Tensai Bankai on Bitcoin, freedom and farming

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

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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 Tensei Bancai. He's doing some amazing things, and as soon as I heard him on the Metrodale, I knew I had to get him on the pod. I really enjoyed this one, and I'm really enjoying getting to know these people on the Metrodale, and really starting to form groups and help each other out.

It's awesome. It's exactly what we need to be doing now, enough of the price talk. Let's work together and build. Before we jump in, I want to say thank you to my sponsors. Let's start with Casa.

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That was last episode, so if you've missed it, go back and have a listen. As I always say to people, if you can buy KYC free, go and do it. But if you are going to buy KYC, and I know a lot of you do, then you really need to make sure that you have a team and someone behind this company who really cares,

and it's doing what they can to keep you safe. Danny is awesome. I have a lot of respect for him, and I really do believe in that team. So, FastBitcoins.com, and start stacking today. (upbeat music) - Tensei, how are you, mate?

- Yeah, you're coming through a little bit broken up, though. Are you using a mic or are you on laptop one? - No, I'm on a mic. - That's fine now, it's fine now, it sounds good. - Okay, okay, just turn the volume on.

- We'll be printing. You said you were waiting for the fans to cool. - Oh, so I have been working on creating a sort of a node case. I posted about it a bit earlier this year. We've been having quite a lot of load shedding, and so I wanted to build a case that was able to enclose four 18650 cells,

along with all the power, regulation, equipment, and as well as an SSD all-in-one enclosure. - Very cool. - Yes, I've been learning how to use like these 3D modeling tools, which has been an experience in itself, and learning the intricacies of 3D printing.

It's been quite a rewarding experience. - It's amazing what you can do with these things. The iteration can be so fast, and the quality of some of the prints that I've seen and the things that are being built, mind blowing.

- Yeah, I mean, the ultimate goal, I guess, is to work my way up towards building an FCG or FGC. I don't know if you know what those are. - Is that for like milling and stuff? - No, the FCG, it stands for fuck and control.

- Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I know the one. - Yes, so hopefully I'll be able to get confident enough to build something like that, but I think that is quite far away for now. - Well, everyone that I speak to who's messed around with these things seems to think that you don't need a huge amount of experience for it.

They just sort of warn that, you know, sometimes these things blow up in your hand, so you want to make sure, you know, if you fuck it up. We had Suckboy Tony, I don't know if you know him.

He's another gun printer. We featured him for 21ism, I think it was last month. He makes them mad different ones. Like, you've got to have a look. It's like Star Trek stuff, it's fucking cool.

But he was saying that. He was like, occasionally you do have it where these things blow up, so you wanted to like test them first and all this kind of thing. But basically, you don't need a huge amount of experience and you can get something that's pretty damn reliable and good without too much trouble, which is amazing.

- Yeah, that's amazing, you know, like learning how to, you know, do the sort of stuff. And you spoke to, I think, nonsensical a few weeks ago. And, you know, like, I'm sure he told you, I'd never chance to listen to that.

I'm sure he told you what it was like for a lot of the people living there that were forced to defend their own communities. And you listen to those walkie-talkie communications and, you know, I think a lot of South Africans realize like, they don't have enough ammunition.

- Yeah. And so, like, you know, the state, the state as it continues its collapse around here, you sort of realize like, there's no daddy coming to save you. You need to take responsibility for your family and your family's safety.

So learning, at least how to do this, in my mind seems like a critical, critical skill to have. It's something you hope you don't need, but as you wash things unravel, it seems that it's more and more likely.

Yeah, even here, I mean, obviously the gun controls here are, you know, you go straight to prison for a long time. But having the skills so that when things turn really, really bad, you can protect your family.

It's no bad thing. And this is the stuff that's so amazing where technology like 3D gun printing and Bitcoin and all these things that are on the cutting edge, they all sort of start to merge because it is on the bleeding edge and it is trying to protect family and lifestyle and savings and everything else.

It's with all the volatility in the world. You need something to protect yourself and that's fucking cool that people have that possibility where they didn't, you know, five, 10 years ago.

Yeah, yeah, you sort of like learn on this journey that, you know, Bitcoin is just the first step. It sort of clicked for me a short while ago that I was quite possibly just lapping for this change or not really lapping, but not doing enough.

Not fighting for enough change in my own personal life to sort of make the changes that I needed in order for something like this for Bitcoin to become a reality. Yeah, I think a few of us have started to have that realization and, you know, like we've said in the last spaces and a few other conversations we've had,

like there's no point in having all these sats if you've got a bullet in your head or you can't feed your family. And so it's why I'm so interested in and pushing this idea of Meastadels and of farming and being as self-sufficient as you can in all aspects of life and to not trust any of these institutions

and not rely on any of it if you can. And so that goes right the way through, you know, yes, money is a really useful tool. Bitcoin's fucking awesome for that. But once you work out that you can be self-soffering in that way, then I think it's like an addictive process where you're like, well, it almost highlights

how weak you are in other areas. And then you think, well, okay, if the world goes away, I think it's gonna go, how prepared am I? And there's something I've been looking at myself and not very is the answer.

