Shitcoinery, China, bitcoin and freedom with @expatri0tic

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

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

Yeah.

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

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

That was a yawn. I'm very tired, but we had a good show. This was from about 10 days ago. I'm a bit behind on the editing. I had expatriotic join me. I don't think he's been on any other shows, but he's putting out some good content and I thought it'd be cool to chat to someone new.

We did cover quite a lot of shit coinery and some of the crazy stuff that goes on in that sort of DeFi world, which is pretty interesting for me because it's been a while since I've looked through that sort of special needs window.

So it was good to chat about that. We also covered Bitcoin privacy. And do you know what I really appreciated about expatriotic is he was completely honest about the way he thought about things in the past.

And that's cool. It's cool when people can own up to making mistakes and move on from them and not bullshit and huff their own farts, like so many people in the space. So yeah, I really appreciated that and I appreciate his putting some cool content out.

So it was a good discussion. I hope you enjoy listening. And I want to say thank you to everyone who's been reaching out to me, streaming SATs, sending SATs to my pay name, and just generally supporting the show by sharing with friends and family and everything else that people are doing.

It's pretty crazy how the show has grown and struggling to keep up with it a little bit at the moment. But thank you to everyone who's been helping, including John and Mr. Crown and everyone else who's been involved in helping the website and growing things.

A big thank you also goes out to the team at Foundation. Pretty amazing to see what these guys have done. I reached out to Zach a couple of years ago now when the founders edition landed in my hands and as soon as I unboxed it and started playing with the thing, I knew I had to work with these guys.

So I reached out and said, "Come on, Zach." Sponsored the show. They weren't at the time sponsoring any other shows and I'm very grateful that they took the chance with me. They're fully open source.

They make the most beautiful hardware that is piss easy to use. Literally any fuckwit can use this cypherpunk tool, including me. We went through all the updates on their recent release with Bitcoin Q&A and Antimas in the last episode, the Bitcoin monthly.

So if you've missed that, go back and have a listen. And if you haven't checked out one of these passports, go to foundation devices.com. You can use my shill code bit by bit and that'll get you $10 off and it will also let them know that I'm shilling hard.

If you do have any questions about the device, you can reach out to me and I'll be open and honest. You can also reach out if you want a helping hand. You can pay it, I think it's $100 and Bitcoin Q&A will hold your hand through the process.

But to be honest, you really won't need it. You can even reach out to me, I'll help you. That's how easy it is. Go to foundation devices.com and check them out. And finally, before we dive in, I thank you to FastBitcoins, who sponsor this show despite me shitting on them from a great high every fucking episode.

I tell you not to go to KYC exchanges, I tell you to buy peer to peer. And I know that not all of you will listen. So a huge thank you to FastBitcoins for putting up with my bullshit and supporting the show despite it.

This shows me that they actually care about Bitcoin and they actually care about getting the truth out there. For those of you who are gonna go to a KYC exchange, you need to make damn sure it's a good one.

When you buy your lovely tasty sats from this exchange, you will give over not only your money, but all of your identity, your address, and all your personal details. If you're going to do this, you need to make absolutely sure that you pick a team that is competent.

FastBitcoins has an incredible team and they will do everything that they possibly can to try and keep you safe and your data safe. I still obviously advise that you get your sats off exchange immediately and this is what FastBitcoins will push you in every way they can to do.

They do not want to hold your sats, they do not want to have that risk and they want people to Bitcoin properly. If you have any questions about the trade-offs or you want any more information, you can reach out to me, but check them out at fastbitcoins.com.

Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

- Test, test. - I've got you, I think, mate. - You got me? - Yeah, there we are. We've got there in the end. - Good, good, good. - I think that was actually a fault on my end because I'm too cheap to pay for the paid version of this.

- Uh-huh. - Yeah, I think I'd just run out of a trial, so I've just gone in on another account. - Oh, yeah, no worries. Sorry, anyway, obligatory, I need to apologize. It was unfortunately outside of my control.

I live with my in-laws, so there's a lot of family planning there and-- - Oh, I know all about that. - We went off the rails a little bit. I was really, problem is in this culture, they, being late is not a problem, so they probably won't even apologize.

Like, they don't, like, whatever. Like, you eat our food, you sleep in our house, like, shut the fuck up. (laughing) - Where, without doxing yourself, whereabouts are you? - Yeah, so I'm in Indonesia, so I'm in Asia.

- Okay. - Yeah, fourth largest country in the world by population. - Yeah, it's beautiful around there. - Yeah, equator, so. - Yeah, nice weather. - Well, I mean, it's like home because I'm from Florida, so it was like coming home.

- And you planning to live out there full-time now, or? - Yeah, so I've been here about 10 years, and I'm actually moving the family, so I got a really, really nice job offer in China, and then I proceeded to go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and join the sovereign Bitcoiner telegram group, and have literally everyone tell me

how much of an idiot I am, but it was one of the things where, you know, I already signed the contract, and it's more taken one for the team for a few years, just get some capital. - In that group, you'll be called an idiot for basically anything.

- Yeah, basically anything. - Yeah, I'm starting to realize that, but you know, it's a good group, you know, if you need help, people are gonna give their time to help, so I left one time, and X-21 was like, message me, he's like, yo, so I saw you left, and I was like, yeah, I just get tired of,

it was like a day where the whole chat was just faggot and queer and all this kind of stuff, like ad nauseam, and I was like, dear Lord, who are these people that I've gotten in bed with?

Like, this is ridiculous. Like, are we in primary school or something? - Yeah, it's weird, 'cause it's like, it's the nicest bunch of people who are so fucking helpful when you have problems, but they'll also call you a come.

It's just like, it's just how it is, but it's a really, really good group. To be honest, I much prefer that where people are like abrasive, but actually care about Bitcoin, and actually care about the cause, and I think a lot of it, like the reason people are abrasive is because they deal with literal retards all the time,

and all the clout chasing, and all the fake, there's so much fake, like, oh, I'm here to change the money, it's like me, you hear four money, and you hear for clout, and you wrap this facade of like, you know, I'm here for the right reasons, and honestly, like, I've been doing this a while,

you start to see through it, and the majority of people are full of shit, but there are some really good people in sub and bit corner group. And that's to be honest, like, we haven't spoken before, that's why I got you on the show, is like, yeah, he's in this group, you're putting some content out, I hadn't heard you on any other pods,

and I thought, fuck it, let's get someone who seems, let's not get the same sailors and everyone else on the show, let's get someone who seems like he's doing it for the right reason, so let's jump in a little bit to your sort of like little bit of background, we don't have to do the whole Orange Hill story,

but it sounds like it might be quite an interesting one, give them where you've ended up. - Yeah, well, just before I go into that, just to comment on what you said before, I think that's, it's actually an attribute, people being adversarial, 'cause I think that's something that crypto at large, it's kinda like, oh, just trust me,

you know, there's way too much trust, and I think in Bitcoin, people kinda, they get it, you know, this is adversarial tech, this is, you can use this with someone that you absolutely do not trust, and that's okay, but yeah, going to myself, so I got in 2017, unfortunately I hadn't heard of Bitcoin prior to then,

just didn't come across my radar, I was already in Indonesia by that time, but yeah, 2017, and just opened up a Coinbase, started buying, oh god, I thought I was a genius, like I bought some Litecoin, that went up to like $250, I was like, I put on trades, like I was trying to, yeah, you know, I was just trying to make money,

I paid off all my credit card debt with that, and I just, you know, I caught the fever, and I read Safedine's book, The Bitcoin Standard, so it was weird, because I was a Bitcoin maximalist at heart, like his book really resonated with me, and I was like, oh, there's something to it,

but on paper, I didn't really, I didn't understand anything, and I wanted to make Bitcoin, but I didn't wanna hold Bitcoin, because I was always refreshing, you know, what's pumping the most, oh, I should be in that, and then oh no, now it's going down, I need to get out of that, I was trying to convince other people to hop in,

and I made a mutual fund with a friend of mine, and he's even crazier than me, he was into like Neo and all this other crap that XRP, all this stuff that I wouldn't even wanna touch, but we were buying that kind of stuff, and yeah, it all went to shit, basically.

You know, we had the blow-off top, and as you know, the alt's pump, but they take a beating the most, so I basically just kind of lost my appetite for the whole thing, and I cashed out probably mid-2018, I hadn't put a lot of money into it, I didn't have a lot of capital, you know, working in Southeast Asia,

I wasn't having a huge paycheck or anything like that, but yeah, I just cashed out and forgot about it, and then let's see, so then I got back in, a friend of mine was telling me about NFTs and stuff, and we were having a beer, and he was just like, look, you know, this is like 2020 or something like that,

I think this was after it had pumped pretty high, and he was just like, look man, we're still early, and we talked for, we were chatting for, it was like a three-hour session with all the guys, and he just sold me on it, he's like, yeah, we're still early, and I was like, you know what?

