EP94 Bitcoin and the social layer with @DaddyWarbits

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

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

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

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is with Daddy Warbits.

You might recognize the name from Twitter. He's been involved in traditional finance for a very long time, and it was interesting to hear his perspective on things. Don't get me wrong, although he is involved in traditional finance, this guy is a proper Bitcoiner through and through.

I really enjoyed this conversation. We had a long chat offline as well. I sometimes wish we had those recorded, to be honest. Sometimes they're the best parts, but at nearly two hours, I thought maybe it would have to be two parts or get them on again.

But yeah, I really, really enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed listening. And before we dive in, I just want to say thank you to the sponsors. Firstly, thank you to Point 4 UK. If anyone's listening to this, and you're not taking my advice, and you're not buying no KYC, and I do understand that sometimes it is tricky,

and when you're first getting in, you might just think, "Ah, you know what? "I just need to get some Bitcoin." There's nothing wrong with that. Just know the trade-offs. But if you are going to buy some Bitcoin, and you are going to go KYC, then there really is nowhere better.

That's coin floor UK. Next up is crypto cloaks. Crypto cloaks are absolutely awesome. They have got some incredible products. We actually featured them pretty early on for 21ism because all of us absolutely loved what they were doing.

You can personalize your node cases. They do block mitts. They do all sorts of things. They have those 3D printers running all day, every day, and orders are coming in fast. So check them out at cryptocloaks.com.

Enjoy the show.

Time to perfection on the dot to the second. I like it. How are you? Very well. How are you? Oh, you know, I'm like everyone right now. I'm all over the place, but I'm good. I heard the bottle pop.

What are we drinking? (chuckles) This is tequila, four de liza. I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce it. Oh, very nice. That was a new bottle pop. I got a couple minutes behind here, so I'm behind on my setup, but I'm settled in now.

Cool. What setup have you got? No, you know, this is kind of a, I've got a little office that I carved out in my basement. It's just got a little next-ago webcam, probably spying on me, but I got it early on for the Zoom economy.

So yeah, I needed a, nothing fancy. Yeah, me too. I'm currently in a sweat box at the moment, no air corn and can't have the fan 'cause the mic picks it up, which is good. You're in a small, are you in an apartment setup?

I heard you say recently, you haven't been getting out much lately, or have you been cooped up inside? Yeah, I've been cooped up inside just working on all sorts of things for 21ism and the show and lots of editing and videos and all sorts of things.

So yeah, I've been stuck in, but we've got a house at the moment and, you know, we're backing right onto a river and nice fields and stuff. So it's not that there's nowhere to go. It's just that I've just haven't had the time to get out.

So I need to make the most of it. But the house should be going in three weeks. It fingers crossed everything going well with the solicitors and everything. It should be gone. And then I'll be stacking very, very hard.

Very good. Yeah, we look forward to following that, seeing how it goes. But yeah, it's been crazy the last, like you must feel more so than me even the kind of the roller coaster. And I don't even mean the price roller coaster.

I just mean, I was thinking about this. Like, do you ever get sick of people talking to you about Bitcoin, right? Because I spent so long not having people to talk to about it in my own life.

And still most of the people that I care about, you know, showing why this is the future, they don't seem keen to hear it. But now it's like it's the global news cycle has now been hijacked by it.

So all of a sudden, you know, like with this pipeline hack and you get like all the people that I've been talking to about this at work, we're starting to see investments in the Bitcoin industry.

And this is an institutional finance world. But it's all, when you talk about it with those people in that world, it really isn't the same. It actually, you know, it's just not as, it's not the same as when you talk about it with proper Bitcoiners if that term is allowed.

Yeah, no, definitely. I know exactly what you mean. I assume that's your sort of, you're in traditional finances, a career, are you or? Yeah, I am, it's been, I've done it for, God, almost a little less than two decades now, like probably 15 years, 16 years.

But it's been harder and harder to do since like that. That's actually really how I got into Bitcoin was the global financial crisis. And I think before that, I was one of the libertarian leaning types and then kind of found Ron Paul during his campaigns.

And then when I saw the whole thing fall apart before my eyes, but then get put back together in a way that seemed not to fix any of the problems, that was a major kind of awakening thing.

And it's so odd because I've been struggling with that for a little over a decade now with trying to reconcile how crazy the world of finances, but also what else am I supposed to do? Yeah, a lot has changed in the last 12 months because I think at this point, I might have had doubts prior to that

about whether or not I was maybe just being, I don't even know if they're too idealistic or something like that. But seeing what's happened over the last 12 months and in particular, the last like this year to date, starting with what happened with GameStop and those equities, I just, I can't, you can never go back

after you've seen that kind of thing. It's just, it's an untenable position. But yeah, it's traditional finance and Bitcoin is starting to make its way into that world. So now I field questions from people who are all of a sudden experts that I work with and one guy yesterday is like, oh, so it turns out you can really hack

these Bitcoin passwords a lot more easily than you were talking about. I'm just, no. So yeah, that's where we are. That must be very interesting coming from that background and having these conversations because, like you said, the conversations that you're gonna have with proper Bitcoin as people who are here for a reason,

people who have taken the time to study, people who really understand the implications that this technology is gonna have on the world is a totally different conversation to somebody who has been involved for a couple of weeks, sees number go up.

They think they know everything because of, you know, because they have a traditional finance background. They think, oh, well, if I understand that, I've understand these markets, then I must understand Bitcoin.

And I imagine it's quite laughable these conversations. Like you just said that the hacking of a Bitcoin wallet because they've read some stupidity online. You just think, how long is it gonna take for these guys to catch up?

Like, what is it gonna take for them to understand? Or do you think they won't ever understand because you have to be searching for something already to really understand and bother to learn?

- Yeah, it depends right on how long it takes for this to, if it truly is inevitable, it depends on how long it takes for them to just get dragged into it with no alternative, you know. And I think that's right.

Like, in a weird way, it's fitting, right? Like, it's the reverse of the Contillant Effect in the sense that these guys are the, in theory, they should be the best position to understand this thing.

They're in financial markets every day. They can see what's happening with, you know, the repo markets in real time. They saw what happened with the financial crisis. They see what's happening with the money printing.

But they'll, they will be last to get to Bitcoin. You know, like, I've been thinking about it because so the, I have a guy that I've worked with since 2008. And I know that I've spoken with Bitcoin to him.

Like, we spoke about Bitcoin as early as say, you know, 2014, like just before Mt. Gox. And throughout my career, I've sort of been consistently telling him about this thing. And he's always laughed it off.

And then last year in the fall was the first time he started to not laugh it off. And then in the, you know, the winter, turn of the year after the election in the U.S. And he started to think that maybe the political regime that he lived in isn't as secure as he once thought it was.

You know, he's become, he's now like outstacked me. And he's gone, kind of gone ape on it. But it took him that long. And the funny thing about it is we still, and I think people like him who manage money on behalf of other people, they still feel as though it's too risky and not the right investment for their mandates, for their clients.

So it's like the very last money that will come into this is going to be that big institutional, you know, stodgy money. And in some ways, I think that's kind of beautiful, right? Like you had idealistic crypto anarchists who were first to it.

And then the people that wanted to roll up their sleeves and figure out how the technology works, how to mine, and then it slowly makes its way through the internet ideological networks for lack of a better word.

And, you know, here we are wondering when the Lords of Finance are going to realize. - It's beautiful, really. It makes it all the better to know that because it gives other people a chance, gives a chance to reshape things.

And the last people we really want involved are the people who fucked everything up in the first place, in my opinion. So like, I'm quite happy about it. And obviously you're going to have the odd person, like yourself, who is already in these markets.

You understand the traditional financial markets, but then you've seen this. And for whatever reason, it's spoken to you and you've bothered to actually go, right, well, I'm going to do a deep dive on this and now you are where you are.

But it feels like some people are predisposed to it. And I don't know whether it is how you've been brought up or whether it's just life experiences or whether it, I don't know, it seems there's normally a common thread and normally freedom and being completely sick to death of how the world is currently working.

And you find this thing and you're like, this is answering so many questions. Like the questions are already there, but you haven't found the answer. And then this feels like just the answer.

So that's what makes you dive deeper. And I wonder maybe some of these guys just don't see the problem because life's okay for them. I don't know, what's your view on that? - Yeah, that has a lot to do with it.

The life's okay, phenomenon like it. And you can imagine when you're talking to people like this about why you would want wealth that you can cross borders with in your head or why you would want to be able to move in stealth and understand the privacy aspects.

And to have that kind of untraceable, uncomfortable, immutable money, it makes all the sense in the world to people like us. But when you sit in a meeting where people are talking about how many basis points of spread they can earn on a government bond and they're living off interest

and everything is fine, it's such a foreign concept for them to consider anything but that. Like it's an inability to imagine the world existing any way other than the way it exists right now, even though history's full of examples of paradigm shifts.

But the other interesting thing is the people on the flip side, 'cause as you ask about what's the common denominator, it really is a good question because the other thing I think about it are all the handful of friends I made pre-Bitcoin who were the radical libertarian Ron Paul types in we live in an area that's otherwise very blue,

progressive, woke, very anti-freedom, very nanny state. And none of them, they're all still no-coaters after all this time. So it's amazing because they have all of the pieces as well. They have all of the tools to understand it.

They know how wrong everything is. They probably have some physical gold or they have some gold and a vault that someone like Peter Schiff sold them. But yeah, it's not even like sometimes the people who are ideologically ready for it just aren't ready for the technological side of it.

They're not ready to invest in something they don't understand and force themselves to understand something that's brand new. So it's a challenge. And I think that's an important thing to keep in mind.

Like none of this is gonna happen overnight even though at times it feels like it's right around the corner. It's almost like we just have to keep this thing alive in our lifetime and let next generations take it forward.

Have you given thought to what might have made you align with this technology or make you recognize it so quickly? You mentioned 2008 and you were working in financial markets at the time.

Was that something and you said, oh, this has been then pieced back together in a way that obviously didn't please you? Was it something you were already searching for? Were you looking at what had happened in 2008 and you were like, fuck, this is really bad.

Like there has to be something else. Or was it sort of you stumbled across this and then put the pieces together? I think probably, well, more like the former but I also, I caveat like in a huge way, I try to always assume that I don't know the shit.

You know what I mean? Like I always try to assume that it just happens that way. And it used to be detrimental in a way. I would always think everyone knew more than me and that would let, you know, I may be in an industry where it's how compelling you can be with your case.

It's usually how loud you can bark and how much you can talk over someone else or how much you can bullshit. So I always approached everything as though like, what, like more from a perspective of, I need to figure out what's going on because I assumed everyone else knew what was going on and I just sort of needed to play catch up.