You know, there's a lot to be done, a lot of work to be done. You've gotta be fit, you've gotta be strong, both mentally and physically. And you need to be able to not have to rely on the people you know are trying to fuck you over and build these connections with the things that you can't do and do it yourself, whatever you can.

So I know you've been dipping your toe in with some of this stuff. Can you share for anyone listening what it is you're doing out there outside of the node case in terms of like produce and things?

- Yeah, so it kind of hit me during lockdown, middle of lockdown, when people, not really in South Africa, but at least the rumblings of it and you saw it implemented outside of the country where people's freedoms were getting quite heavily restricted and there's more and more talk of, you know,

coercing the non-compliant in two compliance through removing their access to society. And it sort of got me thinking along these lines that, you know, in a city, living in cities has made us incredibly fragile.

It's made us incredibly weak and susceptible to, I guess, tourney, tourney to state best. And if I am limited in how, in my ability to access food through stores without proof of, you know, vaccination, how am I going to access these resources?

And even if it's not something like this now, it could be something else in the future. If this trend of digital identity and digital passports get introduced into our society, it's something that we can never get rid of.

And so it sort of made me realize like, hey, I'm living in a city and the city gives me great things like the university, arts, culture, all sorts of amazing things that happen when people come together.

But at the same time, it's made me extremely weak. It's made me quite fragile to systemic abuse, to the system failing. We are completely reliant on all these higher order 34 systems that take place that we take completely for granted.

And we saw some of that unfold in case of the day earlier this year, where there was mass riding and looting that occurred because of the, you know, just the gradual state of economic decline in South Africa.

And, you know, you have a demographic, largely black South Africans who are disproportionately affected by the current economic and political negligence by the current government coupled with previous governments, racial policies that they implemented.

And so there was mass riding and looting and all the shopping malls, essentially all the shopping malls were burned and looted completely bare. And the very next day on the radio, you're hearing people trying to find out where they can find milk and bread for their toddlers.

And that's something that you don't really think about, how fragile and how reliant you are on these things like we buy things, knowing we can wake up tomorrow, go to the shop and buy some eggs and bread and feed our family.

And so, realizing all of this, I decided, okay, it's probably important that I start figuring out and thinking of ways in which I can make myself a little bit more resilient in a number of ways, resilient to tyranny, resilient to just systemic collapses that could occur.

I'm in a very fortunate position in that I am a software developer, I work remotely. And so I've largely been, and I'm alone a lot of the time, so I've largely been unaffected by the ridiculousness that's unfolded over this current crisis.

But that doesn't mean like I grew up, I grew up extremely poor, right? And I know what like the neighborhoods that I grew up in or like, right? A lot of those people were largely forgotten about by all the middle-class liberals who have very nice lives, who are saying, shut down everything,

shut down the economy, we need to save lives. - We need to save lives, just not your lives. (laughing) - Exactly, exactly. And knowing that this was gonna be reality, sort of like really infuriated me.

And it's just come to my realization like, okay, I kinda need to figure out a way to start producing food. My immediate sense was to try and find some land, but this process of me trying to go out and find that land has been quite illuminating for me,

for a country that says they would like to redress the past 300 years of land injustice that's occurred. It's incredibly, it's incredibly difficult for a black person to buy land in South Africa.

And so I kinda saw, okay, my dee-gen smash-buying of Bitcoin hasn't really helped me in the sense of showing that I have the financial capital to buy land. And so I'm now sort of going in the other direction and saying, okay, so if I can't buy land, maybe I can use someone else's land or rent some land

and go about this process of trying to produce food that way. And that's sort of where I sort of circled back to Joel Saladin and started looking quite heavily at the process of producing poultry, organic free-range poultry, in a way to start, or this process of trying to, how should I say,

like start up a business providing chickens to people. And the entire process has just been so illuminating. You learn so much along the way. Like I'm learning about the fact that there's, it pretty much seems like there's a shortage almost, so to speak.

There was massive wave of avian influencer that came through South Africa a few years ago. A large amount of chicks got culled and I guess the industry is still somewhat recovering. So, you know, just from this process, I saw like, wow, I've got to basically order my birds three weeks in advance.

And then you learn like, okay, so it's like six weeks to raise these birds, to slaughter weight. So that's a nine-week process. This is, you know, all of this is completely foreign to me.

I produce software like, I had no idea the sort of intricacies involved in producing food that arrives on my table that I take for granted. And it's just made and given me a whole new appreciation for the many systems and layers involved

in getting this product to my table. - And so the chickens that you're raising, did you have to look into a specific type of chicken that you thought was, I don't know, best for nutritional density?

