The orange pill simulator.

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

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

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

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

Alright, you ungovernable fucks. As you might have noticed, the price of Bitcoin has tanked. Now this is good news for any of you who are smart enough to be scooping up those delicious sats.

But not everyone is as smart as you. Some people haven't even been orange-pilled. They haven't started buying, they haven't started using, and they haven't started fighting back against all the bullshit we see in the world.

As you know, the kindest thing you can do for a friend or family member is to orange-pilled them. But, as you also know, most people aren't very receptive. Think you're a fucking lunatic and ignore you.

So, today's guest is Urban Hacker. Urban Hacker has been working on the Orange Pill Simulator, and it is a new way to help orange-pilled people. I really like his approach, it's very different, and I've really enjoyed getting to know him over the last couple of weeks.

We talk about the project as well as security, self-hosting, privacy, and much more. Before we dive into the show, I wanna thank my sponsors. Let's start with foundation devices. Foundation devices is my favorite hardware.

Not only are they fully open source, but they are beautifully designed. It doesn't look like anything else in Bitcoin, it is absolutely gorgeous and so simple to use. Even though I don't have a problem, which means you won't either, I'm very comfortable suggesting this to friends or family, and pretty much everything you need to do

is as simple as scanning a QR code with the camera, and the interface is so, so slick. They have their own app, Omvoy. If you wanna find out more information, you can go back and listen to the episode I did with Bitcoin Q&A and Lily.

We go into depth with this, but basically they cover your ass and make sure that you stay as private and secure as possible with minimal input. Check them out at foundation devices.com and use the code bit by bit to get $10 off.

If you have any questions at all, you can reach out to the team or you can reach out to me and I'll be happy to answer what I can. And finally, a big thank you to FastBitcoins. FastBitcoins have been sponsoring this show despite me constantly bashing KYC services.

As you know, and as we get into in this episode, it is best to buy no KYC. It is best to mine at home, but not everyone can do this and not everyone cares. So I wanted to bring on a team that I can trust to do the right thing and to do as much as they possibly can to keep you safe.

Today was a really good example, actually, of why I have these guys on board. I had a friend reach out to me. He's seen the price has dipped hard and he wanted to buy some Sats. I did explain to him to buy no KYC, but he wanted them today.

He also wanted an amount that I couldn't match on a peer-to-peer service for him. So I sent him across to FastBitcoins. He's a fucking dinosaur and wouldn't be able to work a lot of this stuff out by himself.

So having this personal hand-holding from FastBitcoins team was really useful. If you haven't already checked them out, go to fastbitcoins.com. And if you have any questions about the trade-offs or need any information, you can reach out to me or the team.

Enjoy the show. - Do you hear me? - Yeah, hey there, mate, take two. - Yeah. - This one is the right one, right? - This one should be working fine. - I don't have the warning anymore. I tried to enable as much storage as I could.

I was applying, so it should be fine now. - It sounds better as well. Well, welcome to the show, mate. I'll do a little bit of an introduction before we jump in. So obviously we've been chatting in the background for quite some time now.

It was an interesting way that we've met. For anyone who's listening to this, we are speaking with Urban Hacker. Urban Hacker has built something very, very cool, and I'm very excited to share it with everyone.

When he first reached out to me, in all honesty, I just thought, oh fuck, this is a scammer. You know, I thought it was gonna be some sort of bullshit that I get bombarded with all the time and yeah, went in quite skeptical.

And the more I've looked into the projects and the more I've got to know you, I've got more and more excited. I see this is a really clever way to onboard newbies, to do it in a way that's not in everyone's face and not preachy.

We'll get into lots of different topics that we've been talking around in the background as well, but before we get into that, maybe you could do a little bit of an intro on what it is that you're building.

- Yeah, so my name is Urban Hacker and I'm building a project that is designed to onboard massively people on Bitcoin. So what it is, it's based on my experience working in video game. So I know Bitcoin for quite some time, I discovered it in 2011,

but I never really understood what it was. It was just, you know, like magic internet money. It's kind of interesting, it goes up and down. And it's only when there was the pandemic and the whole shit show with like the restriction and all of this, where I started to question a lot of things and I was looking to buy a new GPU

and new GPU were way out of reach. And I rediscovered Bitcoin at that time because I was like, okay, why are the GPU so expensive? Or because people are crypto mining. I was doing a lot of driving at the time.

I had to travel a lot and I started to really understand and learn and what is Bitcoin listening to podcasts like Stephan Nivera show, what Bitcoin did, et cetera, et cetera, then later yours.

And when I realized that Bitcoin was a solution to so many of the problem, I saw in the world, the next logical reaction is, okay, how do you tell everybody about this? And this is when you're faced, as you said, you should not be preachy.

And I am not a cryptographer, I am a programmer. I also have background in cybersecurity and like managing server and things like this. But I'm not like a mat guru or things like this and everybody was building wallet and different wallet and UI and stuff and I didn't want it to do that.

So I try something that I knew how to do which is a video game. I work in what is called serious video game. It's basically how you can apply video game to solve issue in the real world. Think of it like airline simulator or medical simulator, things like this.

And my natural idea was, okay, why not making something like this with Bitcoin? Now, it's a video game that is not about Bitcoin and that's the other key thing. The video game itself, it's like a fun pixel art, Commodore 64, you know, your typical retro game.

But in the background, it use Bitcoin. So you need to learn how Bitcoin works in order to play the game. And finally, the last thing, and this is based on my experiences, it's a completely safe environment.

You do not have real money involved, which means the only real money you have is you buy the game and then you can do whatever you want with the game but you're in a safe place. So the entire Bitcoin in the game is fully simulated.

It's all fake, which means you will not destroy real value. And that's the key thing. Yeah, so that's the project. Of course, having an idea, it takes like, you know, two minutes to describe this to you.

But then making it to a project is much harder, so I worked for now a year on it. Initially, secretly, and then after six months, I had two people helping me with art and code because I realized I couldn't do it myself.

And yeah, and then I was looking to reach someone that would understand the potential of this. And I was already listening to your podcast for a while and many times you mentioned about how to onboard people and newbies.

And I was like, okay, maybe I think I might have a solution for that. - I'm so glad you did reach out to me because I also particularly like art and I like things that were a little bit out-the-box thinking.

You know, I think that what you've designed is really beautiful. I really like the aesthetics. And I just like, as we've been discussing a lot, we've said already, like the non preachy way.

It's such a big turn off for people. And I've experienced it myself. Like, I was the annoying preachy, just retard that no one wanted to speak to because, you know, you get all excited about this.

And it is amazing. Like Bitcoin is fucking amazing. That's why we're here. But to most people, when you're telling them all the stuff that you run around telling them, they just think, ah, fucking hell, you're selling me a scam.

It's a pyramid scheme. Why don't you just shut up? Why does everything have to relate back to Bitcoin? You're like, ah, 'cause it does. Like everything does relate back. And no one wants to hear it.

And so I think a change of tact is important. And so the way that you're doing this is actually, it's like a slow drip feed. It feels like people will be doing this for enjoyment and slowly but surely they're learning about something that's not mentioned.

They're just learning to a point where they start to click and be like, ah, this is why money's important. This is what it is. And so it's not really something that's been done. There's other games out there and like companies like Zebedee, et cetera, are sort of bringing Bitcoin into games

so that you're actually playing and you're using it. Whereas this is kind of like a spin on that. It's completely flipped it, which I really like. - Yeah, so maybe I can discuss a bit of the design choice in there.

- Yeah, yeah. - If we look at competitors, this is not the first time someone tried to make a Bitcoin game. So why this one is different. I identified three main competitors. So the first one is there is the Bitcoin testnet which you can just set up a Bitcoin test network and you can play with it.

The problem there is you need to be literally sysadmin and have experience with programming to set it up because it has even less software than the real Bitcoin network for obvious reasons.

And you need to make your own node and all of this. So nobody will use this as a way to experiment with Bitcoin. So that's the first one. So this is out of the window. This is designed for developer and people who make wallet and things like this.

Then the next thing is you have Binance and Coinbase and all the other days. Sometimes if you play money, like here is 10 bucks and you can just have a go with it. And it's all fine, but they want you to trade, right?

They want you to gamble because that's how they make money. And the user experience there is, first of all, it's like, "Why do I get free money?" That sounds like very scammy. And I'm not saying they are scam, by the way.

- I am. (laughing) - I kind of agree with you. But anyway, this is not like, but they give you some free money. And then later on, you might even have a bad experience because you will gamble on some shit coin and then you lose money.

And then it's just lost, right? And finally, you have a project like CBDC. I think there is also a poor game. Not sure if it's related. I think there are, anyway. And they try to have tiny interaction in which you can buy Bitcoin.

And there it also feel like a scam. And again, I think they have good intention, but put yourself in the shoes of someone who has no idea about Bitcoin. And they play a game that promised them to pay real money, but then they need a wallet, it's confusing.

