“You can’t live in a bitcoin.” Ben Gunn Returns as Atlas Shrugs.

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

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

Yeah.

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

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

Yep. You read that title correctly. Then, gun returns. It's been a couple of years since our first conversation. And even to this day, people contact me saying how much they enjoyed it. It was exactly the conversation that I needed to have at that time.

And I think many of you needed to hear. It was in the depths of the COVID madness. The world was burning. And Ben could see it. He could also see a lot of things that many of us missed. And a lot of things that have come true since that conversation.

Just as it was the right time to have our last conversation, it was the perfect time to have this one. There's so much going on in the world. I needed to have a chat with my mate, Ben. He's a fucking retard.

But he's also quite smart. And I think you're gonna really enjoy this. We flew out to Amsterdam for this one, and to keep the continuity, we took the microphones out. We went on a walk, and we went out in nature.

And because we were out and about, you will hear the odd bird chub. You will hear a bit of wind noise. You will hear the rustle of leaves occasionally. And you're gonna have to deal with that because I've done everything I can to make this audio as good as it can possibly be.

And if anything, I think it adds to it anyway. So I really hope you enjoy it. As it is a longer show, I will keep the thank you's brief. But I do wanna say a big thank you to Ben. I also wanna say thank you to everyone who's been supporting the show by streaming Sats or sending in Sats to my pay name.

A big thank you also to Mr. Crown for everything that he's been doing with the design and the website, making everything look so fucking beautiful. And a huge thank you to my sponsors. I'm very lucky.

I've got sponsors that I can genuinely be proud of. I'm gonna rattle through them quickly, so please do bear with me. First up is foundation devices. We talk about them in this episode. I use them, Ben uses them.

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And enjoy the show.

All right. So we're recording now. Yeah. So I get a clapping. Yeah, but where are we going to sit? Doesn't matter. Just get it started and sit anyway. All right. So take one, two, three. So that will sink now.

Yeah. So we're on. Yeah. Got it. We'll pop around there. I just noticed it was quiet. Might be worse. Starting off somewhere. We can piss off. Look, just go for a little bit. Yeah. And then we can...

Hiya. Just going to sit down. Yeah, yeah. This is more civilized. Yeah, yeah. This is more like the last one. We're still at the woods. We've got a bit of a view of some trees. This is properly managed though.

Yeah. There's been an adult at work here. So where are we mate? Amsterdam. We're in Amsterdam. We're about to go there. Or a cup of tea party. Sorry? Positive tea. No. Because we have private event here.

Oh. So we have the empty event. Oh. What time is it now? 10 to 11. Excellent. The lobby is still open. Yeah, we're just looking somewhere quiet for them. We're doing it. Anywhere else? Not here.

Not here. Unless you want to be in the middle of a wedding. No. Not really. Sorry guys. It's alright. It's alright. So that's ruined then. That's why it was quiet. Yeah. Let's go for a wander.

We'll go for a wander. The world's time. We've got to go outside. It's not raining today. It's a bit easier. Right, take two. Yeah, take two hours after that clap. So we're in Amsterdam. Yeah.

We're staying at Westergas. We've not seen each other for two years. Face to face. I don't actually speak too much after the pod. No. Sort of got back in with it. And then as time's gone on and just sort of updated each other.

Been in a bit more closer contact. Really mainly just from what mutual moral support. I know. I mean in both cases, it's similar to the conference or any conference. You sort of come to them, you meet like minded people and then you break away.

Back to the fiat mines. Yeah, because you have to. Yeah, like we're all physically spread out. And yeah, God, I just thinking back over since we last met. Listening to the pod. Just so I knew what I said last time.

It was a good pod. I'm nervous. I'm nervous now because it was so good that it's almost best to just leave it. And just never go back on a pod at all. Sequel's a notoriously hard to get done better than the original.

It come out better than I expected it would. I think that's 99% to do with your editing. And that says everything about the effort you put into the pod, which I know now. It's massive and just an incredible effort at the end of a shitty, usually a shitty day.

And then you pick this up and do what you're passionate about in the evenings, which I think a lot of Bitcoiners can relate to. Especially at the moment, the tide went out. There's not as much benevolent money around.

Yeah. And I think all of us in our different ways have had a kind of a Bitcoin recession of our own. Like alongside what's looking like a real fiat recession. And I think that just draws on us all in different ways depending on how our lives are.

It's been a difficult couple of years. The pod that we canned, I was on a bit of a sugar high. The corn was doing what it was doing. We had a lot of big events. Big even now, even in context, you know, I was a bit of a sailor fanboy back then.

That's what I took away from it. But that was all brand new, you see. And we mentioned ETFs very briefly. I've got some of the thoughts on them now. But a lot's happened in the last two years for us both.

And yeah, I just don't know really where to start. What I liked about the last one is it was just two Bitcoiners. And when I say Bitcoiners, people who are actually interested in the changes, mainly because we are so sick of the world that we see around us.

Yeah. I think like, especially as I got to know you more over the last couple of years, it's like... We're different in a lot of ways, but we have a common thread of like, we like to get shit done.

Yeah. And we like to get it done our way. Yeah. We're happy to take all the risk, but just fucking get out the way. Yeah. And it's nice when we got to sit down and be like, "Oh, I might be a mad cunt, but I'm not the only mad cunt."

Yeah. And it's nice to have someone who sees the world in a similar way. I knew from sitting down with you, I was like, "This is bloke I can spend time with." Yeah. And it's like, "I need fucking help now, please."

Yes. You'll be there. No. And vice versa. I'm gonna go give fucking Will. I've got the tracker on you, I'm sure. Well, we covered it a bit on the pod, you know. You've got to be careful with who you help.

And that's something I've definitely not done well since. Yeah. Some of the topics, we pretty much got a bullseye on it. But I was kind of thinking back now how little of my own advice I followed, really, in the last two years.

And particularly about having control over something yourself. Yeah. Immediately have the cannon that pod. I went from being on the woods, completely self-contained, complete control. Yeah.

And getting some grip. And I was about to kick the engine up into that next gear, picked a bit of ground speed up. Yeah. And done it from a very, very steady base, which I think is the way to go.

And I just about... Oh, that's going to... And I just about kicked it up into that high gear. Exactly when I was about to hit a load of bumps. Yeah. And really the last two years for me has just been trying to knock it down two gears.

From what my ambitions were just at the end of that pod. Mm-hmm. Where to take the timber out, add more value, put it into projects. And I just, it just kicked off. So yeah, I moved over, I relocated, so I walked out of the woods.

It's not a sustainable way of living. I know that's... Most people already knew that. What, living in a shed? Alone at the top of a fucking hill. Do you know what, though? I want to go back.

I really... As part of you that misses it. Yeah. A huge part of me now. But is that nostalgia? I mean, what's hard to bear is sweet to remember. And maybe I just sort of blanked out all of the shitty freezing nights and stupid compromises I was making to do that.

And I had to do it. I was kind of committed, which is something I highly recommend getting into something that you're completely committed on. But everything comes to an end. I just wanted to try and extend my ambitions a little bit further outside the forest.

So I relocated, I moved to the island, man. It's only about 60 miles away. It keeps me close to the family. There's a Bitcoin presence on there. It's not massive, but it is there. There's tax advantages.

And at the time they had a timber shortage and I was just going to bring some on, sell it a stock. While that stock was selling, be there to build a few little bits and pieces up and just have a bit of fun with it.

Yeah. And get back into a maybe a normal routine. Yeah. But almost by the time I'd moved, things had changed very quickly. I think that was when the interest rates and the inflation was starting to really kick in.

I remember having loads of conversations with you on the phone. I'd walk my dog. Yes. I'd walk my dog. And then I'd call you for two hours. Yeah. I'd talk about interest rates. And the dogs just shut.

They're looking at you. You can't. This is meant to be our time. Yeah. Remember? The biggest mistake I made was trying to carry a little bit of knowledge from, used to be an interest rate broker.

So it's like, I don't know about these interest rates. I've got it covered. There's no way. And I know a lot of people got it wrong. But I just thought there was no way they can get past two percent, three percent.

Yeah. Because at that point, you're going to create a deflationary spiral. But they did and they're up here nice and high and it's starting to bite. I didn't give it any, I didn't take that in and say, right, maybe I should trim my sales.

I was like, fuck it. I've got some capital. I've got a business that I can control the supply chain of. I'm just going to do it. And then started to introduce third party risk. I rented a warehouse that wasn't to spec.

Yeah. And then you'd into legal stuff that takes a very long time at the moment. And ended up by the time I had it ready to do what I wanted to do. Lost momentum on the woods. I lost the amount of time on the license to get timber out.

I had to start reapplying. So just terrible. Just sort of immediately after that pod. Yeah. You could say it's my fault in some ways. I actually think you're a curse. But now that we've had two years of pain, maybe I just needed to flip it a little bit.

Yeah. A bit of luck after this. I'm not moaning and I'm not saying I'm unlucky. It was just to acknowledge that just as I was getting a bit of momentum to jump out and jump straight up into a miter, which would have worked maybe for the previous few years.

The ferry prices, transport, costs, balloons, it got to a point very shortly after relocating where I thought this just isn't worth it. I mean, I did say on the previous pod. The timber can sit and wait for a very, very long time.

It doesn't have an expiry date, especially if you stack it properly. And so if you've got the option to sort of cut your losses early and live to fight another day, you do it with this type of thing.

So I've still got the woods. It's in a dormant state now. I just shutted it all down. The dangerous part I had done just before you visited. And that was the acute part. That's why I had to be there.

Had to be there. Yeah. And now it's more like a stable stock room. Even if I'd have stayed, I think I'd have had big problems because the regulatory burden maybe hadn't changed in letter, but in the actual practical process of applying for permission for things, that ballooned.

It's like the user interface got way more complex. Yes. Low. Yeah. So I sort of mentioned it before, but look at all of the arguments and stress and effort is taken in Bitcoin to reduce the gap to the user.

Yeah. And on the fiat legal layer, they're actually making it harder and harder to interact with the services that used to serve you. Yeah. So I don't put tax returns in any more myself because I need an agent.

