EP89 Bitcoin & The Trust Problem with @btcdragonlord

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

Alright, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and deliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is for 21ism.

This was for Word Block 007. And I've got a chance to read through Kero Zagoras' new book. I have it a little bit early, and it's really, really interesting. It touches on some incredibly important points.

So we were very proud to be featuring this for 21ism, and I thought it would be worth sharing on here as well. Anyone who hasn't already checked out 21ism and the other artists we're featuring, I suggest you go and do that now at 21ism.com.

I'd like to say thank you to Coin Floor UK for continuing to sponsor this show, and for anyone who's in the UK looking to dollar cost average and do it directly from your bank, either daily, weekly or monthly.

You can do this with Coin Floor. They've got a really good team. And if you use the link in the show notes below, you'll get 30% discount on those auto buys. Next up is Crypto Clokes. Crypto Clokes are my new sponsors, and they have some fantastic products.

Really, really love the team. They're Bitcoin only. And they are expanding at a rapid rate. So many people building nodes as it becomes easier. They want something that's gonna look cool.

They want something that's personalized, and there really is nowhere better than CryptoClokes.com. Enjoy the show, and any questions, feel free to reach out. Hey man. Hey there, mate. How you doing?

Doing far back you? Very, very well. Looking forward to this conversation. I'm just making sure you found your way out of the closet. Were you stuck in there or what was going on? I'm just laying some cables for AT&T.

Ah, okay. Okay. Is that something that you do outside of Bitcoin then? No. Just for yourself. Yeah, you know, whenever the nature calls. Cool. Well, yeah. I'm really looking forward to having this conversation.

And we're very proud to be featuring you for our Block 7 of 21ism. Really cool to have another book in the space. And I think touching on something that is really at the heart of all of this, the heart of all this movement, and that is trust.

And so I'm very pleased to see that you've written this. I've dived in as much as I can in the time I had and scanned my eye through it. And yeah, it's really cool. So first of all, for anyone who doesn't already know you, most people will do from Twitter, but maybe you could do a bit of an introduction on yourself

and what led you to write the book. Yeah. So I'm the Dragon from Twitter, A.K. Caro Zagoras. You can call me Cairo, or B.T.C. Dragonlord. I had started my journey with shit-coining back in 2017.

It was more like a way to find myself out of this hellhole that I'm living in in Hungary. And I was just trying to speculate with bit money. And somehow I fell into this hole that something is wrong here.

It was 2017, December. I got under this shit coin, and it pumped up really high. And then I thought that value was somehow created out of nowhere. Kind of like how the normal markets are working.

And then at the point, I started thinking, what if there are some different mechanisms here for these things that are hidden to people? That from somewhere, the money is coming, and it's pumping up prices.

And I started digging into it more deeper, and I figured out that there was a bit more bigger economical side to this. And I look more behind money, philosophically, like how money exists, why people use it, how it comes about, what do we do with it, and how society is intertwined with it.

And it turns out it was really everywhere. You use money in order to live. If you don't have money, you don't have a life, basically. But since government is manipulating money, it changed many things for people.

Ever since 1920, or before when the Federal Reserve was established, things started changing. As inflation started spreading. Oh yeah, this is a bit rushing too far ahead. So basically, back at that time, when I was finishing University, I kind of wanted to see where this is going.

So I thought of applying for a master's course. And I wasn't really sure what I was doing back then. I just wanted to see where this is going. And the whole thing that looking into Bitcoin kind of came about as around August when I realized that everything was revolving around Bitcoin.

Because the system was much more important than I thought before that. I want to define what is really going on. And that this is how my research basically started out as if you don't find it out for myself.

What is wrong with society? Why something like Bitcoin could exist? And why will it stay around? So that's how the whole research started out. And I managed to force this entire thesis through the University that I was at.

I managed to find a really great consultant who was really accepting towards the analogy and everything else, really to economics and other stuff. And that's how the whole thing came about, basically.

- It's amazing how people get dragged in like this to a point where all of this research has to be done. And it leads you to decide you want to spend the time to write a book. - I can only imagine the amount of time that has gone into this.

Looking through it, it's been very well thought out. And it's obviously been a labor of love. And I always find it fascinating just how many people get pulled into this level where it takes over your brain.

Like it makes you think about the world in a different way and see it through a different lens. And people wouldn't be doing this otherwise. So what was the point where you decided this is actually, your research is actually going to become a book and that you want to help people understand this because you know it's important enough.