And they might spend hours and hours to have some such that at the end, they might even lose because when they transfer to their wallet, the fee is too high and they don't understand what's going on.

So I think the overall user experience with those three things is not that great. And this is why, of course, criticizing is easy, but with the orange peel simulator, which is the name of the project I'm working on, what it's designed to is, hey, it's a game.

You know, like, I don't know, Azure Vampire. In Azure Vampire, you need to mine gold because that's the money and then you need to sell it. - Oh, I used to play that game. It was incredible.

- Right, but you don't know about, they are not teaching you how to mine gold, but you effectively learned that gold is money to play in the game. So this is, in a way, it's similar where it's a game about parrot.

You have a train with a crew and you go from city to city and you need to trade. So you go to Amsterdam, you buy some stuff, then you go to London, you sell it, and you have different encounter.

And everybody in the game use Bitcoin. So it means that if you want to do business and you want to thrive and to make your crew happy with beer and food, you then need to buy this and you need to use Bitcoin for that.

That's the entire incentive is you keep your pirate happy and you go from city to city and to keep them happy, you need beer and to buy beer, you need to sell stuff and to sell stuff, you need to understand how Bitcoin works.

So it's a very safe, you know, it's a game. There are no microtransaction. There is no NFT, there is no token in it. It's really very simple. It could run without internet, you don't need any account.

You can just run it, play with it, have fun. Yeah, it's how I compared it to basically other project that tried to achieve similar goals. - And I wanted to go back to a point you made before about sort of the competitors and something like a Zebedee.

I agree, in terms of a normie, obviously I know Zebedee, I know the guys there, they're fucking awesome and I love what they're trying to do. But to a normie who's just coming in, having a wallet and having these things called SATs and being told they have value and all this stuff, it's like, it's still confusing.

It's really fucking cool for us. I played one of their driving games, it was like Super Mario when I was at the developer conference in London and it was brilliant and I got paid out to my wallet and I was like, ah, this is fucking cool.

But I'm not a normal person and a normal person just won't bother with that sort of stuff at this stage with Bitcoin. And so with what you're doing, it seems like, from some of the images that I've seen that you've sent me through and that are on the website, there's no mention of it, it's just like that's the money.

But what I liked was in the screen, it's very Bitcoiny. So it's like they're learning without knowing their learning. Could you talk through, like, 'cause obviously someone listening to this won't be able to see.

Well, actually, let's just say where they can go first so they might be able to look at it while we talk. What's the site they wanna go on? - So the easiest is to go to harbanacar.net. It's a blog and website.

If you type this in, it's the first, it has different projects I did over the years, but this is the latest one. And then I think you will put just a link of my Twitter account and the fundraising.

- Yeah, I'll put those in the show notes. But so as soon as someone goes on urbanhacker.net, you'll see the first image, there's a little computer there and then you see next block, you see transactions, you see fees, low, medium, high.

You see just little things where there's no Bitcoin mentioned, but it's just like something there where as they play the game, they will learn it. And so when they do eventually learn about Bitcoin, this user experience will be obvious to them because they've had it in the background, running in the background.

- Yeah, so we consider Bitcoin as money. At least I consider Bitcoin as money. I use it now more than once a month as money I pay for stuff and I get some time Bitcoin. But it's a very different type of money.

And to quote Satoshi writing a description for this thing for general audiences, bloody hard. There is nothing else to relate to. You know, you need to check the mean pool, how full it is.

There are all those things that we do intuitively. I was doing some transaction this morning and I just went to the mean pool to say, okay, what's the status of the network? And when you use your credit card, when you use your online banking, you never do other things that you have to learn, right?

But it's different. So in-game you have to check the mean pool just like you would on a real network. And it has all those steps. So you can set up the fees. You have to backup your seed phrase.

If you don't backup your seed phrase, you will use your fund. And there are all those things where you have potential of destructive action from the user. If you set fees too high, you might get wrecked because you just spend half of your money on just having the fees.

If you don't backup your seed phrase, well, obviously you lose everything. And all those things, we know them intuitively, but we had to learn. So the game replicates this exact behavior.

You just have to go along with it. So I give you an example, you reach a city, you have your node, you check the mean pool, okay? There is not many transaction. And you can then just do, buy some goods on the thing and get away with the minimum fee.

And it will replicate what you see on the Bitcoin network. So for instance, during the day, it's more busy than during the night, during the weekend, things like this, all those things that we know.

So if you go on the website, you will have a very cute pixel art version of the mean pool with the blocks and everything and all full they are. And this is what you have in game. And then you have your wallet and you need to peer it with your node, but you can also not use your node, but then it has consequence.

And yeah, we could go into the game play a bit. There is even a CBDC in game. And it's all about teaching good practice of Bitcoin. So I don't want to get in trouble and I think people have a lot of imagination to understand what I will mean, but there is a company in there that you can land your Bitcoin

and get really high interest yield. So it's called Kelvin. Now, no reference to any existing company. It's called Kelvin Investment Limited. And it's just that every week in game, there is a 50/50 chance that the rock poll you close your account and you have no way to withdraw.

- Love it. - And yeah, it's, of course, and the thing is the game is like Bitcoin. It's auto-save everything you do and prevents you from getting back. Unless you hack the game, you do like a backup of the file or something like this, but if you play the game normally, it prevents you from getting back.

And the idea there is everything you do is permanent. So yeah, you can earn a lot of money by lending your Bitcoin, but you have a 50/50% chance of losing everything because there are volume and it's a Ponzi.

So there is all those things. It's like, of course, if you do this in reality, it's devastating because you might have lost maybe even all your life-saving. But if you do it in game, it's like a fun experience.

You kind of laugh about it, you restart the game and it's all fine. So yeah, that's the entire principle of the game. - Yeah, and so all these principles, all these lessons that you learn through the game are all life lessons.

Things that a lot of people get rekt on in Bitcoin because they come in and either they're not listening to the right content or they're not caring about their privacy or they're not caring about their backups or they're going to shitty companies who rug-pull them.

And so what I like with this is, obviously this is in the background and everything we've just mentioned there is a very small part of what the game's actually about. Maybe we can get into what the gameplay will be like for someone, what the sort of setup is.

You've got obviously a description on the site but what is someone's experience going to be and what are they sort of going to be playing with there? - Yeah, so it's inspired by several existing games.

I don't know if listeners are familiar but I think it was an MS-DOS game where you were a drug dealer in the, I think it was the New York subway and you had to go from one station to the other and sell and buy drugs.

And you had a launch arc that you had to repay. You had to try to make money and then you could buy weapons and stuff like this. And it was all very simple, only text-based. So it started as a recreation of something like this.

There are a lot of games where you are like a parrot with a ship and you have to move from one island to the other or a spaceship. I choose train because again, it's kind of original. There are some trading game with train but it's kind of unique.

So you are the capital of a train. And in the world, if you read the story, the entire planet, Earth, change in a very radical way. And people are surviving from city to city and they use those train, like steam train to go from one place to the other.

And this is a very dangerous job but you earn potentially a lot of money because you're basically taking all the risk to move goods and provide service from one community to another. So it's this post-apocalyptic game and you have your train with a steam engine and you need to maintain it.

It burn coal, you need to buy coal to keep it running. And it's a bit snow piercer. I don't know if you know the snow piercer movie or I think it's a Netflix series where it's like kind of like this constant desperate situation and you need to keep up with it and you have your crew and they have certain requirement.

To make it possible to do from a solo project, I use something called emergent gameplay where there is a lot of tiny rules that together makes complicated stuff but are very easy for me to implement.

So I just give you one example. You crew produced trash that you need to get rid of somehow, right? So the normal way to do this is to simply buy a shredder and then shred it and then you have compacted trash and then you can burn it in your train and you can use it as energy.

But if you don't do anything, I just keep adding to your inventory until it's full and then there is nothing you can do because you are stuck with a train full of trash. And again, in modern game, this is like a sin.

Oh my God, people will never figure it out. You know, it's a bug. But no, it's like if you look at the golden age of video game like on MS-DOS, on Atari, on Commodore 64, they were very experimental and sometimes very harsh on the player.

But they were also much more fun because yeah, you can screw up with your train full of trash. So you go to a city, you check the price of stuff they sell. So for instance, Amsterdam would sell weed.

Then you go to London, but obviously London does not allow weed. So you might have a police train that inspect your train. And there it's all about negotiating. Do you let them search your train?

And then if they found that you have weed, they just arrest you and put a huge fine or something like this. Or do you try to drive them? So you have all those options, but it's a lot of it is text based, which means it doesn't have a lot of fancy graphics or things like this.

But it makes it all so much easier to play because you don't have to learn fancy combos and things like this to win. - This is one of the big reasons I liked it because we're talking about Age of Empire and these sort of games.

Or I think about as high level as I go was like Crash Bandicoot. I had like four or five different things you could do. If I try and play a game now, like some of these modern games, I just end up looking around, getting shot, not understanding what I'm doing.

