TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #314: Group hang with CK, Pete Rizzo and Dylan LeClair

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Join Marty as he sits down with CK, Pete Rizzo and Dylan LeClair from Bitcoin Magazine to talk about Bitcoin 2022 and building BTC Media into what it is today. Follow CK on Twitter Follow Pete Rizzo... on Twitter Follow Dylan LeClair on Twitter Read more from all the guys at Bitcoin Magazine. Shoutout to our sponsors: Unchained Capital Braiins HodlHodl Bitcoin 2022 - use the code TFTC for 10% off Fountain Podcasts

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Starting point is 00:00:00 We're going to win, freaks. We're going to win. Situations, volatile, hairy, a bit scary, but we're going to win. Things are happening. Things are happening. It might be advantageous to produce stuff and not just dollars moving forward.
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Starting point is 00:08:58 you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. The cold winds of fall are blowing.
Starting point is 00:09:38 There's a bear market on our way, Pete Rizzo. Is this true? Well, I actually was talking with Dylan Leclerc here, and he was saying that the bull market is, quote, confirmed. He was on Dan Eld's timeline, the most popular space for Bitcoin news. did I say that I don't know
Starting point is 00:09:53 did you what did you say I think he said orange coin good yeah orange coin is good it is confirmed that is confirmed
Starting point is 00:10:00 you were getting very bearish yesterday it feels purely sentimental is this would you like me I'm putting you on the spot explain why you're bearish is this how the podcast starts
Starting point is 00:10:12 there's just no introduction no who am I you're introduced in the tweet yeah what do you want you've been on this podcast before Pete people know who you are
Starting point is 00:10:20 Rizzo, I work for Bitcoin Magazine, editor over at Kraken as well. Currently, yeah, promoting the idea that we're headed back towards leaner times for the Bitcoin space. Why do you think so? You know, a time to reap, a time to sow, you know. I actually have a real metric for this. So it's the signal to noise, right? In the bull market, everyone reacts to everything as if it's signal. And in the bear market, what you start noticing is that no amount of stimulus could possibly motivate us, right?
Starting point is 00:10:52 So, you know, the good news today is, you know, you sort of see people being very passive to it. So it's starting to feel like everything is noise, right? And so in the bear market, everything will be noise. And in the bull market, everything's signal. And of course, neither of those things are true, right? So they're both just the market's perception. And I think the market perception is trending towards viewing all sort of good news about Bitcoin as noisy, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:14 i think back to 2015 that summer it got pretty quiet uh on the internet on the internet in regards to bitcoin on twitter specifically yeah all we had was bitcoin uncensored and you know yelling at each other that's it well wasn't even yelling at each other like people were like actually sad they're like oh it's dying people thought it was dying the whole space in yeah summer 2015 and look where we are on the eve of the largest bitcoin conference ever to be held the largest conference ever that's what we call
Starting point is 00:11:46 a professional segue towards the topic for marketing purposes are you running this podcast now oh Peter take a back seat
Starting point is 00:11:54 god you asshole hey I was invited here I want to stick on that though you missed Bitcoin Uncensored I'm picking on Pete to start the podcast because
Starting point is 00:12:06 this is a strategic we'll allow it we enjoy watching Pete get picked on well you guys have an interesting dynamic uh pete was he was describing to me last night the three of you particularly what is your dynamic like what's it like inside inside the halls of bitcoin magazine i thought we were picking on pete well first you have to imagine bitcoin magazine it's just this
Starting point is 00:12:25 really lofty establishment right there's marble everywhere so when you walk in it's just you know it's complete marble and there's just many many employees right so just your desks upon desks uh money fine gold embroidery as you walk down the halls and we all have really large offices like much larger than this like yeah and with a lot more leather yeah a lot more leather uh dylan of course has the largest office where he commands uh the deep dive which is our subscription investor newsletter as of course dylan has his finger on the pulse of bitcoin right like whatever is happening on chain he knows exactly exactly right so like there's all this data coming out on the chain and dylan is just like parsing that in real time i walk in a block block he's just it's like
Starting point is 00:13:06 he's in the matrix right he's just he's in surrounded by numbers and you know he's he's really he's feeling that data here he gets the pulse of it orange coin good and then he translates that to us right so we can kind of go in uh it's like that movie minority report not to make like a really like terribly specific reference but yeah it's like that he's in a pool of water and then he tells us to be bullish or bearish right yeah the ball comes out yeah oh yeah and then the ck i wouldn't pretend to speak for you of course because you were you know you're sort of the the highest like you have to go up
Starting point is 00:13:38 many floors to like to get to CK yeah I'm NSF so complete complete shithole yeah
Starting point is 00:13:46 but moving up moving to Nashville soon so soon I'll be in the grandeur of the marble right are you excited to be in the thick of things
Starting point is 00:13:54 in Nashville BTC Media yeah no absolutely I've been I've been posturing very very loudly about
Starting point is 00:14:02 the rise of Nashville as a Bitcoin city so it is awaiting my arrival I'm very excited and we're going to make it big. Yeah, you're going to make it big. The Bitcoin capital of the world,
Starting point is 00:14:11 Austin, Texas. We look at Nashville, we say, hey, that's cute. Yeah, no, we're scouting right now. This is what's happening is we're looking around, figuring out enemy territory. No, no, no, no.