Can you remember a time where you went from shitcoining to Bitcoin and then it just really clicked and you understood quite the level to which this is going to change the world? - Yeah, well, it clicked around in 2018 around June.

When I started looking more into these shitcoins that there were so many of them. There was one coin for every idiotic reason or purpose that existed out there. Like toilet coin, spent coin, or what I tend to coin.

I don't even know what the hell these things are or why they even exist. Like tokenizing, even taking a breath or tokenizing the internet service providers and things like, how does this make any sense?

- It didn't make any sense, there was too many of it. It was way too complicated and the scams were plenty. I already, if you go on a telegram, there's a group actually called these wrecked plebs.

You can see tons of people getting wrecked every day having their money stolen, getting scammed, whatever else happening to them. And that's the whole shitcoins phase basically in a nutshell.

And that's the point, I started, you know, I was more looking at charts and shit back then, but the whole point was that I figured out that there was something big going on with Bitcoin. That's when I kind of figured out a Bitcoin that crashed like $3,000.

And I was like, yeah, let's put a fucking position here in August, and I waited until November when I actually went down and I jumped in. And that was the time when I, you know, I, you know, totally, I was actually already committing myself by October because in September, I completely changed my thesis.

And so when I started, I started, you know, talking with this professor, who I managed to early on get on board this thing. And then we went from cryptocurrency to entirely Bitcoin. And that was the main turning point in November when I started just only Bitcoin.

And then when I started receiving all the negative input from other, other lecturers, especially this woman who was an anthropology teacher, and she was very negative. She was saying that I'm trying to write something so big and so complicated.

I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail. And she said these exact words that I'm not going to work. And I wanted to prove for that. No, no, bullshit. It's going to work because I'm going to go out there.

I'm going to check on people. I'm going to see how this thing works. I'm going to look at F, look at the whole picture. And I'm going to look at just the important parts that is mainly concerning my interest in the field.

I'm going to look at why banks are ruining people's lives, how the monetary system is pitted against us completely, why politics letting us down, why the media is lying, and the whole thing how it basically comes all together.

And that was the main point that kind of really gave me the answer that this thing really existed. It was needed, a long time coming. And really Satoshi gave it to us. It's quite a gift, isn't it?

It is, it's like Satoshi gave us the gift like he was God. Like it was really, really, really phenomenal what he did. Yeah, it's a lot of sort of links where it becomes almost religious and like that selfless act of stepping away and giving something so huge to the world.

That they haven't realized what it is yet. Like there's a few of us fumbling around in the darkness sort of trying to work out exactly where this is going and spending a lot of time doing so.

But I don't think anyone really knows where this is going to go. And that's sort of the exciting part. And whoever Satoshi was had incredible foresight. And like you said, this is a long time coming.

Nobody's really been looking in the right places. We see sort of around the world so much crazy stuff going on. Trust in governments and organizations is going down more and more. You have this huge wealth gaps and problems going on which most of it can be linked back to money.

And rather than looking at the money, everyone's being misdirected, everyone's, everybody. Everyone's being fooled and they're looking in the wrong places and they're arguing with each other.

Have the things that really don't matter. What I've really realized from being in this space is that it doesn't matter where you're from. It doesn't matter your gender, your race, your previous thoughts on religion or anything else.

At the end of the day, we have more in common than we have to fight about. And once you realize that, that actually most people just want to be left alone, want to look after their family, want to educate their children well, we all want the same sort of things.

And we've been forced to fight because of this media narrative to distract us. And this is the sort of book that people can pick up and read and go, oh fuck, that was so dumb. Like why don't we work towards a common goal?

We can do so much better. - Yeah, especially in the US, the whole system is just, it's like you have to run in this treadmill every day. And there's no end of it. Even for people who are in the lower class, basically, who are not low income people, they don't have that really great access to the banking system there.

In New York, lots of people use cash checking services also. They don't have access to the internet in a way how we do with bank cards from normal traditional banking entities. So they use gift cards and other type of services in order to buy products and things like that.

And they don't have the usual European banking institutions that offer free services in the US to the regulations. - Yeah, it's crazy and it gets worse in other countries as well. I mean, some people have really got basically no access at all and they've got currency issues that are devastating.

Yeah, it's just such a huge problem and it's fixed so elegantly. It's got a long way to go, obviously. And a lot of it just comes down to education and sort of people wrapping their head around it and understanding it, but also this NGU technology that pulls people in as the marketing department is very well thought out.

Is that what initially brought you into this? Or were you already sort of sniffing around and thinking there's something not right here? There's something not quite right and I can't put my finger on it, but I don't feel it's correct.