Yeah. They give me an abstraction layer. They give me someone to say, look, I gave this to someone whose job it is to prepare. So I've got now that user interface. I'm not on the phone for three hours to the tax man.

Pressing six and pressing two and pressing one and then waiting two hours. I ended every five minutes, by the way, to not be abusive is like a really interesting mental struggle session. Our team will not accept.

We will not accept being spoken to rudely. Give us your money. We don't accept being called a can. Even if we are one. Yeah. Well, we don't want reminding. We don't want responsibility for our actions.

You know what? It can't be nice doing that as a joke. No, no, fine. Oh, my God. Yeah. I don't have any sympathy for them, but they're in their own form of hell on the other side of the phone.

You know, as an observation, I've got an agent now for my own personal pleb. Pleb as fuck taxes. Yeah. I've got a forestry consultant because they would not. They told me off the record when the regulator visited the forest.

Yeah. They were impressed with what I'd done. Yeah. I'm not trying to impress them, but it was good to see that I exceeded the expectations, I suppose. So that was fine. But then they said, look, your plans for the next part are more complicated than the things you've submitted.

We'd really feel more comfortable getting a consultant to prepare the plans for what I needed to then do to extend it. Right. So that's fine in principle. It's always a grand or more lawyer or anyone.

It's always a grand or two. And you know, that takes a long time to earn, man. Yeah. Well, you've got to earn twice that to pay it. Oh, yeah, because you're not, you're not, of your pound you earn.

Yeah. You've 30, 20, 40, depending on your circumstances, percent off. Yeah. Then they charge that. Yeah. Anyway, it's another abstraction layer. It's someone else now that I used to be able to just go onto a portal, put in my plans.

Yeah. And look, can we do it or not? And now it's, no, no, we've got a man. Yeah. And then obviously the man's very busy. Yeah. Long story short, it took for, it's an eight week legal process and it's taken 12 months to prepare the application for submission.

And the project is just a bypass forestry road inside the woodland to relieve the village that's at the foot of the crag of timber traffic going through. And it's taken 12 months. So even if I had have been there, my license had run out to fell.

All right, I could have fell back on the stock I had. So I suppose there's that timber prices fell a bit. And I'd have probably stalled no matter what, but it was just made worse because I was away from the woods somewhere else.

Up to my neck in my door on a warehouse that didn't really have a roof. Yeah. And I'd order like a lot of those out here. You want to have roofs on warehouses. They're useful if you're a masochist.

Because it's just like, I got the place in a dry spell. I'm laughing because it's just, it's not funny, but I took the lease and the first time it rained. It was like, why is it? How do I know it's raining?

I'm in the warehouse. How do I know it's raining? It was like an Amazon rainforest on the inside of the building. And I had ordered slightly better equipment for milling and planing and things like this.

Yeah. It takes 400 volt three phase power. You can't put that in rain. So I'd spent a load of dough and I had to turn that machinery away because there was no where to put it. That sort of time I thought, right, well I'm on the island man now.

I'd buy then I'd gone down the pub, met a few Bitcoiners and really I'd committed to the place. So I'm here now. So I checked on the warehouse, wrapped up the woods into something that it just dawned on.

Yeah. And then jumped into a startup on island and then spent another 12 months there, which can't say too much about because it's still all ongoing. Yeah. And it's just not professional to draw conclusions before something's been brought to a close.

Nah, that's very nice. I just don't know what the situation is there, but I spent 12 months there full time. The idea being, well, I'll just come in under someone that's doing it and maybe got a little bit more experience than me.

And no matter what happens, I can just sit there and, you know, buy osmosis, pick up what they're doing, have my own opinion, but then working under a team where you're kind of being given the jobs.

Yeah. And didn't enjoy that temperamentally. I just wanted a bit of control of my own again, but I stuck it for 12 months and I've sort of cut away now. And this is where we are. I'm sort of in between two things.

So just a lot of time to reflect and... It was a good time to do this and have this conversation because you're in a, well, where do I go now phase? Yes. And going back to gearing, you know, like I said, you hit a high gear.

There's something really healthy and knowing in yourself that you've got to take it down a couple of gears again. Yeah. If you just press on heedlessly just to try and get your speed up. Yeah.

And when you do hit something, you're just going to crash. You're going to stall your engine and you're going to crash. It was just that process of, well, here's some momentum, we're off.

And then it was, no, no, no, no, trim it in, break, break, break, break. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now is a good time to sort of sit back and question what parts of this I can take lessons from.

I've had a lot of time since to reflect, I've become a bit of a shadow journaler. Objectively criticize things in the third person that I'm doing and get it down on paper. Normally in the morning, it's like letting off, letting the poison out in the morning.

Mm-hmm. Don't open the laptop anymore. I don't do them scroll on Twitter, I'm not even on Twitter. I sit down and just unenumerated 10 or 20 minutes in the morning and I'll just put out whatever's on my mind and just have a process of that.

You do that in obsidian. Yeah, we'll talk about that. It's just one tool to, it's just like an organized Microsoft Word that connects into all the other things that are relevant to you. And so I've started doing a bit more work on myself, critical, but also with the idea that if we get this right,

I'll know in future what suits me and what doesn't. And I've taken a lot from the last couple of years, some good and some bad. Mm-hmm. And yeah, it is a time now before we make another big decision and go and do another thing to just sit down and go right.

Where's your attitude stinking a little bit? And I think one of the things that I'm guilty of is I'm a temperamentally negative person. Now, when we're doing that to yourself and you just shit-talking yourself on your own projects, that works.

But I'm deciding now to, instead of criticise other things I see that I have no control over and no staking, it's to try now an answer with something of my own and have something that is like, this is what I've done.

And criticise that, but not to just sit with nothing on my lap pointing at other things and going, that shit. Yeah, because that's easy. That shit. It is easy and it also becomes a habit.

Yeah. Because I'm so negative temperamentally. Where that's come from I don't know, but fully acknowledge it now that I am. You're living in this world. Maybe, maybe, but that's the thing, isn't it?

Because if you can cut away from it and try to ignore what you're drawn to be negative on and control something a little bit more positive and humble inside of your own orbit. Yeah. You've pretty much solved the negativity problem just by switching your focus to something that you can do yourself.

Yeah, if you focus on what you can control then you only have yourself to blame. Yes. So you're not blaming anyone else. No. That then means there's a lot less negativity in your life. Yes.

You really give life to the things that you give attention to. Yeah. This isn't new stuff, but there's a difference between reading it and then practising it, which is something somebody pointed out to me.

It's like you've read it all, but how much of it are you actually doing? Yeah. You can pass the pub quiz. Are you actually getting up and doing what you're saying you're doing? And for me the answer was fucking no.

I was getting up, update their world into my brain, miserable before breakfast. And also it's like what credibility do I have inside of a bigger operation? I was trying to be deferent to a team.

And the point is don't moan about it. Piss off and do it in your own way, and if it's so clever it'll float. So I'm working on that. It's not bullshit. It's not corny. If you think positively it does start to have a second order effect, or I've noticed it.

Oh, it does, yeah. It's just something that I feel stupid for not having picked up before now. When you got as much on your plate as you had on your plate, it's hard to have some introspective thinking.

Yeah, it didn't have time. I mean this is the thing that we don't have anything of anymore. But you've got to make time. Scaling back of the time that a human being can actually have to themselves to reflect.

Right. Especially if you're running a business, have a family, have ambitions, try and ish look after yourself. Yeah. Blah, blah, blah. You try and strive to be a good person. Yeah. A strong person.

But then you have to dedicate and be very principled in, sorry, not principled. You have to be very regimented in the way that you go through life. Like, yeah, I have to train. Yeah, I have to eat well.

Yeah, I have to look after my family. Yes, I have to stick to my work. And I say I'm going to do something. I'm going to do something. That's the most important thing. The money. I have to do this.

And then at the end of the day, if you're doing that, unless you're in a fucking super duper job and some people are and they're a dev earning crazy money, whatever. Yeah, but if you're not, you're probably working one or two jobs.

Yeah. You probably have a few side hustles. Yeah. Once you've done all the other bits and done the things you have to be doing to be a good friend and a good dad and good person and get shit done, there's no fucking time left.

No, there's not. There used to be. And it wasn't that long ago that there was time. And that's the whole thing. That's the whole thing we're fighting. It's like, fucking bring back some normality.

Bring back the ability for, like, people to spend time together, create ideas, look after their families and loved ones, reflect a bit more. Because that's probably a big part of why everyone's an angry cunt.

The rage has gone up. It's basically just stress boiling down into people having a lighter trigger. But of the things you've listed off, at least all of those things are in your control. And another thing that sort of came back to, again, another thing you read in your teens or your 20s, you tick it off and go, "Oh, that's clever."

And then you just don't fucking do it. It's this idea of a locus of control. Around you is like a bubble. And inside that bubble is things that you can control 100% or at least influence.

At least contribute something and change the error. And then outside of that is just shit that's happening that makes demands on your time and demands on your emotions and gets you down. That you ultimately can't influence and I think when you get towards this time bankruptcy thing,

people I think of generally are starting to abdicate the things that could be responsible for. It's better think for most people to just be able to project over into something that isn't something they can control and have a moral opinion on it.

Look over there. Look how bad that guy is. Look at this. Look at that little trial. Look at this war. That's how people live because they've just been robbed of their centre. They haven't got as much to control.

Getting that back, it's an effort. You have to get up and do it every day. And the hardest one is, is this my problem? Yeah, yeah. When I see this, is it designed to hook me into commenting and going through a mental process anguish and liking it and sharing it?

Or is it better to say, this is not my problem. There is so much around me that I haven't got control over. I was a coffee addict. Like I just had to quit coffee. It's easier to have three coffees and go on Twitter.

Then it is to just quit and use the time in something that you can get a result from and change. So that's been a theme since we last poked. Taking an L or two, knowing when to quit. Ah, this is blocked off.

Slither back that way. Yeah. We've got a proper gym there. Caught around there. Yeah, this is where it went out this morning, down here. You're going to do your pull-ups and that. I don't do pull-ups.