I don't enjoy it. It's too technical. There's too much to learn. You can't just sit down and just play it. Well, I can't 'cause I'm a retard. I mean, I'm sure like, Crocker Gamers can, but like, I miss those simple games.

I think there's a lot to be said for. I think it's a lot more fun. - Yeah, so I give you one example and you can see this in the website. Every week's your crew ask to be paid and you can choose to not pay them.

And then they become unpaid worker and they are pirate. So it's then up to you to deal with the situation in a way. The goal of the game is to let you play as long as possible, but you will eventually lose in a hilarious and fun way.

The game always ends a la Scarface in which they will invade. And there is a shooting aspect to it. I could send you a screenshot, but it's not yet ready, but it's basically, you have a Doom like where a mini game where people invade your room and you have to shoot at them because you pissed them off.

You pissed someone at some point and it was too much and then you will just die in our last stand. So that always it will end up like this, but then there are many ways to arrive to this state.

So an example I could give is, you can recruit people for your crew and they all have deep psychological pathologies. One of the guides that you can hire, so they will boost your character.

You will become like King of the Hill, but they have something like one is a warmonger. So he wants to start a battle every time. So if you go to the most powerful and peaceful city, you know, like it's like a city and they are very powerful, but you're at peace with them.

He might just start a war because that's what he likes. So every action you do, it has a very positive impact, but it also has a very negative one and you have to constantly deal with things like this.

- Like balance in life. It seems like it doesn't just teach you just about Bitcoin, but it's personal responsibility, which is a big theme with Bitcoin as is taking responsibility for your life, whether that's with your money, with your food, with your relationships and the every decision you make matters.

So I like that. I think it's very fitting. - Yeah, so if the listener wants to see a game that is similar in its spirit, there is a very complex game called Draw Fortress. It's like an old ASCII art game where you manage a tribe and many things will go wrong eventually.

This was a big inspiration for me. If you want something more modern, there is a game called Frostpunk where you manage a colony. It's like Adro from Pyre, but in Cold. And it's similar. It's like, okay, do you keep people warm and you allow child labor because there is not enough worker

or do you value education? But then people might freeze to that, but the children will eventually have more experience and help you later. So it's all about short-term versus long-term. - Yeah, time preference.

- Yeah, exactly. - Okay. So do you sort of have a vision that maybe a Bitcoiner would send this game or give this game to friends or family and that this would be something that would then teach them about all of these ideas in a way that then when they do sit down with them,

these things start clicking into place. Is that kind of the feeling that you get? If someone was to play this game, that that orange-pilling conversation would go quite differently. - Yeah, it's a hard question, Max.

- I don't know. - Ask you to say yes, definitely, but that's the hope or what you feel. - So my goal is to provide a fun moment and to bring the player back to the golden age of video game.

And show that when they will be ready to discover Bitcoin, they will already know everything about it. So put yourself in the shoes. You offer this to your grandma. She absolutely crush it on the leaderboard.

She's like the best of the best. And then you speak to her about Bitcoin and it's like, what the fuck is that? Yeah. The alternative is she gets interested by Bitcoin on her own when she's ready.

And when she's ready, she knows how to self-custodie, how to backup her seed phrase, how to not land Bitcoin to shady company, how to mine Bitcoin, all those things. So the idea is you can offer this, so you buy it, right?

And then you give it away for Christmas and you just let people play with it, have fun. And when they are ready to have this conversation, but it must come from them, then the technical aspect of it will already be way lower, then if you have no clue.

So you're like, okay, I want to buy Bitcoin. Now what? Now what? Now, how do I custody? How do I run mine? You have no clue. And then you're afraid. So with that game, you would be okay. Yeah, I remember it's second this game.

Yeah, sure. So that's the idea. - I think that probably gives like a good picture of what the game's about for people. I really think it's a good idea. I think it's very interesting. Obviously, it's something you've been working on for some time and I know from our conversations a lot of efforts gone into it.

What sort of stage are you at with it now and what needs to be done and what are the roadblocks? - So the main roadblock is I have a fiat job that I need to do every day. And this is why I reach you because I want to get funding and hopefully through your network of Bitcoiners, they can donate to the fundraiser.

And hopefully I can work on this full time and quit my fiat job. To be more serious, there is a fully working prototype of the game right now. So you can create a character, launch the game, travel to a city, sell stuff, buy other stuff, travel to another city, make a profit and the whole Bitcoin simulator thing works.

So that's what's done. And then obviously there is the artwork, there is the background story. There is like all those things that you don't necessarily see but are required. So now it's a matter of adding more and more content to the game.

More city, bigger map, a storyline, dialogues, things like this. But the core aspect of the game, which is a tiny Bitcoin simulator that is already done. And all the screenshots you see on my website, they are directly from the game.

Again, proof of work, right? So everything you see is already done and it works. I want when there will be a bit more content to make a clip or like, I don't know, like a YouTube video or something where I show a bit more the gameplay.

If there are big whales that want to sponsor this and potentially have a lot of money to invest, I can do a private demo as well. I would have no issue with that. We can have a Zoom call or whatever and I can show what was done.

- Obviously when it comes to this sort of thing, there are many ways that people can give value. So if someone's a whale and they've got some Sats to spare and they think it's a good project, they can do that.

For some people who don't have Sats to spare, is there anything that they can do sharing this with friends or maybe they can participate in some way or they have ideas, is there anything like that that people can help with?

- So it's a very good question you ask. The best way to be to speak about it, follow me on Twitter, help give this project a voice, talk to your Bitcoin community, to your meetups. That would be huge.

I am rather small on Twitter. I'm not, you know, like your typical, I'm not so known in the Bitcoin community and that would help a lot to broadcast and give like the project, the advertisement it deserved.

Regarding ideas, it's great, but I am very careful. I have a lot of experience with video game. I worked previously on an open source video game for almost 10 years. Ideas without work are not that good.

And look, if you really have an amazing idea and you think it should be in the game, you can write to me and I will try to answer you. But overall, I want to have a working prototype because if the game is then released and we have a community of people who makes mods, they hack the game, they improve the game and stuff like this.

Although the game is not planned to be open source and I could discuss why, through mod and community and user made content, I think this could be cool. But for now, the entire project is really to have this out in the public.

So any ideas would be, yeah, it's nice, but unless you have the money to pay me or one of the dev that works on this to help, that doesn't help me right now because the prototype works but the game doesn't yet.

- I guess what I'm really thinking more is like, you know, like from our discussions where we've been talking quite a lot about privacy and the importance of that and you were talking about like having the different inputs and outputs potentially on the screen and that kind of stuff.

I'm kind of thinking little tweaks, little things that are gonna teach someone just that little extra thing that maybe they wouldn't otherwise think of so that like coin control or things like that would be thought of because, you know, the way that you've described it to me and the thing that I really like

is that you're learning to Bitcoin in the right way and so that when someone's done this game, they're like, well, I'm obviously not gonna give my money to fucking Celsius or one of these idiots because that would be dumb, you know?

And I'm gonna make sure I run my node and I'm gonna make sure that I manage things correctly. So yeah, those sort of things I think are really important and missed by, you know, the majority of people who, what is a Bitcoin, you know?

Bitcoin is somebody who uses Bitcoin. So what is the average Bitcoin? They're probably not running a node. They're probably not even understanding what UTXOs are or how to manage them. They're probably not thinking about coin join.

There's so many things and, you know, so like in this game, you know, I was wondering, is that potentially part of it where people that you pay can track you back? And then if you haven't paid them again, what I call one of these pirates that you haven't paid can then fine-dude or maybe that's too complex.

- It's a great, I think it's a great idea. But up until three days ago, the game used a bank account system where you add your wallet and you add a value somewhere but we know Bitcoin is not like this.

So recently, but it took like a major effort and rewrite of a lot of the code of the Bitcoin simulator. It now used UTXOs, which is like every unspend transaction that you have in your wallet, like a real Bitcoin now.

So when the demo will be ready to be tried, people can give those type of suggestion. Then I think it's welcome. But there is a lot of ideas that I already want to make but it's more a matter of resource, which is why I said, I think the priority is to get resource.

Now, as for your question, just to answer, the goal of the game is to teach you as much as I understand the best practice of Bitcoin. That's what the goal of the game is. And then we can think about what are the consequence if you, for instance, do not have privacy or don't care about privacy and things like this.

The primary goal of the game is yes, indeed, to teach you about the good practice. But I don't know if you don't manage probably your UTXO right now, nothing happened. It just works like the normal Bitcoin network, but there is no negative consequence, at least not yet.

- Okay, yeah, yeah. And like you say, like you've had a lot of experience building these games or be it with sort of different things with the surgery, I think you'd said, and the flight simulators and stuff like that.

What's your experience been with those kind of things in terms of people's learning? Has it been something that's been generally successful? - So my experience is only in the medical industry, but I do know a bit of flight simulator just because it's related.