I think the, like I came across Austrian economics before I'd heard about Bitcoin just reading the intro to libertarian philosophy and economics kind of stuff. And so I would like sit and stew in that all day.

I think, and even when I first heard about Bitcoin, it took years before I was able to figure out how, well, a year or so to figure out how to buy it. And then I lost it because, you know, Mt. Gox and then sort of you put it on the back burner for a while and then you kind of revisit it again.

And it probably wasn't until actually trying, you know what it was? It was forcing myself to learn how to take self custody that really made it click how all of it works together. And that was when it went from being something other than just a nice idea in theory to something that was more tangible for me and you could really understand.

So there was a lot of priming on the economic side and just the idea that human beings should be able to interact on a voluntary basis with as little interference as we as a society or people can manage.

And, you know, I don't really know what that means except to say that I tend to think in minimal interventions into people's free and voluntary interactions. And this all lined up with that ethos.

It was all really cool to learn about that. But then, you know, it's like once you actually start rolling up your sleeves, you take possession, you do, you see how it works. And it starts to change the way you think about things.

Again, this gets back to the last 12 months seeing, it's almost like you look at the parallel economies that we live in right now, the parallel world, right? You have one world where everyone's negative, everyone's looking to, you know, figure out who they can take from next to pay the next guy.

It's very dishonest. You know, there's nothing optimistic about it. It's fighting for scraps, right? And then on the flip side, you've got this world of, once you start looking at the people who are motivated in this Bitcoin economy, you see the optimism.

You see, you know, you see passion. You see people who are saying like, look, we only have rights because they're rights that we can take. And that's exactly what we're doing. So it's really, it was that.

I don't think it was anything about, and look, it's a progression too. Like it's, I'm sure that everyone's thinking about what this, how this fits into our individual lives and our life as a global community of Bitcoin users, that's gonna evolve over time.

But I think it was, you know, primes for the economics of it. The tech came really hard and still comes very hard, although the improvements that we've seen in the last couple of years are just like, again, 18 months is mind-boggling how much more, you know, how many more tools we have.

But what's really hit at home is seeing how much the network is growing and propagating and like the most interesting things. Like what you're doing with mesh-to-dells and the permaculture stuff, like people bringing, not just the econ to it, but bringing the best of their, what they used to do in fiat world

or what they were passionate about in fiat world, whether it's 'cause they have time now or whether it's because they've decided to reprice their time, you know, bringing that to Bitcoin.

That's been the most interesting thing to see is like, this is the ticket to participating in that economy with those people. And to me, like, you know, that's what we're buying. Like that's why you own Bitcoin.

- Yeah, I completely get that. And it's interesting you like the permaculture side and the mesh-to-dell idea because I've always sort of thought, oh, well, anyone who's really deep in finance and knowledgeable with that will probably sort of stay in their lane and they'll find, 'cause it's, you know,

these rabbit holes are, as we all know, they're endless. Whichever route you wanna take is just endless. And I always thought, well, these financial guys are gonna come in, they're gonna find the finance side interesting and they're gonna then stay in that lane.

But what I'm finding is a lot of people get to a point where they go, I can't be more confident in what's happening. I can't be more confident in where I've placed my money, but then what's next?

And like, if we are gonna build these new communities, if we are gonna build like social layers on top of Bitcoin and we use that as the, you know, the layer of trust and then we have trade between Bitcoiners and all these things that are discussed.

Like that's where it really gets interesting because after a while, I found for me anyway, you know, I don't come from a financial background. I was involved in property and some bits and pieces, but not, you know, traditional finance.

And I got to a point about a year and a half in where I just went, ah, not really, I don't really find this interesting anymore. I'm confident enough that I don't need to look at any more, you know, million graphs a day.

I don't need to run the numbers every day. I don't need to look at the price every day because I can see it, like I can feel what's going on. I can feel there's a draw here. And then those other things are what become really interesting.

And actually, I think they're what are going to move the price as well because they're going to bring other types in, you know, the permaculture stuff. You might have somebody who has no interest in finance, no interest in the freedom aspect.

But then they're like, oh, what's this permaculture thing? And they hear about what Bitcoiners are doing. And it draws more and more normal people in, which I think is not necessary, but it would be nice, wouldn't it?

It'd be nice to have more people have a chance to jump on this life raft. - Absolutely, absolutely, and that's the thing about, you know, everyone talks about the circular economy and bootstrapping that, and that is definitely the, that's where, that's the only part of it that we as individuals control in some ways, right?

Like we can hold Bitcoin, we can use Bitcoin, and then we can choose to do things with our lives that, you know, that build that economy. And that's the challenge right now. It seems you probably will have thought something similar.

You wanna give more of your time and effort and your energy to it, but then you also think, right, well, I've gotta pay the bills. Maybe I have a family or I'm trying to start a family. So I can't necessarily totally sever my fiat paycheck.

And, you know, you also never feel like you own enough. So any extra fiat you can put aside and convert like you wanna do that as well. But, unless you're a dev or, you know, like it's very, it, up to this point, it hasn't been obvious how an average person can just sort of like participate in the Bitcoin economy.

But I think that's changing now with all of these people bringing their various interests into it and, you know, maybe Bitcoin is secondary where they found it because they found us through something else.

But that's the part that I think is gonna be the most interesting to watch. Putting aside, you know, the financial guys, like you talk about that, that's, I go back and forth between viewing that as a risk and as just irrelevant speed bump.

And I think you kind of have to believe it's the latter. Like, if we can't survive people over financializing Bitcoin, then, you know, then Bitcoin was not properly conceived from the beginning.

But fortunately, I think it was. And by that, I mean, like, I think we're gonna have a tide of that to sort of deal with like re-hypotication and, you know, Bitcoin derivative products and people thinking the value of a Bitcoin is one thing because it's manipulated.

And that manipulation can persist for a long time. But, you know, ultimately, we all know one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin. And if we're building things completely away from that to the extent possible, then, like, I think that's the goal is to isolate yourself from the, from that outside world as much as you possibly can afford to.

And that's the decos back to why it's frustrating that now the, unfortunately, the Bitcoin is permeating into my fiat world and it's actually, you know, making, it's a negative in some ways because now it's like a, a part of my day that I have to talk to, you know, to finance bros who are looking for the next green coin

as part of my day job. - Yeah, I can imagine that's incredibly frustrating because the normal conversations I have with no coiners are pretty surface level. So, you know, you get the normal, like, a text every time the price dumps and you're like, oh, yeah.

Well, Elon's not so interested in this anymore. Obviously, it's not gonna be, it's not gonna work, is it? And you're like, oh, just fuck off. And then you get the text, like, you know, a couple of weeks later, oh, how do I buy?

You know, what am I doing? And that is annoying enough. But where I really find it frustrating is the ones who have sort of ignored you for years and years and years and then they get involved.

And then they're suddenly the expert and they're telling you everything that you've told them for however many years. And I actually find that really annoying because it's like, the conversations you wanna be having are ones where you're learning.

And that's kind of the thing that's like, why I made this pod? 'Cause I got so sick to death of firstly, like no one wanted to talk to me. And if they were gonna talk to me, it was so surface level and so basic that it was irritating.

So I was like, well, how do I speak to people that I can learn from? And that's kind of how this came about because that is the exciting thing, not just... I don't know, maybe you've had the same thing.

You just get to a point where it's just not fucking interesting anymore. It's just like, you've seen every model, you've seen every graph, you've seen everyone comparing it to every other asset.

You've seen it all and you've heard it all. And it's like, well, I'm not learning anymore. I'm literally just like, I'm giving myself opium and just hyping myself up, which is like fun for a bit, but you do hit a war.

It's like, yeah, I know, let's learn something new. - Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. It's not a... And the other thing about it is if you approach it trying to like trade or, you know, again, that goes back to that mentality.

And maybe it's not as second nature for everyone, but I do think it's becoming second nature and obvious to at least... Like, I don't talk to any of the Bitcoiners out there, but for a handful, but listening to, you know, it's all the amazing content that's out there.

You kind of hear it. You know, it's one thing for the people to be like, I don't know if you saw Max Kaiser get up there at the conference and you'd be like, "Oh, we're never gonna sell like that rah rah stuff."

That's all, that's cool. Like, that's all well and good. But you hear something different when, again, going back to, I hate to say, proper Bitcoiners, but the kind of people that are using Bitcoin as a building block in their life, rather than as like, "Okay, I'm gonna try to time markets "and I'm gonna try to become fiat wealth.

"I'm gonna have visions." Like, and look, you know, I did the same thing, obviously. Every time, every pump that I've lived through, I've like extrapolated that pump three or four pumps forward.

And I've thought about myself having like a staff and a yacht and like a big house and all that cool stuff. And you can't help but do that sometimes. But now, and I think this is why it's become so much more of an emotional rollercoaster, even though the price has never mattered.

Like, the price matters less now to me than it ever has, but it's also become much more of a rollercoaster for me because it feels like now we're approaching, we're fast approaching the point where this is no longer just a nice option to have, but a necessity.

You know, you see, like, I mean, the world was just locked down, right, like people were taken out of their houses at gunpoint for, you know, whatever local infraction they violated with respect to the movement restrictions and whatever else.

I mean, like, we seem to be going down or accelerating towards a really bad place. And so that's why this whole Bitcoin parallel economy has taken on new meaning. It's just way more important now than it ever has been.

So it makes the price way less relevant. Like, all you really care about is the network functioning, can my coins, you know, are my coins mine or my UTXO's mine, you know, and I figure out how to custody everything.

And this is a whole separate can of worms that I think are never ending struggle, but, you know, the basics of the custody game. Like, you want to be private, but you also want it to be able to outlive you.

And, you know, putting all those pieces together and forcing yourself to think about your family and intergenerational wealth, it really, you can't help but change the way you think when you're thinking in those terms.

So, yeah, you know, it's, in that regard, it really has, it takes a hold of certain people in a way that it doesn't take a hold of others. And I think seeing as many more people and hearing as many more voices from all over the world, that's the other great thing about listening to, you know, who you've spoken with is like,

you hear all these different accents, you hear people from all over the world. It's, you really do, 'cause I think that's one of the most powerful things about this is not just how, like the sheer numbers that we get, but it's the where.

It's where do we have people, you know, what are those, how activated are those people, how talented are those people, how engaged and committed are those people. And yeah, I, that's, so there's, there's this huge cause for optimism here, but you also feel how fragile it is because the world also seems to be closing in around it,

you know? Is this something that you've noticed for a long time, you know, you're mentioning the world just being a little bit crazy at the moment to say the least? Is this something that you've always seen?

Because it seems to me that the people that I tend to communicate with the most, this like core group on Bitcoin, Twitter and the people I've invited on the pod and people I've spent time with through '21 is them.