Can't do them. No, I just don't run. I'm running. In between times I'll do enough of that. But that's another thing. It's okay when you're working physically because you are keeping the weight off.

You can eat trash up to a certain point. Yeah, yeah. Another thing is coming back into the fiat world is there's your desk. She did a year of that. Er, yeah, yeah. I did a year of it. But having had 12 months of it, you come out with your lessons.

You still learn the lesson collectively. That's the part I'm going to try and take away from it. But it's really just a good time to pause. Put together what worked, what didn't and do it objectively.

And really go into some deep criticism, which is a real hard thing to do. Just keep going. It's why, you know, what is this? What is this in you that could be fixed or needs to be dealt with?

Yeah. And it's spent an awful lot of time doing that. I should have done it a lot earlier. But what you get out of that is you get a better sense of your identity, which I think Bitcoin does for you anyway.

But then it's easier to split what you want to spend your time on and what you don't want to spend your time on if you know what you're about, who you are as a person. So anyway, maybe that's just something that everyone's already done and I'm just catching up.

No, I think it's something that most people do in like stages and then for not long enough and then forget and then you've got to come back to it. Yeah. It's like a constant readjustment.

It takes time. The way you make decisions are tactical inside of a day, operational inside of a month or a week. Hang off this for a minute. Yeah, go on. Do you ever do this? Do you ever just hang?

It's good for your shoulders. Yeah. And you lower back and all that just kicks it out. You're just hanging off a bar. Hold on. Poddling. Yeah. Got a few clicks there. Yeah. Yeah. That's another thing registered with a dentist again, registered with a chiropractor again.

Oh, I've not done all that. You know what I mean? Like it's like, okay, you know, this is what grownups do. So really it's just been a kind of hard yards, but I think they're going to pay off.

And yeah, it's just a general to people listening. Everyone gets on their podcasts and they give the best impression of themselves and they give their wins. How great everything's going. And then nothing, no updates for a couple of years.

It's just to say, if anyone else has struggled, not just through COVID, but also in this sort of aftermath. A lot of people are in the same boat. And it's not necessarily a bad thing in the long run.

This too will pass. And the trick is to just take as many sensible lessons from it as possible, bring things in to what you can do well. And that doesn't have to be ambitious. It just has to be something that you've got your lock on.

And everything outside of that bubble, frankly, fuck it. Yeah. Current affairs, global events, you've got to be present to them. It's definitely never good to be ignorant. But to treat them as you would a historical story or a myth, that there's something you can take from it, but there's nothing in it that you can change.

No. There's nothing in a World War II documentary that you should have an opinion on, but you're not like, oh, well, I should do it this way. It doesn't matter. The only thing we've got control over is what we can move around with our time and our money.

What can I put on the board that is productive and positive and really just picking what to do? And I'm actually completely in a state now where decisions are still to be made. But being drawn into Bitcoin, I mean, that is the one thing that won't change now.

I don't see myself cutting away back into the fiat mines and doing something non-Bitcoin. I think I'm going to be coming more into the, hopefully not the public eye, not want to be that. Maybe just contribute more and criticize with acts and counter examples as opposed to just heckling.

Ultimately, even if you're right, there's a lack of credibility when you do that. It's like, well, what the fuck have you done? Well, there's a lot of bullshit in Bitcoin land at the moment.

It's changed. It's changed a lot. There's a lot of great stuff, but there's also, like, we're here at the conference. Yeah, we're at BTC Amsterdam, should have said that at the start. Yeah, don't get me wrong.

I know what you're going to say. I've caught up with some fucking brilliant people. Yeah. People that have not met. I know their nims have done for a long time. Yes. I won't say names now because I don't want to dox of who's there.

Don't listen in. That part. That's the value. Yeah, it gives me a huge amount of excitement. It makes me feel really positive about Bitcoin and open source software and the group of people who are driving it.

And there's some fucking great stuff. But there's also this veil of cuttiness, which is like a stench that is in the air of corporate cunts. Yeah. Maybe it's just a Bitcoin magazine thing.

I don't know. And I don't want to sag them off too much because it's a nice conference. It's nice, whatever. But it does feel like, listen, I think you're missing the point of what Bitcoin is about.

And maybe it's because you're new. I don't know. But the way I think, you know, especially from our last conversation, how's the board changed? The board being the fiat world. Yes. Oh, that's fucking changed.

And you've got to be careful what pieces you put on and take off. Yeah. The Bitcoin world I see is like, that's a completely different board. And there are bridges and parts where it joins.

No, it could be separate planets for the sake of planning and how you frame them in your mind. They are different. It's abstract. Yes. And it's got a purity around the core of it. It's got a purity.

We've built these gatekeepers going back to meeting people. That's the product. That's what these things pull in. Very few people in Bitcoin live amongst each other. And it hats off to the lads doing it out in America.

Typical America. They're always doing it better. Or at least bigger. It's just great to see projects like the Bitcoin park. Yeah. And this is what I mean. That's how you criticize what you don't like.

What Matt O'Dell has done in his team is to build it yourself. Make it how you see it and let it stand. There's not only an account or example to what you disagree with. But also as an inspiration for other people to do it.

It's not shaming. But it just says to me, you can't just sit and point the finger. Even if you're right, it's not good enough. You are part of the problem. If the only part that you play in it is to be the critic on the edge.

You're on the edge of the world. You're not in the middle of your own. I don't like the idea of paywall social functions. So we've gone there now. It's like just your 400 quid band. Yeah.

Now you can meet your friends. Yeah. And last year it was kind of similar. But most of the activity and most of the memories you take away are outside the conference. Oh, the bar around the corner.

The bar around the corner shooting the shit when the anxiety levels have dropped. People who've come to do work or have a stand speak perhaps or maybe have some obligations in the event can let their hair down.

Speak freely and have a catch up. That's the part that I'm most attracted to. It happens every time I come to one of these things. They don't go to many, but each time there's five or ten nims.

Yeah. That you never look like what they sound like. Yeah. Never ever. Yeah. Some of the people that you could literally bump into them on the tube. And you'd never know that they were maybe one of your best friends or someone that you, when you see them on the timeline.

Oh, see what they're doing. They make you happy. Yeah. You're like this motherfucker ships. Yeah, like, yeah. I mean the people around it are such inspirations. And I need to get off my arse and start doing things as opposed to just trying to riff off either the negative things I disagree with.

Or just sort of lop on the edges of things that I am in favour of. But the conference has a value. It's a temporary meeting point to find your friends in real life. And it's great that I was able to get you out, convince you to come out and do it because you were thirsty for a bit of a social break.

Oh, yeah. And it's good for the heart just to see the people, look them in the eye. They're human beings. They don't always look like what you think they're going to look like. Except Q&A.

Except Q&A. Yeah. I think I need to go home and speak to my dad and say, "Has he had any side relationships?" Because I might have a step, I might have a half bro there. It's really weird that never met him before.

So that was just great to just see people and share a pipe and blow the blows. But it makes me wonder what the potential is for the circular economies. Because where they are cropping up.

And in these little ways, like, again, go back to Bitcoin Park as an example. They come in, they get up, they get dressed like everyone else. And then they go in to an environment where they're talking about Bitcoin, with Bitcoiners.

And they're extending the value that sweet spot that conferences have given us up to now. Yeah. And I think conferences have got more, they've got to bring more to the table. Yeah. They've got competition.

Other people are running different events. If you dilute your product, it has an effect. That's what I'm saying. And I think that's what... If we're going to criticise it, I don't run events.

There must be a nightmare. I think that and mining are the two things that you have to be a kind of masochist. Like John. Yeah, you're all mad. Yeah. I love you boys and you're very smart.

And the stuff they put out, like, the little videos of their setups and stuff. But as a business model, you've got to be... You've got to be a bit bananas to want to be a miner. You don't control your input costs or your output costs or the cost of your hardware.

And everyone hates you. A regulatory side, I mean. And they've struggled. They don't need to tell the miners it's been a hard couple of years. Yeah, it's hard times. But yeah, what's outside of conferences to keep that connection?

Work environments. Really interesting one. Yeah. But that's not really going to work for blue colour, Bitcoiners. Unless you're a dev and you can just open a MacBook and that's great for them.

Yeah, yeah. I'm happy for them. But outside of that, they're still going out to the rest of the fiat economy for everything else. Yeah. And the perfect circular economy is one in which all of your resources are kind of kept in.

So I'm looking at maybe somewhere different to relocate. I'm open-minded to it. I've given the Isle of Man a couple of years and I'm kind of half... Well, have I been good enough to make things work there?

And I'm not completely closed off to it. I'm not bitter about it. It might just have been, what's the word? Couple of stalls. You know, like a couple of efforts that have just never gotten away.

Yeah. And that's okay. And now I'm sort of looking at it all again where maybe to move to... I'm going to give Isle of Man maybe another six to nine months on something I'm going to do under my own power.

That would be a little bit more... maybe a little bit more humble, like with lower ambitions than what a bigger startup would try to do. Yeah. But maybe be more successful at doing a simple thing well as opposed to trying to do something complex.

Just building a plane while we're flying it. Yeah. Oh, what a beautiful quote. I'll write that in my little notebook, but that's a stupid idea. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to build a plane before it takes off.

That's why it's a plane. And that's why so many of these complicated ideas fall by the wayside. They're fragile. They're susceptible negatively to future change. And that's exactly the opposite of what I want to try and do.

I'm going to give it a little bit more time, but I have got one eye now on other things broader, further afield. That might be simpler, but might work. Maybe that's the lowest standard of living as it's judged, but I've done that.

And I never felt sad or down about it. You have a goal that you're completely in love with and invested in and completely committed. And all your peripheral vision drops away because you have to focus on this.

It doesn't really matter. You can put up with anything. Maybe that's what I'd be looking at doing somewhere further afield. So I'm spreading my net. I've got about six months from now till when really there's a time then to you've got to buy it maybe by then take a decision.

And in the meantime, just maintain what I'm trying to build momentum in now, getting fit and starting to contribute. The effort of producing as opposed to criticizing, but going back to how difficult it is to get things done in the world.

And certainly that place is not immune from that. Everything takes a little bit longer, not necessarily more expensive, but takes longer and is more uncertain and therefore becomes expensive.