And of course, the industry they talk to each other, they share ideas and stuff like this. So on the medical industry, it's always the same thing. People do not see video games as a way to teach people.

Especially older generation, they are like, oh yeah, you're making a fancy video game or a fancy simulator. And when I went to the Bitcoin conference in Amsterdam, it was interesting because I heard those exact criticism, but instead of being for medical simulator, they were for this project.

So I've quite some experience dealing with those things. The thing is, it works, they are a picture, I will try to find it for your show note of a wooden airplane that was built a few years after the Wright brother made their incredible achievement.

And there are two people next to the wing that were shaking the wing and moving up and down the wooden plane. So already, early on, they use a toy to teach people. Because Bitcoin, medical simulation, airplane, pilot, all of those things, they have one point in common.

If you do one mistake, if you cut the wrong organ, if you fly into the mountain, there is no way back. It's right, it's gone. So how do you onboard a new B2DAD? It's a daunting task. The main difference between Bitcoin and surgery, nobody dreams to be a good Bitcoiner.

And I'm serious, Max, I think if you didn't have to deal with UTXs and privacy and all of this, and you could just use Bitcoin, you would do it. - Oh, yeah. - Right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

- How do we encourage the player? That was the biggest challenge. It's like, okay, you created a Bitcoin simulator. But nobody is gonna, you know, this is Sunday evening, I fire up my Bitcoin simulator and I try to do a fancy multi-sick.

Nobody would do that. But if you suddenly are like, okay, I'm gonna play this parrot game with my crew that wants me to manage their expectations, then you have a drive. And that's the biggest difference.

And this is where I think my experience is quite unique because I did work on an open source video game and I also work on simulator. So I have both, I really have both aspects and I think I understand quite well both side of the story.

- And you mentioned the Amsterdam conference meter. What do they call it, Bitcoin Amsterdam? What was the feedback like? You said obviously a few people were questioning it, but presumably you had some positive feedback as well and what was the experience like in general?

- Ah, it was amazing. It was amazing and the entire conference was really, you know, it's the thing that brings you back from depression in a way because if you hear normies, they are like, the entire world is true.

There is nothing we can do global warming with you. You know this thing? And they're at the beginning of the conference. They were like, welcome to Amsterdam, a city that was built under sea level powered by pumps to pull out the what, there are solutions to those things.

Since the age we know how to deal with raising sea level and things like this and they even made it in an old coal factory, which was brilliant because I think only Bitcoin can own it. You know, like yes, coal was fucking amazing and it helped us so much.

It had this issue, but the fact that we could celebrate what it did allow mankind to achieve, I think this was so positive. So yeah, regarding the game itself, many people wanted to just play the game and ask to buy it.

So that was quite cool. So there is definitely a market. I did discuss to a few VCs or angel investor, not sure in which category, who were very interested about the project, but I need to clarify exactly what they want and what are their expectations and things like this.

But this was super cool. And then there was this really funny story where the last day we were in a bar and I wanted to show it to Matt Odell and my laptop literally died after two minutes when he was playing it.

- Brilliant. - But you know, in a way, I was like, okay, it prevented me to say any bullshit. I basically went, I removed his beer and I said, Matt, you need to check that out. And after two minutes, he was like, okay, we need to do something.

I wrote him back, but I didn't got anything yet. So yeah, I have to see, but maybe with this podcast, it will ring another baby because I want to give him a proper demo and see what he thinks about.

And maybe if he can... - Sounds right up his street. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's... I think he also, what's great with him is he do understand the value of open source. He do understand the value of Bitcoin and he also is Bitcoin only, which is also great.

And yeah. - Yeah, he's been for me one of the people that really, him and Marty, when I first was getting into the space and I listened to a lot of shit and a lot of lying, bullshitting, podcasters, a lot of YouTubers and people who were just insincere and selling shit and those two were so consistent

with their message for such a long time. - Yeah, I'll always have massive respect for them. - Yeah, I think and their podcast, even if sometimes it's a bit of a rant, they are always amazing and on point.

I don't know if you saw on Twitter, but like a few minutes before we started the podcast, he was writing about the lightning network and they showed that certain notes start to be off a compliant.

And I was like, I love this guy because, you know, instead of saying like everybody's like, oh, I think it's great, it's gonna save us what it's like. Hey, let's not become like Ethereum, you know, like let's, let's look at this seriously and let's be aware of those things before they become too big.

- Yeah, it's no cheerleading. It's talking about the important stuff. So what else with the conference, what was the general vibe there? You said, obviously you've got a lot of people who are thinking about not just the problems but how to fix them.

Were there any other projects that you saw when you were there that were particularly exciting? - Yeah, so there is a Bitcoin Peach, which is a project in Switzerland, I think. Yeah, it's in Switzerland.

- I know the team very well. Yeah, it's fucking cool. - Yeah, and we discussed a bit. Yeah, it was like a really cool project. And since I live in Switzerland, I was like, I need to have a beer with them at some point.

But yeah, you know, obviously like very busy with a lot of things. I think, yeah, it's just this general feeling of there are solutions to the problems and those solutions do not require to massively redesign society in a communist way.

And I think for me, this was difficult. You know, again, I repeat myself but this is so refreshing, you know. I don't know how it is in UK for you but here we only discuss about using less energy that we are screwed and there is not enough Russian gas for the winter and blah, blah, blah, blah.

But there is nothing about, you know, hey, maybe we can increase domestic production except with the two secret cow which is like, oh yeah, we can build more solar panel and wind turbine.

And I'm like, Jesus Christ, you have no other way. It's like, it's either solar or wind. There is nothing else. Like, no, I mean, really, those are the... - Oh no. - This is the only allowed thing to have.

And to just have discussion with people like, hey, you know what? So maybe we could use this or that. And it was just over refreshing. I think I didn't really saw any major project that like caught my attention in a big way because I already knew most of the project.

It was just a matter of meeting people and being with like people. Oh, I had a discussion with the guy from the Wazabi wallet, Max Yildubran, I think, his name. It was also really cool. And I have one little controversy.

I got certain source that told me, I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently the events that organizer that Bitcoin, Amsterdam hired to help with the event wanted at no meat event.

There was literally a fake burger beef truck on the premise of the contract. - Oh no. - And I was like, you do not know those people. They literally buy freezer to fill them with pork and beef.

(laughs) Yeah, so that was a bit weird. - Hmm, that's very weird. - Yeah, but there was duck burger, which were amazing. They were just fucking amazing. I don't know if you like duck, but this-- - I love all meat.

- Yeah, it's great. - I have to say though, I don't love Wazabi. That is not something that I get involved in. - Yeah, I can understand why. One of the problem I have with them is, regardless if they want to do transaction with certain people or not, the fact that some of their money will literally pay a company like China Analysis.

- Yeah. - That rubs me in the wrong way. - I don't get into beefs and all this sort of stuff. Like I just use the tools that I use. So I never have any like personal vendettas or have any of these sort of problems.

But yeah, for me, just Wazabi, for that reason alone, forget anything else. It's just a no. It's just like, not a chance. - No, to be a privacy wallet and be paying and using chain surveillance is antithetical to Bitcoin in my mind.

To me, Bitcoin is about fuck you money. To me, Bitcoin is a chance for people to take back control over their life, to not be surveilled. It upsets me when people get paid to shill that project.

- Yeah, I just think that maybe a little less infighting between the different coin join implementations and stuff would be nice. But I understand why there are these beefs. I do understand it.

- Yeah, I get what you mean. My heart is with somewhere. I really love those guys. I think they are really trying to do what is the correcting even if it's hard to do. I have massive amount of respect for them.

The fact, for instance, that they encourage you to run your own, the fact that they made it quite easy. I think it's, so for now, all I'm saying is in-game, the wallet is called Ninja. The name is up for, like, if a project wants to sponsor it, if Samurai is interested, I would love it.

I would love it. - What's the node called? - Oh, for now, it's only Bitcoin core. - Bitcoin core, yeah, it's the generic. By the way, you also have to sometimes update your computer. For no reason, it's just like a mini-game.

- Yeah, yeah. - And one of the things you have to do is to link to the node in the computer. - It's very nice, but you have to do it. - Very nice. Do you know what I love is how simple it's all becoming?

I remember, you know, only a few years ago, like building my first node and messing around and how scared I was to do it. And I've moved a lot recently, so my nodes have been down. But, you know, I'd know when I move into my office, it's about a month away from now.

I'm actually excited to get these things up and running and to be setting things up again, because with projects like Ronan Dojo and Samurai and Sparrow and everything else that's just made it so fucking easy to do things privately and securely, it's just mind-blowing.

Like, it's something that I'm gonna be nerding out and showing friends and family as they come round, is just like, look at how good these interfaces are. Look how slick they are. Look at the hardware, look at the quality of like a tanto and these kinds of things.

And there will come a point where people will, you know, I think if someone comes and they look at a tanto on the desk, they're gonna be like, fuck, what's that thing? Is that a Mac? You know, is that like a Mac that's all blacked out?