And he was basically just like, you know, put a little bit in every month, just put a little bit in. - Into NFT, so I thought it was a bit good. - Well, he was trying to flip NFTs, which since then he was like, oh, it's stupid, but he actually hates Bitcoin, I don't actually talk to him anymore, that's a whole nother story,

but basically he thinks Bitcoin rules the market, but he just thinks it's retarded, so but he got me back in, and then from there, I just started devouring everything I could. I was a YouTube maximalist at that time, so everything on YouTube is crypto, so like Coin Bureau and all that kind of stuff,

and trying to find the gems in the rough, and I got put onto DeFi, and then I found a community there, and it was attractive, because, you know, in the tradfi, like tradfi, DeFi, you know, all these silly labels, but the thing that I liked about it was, okay, so I can be somewhat anonymous,

and get, you know, all this yield, which I think yield is ridiculous now, because the aftermath of it was essentially, I lost a lot of money, because the chain that I was on, like I didn't even think, you know, if something's being used for gas, it's not an asset or a commodity you want to hold, it's just there to pay the bills, you know?

Like, if you use gas for your stove, for your stove or your oven, you're not gonna go hodl gas, it's an insane thing to say, okay, this smart contract chain, I'm gonna hold that gas, and that's gonna appreciate it in value.

Why? Like, people get in and get out of it, you know, transactionally, so why are you holding it? What's the use case there, other than to execute contracts? So, the value of that, of everything I was holding, essentially, you know, you're holding liquidity on both sides, and everything just, the bottom fell out,

'cause, you know, we, the bull market ended, and then again, same thing. I got bit twice, basically. And then, after that, to bring it to Bitcoin, I found somehow, I was just looking at podcast, I'd been on YouTube for so long, and then I went ahead and searched for podcast, I was like, okay, let's listen to some stuff

instead of watching. And I found rabbit hole recap, I didn't know what it was, but just the way they talked about the whole space was completely foreign to me. I'm like, what are these guys talking about?

I had been scared off of using Bitcoin because in order to dollar cost average, I was actually in Bitcoin, but on the DeFi exchange, you know, 'cause you can do borrowing and lending, and you can use leverage, and you can do all this kind of stuff.

And I thought, you know, this is the way, this is the way you have to use Bitcoin is on another chain because transactions were less than a penny, and to get it off the exchange was only costing me like one phantom unit, which is one of the chains, and that was less than a cent to get it off the exchange.

And I tried to send my nieces and nephews Bitcoin for their birthdays 'cause I'm a Bitcoin Maximus even then, and we won't go into like purity tests 'cause, you know, people are obviously no one's actually a Bitcoin Maximus if you apply the purity tests, which is retarded.

But I tried to send them Bitcoin for birthdays because the price of Bitcoin was pretty high at that point. It was gonna cost me like 20 bucks or 15 bucks 'cause a lot of these exchanges, they at that time it was like 0.0005 Bitcoin, which I think is like 50,000 Sats.

And that's not nothing, you know, I'd been buying phantom and taking it off the exchange for, you know, a penny or less actually. And so I thought, man, you know, the Bitcoin chain sucks because it's costing, you know, 10, 20 dollars to get off the exchange.

Little did I know it's just because exchanges don't use segregated witness or lightning. And actually once you get it off the exchange, you can have, you know, one sat transactions and I have experienced that.

Once I started using Bitcoin, I was transacting and it was, you know, five cents or something like that 'cause, you know, for a while they're the fees were-- - The fees, my shoe was terrible as well.

- Yeah, completely changed from 2017 'cause all I remembered about fees was from 2017 where it was egregious. And so I hadn't been updated about the fee situation. And so I started getting more into Bitcoin and, you know, I got a blue wallet and I transacted to buy a more bad VPN 'cause I started getting more into anonymity

and privacy and things like that. And it was crazy, you know, it cost a few cents to send Bitcoin and I thought, what the heck? It's decentralized, it's censorship resistant. There's all these attributes.

And yeah, since then I still had a lot of Bitcoin on the DeFi exchange for a few months 'cause I had been kind of arbitraging my debt 'cause basically I had credit card debt from travels and things like that.

And it was, you know, 20, 22% annually. And on DeFi I could get USDC loans for like 3%, 5%, you know, it's anonymous. So, but the thing is, and this is why I don't really like the whole crypto scene in DeFi is there's so much trust.

You need to trust the people that run the chain. You need to trust the network effect. You need to trust that it's not overly centralized. You need to trust the protocol that you're using that is, you know, the coding.

You need to trust that there's no bugs. I was fortunate because I got into a community where I did trust the people that were running it. I trusted them to do the right thing. And if there was a bug and, you know, a million dollars worth of funds got locked up for some reason, they would make people whole.

And I thought, yes, you know, this is, find a niche, find an area of DeFi that's not just scum and exploitive practices and pump and dumps and things like that. Find this area and then just stay there.

'Cause you don't have the capacity to really vet everything. And so I found an area that I thought I was pretty comfortable with. I was pretty close to all the guys. And I felt like, you know, if there was a problem with the smart contract, which is another risk of DeFi, that, you know, they'd make people whole.

But as the bull market turned to a bear market fully, you know, we really bottomed out, I realized that, you know, especially as things were happening with FTX and just all the shit happening with BlockFi, I realized that my trust model was broken.

Like I needed to move to a model where there was complete, not complete because, you know, there's always some amount of trust, but I needed to shift systems to something that was way more trustless than all the trust that I was having to stomach.

And yeah, that, once I was financially able, I paid off all my debts and things like that. And now I'm just, you know, bear market, just ready to stack Sats. Actually, I actually asked my parents in laws to fund me to get one Bitcoin when it was like $15,000.

And I spent like three hours with a presentation trying to orange pill my father-in-law. And he legitimately, he's a Christian, I'm a Christian, he looked at me and was like, you know, it's a moral, it's used for scams, it's, you know, I would rather, 'cause they're both retired.

And he's like, I'd rather have my money in 3% bonds, government bonds, where he felt like, and I was completely flabbergasted, I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but he essentially told me that trying to put money in Bitcoin just because it's gonna go up in value is immoral.

And he would rather have his money in something government backed because he's like very communal. And this is a problem with Asians. A lot of Asians don't like, you know, Westerners were very individualistic and very, we can be antagonistic and things like that.

And if you're very contrarian, like you and probably, or like I am, and probably you are as well, Bitcoin really resonates with us. And I'd really like to go into talking about kind of the government and after system kind of stuff, that rabbit hole.

But yeah, I talked to him and he was just like, no, this is not good, you know, people use it to buy porn and things like that. And I'm just like, all right, you know, I don't know what else to say to you, but yeah, after he passed on that, and then I watched it, you know, 2X from the bottom.

I was just like, well, thanks father-in-law for, but you know, it was his money, not my money. And I just brushed it off. I'm like, you know what? Stay humble, stack sats, just put in money I have.

Like I'm completely leverage off at this point. Like I just, I couldn't stomach it anymore. Like, so anyway, that's my rant. - Well, this is the thing, mate. It's like, this is kind of the story for almost everybody.

We're all relatively similar in our approach. Like everyone gets stung by shit coins. The only ones who avoid it are ones who literally have a friend abusing them and almost punching them in the face every time they're gonna think about it or come up with some reason why it's better.

And I've got managed to get a couple of friends to become maximalists in the sense of what they invest in and that they don't fuck around and try and invest in all these other scammy bullshit.

But it's really hard. Like you have to spend so much time with people. Everyone else falls for it for some amount of time. And it's not the people that retouch. Like I've got friends even now who are like very smart, very, very smart.

And they still fuck around with Define all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I think that's dumb for me. Like I'm not interested in it, but they're really passionate about it. It's very attractive because all the promises that people sell are exciting.

And like this idea of rather than paying 20% on your credit card, you wanna pay three. It's like, yeah, obviously I wanna fucking do that. You want yield by putting something in this small contract and you know, and all this stuff.

It's like, it sounds amazing. I get it, I totally get it. So when people sort of abuse the shit coiners, who are there, I think a lot of them are there for the right reasons, they just don't understand.

And it's only once you start to like dig into, well, okay, how does this work? Like, why is it here? What's the background of it? Why was it actually built in the first place? - Right, right.

- And what are the things that make it decentralized and make it trustless? And, you know, it takes time. It's like, it's so foreign. I don't think you can blame anyone. And then, you know, we then also all, when we find out and work out, oh fuck, like this is what Bitcoin is.

Oh my God, if you start to understand quite how dramatic the change will be, then you wanna shill it to everyone. And then we all go through this as well. You know, like you said with your father-in-law, it's like, I did it.