The more time I spend with them, the more I realized that like if we were at school, like we were kids, we'd probably have been quite similar and got on, questioned authority, you have a sort of fuck you streak in there that's like a, you know, I will not be told what to do.

And if something is wrong, it's wrong. And I won't yield on it. And it's something that like I've noticed with almost everyone that I deal with. And I wondered, is that something that you've had growing up?

- Were you always questioning and did you find that got you in trouble before you sort of found Bitcoin is before you found these other people that were very similar? - Yeah, you know, I was very, what would be defiant, I think would probably be the right word like rebellious and defiant, but not in a troublemaking way

'cause I always was, you know, it was a weird dynamic. Like the teachers, some really liked me, others really didn't like me at all, but it was always like, I guess it was a matter of, I always, yeah, I would call out the bullshit, but I wouldn't do it in a way that it was like, you know, just troublemaking for the sake of troublemaking.

It would more, it would be like, there had to be an art to it. Like you had to be calling someone out for something that was really, so I went to Catholic school, which may explain some of it if anyone, if anyone had been to Catholic school.

- Me too, me too. I went to a military Catholic school. - Yeah. - So you understand. So yeah, unfortunately, I think it's hard. I couldn't really, you hit something there that I probably need to go see a therapist about, but no, in truth, it was like, I got a lot of discipline out of it, but I ended up being this person who,

and maybe that was a good thing. Like I became a very independent thinker. I thought a lot of what, 'cause a lot of what we were being sold as unquestionable truth was clearly bullshit. And I think in retrospect, now that I'm thinking about it, that just made it so that at an early age, the encounter of something that was truly bullshit,

and obviously bullshit to say a 12-year-old coming from the authoritative mouth of a 70-year-old nun, you sort of, at that point, in a weird way, it's like you've seen the curtain fall a little bit.

So yeah, I definitely have had that streak, and I think that leads to more of like an independent streak where you think to yourself, you know, these people aren't, A, they may or may not have my best interests in mind, but it seems like they don't have their shit together, and so I, as a person, have to take accountability

and responsibility for myself, and that starts to lead you down the journey of, you know, a little bit of the prepper mentality, a little bit of the, okay, you should always have some food on hand in case things go wrong, you should have a bug out location.

So I think, yeah, the contrarianism and the defiance also has a flip side to it, which is an independence and a desire for autonomy and a desire to, you know, not be so dependent on other people, because then other people might tell you what you have to do in exchange for what it is you're depending on.

And I think that's probably how I am where I am. - Hmm, and it's that fairness thing as well. It's like, it's so often, especially like the few years leading up to finding Bitcoin, I'd been in enough industries and dealt with enough people that I had become a little bit disillusioned.

I was pretty sick of the way that things were working and I was just like, what was really pissing me off was fairness, which sounds like a little bit childish, but I was just like constantly feeling that things were not fair.

And I was dealing with, you know, dealing with council or dealing with solicitors or dealing with property sale or dealing with whatever it was. And it would always come to a point where it's like, well, whatever's the biggest organization, right or wrong, whether the rule makes any sense or not,

whether it's fair or not, they'll win and you're fucked. It was getting to a point where I was just like, ready to drop out of society completely. I was just like, I don't wanna deal with this shit anymore.

I fucking hate liars. I hate, I hate liars, I hate cheats, I hate all this shit. And I was just like in this horrible mess in my head. And then I found Bitcoin and I was like, once I once it clicked, I was like, oh fuck, like this is, this is like the old school sort of mentality of like trust and like actual agreements

and like none of the red tape and none of the bullshit and none of that. And like, oh my God, it got me excited. Like fuck it got me excited. And then the idea when people talk about price, you're like, you're saying like, it's not about the price.

It's really not. It's like, if for me it's just like, fuck you. Every single time that something's been unfair, every single time that someone's taking advantage or things are not set up in the correct way.

Like I just think of that and I think, nah, I can't sell. No way can I sell because I can't allow for this to continue. And I think once you've got that under your skin, it's like this rebellious like, no, I want change or I want nothing.

And once you get there, it doesn't matter if we're 10,000 or 100,000 a million, 10 million, it doesn't fucking matter. And there will be some things like, yeah, you go, okay, I want to pay off my mortgage or I want to make sure that my kids have what they need.

I want to make sure that we have a nice home or want the things like that. But outside of that, I'm never looking at like products or services, no looking at like a new pair of trainers or a new sofa or something and going, oh, that means more to me than sat because nothing really does.

It's funny, you're like, what are the words from that song? You're singing my life with your words. It's, there was definitely, and I think this was probably right around when I first heard about Bitcoin.

My wife and I were at a free state project conference. There was a project to get a bunch of Americans to figure out, you know, if we love freedom, what's the best state for freedom? And let's go there and try to affect change at the local level.

So we went to a seminar there and there was someone that talked about Bitcoin. But at that time, that was exactly where I was when you said disaffected, wanted to give it all. It was just like, I just wanted to, and I still, and this is the, come in full circle, I still want this, but at the time it was like, all I want to do is just sell

all this shit and I want to move out to a piece of land somewhere, I want to figure out how to grow my own food because at some point, you're not gonna, and we've been, I think we've been duped into thinking that we're still getting real quote unquote real food at the grocery store.

Like, I always assume that, you know, it would be harder and harder and harder to get whatever you want to like, organic, you know, grown the old fashioned way fruits and vegetables. I think it's actually impossible to do that at the grocery store now unless you have a local farmer that you trust you do it yourself.

But I thought it would be more like the supply chains wouldn't hold or something like that. And people would be forced to do it on their own. It turns out you just get a cheaper and cheaper replacement every year and you can keep it going for a long time.

But that was exactly, I was like, I want out of this whole economy, I don't want anything to do with this, I don't want to pay taxes to fund dishonest wars anymore. Like, and the fact of the matter is, like as much as I would complain about things and complain about things, you know, I'm still in that world taking that paycheck.

So you go in, so then every day you either have to confront the reality of like, okay, it's time for something different or I have to just shut up and accept that all of these things that I don't like about the world are the things that are actually, you know, that I'm working for every day.

That's what I'm coming in and giving my time to every day. So I complete, and that's what I mean like going back to it. You think about during all the pumps you project forward, you think about what it's gonna be like to be rich and et cetera, et cetera.

Now it's like, I think about, I just, the success, like, you know, Grand Slam home run would be that it's very hard for most people somehow to figure out how to do anything other than scrape by.

And if you know someone who can support you in a local citadel, who's, you know, like someone's got access to food, we have logistics. And this is pie in the sky, but we have our own logistics networks, we have our own communications networks.

To me, like living on a homestead site, where I just mostly like feed my family throughout the day and then enjoy their company by night, that's the dream now, that's the moon, right? The moon is basically living like a peasant in Europe in five, 600 years ago, but with a little bit of modern technology.

- Mm, yeah, 'cause what you're buying is time. And you sort of learn eventually that that's the most valuable thing. And like I went through all that. I had a bit of a weird, I never like gone into it fully on the show, 'cause I don't wanna dox myself.

I have a very fucking weird childhood. And it forced me very, very young to take responsibility for myself. And so I then got obsessed with having stability, 'cause it was very, very unstable.

So I had this obsession from about probably like 10 or nine or something that I was gonna buy a house. That was like my thing. I was just like, I'm gonna fucking buy a house. And so I would, like from about seven, eight, nine, I was selling porn on floppy disks.

I was, yeah, like seriously, I was like sneaking in, like getting the images. People do it to order of like, you know, like I want lesbians and I'd be like, cool. I can provide that. And so, and I was still the floppy disks from the computer department.

- What do you fit on that? You fit like five, five, six pictures? - Yeah, like not a lot. Like it was, yeah, you know, five, six, 10, whatever. - That's a tough thing, you know? - Yeah, time for 10 was at the point.

(laughing) And so I'd sell them. And then, you know, your mark up was 100% 'cause I nicked the floppy disks. And then I'd go and buy cigarettes so I could sell them. And just it would go on and on and on.

And so that was my obsession was I want money, I want stability, I want a home. And so I bought my first property at like, 16, no, 15, I bought my first property. And I was so excited and I was like, oh my God, this is, I'm like, you know, I'm gonna be my own man, I've got this stuff.

And it took about another 10 years to realize it doesn't matter how many properties you have, it doesn't matter what car you're driving, it doesn't matter what clothes you're wearing, what girl you're fucking, you are not gonna be happy unless you feel you have purpose.

And I didn't, like, nothing I was doing in life to earn the money was actually meaning anything or fixing anything or helping anyone. So I felt like shit. And nothing that I did would allow me more time 'cause I was only piling on more and more and more things to do to make more money.

So you get to a point where you're like, I have no time, I can't enjoy the things I have anyway, they don't make me feel good anyway. And so you get to this, like, not peak, but like, I had the things that I dreamt of when I was a kid and I was so deeply unhappy from it that that's the point where you go, fuck,

what is there then, you know? And so just really, really lucky to find Bitcoin because otherwise I don't know where it would have gone. It would have been like, well, there's no point to anything then, is there?

Because I can't fix these bigger structures, I can't fix what's wrong in the world. And then what's the point? But that's where this Bitcoin is hope, Bitcoin is like, we can see real change and we can have these moments like you're saying, you want to live on a farm, you've got your family, you can sit out and barbecue

with them and tell stories and enjoy each other company and teach your children rather than just send them off to some school and never see them and pass on your knowledge and not just your genetics, but like principles and ideas to the future generations.

And once that clicks, you're like, okay, this is life, like this is what it's about and this is how you enjoy it. - When I'm curious, when you said it was like, first of all, that was, it's pretty fucking amazing that you managed to figure out how to buy yourself real property at an age when most of us were like, you know,

dicking around in high school, trying to chase cheerleaders and things like that. So you said it was like, you know, even better. So you said it was like 20-ish year, like what was it that made you have that realization of, like I guess what I was, 'cause it's very similar, I would call it self-actualization.

It happened around the same time for me, I want to say it, so I was going to silence the phone, I thought I did. When did that happen and do you remember like, what was it just discovering Bitcoin that you were like, you know, all of a sudden everything else makes sense or was there something else where you said,

I have to like take a more active role in my own happiness in life? - Mm, no, it was a mixture of starting painting again and Bitcoin that sort of came along at the same time. So I completely threw like a temper tantrum, wobbly, quit my job, closed down my business, stopped doing all my work,

just completely fucking just, I was like, nope, not doing it anymore, fuck this shit, completely broke down and then just started painting all day, all night, seven days a week, just getting high from the moment I woke up to the minute I slept, just paint, paint, paint, smoke, smoke, smoke, like listen to fucking weird podcasts

and all learn about all different random shit while I'm doing it and I found Bitcoin in that time when I was like open to other possibilities and the anger that was running through my head, like I already understood the basement of money, I already understood from property why these assets go up,

I already had an understanding of like how unfair things were and that's why I think when I found Bitcoin in that time, I was still pretty depressed when I was doing my painting and stuff, but it was like a coping mechanism and I found this and, you know, probably took a year until it like really clicked,

but yeah, completely filled me with hope, completely changed my outlook, completely, I don't know, yeah, rewired my brain. - So this is, I'm gonna put you on the spot with this one, but like let's just say tomorrow, somehow something came along and nuked Bitcoin.