You're like, oh, no, this is a Bitcoin thing. It starts to give the whole thing legitimacy because when people have this kind of like, you know, even, I remember setting up the Raspberry Blitz the first time and I was like, oh my God, I just entered the Matrix.

Do you know what I mean? It was for me as a non-techy. I was like, whoa, what the fuck? And it was cool, but it was hard. So it's just, it definitely feels like it's come a long way. - Yes, self-hosting is becoming easier by the day and it's amazing.

I went into self-hosting before I understood what Bitcoin was. So I already had my own server and everything. And when I started to go down that path, you really understand that you are not the client of cloud service.

You are the raw matter that they extract from you and that they sell to their client. That's who you are. And in our society, we lost what it means to be the client of a vendor. When I go to buy me from my farmer, she knows I am the client.

She even gives me breakfast sometime. - Really? - Yeah, really. I mean, she's fucking, I mean, I'm trying to orange peel her. It's taking time, but yeah, she gives us like some ome mates who suggest that she do at the farm with the meat from the cows.

And the relation you have when you are the client is just much better. And if you look at self-hosting, it's kind of the same. Like even if you only care about the price, if you want to have, I don't know, like a 10 terabyte Google cloud account, it's gonna cost you a lot of money.

While for, I don't know, like a 10th of that, you can buy some pre-made solution that you plug in and you can have a blast with it. And I think this move to make everything easier, you know?

It's very easy now to do self-hosting compared to what it was, right? And my recommendation there for Bitcoiners who want to have a look at it is start small, you know? Think about the first time you use a hardware wallet, maybe it was a treasure, maybe it was a ledger, maybe it's not even open source, but you go for something established

that you know kind of works because you definitely don't want to lose any data. And this is why I would recommend people to like, you know, buy some Synology or some Knapp. There are small devices where you can put hard drives and they are built in to basically back up your data and make it a valuable on the network.

And if a hard drive fails, you can just pop it out, put a new one and you're done, right? And having this, yes, it's not open source. Yes, you need to trust the vendor, but on the other side, you are on a much safer ground because it's like, okay, you have a nice interface, you have an App Store, it's a bit like Umbrell,

it guides you to set up everything, the containers and all of that. And I think it's the best way that you can dip your toes in that field. - Yeah, I think it's otherwise it's quite daunting.

I'm all for open source everywhere that you can. And you know, it's where I'd want to go. I just where I'd want to go, ideally. But the other thing is like, I'm an idiot and I don't know how to do these things.

And I've had so many, I do push myself past my technical abilities often. And for that reason, I fuck up often and it's very, very stressful when you've got either Bitcoin on the line or your data on the line.

The amount of sleepless nights and problems that I've had is probably taking years off my life just in this last couple of years fucking around with it. And although like that's where you want to go, I agree with you.

Like these little steps are better. Are you better to be doing what I'm doing now where it's going? Oh, you know, I'm too scared to run my own server and someone like Catan will say to me, like, oh, it's easy.

Yeah, all you got to do is do this and that and relearn. I'm like, yeah, but you're a different animal to me. Your understanding of this stuff is so much better than mine and I have no time.

And so to take that step to, I think it's synology stuff is what you sent me. To have something like that running, I'd feel like, okay, I can probably handle this and it's better than using fucking iCloud.

So at least if I do that, then I might get comfortable enough that I then take the next step. But right now, I think loads of people are in this middle ground, not even middle ground. Sorry, they're in this situation where they're going, oh, well, it's too fucking hard.

I can't afford to lose the data. I know I could mess it up. So I'll just use iCloud or equivalent. I think you're right. I think like the next step for a lot of Bitcoin, as myself included, is to go this self-hosted route.

And I think it's a really exciting one. Like I think it's once you start taking control of one thing, you want to take control of all the other things in your life, your money, your data, your food, et cetera.

Yeah, and you become the client again. Because then when you buy certain enterprise, especially if you go, so in the previous recording that failed, I mentioned that I have my main cave. You know, it's like a small space in the apartment where I live where I have like full of server.

Is it really dark? Are you wearing a hoodie? No, I'm wearing a hoodie, but I don't have servers. I could. I can send you a picture. Anyway, so you have all those light blinking and shit like this.

And when you sometimes then ask for like customer support and stuff because you pay for good quality hardware, then you're treated as a client, small one, but you're treated as a client. And if you have your own, your iCloud or whatever, you are just a raw data that they use to then sell it to people who are their client.

With a Synology box, I think it's really a better way to approach this, because it's already a server. It's a bit like, you know, the Tanto or the Ron and Dojo. It's like, yeah, you can build it with a Raspberry Pi and some shady SATA to USB connector, but you can also buy this thing, which does everything out of the box.

You just plug it, wait one day to synchronize everything and you're good with it. And Synology is pretty much the same, but with your data. So I would definitely recommend people. You go on, you buy some Synology.

You don't need to go fancy first. You can take a small one. You already have a server running 24/7. Doesn't choose a lot of electricity and you can play around with it. You can even run a Bitcoin node.

Now it's super slow, it's not designed to do that, but I've done it as a fun way, right? And then you start to backup your data. And first, it's only a backup from iCloud, right? You still want to keep iCloud just in case, something goes wrong.

You don't fully trust yourself yet and see how it goes. And then when you're ready, maybe you buy a bigger one. And then you use the first one as the backup for the second one, which is all I got started, right?

I bought my first two hard drive NAS and then I moved to like professional enterprise level thing. And I just used that as a box next to it to backup everything. And I think this way, and I wrote to Katan a few weeks ago explaining to him this that, hey, what you do is great.

It's really important. But I think for beginners, especially you want to take ownership of your data, go with something built in that is quite reliable that you don't forget up. And then you don't make it secure.

Those things, they are Linux box with a UI. So if you want to mess around with Linux, you can, right? But then, you know, make it secure, make it access to a VPN, put the firewall in place, put the security, the ad blocker, the pyho, all of those things, you can run on a Synology.

And by doing this, you train yourself. And then when you move to like a bigger one or even your own hardware with like Linux server, which is now what I do, you get a much better chance at this because you understand everything.

And you got a UI to guide you and everything. And then it's the same but with command line. But like today, you know, while I was waiting for the podcast, I was updating my Bitcoin node. And I realized, you know, I have to shut down services.

Then there is a script to update. And then there is an automated thing that shut down others. And like a beginner have no chance to get this right. - Yeah, I can confirm. You just can't, right?

But if you go on Synology, you say, yeah, auto update, reboot, and then you're good to go. And this is why I think it's a much better way to onboard people to be self-sovereign in your, yeah, as you said, in your data and your food and your money.

- Yeah, it's, I think the thing is like, there's so many people who are in Bitcoin who are just so capable with this kind of stuff that it's hard for them to understand what it's like for somebody who's not or who hasn't got the time.

Like if I didn't have a fiat job and the podcast and family and everything else going on in life, and I just had time and I was like, oh, I can dedicate, you know, a few hours a day and sit and learn, then I might consider it.

But when, you know, barely getting a chance to jump in the shower or, you know, whatever, like that's, all the time I get to myself, it's like, I can't really sit down and fuck around with this.

And if I do and it goes wrong, I definitely don't have the time to go and read through a million guides and try and fix it. And if it's mission critical and it goes down, well, you're fucked, aren't you?

So I like that there's those two different approaches. And it's the same with the food. You can do that in steps. A lot of people who start thinking about it at first, it's like, okay, you're not going to have your own farm necessarily and like produce everything yourself and do everything fully organic

and eat from snout to tail and all this kind of stuff. Like people can start with don't order a shitty pizza, just eat a high protein meat meal. That's a million times better already. Going for perfection straight away maybe isn't always best.

So I was responsible at a point in the company where I work to onboard and train people with cybersecurity. And the idea was, okay, you have new employees and existing employees that needs to understand that cybersecurity online privacy and all of that is very, very important.

And then it's like, okay, how do you guide people who do not care about this into taking the right action and the one thing that is quite successful and I always told this to people is do not do something that you cannot do over the long run.

So take for the food. I don't know if you love pasta and that's the only thing you like. Try to reduce it, but don't cut away because if you start to cut away things and be the perfection, you will burn yourself after two weeks and then you will go back to your old things.

And you will get desperate and it's not good for your mental spirit and it's not good for your health. So whatever it's cybersecurity or self-hosting, start simple. As you said, don't drink sugar eating buy a small external hard drive, put your backup in it, et cetera.

And move from there progressively. I didn't became a self-hosted guy from one day to the other. Actually, even if it was my job, I was scared of it because it was like, oh my God, I'm doing this for me, not just for a company, you know, not just for it's like, it's my data now.

- Yeah, yeah. - And initially I was completely scared and then progressively you learn and you become confident and then you fail and you have a hard drive failing in the middle of the night and then it's okay, what happened?