Like you've run around to everyone in the world, like trying to explain and why it's so amazing. And you try and get people to invest and you do all this stuff. And it's like, that people's reaction is almost always the same.

And again, you can't blame them because it's like, they've been taught their entire life that the money that they have is sacred and the government is great. And all this stuff, they've been taught and basically brainwashed into thinking this.

They don't respond well to, A, they don't understand what you're trying to shill them. B, they don't respond well to things like, you know, if they say, oh, well, it's immoral to have Bitcoin because it's gonna go up, I'll keep it in government bonds.

You're like, okay, do you not think it's immoral to have money where it's literally funding terrorism and for people dropping bombs on their children and all the other disgusting shit that the dollar and the pound and all the other fiat currencies are responsible for.

And it's like, they will find that a personal attack because by saying that, when you're saying, this is what your money is doing and you're involved in this system, you're basically saying you're murdering the children.

And the truth is effectively, yes, they are. And that's like really painful for people to hear and understand. So I feel your pain is reassuring. But I don't think orange-pilling people, most people is productive use of time.

But I basically completely stop now unless someone is already on the same page. For example, if someone comes to you and they're like, oh, fucking hell, this is really disgusting, the war that's going on or whatever, something where it's tangentially linked to the sort of goal of Bitcoin.

Then I think that's like a nice in, rather than, okay, this is something that's gonna become more valuable. Which it is, but it's like, it just doesn't seem to work. - Well, that's why I started writing the material 'cause it was just unhealthy.

I mean, every social gathering I would go to, I'd be there five minutes and I'd be five minutes into a rant. My wife would just shake her head 'cause I'd grab someone's ear and I'd be, I would basically lecture them for an hour and it would be a lecture because they genuinely had no idea.

They were kind of a captive audience. I had something to say for whatever they said and they genuinely, there was just so much they didn't know that I would just talk their ear off and it was really uncomfortable for me because you know that they don't give a shit.

But you can't stop yourself. You're just like, how do people not see what I see? - Yeah, I mean, just like you with this podcast. Like, I remember once I did the rabbit hole recap and then I found Tails from the Crypt, Peter McCormick and then Stefan and then I found you.

And yeah, I just popped on over to your, usually what I do is if I like a podcast, I'll go back all the way to the beginning. So I started Tails from the Crypt, you know, first episode. I started bit by bit, first episode, Stefan Lavera, first episode, just going through and you know, just listen on two times speed or whatever.

But your podcast especially resonated with me. It was just you talking with another guy, I'm not sure who was on your first episode but you were just talking and going, like everything that I had encountered going down the rabbit hole, you were talking about.

You were saying, and I was like, holy crap, like this guy gets it. And then you were saying, I can't socially talk about this to people, so I need to have a podcast. And I just went like, he's right.

And so that's now that I've written some content and I was writing every day now, I'm trying to write once a week, but it has helped, you know, when I go out on social, like I can just kind of sit there calm.

And if I do talk to someone for a few minutes, I can just say, hey, you know, I've got a blog, you should check it out or something like that. Like it's a lot more chill versus what it was before where I would literally rant and rave and get very emotional.

Like I like, I remember one time I was, I was trying to work out at the gym and I was literally sat in a corner sitting Indian style talking, I had my AirPods in to listen to podcasts, but a friend of mine was calling me back 'cause I'd called him on the road.

And sat there 30 minutes of my workout time that I couldn't really work out. And I was just talking to him about how, you know, the fiat system is just how shitty it is and how, you know, it makes people poor.

And it's the reason that society is, you know, so fucked. And he was like, what? Like he had no idea what I was talking about, but he's like, wow, I should really look into that 'cause I was telling him about inflation and he's British, he's from the UK.

And I stoned him about how the wars had affected inflation and all that kind of stuff. And he's just like, yeah, I don't know anything about this. But to go back to the crypto thing, like that community, all the people there, super nice, they all pay their taxes, which I think is retarded, but you know, they're like very, they love it.

They're like, you know, you should use this software, that software, and I'm just like, how do you account for all this? But that's beside the point. But something I wanted to mention before we moved on was a lot of the guys, and I think I was in this position in 2017, I'm still in the telegram group.

I have people say to me, I'm like the Bitcoin maxi in the group, I'm waiting for them to kick me, but I'm gonna stay as long as they keep me around. I just show Bitcoin. And one of the guys was like, you know, I'm too poor to own Bitcoin.

And this is like actually a really common thought. So in the traditional world, a lot of, you know, you hear Bitcoins too risky, it's too volatile. So I don't wanna hold it. But in the crypto world, it's actually the opposite.

Bitcoin is like the old, old, funny, you know, grandpa coin. And I need to get into a coin that's gonna pump. And, you know, for me, I find that actually to be a bit unethical because that liquidity is coming from someone else.

It's like that YouTuber who did like the million dollar coin or million coin or something like that. And it was a complete scam. He said, I'm gonna put in a million of my dollars, and then this will always be worth a million dollars.

Well, he only put in like 100,000. And it was just a complete scam. And then he got, he got rich off of it. And people don't understand the concept of like, you are the exit liquidity. People look at small cap, you know, they look at it as like a penny stock.

And all of this is a security. All of this is basically equity in a company. It's centralized. There's someone who is pre-mining the shit out of the token that they're generating. Like it's all completely on a, but people are so greedy and short-sighted basically all they look at is delta, just the change in value.

If I buy in and it's worth five cents, and later it's worth 20 cents, I made money. That's completely ludicrous. You're talking about a coin that has 400 million units, 80% of those units or tokens the developer is keeping.

The market value is completely inflated because just like the RuPaul and Russia, they're actually locking up a lot of the tokens. This is what XRP does. They lock it up so that the moving liquidity is very small.

It's a small pocket. So it's very artificial. That's what they do with the RuPaul. So people are looking at the nominal price and saying, oh, it's really high. Well, no, it's completely inflated.

And regardless, you're pumping their backs. And just like the guy who co-founded XRP and he left to do stellar. I'm sorry about all the shit coin talk, but he basically sold on the community.

You know, they gave him, they make them, what I'm saying is they make themselves rich off of everyone who provides liquidity. And yeah, everyone's expense. And everyone's just thinking, like how pathetic is the XRP community?

Like seriously, the all-time high is like $3.50. And actually my best friend who's my best man at my wedding, he's an XRP maxi. And I got him reading-- - That's amazing. - I thought they were all bots. - Like a Bitcoin book.

Sorry? - I said, that's amazing. I thought they were all bots. I can't believe they were real. - No, even now, 'cause he was a business major. And for him, it makes sense. Like he's like, oh, this is gonna be used by the banks and everything.

And I got him reading, what is it? Hard money, you can't fuck with something like that. I think it's Jason something. It's a Bitcoin sound money you can't fuck with, there's something like that.

- Oh, I don't know. There's so many books that will-- - Yeah, there's so many written books. But I've had him reading that, and he was like, oh, okay, I get it. But he's like, this is like the gold to XRP silver or some bullshit like that.

And I'm just like, ew, just stop, just stop. Everyone's mantra is like, I'm using XYZ token or coin to get the money to put into Bitcoin. And I've completely gone risk off in that sense. And I'm just like, no, I'm just gonna buy Bitcoin.

And you don't need yield because yield is, it's a farce. It's a scam when the value of the asset that you're holding. So if you get a thousand percent yield, but the asset that you're holding goes from being worth, so phantom when I started in the DeFi with Phantom, it was worth like $2.50.

It went down to 10 cents in the bear market. That's ridiculous. And so, oh, you've been making 15% on your phantom that you've been getting yield on, 15% yay. But when I first got into that, I staked some phantom just to test it, just to play around with it.

Not much, like $100 worth. And right now, it's worth like 40 bucks. And I've been making yield, quote unquote. I staked it, so they give you some of the emissions. I've been making yield on it for, I don't know, like a year.

But it's worth, you know, a fourth of what it was worth when I put it in. So yeah, I don't know, like everything is a scam, bro. Like just, it's all inflationary bullshit. Like it's the whole crypto market.

If someone can literally make 400 million units of something, and then all they need to do is sell one at a market value, and then they can multiply that value. You know, they can pay someone $20 to sell, to buy one unit of it for $10.

And then they can multiply that by the total number of units and say, oh, now it's worth four quadrillion dollars because I made one sale. But there's no liquidity, right? You understand what I'm saying?

Like it's a complete scam. - I understand what you're saying. It's been such a long time since I've even given it thought to be honest because I'm so bored by, not just bored, but like, I'll put it like this.

It feels pointless to me because all of these scams, all of these different ways to re-rap a turd, which is going to steal from a community of people who probably mean well to enrich yourself.

- Yeah. - I could go out onto the street and take a machete and go and take someone's Rolex and make 20 grand this morning. 'Cause there's a load of cunts who walk around with them on their wrist, right?