Or did you have to look at sort of which ones grow the fastest and get to a certain weight? And also once choosing what type of bird, how are you looking at actually raising these? Are they roaming free?

You said you were possibly renting some land off someone. So like, what does that process look like for you from like ordering the birds to actually starting to raise them and then slaughter them?

What's that process like? - So this is my first run. And the birds have still not arrived yet. There were quite a few assumptions that I made on my part that, you know, I had to learn the hard way that, you know, these things aren't just available when you want them as a consumer, you know, there's always like, I can just go online

and order these things, but it doesn't work that way. Even trying to go buy poultry equipment from some of these suppliers, none of them would want to see me without an appointment first.

So after a lot of reading the birds that chose with the sort of cob 500s, they seem like the, typically these are broiler birds. They sort of grown in cages or enclosed environments

which, you know, I just wasn't a fan of producing food that way, and yeah, so I pretty much chose them because of the time it takes. It's six weeks from hatch to reach a slaughter weight.

And I tried to choose something which took as little time as possible where I could learn as much as possible. So this first run is designed to be entirely for me in the sense that I need to learn what's involved

in terms of the time it takes to look after these birds, what's my time commitment in the first week, second week, third week, fourth week, sixth week, what does that look like? What's it gonna be like transporting the birds?

How am I gonna do with the birds after they've been slaughtered? These are all, you know, very important questions that I need to answer before I sort of make a commercial commitment to a restaurant or supermarket or some sort of market where I'm planning on selling this produce.

So a lot of thought has gone into the design of the system to ensure that there's, there's sort of, I guess kindness in a way. I mean, it's hard to think of kindness when you slaughtering birds in six weeks, but the entire system is like designed to be pasture-based.

I listened to a lot of the feedback that you guys gave me on the last space that I was in and initially it was meant to be in chicken tractors,

but now I'm just getting electrified poultry netting and setting it up in the fields and trying to figure out and see through this process like what I can do on the land and sort of what the negative pressures of my activities are doing to the land and trying to scale up this process in a way where I'm not exhausting my environment

and I'm not being cruel to the animals that I'm raising. Yeah, it's good that you're looking at things this way and you said it's hard to imagine it not being cruel in a six-week period, but it's all relative.

I'd rather live six weeks free than a lifetime in a cage. And so if you've got these chickens that are roaming free and they're being fed well and they're treated well and then they're slaughtered in the kindest way possible.

Well, I think that is a million times better. So I'm glad to hear you're doing that. And also I mean, I can't remember specifically from the spaces what we've gone into or how much depth, but I know that a lot of people who are into permaculture actually use the chickens to help with the soil anyway and them like scratching for worms

and stuff helps for like seeds and things like that. So it may be that actually it works nicely for the land done right. Yeah, you know, unfortunately for the owner of the farm, you know, and this is another thing you sort of learn along the way where the farm he got sold is sort of a dud.

The land is very uneven. And after he bought it, he discovered he's not allowed to change the shape of the land in any which way. He didn't realize that the farm was in an area which was recently designated as protected area.

So he's not allowed to disturb the soil in any way. Yeah, so it's extremely painful for him. He's got like two or three aquaponics tunnels already set up, but that's pretty much the limit of what he's allowed to do there now.

And so he's been frustratingly sitting at his computer trying to work out what's the best way he can get some yield out of these tunnels. And so, you know, I came along presenting this opportunity for us to try and raise chickens on the available land which he shares.

He shares part of the land with a neighboring sheep farmer. So there's even ruminants on the land as well. So there's quite a good possibility that we can get some synergy between what the two of us are doing where we start trying to do some mob grazing with the sheep in a sense.

And then we're sort of following afterwards on that patch of land with the chickens to sort of spread that manure around and remove any of the sort of pests that the sheep might have excreted onto the land.

So there's all these sort of possibilities that's opening up to us as we sort of explore this process even further. The other big issue is that, you know, he wasn't aware that the land was, the aquifer below the land was extremely brackish.

So the water's got such a high saline content that it's almost unusable for growing anything other than beetroot. So right now we are slowly looking at developing some sort of filtration system where we're using halo fights,

so plants that are high in their, their salt tolerance and using a series of troughs where we slowly run water through it to extract all that salt from the water to try and augment our water source because the cost of water

from a municipal supply is extremely expensive when you are running these sort of deep water culture systems. There's so much that goes into it that you just never think, like you say, oh, raising some chickens.

I think, you know, the first place my head goes to is, well, you have a patch of land, you wet the chickens on there, you have something you feed them and house them with and pops your uncle, that's it, but clearly not.

There's a lot of thought that goes into this. And so when you do work all these issues out, which I'm sure you will, what is the plan in terms of sale and scale? Are you thinking that, you know, you want to use something like a pleb network and be selling these chickens to other Bitcoiners and accepting Sats?