What was your entrance into the space like? - Into the shit coining, it was more the NGU. But then when I saw what's going on with Bitcoin, that's when I started selling all my shit coins for Bitcoin, basically.

That was like the turning point for everything. - And did you already have a sort of mistrust of governments and mysteries? - Well, lots of people in Hungary, it's just the government, basically, it's like, it's an oligarchy.

It's a Russian style oligarchy that we live in that is constantly exploiting the population to further itself. - Can you tell me a bit about it? I've never been to Hungary. I must say my knowledge is not great, but it's very interesting to hear from someone else's perspective.

What is the general feel from the public and what's going on? - So there are like two sides, basically, with the one totally split. Lots of conservatives abroad would say they like Orban because he protects Europe and Christianity, quote unquote.

But they kind of ignore rest of his misdeeds, basically, that he's doing in order to elevate his stance towards Christianity and other religious institutions that he's doing. But the problem is that Orban being in power for like ever since 2010, he's now having his third term right now.

And it's likely he's going to get his fourth term or also in 2022. And he's just going to be staying around because they changed the entire election system that's in Hungary into a system that where they can obtain seats in the parliament very easily.

They don't need a majority vote in order to be elected. So for example, the opposition parties, the left and the right parties who weren't united at that time, received more votes together than the Fidesz party, basically.

And Orban still managed to get into the parliament and he still got the two-third amount in order to pass any type of legislation they want to do. So it's quite interesting this way. And then in the early days when Orban was first elected, it was quite a refresh because the previous socialist government was really corrupt.

They were doing all kinds of stuff like lying to people about the state of the economy. They picked up a billion dollars of loan that we're still paying back. And people just wanted to get rid of them.

So they elected Orban. But then somehow something turned upside down in 2014 and they started going towards the wrong way, especially after the migration crisis started. And that's when the nationalistic side of Orban already came out.

That's when Kanau, when Orban's best friend, who I think his name is a [INAUDIBLE] He is his original profession as a plumber. But he's now one of Orban, he's richest person thanks to his old friend, Mr. Orban.

And he owns one of the largest construction companies now in Hungary and he is on route to-- he actually owns most of the newspapers, TV channels, and other financial institutions also. Orban's allies ate themselves into every institution that you can know about.

For example, one of Orban's closest ally owns-- actually managed to buy G4s in Hungary. G4s is a security company. I don't know if you're just going to be good at cutting. G4 is basically almost the largest for a military organization, the planet that handles money transportation security and object security, especially it

runs prisons in the United Kingdom. And in Hungary, it was one of the largest-- the only largest money processing institution that handles cash transport and counting for banks in Hungary.

And they've been trying to change this thing inside out because I think they have some plans in case they get kicked out. Because they're trying to create a parallel institution in the country in case their rain would end.

And since, for example, G4s, if you, for example, shut down G4s for some any reason, that could mean that its employees could go on strikes and they could basically choke the entire country.

Shops wouldn't receive money, fresh bank notes. They handled transportation also for the National Bank. There would be no money in the ATMs. Retires couldn't take out money from the ATMs at all.

Nobody would have money. Just everything would get stuck. And then the economy gets choked, basically. That's quite an interesting plan they have. But nonetheless, yeah, that's one part. And then there is another part that they built all kinds of things that are totally useless.

Parks, basically, stadiums with money when our entire health system is just crumbling. The hospitals that are totally bare-boned from the outside looks like it's been for construction for like 10 years now and there is no progress.

And some of them are totally depolated. But the health care system is pretty good. Otherwise, other than that. And so this sort of formed your views prior to Bitcoin, you were sort of already primed for this.

It's not just that. It's more like the lies, the all the liberal lies that they do. And they don't communicate with the media at all. Orban has his own favorite radio talk show that he goes on every week.

Nobody else can talk to him. Everybody else is just not allowed to talk to him. Even when this virus crisis started, they had the press ask questions usually from these people who were doing the press briefings.

But then they only allow them to send in questions. And even those questions get processed by the national TV, which is basically propaganda arm of the government. It's like, television in Hungary is completely biased.

It is just like a propaganda TV. You have the main M1 channel and TV to and others, a few independent ones, which are not really observed. And these things always pump out things that the government want you to know.

It's like, you know, like North Korea, basically. You turn on the TV, you talk about how good the economy is, how good things are going. What is going, you know, these kind of things. You know, everything, these kind of things is add up.

And the country becoming even more unbearable for people to live in. Like, like people who, people earn basically 400, 500 euros a month here in Hungary, on minimum wage, which is extremely small compared to Austria where the minimum wage is 1,500 euros, just next to neighbor.