Yeah, but I think that could be applied to anywhere. Like I said, we've had trouble getting wins in the woods for planning and license extensions and things. And even though on the ground, there's nothing that would make it ineligible for what I'm asking for.

Literally the time it takes to not only ask the question, but get the answer back is a cost of its own. Yeah. And so it's taken so long in the woods that it might just be as easy to wrap it all up, take the win from it and walk.

Which I never thought I'd say, but it's just a fact that things are taking no matter how much effort you put in. They're taking an awful long time and life's moving on. The boards changed mate.

It's just got incrementally harder to push things through. That's how I see it. And it's at the edge now of should I stay or should I go? The way I see it, and I deal with different problems than you do.

Same in a way though. Same in a way. Same same, but different. Same same but different. What I've found is, I've got to the point with anything around regulation or anything that touches compliance, government, council, solicitors, anything.

Yeah. Any of those cogs in that big machine, it gives me anxiety. Why? Because it's so stressful to get anything done. You always feel like... Do you feel like you're swimming through... Shocks.

Shocks. Shark infested treacle is actually quite a good analogy. Yeah. Because not only are you moving incredibly slow, but when they want to spike you. Yeah. They can't off pick up the pace.

Yeah. The enforcement ends of these agencies. It's very late on its feet. Yeah. So it's treacle for you to get any basic shit done. Yeah. I want to put a wall up at the end of my garden. No mate.

On my fucking land. Anarchist. I could knock it up in a weekend with a mate. It's fine, it's easy, but I've got to wait 12 fucking months of dealing with 15 to 20 different cunts and chasing them and this and that.

And then if I just went, "Do you know what? I've been doing this for a year. I'm just going to fucking build the wall." If I build that wall somewhere, I'll be there that day. Right. You're fine.

It needs to be pulled down, but you can't pull it down for health and safety. Yeah. I've got to send my mate who's going to do it, and that's going to cost you five grand. Yeah. And so it's always that like, "Ah, I've got so much shit I want to do."

But I can't do it without having a headache. Yeah. So you either go, "Well, I'm just not going to do it." Yeah. But then you don't get the pain down. You have to do something. You're a human being.

They're constantly giving you a predicament. Yes. Keep struggling under the weight that would keep adding to it while more equating around you. Yeah. Maybe joining the agencies. I mean, that's another thing I've noticed is these power centers.

They attract people once they've beaten a landowner or once they've beaten somebody. They come in on full-time pension. Don't put the tools down. That's beneath you. Come in and supervise the environment.

So there's this thing where once you stomp down to a certain point, the instinct is to... Can't beat them, join them. Join them. I'm not prepared to do that. No, I'm in it, though. But there are other places that you can withdraw from.

But if you are stuck, you're back to limiting your ambitions. But it's... Right, so I completely agree with you up to that point. But that's not where the thought should end for us. That's the bit that I think has changed for me.

It's like, all right, okay, finish the last bit of our pint. Everything's shit. Catch you next month. No, no, no, no, no. No, that's the start of the thought as to what do you do next? And I think that's where I'm going to put my focus from now on.

It's not easy. The options are to quit. The trick is not to quit out of the moment that you're lowest. Yeah. It's to acknowledge that you're struggling and that this might not be sustainable or rewarding enough to proceed.

Let that moment pass and take a moment later to judge objectively. Objectively, whether you should change course. And that's the time to do it, not when you're at the crush low. Because I think at that point it feels more like a bitch quit.

Yeah, yeah. And that's what you've got to try and avoid. But what then? We're saying we've got these two boards. Yes. So the way I look at it is, take as much as you possibly can off the most attackable board.

The shark infested treacle waters board. You have to have some stuff there, but take everything you can off the table. And you put that on the other table, which is the Bitcoin table. And you say, right, this is my safety net.

This is what can't be touched. But then you also have this other board that you have to, especially if you've got family, especially if you have people depending on you, you have to have some fiat world stuff.

Because you've got to pay bills. You've got to live somewhere. You've got to find food. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, you can argue, you can work out in the circuit economy, the Bitcoin world, your food, and you can do all that.

You can, in theory. At the moment, though, it's not a broadly available option. It's not. It's something that you have to take a cut a lot away. A lot of disjointments, a lot of dislocation.

Yeah. And you have to really burn yourself down to flat. Unless you're lucky enough to just be in nearby one of these places or in some other way is closer to you than it is for the average person.

But you take what can be attacked off the board where you can? And there's a lot. Where's the physical people? Yes. You know, Bitcoin's an abstract. It's a clock. We can't go there. And like the last part, you can't eat sat.

Yeah. Okay, you can harden up some relationships so that you get a little bit more from a Bitcoiner. And you could maybe go to trust them more than you would feel comfortable doing with someone that you've not met before.

But that goes back to this thing that I think the Bitcoin pool has changed slightly. I'm more reticent now and I will do more sort of due diligence with a Bitcoiner. And I would trust them less just because they say they're a Bitcoiner.

That doesn't mean anything to me now. No, it doesn't mean anything. It's grown. And of the people that from three or four years ago that are still around, they're proving themselves. Yeah.

But then there's others that are sort of fly under this flag. Yeah. But then behave in the exact same way that I've seen and tried to avoid in the fiat sphere. So it's not just like, oh, well, I'll just go and live with all the Bitcoiners.

It's not really. That's not the fix either. It's a fiat, pig wearing lipstick, orange lipstick. I mean, at the most extreme, some people beyond the bio and retweeting. The mantras. The hack need.

Things that were new three or four, five, ten years ago. Yeah. Today, it's just a way for them to get in and get amongst people that would treat them a little bit better. Yeah. Only to then behave in exactly the same way.

So I'd say that the Bitcoin side, I put it like this. I don't think there's a Bitcoin community. No. I think that there are just individuals who are producing and then people on the edges of that, either taking advantage of it or like me criticizing it or supporting it in a kind of non-effort way.

I'm just going to try in an unstructured way to be drawn closer to the people that I've seen, prove themselves over and over and over again. But I've got, it's a good problem to have, but the options are where to physically base yourself.

Your mindset, the way that you interpret a problem, how well prepared you are as a person, mentally, physically, what your attitude is. Yeah. If you've got that right, you could drop anywhere on planet Earth into any environment of almost any level of crisis.

And if you've done that part right, you will be fine. Or as fine as you can be. Where you base yourself and all the other things that you have to decide, they just help optimize just to make things more likely.

And the other side is, even if you've been the perfect place, and even if everything's going well, you can still walk under a tree and a branch can drop on your head, you're dead. Or you can get a severe illness that comes out of the blue.

Yeah. And you're going to have to be ready for that. So the first thing to say about where you live is, it's not the be all and end all, it's important. But it's, don't think for a minute that you're going to be able to pick your problems up and move to somewhere else.

And that those problems don't follow you. They will, especially if they're in between your ears. For sure. But for things like, you know, we were talking yesterday about planning and stuff like that.

We know what the planning is like in the UK. It's a fucking nightmare. Yeah, it is. It's the same. But just because I don't know why, but it's just slow everything. It's not just planning though.

It's every agency, like you said, that connects into that state apparatus has dragged and subjectively enforced. You know, widespread rule that almost anybody could be guilty of selectively your find you got away with it.

All of this is, it's repellent. Yeah. That's going back to the woods and thinking, right, well, is this potentially a time to just put a bow around it, sell it to a fund? Who are the buyers of woodland, by the way?

It's not like some other person. It's a pot of dough. And they're just accumulating. That's me kind of saying I'm out of here. Like that is a kind of comment on the country and the region and the culture as a whole.

And I haven't done that yet. But I would say as I sit here now, it is something that maybe I just want to take off the board to use that phrase and just say that was a nice thing to do.

My dream would have been to buy a cottage near it and be closer to what I liked and just go harder on it and turn it into maybe a place where people could visit.

But that's just, it's just genuinely too difficult to realize, not because of the effort, not because of the risk to me, but because you are literally not allowed to have permission in a reasonable time to do it.

What was once probably never regulated is now so regulated. It's like fixing kids' bad behavior by not having kids in the school. Yeah. It's like Matilda that, uh, what's the bloody, um, the head of the school?

Yeah. It's just like, I've fixed this school, we're going to hang fly paper in the hallways and all the kids will get stuck to it and then the school will be perfect. That's what this regulatory mist does.

It just chills any ambition and it reaches nearly everybody. It's a bit like a pesticide where they're like, oh, we're going to clean all this up, get rid of all the pests, but what they've actually done is just killed any growth.

Yeah. There's no organic matter, any ideas, anyone who wants to do anything that's exciting or new, dead, unless you're a huge corporation and you've got a fucking team of lawyers and compliance guys and you grease a few palms.

And if not, play their game, play their game, but close on impossible to play their game if, you know, normal pleb. And so then it's like, yeah, you don't want to give up, but can you find a jurisdiction like we're talking about?

Probably not the perfect place, whatever nowhere is, but somewhere like El Salvador where you're saying, there's no planning laws. No, there's no planning laws. Apparently. Someone check that and tell us that we're wrong.

But it's not out of any principle. It's just that they've been wrecked for so long. They drop the difficulty adjustment down of fiat mining to a point where people are then happy and prepared to come in and throw it.

The difference is you buy some land in the UK. If it doesn't have planning on it, it's not really worth a lot. If it gets planning on it, it's worth an absolute fucking fortune. Getting the planning is a fucking night there.

Getting the builders is a fucking night there. Getting anything done is a fucking nightmare. And even when you've built it, you're going to have some cunt come round and go, oh, you haven't got disability access on this side of the house?

Well, I'm not disabled. Yeah, but the person who you might sell it to might possibly be disabled and therefore you can't build it this way. It doesn't come. I'm not fucking selling it. This is my family home.

Go away. Yeah. It would be nice to just go somewhere like that and just say, I want to build a good house. Why do you want to build a good house? Because it's my fucking house, so I want to be good.

It's in my interest for this to work. Yeah. Yeah, I don't need your help. I don't need your help. I don't want your help. I don't want to pay you for your help, but I don't want. No, that's right.