Or are you thinking more like you'd mentioned before, going direct to local restaurants and things like that? Because obviously, where you are geographically, it doesn't make sense to sort of be sending chicken all around the world, it just doesn't scale, but it's got to be more of a local thing, I'd imagine.

- Yeah, that is the idea. There's obviously sort of limits, like we first, as we go along, we're going to have to sort of figure out what is the sort of carrying capacity of the particular piece of land we're working on.

And, you know, the numbers seem like we can do possibly around like 1,500 birds, but I think those estimates are way too optimistic. And if we're doing that sort of numbers, I don't think it's sort of, you know, if we, let's just say we're producing 500 birds a week, I don't think there's a way that Bitcoiners

would be able to absorb that. So the idea is that we'd have to find markets through sort of traditional markets where this protein can be sold into. It is going to be a premium product. So it's not really going to be accessible for, you know, a lot of people, like conventional cage chickens cheaper or way cheaper, they use less feed

because they're not moving around. So their muscles don't work as much. And so, you know, I'm developing a product which is pricier. So, you know, how, you know, it's a difficult question to ask.

So, or answer. Yeah. I mean, it's just something that's, yeah. Sorry, just something that's popping into my head now. I may be completely wrong here, but am I right in saying that you can do built on but you can do it with chicken?

So you can actually preserve chicken and have it as you would with the beef? Yes. Or am I completely wrong here? Okay. Well, you can't. Okay. I've seen, or rather, I've seen chicken built on.

I don't know if it's prepared in the same way. I'm not sure if you have to do something to possibly get rid of any salmonella or something like that. Yeah. 'Cause I'm just, my only thought there is like, you're saying that plebs wouldn't consume that amount of chicken.

However, the value of built on in somewhere like the UK is huge. Like the cost for us to go and buy like a tiny, tiny packet built on was like ridiculously expensive and often the quality is not there.

When you're doing something like that, you can obviously preserve it for a long, long time. So you have a longer shelf life. Presumably you can then vacuum seal it. So packaging is gonna be easier and you can send it cheaper.

So I just wondered if something like that could potentially be a way, if you don't have people who will take the birds off your hand at the time that you want rather than freezing or whatever, you could do something like that.

It may not work. It's just something that popped into my head. Yeah, I mean, it's not something that I even really considered as a, you know, a bolt on value ad. I know that they are quite strict, export restrictions on South African meat, particularly beef.

I don't know if that applies to chicken, but... Okay. So it's definitely something I didn't consider. Yeah. Dry it all with the heat from miners. And then... (laughs) You've always got to try and tie in mining somewhere with these ideas.

Yeah. That's always the plan. That's a thought that I had the other day when I posted on Twitter and I got some advice saying, you know, maybe not for your brooder, but most certainly for your hatchery and possibly for your chicken coops during winter, miners would probably provide an excellent source of heat

for your birds. Yeah. I mean, you're spending the energy on the heat anyway. And the more I look at it, the more I see that heat is, you know, it's just another product that should be used and not necessarily a waste.

Well, that's it. Everyone is the byproducts because it's not what people are using it for. So they're just like, we'll pump that out, get it away. The cheapest, quickest way is just pump it outside.

But if you think about it, then you can offset the cost of electricity against the heat. And I think a lot of people are getting creative with things like that now, especially people in Europe because our energy costs are fucking ridiculous.

And so, you know, you have to be creative with these things. And like you say, with the chickens and making sure that you have the heat you need, well, do you run a space heater, which does nothing else?

Or do you run one that also mines you south? I mean, it's pretty clear. It just takes a little bit of time and tinkering usually to make these things work. But I think it's well worthwhile.

Yeah. You know, that old thing got me thinking as well, like, like, if you're running a business and your business, you know, doesn't have a high electricity wall, wink, wink. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, what are you doing? Like, why are you trying to be more profitable to give, you know, more potential sets to the state? Like, so, like, either way, I think that strategy has to come into play.

Yeah, definitely. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. And one thing I'm really interested, and we're going a bit off topic here. We'll kind of bring it back to the farming in a second, but just the use of it in homes, I'd be really interested to see at what point it starts to get more normal,

to have like, you know, boilers or your heating systems to be, you know, you have a few miners with an immersion system, a heat exchange, and then that goes through your radiator system or underfloor heating or whatever it is you have in a home.

And that when you're specking a house or you're building a block of apartments or a business or whatever, that becomes normal. That these are units that are used on mass. If you've got any thoughts on timelines for things like that or any reason you think like, nah, I don't think that's going to happen.

- Yeah, I'm sort of like starting to think it's going to happen like reasonably soon. If not like an official thing, there'll definitely be companies that spin up to start doing it. And I'm looking at a primary, primarily from the sense that, you know, with these new generation, I think it was Bitmain that said they

are now producing a five nanometer ASIC, right? And 150 terra ash. - Yeah, and you know, you've got to think like, okay, like we're pretty much reaching the limits of how small these ASICs are going to get.