I don't know what that is, it's funny 'cause people spend a lot of time thinking adversarially and we're all concerned about these edge cases and all these crazy things that could happen that will ruin it for us.

Like when you actually sit down and try to plan out, like, okay, so explain to me the demise of Bitcoin, it actually, it's pretty hard to do now that I'm thinking about it, like what would kill it for you tomorrow, but let's just say there was a double spend, so somehow some way it's like, or put it this way,

you know how there's always those questions that you ask no corners when you say, and someone else told me this, so I don't wanna take, but when you say to a no corner, what would it take to change your mind?

Like at what point would you re-evaluate things and say perhaps I was wrong? So let's say that happened tomorrow and you all of a sudden thought, I'm completely wrong about this, what would you do?

- Good question, I'm gonna steal that, you should do your own podcast, that's a good question. - I'm asking because that's like, when I say, you know, the emotional rollercoaster thing, like that's the one thing, and I think that's in some ways why it's so obvious that this is what's worth fighting for in the world,

is you know, like what else is there that's more important for, you know, it really and truly, like there's really nothing worth my time more than making sure that when my kids are, you know, when they have children, when their children have children, that there's, even if they don't, like look,

even if they don't, somehow I fuck up my multi-sig configuration and a lawyer steals it or something, like even if they don't have whatever Bitcoin I'm gonna try to leave them. If we can leave Bitcoin to humanity, it seems like there's nothing that's more worthy of our time than that.

'Cause it really does, I mean, it's hard to imagine what we would be doing right now. I mean, look, we'll figure it out, right? People will still talk, people will still network. We still have, you know, common rallying cries and common things that we care about, but, but man, you know, that's why I say

it's such an emotional rollercoaster because anytime you think that there's a possibility that the existence of Bitcoin comes into question. Like, you know, that is a hill that I think you have to be willing to, maybe we're not all gonna line up and die on that hill, but there's probably some pretty drastic things

we're willing to do before we get off that hill. - Oh, for sure. Yeah, it would, I thought fairly deeply about this because I've realized that I've tied my hopes, my future, and a lot of, like, a lot of my personalities tied up in it, I'd feel quite lost if it went away.

I'd feel quite, not quite, I'd feel very lost. I'd feel very, well, all my hope would probably completely disappear because yes, there may be something else and humans are good at inventing stuff and will probably come up with something hopefully, but, the rest of the world, like, outside of Bitcoin to me

is so bleak with everything that's going on. Like, I'm really, really, really concerned. And so if it went away, yeah, it would crush me, I think. Like, I don't, like, being realistic with myself, I'd like to say, oh yeah, I'd move on, I'd be fine, but I don't think I would, I'd be very, very, very sad.

- I feel the same way, and that's why I kind of wanted to ask because it worries me to some degree, you know, as a person, as I'm sure many of us are, who's interested in just making sure that we're as strong as we can be on the inside, you know, like diamond hands mentally, right?

It's important to think about what happens if this isn't it. Now, fortunately, again, I think it is it, but I think that also just goes to reinforcing, you know, that, when you think about what am I gonna do with the next minute of my time, the next hour?

Like, what am I gonna start building towards 20, 30, 50, 100 years hence? Like, that's, I don't really know anything else that I could say that about that if, like even things that you used to, the United States Constitution, you'd say, oh, well, if that didn't, if there was no United States Constitution,

then, you know, my whole world would fall. Like, I can't really think of anything comparable, you know, obviously a person, you can have devastating life experiences that affect you as an individual, family issues, you know, death, like loss, that kind of thing, putting all that aside, as people, I just can't think of anything

that's more precious to us than this. And like, you know, so that's why I think whenever you have those moments all the time where you doubt it and you're like, you know, could this really be, you know, am I diluting myself?

Am I coping? Am I looking for an escape from a really shitty situation? And this happens to be, like, even if that's true, I think it's worth it, right? It's worth the effort, it's worth the time.

And as you said, if we don't have something meaningful to struggle for, then you really will, I just, I don't see how you find happiness without struggling without meaning. - Yeah, and the friendships along the way, you know, I've made strong, this is another thing I thought of and, you know, a question for you is like,

would you, I assume you're fairly deep into this, like I am, like, again, won't fully doctor myself, but 90 plus percent of my net worth is in this thing and then it will be as close to 100 soon.

And so if the thing went to zero, would you trade the experiences, the knowledge and the people that you've met for, you know, would you go back and change it or would you accept it? Because to me, the value is not just in the asset, the value is in the networks around it.

And for me, certainly, I've met some of my best friends. I've met people who, like, literally today, if I went and reached out, I had an issue today and if I'd have reached out to any family or any friend outside of Bitcoin, they wouldn't have helped me.

They just wouldn't have, no question. I know they wouldn't. And someone straight away in my Bitcoin networks like, look, whatever you need, I'm here, I'll do it, just tell me. And to me, that's invaluable and I wondered, would you, if it went to zero, would you feel like you'd lost or would you still feel like you'd gained?

- So one thing is, when you say if it went to zero, it could, I'm actually psychologically prepared for a scenario where it goes to, quote, unquote, zero and it still works. And I don't quite know what that looks like, but just assume that you couldn't exchange it for fiat period.

And so, therefore, the dollar price was zero because no one who has fiat on an exchange, there's no observable market for the price of Bitcoin. I still think it could work in that scenario.

So even if it, quote, unquote, goes to zero, like if we're assuming there's no blockchain that's printing blocks every 10 minutes and the whole project has failed, then I have to say, yeah, I agree with you, that's one of the things that's come with the shift in time preference and a lot of it has changed due to not going

to an office every day. I just do this kind of intellect. Like I do the mental math for myself. I think, all right, I used to spend 10 to 11 hours a day, five days a week in an office with the same half dozen people, dozen people, you know, that I've seen more or less with some revolving door, but more or less the same people

for the last decade plus. And I think about how much time I spend talking to them now. And I don't really talk to them at all. But before, it used to be like, hey, you know, you wanna go grab a bite to eat for lunch.

You wanna have our lunch together. You wanna get a cup of coffee. You would have these friends that were friends only because it was a matter of you're both in the same place at the same time.

And then at the same time, I also have been very diligent and like purposeful about, I hate to say it, but cutting people out of my life over the last 12 months who aren't on the shared mission.

Because for the reasons we just talked about like, there are people whose names I probably will never know who are nims on end-to-end encrypted chat services who I'm like, in a weird way, those are my people.

Like, those are my friends now. And I've got a lot, so if I take all of the time that I used to invest in my coworker relationships and my professional network and, you know, my college friends, when the best you would get was, let's go out and have drinks.

It'll be a fun time. We'll all have a bad hangover tomorrow and then we'll all move on with our lives. And there's no, like, there's no thought to even, what are we gonna do together next weekend or in a year from now?

Forget about what kind of civilization are we gonna build to bequeat to our descendants the way Bitcoin people think, right? Like, when you shift from the world of transactional social relationships to, you know, I'm gonna invest my time in people that I care about.

And these aren't even, this isn't even a Bitcoin thing per se, like, I have a few friends who, I've just taken more of an interest in what they're doing because I believe in what they're doing.

And I think that, you know, my time is better spent. Like, I wanna help enrich them to the extent that I can and I wanna be enriched by them over a much longer time horizon than drinks tonight or lunch at the office tomorrow.

And so in that regard, it really has changed the way I deal with my time from a social allocation. And yeah, I think it would be a, it would be almost as big, I mean, it might be a bigger disappointment like play the other scenario out.

Let's say number go up to infinity and we all have a lot of paper wealth but somehow they manage to cut off our lines of communication and you couldn't meet random strangers on the internet who have the same life experience and the same concerns and the same objectives as you.

That's almost equally if not more depressing. So yeah, I think I agree a wholeheartedly. If it turns out that none of the things that I think work about Bitcoin work but I have all these people and we've all found alignment on these core principles and this idea that truth matters more than anything else,

then yeah, I'll fucking take that. - It's just different, isn't it? Like these conversations and these experiences with people from my past, a lot of them. And I think like, what do we talk about though?

What was the conversation, like how deep did it run and looking back about as deep as it got was some nonsense to do with politics where you're deciding if something's a good idea or a bad idea without the nuance of like both ideas are fucking retarded.

Like you go left or right, it's just dumb. Like you could Brexit or not Brexit, it's dumb. Like whatever you do is fucked. And that was about as deep as it gets. And now I only like you say like getting pissed and just like, you know, you feeling like shit the next day.

And now the conversations that I'm having with Bitcoiners are about generational wealth. They're about how to build the citadel. They're about how to change the world. They're about how to do these brilliant things and the conversations are so much deeper.

Like people would like reach out to me who I've never met and you know, they are the internet nims that I speak to. And they'll ask me like real questions like, you're all right, mate, how are you doing?

Like you've seen a bit down the other day where you say, you know, whatever it is and they're genuine concern for people's happiness and how they're doing. And is there anything I can help you with?

And that's always reciprocated, of course, but it is sort of the polar opposite of the fiat culture, which is exactly as you say, you know, working nuts off in an office, come out, get absolutely plastered, talk about nonsense.

And then you repeat the whole thing again. And it feels like a big distraction. You know, all of the things that are being discussed now are sit with a normally, you know, a year ago it was, oh, what do you think about Brexit?

You go left or did you go right? Like fuck off, I don't care. Now it's, oh, what do you think about this new COVID rule? You know, and you're just like, oh, just fuck off. Like just, can we not like have a conversation that is not red versus blue or left versus right?

We not have just a conversation about something deeper because the things they're discussing, they don't understand at all. They're just reeling it off some fucking news channel. And yeah, it just gets to that point where it's so boring, I would choose to be alone every day of the week rather than speak to those people.

- Yeah, no, I can definitely empathize. And that you can imagine if you, I was much more of a political, I would argue politics a lot, like more so than most. And my whole thing, you know, a decade ago was like, you guys need to be paying attention.

Like you're not, you're watching your sports ball games and you're watching the real housewives and you're not seeing what they're doing and everything's falling apart. And then in some ways, like this time around, I've kind of just, you start to realize that a lot of what people are doing when they're doing that

is they're seeking some kind of weird validation, right? Like they believe something, they want you to believe it too, they want uniformity. And I think it's almost something, it's something that we don't, I don't know if like it's the right term is pre-cognitive, but I always, things that we don't think about

but that influence our behavior, I just, that's what I call it. It's almost like this, you see this urge amongst people to get everyone to agree, right? It's like, we want, no, just put your fucking mask on.