And so let me just go there. I'll buy the land. Build a fucking house. Build a business. If you want forestry or you're talking about coffee maybe or whatever it is. Yeah. And just fucking do it well.

And then you have your little community around you. You look after them. And to me, that's like, that's what life is supposed to be about. Yeah. All this swimming through treacle with fucking sharks, tiring.

Energy should be going into the other board. The one where there are rules, there aren't rules, there are fucking highly capable, really switched on, and some very honest, good people. There are some cunts as well, and there's more and more cunts coming.

Have you spent enough time in this space? You just see enough stuff to build. There's a select group of people where I go, you're fucking good. And they'd be good anywhere. That's my point is that they'd be good anywhere.

And then going back to this quitting, it's not just, you know, it draws on your energy. The thing about it is, this is really important, is that it doesn't just reduce your energy and your wealth and reduce your options and disappear into the river, or float up into the air, like waste gas, or it doesn't.

It goes directly into the machine. The machine that you're both at odds with, but also living under. And so the harder you try, the harder you push back against it. The more you say, fuck this, I'm going to make it work, I will have this done.

You're feeding it. You're feeding it. Your lifeblood as it's oil. Yes, and so then, it's not quitting, is it? Because if you remove yourself from that toxic relationship, and so I am done.

I tried, I went more than halfway on all of this stuff. I've bent over backwards, but that's what they want you to do. When they see you bending and making concessions and going along, it doesn't prevent them, it gives them encouragement to continue, and it never stops.

You give up one thing, they take it, they never give it back, and there is a point at which people just start to lie down. And that, from a previous pod that you did, now who was it with talking about?

Oh, it was a guy from Foundation. The guy who just met? No, there's a guy. Was it another guy? I've not met him, other guy. No, but he was talking about that and the obsidian. Oh, we've got to cover both, but the quitting.

Quiet quitting. Laying flat. Laying flat was the vanilla one. The latest in China is let it rot. Right. That's a bit, that's a bit of a, that's going up the level. I like that. Let it rot.

It's not my problem. But the problem is that those people aren't living productive lives. They're staying in their bedrooms, they're not going out. They're on their screens and you've given them your life.

Actually, if it came down to it, that might be better than building and producing value that's confiscated or in some other way. Well, at least you're not making your enemies, ideological enemies stronger, but it's not quitting.

If it has the knock on effect by removing yourself from the argument, by removing yourself from the conflict and the validity you give it, it becomes an act in itself. If there is a kind of place to move to, if you have to move anyway, then perhaps somewhere that's had war in living memory, they've learned how bad it can get.

They were there. They remember how it felt. They remember what it was like when gangs were on the territory and they're just so happy that they can walk on the streets now. It might be a better place to start again and maybe more appreciative of people that just want to crack on.

That's all it is. It's just the cheapest to deliver territory to do something that you feel full after doing. Devs have got the best. They can open their MacBook anywhere and that's great, but their heads might be on the laptop.

Their feet are in some form of tax farm where they still have to participate and do the struggle sessions and all the rest of it. It's probably just that they can break away and escape a little bit easier.

Again, credit to them and love what they do. It's just not what I'm temperamentally suited to or interested in doing. And we can't all be devs. No. So I'm doing that part. Not a dev. Yeah.

But I might still hang back. I just don't know. There are some very simple changes that going somewhere like that makes for one. It actually genuinely makes a big difference to your life having some sunshine.

Yeah. Certainly for me, it does. No, it's a thing, mate. I lived in Thailand for a few years and the sunset sunrise all year is within an hour. Yeah. You don't get this nine o'clock sunrise, four o'clock sunset.

There is a value. I mean, physical benefit of sun is something that Bitcoin is don't need to be lectured on. Your mental outlook when it's sunny. Yeah. Being able to grow produce. Just that feeling is very nice.

Culture. Apparently everyone's very happy. I think that's remarkable. I just don't. I'm going to go next month and visit and apparently everyone's just nice to meet you. And are you thinking of coming here and you're coming to us?

This is a country that's lost so many young people to America to do their menial job. It's been robbed. That's a bit like a, it's like the attitude a parent might take if their kids like just hates them so much.

They just abandon them and then they come back and they're just so relieved to have a relationship again. Whereas I think we're on the other side of the slope in the West. If we're going to make a broader observation is that it isn't necessarily friendly.

There's people dotted about who are lovely and volunteer their thoughts. If they know that you're a friendly person, they can shoot the breeze with. But most people are either in their own world or maybe hard to approach.

And that's something I try to do as well is if you see something you like, just spend a bit of time around it. Even in a fiat mine, even on a tax farm. You can still see living people and little examples that, you know, things are okay.

It's just that everyone's under a bit of a weight. So that's the individual, but the system and that world. There's a point at which it stalls. There's a point at which there's just not enough living tissue and too much mass, a tumour, that breathes and needs oxygen fed to it using the existing system, like a circulatory system.

It still draws on the food that the body takes in. It still draws on the lungs, but it doesn't do anything for the whole and that's grown. We're at a point with it. I think maybe it's just me rationalizing my own situation, but it's sputtering.

There's just not enough people who are prepared to work under these conditions to support all the others that have decided that they can't or won't. People who need jobs to do the shit that is the treacle.

Yes. And they need to feed the sharks. Yes. There's a Canadian roof that's got a video out. It might have already been lost in the mix now, but he's basically looking into his camera and going, "Look at this.

I'm in Canada. These guys locked me in my house. This is a liberal family. They've got two BMWs on the drive. Yeah. I've put 15 grand on their bill. Fuck 'em. What are they going to do? They can't go to anyone else.

There's no other roofers around now. Fuck 'em. That's what you get. That might feel good. I totally get the vibe of it, but it just goes to show you that of the people that are left still swinging, there's a resentment that's built up and there's this girl feeling that it's like you're on the other side of some zero-sum game.

More for me is less for you and vice versa. It's all come into it. It just feels like it's all real moment where it might be time to sort of switch, go somewhere else. And to normal people that you speak to, I feel it in my life. I feel like no matter how many hours I put in.

Yeah. And I put in hours. You put in more hours than I've ever heard of as a direct story. As a human being. Yeah. It's not good, mate, by the way. It's not good. And I don't actually really move forward.

You're swimming just to stand still. Yeah. I get the bills paid, people get fed, just, you know, we're all right, but we're not ordering a takeaway. We're going fucking liddle. We're buying basics. I can cook luckily, so we eat well.

Yeah. And we get by, but I can't adjust the amount of hours I put in. I can't adjust the amount of effort I put in. And I'm getting crushed on all sides. And so I feel like exactly what you said is...

Let it rock. Let it rock. Yeah. Like that. Because at the end of the day, like, I don't have any time to myself. What am I doing? Yeah, I'm passing by. I know. I'm doing it all short. And so I'm thinking, well, I'm not shy of hard work.

No. I can build what I can do things. I think I'm in the wrong environment. And it just reminds me when I spend time with people like you and Q and everyone else that's been out here, I go, why aren't I just around these cunts more? And why aren't we just going?

I'm just fucking built up. We are in the Bitcoin world. And yeah, we are building stuff, all of us in our own different disciplines. Yeah. But I actually mean, like, I really feel like I want to be in a place where just fucking leave me alone.

Let me do my shit and I have people around me where we look after each other. And this is this Meastadel idea. Yeah. Which, you know, we've been talking about it for a long time. And it's a great group.

And we've got people who look after each other, but we're all distributed all around the world. And I just feel it would be really fucking nice to have a place where you can be left alone and build.

Imagine if we had a place somewhere like El Salvador. You've got a plot. I've got a plot. 20 others that we know. Yeah. Well, I've got a plot. We're all close. Anyone wants to come and cause trouble with us.

It's everyone. We're all on there. Yeah. I wouldn't try it. Mr. Untapped Growth hats off to him. He saw it from way further back. Yeah. And I've not caught up with him for an awful long time.

No, I haven't. I think he just got his head down and got on with it. But that's, so in America, that does, you can kind of win a town over. Yeah. And because of the way their law enforcement works, there is a local layer.

If you know the sheriff, I suppose, or they serve a small community that lets its feelings be shown more than you could with a sort of national police. You can get these little pockets. I'm not in one. You're not in one. A lot of people that work in Bitcoin aren't.

When you bring in the family in, then the extended family who support young families, and it's a huge amount of collateral. And I think a lot of people are just making it work at the moment, and that's fine. That's fine.

The ground's rushing up a little bit for me. But I don't think there's a fix by just moving. No, no, that's not. The pendulum will swing in El Salvador, even if it's a massive success, they'll come in five years time ago.

I know you've been doing this for no planning, but we need a little bit now. And it'll creep again. Just fill out this form. It's not a big problem. Just sign a form. There's no fee. It's just so da-da-da-da.

And you go, well, I'm not moving just for that. And it starts to creep again. And it's not to be sad about. It's just to be cogent off, because just because Bitcoin's over here doesn't mean the physical world is going to stop being physical.

If you have the power to destroy somebody, and you just want 5% of what they do, that model is going to work for as long as things that are physical being built are worth kicking over. And someone's going to pay to defend them.

But you are paying the Dane Gelt. Have you heard this Dane Gelt? Yeah. You pay the Dane Gelt, but you don't get rid of the Dane. When the Vikings raided the British Isles, all along that east coast, all the monasteries with the beer and the honey.

They said, "If we just give you loads of gold, please go away." And they're like, "Yeah, okay, we'll go away." They went away, bought more boats, told a load of stories about this amazing island that just produces just going knock on the door and they give you the stuff.

And they came back even stronger. And so, as long as there's a place where you can limit that inside of your lifetime, that might be enough. It's just the extremes of what caused me to want to move from one to the other.

We're getting to a point where it's really not good. And I don't want that to be the end of the thought because that's just a negative assessment of something that's not working. It's the positive side is we have still got some agency.

Yeah. There are options around. And even for the people that don't decide to move physically, the ones that do will leave the weight on fewer and fewer shoulders. But the will come a point when they get to the end of what threatening somebody else's livelihood yields.