And probably, you know, and a lot of other prominent speakers in the space have alluded to this that the next step would probably be more efficient home miners. So not consuming, you know, 3,000 watts, but maybe 1,500 watts of power producing a significant amount of hash.

And then using that heat in your home, it like that, that sort of calculation becomes a lot more reasonable for a lot of people. - And it's amazing for the network, you know, because you've got a lot of people are really excited 'cause they're like, oh, wow, we've got all this hash leaving China and it's going over to America

and isn't that brilliant? It's like, not really, it's not really great. You're just moving fucking huge data centers that are centralized from one country to another country. And what does that really do?

You really think that if the government doesn't want to come and shut these guys down where they've got thousands or tens of thousands of miners on grid in data centers, once all this energy fud completely gets blamed on us and we're all domestic terrorists, you really think that that's going to work long term.

No, it's not. If you have these things decentralizing in homes all around the world, and if it makes sense financially for people to do it, well, then that completely changes the game. And then it doesn't, it's no longer like a whack-a-mole game that they can play.

They're just like, fuck, what we're going to do? Knock on every person's door, rip out their heating systems. I mean, no. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't make sense. And especially this move towards public miners, I, you know, at first it sounded great, especially if you, you know, at the beginning of this year,

you were listening to people like Mark Alfred, you know, to the horn of these companies. And then you slowly start thinking and realizing like, actually, you know, this is probably not great.

Like, I would, I would much rather not see an ETF and see more people have the opportunity to stack at lower prices than be a high-time preference and see my bags go up, you know, high in the short term.

Yeah, it's interesting how, how it changes. You know, I was the same. I was like, oh, yeah, I can't wait until there's an ETF. You know, early days, can't wait till that happens. Yeah, it's going to pump my bags.

And like you say, I think it's once the bags turn into more than just money. You have your future tied to these bags. It's a make or break for society in a lot of ways. And so when you really think about it, how good are you going to feel with a million-dollar Bitcoin but it's captured and people's freedoms are taken

versus how are you going to feel at $100,000 or $50,000 Bitcoin? But it's more decentralized. It hasn't been captured. You don't have the ETFs. You don't have all the fucking dirty bankers lurking around.

And if you have it for the people, I'd be much more happy there. But if you just said that to me a few years ago, I'd be like, no, I just want the money, you know? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, this also leads into like the conversation you had with Ben, where it's like, you know,

it's all good and wild if you have, you know, a million-dollar Bitcoin but, you know, like, can you buy food? Like, can you grow food? Do you have energy? So, you know, that conversation of lapping comes, you know, full circle again where it's like, what am I doing in my life

to give myself some more resilience other than just saying that Bitcoin fixed the money, fixed the world. I think it's a tool, and it's a tool that we need to use correctly in order for us to bring about the sort of world we want to see.

Yeah, I agree. So, what else are you thinking about then? Because, you know, you're talking to me about this node case that you're building, there's obviously an issue with power and you're trying to work around that.

You're trying to make yourself more resilient. You're looking at your food and trying to make yourself more resilient there. Sounds like maybe you've moved out to the countryside rather than the city.

Again, you're making these changes to yourself, to make yourself stronger and more resilient. What else are you thinking about? Like, are there any bits where you're looking and you're thinking, "I'm weak here," or "I've improved here and want to share it"?

Well, I kind of realize I'm kind of weak as are the wrong, but I'm weak in almost every aspect of South Resilience. We had a drought in Cape Town a few years ago, and one of the things that I did when I saw this was happening was I was like, "Well, fuck me.

"I still want to water my tomatoes." So, I decided to build a sort of whole house filtration system. So, I went, and this is me never having worked on anything real with hardware and plumbing.

And I do the very computer tech growth thing, was like, make all these assumptions about reality and what things are going to cost, and then just go from that. The entire process took me eight months.

It cost me nearly triple of what I thought was going to happen, but in the end, I built this whole slow sand filter system, which took water from my shower, my kitchen, sent it through to an anti-floculant tank, anti-floculant tank, then through the slow sand filter into another homemade charcoal filter,

and then went all the way into my reservoir, which I was then using to water my plants. And it took me eight months to get that water to a state where it was crystal clear and no smell. But just doing something as small as that

sort of gave me an appreciation that I'm fragile, right? But when you learn how to do something like that, when you learn how to pick up a skill, like how do you, you know, maybe you learn how to forage mushrooms in the forest or recycle water, like it's the strangest thing you stand taller, you stand stronger.

