like one of those things that like you remember you struggled but you don't really remember exactly what it was like i wouldn't be able to write a tutorial on it you know um and uh so it would be good to kind of like ingrain that and like go through

that process because i'd love the the interface itself is a little bit is pretty unintuitive in a lot of different ways but after you kind of get the feel of it and and i'm hoping and i've still been i've delayed it but i would like to do like a write-up of like how i would expect the user

interface to work um yeah but after you get the feel of it it's so like you can do so much with it um i've loved having it um it's been it's been wonderful to have on my site and i'll i will say one thing i tried it a couple of different ways at the beginning just do luna node if you're doing

like a cloud server or whatever just just go to luna node you just you literally like you click like a couple of different options and then it just goes and it's also not very expensive so as far as like getting like a cloud instance up it's cheaper than pretty much anything else i was doing

it's cheaper than digital ocean which is what i do for my website okay i'll check that out yeah it's uh it's something i'm quite excited about doing because i want to start accepting bitcoin and and i want to be technically competent enough that you know if someone a friend of mine

says to me well okay i'll accept bitcoin then you know i can say okay well i can help you with that you know being able to actually get people on board it um because it's all well and good saying how great this stuff is but it'd be nice to get more people using it yeah yeah i'll tell you

what's fun is uh i use a fold like religiously um and i'm usually using my credit card because i just want to stack bitcoin um but uh i will use i use lightning through strike when i have money in that account but i had i actually had to create an entirely new bank account just to integrate

with strike because my bank sucks um but when i am using lightning on just kind of randomly or whatever which is still pretty frequent um every time if my breeze wallet or whatever ever doesn't have enough balance or something like that um i constantly use my btc pay to um to refill that

but my i have zap wallet on my phone and i will literally just in the checkout line i like in the drive-through like getting starbucks i can just whip that thing out and it's like it's so fast like just boom boom boom i've got the card copy paste put in my uh starbucks thing and i'm paying

and i do that regularly now and i love it like it's been more and more fluid i love zap and i love breeze they're both awesome wallets and btc pay is kind of like my hub um and then i refill my breeze wallet breeze wallets like my kind of like hot wallet i still don't have like a huge

channel with it right now i've been planning on opening another one but right now i've just been using the defaults on everything because it's simpler um yeah it takes time to play with this stuff yeah yeah it all takes time like i i've got my nodal setup and everything but i i haven't really

messed around lightening that march or or really like got my hands dirty with it because yeah it's it's just it's a time thing but i'm excited to to get my hands dirty that's kind of what the last kind of month and going forward now is just me trying to learn this stuff and then

trying to help other people with my journey and problems and sort of uh maybe make a couple of videos and stuff because it's really confusing but it's it once you actually accomplish it and like you're using it like you said it's just it's amazing it just feels so good definitely it's

its own rabbit hole all right guy well listen um i've kept you for an hour and a half now it's been really good catching up with you and later absolutely on it sooner and um i really hope that we can do a project together in the future and uh if you fancy that btc stuff that would be great

do definitely uh hit me up and give me uh whatever link anything like uh whether you're making a group or whatever just shoot it to me and dm on twitter i'd love to check it out yeah for sure and uh yeah before we close it out is there anything that you wanted to cover that we

happen um no i think we got it all like it does this good episode it's a good chat i appreciate it awesome and and also before we go just uh shout out where people can find you um like i said at the beginning and i'm really mean this it is brilliant i love bitcoin order i love what you're

doing and i'm definitely not going to be the only person who is going to find value in this it's it's brilliant so anyone who wants to check out these articles but either is an idiot like me and can't read properly or or just doesn't have the time then where can they find you yeah you can

find me on twitter at bitcoin audible or at the crypto economy that's my other tag i'm sure you can just search guy swan and that swan with two ends um and uh yeah i got uh 530 odd episodes 420 reads um and it's uh it's a huge huge database i find myself now going back and listening to my own

stuff just because i'm like oh my god i forgot about this piece i've read so much stuff now it's like that that's that scroll just goes on and on and on and uh yeah and oh and if anybody wants to do the swan bitcoin thing uh DCA is the way to go so it's cash app coin floor swan bitcoin but i do

have an affiliate link swan bitcoin dot com slash guy uh if you listen to the show that's that's the one i show all the time and that's just for us isn't it that is just for us yeah nobody over in the UK yet but i keep hearing rumblings i know they're i know they're pushing for it so um but yeah check

out bitcoin audible man all right thanks guy and then like i say i hope we speak soon yeah man dude thanks so much dude i'll talk to you later cheers