There's a point pass which there's a diminished return even in that grift. Yeah. Eventually the world will turn. I just don't know whether I want to be in the middle of it when it does. That's why Atlas Shrugged is such an important book to read if you've not already is because it deals with the exact problem.

It's focuses on it's a dystopia about the world. It looks at things at the level of how the world turns, not the individual. It looks at what happens when fewer and fewer contributors are carrying more and more consumers to a point through the book that we're going to get into.

And yeah, it's funny that we find ourselves in the exact same spot as the book discusses 75 years after it was written. And maybe there's some lessons to take from the book from me dipping into it now.

Your six chapters in? Yeah, six or seven chapters in. It's very good. You've talked to me about it for a long time. Sorry. And it's been on my list for a long time, but it's a fucking huge book.

Which is, you know, I've got it on audiobook and it's like 70 hours or something like that. And I was like, "Ooh, okay." It's got parallels to Bitcoin, you know, having problems with time, mate.

I feel like you're working a bit too hard. Try this fucking massive book. You're like, "That won't fix it." Yeah. Same with Bitcoin. It's like you're having problems with your savings. Try this volatile thing that you've got to learn a lot before.

You've got to spend a thousand hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got the same, it's got that same buy-in. And I think now I've got a little bit of time. It's not something that I feel I'd be laughing on because it is something that I read a lot.

And it is relevant now. And I know the time buy-in. And I know that the effort it takes to just follow the process of the author's thinking. What we're going to do is perhaps do one to five chapters at a stretch.

And then a pod episode that just reviews that in its place to accompany certain sections of the book. And then as people do decide to pick it up and read it, they can use that podcast as a way to perhaps break down what they saw in it.

It's a complex book. And as I've read it more and more. How are we trying to read it now? Well, I got given it in 2011 and read it in the September of that year. And then because September the second in the book is a kind of Easter egg date.

Having read it once and being kind of blown away by read it again every year, every single year, it's September. And I'll go over it again. And having done that a couple of times just to enjoy it as I did the first time.

It changes what you read in it and what lessons you get from it. And you learn a bit more and the parts you're familiar with. You pay less attention to and you pick up extra scenes and extra exchanges.

So I've read it to answer the original question. I think it will have been maybe 12, 12 reads of it. But passively, you know, don't get me wrong. I'm not, it would be headphones while we're milling or on a long drive.

But I can understand why someone might pick it up, get 10 chapters in and hit a bit of a plateau with it and put it down and get distracted. And I think having something that accompanies it, especially an analysis of the parts from a Bitcoin perspective and also from the current times,

I think that could be something that means that when you do break away and get busy, just put a bookmark in it. You've got the pod series to accompany you through it.

And then the other thing going back to obsidian is to maybe produce notes that you can download in an open format and have on your laptop and go along with it and get the most out of your time.

You know, don't feel like you're driving and you concentrate, you miss a bit, you skim through an important part and feel like you might not be getting the best out of the book.

And to have these other things that maybe condense it and point things out that you might not have seen if you were just reading it first time on your own like I did. That's something that I wouldn't have any lack of confidence to do that now.

And you're reading it for the first time, which has got a value of its own. And I think between the two of us, that could be a nice idea. It's a perfect time for anybody to read it now because it's never been more relevant.

It's like Bitcoin though. When I read it in 2011, there was never a more relevant time to read it in my head then. It was the same things. Looking back then, just after the financial crisis, that's when the book got a huge raise in sales.

And that's kind of similar to Bitcoin is that that's true, but it's true. It's always been true. It's never more relevant to get hold of Bitcoin now than ever. I suppose Atlas is sort of being carried along on the same curve.

I know what you mean, but it feels like it's crucial time. Like you said, the ground is rushing up. It's just that point, going back to the lion flat, letting it rot, kind of movement. That's just one theme that's in the book, but is also playing out in real life.

Where else do you see it? I see it everywhere. Doctors retire in early or move into private practices. People move into three days a week, not bothering, sitting back. Let it rot. Just smash a cracked part. It's already cracked.

And this kind of like sitting, giving up. My dog does it when I'm brushing him. He's so pissed off with getting brushed. And there's nothing he can do about it. He can't run off. He's got to stand there. He literally just lies down.

That's his protest. Maybe a bad analogy. But I think a lot of people are just taking their foot off the gas. They're just at that point where the gradients going up too much for them. And the weight on their back is just not getting any lighter.

And they just take the bag off and sit on it. That is maybe arguably the key. Well, the working title, when she was writing Atlas Shrugged, was the strike. Right. Kind of gives you an idea of what she was trying to write before she wrote it.

It's sort of remove yourself. She calls it the sanction of the victim. Don't give the people that are abusing your time and your freedoms. The value of what you love because you're making it doubly worse.

And it's an unsustainable situation. And as people realise that and withdraw, the people that are left fight harder and harder until they eventually see the light as well. So I don't like the pre-announcements.

It's relevant to the conversation. It's not done yet, though. No. I've got notes and things. It's just a case of turning them into something readable. For someone else, as opposed to just my little like madman scrollings.

It's not a bad thing to say to people now listening if you can start reading. Because a lot of the things that we're discussing here are highlighted in that book. And you get insights that are pretty useful.

The big takeaway that I had from our last conversation was you said. We've had for the last couple of decades redistribution of wealth. Now we're entering the era of redistribution of health.

And you have boomers forcing experimental jabs into the arms of healthy young people. Who are the same healthy young people who they wish to sustain them. And I saw that play out. It's happened.

We have to fucking go into it. But it was hell on earth. It was disgusting. We saw how depraved human beings are and how scared they can get. What that makes me think and you kind of see parts of this in the book is like, with this next phase, we know, because we've just seen it,

the majority of people will nod along and not just nod along. They will fucking enforce whatever rules come, whatever theft of personal property and rights and speech and everything else is coming.

And it is coming. That crowd of zombies you call them. Anyone hasn't watched Shaun of the Dead. It's worth watching. Because that is what the fucking population are like most of them. The zombie meme is a powerful and scary one. It's mean, but it's just scarily true.

A shout out to a huddle not if he listens. One of the first Bitcoiners I spoke to on a bloody weird chat server before Twitter spaces. I was one of the first people. I was the first voice I heard it.

Someone sent me the link and said, just download this app and go on this room. And you can speak to people. It's like, right, okay. And me and him got talking and one of the things that came out was this idea of zombies.

And it's like, they're living. They're moving. But with no agency and kind of a slave to their instinct. And there's a load of other parallels. Delete your flesh. We'll eat brains. That's what zombies do.

And I mean, if you take that as an analogy for drawing on the intelligence of someone else without requiring it yourself, you start to shape up into quite a sticky idea that people can get bitten and joined that you lose one person of your living tribe and they become of the ranks of the people that are then now attacking you.

Yes. Now, maybe not physically. Yeah. But if you're on the sort of mass man side of political arguments all the time, that's when it starts to look like this sort of zombie. Yeah. The zombie meme is, I think, criminally underrated.

The point is you don't want to be around the zombies. Now, keep them away. And their ranks are growing. But they're slow and they're stupid. Yes. And if you're smart and brave, you can avoid it.

Yeah. And we're going back to this, where do you put yourself? Where do you put yourself? Because if you're in the middle of them, they'll rip you to pieces eventually. Yeah. Or you'll lock yourself away somewhere where you can't leave and you're hidden.

Yeah, you're in an abandoned mall. Yeah, and you can't ever go anywhere. And you don't want that. Well, that's like digging a hole and climbing in it and burying yourself and just like with a little straw.

Yeah, I'm surviving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. At what cost? Well, you just, it's a type of sort of slow death. Better to be somewhere with a bit more breathing room that you can do something modest but productive and attract other people to work in and around you.

So anyway, we've kicked the arse at a relocation. Yeah, I think so. I guess that is, you know, last time you can't eat sats. Well, no, and Bitcoin isn't going to save you. It's just a tool.

If you're getting hungry, you can't eat them. Also, if you're getting fucking eaten by zombies. They're not going to save you. Sats won't save you. They're somewhere else. They're off the board.

Yeah. They won't get eaten. They're going to stay there. Yeah. When you're completely protected, it's a huge win. It's a huge thing on our side. It will pry open denied areas over time. But it's a physical world.

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That's just because it's hard to do something that changes the game in a material way, in a way that Sam and I have done. Absolutely perfectly. Where he works at Foundation, it's about picking your poison and making trade-offs where you have to make a trade-off between one thing or another.

Often things like usability and security. How many projects do you see sort of spring up under the Bitcoin conference umbrella, with money up front and the podcasters get a nice big up front, no strings, just read that off the script, Ron Burgundy, that you've got this cloud mining thing and you've already made half your investment buy.

That's great. It's a great model for the podcaster. They get to fly business class and hire a load of staff and maybe a higher standard of living, but the problem is that it shifts risk from where it's meant to be, which is in the equity in the cap table of a bad business idea, and it puts it directly into the ear of your listener.

And now someone who goes on to the top ranked podcast in Bitcoin, searching for the word Bitcoin, looking for the Bitcoin community, are now long a product with a bomb under the carpet that blows up.

Rugbyful technology. Yeah, and in all these different ways, you know, we've had some crackers since we last spoke. The compass mining one was a stinker. World class. Just insane for me because I'm not a smart guy.

I don't have to look into the financials of compass mining. You know from the pitch, it's a short volatility product. It's sensitive negatively to volatility. Russia just took all the minus.

You didn't need to know what the intentions of the Russian government were to know this product contains risk that's not being made clear at the point of the sponsorship or on the marketing material and the end user got repped.

And now listening to a podcast with adverts with unscrupulous advertisers is not free. A podcast should cost the time it takes to listen to it. No more if there's a sponsorship that makes induces a user who's new and requires your endorsement to feel confident to buy the product.

There's a fidelity bond to hedge what that represents, which is, hey, 10,000 listeners per episode, 100,000 listeners per episode. I've just put some money with BlockFi. I'm getting 6% on my stack forever.

Put your Bitcoin to work with BlockFi. That's another risk product where the user got repped. And then in the aftermath of the blowups, you find out the podcaster pulled their wealth before the balloon went up.