And as you should. Yes, yes. And this entire process, it feels like it's sort of liberated me from a lot of the demons that I feel like I faced in the past, where, you know, growing up poor, I'm not the most, like, educated person in my family,

even though it's fiat academia and that means fuckhole. I, I, where's the thing with this point? Oh, yeah. So, and I feel like it's given me the sort of confidence in myself and my abilities as a human that actually, you know,

I have this kind of superpower that I can well, my desire is into reality. And I need to just, you know, harness their power, put it into practice. And the one thing I want to do is, you know, create a space, a sort of space that's not so reliant

on these easy to access high-time preference systems that I'm participating in and, and make myself, my family, and the local community, wherever I situate myself, make that a little bit more robust and reliant, self-reliant.

Yeah. You sleep better at night as well, with every little change, you know, like you said about learning to forage mushrooms or whatever it is, and it's kind of like habit of stacking these things and the more of these skills that you have and the more that you develop over time, you do stand taller and you're more sure of yourself.

And it's very useful just mentally because with everything that's going on and like it's very, very easy to slip into darkness and be like, oh my God, the world is just fucked. I just, this clown world, it can really get on top of you.

But then if you think to yourself, well, no. Today I've gone to the gym, I've trained, I've eaten healthy, I'm working on building a filtration system, I've gone on forage mushrooms, I've got self-defense skills, working on learning a 3D printing, I'm working on making sure that my node has better up time, you know, all these things.

And after a while, you do think, well, yeah, the world is fucked, but if anyone's going to survive it, it's going to be me because I've put in the work. It is literally as proof of work. And when you've made these promises to yourself that you're going to be a better person, you're going to be a stronger

and more resilient person and you start to actually do it and you keep the promises you make to yourself, then you can have that self-respect and say, yeah, you know, I am doing what I'm saying, rather than just stacking sets and going, oh, well, I'm going to be rich.

It's like, yeah, well, fucking good luck with that, mate. Yeah, yeah, and it's sort of like this whole thing has been sort of an attempt on my part to sort of return close to be closer to nature, in a sense.

Like I have the sense that cities are derivatives. They're derivatives of the countryside, you know, like up until like 100 years ago, like most of human wealth was generated from the countryside.

And the city for a long time has just largely been a drain on those resources where the farmer and the miner was set to produce like surplus value, which was then aggregated in cities which like allowed all sorts of industry to flourish.

And then, you know, these, you know, specializations that occur because of the productive surpluses, allow for advances in tech, which, you know, then allow us to extract more value from the countryside.

But, you know, all of that greater surplus extraction, you know, just allowed our cities to expand to the way that they are now. And like even if we go back to the Roman times, you know, we can note even then that the cities were immense drains because the cities there produced absolutely no value.

It was just filled with peasants and beggars that the sort of the nobility, or I don't know what you call the upper class there, would just sort of feed the people food, bread and circuses to keep them happy to sort of win the next, you know, election cycle.

And I found, I find that what we've done is we've sort of gone to this place where we start seeing this derivative as this sort of base reality, like the city is somewhere where all of this emanates from, where in reality, the relationship of a space city to a nation state and a nation state to the city and the city to the countryside.

These are all higher order derivatives that feed on each other and rely on the underlying system. And we sort of run into these issues where we start making these assumptions that this higher order system is the sort of basin and true reality.

Yeah. It's a really nice way of putting it. I think more and more people are starting to realize this. And, you know, I get very excited when I hear of, you know, projects like you're doing and that the one sort of weak link that I see and something that I want to discuss on one of the spaces once we get to that sort of level,

because you want to start on the individual first. But logistics is a massive one for me, where I'm like, I listened to what you're doing. And I'm like, well, I want to fucking buy your chickens.

But then I think, well, how's that going to be possible? Because we don't have the logistics. We don't have like a pleb network that can do that. And moving this value through space and time, even though we're Bitcoiners, we can't put fucking chickens on the blockchain and on the lightning network and send them across.

So, you know, we do still have, we still live in a physical world where we must move these goods that have value. And, you know, I want to buy my beef from Joel. I want to buy my chickens from you.

I want to be able to go and get my tomatoes from Dim. But, you know, you're all thousands and thousands of miles away. And I'm like, well, how the fuck do we fix this? And it's a big problem.

But I'd love to see someone tackle it. Yeah, that's going to be an interesting one. As someone who's worked in sort of at least transportation, I worked in a couple of transport startups.

The issue of logistics or anyone trying to do a startup to just easily tackle logistics is, I think, by and large kidding themselves. This is a very, very complex and layered industry. I mean, supermarkets, I would consider supermarkets like one of the biggest logistical companies that we know of.

And I think it's a mistake to call them supermarkets. But that complexity in like figuring out how to move products around. Yeah, that's a complicated process. Could we start our own supermarket?

Can we have the pleb supermarket? And they start to build out and all the produce from all the growers and producers like you get sent to sort of warehouses, distribution centers, and then anyone who must buy with their SATs.

Or I don't know, this is a long-term vision. But can we find a way to compete with but not compete just on price? Because you're never going to compete on price with the shitty supermarkets with very low quality food.