Like, why can't you just wear a fucking mask? Or like, hey, take your fucking mask off. Why do you have to tell me to wear them? And like, I clearly have, like I'm on the freedom side of that, but you almost see this mentality of people who think it's not a mask that they want, it's not a shot that they want,

it's not one leader or the other that they want. What they want is fucking consensus, right? Like they're begging for everyone to just go back to being all in agreement on all things. And that's the scary part is it seems like the ship has sailed on that, right?

It seems like we're at this point where it's almost like a memetic escalation where everyone is looking for everyone to get on board with their side or be killed because we just need to get back to the point where we all agree on everything and then it's gonna be good going forward.

And then incidentally, you know, we all have this network that's sort of just pumping out these blocks, you know, one block at a time that says this is the truth, now this is the truth, now this is the truth.

And that's the beauty of it. But I know what you mean, there's a lot of time wasted, there's a lot of energy wasted, there's relationships destroyed. And I think in some ways it's very good programming.

Like, you know, attention is a very valuable commodity and there are people that have figured out, like with algorithmic certainty how to harness that attention, how to monetize that attention, and they're doing a very good job of it.

And then on the other side of that, there's people who are possessed by this desire to have everyone agree with them and fight to the death about, you know, whatever the bullshit political debate of the week is.

And, you know, I think for the rest of us, it's just like, you know, let's lay in the cart and let's wait them out. - Yeah, and there's no point in arguing with them. That is what I've learned is just, you know, there's no point in trying to convince someone to buy Bitcoin.

There's no point in trying to convince someone your views on COVID and all the lockdowns and freedoms or anything like that. It's, this is just a lot of time wasted. And people won't even now, like, when I do have to speak to normies, if an answer is, I don't know or I don't care or I don't care what you do, I'll just do what I'm doing.

It's not sufficient for these people, you know? It's like, they're like, oh well, you know, I've got the vaccine, I'm wearing the mask. I'm like, cool, if it makes you happy, then great. As long as you're happy, I'm happy, you know?

Vaccinate yourself, have the mask, wear your mask by yourself in your car, wear it outside in 40 degree heat, get a little stupid tan mark where your mask has been, you know, do it, be happy, fine.

But then if I say, well, I don't wanna do that, I don't wanna inject myself with a foreign substance that I don't know what it's gonna do. And, you know, if you wanna do it, it's fine. That's not acceptable.

So it's this weird, like, double standard of like, well, okay, I'll do what I wanna do, but you also have to do what I wanna do. And like, this is forcing of ideas, which no matter how much you try and break it down, and like, you know, reason with people of like, do you see how this is a little bit silly what you're suggesting here?

Do you see how this is being forceful? Do you see how this doesn't make any sense? And the answer is just no, like, no. And I think it's, like you said before, it's like this very cleverly played attention grab and to allow people to just take their attention away from what really matters.

And I can understand why you're doing your political stuff before, 'cause you're like, okay, well, if we're gonna change something, it has to be this way, 'cause it's the only system in town, this is the only way that we can do it.

And yes, this matters more than the sports game or the housewives, of course it does. But like now we've got a system that actually can create change, like real actual change. And I think that's what's so addictive about it is because it's like you feel like you're part of something.

You feel like when you're working towards it, when you're stacking, when you're creating content, when you're having these discussions creating ideas, you really feel like the world is moving forward and that's such an empowering feeling.

And even if Bitcoin was to go away, I still think that there would be this common goal for freedom. There would still be this fight of sovereignty over your body, sovereignty over your speech and to stop all of this sort of nonsense because when you really play it forward and you think, well, if you wanna have children

or you've already got them, it's like, what am I gonna pass down to these kids? Like, what am I gonna do on my deathbed when I think I didn't fight hard enough? I didn't try hard enough. I just went along with the status quo.

I just went along with what everyone was doing 'cause it was easy. I don't think that you would die happy. I think you'd probably die with regret. - Yeah, you said it before, when you were talking about your experiences in the professional world and I did as well.

The lack of honesty and that's it. When you think about, if you try to live your life, it would be a good exercise to do. If you don't already, it sounds like you kind of intuitively already do it, but day in and day out, if you tried to go every day without saying something that was not true, it's a really interesting challenge

and it forces you to confront how much of all of our daily interactions are bullshit, right? Like, even if someone says something like, hey, you wanna come out and grab dinner next week and you just genuinely don't want to go see that person, right?

You have the time, I could make the time, I could come see you if I wanted, but to be able to say like, no, thank you, instead of making an excuse because it's just become so convenient for us.

It's, and that's what I mean by it, it's everything from the little white lie that we, you know, tell a friend to get out of dinner to the, well, I'm gonna tell my boss I was late because of this or I'm gonna cover this up or that up.

At a certain point, I can't help but think that that permeates your psyche to the point where you just do that to yourself and that actually has been the most revealing thing to see about the people that I work with who I thought were intellectually honest types, seeing how they've processed things

that are clearly one way that they'll spin to be another way for themselves or, and then from there you start to look at their everyday behaviors where, you know, like I'll give you an example, this deal that came across our desk to finance a Bitcoin mining operation, right?

I knew we weren't gonna do this. There's no way we were gonna invest in this, but I don't like, but people that I work with are really interested and they wanna learn more. So they'll tell the bankers like, oh yeah, you know, count us in, we'd love to invest in this.

You know, we're in, we're in. So now I've got these bankers calling me and we're talking about this deal and they're like, oh yeah, this guy actually, he's really into this stuff, you know, and then at the end of the process we don't invest and we could have circumvented the entire process by saying upfront that we don't want to invest,

but then I get the phone call from the banker saying, hey, you know, I'm just trying to figure out why it is that your firm was so, you know, interested in investing and now they're not investing and the fact of the matter is, it was just because it was convenient for someone to say, oh yeah,

we're really interested, send us all the information, but knowing that that was never really going to happen, right, like that person convinced himself that it's just like, yeah, well in theory we might be interested in this, knowing that we probably weren't.

And it's these little white lies that start to compound and add up and then the next thing you know, you find most people living their lives in a way where they've trained their mind to say, what is the most convenient and expedient thing that I can say in this moment to get what I want as opposed to what is the true thing

that might be hard to say and it might take years before I realize the benefit of making the decision to say the one true thing here, but it really is, it's a corruption of truth that's pervasive in our culture and you know, I think that has a lot to do with it.

- It's a real hack, like efficiency gain through truth. It's pretty uncomfortable at times, but yeah, definitely. I mean, how much time is wasted in that situation, you know, that you say, yes, you're interested, someone goes away, gets all everything prepped so that they can do a pitch for you or whatever it is they need to do, you know,

so that someone's gonna invest, they get all excited, they then before it's actually happened, go and tell their wife and friends, oh yeah, we've hopefully got this deal on the table, everyone gets excited, there's all this energy buzzing around and it is all absolutely fucking pointless

because all someone should have done is just gone, no, the likelihood is 99% I'm not investing in this and, you know, good luck to you, but it's not for us. That's all that needs to be said and it's maddening because you know when it's happening half the time, like, you know, the old thing where it's like, for example,

oh yeah, do you wanna go grab dinner? Oh, well, look, what I'll do, I'll let you know because I've got this thing and you start hearing this story and you're like, just say no, just say no, you don't have to go, no, because I actually think you're a fucking prick and I don't like you or your wife

and if I had to hear her tell one more story about her dog, I'm gonna shoot myself in the head. You don't have to be that honest, but you can just say, I'm sorry, but I'm really busy at the moment, I just don't have time for it.

And then the world keeps on turning, they go and spend time with someone that they're interested in and I think this whole cutting people out thing is a really important thing you touched on and that I remember like, very, very early on, people that said to me, you will become the five people that you are closest to, you will become them.

If you're around people who are deep thinkers, they work hard, they care about honesty and truth and they have certain lines they won't cross, et cetera, et cetera, you do start to become like them and then you have other people in your life, do you like, well, I know every time I have this interaction

with this person, I actually leave disappointed or I've lost a couple of brain cells or I just, I don't actually enjoy it and you keep repeating it 'cause you don't wanna hurt feelings or for whatever reason and it wastes their time just as much as yours.

So it's actually unkind to lie like that. It's just, yeah, like you say, I think it is a cultural thing and I don't think you get away with the cutthroat honesty that we do in the Bitcoin society, like as you do in normal society, I just don't think that they are hardened for it yet.

- Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, and it's not, it's the society that that creates but then it's also what it does to your own mind, right? It's like just from my own observational experience, the difference between waking up every day saying to myself, like, look, I'm gonna make every effort that I can today

to not say something untrue, ever. Once you start doing that, you start to have to reconcile with hard decisions, right? And you have to start to think about things like this and then all of a sudden, once you've made some of those hard decisions, you don't wanna then sacrifice all of that integrity because someone asked you to dinner

who you don't wanna be impolite to by just declining politely. So I think it's more, it definitely works at a bigger level, like a societal level, but I think most importantly, or more importantly than anything else, it works at an individual level where you start to see things and you're starting to process information

that comes in day to day where instead of thinking how can I prove that I'm right, I'm gonna, instead, I'm just going to try to figure out what is right. And it's a subtle difference, but it's a really important difference.

- Yeah, it is. Have you ever given any thought to, obviously like you said, you're still in your fiat job and you sort of, you earning your fiat money and stacking? And that's really smart.

Like for anyone who's listening, I didn't do that and I regret it to some extent, not fully, but I do regret it to some extent. So if anyone's listening, you're in like a stable fiat job and you can stack, like do that, seriously do that.

But would there be a point for you where you when, no, I've hit this point where I want to either start a business around Bitcoin or something else, but that has been influenced by your sort of Bitcoin rabbit hole journey or would there be a point where you'd wanna work in, you know, work in a business within Bitcoin?

Or have you ever given that any thought? Would there be a point where you'd just go, now I'm fully out of fiat now and I wanna actually do something in this sort of community or start something?

- Yeah, I've been giving that thought for, I mean, for a few years now on and off, but over the last 12 to 18 months, it's been, you know, hours and hours and hours per day. I mean hours per day of thinking that.

And it's just a matter of what, right? Like, you know, I'm in a predicament where I have children and I have a wife and, you know, I have a family here that I support. And the fact of the matter is, I'm sure that I, like, I don't think they're ever gonna want for food.

Like as long as I can keep a shelter over their head and feed them and provide them with, you know, the basics of life, then that's all you really need. And I don't think, like, I try not to worry about that stuff.