What they probably put into it is probably the same as what they build for the sponsorship. The listeners still long, the shit. And then when it blows up, just, oh, well, mistakes for me, I feel bad about that.

Well, not bad enough to not fly business three times a month or to spend the money on things for yourself. Because if you've got a successful podcast at the moment on an ad rev model, the trick seems to be to go and buy other projects and be generous when some sad story crops up on Twitter.

You pay a bit of guilt tax. I'll send them 500 quid because I'm very big bananas. But you've taken it out of maybe 1% of your listeners. We're long, a bit of BlockFi and lost material percentages of their wealth, often all their wealth.

And all they were trying to do was take their savings out of a bond and put it into something even safer. They found themselves in something even riskier than a bond. If you wanted 6%, go buy guilt.

You know, that's perfectly fine. If you need rent, buy a house and rent it. And all the risk that comes with it up front knowing what it is. But if I'm listening to an ad rev podcast and it says, and this is the other thing, they pull in guests that are maybe less responsible, but they're kind of giving it.

When you've got a good reputation and you go on a podcast that's got shit sponsors, your ability to vest into that product. And a new listener says, here's where all the Bitcoiners are. These are the guys that never ruin everyone else.

These are the principal people. So that shitty exchange that they've got sponsored. That's the one I'll use. Oh, shit. That's the one that give all its data to HMRC before it needed to, or to the IRS.

Yeah. Risk shifting on the podcast layer has been a painful thing to follow. Especially because I think you don't have to be technical or particularly intelligent to know what's being sponsored is an upfront bribe.

Read mindlessly off the cue card that you've agreed to read. Pull all of these listeners in who are trusting you. And then when it blows up, mistakes were made. But you can't have your money back and, oh, well, that was a sponsorship deal.

So we don't have any direct link. You can't sue us. You have to be a creditor. Even when that money could have gone either back, even if someone would have said in all this, listen, we've been sponsored for a while by this shit hole company.

It blew up, but we're a successful pod. If you've used our ref link or you've, in some other way, gone through our gate, we're going to take the sponsorship money plus a loss for ourselves, register here.

You won't be made whole, but listen, when you hurt, we hurt, you haven't seen that. They're all at these conferences, grin fucking everybody, making out like it's okay. And really you've just passed the load of risk from the cap table of some shitty VC mess and just put it right in the pockets of people.

And the people who are listening and actually using something like BlockFi are usually the people who really fucking need it. Yeah. Like you said, they're listening. Oh, well, all these people are on it.

You know, they must know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Okay. I trust these people. It's fucking disgusting. It's all it is. It's unethical. And it just seems to go by. We're back stuck again in this, like, point in fingers.

But by counter example on the positive side, ad rev is a bad idea. So where people have tried or are adapting to value for value, even if that's not something that completely funds them or they're doing it as a labor of love for a while.

I have no hard feelings towards that. Even if they made mistakes early on, I think of all the podcasters that kind of got to the edge of it and pulled up Matt's, Adele and Marty, Ben, Marcus.

Marcus. They kind of got drawn in fine, you know, but then the reaction was what I took heart from. Yeah. The candidate and Matt's reaction was to, I don't know the details, but perhaps the refactor, how he does his content.

Yeah. You'll still do a bit of 50/50 with no sponsors or sponsors that are safer. And I'm doing my own over here. It's value for value only. Ride or die. We'll go by tips and we'll be underwater for longer.

But when that catches on, we won't have to answer to people that we don't agree with. We won't have to make compromises. And we won't have to use the listener as grist for the mill where you're spending for your own life.

What listener made a mistake on investing? You sit down. Yeah. It's warm in it. It is now. It's a tough one with all the sponsorship stuff. It's like, I feel like a cunt because I'm not running a podcast.

You are. Well, I am a cunt and I'm running a podcast. No, I'm running a podcast. Well, you are a cunt. I mean, we all know it. Yeah. Don't trust verify. You've verified. Can confirm. Yeah.

An absolute wapper. But it is tough, it's like. It's the Faustian bargain. Yeah. Just come in. I've got the speedy route through a business. Just read this out. We'll give you Wrath of God money.

And listen, if it all goes tits, there are only reasons. Sorry. One's born every minute. It works in the short run. And I'm just pointing it out. But I am also very aware that I'm criticizing something that I've got no answer to.

Yeah. I'm just active on the value for value. That's my answer at the moment. It's just a tip. Take what a podcast episode would cost me, which is like $5, you know, like an iTunes level.

$3 to hear a Lady Gaga song sounds like $4 into a pod that I've really just enjoyed. It's fine by me. Yeah. I want to incentivize what I'm trying to see. The other answer is to do more tip driven model and rely on people to tip.

Yeah. I'm somewhere in the middle where I'm like, there are sponsors. Like I've turned down sponsors where I'd be a lot more comfortable in life. Yeah. And I wouldn't work two jobs. Yeah.

And I'd get a lot more content out. Yes. And the quality of the content would be better as well. Yeah. So it's a big trade off, but I've not taken those ones because there is obvious risk.

Yeah. That I'd rather look after the people who listen to the pod and not fuck them over and build that community over time. And you know, I've been doing it for three, four years now, like a long time and I plan to do it for another 10 or however long you're going to do this, it's going to work.

You're going to go big, I think. But the thing is that saying no sponsors, you can't have any sponsor, I don't think is right. Someone like foundation, who's a sponsor, nothing is riskless.

No, it's not. Nothing. No. But I put it this way. I use them to secure my set. Yeah. Me too. Right. And you too. And love it by the way. I trust Q&A like a brother. Yeah. The rest of the team who I know less well, but I've spent time with, I think, are fucking amazing.

Yeah. And he works with them. And he works. That's how I know them. Yeah. He's put in his full time into them. Exactly. So that's enough for me. When I read an advert, I'm not saying that because they're paying me.

I'm saying that because I genuinely would say that to anyone whether I'm paid or not. Then paying me is literally, the conversation literally is like, I was like, I fucking love your product.

Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. I'll show it anyway. Yeah. But can you help support the show? Yeah. And they're going, we like your show. Yeah. You say how it is. So yeah, we're going to throw some stats at you.

Uh huh. And that's value for value. Yes. Right. That's bad about taking that sponsorship money because I genuinely don't feel that I'm putting risk on anyone. And if anyone else gets rubbed, if that suddenly fucking gets swept or some shit happens, I'm fucked.

Well, the podcast becomes, it just gets diluted by the amount people got hit. Yeah. Well, I'm fucked personally. Well, you are. Yeah. Like you've got skin in the game is kind of almost skin in the game.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not. Yeah. So I'd probably backped a little bit on the ad rev model in that it obviously has huge advantages to people who are trying to produce content. Just the consistency.

Yeah. You don't know when which pod's going to hit and get loads of tips on. You never know when that mega whale tip on fountains going to come in and the ad-read model gives you a way to plan ahead, maybe invest in higher quality production or whatever the thing is that grows a podcast out.

But then, then all I would say is to choose your sponsors wisely, foundation are a good example of ones that you'd, you'd wait out a little bit further for because of how you know them personally and because you're personally invested.

But there's other sponsors that don't have a risk shifting model. Any hardware. Any hardware. The one that keeps bringing to mind, I don't know whether they're a sponsor I've been, but the crypto cloaks model is go on the website, buy the thing, we print it out and we post it to you.

A node box, a shroud on a miner, there's very little that can hurt a listener in that product. So they might want to still get to reach your listeners. They still might need help spreading the message.

But as an intermediary, you're not passing risk on in that product on far less risk than something that's a financial product with a huge tail custody or some other kind of huge hollowed out business model that collapses who by the way are always the ones that have money up front.

Oh and they pay well. They pay so well that people literally just sell their ethics. Yes. Actually, I try to resist, but my ethics are for sale. At this price point, I'll make my apologies online and I'll rationalize it however I can and it'll be okay anyway because even if lots of people hate me, I can be the victim.

I can be the guy online that gets trolled, poor me, but I'm still rich from the people that I'm trying to give a product to that's meant to be valuable. Wiping away my tears with hundred dollar bills.

Yeah. Yeah. It is almost that egregious, but the argument maybe against it is that it seems to be working, maybe we're not looking at it on a long enough time horizon. And I think everyone remembers who you lost money to in life.

Yes. And how? Another maybe slight problem with the podcast model is there might be more needed from the guests to be a bit more like no con, you a chill nonsense through a bear market that blew up and I can have my opinion head on anywhere I want.

I can record and post it on my own name or I can go on a podcast that hasn't wrecked people and I think when you go on to sell a book or to push your clout around on one of these compromised pods, I think that doesn't help because I catch myself going on to those platforms

just to listen to what that person says and I kind of screen out what the other person says or just try to block it out. But I see you, you know, that's all I'm saying and I don't like it one bit.

I notice it when someone has a certain opinion and way of living life and then they go on and have conversations with someone who is completely opposing everything they stand for. Yeah. And it's like, you kind of guilty here, mate.

And there's loads of other tactics that you've not done. I don't know whether it's an actual thing, but I think of it like outrage farming. So you've got a nice followership, drop something controversial in the water, stare at things up, drop a bit of chum in the water, get all the autists that can't control their criticisms

like me and they ship post them to my thread. Yeah. So let's take this onto my paid platform and this one sponsored by fucking Ledger, whatever. That's clever. And that's a good businessman.

I respect it as a Machiavellian tactic, but I don't respect it. I just don't respect it overall, I suppose it's the right way to end the thought. It's good business, but I'm just not fucking, it's not worth it.

I'm just not injured. I'm just like, I deal with in fear at land, he cunts and rules and bullshit all day every day. When I speak, when I do a conversation like this, I'm doing it because I want to have the conversation and that's why I don't have, I don't have a lot of the guests that would

get necessarily the big numbers other than you, mate. But I don't have those guests because I'm like, I'm actually not interested and I don't respect you. You know? Yeah. I'm not. And your listeners don't.

Yeah. There's a reason they're finding you. And I don't listen to the big ones anymore. It's just same. I just don't listen to them anymore. And then a lot of the time, it's like, how many times have you been on 16 times?