But is there a way that we can all somehow group together when it's owned by the collective somehow? I don't know, I'm just, yeah. Yeah, maybe even easier. It's just an orange ball, an existing farmer's market.

You know, very true. Yeah, that's a much better idea. It's much less stress. But I think what I'm saying is like, I do wish I could buy your chickens. But I know that the reality is it's probably not going to make sense, which is frustrating.

Because I'd love to buy from people that I'm speaking to and I know what they're doing. And I buy my wood from Ben, I buy my chicken from you, and I know that if my SATs are going to you, they're not going to go into fiat world, you know?

Exactly, yes. And you know, that's a very nice way of stacking as well. As Andreas said, you know, way back when like the best way to get Bitcoin is to earn it, like for doing work. And that sort of peer-to-peer payment that you make is another way of just starting the beast.

And I think that that is one of the most revolutionary acts growing your food and starting the beast or like two of the most revolutionary acts Bitcoiners can be, you know, doing right now.

It's been fascinating and I really look forward to seeing how it develops. And, you know, I'm sure you're going to keep me updated when you get these chickens and let me know what's come up and what you've had to fix and what happens with this land.

I did want to just touch on because we kind of skipped over it, but I wanted to touch on how you found yourself here and what that journey's been like for you. Because it's clearly changed you as a person dramatically, which is awesome to hear and certainly sounds like it's made you a stronger person.

But what happened? Like, how did you find this and what was that journey like? How did I find Bitcoin? Well, Bitcoin and past Bitcoin, like this group, you know, the group of people who really are trying to push things forward.

Yeah, like, you know, as I said, I grew up really poor and I was kind of lost. And I think, you know, that anger sort of pushed me into Marxism. It was quite a hardcore sort of Marxist communist, really quite a lot of the communist manifesto.

And then I found Bitcoin via the first slash slash slash dot article that came out and was sort of mining a little bit back in 2010, lost that drive, lost those coins, did my honours, my name coin.

I just SSHed into all the computers in the lab. And I just, it's just started mining name coin with all. Everybody was like, why are all the fans going? I was like, I fucking have an idea.

I love it. So did masters, started working at a startup, wanted to buy some butterfly labs tech, didn't do it.

And I was just broke in debt, living a very feared life. And there was just this talk that happened at my company where one guy stood up and he was like, you guys got to start buying equities and saving money.

And I was like, oh shit, I need fucking sort the shit out. And then another guy got up and he's like, you guys should buy Bitcoin. And I was like, wait, yeah, there's Bitcoin. I like Bitcoin.

And I started DCAing from that presentation. I then went into mining Monero, got into all sorts of shit coinery and sort of figured out like, went on the YouTube rabbit all the way. You just follow all the wrong people like the Ivan on techs, the modern investors there.

Oh, I used to follow them as well, yeah. And you just, you know, at one point, I realized like, fuck, these guys aren't hodling shit. They trading, they trading, they telling me to buy shit and then they fucking trading.

And I'm glad, I'm glad I sort of realized that. And then I think the one major change was one was listening to Guy Swan read Robert Breedlove. And I think it was the number zero and then it was Peter's show where Peter was, you know, saying, you know, follow me on Twitter.

And I was like, fuck, I've had this account since 2011 or 2013. Let me just go follow some people. Then I found Bitcoin, Twitter, man. And I got into an argument with some fiat maxi. And then I just like pulled both the Bitcoin standard and pretty much, you know, the rest is history.

And, you know, and just this whole pandemic and everything that's going on just sort of made me realize that what I'm doing is not enough. Like, I really, if I have this power and this ability that I think I have, like, I'm sitting on my ass, I'm wasting myself.

I'm wasting my very, very short life, my short time in the sun, not like pushing myself to the point where I feel pain and trying to like coalesce, like this reality and make it like, just make it real with my hands.

There's sort of like a new and like a real sense of like urgency and purpose that sort of just came out of the madness that occurred at the beginning of the, you know, COVID hysteria where, you know, everyone saw the videos of the Chinese people falling down in the street.

And I legit was like, oh, fuck, this is it. Zip boys, the big ones, yeah. And after spending five fucking weeks locked in my own house, like something just popped in my head and I just said, fuck all of these people, fuck everything, fuck all these liberals who don't give a fuck about, you know, what's happening

to most of the people that live in this country. It's just, yeah. And so I find myself here sitting on the other edge of feeling like, you know, I don't want anyone else to take responsibility for my life but me.

Like, I want to, I want to not rely on daddy. I want to be the responsible father. I want to be the responsible partner. And I want to, yeah, I want to take charge of my life, charge, take charge of the parts of my life that feel uncontrollable.

And, you know, like, I don't know about you, but it's been almost a very, like, lonely process, like going through this because you lose so many friends along the way. Like the past year, it's been crazy.