It really just is a matter of what is the right thing to do and what do I actually know how to do? And that's the problem, right? Like, I basically geared my life from the time that I was at university.

I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to improve my lot in life. So I took advice from people who said, you know, go into finance, that's where all the money is. And I ran hard at that.

And I got to a place where, you know, I was on the career treadmill, I was doing well, but you don't really learn anything. Like, I don't have any, I don't have any tangible skills in an economy where you have to actually produce something apart from just work ethic, right?

So what I've been doing lately is my father-in-law has a commercial bakery. He found that it almost 40 years ago. And, you know, he's an old man now. Like, it's a very tough business. He sells to restaurants.

Restaurants have been closed for 12 months. And now that restaurants are starting to open back up again, you know, we can't find guys to work. So what I have been doing with my time is, while I'm working remotely in my fiat job, I've been spending time helping him try to salvage what's left of the business so that he doesn't feel like,

you know, so that he can leave something where he goes out feeling like his grandkids have something to take up. And that's been really nice and refreshing because it's been working with people who actually depend on their paycheck, who aren't using money as a scoreboard, which is like my normal fiat job.

Money is just a scoreboard and everyone's trying to, you know, be the number one leader in the fiat points board. This is more like, hey, these people have this job because they need this job.

And this is what pays the bills for them. And if we don't figure out a way to keep the lights on while we're shut down, while the economy's shut down, you know, they're not going to have a job.

So I've been throwing myself at that a lot lately. But yeah, no, beyond that, I mean, I'm at the point where I want to do more than I'm capable of doing. So that's kind of why I've, I don't know, I like, I try to invest in Bitcoin projects when I can.

I try to, like, I think if I wanted to go and find a job that paid money, maybe I could, I just, I don't really know what I would do in the Bitcoin economy yet. And I think about it all the time, right?

Like, I think about what are the things that I can do? And for now, it just seems like the best bet is to continue to mine fiat and buy things that people are selling in Bitcoin and use the things that people are making with Bitcoin and contribute to Bitcoin causes, which I now need to do more of.

And that's, it's great because that's actually starting to be more of a, it's more of a mature marketplace, right? Whether you wanna donate to, like, what Jack Mollers just did with open source devs or wanting, you wanna do open sats or something like that.

There's a lot more ways to give back in that way. But no, that's, that's just it. I'm trying to figure out what it is I'm gonna do with the next phase of my life. And that's really exciting in a lot of ways.

- It's really cool. And it's good that you're doing it that way around and giving it some thought because I think a lot of people we get, myself included, you get, you get so wrapped up in what this thing can do.

You're like, fuck, I don't care what it is. I just need to work in this industry. Like, this is it. I'm not doing anything else. And not everyone has a place right now or it's hard to find it.

It takes some time. And I think as this thing grows out, there's gonna be more and more opportunities for more and more people. But they're sort of diving straight off the cliff and just hoping for the best is not always the right thing, especially when you have a family and you have kids.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with mining fear. You know, some people would say like, oh, well, if I carry on doing this fiat stuff, then you know, it's not good. It's against the ethos.

It's like, well, you know, just be realistic. Someone else is just gonna fill that space. And you might as well have someone with strong hands who actually sees the future of this, who isn't just gonna see, oh, we just had a 20% gain.

Oh, okay, let's trade it. Let's, you know, just trade this thing. No, you want someone who's got strong hands. So I think there's no shame and there's no reason not to mine the fiat in many ways that wish I'd have done the same.

- Yeah, but you know what's wrong with it though, is what's wrong with it is that it is, and I've gotten to the point, I think what's probably going to happen is that sooner rather than later, there will be like a legit heart-to-heart conversation where, you know, it's just, it's not working out between me and my fiat job.

And eventually, like right now, I don't think they could find someone to replace me that would work for what I work for, that's gonna do what they need them to do, et cetera. It's just a weird situational dynamic, but there's clearly an end in sight to that.

And it's, you know, it's not long. Like there's probably only a few more years left of that. And that's the thing. As I think about like, okay, I'm gonna go mine more fiat to like go stack the incremental Bitcoin, that's actually not what I've been doing.

So you said before about, you know, the 90% all in, I'm actually less than that. And it's not because I don't believe, it's because in some ways, I just don't think it's the best use of what I'm doing right now.

Like if that makes any sense. Like if Bitcoin works, the way it's gonna work, like put it this way, if the plebs out there are gonna be like, okay, and all good, then I'm gonna be all good.

And so I don't really need to worry about much more than that, right? So I like, no one ever has enough Bitcoin, but at the same time, you know, like I've got enough Bitcoin. I think the next thing that I need to do is start thinking about how I can actually produce something that's of value for people who use this trend,

you know, who use this currency. And so, and even if it's not that, like mining fiat, I'll give you an example. Like, let's say you have a friend who has a great idea and he just is short a little bit of money, right?

And you believe in his idea. Well, is it better, in this guy's not, this is a real life example. This is not a Bitcoiner. This is someone I know from, you know, from school growing up. He's got a great idea.

He just can't scrape together. Let's put a number on it and call it 10 million sats, right? He can't scrape together 10 million sats to get his idea off the ground. Should I buy 10 million sats for myself to put away?

Or should I, you know, lend that guy 10 million sats and just say, hey, I'm letting you this money. You know, I'll get short Bitcoin for you. Over time, you pay me back, no interest, whatever the dollar price is at the time you're paying me back, convert it to Bitcoin, pay me back, right?

So now I've got no KYC Bitcoin. I don't know what the price is gonna be, but I don't have to worry because the more I put my fiat income stream into this sort of thing, the more I'm kind of like passively stacking at future prices, which again, who cares, right?

Like it's all kind of irrelevant. But if I give him the leverage that he needs to get one year or like six months ahead of the game, what does that buy for him? And then what's the return gonna be on that for everyone around?

This guy happens to be growing. He's not doing full permaculture. He's a permaculture guy who's trying to make do with what he's got as a setup today. So if you can do those things, it's almost like that's what, to me, Bitcoin buys me and that's my path out of fiat.

It's really not about how do I make a bigger fortune. It's more about how do I put my energy into the world in a way that's gonna get the most back from it. The problem with the fiat, man, this is the paradox is that I think for right now, while this fiat check is still available, I've gotta take it.

But what's entailed in taking it is it's becoming harder and harder every day to do that and to stay true to myself and be a good employee all at the same time, right? Like if you really are being honest with people, then you have to call their bullshit.

And if you call their bullshit, then you're not really gonna be very employable for very long. So I think that's what's probably gonna happen is just at a certain point, that dynamic will get to a point where it breaks and then I'll have to go figure something else out and I will.

But until then, it's more about mining that fiat in a way that I can live with and trying to use that on the other side to help get things off the ground that we need to get off or that I think we need to get off the ground, right?

It's me putting my little thumbprint on the universe. - Well, yeah, in a lot of ways that is more impactful 'cause you can say, well, without my funding, this would not have happened. And I think it's something that's really good and I think it's something that should happen.

And that's a nice feeling and a lot of the time as well, these things can pay off. It can be a financial success, but it can also make you feel good and make you sleep well at night. And it can make a change on someone's life, you know, if your friend that you're talking about didn't have that funding

and maybe he'd go into a traditional bank or someone like that and go, right, can I have this funding for this permaculture thing that I'm doing? And they're gonna go, well, what the fuck is permaculture?

Let me see the business plan. Well, maybe we'll lend you something but at 20%. And it just means that these great ideas don't get off the ground. So I have massive respect for that. And I think it probably does make more of a difference.

- Yeah, it's like, I'm just thinking about that particular example, 'cause I spoke to this guy tonight. It's interesting, like, all he wanted was to buy some hoop houses to put up, you know, to get some seedlings started, you know, early in the season and to extend the growing season a little bit.

He's a chef, he's got, he knows the restaurateurs who wanna buy these locally sourced microbe, like great business plan. As good a business plan as everything, you know, compare that to the business plan.

We just got from Michael Saylor today that came across my desk to look at where it's like, hey, will you lend money at 6% backed by a fixed amount of Bitcoin? And I think it's a great trade.

And like I told the guys that I work with, this is a great speculative attack on the dollar because he's gonna prove that the market demands this as collateral over most other things. But it's like, we're gonna invest your money.

You're gonna invest your money in a micro-strategy bond to get 6% interest backed by a fixed amount of Bitcoin or do you give your money to a guy who's got an idea to get a business off the ground where he's gonna grow micro-greens on a quarter of an acre and sell them to local restaurants.

And that's gonna like create a good local food chain for him, you know, an income stream for his family and food for his local population. And the beauty of it is when I talk to that guy about doing this, it was the end of last year.

I'm docked in my location, but that was thunder in the background. - I wonder what I was. - I can't change the weather and I can't figure out a way to mute it. I thought I was in a nice quiet place.

But this guy, you know, I made this deal with him and I was like, oh, you know, Bitcoin's it. Like when we finally signed on the dotted line, I told him like, look, these are the terms. I wanna say Bitcoin was probably, it was probably back when it was between 45 and 50,000 something like that.

And I thought, shit, who knows what price I'm gonna get these at. And he called me today, he's like, hey, I'm ready with your first payment. Let me know how to do this. And I was like, oh, you know, this is actually great.

Had I just panic bought 10 million sets in January or February, you know, I would be worse off. But now this guy's better off, I'm better off. Might have worked the other way. Like might have been that I'm getting them at a much higher price.

I was kind of reconciled to that fact. But that's another way you can go about it. And by the way, that came out of just a sheer like, I need to figure out a way to get non-KYC Bitcoin because the vast majority of my Bitcoin have been KYC.

And that's not how I wanna do this going forward. Like I almost kind of, unless I'm buying something right now to send to someone right now where I'm gonna report to the IRS a zero basis transaction and like use the Bitcoin to spend, unless I'm doing that, I'm not buying KYC anymore, right?

So I kind of need to find creative ways to do that. And this is one such way. - Yeah. All these way, it's brilliant. Like the more of these sort of SAT income streams that you can set up, it brings it to a point where you are dollar cost averaging.

You're just constantly stacking, but through all these different streams that are no KYC. And like, I'm really pleased you said that, that it ties in with what you were saying before about, you know, you don't wanna fund these wars.

You don't wanna fucking be part of the system that you know is so corrupt. And there are so many Bitcoiners who are like, yeah, you know, bring down the government, stop the wars, do all this.

But I'm gonna go to a KYC exchange, give them all my details, they will tax me, they will get it. I can be as, you know, as many fucking boating accidents as I want, but when they lock you up or take away your other assets, you are gonna give it over for the vast majority.

And so no KYC is incredibly important going forward. And yeah, that is a novel way of doing it. And that there are so many creative ideas out there where people are either swapping goods or services or like you've done effectively alone where you paid back in SATs and all these different things.