Everybody who lives in West Hungary, they go to Austria to have a job there. The largest amount, I mean, most of the people there speak German because they work across the border. They travel like one hour with train, just, you know, be able to earn much more than people in East Hungary or Central Hungary, basically.

So it is people who are on this kind of minimum wage of like sort of 3, 400 euros. How does that compare in terms of rent and food and all that kind of stuff? Is it equivalently low or is it that the average person is just getting by like, how are people surviving this?

Okay, so inflation started changing how things cost. So I would compare to that in 2010, money was able to buy much more than what it is today. So let's say if you have 20,000 home game four ends, I was able to come back home in 2010, two truckloads of stuff.

And now, not barely just, you know, two bags. And prices around, for a normal house is around 70,000 to 80,000 in cities like Debreath sense, I get one in West Hungary, but in the capital, it's around 120,000, it's like Western Euro prices for houses, basically soon.

It costs just as much as in places like in Essen in Germany or some smaller places in Holland, for example. And money doesn't really get you by that far. Interest rates in banks are ridiculously low.

They don't give you enough. The national treasury funds also have like 1.7% a year or two points, I don't know something like that. The inflation is much more higher than that a year, so it barely gives you any money back, basically.

Compared to how much money people earn in Germany, for example, they were to put away at least one month's worth of income of what people get in Hungary in Germany than here, because here you would be only just able to put away like 10,000 points, which is like 40 euros a month, which is very, very low amount.

Compared to, you know, what electronics cost in Hungary, electronics cost just the same as much as in Western Europe. So it compared to the wages, electronics are much more higher priced.

We have 27% VAT compared to 15% in, I don't know where Germany, I don't know. It's ridiculous. - Really, my question is, for example, in the UK, although we are a very well-disguised creeping towards authoritarian government, people don't really see it and they don't see the need for Bitcoin so much,

especially people in the middle classes. A lot of people are struggling here, but they haven't really put their finger on why it's just getting a bit harder each year and has been for a long time.

Over there, are you finding that if you're having this discussion with people and you're saying, look, inflation is taking away your time. Things are gonna get harder and harder for you. You can see that you're being lied to.

These hierarchical structures are not built to help you. They're built to help people at the top. Here's Bitcoin, here's why it works. How are people receiving that? Are they generally open to it?

Or are they still finding it difficult to wrap their head round there and sort of shunning it away? - The knowledge about Bitcoin is really spreading here also. If you ask the general population, like if they ever heard about Bitcoin, they did.

They don't know what it is. They know it's an internet money, but they don't really wrap their head around it. And about the lies in the country, those just kind of fall off from Orban and the rest of the guys.

They don't really get scrutinized as much. So like Slovakia's Prime Minister ordered the Sputnik vaccine and he was removed from this position over that situation. And here, they can do whatever the hell they want.

So it's like it's complete dictatorship, basically. And even with the coming changes, like how much freedom people have who were vaccinated, for example, you can now only eat indoors if you have the vaccine certificate, this small card that only valid for six months.

- Oh, fuck that. - And they already got that. - Yeah, we already got there, yes, basically. They actually rolled it up because we are the only country in Europe that are using the Sinopharm and the Sputnik vaccine, which we don't even know if the Sinopharm vaccine actually works.

Nobody actually researching it properly. And they try and enforce people to have these vaccines. They're ordering a lot of these doses that they don't even know that the people are going to take it.

But it's how it looks like the 45% of the population will be on the billing to get vaccinated. So it's likely that we will see mandatory vaccinations within this year by December, probably.

But at least four million people has already got the first shot of their vaccine. So I don't know how far this is going to go. But if we look at how many people are going to virus and other stuff, the whole pandemic might soon end.

So I just don't know. But with the whole vaccination card, it's ridiculous. They give people who received the first shot, the first dose of their vaccine, a plastic card that writes there that it does an immunity card.

And they get it after their first shot. So basically, they say that the first shot doesn't even get immune, but you get the card anyway. (both laughing) So you can go already to the restaurant, to eat indoors, or go to places without a mask.

But you know, you just have the first vaccine. Who cares? You can't just, you know, do this and that. And then, you know, lots of countries, like Poland rejected the Sputnik vaccine and the Sinopharm vaccine.

And they don't plan on buying it or accepting it. So I don't know how people who got those vaccines are going to go to those countries. It's like, I don't know. And then, even a few days ago, our government actually released information about vaccine deaths or vaccine-related deaths.