So what we're going to talk about, ticked up next block. How did you get into Bitcoin? Bitcoin fixes this. Let's do a little bit on left wing politics that no one cares about. All right. This one's sponsored by fucking Gemini onto the next show.

Where are we next? Oh, we're in Buenos Aires. All right. All right. And I am split because I am just honking at someone who's a model that helps them feed their kids and stuff. I'm only saying I notice where compromises are made and the damage that's done in the listenership is real.

We've all been wrecked and this toxicity has come from when you've been burned. Yeah. And got a little bit bitter and then you've seen it start again under a different name, under a different team, same bullshit, risk shifting, psychopath, leave others worse off than you found them.

And when it creeps in under an umbrella that you associate yourself to, it's an alien. And there's something in it that is repellent. It would be, for me, less verbal criticism and more tips and support and building of the counter example and just holding it out is the right way to go.

It would be the change you want to change. Yeah. But like a lot of sayings that you hear 150 times at some point in your life, you'd return to them. And at some point you have to internalize it.

But you're, I think, in a situation where you're still doing the hard yards. It's like a marathon where you've just been overtaken by the wumble and the iron man because he's doing a sprint.

And by the time you get to the fifth mile or the tenth mile, they're on the side with heat exhaustion and you're just doing your race, you just need to keep doing it. I'm encouraged by what you've achieved, been able to maintain this at the level that you've had.

When the value for value side of things has grown, you've grown with it and you frequently find yourself at the top of the rankings by sat, you're listening to ships just more loyal. 100%.

There's an active participation under the episodes. There's also telegram groups, little sub clicks, the miners, the mesh to delves. And it's active. And it's just about having the patience to see that through until it gets a critical mass where it starts to pay you more.

Take the ad rev on the products that you want to be exposed to and never take the dengueld. It always hurts the wrong people. The difference is, I lose out on the sats and have done from the start.

But what I have gained is, like I've seen here, when I come and I meet other Bitcoiners. You get a handshake. The ones that I respect, I get a handshake, we have a drink, we have a good conversation.

It's a genuine friendship. It's a genuine respect. It's like, who are you? Max. Max. Max bit by bit. Max bit by bit. I don't know, it's funny, it's just funny. It's fucking weird for me, but it's really nice.

If someone sits and they go, mate, I really respect that you say how it is or like, I get a little thing like that. I'm like, okay, I can't eat that respect. It doesn't feed the family, but it fucking lights the fire and it makes me feel good and it makes me feel like, okay, it's all worth it.

And so I've already won. Yes. I've already won. Yes. That's come in great. It follows, I don't think you've had to make a choice between the two. It's just a longer adoption curve doing it this way, mate.

Just keep going. I'm already trolling the busking level tips. Like, if someone comes in with like a 200 sat, it's nice and it's like, you forgot a zero, mate. I'm so mad. I know that it's horrible, but I think, come on, lad, like up to a point, come on, like, what's it really worth to you, like, I can't do it all myself.

I mean, I've tried as much as I can to help and support, but I don't have the resources to fund it. And it's probably the wrong thing to do even if I could. And if you do get value genuine, like an idea or a period of inspiration or some encouragement, what was it worth to you in your life?

I mean, if you're in the West and you're paying two pound for an egg, give much half a fucking egg. You know what I mean? Like, we got our proportions mixed up and sat sometimes. And then the other problem is it flips, take it to it's extreme.

It goes to begging and charity, like, come on, like, it's not, it's not that either. But if you don't want to listen to bullshit in the middle of a good conversation that could get you wrecked, you've got to get on the zaps and get on the, get on, you need to get on to Noster.

That would be a good thing to talk about. Should we talk Noster while we walk? Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. I'm good, mate. This is the brilliant thing about these. Well, come on. Let's shout him out.

Let's shout him out. If you grab it, you fucking legend, I said that I'm going out to Amsterdam. I'm not going to embarrass you saying this, you can cut this if you want, but there's a few people who have helped me here.

I would not be here without the man standing next to me. Where's he? I would not be here. I could not come out and, mate, I appreciate it more than you know. Ben just said, come on. You're coming with me.

I'm sorting you out. I've booked it. It's my round. It's my round. Just fucking come. Mate, I haven't sent you for two fucking years. Coming out to this thing, it was a way for me to give something that would have been very expensive to do under your own steam relatively cheaply.

Yeah. That's all that is. The value you get from it is you meet all these people face to face. I massively appreciate it. No, you're fine. Then Q&A stepped up and said, right, I've sorted you a ticket.

You're done. Here it is. Yeah. Thank you very much. Q&A. Yeah. What we're recording on today, wireless, fucking sick, wireless microphones that clip on to our hoodies. We're walking around in the park with them.

Ungovernable misfit prototype hoodies. Yeah. Wearing the ungovernable misfit hoodies. They're fucking amazing. Like a couple I can't say. In the park. Matching hoodies. I don't care. Like, so Brother Rabbit has made that possible along with a load of instructions because I'm a retard of how to use them.

And I've turned up here, DC 786, straight in, banged us a couple of joints. Here you are, mate. Value for value. Very much so. Very much so. Well, a nice guy by the way. Yeah. And never had any interaction with him.

And that's the other advantage of the conferences is that you obviously meet the people you intend to meet. Yes. And you put a face to a name. And that's good enough on its own. Yes. But then also people that you might have missed, you get to meet in person and you put the jigsaw together.

And he's particularly someone I've enjoyed meeting. Oh, he's awesome. So this is my point of when I say the value I get from doing the podcast is not paid in sat. It's paid in. I was going through a shit time and my mates stood up and went, "We got you."

Fucking right. And that is really a special feeling. And that's, to me, that's like, okay, there's not a Bitcoin community, but there's some fucking brilliant people in Bitcoin. Yes. When they have to, they'll stand up and they'll look after you.

Yes. That is a big part where I go, right? This gives me hope. Well, even if you were cold-eyed looking at it as a business, you know, and a accountant's got a name for this. It's Goodwill.

It's the part of the business that once you've sold the assets and once you've sold the brand and once you've sold everything material, the remaining value is the Goodwill. And that's what I think you've got stored up in what you've done up to now, in your name, but also under what you do.

The Goodwill, it doesn't produce yield, you know, at times it's hard to monetize or at least enough just to make it sustainable, but it is still capital. Even to an accountant, even to an auditor, they would see Goodwill.

And that's how I see it. For me, I don't even feel it's not a generosity. I'm clearing off the benefit I've had from someone who put themselves forward and spent time in advance when they had little to spare.

And then I can tune in and pick something up that's either saved me money or makes me money or gives me encouragement. And that's what I see getting you out to these places because I want to see more of it and grow whatever that is out to displace what I don't like.

We grow out and dilute the bits of the pollutant. And instead of giving that attention, negative attention and more listeners and more focus is to go, you do what you do, I'll give you why I don't like it if I'm asked.

And if you change your mind, I'm over here, come what may. And that seems like a bit more of a Bitcoin thing than what they've been doing. Well, I appreciate it, mate, and everyone. No, I appreciate it.

Everyone who's helped out. And it's cool just to be around like a real little Bitcoin scene for a bit. Well, too fleeting. Yeah. But I just couldn't have you miss it. If you could have got out here, which you could, it just seemed such a little investment to get so much from it.

Yeah, it's been awesome. Yeah. All to the good. Have we got any other bits too? Oh, yeah, fucking loads, but I'm just conscious that you're the editor. Let's get a break, mate. We had a break in the last one.

Yeah. Let's go and get wet our beaks in there. Yeah. Where are we going to get a coffee from? We'll get a coffee at the hotel. And then we can undo these, do the clap. Yes. Put them away, probably.

We'll have a little wonder on. Yeah. Have a think about what's been missed out. Yeah. I think that was good, though. Yeah. I think we were more, er, not as high. We were not as high. We felt the same. We recorded yesterday.

It was pissing down. We both had a little, er, we spoke the wrong type of cigarette. Maybe a little bit less lucid. Yes. Even less lucid. Yeah. I don't know how much of that is going to be usable.

But I suppose if there's stuff in it that's not repetitive, there'll be some good stuff there. But yeah, a bit high and it was fucking pissing it. Yeah. It's just hard to be spotted. It's soaking drenched.

Right. Let's get a brew, mate. What do you got into a brew? Yeah. Hi. You all right? All right. Oh. Should we knock these off? Yeah. Should we do tea? Of course. Have a pot or a cup of...

A cup. A cup of tea, please. What do you want, mate? A black coffee, please. Yeah, of course. So, one black coffee for here to take away. Er, we're going to have it here. Yeah. And a tea.

Oh, what do you like? We have some great... I'll just, er, breakfast. English breakfast tea, please. With milk? Yes, please. Okay. Five years. I'll be up. Thank you. Thank you. There's a private thing up to us.

Yeah. Just sit on this one. Oh, there. Oh, there. I'm glad I got the pot. That's a bit. That's been annoying me. Let me bet. Let's work out. Two. We clap at the end, John. Yeah, it might as well.

That's a good point. We don't both need to clap. 80 IQ things to do. Okay. Okay. All right. One, two, three. Let's go.

We ain't got no swing except for the rain and the country thing. The ice is coming. The sun's dripping in. Meltdown expected. The week is perfect. The engine stopped on him. But I had no fear.

'Cause London is brown and high. Live by the river. To the invitation zone. Forget it brother. You could go in alone. London calling. To the zombies of death. Quit holding out. And draw another breath.

London calling. I don't want a shout. But while we were talking. I saw you not in hell. London calling. See we ain't got no hide. Except for that one. With the yellowy eyes. The ice is coming.

The sun's coming in. The engine stopped on him. The wheat is coated. A nuclear error. But I have no fear. 'Cause London is brown and high. Live by the river.

The ice is coming. The sun's coming in. The engine stopped on him. The wheat is coated. A nuclear error. But I have no fear. 'Cause London is brown and high. Live by the river.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

I got this. London calling. There's I was there too. And you know what they said. Well some of it was true. London calling. I got the top of the dial. And after all this. Won't you give me a smile.

London calls.

I never felt so much alike. I like, I like, I like.