I could go and do that. And that's a million percent that I've made today. No money I've put down. I've gone and I've made 20 grand this morning. - Yeah. - Well, I can do that. It's fucking horrible.

It's really immoral. I'm not going to go and do it for that reason, right? - Yeah, of course. - I could also go and do the same and start a shit coin or invest in a shit coin and chill into a community of people who listen to me.

I can go and do that tomorrow. They're both immoral and they're both pointless because they don't do anything other than enrich me and fuck other people over. And the reason that Bitcoin's here and the reason I'm interested in Bitcoin, I am also interested in the fact that I think it's going to be more valuable, obviously.

But the reason that I think it's so interesting, it's like, it can make real change. And so it's like, yeah, okay, these like you're saying your friend who's got his business degree or whatever and he's like, oh, XRP, it's going to work with the banks and all this stuff.

And it's like, okay, right. A, it's not, they're not going to work with you. But B, even if they did, even if all the banks were like, yeah, we're going to use XRP and then somehow it worked and somehow it became more valuable, all you've done is just continue the same system just with a different token and everything stays the same.

A best, a best, everything stays the same. And the poor keep getting far, keep dropping bombs. - Yeah, you just then rigid a different person. - Exactly. And so for that reason, you know, I'm not like a, like a Bitcoin maximalist because I'm like, care about these other things or want to attack these other things.

I'm just like, I'm just not fucking interested. Just like I'm not interested with someone going and robbing a watch. It's just like, you do you, mate? Like it's, it's just fucking pointless.

- So how'd you get into the privacy and anonymity? And not, I don't, I don't know how to say that. How'd you get into that? - Yeah, I didn't get into the anonymity. I just had enough of listening to all the finance stuff.

- Yeah. - Three years or so had passed and I'd been listening to just constantly. Like honestly, probably eight hours a day, every day, just constantly listening to all the finance bros talking and trying to like, work out how the current financial system is working and where it's going to fuck people and all this stuff.

And I kind of just came to the realization. I was like, look, there's nothing that's going to change my opinion on Bitcoin at this point. I think this is the best asset in the world talking purely from like speculation side and like where's safest for, for my family.

So I was like, I already have that view and I'm already just stacking. Everything that I have in fear, I'm stacking. Like I'm not, it doesn't make any difference. I don't have like a trading strategy.

It doesn't really matter what the Fed's doing today or tomorrow in terms of my strategy. And so I just got to the point where I thought, this is actually now me trying to pat myself on the back and understand the current financial system inside and out.

So that when I'm having a conversation with someone and I say, no, the dollar's going to fail and all these fiat currencies are bullshit and they attack me back. It's only so that I feel smart enough that I can explain to them why they're wrong.

And that's actually a bit sad. I was like, this is this is fucking pointless. Just keep doing what I'm doing. Just keep quiet, buy as much Bitcoin as I can. And then I was like, well, what's the, what's something that I can do that's useful with my time?

And I thought, well, the useful thing I can do with my time is to work out how to secure this properly and to work out how to make it so that if I want to disappear, I can and people aren't tracking and tracing me because, you know, the funny thing was like I had the

view from day one, which is kind of why I was approached about this is like governments will do anything in their power to fuck you. They don't care about you. Like it's, it's been very clear to me through my life that like they do not give a fuck about us.

And so if you hold that opinion and you know what they've done in history, like you only have to have a quick flick through history to see how horrific they can treat their subjects. And so I was thinking, well, if this does have the power to take away their control

of money, which is their control of time, do you not think that they're going to react in a way that maybe isn't favorable to me and my family? And like the answer is definitely yes. And I'm very confident that Bitcoin will do all the things that we're sort of talking about in this podcast.

It's like it is going to be able to defund the wars, it is going to be able to take their power away. It is going to give freedom back to people. And these are the things that they fear the most, they're going to be fucking angry and like you can act as tough as you want.

But if they're coming after you, it's horrifying. And so I thought, well, I want to be as private as I can be, but also I want to be able to have conversations like this, I want to be able to be involved in these communities.

I don't want to learn, I want to get better with my privacy. And so it's like a really fine balance is why I don't do video. I think there's not really any other podcast that don't do video, we'll have their faces out there.

They all talk themselves and have video and yeah, which I find to be just like, why do they think that's necessary? Like they all talk about, I need to do this if I'm going to have a platform and I'm just like, really?

Like you can't just. It definitely helps. Like just talk to plebs and like Twitter handles and stuff, like, is it really that niche? Well, I think it definitely helps like in terms of numbers and like like normies trusting and that kind of stuff.

But it depends what you're here for. It's like, what happens then is if it's all about the numbers and it's all about getting bigger sponsors and more money and a higher production value and blah, blah, blah, then it's like it very quickly becomes something that's everything that you're supposedly here to stop.

So it's a fine line. So, but anyway, I mean, I was, I was really lucky because, you know, I had people like Bitcoin Q&A and Brother Rabbit and, I mean, Samurai and all these guys who have just been unbelievably helpful to me over the years and just like helping me get better.

You know, if you've listened to the part, you know, I'm like, I'm a fucking idiot with stuff. I really, I really can break. It's endearing. Like anything. Yeah, like anything that's possible to break, I'll break.

But the point is like, at least I try and do it because it's just pointless. You are just sort of smelling your own farts when you're trying to be able to explain to people why they're wrong about finance is not only pointless, it's almost, it's a bit cringy.

It's just like, just worry about yourself. So anyway, that's kind of what I'm doing. And that's the reason for the show is like, try and explain to people why Bitcoin matters, how to use it.

And from the perspective of someone who genuinely like, it's not a put on thing. I genuinely just, I'm fucking terrible at technology. I really am. So it takes me a long time. So the hope is like, there are other people like me who care, but we're not like techie,

whiz kid people and hopefully people sort of at least get encouraged because it's so easy to be like, you know, I've had times where I was sat for literally days on end, like just days on end, all day, all night, trying to set up a node, something crashes or trying to flash a phone and doesn't work and, and just things go wrong.

And you feel like, Oh, I could fucking lose my shit here, like fuck this, forget it, whatever. I can't be bothered with this, we've got other things to be. But then I'm hoping that people listen and they're like, Oh, okay, there's another fuck with who is trying and they're persisting.

So anyway, that's the hope. What about you? Why did you start going down the privacy stuff? Because it's very different to the DeFi world. Well, first of all, I just want to say you're, you're like the badass version of, of Peter McCormick.

I don't know. I would say that as a compliment in some, you know, as you probably know, most Americans, they just hear the accent, you know, and it's pretty common knowledge that if you have an accent, you can pretty much say whatever you want and Americans are going to think you're brilliant.

But I found him first because his, his branding is marketing, he's easier to find on Apple podcast. But when I found you, I was like, Oh, yeah, this is my jam. Like, this is awesome. Bit by bit is, this is the stuff like what, like I, I don't even follow Peter McCormick anyway.

I'm like, anymore. I'm like, why would I listen to that? I appreciate that. So, so for me, I want to know where, how you, the, your icon, like the pleb minor, like where, when did that start happening?

Because, you know, I'm still in the past. I'm in like 2020 listening to you, but well, we can get back to that later. So like Marty bent says, you know, bit, Bitcoin changes you and I don't know if that's original to him, but Bitcoin changed me.

I had always been a soft maxi. I don't, I don't think I just made that up, but I, I, you know, sounds really a phallic but, but not soft maxi, meaning that like, Bitcoin was the thing that I wanted to accumulate, but I didn't necessarily use Bitcoin to get more Bitcoin.

And I didn't think in Bitcoin, because I didn't even know what Sats were, but anyway, so for me, once I started using transacting and using on chain Bitcoin, going, you know, going literally down the rabbit hole, great pod, but you know, the, the actual rabbit rabbit

hole, it, it really is like a, what's that mythical creature with like, with all the heads, the one that Hercules like chops off the heads and the is it Medusa? Is it Medusa? Um, but it's like a dog, right?

It's like, or something like that. And yeah, anyway, you know, every time he cuts off, every time he would cut a hat, I don't know if you've seen the classic Hercules, the Hydra, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, Hydra.

Yeah. So it's like, it's like a Hydra, you know, it, it's so multifaceted. And I think most people think of Bitcoin as just this ticker symbol that that's very volatile, it, you know, goes up and down, you trade in and out, you, you keep all your money on, on a platform so you can trade, but you know, even the first line of, of Satoshi's

white paper, you know, it's, it's a, it's peer to peer. And yet most of the volume is done in a centralized exchange where, you know, you would think that we'd learned our lesson with Mount Gox, but then you have BlockFi, then you have FTX, you have all this.

And people, like, honestly, it's, it's, I'm so tired of it. You know, I talk to people and they tell me, you know, Bitcoin, oh, that's complete horseshit. Like look, look what happened to FTX.