Starting point is 00:14:22 We're all in this together. Yeah. Jurisdictional competition is alive and well. Yes, it is. It's part of the thesis. Yeah, it is. It is.
Starting point is 00:14:30 We want competition. Austin, Nashville. We're all in this together. That's a red flag. no I mean like we're on the information war side of things
Starting point is 00:14:39 are we no I mean I just hearing that term over the last two years yeah yeah we're all in this together we are brothers in the information
Starting point is 00:14:46 information war what's bitcoin magazine's information war strategy I mean we're propagandists oh you all are right
Starting point is 00:14:54 you have to acknowledge that I think the official position is we're bitcoin's marketing department oh god no god no
Starting point is 00:15:02 no just uh leaning in on the plebs i think you know there's i think bitcoiners are the smartest people in the space by far uh so just trying to uh to create a great platform for uh for bitcoin plebs to kind of you know shed their alpha help the world out well let's talk about the history of bitcoin magazine recent years because you are an integral part of what many would say is reviving Bitcoin Magazine around the halving, right? So what...
Starting point is 00:15:34 CK and I recorded an episode that did not air. So we've already talked about this. A lot has happened since now and then. But I think we need to rehash what was happening around the last halving. Where was Bitcoin Magazine? What was your mentality to try and turn things around?
Starting point is 00:15:52 Yeah, so I know a lot of people who are listening to this were around back in the day. and Bitcoin 2020 was a thing that got wrecked by the pandemic. You know, this company, we go big on our conferences. We go all in. You know, David Bailey does not like to
Starting point is 00:16:10 play it safe when it comes to throwing a big party. So that was the case then. And that was the case now. And 2020, things did not turn out very well for conferences in March. So we had to postpone the conference. that put the team in a pretty tight position and uh the team got a lot smaller and there's actually a period of time where there's like five or six people who are just pretty much
Starting point is 00:16:36 working for no pay just like we got to keep the lights on make sure that bitcoin magazine looks alive and uh and get through it and uh a lot of people watch that having live stream which you did a live rhr on but uh the majority of that that like whole production happened when you know people weren't even getting paid so uh from there you know the that production was a success uh we were able to kind of like figure out the the the numbers kind of uh on the back end and uh you know hired back kind of like a a core group of people and you know just hustled right so uh it just kept it growing and then from there you know we really you know we had already pivoted to bitcoin only but we hadn't pivoted to like only hiring like savage bitcoiners we hadn't like
Starting point is 00:17:29 fully committed all the way we hadn't gone uh bitcoin as our treasury asset completely like we hadn't kind of fully committed but we kind of came out of that experience and we just we just went so hard like on you know being as hardcore bitcoiners we possibly could be uh and it it just worked man like we started recruiting great talent um brought on rizzo brought on matt to matt odell to advise you know discovered great talent like dylan and you know created a like a community of bitcoiners that like rallied around the brand so uh it's been a journey it's been a lot of fun and you know excited to talk about the details yeah i mean like what is in your guys view like how do you what do you how do you view the mission of bitcoin
Starting point is 00:18:16 magazine because when i think of tftc i'm like all right i started the newsletter particularly in like 2017 or a bunch of friends hit me up they're like is this true is this true i was like there's for me i was like all right i'm gonna start the bent because i'm gonna teach my friends and family about bitcoin and try to do it in a way that is approachable that's why the tone of the bent is is is what it is and i just thought there wasn't enough like quality information out there about bitcoin and like give it an actual like bitcoiners perspective on the world it's actually funny i remember getting your uh you applied over at coindesk i remember back back in the day yeah no we emailed back and forth that was like right before i started the bet