It's just been iced out of so many things. Like getting a text like, have you been vaccinated yet? And then you say, no, and then there's nothing, you know, it's like,

it's been, it's been crazy. And yeah, yeah, very similar. It's the reason I started the show was because of feeling lonely. I was just like, you know, I hadn't really found Bitcoin Twitter.

I hadn't really like, I was very, very lost. And like, I was pretty sure that I was right about Bitcoin. And I was pretty sure about the implications it would have. But yeah, no one would speak to me about that.

Everyone that I knew was pretty condescending, pretty rude, actually. And I did feel alone because I felt like all the conversations that were going on were pointless. Like, I'd find myself often just in the middle of a conversation.

And people are talking about politics and, you know, what this person says they're going to do. And blah, blah, blah. And I would always think none of this means anything. Like, this is such a waste of breath. Like, it's actually so frustrating because you're just wasting your life talking about this stuff.

And you have no idea what you're talking about. You're just reading some nonsense that you haven't fact checked. And then you're blurting it out to sound smart. And then you're actually arguing with people about something that is completely fucking irrelevant.

And I just ended up wanting to just be alone most of the time until I found Bitcoiners and had, you know, the kind of conversations we're having today, which is like, yeah, we've talked about Bitcoin, but we've also talked about farming and family and how to improve yourself and all these sort of things.

And it's a weird situation where I feel I could sit down and go and have a drink with you. And I'd enjoy my time 10 times more than I would with some friends I've known for the last 20 years.

Because, well, we're on a similar path. And it's why I'm so happy to have people like you in our ranks. And I know that like, you know, there are decent people here who are willing to put the work in.

And they're willing to fight. And I just find myself more drawn to those types of people. And COVID's been the same thing. You know, I've been very clear since day one, my thoughts on it.

And almost all my friends and family not just take the piss out of me, but try to make me feel stupid every time I speak to them. Try to pressure me. I went to spread the ashes of my grandparents yesterday and all my family members because I'm sick. You can probably hear I've got a bit of a cold or whatever.

They didn't want me to come until I'd had a COVID test because I'm not vaccinated. And I was just like, just fuck you, love. Just fuck you. It annoys me so much. So, yeah, I know how you feel, mate. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm sorry about that. I've been very strict with myself and not bringing up any vaccine stuff with my mom and my rest of my family. So hopefully, I don't know what this status is. I don't care. I don't want to know.

Let's just get into any potential fights. Don't ask me.

It's the best way. I can't help myself. I can't help myself when they attack me. I've got to attack back. But it's always questions. It's always like, I never attack. It's not like a nasty thing. I'll just question like, have you seen the death rates? What do you think about the fact that someone in my age group

has a 99.9, whatever it is, percent chance of survival? Oh, you want me to get vaccinated, but what do you think about the fact that the UK's published data showing that more than 70% of people who are hospitalized in the UK have been double jabbed?

What do you think about that? There is never a conversation that can be had. They take it as I'm attacking them. And because they haven't done their research, because they haven't bothered to actually look at any stats they just watched the news, and then they take that as gospel, they feel attacked because they know deep down, I think,

that they haven't got a fucking clue what they're talking about. We talk about personal responsibility. It's the same thing. It's like, well, if you're going to push someone in a direction, if you're going to try and attack someone for their beliefs,

their personal choices, you damn well better actually know what the fuck you're talking about, and no one does. It's very weird. I've had some other conversations with people, very smart people, and they are arguing that I should vaccinate my almost two-year-old

against COVID. And I'm like, if you look at the UK data, since the start of the pandemic, it's been like 25 children and young adults that have died. The majority who have had underlying conditions, and you want me to potentially risk my daughter having

hot inflammation just so that you can feel safe. I don't understand this. And I think a large part of it is like, I think they're well-intentioned, but they're also afraid. I think they're afraid that I think they are afraid that maybe what they did was not a smart decision, but they used

the best information that they thought was legit available to them. But it is kind of tiring to hear every single argument come out of people that you possibly look up to, or things are very intelligent, that their words are like, you're getting a New York Times narration through your

friends, and it's frustrating at the best of times. It is. But onwards and upwards, and we're building a better world, I hope. And yeah, it's really cool to see what you're doing, mate. And like I said, I'm very happy to have you in our ranks. It's awesome. And we've got our spaces this

evening, if you're about, always love to have your input. And yeah, thanks for everything you're doing, mate. And thanks for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge. I really appreciate it.

I mean, it's an honor. I've seen you all the guests. I've listened to so many other shows. I'm 100% player. But I can't shitpost, I can't meme, but I can't build, and I want to build, and I am building. So I like to feel that as a player, that is my contribution to the space.

Well, thank you for doing it. And I'm sure we'll have you on again soon. And yeah, and hear from you in the spaces. But yeah, it's been awesome, mate. I've really enjoyed it. And yeah, we'll keep in touch and catch up soon.

Awesome. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers, mate.