And they tried to, you know, downplay, not downplay, but more like, you know, magnify related to population. How many people die from taking the Pfizer vaccine related to taking the Sputnik vaccine, basically.

And, you know, since obviously more people received the Pfizer vaccine, there are more people who could, you know, who fall into that 4% or something efficacy. There is even that amount who died from this, this virus or the vaccine, I don't know, basically this just on the government release.

And they, you know, sent this information out to everybody who is registered. And it's like, you know, they're trying to get people to take the sin of form and the Sputnik vaccine, because, you know, they always blame Brussels and things like that, that they're doing everything wrong, that they're encroaching on our liberties and freedoms

and everything other, they try to, you know, do this and that. But, you know, living here and seeing what he's doing and how much he's, you know, magnifying these things, making an elephant out of a mice.

And like, it get really annoying after a while, basically. - It's a madness. - And lots of conservatives love Orban and I don't know why. You people need to fucking wake up, basically. It's not Trump, I would love if Donald Trump would be president of Hungary.

Things will be completely different. But, with Orban, I don't know. I mean, I would rather have Trump than Orban. So like, I don't know. It just, the two things don't compare. They are not even the same thing.

So it just, I don't know. Whoever you have in, I've felt this way for a long time, even before Bitcoin, is that I don't trust any of the fuckers that wanna get in power. I don't trust any of it.

And that is something that I'm really hopeful. Bitcoin can take some of this power away from these psychopaths because the way that we're leaning with just the idea of forced vaccines and whether you can or can't move, whether you can or can't have a meal or run your business or travel is fucking lunacy.

Is proper Orwellian stuff that's happening. And I wondered what your thoughts are on whether Bitcoin can help defund these states. And if it was to, and we were to come to like a hyper-Bitcoinized world or something close to it, how do you see things playing out?

And do you think we can do it? Or are we all gonna be locked into boxes vaccinated and back into slavery? - As of right now, Bitcoin is not gonna be able to do too much before you get boxed in and vaccinated.

Forced to be probably in the UK that might happen. Here in Hungary, people is more rebellious, I'd say. So there's a bit of an added risk for forcing people to get vaccinated. But it's possible that if many people would solely understand Bitcoin if it is how it's working because it's not enough that you buy Bitcoin.

It's totally not enough. You have to understand how the system works because if you leave your money on a KY6 change, that means that you are not actively participating in the system. And there's many people who do that.

And if we want to have a hyper-Bitcoinization, people need to start removing their money from exchanges and start understanding how the system works. Because even if money flows into the system, an exchange could always issue more Bitcoins than what there is and that way the whole effect wouldn't work out.

But in theory, a hyper-Bitcoinization could lead to a hyper-inflation if you ever transition into it. So that would mean that governments would essentially collapse, probably. It really depends on how people would live.

We would be living in 1933 Germany again. And I don't know how they'd play off right now in this today's world. Many people now just live in big, large population centers that they're not producing anything.

They don't have land. They're just living at home. What are they going to be doing? Are they going to turn the prostitution or something? I don't know. It's just this hard decision that people going to have to make will be very, very hard.

But it could be also possible that we're just going to transition slowly, that some government, large one, like the US government might go for accepting it and might use it as a base standard for the US dollar in order to try to stabilize it in order to have the upper edge against other countries who would adopt it.

Because if they're not going to adopt it, the problem that's going to happen is that they will lose out on the edge if there will be a high preinflation. When they realized that there is really large amount of inflation happening, like 30%, 40%, people will completely lose trust in the system.

They're already losing. But if the moment they say that the holy shit, Brett Spry just went up 50%, what the hell am I going to do? My money is now worth much less. I can get much less in the store now every month.

People are going to be outraged, and they're going to look for ways how to immediately preserve their money. Money is value, basically. So this is the whole process that giving people a hard time is the value theft that's happening with true out inflation.

When people are producing value, true out work, when they produce value, when they receive money, they associate the value with that paper money, and that's why things can have value. But as government keeps printing the money, it immediately evaporates that value, and it creates inflation.

And this way, people are forced to spend money much more faster, because they say that the value is diminishing, and they need to speed up the spending. That's why many people buy, get credit lines in order to spend up today, and not to save for tomorrow.

Because there is no point for saving when the money is just evaporating. It rises up high time. It rises time preference. It reduces trust in society, and depletes social capital completely.