Starting point is 00:19:00 right yeah and i was like this guy's got such a strong voice i think i comment i think i commented on your your stuff i was like you know strong voice but you know let that freak flag fly you know yeah i go out there we can go back to my gmail account and we can find out to see what that looks like here let me pull it up actually i will find it right now it's gonna be like thanks for your submission but it's like we get hundreds of emails a day what uh for those of the for those of you who don't know before uh rizzo is at kraken and bitcoin magazine he was over at coindesk so the man has built media companies in this space i'm not sure no this isn't maybe it wasn't this email address maybe i was yeah it wasn't this email address is my other email address um
Starting point is 00:19:47 yeah but like so i guess what is the state of media in the bitcoin world your mind like do you like that we have like independent budding like i think personalities of dylan i think the state media is good um i don't know if rizzo agrees with that but you know i think that publications like bitcoin magazine are killing you i think that there's a really healthy um grassroots you know podcaster content creator um kind of community and and you know growing effort and if you just i remember in 2017 i entered the space and the only things that were bitcoin only that i could find were Tone Vase's Crypto Scam and Bitcoin and Markets by Ansel Lindner. So I mean, we've come a long way. I remember when you started your show, that was like 2018. And I was like,
Starting point is 00:20:41 wow, OK, this is a next level podcast. So I think that it's healthy. We're doing a great job of creating tons and tons of content. And to address your original question, which is like, what's bitcoin magazine's goal and i would say btc inc's goal even more is just accelerating hyper bitcoinization you know we have this bitcoin centered uh mindset and you know all of that is that you know bitcoin is going to be the most important technology period and we just want to be the leaders in that not to bring it too far back but i think bitcoin magazine right now also exists in terms of providing signal to people that there is a bitcoin only option right there are people out there who only in bitcoin they're the the cryptocurrency media space has been largely
Starting point is 00:21:23 defined by companies that are multi-cryptocurrency right i think bitcoin magazine and even bitcoin magazine was itself at one point a multi-cryptocurrency publication if italic started even at well bitcoin was only around back then there wasn't anything else it was actually the intermediate years right like the 2014 to 2017 where they were you know uh where it wasn't clear you know i guess to the to the founders of bitcoin magazine at the time right the business decision was to be multi-cryptocurrency right now i think you know the strongest thing that bitcoin magazine does is it sends that signal that one bitcoin only is a legitimate intellectual position to the people that are passionate about that and we're the outlet to communicate that
Starting point is 00:22:02 but you know we have to remember that we're fighting within that context like i was in dc a few weeks ago there are some staffers there you know they just think it's a thousand and one cryptocurrencies you know just changing that messaging to being bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is huge yeah it's a massive lift it is it is
Starting point is 00:22:20 it's hard to stay focused too I mean for I mean I haven't found it that hard to stay focused but like for some reason or another
Starting point is 00:22:31 whether it's a fund somebody building a product somebody building a media company it seems like the siren calls of everything outside of Bitcoin is so alluring
Starting point is 00:22:43 to many in the space and there's a lot of money being made out there as well I think so a lot of fast money I think that's the key is do you have the long term
Starting point is 00:22:53 to kind of like give up the fast money for the the Bitcoin vision like at hyper Bitcoinization your position
Starting point is 00:23:00 and your reputation or you know do you take the the easy fast money yeah no that's I mean
Starting point is 00:23:06 that's what's giving me the most fulfillment I guess out of this is a little weird operation I've got going is being able to look back
Starting point is 00:23:15 and being like yeah I called bullshit on this and people made a lot of fast money on it but then it imploded
Starting point is 00:23:20 one of the best threads on Twitter is your mapping of ETH 2.0 it's like literally like multiple years
Starting point is 00:23:28 long hey they successfully launched a test net today did they yeah apparently
Starting point is 00:23:33 did you update your Twitter thread no not yet I should though I do try to conclude when they actually do something correct
Starting point is 00:23:41 I found her email November 16th Thank you for your submission. We get a lot of emails every day. No, our last, we had like a long back and forth. I'm not going to bore the freaks with it, but basically what happened was, I'm pretty sure I just started the podcast