And going through step, I think it's the best way and this is also one of the things that I love about your show because it's similar to Peter McCormack from what Bitcoin did. You always say, well-- - Oh, don't say that.

- No, what I mean by that is he always tried to take from the beginner's approach, which is okay, explain me like I'm five, you know? And it's one of the things I like with your podcast and it's podcast as well.

I know you might have some disagreement over, you know, the stuff you do, but I think explaining like your beginner is so important. - Yeah, I just have an issue with some of the sponsors that he's taken on and some of the people he's thrown under a bus because of it, that is my issue.

But I do think that you're right. The show has been very good for a lot of beginners and people who wanna get involved and that breaking down and willingness to admit that you don't know everything is something that's lacking in some other shows.

Not wanting to always sound like you're really fucking clever, which I think some people, that's kind of, it's the voice is like, I wanna sound really clever to my audience. So that's kind of like the goal.

And what's more important is like, well, actually, are people gonna learn something? And so, yeah, I do appreciate that about your show. - Yeah, by the way, if that can make you feel better, I was so tempted to do mining with a company that shall not be named.

- They shall compass fucking dirty bastard. - And after listening to a shooting, you said I was like, nope. - Good, good. - I don't know, I don't know what happened because you never really, and it's fine.

I don't have to know, but just the fact that you seem like a very honest guy, you know, like down to hurt, and the way you describe it was like, okay, you were really robbed in the complete wrong way.

And I was like, I don't want to have this experience. And then I was like, okay, no, I will not do it. - Oh, well, I'm glad that you avoided that. - Yeah, yeah. - But I dodged a bullet because I was almost, I was like, nah, and then, nope.

- Yeah, it was really bad. I mean, that's not the only company that Peter's had on that's fucked people. But yeah, it was really bad. And, you know, those sort of things, taking money from companies like that is not a good idea.

And it was, I mean, look at the end of the day, like I've still got my machines are offline. I'm paying a load of money. I'm not getting any hash rate. It's cost me thousands and thousands of pounds.

But I still have a roof over my head. I can still eat. I'm fine. Like, you know, it's not going to destroy my life. The problem is that when you have some form of audience, I think you have to take the approach that some of the people who are listening here begin to build up rapport and trust with you, or at least that's the hope.

And so you have to treat those people like friends and family. You have to be thinking, well, hang on, if they trust me, obviously don't trust verify, but, you know, some of them will, then you cannot be shilling stuff where they can get fucked to that degree.

It is their personal responsibility, but you have to know that what if someone's just put their life savings in there? What if that means that they now can't pay their mortgage, that they've been fucked to a point where they lose their life?

And, you know, that is a real thing. That is a real responsibility that anyone who has any form of audience has. And I think it just needs to be taken more seriously, especially in this space where the whole point of Bitcoin is truth.

So you have to tell it. - Yeah. I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that people put their entire life saving in something like Celsius or other. - I know. It's still, I look, if you have play money, probably every Bitcoin or tried at some point on Binance, whatever, to, you know, do some funky shit.

We all have done it. Sometimes it's even fun. But putting more than play money, like I just don't get it. I don't know. It's something, it's mind-boggling. And then you have the shit show that the name of people with their balance is now public information.

This is another thing. And this is why it's like, I think we had this discussion, right, about KYC. And the fact that you have an exchange that is willing to let you tell people what is the danger of KYC.

- Yeah. I still can't believe that they did. Danny Brewster, if you're listening to this, thank you, mate. You are a real one. Let me shit on KYC all the time and still send me Sats. It's pretty amazing.

I don't know any other Bitcoin company out there that would do it. I really don't. - But that's being honest. That's being honest. It's like, yeah, there is a risk and it's quite important.

And one thing, I'm sorry if it's a bit conspiratory, but so far, in my opinion, states are fine with Bitcoin, even China. We did not see yet true adversarial state or true adversary against Bitcoin yet.

And what I mean by that is, think of it, because your name is in some list somewhere, whatever you have Bitcoin or even whatever, you have people coming to your home and putting a bullet in your head.

And this happened because people were reading a book that is different than the Bible. In a country that a rocket that would fly in space. So it's not unheard of. I mean, it literally happened.

And sometime I think we are a bit complacent and we do not, this is a bit of a rant and maybe I'm getting on attention, but I think it's important to, it's really important to think about us, not that I want them to happen, not that I hope they will never happen, but there is a non-zero chance of it happening.

And it doesn't mean it's like global totalitarian power everywhere on earth, but it could be in a country and it could be someone you know that is affected by this. And I had friend in Hong Kong, who had some interesting introspection into their digital life after what happened.

And I think this should be a wake-up call to everybody. No matter if you like Bitcoin or not, but just those things happen. Yeah. - They do and you know, what are we here for? What is this all about?

Because if it's just about a get-rich-quick scheme, there are loads of other ones, right? There's loads of ways you can make money by lying and stealing and cheating and doing other things.

It's really not that hard. Are we here about doing that or are we here about creating truth and change and trying to allow people to have a better tool? And if we're here for actual change and you understand as a Bitcoiner that KYC is a danger and that there are real implications just like in your game.

There are real implications for the decisions that you take. You have to be honest about that. And I think the problem is the incentives are lined up for anyone who has any type of audience to chill KYC services because they pay the best.

And the reason they have more money than all the other Bitcoin companies is there is a tail risk. Everything has a cost and there is a tail risk. And they're not wearing the risk. The podcaster or the influencer is not wearing the risk of it.

It's their listeners. I think there needs to be a bit of a culture shift. Like, there obviously is within Bitcoin. There's like the people who care about privacy and all that kind of stuff.

But I just think that it's still quite niche and Bitcoin, you know, it's like counterculture. It's like, it's a fuck you to the state. It's a way for people to get out from all the bullshit.

But if we allow it to get co-opted or at least like not be clear about the trade-offs, I think there's a lot of that. It's like you talk about unstoppable fuck you money and you know, you can't take it from me and all this stuff.

And it's like, just like you said, try that when someone comes and knocks on your door and puts a fucking bullet in your head because you're on a list. It's, that's not fuck you money. - And they don't even care about whatever you have Bitcoin or not.

They don't have to. They don't have to look to your complicated multi-sig in 12 different, they just don't care. They want to stop this. They want to show. And look, again, the chance that this happen is, but it's not zero.

And sometimes when I see people in their bubble, I'm like, wait a moment, be aware. I mean, a shiny rock was at some point banned in the United States. (laughing) - Exactly, really, it's, today this would seem like, in certain countries, you cannot invest in something else than the real estate, right?

So it's not unheard of. And I think you see when you have a power structure that is wounded and start to realize that they are losing the game, they can even become more dangerous. And you see that because they feel they are losing control.

And you see this, for instance. So I'm in Switzerland, right? Switzerland is quite okay with crypto. You know, you don't have capital gain tax, as far as I know. It's very cool. There are now many cities that started to embrace it.

There is Lugano where you can literally pay with lightning on McDonald. And you see then we are surrounded by Europe. We're trying to ban it. - Yeah. - And you're like, okay, what's the difference there?

Well, Switzerland is a wealthy country that understands banking secrecy. - Yes. - And they are very pragmatic about this. And they do not see Bitcoin as a threat at all. They could even see it as maybe as a way to empower the Swiss Franc or the economy.

They are not desperate, right? So of course they're gonna be friendly as I sure. Do your ICO, do your stuff, do your Bitcoin thing? Fine, we even accept with it for taxes and things. But then you have like the European Union, which is in a quite different scenario.

And you have Christine Lagarde who said, "We don't want an escape valve." I mean, she said it, I don't know her personally. She's probably a fine person. I only know what she said on internet.

And she said that. And it's like, okay, what do you do about this? - They wounded, they're in trouble and people become very dangerous when they're desperate. - Even if we don't like normies sometime because it's like, I used too much energy, blah, blah, blah, on the scheme, I think we need.

It's very important that we onboard people on a Bitcoin standard in a peaceful and a transition that doesn't create too much chaos. And I know certain Bitcoiners wish they would be the scale.

They want their revenge, you know? But as a bit of a cypherpunk myself, you cannot have your, you know, if you have used Citadel in the middle of nowhere, then it means I can send you a drone, fire a hell, a hell, fire missile to you and no one will care.

But if you start to integrate this into society progressively and you have more and more people using it, realizing the benefit, bank start to adopting it, et cetera. Then it's used in the background for everything.

It's also much safer for everybody because you do not want a violent revolution. - No. This is my personal opinion, but I do not want a violent revolution. - No, me neither. And I think the thing is that the sort of things that we're discussing are so reasonable.

When you really break it down and you get through kind of the layers of bullshit and brainwashing and group thing and everything else, the ideas that we're saying are like, when you earn your money, when you put value out there and you earn your money, you keep it.

And it isn't stolen from you silently. - I think most people are like, yeah, that sounds pretty reasonable to me and that you can actually have control of it and no one can take it from you for no weird and stupid reason that has nothing to do with you.