That's how we ended up in this society that we are right now in, basically. Yeah, it's so true. And there's a lot of people looking for this way out, aren't there? There's so many people who feel a certain way about what's going on, either with the vaccinations and all of the COVID nonsense, or just about the fact

that the world is getting tougher to live in, and to earn your money and save your money. And a lot of people feel it. They just haven't put the pieces together. I don't know if you've ever seen, there's this meme that's like a cliff edge.

And then there's a politician at the end, like a dictatorship at the end, just one man. I did see that. Yeah. And then like a group of people, like all the players in the other end. That's it.

And there's just one guy who goes, fuck this shit. I'm buying Bitcoin and leaves. And I kind of see it that these trends can change very quickly. From my perspective is that holding Bitcoin in on exchange is not holding Bitcoin.

Unless you have your own keys and you have some privacy and you do things correctly or not, really using Bitcoin. So that's like another step. But to get people to at least follow suit, and if it becomes a trend, especially between younger generations who are holding millennials hold, I think 5% of the wealth.

And that is the people who are in the middle of their working career. It is four or five times harder than it was for their parents in terms of savings and buying properties and all these kind of things.

And I think a lot of them are just fucking sick of it. And if they can have access to this information and the more books that go out, the more podcasts, the more info where it can become more of a culture for people to just go, yeah, you know what?

Fuck this shit. I'm leaving as well. Do you think if that was to happen that this can actually, rather than the sort of 10 or 20 years that people discuss, actually be more like a few, like two to five?

It's difficult to say. I mean, how many people are going to buy Bitcoin? Do you know? No. But how many young people are going to be getting into the system? You know, young people are already trained to think in digital currencies.

And this basically makes them more, how would I say, trained towards thinking in things that don't exist? They see value in abstract forms of digital stuff like for the work app called or something else.

So this makes it easier for them to adapt it. And eventually-- although it's very, very hard to say if they will be able to buy Bitcoin, because even today in Hungary, my generation, is really struggling financially to get by.

If you're not married, you don't have six children. You're not getting the door from the government, basically. And this is not really going to get you far away. And just living alone in the capital, you're not going to be able to.

That's way too much. You have to be at least a programmer, have a really high qualification, a good job. And at least not the majority of the population have the ability to do that. And that's where the whole thing ends.

And for them to get out of this whole thing, it will take a much more longer time to do that. It will either be forced to because throughout necessity that they need to start using Bitcoin, or eventually this end up in the system.

But so far as I see it, those who are the lucky ones, they're going to be able to survive it. So yeah. Yeah, and maybe it's a circular economy thing. Maybe we get to that point where people just exit the system.

And like you said, not everyone can, not everyone's a programmer, not everyone has skills that they can earn Bitcoin with using a computer. But I think maybe as this thing builds out, there's a chance that people can actually use it for payments and actually use it between one another, especially with what's happening with Lightning.

I wouldn't run ahead so much with the circular economy because that's a fallacy. Because as of right now, using cash is much more easier in private than using Bitcoin. So as far as we don't have the right privacy tools and we only have flawed ones right now, that means that people are only able to use it for one purpose

in order to escape inflation. And escaping inflation alone is able to build social capital. But we'll be able to kick start basically the rebuilding of society. So it's not a good idea to think about it, that you should start immediately using your Bitcoin right now.

You can do that, but if the price is going to keep going up, are you going to be able to accumulate back the same amount of Bitcoin that you're spending right now? You're probably not. So it's always a better idea to lower down your time preference and just save long term and be able to just try to make more money

in order to get more Bitcoin, because if you miss out on the chance to accumulate, that's going to be it. You're not getting able to access the amount of Bitcoin. I mean, two years ago, people were able to buy like one Bitcoin for like $3,000, like, yeah, yeah, just think about it.

And now you need $56,000. Yeah, and it's going to keep happening. I'm on the same page in terms of cash is better for privacy. No question. Hand to hand, cash is the best. Yeah, absolutely no question.

Really what I'm thinking about is people transacting across borders. Yeah, that works completely fine. And I think that opens up a lot of opportunities for people. And my sort of view is that there will be, like you said earlier, there will be some countries that will probably embrace this because they realize they have to,

but there will be other countries that clamp down really hard. And then those citizens are going to be the ones that need it most but can't get it through exchanges or anything like that.

So they'll need to be some sort of peer-to-peer networking or way for them to earn so that they can actually get their hands on it. Because, you know, it'd be very sad to see those people not have the ability just because of a tyrannical government.

Likely they're going to have to use like third-party exchanges in other countries that allow them. Even if those countries prohibit them from using those exchanges, it could make sense for them to use some service like Bisk, for example, in order to buy Bitcoin.