Starting point is 00:23:53 and you got back to me like a month after my last email. And then you gave me, you sent me a bunch of testing materials. It's a three-day turnaround. Here's the Coindesk writing test. Here's the, for business, here's the Coindesk writing test for markets. here's the Coindesk research test
Starting point is 00:24:14 and the knowledge test and I responded hey man thanks for getting back to me while I really respect Coindesk I'm going to pass on the test just don't want to do I was just too lazy
Starting point is 00:24:23 I was just like I see you eliminated you eliminated yourself through not just not wanting to test yeah and then you found yourself here you know
Starting point is 00:24:32 never going to be asked to test yourself again no well that gets to another like so are there tests for this like maybe am I a journalist
Starting point is 00:24:39 am I a journalist are you I mean I I write a daily newsletter is that a journal like what is a journalist my friend called me a journalist
Starting point is 00:24:46 or like we were at a bar and they're like oh like what do you do and he's like he's a journalist and I was like I'm not a journalist
Starting point is 00:24:52 well that's the thing like I think I saw the test I'm like I'm not doing this are you a person who seeks truth and seeks to promote you know justice
Starting point is 00:25:00 I like to think so I don't know justice is the right word maybe societal justice to speak to the powerful is there a journalist alive it's a hard environment
Starting point is 00:25:11 for journalism right one of the things that's really complicated is information velocity right it's hard to i think journalism itself is still adapting to this question of like what is journalism in an age where the speed of information is you know what it is right exactly yeah well i mean like journalism was i think something that needed the slow pace of like earlier like distribution information distribution right you needed to be able to sit down and like really only be able to create one daily paper right there was this scarcity there that now is no longer there maybe to draw it back to bitcoin right you had the block that needed to be filled every day with the information there was a check and balance there and i think a lot of that has
Starting point is 00:25:49 eroded right and now i think a lot of it is journalism based on personal reputation right so it used to be the reputation of the media outlet and now it's personal reputation right so what is your relationship with the audience so does the audience trust you and are you somebody who's open and honest but that really has radically changed journalism which you know previously was very focused on building institutions and things like that yeah it's created a it's weird so i studied economics i worked in finance studied there went to like a tech boot camp after i left finance and i was into bitcoin the whole time and i was actually the reason i started writing part of
Starting point is 00:26:29 The reason I started writing was I was looking to transition from finance to tech and I wanted to be a product manager in just being a project manager for tech apps. I worked at a software development company that helped staff software development teams with offshore talent from Ecuador and Colombia. And so I had experience interacting with developers and lining them up with projects. and so I thought yeah like I can get in to product management I know design front-end development I think I have like a business savvy mind I can I've led teams before on the lacrosse field but the number one feedback I was getting is like if you want to be a product manager you have to prove to us that you can write about the product that you're going to manage and so I was like all right part of the reason I started to bet was like okay Bitcoin is a product that people want
Starting point is 00:27:24 know like i'm gonna prove that i can write about it so like i got into writing and then that way and now i've been writing almost every weekday since like june 8th 2017 and it's weird like i'm keeping people up to date once we go but am i a journalist i don't feel myself as a journalist like i just view myself as some dude sharing his thoughts like i think everybody has to kind of come to that question right i don't know i think right now the what i would say with with Bitcoin Magazine is I think we've balanced that where it's like
Starting point is 00:27:55 we are a vehicle for people to build independent brands who are speaking and doing creative work on Bitcoin, right? So it's like, I think we've split that balance pretty well.
Starting point is 00:28:03 It's like we're not trying to control or shape things, right? Everybody within Bitcoin Magazine adds their own flavor, adds their own specific line of it. So that keeps the audience and the relationship strong, right? Dylan's got to go out there.