And I'm like, this, you know, one of these is not like the other, you know, Bitcoin, uh, intrinsically is, is not even like you should not even, uh, give controller access to your Bitcoin to a third party.

And so I, I, I had the start experiment of even if I was in an antagonistic country, I could still, and this was through discussing and debating with, with others, um, but I had this thought like Bitcoin has value, even if people say you can't use it, because you can always find another party to transact.

And this was theoretical for me, it was hypothetical, but then, uh, as I went down the, you know, went down further, I actually found, uh, these peer to peer, you know, basically I, I came across the sovereign, sovereign Bitcoin and I asked people questions and it was overwhelming

because, you know, you just want to know where to get peer to peer Bitcoin. And people are saying you need to have this phone and this laptop and this operating system and, and, and it's just like, wow, whoa, hold on, like it's way too much.

And so I just kind of filed it away and started going into it a bit, you know, more and more, it all connects. So once you think about, okay, well, I want to acquire Bitcoin peer to peer because that makes the most sense.

And I also want to be able to sell it peer to peer because that makes the most sense. Then you need to think about, okay, well, what is this tour thing? What about my VPN? Well, you know, my internet provider knows where I go.

If I use a VPN, they know where I go. If I use my credit card, it's just like this, you know, what I'm getting at. It's this, um, it's extremely complicated. Yeah. It, it starts to, um, you start to realize that if anyone, like a, a three-letter agency or just anyone really, like your life is so transparent and, you know, I'm, I'm using

like Nord VPN or something because everyone chills it on YouTube. And it's like, I paid for it with my credit card. They know who I am. And then they're logging potentially every single place that I go to.

And, and I just, I got to a point where I was like, look, the government has already showed themselves to be bad faith actors, the shenanigans that they've pulled with the monetary system, a manipulation that they've malicious 6102 executive order, you know, in the thirties.

And everything that they've done, you know, Nixon and 70, 71, when the French gunboats are coming to the US shore with, with all these worthless dollars, or, you know, worth less, you know, worth less, not actually worthless, but worth less dollars after printing, you know, for the Vietnam war.

And then he says, you know, they're attacking us. We need to get off the gold standard like everything that they've been doing. It has not been for the sake of, of the average Joe. And I, I just realized that I have to take ownership of my life and that includes my finances.

And I need to stop being the lowest common denominator and stop, you know, using convenience as an excuse. My dad, he passed away and I remember being on the road with him and he was using Google Maps in a browser on his phone and I was like, why don't you just download the app?

And he was like, no, because you know, I don't want to have the app. I just use it in the browser and I was like, ah, you're so paranoid. And you know, my dad had like 15 guns and, and I just thought he was crazy.

I thought he was literally crazy. I never followed politics and then when Trump started running, I knew immediately I was like, Trump's going to win. And then I started following politics for like four years and I stopped right when Biden got elected.

I'm ashamed to say that I did vote for Biden. I didn't vote for Trump because he's a fucktard. In hindsight, I think he's probably from a pragmatic sense. He's done a lot more good than most, but he, he is objectively like mentally not a good person.

None of them are. But anyway, like I don't want to talk about politics. My, my point, my point was, um, my, I don't know why, how I got on that tangent, but my, my point is that, um, for a while there, I went down the rabbit hole of being more liberal

in my thinking, thinking that it's okay that the government helps people, you know, there are people that are suffering and they need help. Like in hindsight, so I'm not as liberal in that sense.

My, I literally got in a push, a shoving, well, I didn't shove my dad, but my dad shoved me because I was telling him, you know, we need to make voting mandatory so that like Australia, because, um, you know, Republicans, they, they make it really hard for people to vote.

And that's really immoral. So if we made it mandatory, then poor people could vote easier and all this kind of stuff. And he was literally like shoving me. Like he's, he's all about, you know, freedom and liberty and all this kind of stuff.

Um, and when, when the mass things were happening, uh, I'm, I'm over here in Asia where everyone wears a mask and you have to scan the QR code to go into any kind of building. And I'm just thinking, what the fuck is happening in America?

We, we're all waiting for vaccines so that we can go out into the world because everyone's hold up, which is abysmal and then the vaccine comes and people don't want to take it. Like I argued with my sister about it, all this kind of stuff happened.

And my frame of reference was just different. You know, I, I didn't have the community that I have now, but as I look in hindsight, I'm just like, wow, if I actually knew where a lot of the problems originate, I don't think I would have had the same position, my stance, for example, that the government should be helping people.

That's because I'm not actually seeing the damage that the government has done to put them there in the first place. I didn't really understand inflation. Inflation was supposedly nominally like 2% every year.

And I just thought inflation was par for the course. And something that something happened when I learned about Bitcoin is I, I found out and realized, you know, retro, respectively, that people don't have to, they shouldn't have to spend 30 years paying on a mortgage.

You know, 50, 60 years ago, they spent four or five years. So many things have changed and so many of those things can be attributed to policies that the Fed or the government have taken in terms of monetary policies.

And I just finished reading the sovereign individual. And it's atrocious America, the US is one of one out of three states or, you know, countries, nation states that require people living abroad to, to pay taxes.

Annually, I pay money to have an accountant file my taxes so that I can pay zero taxes, like just let that sink in. I, I've paid someone money in America to file taxes so that I can have my taxes filed and be zero.

Because there's a clause that if it's, if you make like 50 grand to 100 grand and you pay taxes in the country that you live in, they don't make you pay double, but I'm still paying someone.

So if you think about it from a sovereign individual perspective where he, his hypothesis is that, you know, mega states are going to fail and we're going to go more into a futile, you know, localized system, which I think is great if it happens.

But Americans are kind of shit out of luck because in the 90s, he talks about this in the book in the 90s, Clinton made it to where if you exit the US, you have to pay an exit tax. And so they're, they're essentially holding potentially sovereign individuals hostage

saying, okay, you can leave, but you're still going to file taxes and pay us. And if you want to leave for real, financially exit, then you need to pay this egregious exit tax. So I don't know what it is because I'm not like a wealthy, you know, high net worth individual.

So I haven't looked into it, but they actually make the case in the book that you, that you could, there could actually be a case where transactionally people pay the exit tax, but then stay in the country.

Because if you know, if you know the argument with like sovereign individual, when people leave, you know, to go live somewhere else, when they leave the Western world, like Sweden, UK, US, whatever, you have to give up maybe your lifestyle.

And his argument was you could potentially see a very transactional relationship with the government where they're failing, you know, nominally they're failing. And I think we see this kind of happening in real time, even though the book was in 1997, they're failing, but people pay the exit tax, you know, high net worth individuals.

They pay the exit tax, but then remain in the country. And then what that does is it gives the money to the states. And then if they had actually left, then the revenue or the profits they make thereafter would be benefiting another nation.

But if they paid the exit tax and then remained, then any profit or revenue or, you know, industrial productive behavior, they take part in after that thereafter, you know, the government can get their cut, if that makes sense, but then essentially they'd be negotiating a much lower, you know, a much lower tax payout.

So it just gets in the way of everything. It's just a fucking what does theft, taxes, government, taxes, all the regulation. I used to think that the statement taxes is theft, you know, Ron Paul and all this kind of libertarian stuff.

I used to think it was it was kind of childish to say taxation is theft because I thought, you know, taxation has been around forever, you know, even you read the Bible and what is it they were saying?

Should we pay taxes? No, not even tithing to the church, but should we pay taxes to Caesar? And then he says, look at the coin, whose face is on it? Render to Caesar. What is it? Caesars, you know, so taxes have been around for ages.

So I thought, you know, crying about taxes is pretty, it's a bitch move, but what I had never thought about and never realized was the expansionary monetary policy, the, you know, the quantitative easing, the inflation, people, not goods that people need to acquire,

such as, you know, educate higher education, housing, rent, the Tom Fulery and fuckery with the CPI index, which is just a load of nonsense. I hadn't real, I didn't realize that we're, we're all look, it's like a magician, we're looking at the left hand and going, ah, taxes, man, that sucks.

But if you're poor, you don't really pay taxes, actually. And so you think that, oh, you do. Well, so it gets taken out, it gets taken out of your paycheck, but then at the end of the year, don't they, like, give it back nominally if you make, you still have sales taxes, you still have VAT, you still have all the taxes on fuel.

So Florida, Florida, Texas, some, some states are better to be in, but you're right. You do pay, um, and, and there are, I remember when I was in high school, smoking, uh, went from, people would buy a, a carton of like 20 packs of cigarettes for, you know, five,

six, seven dollars, it, it went from that to like $25 because they decided that they should, like, these poor people weren't paying taxes for children to go to school, because they were poor.