And it's like, yeah, that's also pretty reasonable and that you can use your money where you want, how you want, like it's yours. Yeah, pretty reasonable. All this stuff like, oh, you can have these rules that can't be changed.

Well, yeah, that sounds nice. Like, I'd quite like that when I set something up, I have agreed rules, it's agreed and then they don't change. That's pretty obvious. Like, I think the average person will eventually come round and just be like, this is just better.

And so the battle is a battle of ideas and it's against a really small group of people. It's just about, like you said, trying to transition slowly, trying to get these ideas across the people and do it faster, ideally, than all of these countries start failing and we start to see the chaos that is kind of seems inevitable.

We need to try and do that before everyone gets desperate and hungry and cold. Yeah, I mean, that's very well said. And I think the main issue in our society is people do not want responsibility.

They are like, I mean, maybe this is a bit brutal, but people are fucking child. You know, they are like children. They want to know what to do. Think about this, Max. If you were in middle age and you have the king that come from time to time and still half of the gold you have in your farm, if I would have told you, hey, you have a way,

if you remember those 12 words, this will not happen anymore and you can say no to it. And then it becomes a negotiation. And then you can have tax, but you have a say in that you can negotiate the rate.

You can, it's like, then it's a proper trade between two people at equal level. They would have, I'm sure they would, yeah. They would have gotten it because they're like, oh yeah. But nowadays, people are afraid, it's like, oh my God, you know, it's like, I don't know, you do your own dried meat.

Aren't you afraid of mold or whatever? Well, yeah, sure, but then you learn about it. And okay, it's rotten meat, you will not eat this, but then you try again and you see, we want everything ready.

We want everything now. And I think it's partially because of fiat money, but it's also because people are now like children and they don't think about themselves. And I was quite scared recently because there was some person at work during the corona crisis.

She was yelling at me because I was not wearing a mask. And I said to her, look, I already got COVID, now I'm just immune to it. You know, it's like, done. And she was like, yeah, but it's the rule.

And then I said, well, 200 years ago I could have a slave. Isn't that, you know, it's the rule. And you realize then those people cannot think for themselves. They want someone that thinks and apply the rules and then it's easy for them.

And if you look at certain group of anarchy, I know not anarchy is the same, but if you look at other groups, they're like, the state is bad. Therefore, we will break all the rules and we will just smash down random stuff on the workers day.

And it's like, to me, it's two pieces of the same coin. They are not, they are unable to think about themselves. One, thinks of the state as a godlike entity that you must submit to. And the other one see it as an evil entity that you must resist, but there is no in-between.

It's like, okay, for me, that god COVID that is young, that has very good health, wearing a mask mix, no sense, no fucking sense. And then for you, maybe it does make your own decision. It's all about this and now people, I think this is one of the big problems is they want to be cuddled, they want the state,

they want whatever, it doesn't have to be the state, they want someone to tell them what to do. - Yeah, I agree with you, but I also think there is a, I think probably quite a large percentage of the population who actually don't and a lot of the depression and anxiety and issues that people are having mentally really deep down

is because they don't have control and they don't feel that they're valuable because they aren't because they're being little bitches and just doing as they're told and not thinking. But I do think that deep down it is there and it's like, sometimes that just needs to be unlocked.

You know what I mean? Like someone, you know, you feel better. Like if you start eating healthy and you start taking control of things in your life, you feel better, you just feel like more energy, more confident, everything starts to go more your way but it's only possible when you start to take control

and I think everyone's just got so used to everything being so easy and not doing it and everyone around them's not doing it. It's only when they meet someone who is doing it and they're like, oh cool, you're making your own drive me.

That's cool, okay, that really tastes really good, oh okay. Like these are the health benefits. Oh, you're lifting weights, so you're stronger and you're healthier, you're taking control of your money.

Okay, well, that means that no one can take it from you. Oh, that's pretty cool. It's almost like a role model thing. It's like if people see strong individuals doing things that they're very capable people and they can look up to them.

I do think it changes. It's just that like what people look up to today or what's shown to them in the media is fucking weak and pathetic. Oh yeah, and I mean, I don't have a T. Well, I have many TVs as I said, I have like computer screen but when I go to my parent house they have always the TV on the background and it drives me nuts

because it's always about the same thing is too much energy, this and that and it's like there is never someone who brings something new to the debate. It's so predictable and you know what you said?

Yes, I think it's a role model but it's also when you are affected. So the other day I had a coworker who sent me a screenshot that our company is now installing some kind of tracking software on every browser including Firefox.

Lovely. Right? It's over security and safety and my answer was, well, it's not your computer. And actually I discuss with him a lot of time about Bitcoin and you could see he was listening to me half of the time but I was like, look, it's not your computer, you have no control over it and I started to dig into it and I was like, okay,

now you understand you have also no control over your money because the bank could potentially shut it down. And he actually started to be deeply interested into Bitcoin, into self sovereignty.

Why? Because it's now affected because now you realize that, hey, the company installed a spyware. It doesn't mean they will do something bad but it triggered it like he saw it as wait a moment.

Now they can know everything I do. And he was pissed off and look, I think he's right but again, not his computer, right? But then he was like, okay, how do I install maybe a virtual machine or something, whatever to take action and to maybe segregate, maybe have an account for your work computer

and then another one for your home computer. So they don't tell and I think when you see affected like this friend I had in Hong Kong, he was, you bet he was on top of cybersecurity after what he saw on the street and what happened because then they are affected and they see the danger.

It's starting to happen here a little bit with some of the people that weren't really twigging over the last couple of years when I've been talking to them about this stuff. As prices have started to rise and a lot of the controls from COVID and that sort of things have happened and they've seen the world going to shit more and more.

There are a few people who are going, there's got to be a way out. There's got to be, do you know what I mean? Like there's got to be something that I can do here. I do think that like it is starting to affect people in such a way that like it's very difficult to live.

Like a lot of people here in the UK, like normal people are going, I don't know that I can pay all my bills. - Of course. - I need to take a third job. I've got to cancel my gym membership because I can't afford it anymore.

We can't have a dinner out once a month anymore. That just can't be done. There's all these cutbacks all the time and the cutbacks, you know, a few years ago might be more extravagant things.

But the cutbacks now are like, well, I can't really afford to heat my house all the time. Like it has to be colder than I want it to be. It's things that are like basic necessities. And so when people are like pinned into this corner and it's like, fuck, I can't feed my family, I think that's, you know, is either people completely lose it

and just get completely weak and really, really given? Or they're going to go the other way and they're going to start revolting and they're going to find other ways because it's a necessity.

It's like, when it comes down to, can I feed my family or not? And hold on, why? Because I'm already working two jobs. I'm already fucking tired. I already have nothing for myself and I'm just paying all these taxes and bills and bullshit.

Fuck this. I do think that's starting to happen. Max, you know, it's the solution. We didn't build enough solar panels. [LAUGHTER] It's true. And winful. And winful? If only-- Shit, you're right, you're right.

It's like Scientology, you know. It's like you-- I mean, seriously, you sunk in so much money. And then it's your fault if it doesn't work. It's only my parent, they have a house. And it's in the middle of a forest.

We get every month calls from solar company that want to put solar panel on our roof. And the other day, I answered. And I said, look, they were trying like, oh, yeah, you know with your sun power output, you could maybe power your fridge and after other things.

And sometime in summer, the neighbor's house. And I said, man, I donate this plot of land to Switzerland. I do it. No problem. You strip, you just take it. And you build a nuclear power plant.

And then not only you can power my house, but also the one of the neighbor and the one next. And then maybe the village and the entire city next to the village. And the guy was pissed off.

He was really pissed off. Think about it. They spent hours. They pay someone to arrest an old lady, my mother, to trick her, to take a loan, to install solar panel on her roof that is in her house in the middle of a forest.

That makes no sense. I'm sorry it makes no sense. Maybe in Egypt, solar panel makes sense. Maybe in-- I mean, they do have a use, but not in Switzerland where it's called Alpha of the Year and you have a fucking forest.

It's stupid. It's all in shade. It's so stupid. It's ridiculous. And the other day I almost got into a fight with a guy at work because I said, look, one way Switzerland could monetize solar power is by growing trees and then burning them.

And actually, this is better than solar panel because first, you value forests. So you will grow more forests, more nature. So that's good. And then all this requires, technologically speaking, is a Raspberry Pi, a boiler, and a steamer by.

That's it. With all of this, you can probably-- OK, maybe a laptop. And you can probably get away with it. And you can run it 24/7. And you can run it during the day, night, cold sun. You don't care.

And he told me, yeah, but you know what? The forest would take 50 years. And I was like, man, you have such low value of yourself and your time preference is so high that you cannot think 50 years in the future.

You are telling me you are in the green party and you are incapable of thinking maybe we should grow tree so that in 50 years, we can power this steamer by. Yeah, but growing trees sounds like a bad idea for the environment to me.