Starting point is 00:28:18 He's got to publish his investor newsletter every day and he's going to go and defend that position and you know people now trust Dylan right after a year of his work
Starting point is 00:28:27 you know so I think that's that's an important part right like media as a whole is just trying to find its way and I think you know
Starting point is 00:28:34 Bitcoin Magazine right now is a strong brand but it's a strong brand because it's adapted to kind of the changing environment yeah the changing environment has pissed off a lot of
Starting point is 00:28:42 people who went through what they thought to be a traditional avenue to become like a legitimate journalist and well i think that's one of you know i guess my advantages is that i have literally no real media experience and you know i rizzo has a lot of media experience we have folks on the team who have a
Starting point is 00:29:03 lot of media experience but you know our approach has nothing to do with like the right way of doing things it's just how do you get things done with the resources that we have and thankfully one of those resources is like the Bitcoin community, which is this like insane hive mind. So the fact that, you know, we're tapping that no one else's is. I would say Bitcoin magazine has also been a great vehicle for multiple opinions. Like you've got a range and variety of perspectives on Bitcoin magazine. You could say that they're all, you know, somewhat, you know, Bitcoin focused, but there's, you know, there's a huge spectrum there, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think just in the last week alone i mean the in the mining industry you have people are like oh it's gonna be like green energy
Starting point is 00:29:47 driver is bitcoin mining then you have others are like the green energy revolutions making us worse off like bitcoin mining is going to help us become energy secure not just renewable energy secure that is one narrative that i think could bite us in the ass in the future if bitcoin is like oh it's going to incentivize renewable energy production which maybe it does and a lot of people are like insinuating that x percentage of hash rate will derive from wind solar hydro in the future if that does not come to fruition it's just like oh you said it was going to be this like bitcoin and i think rizzo can talk about this but bitcoin has a long history or Bitcoiners have a long history of like, kind of like misleading promises. So, you know, it's,
Starting point is 00:30:39 am I on the hook for that? I'm not saying you're on the hook. No, but you, uh, you know, of those promises, even though, you know, you documented, uh, kind of Satoshi's quote unquote misleading promises, even in the early days. Well, I mean, look, I think like we're, we are, as humans are understanding Bitcoin. That's the lens I take to it, right? Bitcoin is this invention. We have to try to understand it uh i think bitcoiners you know have had you can look back at certain here periods of bitcoin you can say that we commonly believe things then that we just no longer believe now so my my stance to like the current market cycle which i think is kind of like ending right i think we're passing into like a period where activity is maybe going to be a little lower
Starting point is 00:31:18 i think we're going to look back at this period and we're going to reflect and we're going to see that like you know all right you know when you go to the party and it's like the bottom of keg is like all is all froth foamy yeah you know it's pretty been pretty foamy of late let's just be honest with ourselves right uh and i think you know some of that is just going to be stuff that gets filtered out right like the strongest ideas survive and we'll move on um i think in terms of the mining market i think you know you've done a great job raising concerns right and i think there is a lot of questions about what's going on um a lot of mining has been moved out of china it's moved across the world now in the united states that's great but we don't know what the
Starting point is 00:31:54 end result of that is going to be you know we can try to de-risk it as much we can but it you have to acknowledge that it brings risk right yeah i mean we just saw what kazakhstan confiscated 200 million dollars worth of equipment this week right and kazakhstan was supposed to be one of the big saviors you know post china right so uh we are dealing with proof of work mining you know you want the advantages of anybody in the world who can access energy being able to generate bitcoin but the trade-off with that is that you know you have a physical infrastructure your physical infrastructure is liable to be
Starting point is 00:32:24 attacked, subverted, or brought under the regime of the government. I've been particularly like, you know,
Starting point is 00:32:32 I don't understand why there aren't more businesses going to Anaheim. I've been pretty open about that, especially on the
Starting point is 00:32:38 mining side. I don't know why they haven't. Well, the heat is one factor. It is. They got volcanoes, though.