But if they tax the shit out of cigarettes, which poor people buy, then they could use that for education costs, which, um, okay. Yeah, that's, yeah, I don't, I don't know what you think about that, but that, uh, so yeah, you're right.

Poor people do pay taxes. They pay taxes in the worst way because they have the silent taxes, you know, inflation, right? Fucks them, sales taxes, fuck them, taxes on everything you could possibly buy and, you know, like fuel taxes and all these things.

And then, I mean, here, it's different here, but like, you know, you've got to pay council tax just to live in the area that you're living on the property, you already have, you pay your property taxes when you buy something, you pay tax on that, when you earn something, you pay tax on that.

Any earnings that you have left over, that you invest, and then they happen to make some money, then you pay tax on that. If you want to start a business, you pay a load of taxes upfront on, uh, business, and then you have to jump through all these different hoops, just millions and millions of hoops

of just bullshit and bureaucracy, which effectively is a tax on your time. This is one of the reasons that, like, I was so excited about Bitcoin because I used to run businesses, I used to run dental practices, I used to run Botox clinics, I used to run fucking annoying businesses to run because you had all this interference at every step

of the way. It just got to the point where I was like, I actually fucking despised this. I hate doing my job, I couldn't speak to any patients, I couldn't do anything that was of use to people because I spent all my time with fitting out stupid little forms and fucking

around with pointless stuff that no one appreciates that it wasn't necessary. You know, I was just like, oh, every step of the way, every turn, everything you try and do, especially as a small business owner, is just a fucking nightmare.

And so I got to the stage where I was like, I just don't want to deal with anything. All I want to do is deal with cash, I'm not fucking around with any of this shit anymore, it's a nightmare.

That's why, like, it's probably a while off, but we do have this little, like, if you take out everything that's going on around us, like, yeah, we can't really stop the government coming after people for tax right now, we can't really stop all the wars right now, we can't

really stop all the fucking crazy shit they're doing right now, we can't defund all the crazy programs they're doing right now. Yeah, that is a reality that we're living in, especially, like, being in the UK or being in America.

Like, you just have to, right now, I don't know if you have to accept it, but it just is, right? Yeah. But you can effectively go away from this world and be in this Bitcoin world where, yeah, exactly, it's like, you're still living physically in this world and there are certain things

that are going to affect you and it's like, I can winch all fucking day about, I have to pay council tax here and it's 300 quid a month, they barely fucking collect my bins as potholes everywhere.

If you call them, you stay on the line for an hour and then it just goes dead, it's just completely fucking pointless. I can winch about that, but nothing's going to change. But I can also hold my Bitcoin.

I can interact with anyone, I can get tips for the podcast, I can sell clothing, I can buy and sell anything I want with anyone I want and no one's in the middle. And so that's the way I look at it is it's like, like looking at all the financial system and working out where are the cracks and where it's going to crack next and why.

It's kind of like, I don't know, I just grew tired of trying to wrap, not just my head around it, but also to the point where I could explain it to everyone. And I've kind of just think, well, it's best just to take a step back because it's not saying I'm defeated, I'm going to retreat, it's saying, what can I practically do?

And one I can practically do is take as much of my time and effort away from the fiat system, store as little as I possibly can in that system, feed it as little as I can, give it as little information and time and energy as I possibly can to starve it as much as I possibly can.

Outside of that, there's not really anything you can do. And what happens is you become, which I used to be, an angry prick and an annoying, like you say, like you go to a party and like everyone's having a good time and you're like, how the world's going to end and they're fucking kidding people and everyone's like, oh god.

They just kind of roll their eyes, they're like, what the hell? So, one thing, you know how Pierre Richard, he ratioed, what was the New York Times? Yeah, it was probably fun, like, yeah, I actually didn't watch the video and then I saw like PC, gamer, mag or some shit like that, they were doing a rebuttal and they completely

missed the point. They didn't realize it was a joke, they don't realize gamers use electricity too, they don't get the proposition that he's trying to make, which is electricity does not equal energy.

You know, it's not one for one. And I find the whole thing to be a bit absurd and I'm sure you've seen the same thing in Twitter, you have people making the observation that Elon Musk makes electric vehicles to replace gas powered vehicles, everyone applauds it's Bitcoiners use electricity to secure the

network and we're killing babies, we're both using electricity, right? So here's my thing, I have a little bit of sympathy for the point they're trying to make. So they're trying to make this point, they're trying to say from an absolute sense, right, since Bitcoin is shit and it's worthless and meaningless and fiat is fine and we don't

need Bitcoin because they're privileged and if you live in the US which has the petro dollar and everything, you think dollars are fine. So if you have that viewpoint, using the energy of a small country, you know, the energy of Chile or whatever to securitize nothing, right?

Like if you think about Peter Schiff, you know, Bitcoin is nothing. So that seems a bit wasteful, right, but basically what's happening here is they don't understand the value proposition, right?

Bitcoin is better than gold, it's better than the dollar, it has the capacity to absorb the value of the equity markets, the real estate market, the bond market, pension funds, you know, central banks could put it on their balance sheet to replace gold.

I mean, it has all these things going for it that people just don't, they just see it as this asset that people trade on Coinbase and so of course they think we shouldn't be using any energy to securit, but they don't get it.

You can see why they don't get it. Yeah. I guess it comes down to that, like the fundamentals of it, there shouldn't be an energy police to tell someone who pays for their energy what they can or can't use it for.

That's like, if you boil it down, it's like, that's what it comes to is, you know, if you purchase something, should you be able to use it freely as you wish? The answer is obviously yes to anyone who cares about freedom or like logic, but that's not what they're there for and I think people fall into that trap.

As soon as you get into that argument, as soon as you even allow that argument to happen, you've kind of already lost, you're never going to appease them, they're never going to say, "Oh, I understand your point, right, no, it is useful for people, it is maybe not

useful for me right now or I don't think it is, but I can understand why you might find them." They're never going to do that. That's why what Pierre did was so funny. It was just like it was making fun of how student they were.

Yeah, he's putting a CO2 counter at the exhaust fan of a miner. Look, that's just comedic brilliance and he's deadpan and I didn't even know it was him at first because I listened to podcast and it took a few seconds to register his voice and be like, "Oh, shit, that's Pierre Richard," and so obviously whatever is going to happen

next is going to be nuanced and highbrow and comedic and so I got it because at first, I literally took it seriously. It wasn't until I understood who was presenting that I was like, "Oh, this is a fucking joke."

Like he's taking the piss and that just made it great. It's fucking hilarious, but yeah, it's, you know, and I think should we be free to speculate on what we want to speculate on? Should we be free to speak and have opinions of our own?

If we buy something, should we be able to use it as we want? If anyone wants to, it was the same with all this stuff with COVID, it was like the same argument, you can argue, "Is this going to kill people, the jab, isn't it?

Are you going to die if you don't have it? Is it the right thing for society?" Blah, blah, blah, blah. You go on and on and on and round in circles until you're fucking blue in the face, but at the end of the day, it's, "Should I be free to put into my body what I want and should I be free to say no?"

And obviously, the answer is yes. And anyone who doesn't agree with that and will say, "Oh, it's for society," and it's like, "No." And you don't care about freedom, and it's that basic. So sometimes it kind of does more harm the good entering into those conversations with people.

It kind of fuels the fire, and it just doesn't get you anywhere. And I think that the truth is, like most people maybe actually don't care about freedom. It seems that way, like, you know, if you look at the last few years, the average person that you spoke to, not Bitcoin, is like average people, they don't really care.

They just want, I think, easy is like the thing, it's like, "What's easy? What's easy?" And they'll do that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just going to the vaccines, like, I was on the other side of it, right?

I told you, you know, I was all like, "Okay, you know, black lives do matter," and all this kind of stuff. And because, you know, it makes sense to me, like, I wasn't thinking adversarially.

So black lives do matter, white lives matter, all kinds of lives matter. So of course I was like this phrase. Like, yeah, like, why do you even need to say it, of course, it makes sense. But I didn't know about, I didn't know anything about the organization itself, like, I didn't, I don't really, I didn't follow news and things like that.

And with the vaccine, I just wasn't thinking adversarially, like, I legitimately was thinking, you know, okay, the UK is developing it, the US is developing it. They are going to be acting in humanity's best interest.

So we have this, we have this, I was like, I was naive. I, you know, the world was in turmoil, you know, I was blessed because I like being in home and just watching YouTube, like, I don't, I'm not one of those people that people that I need to go out and I like having my alone time and so it was actually kind of brilliant for me.

And I legitimately thought, you know, okay, people cannot go outside. That's bad for some people. You know, if they're hourly workers, luckily I wasn't an hourly worker, I was still getting paid.