These things are fucking menaces. Growing more greenery and more trees can only cause problems. But it makes us independent from China because then we don't need solar panel from China. If you want to monetize the sun, I was trying to think in an industrial way.

Now, I don't think it's the solution personally, but hey, even that we cannot have. Even medieval technology we cannot have. And now I found myself to buy 20 kilo of coal and a tiny coal kitchen in my apartment.

And I can put it in my balcony and I thought, and look, I don't think I will use it. But just in case I bought it because it was like, you know, I cannot afford to not have food. It's a nice heat as well.

There's something really nice about like a log burner or a proper wood fire. It's so much nicer than having any other heat. There's something also about like how it looks and how it makes you feel.

Always find them more relaxed if I'm sat by a fire. Like radiators, fine, whatever. Like it's cool, it's going to warm things up. But there's something like, I don't know, like sitting around the fire.

Yeah. Yeah, the crackling and the light is like, it's more of a romantic light. Or if you've got friends and family around, like it's just warmer and nicer. I just think it's sometimes like going back, like sometimes even like a power cut.

Like we're going to probably have them quite soon with everything that Europe and the UK are doing with that power. Like, sure we're going to start having some blackout. I don't mind it occasionally.

Like I actually really like just like lighting a load of candles and having that kind of light. It's like going back in time or sitting by a bonfire like outside. It's just something that makes me feel better.

I don't know why. It's because it reminds us of the sun. The artificial light is the frequency and stuff. It's not quite the same as the sun. Which is why you know, with LED it's now possible to have like warm light.

And if you look, it just makes everything warmer and nicer. And of course, I added in my apartment a fake brick wall.

You know, and it makes the entire place like a cabin in the wood. Now it's a concrete building in the middle of a big city in Switzerland. There is nothing fancy about it. But when people come into the place, because there is this fake, it's just a wallpaper.

It's not nothing expensive. It just makes everything nicer. Because it connects you to nature. You know, you have now Fiat food. You have also Fiat architecture. As a 3D artist, I am so sad about the state of our city.

They are so boring. It's now whatever you are in Shenzhen or Zurich or in London. It's all cubes with large glass panel, no decoration, nothing. And why? Because you need to build quickly new buildings.

And you need to be the money printer. So you cannot have nice things. And of course, you know, having a wood fire. This is too expensive. This is inconvenient. But I think people are also depressed because they are in places that are inhumane.

You know, if you put people in tiny concrete cubes, they will not feel welcomed. They just won't. Because it doesn't connect us to nature with like the natural light. The sun, you know, in 3D, we spend so much time.

You not only have the sun as like a light source, but you also have the sky with all the blue and the pink hues. It's so rich. And you have like complicated algorithm to reproduce this in 3D.

And then what we do in real life is we put people in a concrete cube with a fucking neon that is flickering, maybe even. And it's making people sick. So yeah, I'm not surprised that with some candles, you make a much better place.

Yeah, I look forward to us winning. And eventually, yeah, I think we do. And for these things that really matter to start being a priority again and people to get off the hamster wheel and just start to like take pride in things when they're going to build a home, think this is a home.

It's not an investment. It's not somewhere where I just want to flip it and just do everything as cheap as possible and as efficient as possible. Sometimes like efficiency isn't the most important.

Sometimes the aesthetic actually matters. And the experience that you have there really matters. And I just look forward to like getting to that point where someone can say, OK, my garden might take 30 years.

That's how long it's going to take. I'm going to plant these trees and because I planned past this land down to my children. And it's just like these sort of things are not even considered now.

It's-- No, it's all about the quick. Quick, easy. And you have to do a 10x next month. If you don't do a 10x next month or next quarter, we had recently a meeting with people at the company where I work about quality.

And I could not stand the meeting. I seriously, I was thinking just leaving because they were discussing how can we improve quality. And my answer was our society does not value quality, which is why we are not paid by our client.

Thank you very much and my consulting fee is that amount. I wish we wanted to say that because look, society does not value quality. And then they were like, oh, but [INAUDIBLE] you're maybe a bit too-- and I said, no, I'm sorry.

Our client do not value quality. They might say they want it, but they don't. They don't. And then they ask me why. And I said, well, we have to beat the money printer, which is hard, you know?

It's extremely hard. Everybody is in that hamster wheel. You know, they keep trying, trying, trying. And they don't understand why it's not working. And what they don't realize is they see the light of the star getting distorted.

And they don't understand why it's distorted. What they miss is there is a fucking giant black hole in between that is sucking all their wealth. That's what they are missing. They are missing the money printer because they don't see it.

But it's like the event horizon of our economy. The bonds are doing incredibly funky stuff. The Japanese central bank is also doing funky stuff. And they are like, they try to make sense.

And they can't because they do not see that there is a massive black hole that is sucking all their wealth and their time and their value in it. And because you don't see it, it doesn't exist.

Yeah, but it's there. And like we said, people will start to wake up. And the narratives that being pushed will start to break down. And it's an individual thing. We all one by one start to take control.

And hopefully that inspires other people around us. And it's kind of like a wave that will go through society. And I do feel confident about it because it's what we're saying is truthful.

And I think that it comes from a good place. Like we believe what we're saying and we want what's best. And it's not about the fear-minded bullshit and getting rich and this and that. It's just about having like a rich life and spending it with family and friends and to do what is right and be honest.

And I think that has got to win out at some point. I really do think that. Yeah, and what's amazing with Bitcoin is that it has a community aspect to it. It allows certain things that is straight out from communism.

But with capitalism and market force, which is amazing. You know, you have people, why do they want communism? Because it redistribute the world. And we all know it's bullshit. But if you have Bitcoin, it does that because it forced the rich people to spend their money, right?

Because of course, if they have the money printer, they will just print more money and borrow against their stuff. And they will never actually touch money. They will continuously do this.

And this doesn't trickle down to the people who are fucked. Because for the people who are fucked, everything is getting more expensive. But with Bitcoin, without taxes, without state intervention, by pure game theory, you force people who have the money to spend it to other people in exchange for good and services.

And this is so important to have a well-functioning society. I think it's one of the things that is truly amazing. You know, that you can have literally well-trored distribution without stealing from anyone.

That's, yeah? - Yeah, no, I was just taking a breath. I was like, yeah, I agree with everything you've just said there. Yeah, it's very exciting. And I don't know how long it takes, but whether it's our generation or the next, I'm not sure, but it feels like it's going to happen.

And my hope is that, you know, that there's all these different ways that we're trying to get the word out. Different ways will hit different people. You know, some people will want to put on podcasts that talks just about the finance and the economics and they want to understand why Bitcoin is going to be a good investment.

And that's fine. And like they're going to want to listen to that sort of stuff all the time and that will get them involved. And then maybe that opens their eyes to some of the other aspects of it.

Some people want to come in from the tech side. Some people want to have audio. Some people want video. Some people want to read. And I think now with what we're talking about in this game, it's like a lot of people fucking love playing games.

And so having this other way in, you know, that just might be one more opportunity for someone who would never otherwise find out about this to find out and like do it in a fun way. So, you know, I'm very excited to see where this thing goes and I'm very happy that you reached out to me.

Like I said to you before, like we've obviously done this pod but I'd like to do one a little bit further down the line and to find out where this goes and any way that I can put you in touch with people or hopefully someone who's listening to this will be interested and be able to get in contact.

And we can, as a group, try and get behind this. I think it's important. - Yeah, and thank you a lot for giving me the chance. It was really a pleasure. I really enjoy our discussion and I'm sure we will continue and you know, if you have any question about self-hosting and stuff like this, you can ask me.

I always try to answer. - I definitely will be doing that. - Yeah, yeah, that's fine, that's fine. As long as I can answer and yeah, it's one of the great things about the Bitcoin communities, you will find people who will help you to set things up and I'm willing to do this.

Yeah, so thank you a lot. And yeah, I'm sure we will continue our discussion in some way or another. - We definitely will. And just before we close things out because I could sit and put the world to rights here all evening with you, but I try and keep these under two hours.

So we have to do, we're going to some other things next time. But before we jump off, do you wanna just remind everyone where they can go to look at the project? Also your Twitter handle and everything else so that they can find what you're doing.

- Okay, so you can, so on Twitter, I am @realharbanacker. My website is harbanacker.net and you can just write me on Twitter. I'm also on Telegram, but yeah, just DM me on Twitter if you want my Telegram handle or something like this if you prefer Telegram.

Oh yeah, so I think it's just my Twitter account is fairly new, so yeah, but I try to answer to people if it's not spammer or scammer. And for you Max, I will have one more thing to say you, but this is privately.

- All right, well, let's close it out there. Thanks again, mate. I've really enjoyed the discussion not only on air, but off air as well, and I've got a lot of respect for what you're doing.

I think that you're looking at things in a different way and I think that it really could help people get involved in this space. And even if they don't have some fun playing a cool game.

So yeah, thanks for what you're doing.