And it's very creative and it strengthens the network. Like the way that I look at it is the more no KYC SATs that the more that things are going to join, the more we can make it difficult for the people that are gonna come into this place.

And, you know, basically try and rape every one of their SATs. And it makes their job very, very difficult, if not impossible. - That's exactly right. And that's the thing, it's like in some way, and it's not to make, you know, it's not to make yourself a fucking martyr.

Like no one should make themselves a martyr. But if you're at the point where, you know, the incremental Bitcoin that you, the incremental SATs that you buy, is not really that relevant to the overall picture for you.

It's like, well, then why not get short SATs on behalf of someone else? And let them get a little bit ahead. And, you know, they'll pay you back in time. And effectively, this is a zero percent interest loan, right?

Like, don't pay me back when you can, just at the time you're paying me back, convert the dollars that you owe me into Bitcoin and pay me back in Bitcoin and will be cool. You know, and it's surprising, like, 'cause this is what I racked my brain over for a long time thinking about, like, what could I sell to get Bitcoin?

And everything seemed to be just a little cheesy. Like I thought about trying to sell expensive designer bags, like handbags for ladies for a 10% loss. I actually have a domain that I have for this where I was thinking like, I'll go buy a $10,000 bag and I'll sell it for 9,500 in Bitcoin and I'll get no KYC coin.

And if it gets big enough, I'll be able to syndicate this out. And, you know, like, look, that premium is better than what I pay on Bisk. But then eventually it was like, oh, wait a minute, you need some money and you're a friend of mine and I trust you.

And like, I know that you'll try to do everything you can to pay me back and if you can't, no big deal because like I know that you'll, you know, I will have known that you tried. No interest, just pay me back in Bitcoin at some point in the future.

And like, that's a great way to get no KYC sets and a great way to help someone that you believe in. - For sure, my fear with that and maybe it is just 'cause I'm an arsehole but every time that I have lent people money, I've not get it back every time I've...

- Are you scaring me? - No, I like, well, we were talking about speak, speak the truth, speak honestly. - Yeah, no, that's fair. - I have had probably six different occasions now where I would say life changing money to me, money that made it an impact to my life.

I've lent out to people that were supposedly friends and I've not had it back. I've had cars taken, I've put people up in houses for over a year and they just fuck off. And so for me, maybe it's very unlucky.

Maybe it's just 'cause I'm an arsehole. I don't know, I don't know what it is. It could just be complete luck, but everyone's taken the piss. And recently, like six months ago, I lent a fair amount of money again to someone who was trying to get their household but couldn't finish what they needed doing

so that they could get the planning stuff signed off so they could sell it. And I was like, look, they couldn't get any money from the bank, they wouldn't lend it and they were in a real pickle.

And I was like, I'll give you the money. I gave it to them in cash, just same thing. Give it back to me when you can afford to give it back. We'd known each other for years, nothing. No phone call, drops off the earth, nothing, nothing, nothing.

And you just get to the, well, for me, I've got to the point where I'm like, I just can't do that anymore. Like, I just, like, my trust with that kind of stuff is just completely gone. And then what you do is it like, all right, well, I'll take some cholesterol, I'll take your watch, I'll take something,

I'll take your watch, you know what I mean. - You shouldn't, right. At that point, you shouldn't. At that point, they should just go, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's unfortunate and that might be my future for all I know.

I guess the only, you know, the comfort is that you size it accordingly. It's not, you know, like, look, so I'll be out that many Bitcoin that I might've had if I had bought Bitcoin instead.

But I'll feel great if this guy gets off the ground. And, you know, it's, it's a really, there's so many of these things that you, it's like there's this idea that you don't trust verify, right?

But also you should trust. Because if you don't trust, then you'll know it's, there's a lot of these, it goes back to what you were saying too about the, the debating political stuff versus not.

Like, if no one debated political stuff, if all of us just took the attitude that, you know, well, fuck off, I don't have time for you. I'm just gonna figure it out for myself and you can go figure it out for yourself.

In some ways, you have to wonder whether or not we would ever get to where we wanna be because it does take people who give of their time very freely, which is another weird thing about the Bitcoin economy.

You have all these people who are doing something because they're passionate about it, not because they're trying to monetize it. So you'll try to like, you know, you'll go, for example, book an appointment with Catan to do a Ministry of Nodes call and try to pay him for his time.

He's like, no man, I do, you know, just pay me what you think it's worth. It's, you have these people who are trying so hard for something that they don't wanna charge you for their time because they believe in it, but at the same time, you wanna give them for their time.

It's a weird dynamic that gets to, you know, it hits every part of what we're doing. And in this case, it hits the point about trust. Like, you don't wanna trust, you wanna verify everything, but at the same time, if we never had trust in any people, you know, if we never, I always think about it

in terms of spooks in the Bitcoin network, right? Like, nobody is looking for spooks more than people in Bitcoin and, you know, like the Monero set. Like, everyone is a spook, right? But if I believe everyone's a spook, then we'll never be able to bootstrap the trust that it's gonna take to get some of these social networks

or social layers off the ground. And so in that regard, I think at some point, you have to be willing to just, you know, take a breath and say, as long as this is a risk that I'm willing to take, I'm gonna eyes open, take this risk and live with the consequences of it, because otherwise, you know, it's weird.

Like, if you never argue with anyone about politics, then, you know, no one ever gets red pill or orange pill, or black pill or white pill or whatever pill people are handing out these days.

So it's walking that balance where you, you know, you shouldn't really spend most of your time doing this, but at the same time, you know, if people hadn't spent their time doing it against their better judgment and trusting that it was gonna work, that there's a plan, that there's something that matters behind all of this,

then, you know, we wouldn't be where we are. - Yeah, it's true. It is slightly different in Bitcoin because your reputation, you only have one chance. Like, in fiat culture, people don't really give a fuck.

They just move town, move on, whatever. Like, it doesn't seem to really matter. But for example, if I said, you know, you said, "Oh, I've just ordered myself a pizza and I can't. "I haven't got any money in my bank account.

"Can you send me some cash?" I'd be like, "Oh, cool, I'll send you." And then, if you didn't pay me back, I'd go, "That fucking daddy war bits is a right cock." He said he was gonna pay me back and he didn't.

And I'd post it on Twitter and everyone would call you out and they'd go, "You are so, why aren't you paying him back? "Fucking paying back for the pizza." And you lose that reputation. And the thing is that that reputation is very, very valuable because the people that we get to communicate with,

these bonds that we make are very, very valuable, very helpful and you only get one chance. Whereas in fiat society, it is not the same. You seem to, it doesn't seem to mean anything. Like a deal with a handshake means nothing these days.

Like I was brought up where if you do a deal and you shake someone's hand, even if it goes against you and you think, "Fuck, I shouldn't have done that. "I've been offered more things of change.

"It doesn't matter because the way that you're viewed "by other people and how you actually go through life "is more important than just the money." And so it's sort of, it's returned to that within this community.

- Yeah, absolutely, and one of the other interesting thing about that though is that we have a protocol that your penalty for being outside the protocol is that you're outside the protocol, right?

So when people are, like you can't be dishonest at the base layer and your penalty for being dishonest at the base layer is that you get kicked off the base layer but you can always come back in.

And I think you're right though, you see how long it would take to build that trust. And that gets back to another, like it's the similar dynamic about trust and verify when it comes to the social layer, which is one of those things that I'm really, it's a challenge that I don't think we've begun to solve yet,

which is to say like there are people in this network, right? Who have assets, who have skills who would be willing to give of themselves to everyone else in this network if they had a little bit of trust.

And it's how do you scale from that base layer on chain trust to the interpersonal relationship? Like I listen to the guys that come on your show and that talk to you about permaculture and I'm like, man, I would love to work with some of these guys.

And you know that there's thousands and thousands of them out there. So it's that dynamic of there's all these people that you want to trust, but the second that you're willing to do things for Bitcoiners in a weird way that you wouldn't be willing to do for anyone else, but then we still haven't figured out

how to actually make that work at scale, which is that's something that I'm really keen to try to figure out, you know, like, if I knew someone's two or three degrees removed from you, for example, right?

And I'm like, listen, I've been listening to this guy for two years. I know what he's about, like, if this is the guy that's going to end up bringing me down in the end and so be it, I'll make peace with that.

Like, if Max is a spook and this is all a setup, then great. Like, some guy is going to be able to take advantage of me for a small amount of gain. I'm willing to take that risk, but then the problem becomes how do you start to scale that?

And that's, I think that's something that we all, you know, should be thinking about. - Definitely, it'd be nice to have something measurable 'cause everything is just gut right now, you know?

And you can be low time preference and you can sort of think about these networks as something that have value without actually bringing an income, like you're talking about Qatar or Bitcoin Q&A or anyone who's like helping people.

And a lot of these guys will do it for free for a long time, like crazy long time. They're putting, you know, they already have jobs, they're working this on top. I don't know how they have the time to do what they're doing.

You have other idiots like me who have not earned a penny for two years because we're just making content and creating art and doing all sorts of things, but it's not a selfless act. Like, you could say it and you could frame it like, "Oh wow, how selfless, like that's so kind."

It's not all kindness. In fact, most of it is that you're saying, "Well, I'm gonna take a and have a low time preference view on this." And although there's no income now, the value in the networks that are being created, the value in the trust that is built between others, is that, you know, you feel confident,

or certainly I do, that, you know, fight, it might be five years down the line, it might be 10 years down the line, but the people that I interact with, hopefully you make a good impression, hopefully you have a good bond, and they'll say, "Ah, hold on, you work as an artist or you work as this, can you help me with this?"

And I think a lot of people are looking at it like that, a lot of people are confident enough that this is the new economy. The Bitcoiners are the ones that are gonna hold the wealth, they're the ones with the creative ideas, they're the ones that are building, they're the ones that are pushing forward, so work with them.

And yeah, okay, you might not earn money today, but you will tomorrow. - Amen, that's what it's about. It's about, and that's from the outsider's perspective, right? Like, not everyone will have a successful podcast, and not everyone will have a successful blog, and not everyone will be someone who's name everyone else.

But that's also the beauty of the NIMM, is we all have all these different opportunities to participate in different ways. Like, I wanna see a world where NIMM's whole public office, where NIMM's can get elected without ever doxing their voices, but just have a platform.

Like, we could get to this world, where a lot of that other stuff, where a lot of the bad incentives from fiat world are irrelevant, and that's the world I wanna live in. And it sounds like that's the world you wanna live in too, you have these people, it's a really exciting time because we're all participating in this together,

we're all trying to figure it out in real time, but at the same time, we're in uncharted waters. So, it's a mind-blower to think about how much opportunity is in front of us, and then to think about how much time you might waste on the, you then put your fiat work into the context of that bigger picture, and all of a sudden,

you're thinking to yourself, like, what am I really doing with my life? Like, what do I wanna do with my life? Who are the people that I wanna work with? What's the economy that I wanna tap into?