Because some transactions don't require you to make it look like you're buying Bitcoin, you're just putting in random data there, and then, you know, you're just using it to verify that you're transaction and you get the money back.

So Bisk and Hado Hado is really great for these purposes, basically. Yeah, completely agree. I use both and they're very good. I was going to ask you, actually, who did your front cover for the book?

It's really nice. Oh, yeah, it was Bitco, Bitkoynovsky. Bitco, okay. This is really good at it. I really like how it turned out. He really grasped the idea from the beginning. I was blown away from the first sketch that he sent me.

And it was really phenomenal. But, yeah, he's really busy these days, so I'm having a bit of a hard time getting the second demo copies. But what if you're on it? We try and get it out as soon as possible.

And I'm going to be personally reviewing all the errors in the next print. So, yeah, that's going to be pretty cool. He's got some awesome work. Absolutely love his artwork. Yeah, absolutely amazing.

It just gets it, it nails it. As soon as I looked at it, I was just like, "Oh, that's a fucking good cover. It really draws the eye." And then just it picture paints a thousand words. Yeah.

So you're going to be going through the book just with a fine-tooth comb. And then, do you have some sort of idea on a few things? Like, where's it going to be released? Where's it going to be available?

And also, are you going to do an audio book for it? I already taught the guys one who actually promised me to do a version and a free version. But probably I never really got around doing that.

But then the book is going to be coming out on Amazon, probably by the end of next month or early after next month. So that's what I'm trying to aim at. So I'm going to try speed this up really fast and then get it out.

And then we will see if there are going to be a translation or something similar because I've been getting some interested people who want to have a demo copy first, just able to see if it's really good.

And they've been really blessed the way about it also, so yeah. And what's your feelings with the book now that you've written it to your baby and you're getting it out? Is there a certain part that's your favorite bit or something that you really feel that's been nailed down from the book?

Do you know what I mean? Was there a certain part which really feels special to you? The first and the last two, basically, the conclusion and the social organization. Those two are really like my contribution to the space and everything.

The first part is more because I was looking at the evidence and seeing everything in the big picture and then trying to bring it together in order to make sense. And I think I really managed to nail that down.

I do think that, yeah. And then there are some sections that I had to include in, for example, about Bitcoin and things like what's with the system. Those were necessary because people who basically read this book need to have at least a minimum amount of knowledge about the system.

And this was quite a requirement in order to get the whole thing into a working shape. Without it, it would be like, you know, just the skeleton listing, basically. So it completely works this way, in my opinion.

So anybody reads it, maybe we understand the system why it exists and how it works, basically. And it's an ad positive thing, I think. Absolutely. And the social layer side, but I mean, that's a part that interests me a lot.

It's such a massively important part of it. Can you sort of give a little bit of a teaser for people who obviously haven't yet had the pleasure of reading this to entice them in, to go out and buy this?

Yeah. Where should I start? See, I talked about the plebs, basically. That was one of my favorite parts in it. Ever since he had a lot, first time he disappeared. You know, people who were-- you know, the nobodies got together and they started the Bitcoin plebs back then.

And I've been with them ever since then. And I can say that it's kind of sort of forming into a much more larger group. But now as I see it, I started realizing that more and more of these groups are going to be starting forming slowly, because people will have the share interest to work together and create things.

And that will always exist. So people will be forming these groups and they will be going forward. And this really shows that the social capital is slowly replenishing, and people will achieve much more things than they were able to do before.

They take much more risks now than before. And they will succeed, probably. And other part that I really liked also was talking about the shitcoins, because that's what people have issues grasping this topic.

I see this common theme among people who do information technology, who do programming, and they do this type of science. That they think that technology can be improved. Yes, physical hardware can be improved, yes.

But when you talk about things like internet layer things, they don't usually improve. They just get additional improvements. They don't get changed completely. Like the internet is not changed.

We still have IPv4, next to IPv6. Although we're running out of IPv4 addresses. There is an IPv6. And then all these changes, there is-- if we try to compare Bitcoin to the internet, it's much more similar.

So these two things, they work together perfectly well. And the internet basically started this whole decentralization process of the world. And Bitcoin, it would have eventually happened either way, if Satoshi didn't release Bitcoin at that time.

So yeah, that's a really interesting part. And people fail to understand these things, especially people who are educated, or some other people who are speculating. They see the multi-coin world, which is a terrible idea.

And they think that they can improve Bitcoin, that they think that blocks are too slow, they're too small, that the system is not decentralized enough, that it is environmentally damaging, or it is killing babies.