I could still teach from home. And I just thought like, you know, these companies, these massive companies who potentially second, third order effect killed my dad, like he basically, my dad was, was obese and then he had diabetes and then he didn't take his medicine insulin because in the States,

you know, their profit margin is like, you know, they're taking 98% profit and the cost to produce is like 2%. And why? Because they can't. And they lobby the government and they've lobbied the government such that their hands are tied.

They've lobbied the government to the point where they've said, you are not allowed to make any rules about the medical system at all and just sign on the dotted line and government passed those kinds of laws.

And so these organizations, these companies that are completely profit motivated, and if you're an archival capitalist, like maybe you're sitting there listening, thinking, who cares? Like, what's wrong with them wanting to make money?

Okay. Fine. But I was coming at it from the perspective of like, you know, the world is in the midst of a pandemic. They are, you know, giving lip service to putting aside their checkbook to help create a vaccine and then get that vaccine to people so that we can go back to normal.

And I bought it. That's cool. That is quite there being very, you know, they're like, that's laudable. Like that's great. Um, yeah, I mean, I was lucky because the vaccine I got was a traditional vaccine, a synovac from China, because I'm in Asia, and it was a vaccine based on, it wasn't basically it wasn't an mRNA vaccine.

So I kind of, you know, got to bypass that whole shabacle, you know, that all that Tom Polery it was a fucking nightmare, I understand, you know, like you're saying, it's just not something that was on your radar.

You're kind of thinking, well, people are going to do the best. And I get that. And most people were like that. And like, I've got no, no hatred for anyone who was on that side because it's like, well, most people are like, it's fine.

But, you know, for those of us who were literally from day one, like, they're going to be harming people. This is fucking disgusting. They're trying to take away your freedoms and like, for me, it was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

And I was trying to tell everyone in my family and then my friendship group, maybe a bus. And they thought you were an idiot. They thought you were, they were arguing with you. They were saying you're paranoid, you're an idiot.

And worse, and worse, they were, they were really horrific. Yeah. I mean, luckily, like, my Mrs is really fucking cool and she was on the same page. She was just like, yeah, this is crazy.

But everyone else. Yeah. And it was really painful because, you know, for that whole time, even though my family and friends don't like agree with me on this, I wanted to protect them. I didn't want to see them suffer.

And even though they were sort of calling for, oh, yeah, well, if you don't have the job, then you shouldn't be allowed medical access and you shouldn't be allowed to travel and you shouldn't be allowed to job and all this like proper disgusting shit that was going around.

My mom and sister didn't get vaccinated and I thought they were ridiculous. Mind you, I was in Asia where I had to do it. If I wanted to go into any building, I had to flash a QR code from my phone and check in and check out.

I mean, how we have to do that, hey, it's a different, it's a different world, man. And I'm being sponsored not by my wife, but by my company. So if I didn't, if I wasn't able to work, like, you know, I have to go back to the States, I haven't lived in the States for like 10 years.

I mean, it's not my home. I don't know. You know, this is my home. Like, all my assets are in my wife's name, my two kids now. So for me, and plus, you know, I was on board with vaccination.

And the funny thing is I had a coworker who he came to the first job, which we had at our school, like, inebriated and he was like, calling us all sheep and stuff and I was like, this guy's a fucking idiot, like, just get vaccinated and go back to work.

Like, I'm tired of being at home, which I really wasn't. You know, I loved it, actually, but from the perspective of like humanity, like humanity can't be locked up forever. You know, I'm aware that people, people in general, you know, they need to be outside their home for to be economically productive.

Like I happened to not need that, but I knew I was in a special place, but yeah. And we just now, January 27th, I forget, like a month or so ago, March 27th, I think, I can't remember, but didn't have to wear masks at work at the school I'd teach at.

So, but then the crazy thing is, so I come back, I'm like stoked, I come back and I don't wear a mask. I'm like, oh, finally, because I kind of flip-flopped when I went down the rabbit hole and, you know, got into this community, I was like, oh, wow, okay, you know, I started to see the light.

And then I, I'm stoked about it, and I come to work, I don't have a mask on. Wouldn't you know, 75, 80% of people still are wearing masks, students, teachers, and I'm like, what the hell, hell, but I mean, that's Asia.

I mean, people were wearing masks since what was it, H1N1, you know, bird flu and everything. So. Oh, you still sit here all the time, I still see people driving around by themselves. Oh, no, no, that is my nemesis, driving the car with a mask on.

It's utterly brain dead. It's, I had the problem here, which was, I didn't want to back down with any of it. And we were supposed to flash this little card and wear you little mask when you go anywhere.

And I was like, I'm not doing that shit. So I was in arguments all the fucking time, but I actually hate conflict. It might not sound like it, but actually really, I really don't like to be confrontational auto arguments.

But you want to, you felt like it was important to the standard ground on this? Absolutely. I thought it was. And also it annoyed me that people just couldn't see something that was so illogical.

You think that this fucking little stupid mask, this little paper. A pointless ill-fitting mask is going to stop this virus that you think is so fucking dead. The one you've been wearing for the last three months and haven't changed.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, provable, it's like, and like, trust the science, you're like, OK, if you actually care about science, go and look at any study, go and just fucking read. And you'll understand that this is complete fucking lunacy.

It makes no sense. It is pointless. How many of these masks are thrown all over the floor? The place was littered with the stupid one you smashed. The point for me was like, stop being dumb.

It was just like, it was so frustrating. It was like, stop being dumb. I had to change the trash in my car every week because I was wearing a mask for two weeks straight and my coworker, he teaches the subject I teach, but he also teaches biology.

He was like, you know, you should change it every day. And I was like, I mean, technically he's right, you know, when you go to surgery, you don't put that mask on a metal hook and then grab it again for the next surgery, you change it all, right?

So then I started, I had these cheap, singly black masks and I just started changing them out every day. And I mean, I had to empty my trash every week, like it just fills up. And that, you know, it's not environmentally friendly.

It's utterly pointless, but anyway, we're sort of off track on that. I mean, it's just, you know, it's easy to get annoyed and it's very easy to get annoyed if you're seeing things in slow motion and unfortunately a lot of Bitcoin is deal with this with the finance staff, with all the crazy medical staff with freedoms being taken.

And we just see things in slow motion. I think like what you need to avoid and getting back to the original sort of like thread of like the privacy and like freedom aspect is like, it's more useful for more people to spend their time on improving themselves, improving their security set up, improving

their understanding of things, improving their health, because that's the only productive thing that you can do. And it's the only thing that you're going to thank yourself for down the line.

If Bitcoiners are being hunted down and freedoms are going to take and to a greater extent, it's like, ah, being fit and healthy actually is pretty useful now because, you know, I'm going to need it.

And ah, yeah, it is going to be useful that I can keep this stuff secure and it is useful that I'm more private. And it like it makes you physically weaker and mentally not as sharp if you spend all your time focusing on hatred and focusing on like the fear of them taking your freedoms away.

Like what I've done now is I've just gone, they are going to try and take my freedoms away. They are going to base my money. They are going to come up with every stupid argument against Bitcoin.

Anything that's just fucking retarded, they're going to do it. So yeah, just accept that. And now like just try and improve yourself because otherwise you're going to become miserable and tired and sick and just it's not, it's not healthy for anyone.

Well, Max, think about, think about the place that I'm in, right? So I'm learning about Bitcoin and privacy and then I'm leaving in Indonesia to go to the States for two months and then I'll be in China.

And as I've done more research, I mean, from what I know, if you're, if you're in the UK and you use Tor, your, your service provider knows you're accessing Tor, they just don't know what you're, what you're looking at or what you're doing.

Yeah. Yeah. And so in China, it's not like that. You have to use a bridge and I'm not very, like, I'm mediocre in terms of technologically savvy. Like I have an Android that I flashed lineage and that was like, Oh my goodness, you know, I'm in the same boat with you, maybe not to the same extent, but I get you.

I want to roll, you know, run my own dojo and all this kind of stuff, but I'm about to be essentially unemployed over the summer, uh, in transition. And so I don't have a lot of capital. Number one, number two, I'm moving from one country to another to another.

And number three, I have no idea the ramifications of like, for example, if you use samurai, you use Tor, right? I might not do that. Hear me out. So I, so I have no bad VPN, right? And so if I use samurai and I deactivate Tor, it'll still be obfuscated because of the VPN.

But if I use Tor in China, not only is there the DDoS attacks, but there's also the fact that if you try to use Tor, they know that you're using Tor. And it's, you know, you can't do that.

So you, in order to get around that, you have to use Tor bridges or VPN first. And, you know, it's crazy because so many people are just like larping and, and, you know, they're, they're running Tor and all this kind of stuff in the States.

And the States is, is an abysmal place who they're not acting in good faith, but they don't throw your ass in jail for, for using Tor, which actually Biden, they're, they're having the new, um, that new law where if you use like TikTok with a VPN, you go to jail for like 20 years or some bullshit like that.