And it just, it becomes so compelling that this is where, that this is where you wanna spend your time, that this is what you wanna allocate yourself to. And you kinda know, like, I don't know, maybe it's Polly Anish, but I think we're gonna figure it out, like, I think that we're on the right side of these things,

and if we're not, then we'll lose, but we'll lose with grace, and we'll lose putting up a fight, and we'll lose fighting for what we believed in. - Absolutely. I'd very much like to wait until this guy pays you back, the permaculture guy, 'cause if he doesn't, then fuck him.

But if he does, I'd be interested to hear a little bit further down the line. I don't know whether he'd wanna come on the show, but it'd be cool to hear more about what he's doing, because, you know, any anything that's being funded, and anything that's like a Bitcoin loan, anything that's moving the world forward, I wanna hear about.

So, I don't know whether you make it, maybe you could put that to him once he's paid you back, but that would be cool. - Yeah, for sure. We haven't spoken in a while. I just spoke to him today for the first time in a while.

He actually mentioned, I think, and this was part of the intent, was to somewhat send him down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. He is not a Bitcoin person. He's a person who is, basically, he busts his balls to make money as a chef, to provide for his family, but he also, his passion is to grow food.

And so, for whatever reason, when I was speaking with him, I thought he just felt like he was primed for this, and, you know, he was talking to me about it today. He was like, "Yeah, I've been doing the research "on how I can do this and how I can pay."

So, my goal is that I'm gonna get him spun up with his own, you know, eventually he'll have a wallet, and he'll learn how to use it, and I think we might end up getting him to the right outcome, just by virtue of the fact that he had to figure out how to pay back a loan in Bitcoin and learn the rest from there.

But yeah, I'll definitely keep you updated on how that goes. And for the record, there are other people that I've lent some money to for other random things that are just life things, and all of that has worked out fine so far.

So, knock on wood so far so good with the zero interest. You know, I'll short the sats for you loans. - I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, that'd be cool. And one more thing before we close it up because we've been on for, I think almost two hours now, just flying by, but I wondered, 'cause I don't get to speak to a lot of guys in finance,

as I said, I've sort of gone away from this. I've gone very much more down the privacy and security rabbit hole, 'cause I was bad at it and wanted to learn. But it'd be interesting to hear from you being there it is your job.

Like, where do you, you'd have to give me moon predictions, but where do you see this thing going? And do you have like, one particular reason or a couple of reasons why you really think it and that really make you confident?

- That's, that's a tough one. I will say like, my overarching view is that, and I'm gonna use the, I'm gonna use the Maddow del line and just say that Bitcoin is designed to pump forever because I do think that is like the simplest way of distilling the truth of the matter into a meme that everyone can comprehend.

Like we, so all right, this is, it's a tough one to end on, but if you think about what it is to save money, you're effectively saying that the work that I've done today is work that I wish to consume at a future date.

And if I think that the value that humanity will produce for me is going to be lower in the future, then I would be inclined to say that I should spend that money sooner rather than later.

But if I think the money or sorry, if I think the value that humanity will produce for me in the future is greater than what the dollar price indicates today, then I would be marginally inclined to save that for the future.

And I think you have that on steroids with Bitcoin for the reasons we talked about because by me saving Bitcoin, I'm investing in the productivity of all of the people in the Bitcoin economy.

So I've just like very simple basic. You think about, you know, at one point in time we were in the iron age and then we were in the oil age. And I think now we're in like something like the information age.

I think as more and more things become abstracted and become digitized, the currency to be free, to get access to information, to get access, like that's going to be the most important thing in the future.

And there's nothing better to me than a finite, a provably scarce asset that can denominate all of that that had like, I guess just take a step back. And it's obvious to anyone who's looked at this for any period of time.

Is Bitcoin the perfect money? Probably not. There's things that I wish, like I wish we were a little bit more private at the base layer. I wish that it wasn't so subject to re-hypothecation and financialization.

But is there ever going to be anything as good as this? Also probably not. So if we have this asset that is provably scarce, that's not growing over time, and the productivity of all of the people who price their time in this monetary unit is increasing, then I just see it as me, like, and this, I guess it gets back to the point,

like, I don't really need Bitcoin to work for my life. Like, my life will be okay. I'll figure out a way to feed my family. And it's a very privileged position I recognize, but like, I will figure out a way to feed my family, to provide the basics.

But to me, this is a way of me saying that the people who are working in their lives towards this economy where truth is what matters, where value for value is what matters, that's the economy that I want to invest in.

So like, I wouldn't want my savings to be in anything other than that. So like, as far as price goes, how it plays out, I have no idea. There's one scenario where it, you know, like, imagine Scaramucci gets up there and, you know, he's pumping this fully custodial, like, crazy fork of Bitcoin, and then maybe Michael Saylor turns,

and all the people that the boomers are watching on CNBC are pumping this crazy, weird fork. And the number goes up and like, yeah, great, we all get rich off that. But then maybe there's this other thing where we all can maintain a note somehow.

Like, I guess it's just, I try to stay really fucking humble about the fact that I have no idea where this is gonna go. But I know that the right thing to do is to invest in the people and the productive energies that I see gravitating towards this.

And so like, will the Bitcoin that I own today be worth more tomorrow? Absolutely. Am I going to be able to repeat what I would have been able to repeat had I gone back to 2013 and like put all of my net worth into Bitcoin at, you know, whatever, 50 bucks?

Like, no, that trade is over. Like the people who got in early who made life-changing billionaire fortunes, I don't think that happens again. But what I think happens is we're gonna rebuild a great civilization and it's not gonna be, you know, like I said at the beginning, it's really not about where the price is when I die.

It's about does Bitcoin still exist when I die? Is this something that I can pass on that my kids understand enough to keep going for generations? It's gonna take a long time. And like, you know, there are gonna be people that are into it for that and there are gonna be people that are into it

for the fact that you can make life-changing wealth in short order. And I think both of those people will be right. I think the life-changing wealth in short order people will be right sporadically.

And the ones that, you know, pursue only that, a fair number of them will get wrecked along the way. But that's, you know, that's the best way I can describe. It's very hard to, I just don't think anyone has any idea.

Like Bitcoin could be at $2 million next year. It could be at $50,000 next year. As long as we're still doing what we're doing right now, to me, it works. - Yeah, I agree with you. I completely agree with you.

And I do think about these moon numbers, but like you said, it doesn't really matter 'cause one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin. It's just gonna be interesting to watch it. And I'm glad you said you don't know 'cause I hear too many people just like so confidently 'cause of whatever model or whatever it is

'cause they've divided something by something that they suddenly know. And you just, that he is like, well, gold is this. So we're definitely gonna be 10 times that. We're like, what do you mean?

- Rightly. - You know, definitely. - Never underestimate the capacity for fuckery. Like there is a huge capacity for fuckery and that fuckery can last for a long time. Like the beauty of Bitcoin is that we can all, like we can force a bank run, right?

We can all, that's, if I, that's probably my biggest fear is that we get to a point where all these people coming in buy Bitcoin, they buy on KYC exchanges, those KYC exchanges become Roach Motels where any Sats that come in stay there and they never leave or at least they don't leave for our lifetime.

And then the next thing you know, we have this like weird bifurcated system where, you know, you can't move Bitcoin freely, or you can move Bitcoin freely from your address to someone else's address.

But once you put them on a KYC service, they're gone forever and they're captive. Like, I don't know what a world looks like where 90% of the Bitcoin is on this KYC ramp that you can't get off of until the ramp implodes and, you know, who knows what that looks like.

But that's kind of, that's why it's so hard to predict because we have the ability to force the bank run. Like, we have the ability to take custody for ourselves and to make sure that this re-hypotication can't happen.

But, you know, I think it's gonna be, I think it's naive to expect that that's not going to be how it goes at first. And I don't even, you know, like, look, that might mean number go up a lot, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, it's just, it's not the same as, and I think we'll still be able to have the kind of economy

that we wanna have on the side. One Bitcoin will still be one Bitcoin. There'll be a premium for non KYC non-exchange Bitcoin. So I would never, I don't foresee a scenario where the Bitcoin, where my Bitcoin go back to the exchange, 'cause I, like, look, you can send it back to the exchange.

You'll always have that option. You might as well keep it off. But that's, yeah, that's the thing. It's very difficult. And I think we just have to make sure that we, at least in my life, I wanna make sure that I'm trying to keep in mind that this is bigger than me, this is bigger than what kind of house I end up in in my life.

This is more about whether or not we do something as generations that benefit humanity into, you know, like what we do in life echoes in eternity. That's, I think that's what this is about.

- Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And so for anyone listening, just remember that when you're stacking, just remember that the no KYC stuff, not only is it important for freedom and important for future generations, but also I 100% agree with you.

It is going to be worth more. The non KYC real Bitcoin that you can actually send and actually use and actually runs on the network is gonna be way more valuable. So don't concern yourself with, oh, it's 1% more or 2% more on BISC or HODL HODL.

Find ways to earn in Sats, find ways to do these kinds of things with loans or do. Whatever it is you have to do, go and do that, get some no KYC Sats and move this thing forward. - Amen.

- It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you. Hopefully we'll chat for a couple of minutes offline as well, just so I make sure I get the audio. Every time I have these sort of conversations, we've never spoken before.

I've really appreciated you sharing and letting me know that you enjoyed the show. That meant a lot. Like every time I get one of those messages, it lights my day up. It just makes me think, fuck, you know, this is all worth it, like someone's enjoyed.

And it really, it really makes me happy to hear that. So, yeah, thanks for the support and thanks for coming on the show and everything that you're doing. And it's been a pleasure. I hope one day we can grab a beer or something like that and you can be honest and say, no, fuck off.

I don't wanna spend any time with you and I can say good. - Thank you. You know, but for the fact that there are people that decided, you know what, fuck it. I am gonna start another podcast and I'm gonna have people like, we need that.

And it's been so valuable to have, you know, more voices and more people and to check myself. I'm like, yeah, you know what, we're right. They're fucking wrong. So I have such an appreciation for what you're doing.

- Thank you. Thank you, mate. All right, well, any sort of last wise words, words of wisdom to leave people with? - No, I would hate to try to come up with words of wisdom. You know, just that everyone doing what you're doing, ignore a lot of the noise and focus on the longer term and make sure it's meaningful to you.

Make sure it's something that you, make sure you're fully integrated as a person and you're ready to, you know, stand up and face the world forth rightly and the rest of it will come. - I love it.

Thanks for coming on, mate. And yeah, take care, we'll speak soon. - Thank you.