I don't know. These people, they think they have these misconceptions. And they're eventually going to get wrecked. And I really hope they're going to get wrecked. Because if they are unable to figure out the whole system by now, or I don't know how many years they had, I was able to figure this out in six months.

But good morning, but people need to really wake up now. And they need to think about the big picture, about the whole thing, how things work. Because we're not going to have toilet tokens, obviously, not going to be using either 2.0 by your chips tokens, or your sushi.

I don't know, DeFi. I don't know what the hell is that thing. You can do all that thing on Bitcoin. Let's just end it there. That's the whole thing. It's pointless. People do pointless things.

They throw money at it because of inflation. People have, who have a lot of money, basically, who scammed a lot of money in their life. They're showing money at these protocols. And they just want to have more money, basically.

They want to speculate. They want to get rich. Really fucking rich. And they don't care about the rest of the things. They look at this one. They read hundreds of my papers every day. Probably not.

But it's crazy what they're doing. And they still don't realize that Bitcoin is the only thing that exists. And they need to improve upon it. And I'm pretty sure I'm confident that Bitcoin is improving, that I don't need to use a shit coin in order to get privacy or other things to get by.

If I remain calm and quiet, and I don't advertise myself completely in the open with my real-life name, then I'm going to be probably fine. And other is going to be fine also, because the government will kill itself.

It will sort of kill itself, basically. And they will be people who already bought Bitcoin. They will be the ones who will be reforming the world and helping to rebuild. And I think that's the important part that people totally forget.

That we have to be impatient. People have different types of high-time preference. And I want to go into the privacy side of it, but it's really a bad thing. But people need to calm down and take a step back, and think long-term.

Not short-term. Because if you're thinking short-term, you're going to end up in really bad places, basically. There's a lot to navigate through. It's such a big idea that I think a lot of the shit coiny stuff is just people trying to scam other people and then stupid fuckers just falling for it.

And that's kind of basically the economy. But the opposite to that, the pleb-life, low-time preference, stacking stats, holding is completely different to that, and it's so refreshing to see.

It's such a nice place to be around other Bitcoin plebs, because their view of the world is so different to the fiat culture, that fiat fuckery that we see everywhere else. And it's very clear to me that that's the one that wins.

You rightly said that there's a lot to be done with privacy. There's a lot to be done with a lot of the aspects of Bitcoin. But one thing that I think we've got really going for it is this culture.

And it's a really fucking cool culture. I really love it. It is. It is really cool. Yeah. Even out of people, this whole culture wouldn't exist. And it's cool that Bitcoin basically organically regenerates this culture.

And people consume it. They also create it. Gold never really created this type of culture. They just created civilization to use it as money. They were objects of wealth, putting it into earrings and things like that.

But with Bitcoins completely different, it changes society. It changes people's thinking and their behavior. And they are grateful for that. And it somehow manages to create culture this way.

And it's really cool. There's art, there's music, there's memes, loads of it. And it's really amazing. Yeah, I think that's really the reason we started 21ism is to show these seven different categories and to showcase what is happening each block each month within Bitcoin culture and show it in the best way that we can and have it

for historical context in the future. Because it's such an exciting thing. And there is so much going on all the time. There's so much incredible art and music and memes and all of this stuff.

And it's just, you know, apart from the fact that I really think this is going to change things and make the world a better place, I really just have a lot of fun. You know, it's just like, it's a lot of people who are just joining together, having a laugh, trying to push things forward, creating these memes.

And when the rest of the world is crumbly, there's this shining light and this hope. And that's Bitcoin and pleb life, which is, it's fun to be a part of. It is. Well, look, I really loved the book, what I managed to read of it, you know, being completely honest, I didn't get through the whole thing.

I just was a bit short notice, but I really look forward to getting it in my hands. I really look forward to hopefully hearing Guy Swan read it. And yeah, I think that this is going to be a great one.

I love that this is focused on this social layer and around trust. I think people are going to love it. Before we close up the call, I just want to say for anyone who is listening to this and thinking you would like to get hold of this book, where they can find it.

And also to point them towards your podcast is Bitcoin rehab, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Bitcoin rehab.net anywhere else that you can point them to. Not really, that's obviously. Okay. I have my post on Cidolle21.com.

And I sometimes contribute to Bitcoin magazine. That's obviously. Well, yeah. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for taking the time to write the book. It is really great to have another book in the space.

I look forward to diving in properly with it. And yeah, thanks for coming on the show. I really enjoyed it. No problem. And thanks a lot, man.