So I, um, U S is becoming more like China, I guess, but my problem is when I'm in China, how visible is my network activity, right? So I'll be using more of that. Great. Probably won't be able to use Tor.

I've talked to the guys at the Tor project over email and they're like, yeah, you know, we can hook you up with the Tor bridge and everything. But as you know, using Tor can come with unreliability and network problems and even people that aren't in China who aren't using bridges are coming up against problems of connectivity

issues with denial of service attacks. So basically the, the point that I'm at right now is I've just taken all my wallets, stack wallet and blue wallet and samurai. I've just, they're all on paper.

I've got to get from Indonesia to the U S, then from the U S to China. So I've got them on paper, trying to figure out the way to do that best. I'm not going to put it on metal because that's too obvious.

And I've got all these wallets and sentinel. And I don't have any private keys or signing, you know, signing abilities available to myself. If I need to, if I need to move money or assign something, I would have to put the keys in Sparrow or something like that.

And yeah, I just, you see what I'm saying, like it's like you have to think about this a lot differently if you're going to like, for example, I'm thinking, how am I going to, because I want to dollar cost average into Bitcoin every month, because I think that that's the way Bitcoin's like a battery, right?

I want to, I want to store my energy that I'm expending, not in Fiat, which might fail, especially the dollar and all these banks failing and everything. I want, I want to store it in Bitcoin, but it's literally elite, illegal to do that.

And so I'm trying to figure out how I can pay someone money while I'm in, in China and receive Bitcoin. And so all my wallets are watch only wallets, because then I can receive, I don't need to send.

And the reason I'm going there is because it's a better job. I can support my family better. Yeah. I mean, these are, these are things I'm thinking about. It's crazy. You're not going to walk across a border with your seed words on paper, are you?

So I wouldn't advise it. Yeah, maybe there is a smarter way. Yeah. So do you have any advice? I mean, cause I, there's so many options. Like you can have a book that you're reading and then like circle words on different pages and stuff like that.

Cause I have a password manager, but I also have stuff that I don't want to touch the internet. That's in a notebook. And I, I was planning on, on holding it, but yeah, uh, yeah, I'm aware of, I'm trusting that they're idiots and, uh, but you know, maybe that's not the best bet.

Uh, well, it's something Q and I were saying to me the other day, actually, not about crossing borders. Well, well, there's a few options. One is border wallets, um, I don't know if you can come across that project.

Yeah. I watched that video. Yeah. Yeah, it's now in Sparrow, it was super for Arrow and MTC who made it. That's one option, you know, there's, there's many different options within that. Um, but the thing that Q and A was saying to me, which I think probably is a lot more

simpler is passport has this feature foundation passport, but I'm sure there are other ways to do it as well, which is just save and encrypted backup onto your micro SD and you can make as many as you want.

You could go, right, okay, save this to the micro SD, encrypt it, you have a password on it. You can keep that password in a password manager or somewhere that's secret to your micro SD and then you put, put the micro SD in a camera or some random shit that you were traveling with, uh, like in a GoPro or whatever.

And then if they check it, even if they find it, they, then there'd be like, okay, there's random shit on here or it's encrypted. And then they'd like, well, you know, do they have a password for it?

Cause you don't have it on you, you have it somewhere separate. So in that case, even if they did find what it is, you know, traveling with, they can't access it. Just cause I'd worried that, look, 99% of the time you're going to be fine.

You're going to travel through, they're not going to check that, you know, even if they see these words, they're going to be like, I don't know what the fuck that is, but I'd feel uncomfortable risking it.

Well, I've been going back and forth on getting a passport this summer and I'm just thinking of, you know, okay, so I buy one and then I bring it to China and then I'm just going through the mental gymnastics of like, they won't know that's a hardware wall, right?

You know what I mean? Like, it looks like a, it looks like a phone, like a, an outdated phone. Yeah, I was thinking about that, but in terms of my, my little notebook with, with passwords and, and 12 word seeds and 24 word seeds, so I, I, just so we can be practical and help

people that are listening, I, I do agree, if you, if you're listening and you are really overwhelmed with the way that different wallets manage things, sparrow, samurai, they all have different ways of kind of approaching this.

The way that I think about it is I'm, I have high security on my, my devices. So you know, like, for my phone, I, I don't use a fingerprint or face unlock. I have a very long password that I have to type in every time, which is really inconvenient, which is why I know it's good.

And so I would say probably your best bet is having a passphrase, a very long passphrase, six or seven words, but not a passcode or password, that's my current trade off. And it's something that I borrow from, uh, something that I, I borrow from samurai.

So it's default with samurai to have a passphrase. And so what I do is, cause I have my wife to think about what I do is I, I, I have the 12 or 24 words that are right down on paper. And then the passphrase is completely separate and it is online.

It's on my password manager. And so my wife knows that, and I write down on the paper, you know, look for the passphrase in my password manager and my wife has access to all my devices. So if, if I were to pass away, you know, she, she'd be able to get access to, to all my funds, which is kind of a necessity.

And, and you said you have a missus. So that's definitely something that I've thought a lot about, um, I know you have products like, uh, nunchuck and, and all these kinds of things for inheritance.

But, uh, this one of the things that's scared me away from multi-sig so far, cause I just don't think my wife can handle it, but, um, yeah, I mean, luckily I guess I don't really have that much money saved, but, um, my, my goal is that, you know, like the fire on,

on YouTube, they have like the fire, like, uh, financial independence retire early kind of movement. Um, the way I think about it is you have to not just make more money, um, cause I think that's a bit of a trap.

People make more money. They spend more money lifestyle creep. I think you have to make more money and then you need to take care of the other factor, which is spending less. So people think they need to retire at 65, 70 because after they retire, they need $50,000 a year.

But if your expenses per year or $10,000, then instead of retiring at 65, maybe you retire at 45, right? So for me, you know, I was thinking about getting into investing and things like that.

But Bitcoin is a true saving vehicle because like gold, it's, um, well, it's not like gold, but it's, uh, it's deflationary. So it's going to increase in value. And you know, in 16, 18 years, I have kids that are going to want to go to college potentially.

And yeah, I can tell them, you know, make your own way and that'll make them more independent. But what would be nice is that whatever I can save now, knowing that it's going to actually be worth a lot more in the future.

And so, yeah, I mean, Bitcoin is like a battery. It stores my time and energy and I just want to be able to store everything that I have in something that's actually going to, going to produce for me.

Hmm. Yeah, it makes total sense. And yeah, I mean, I guess looking to how to move these funds because, you know, you're a family man. You need to make sure that you keep them protected. And there's lots of different ways so we can, um, yeah, we can chat off air about that as well.

But I wanted to just touch on your blog and sort of what your plans are with that and direct people that way. So Jenna, give a, give a little bit of a rundown of what it is you're doing there.

Sure. So basically on my blog, which is expatriotic bear blog.dev, I'm just trying to rant online instead of rant on people. And it's kind of, I'm good at synthesizing information. I do a lot of research.

So, um, some of my most popular posts have been actually post where I've collected, say, basically making guides. I don't know if I'm very good at other kinds of posts, you know, where I talk stream of consciousness about different things, but people really like where I collect things.

I like to simplify things, uh, some of the places you can go to get guides. It's a bit overwhelming because there's a lot of links and you go to, you click on a link and then it's a page with a hundred more links and you click on a link there and it's a page with a hundred more links and it's like never ending.

Um, and my, my guides aren't like that. They're a lot more simple and basically I'm doing more curating, I guess. And basically saying, these are the things that are important to me and the things that I think are valuable and I'm purposely excluding things that I don't give a shit about.

So hopefully that helps people. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's nicely laid out. It's very simple. It's exactly what people need. Like you say, sometimes it's things sometimes go into too much detail and have too many links and people get lost.

And that's what I always appreciated about what Bitcoin Q and A was doing when I was sort of going around the world and learning. One of the best ones. Yeah. Lops. I went to Lops and I just had to close all my tabs because I just, I opened like a hundred tabs and it was too much, but the Bitcoin Q and A is, that's a good one.

Yeah. And it reminds me of that, the layout. So, um, yeah, mate, it was, um, it was really good to talk to you. I've now got some bits I've got to get on with, but, um, I'm sure we'll check.

Okay. And, um, good to see you put in the blog out and good luck with all the travels and stuff. And I'm sure we'll speak offline as well. All right. Manuel, if you're ever in my neighborhood, we'll get a beer.

I really appreciated this. Sounds good. And, uh, kind of fangirling a little bit because obviously you're one of my favorite podcasts. So super stoked that you had me on. And I obviously I apologize if I was a bit long winded, but this is what I do with people and in real life, you know, I, I rant and, uh, trying not to do that as much.

So, so it's outlets, outlets like this are perfect. So, but anyway, see you man. All right. Cheers, mate. Thanks a lot.