Starting point is 00:32:45 Yeah. They're air-cooling those units. I guess, how do you particularly deal that i'd be curious because you know you've you seem like you're pro-america i don't know if that's a yeah i mean and you we've now brought all this mining infrastructure under the american
Starting point is 00:33:03 regime yeah i mean i think so whenever whether it be like cathedral or personally i have personal mining operations what i look for is a particular political climate in the state like it or not people don't like when i get political but i look for red states that are very respective respectful of private property rights and have shown a penchant to stand up against the federal government uh i look for temper temper more temperate environments i think texas is a huge meme right now but i think a lot of people frankly are larping and are going to run into a lot of problems pertaining to heat specifically a lot of dust around here yeah a lot of dust uh and then yeah i like off-grid obviously i talk about that so i think being able to hide your operations or
Starting point is 00:34:02 or not hide but make it more difficult to identify using grid fingerprints you don't think bitcoin is apolitical what do you mean by that well you said you were looking for red states So how's your operation? I mean, the protocol is certainly apolitical. The protocol has no idea if a Republican or a Democrat is using it. Right. The implementation of the infrastructure. Maybe politics doesn't respect property rights equally, and that's the deal.
Starting point is 00:34:30 I think that's certainly the case. I mean, we've seen in the last two years, Florida, Texas, they certainly respect bodily autonomy, which is private property. Bringing it back to the conference. One of the best effing decisions that we made as a business was January of 2021, we decided to move the Bitcoin conference from Los Angeles to Miami-Dade, Florida. And that was one of the best decisions we ever made by far. Not even like one of the very best decisions we've made. When you bring it to Austin, that's the question. No comment.
Starting point is 00:35:10 Bitcoin 2022.2. You know how all those cities were like lobbying Amazon to come to their city? So Austin, we're accepting applications. Any other prospective city that would like the Bitcoin conference next year? Hit us up. Contact at btcmedia.org. I mean, the traffic in Miami. So I recommend if you're going to Bitcoin 22, stay on Miami Beach.
Starting point is 00:35:38 There's a good chance if you get a nice hotel, you can walk to the beach and the conference. you don't even have to worry about the traffic. I don't want to like shit on the traffic. We're trying to sell tickets here. Use the code TFTC at b.tc slash conference. You're going to get 10% off. Yeah. Bang.
Starting point is 00:35:53 Yeah, but is Bitcoin apolitical? I want to get back to that. What are your thoughts, Peter? Well, certainly the protocol is apolitical, but I think you can also be strategically apolitical with Bitcoin. And that's, I think, where we would probably disagree. I think that your focus on Texas over Ohio
Starting point is 00:36:07 or like Pennsylvania, states that could potentially swing elections, it's interesting. You're choosing to have a line with a certain political party that might not always advance Bitcoin. I mean, Ohio and Pennsylvania, I mean, they're... Purple states. If it was me and I was investing in Bitcoin mining,
Starting point is 00:36:24 I've been saying this up and down. It's that if you can prove that you can swing 1% of the vote, a purple state, you will never... Any politician that is up-ballot from that will never be against you. And I don't think we're thinking about this very strategically
Starting point is 00:36:41 especially if we're thinking about making this you know Bitcoin mining partisan yeah Pete I mean
Starting point is 00:36:46 even though I have my operations in states that are redder it doesn't mean I'm not talking to the purple
Starting point is 00:36:52 states I do a lot of talking behind the scenes with people in purple states
Starting point is 00:36:57 and blue states for that matter it's people in all states there's people Dylan what do you think
Starting point is 00:37:02 Bitcoin apolitical I don't know if I have too much to add here I mean I kind of agree with the
Starting point is 00:37:08 protocol being apolitical um i live in probably the bluest of blue states myself uh yeah it was next door to bernie sanders actually yeah um and so i mean i'm personally kind of fed up with uh a lot of the stuff that that goes on yeah me as well yeah um and so probably personally looking to make an escape to to somewhere of a red state but i mean i i didn't vote in the in the past election i don't really plan on on voting at all i i mean i said this on twitter i say this publicly i vote with my wallet um and so you know i don't really the bipartisan game i mean i obviously align probably
Starting point is 00:37:47 more with the red states but yeah me as well and in terms of its implementation again the protocol itself doesn't know who's using it so can't censor based on political beliefs but i think the implementation of Bitcoin as a sound money in the digital age is certainly a bit conservative. Well, I think it'll be interesting
Starting point is 00:38:08 in the conference we'll have politicians from both sides of the spectrum, right? There's Warren Davidson confirmed. Who else is on the list? So,
Starting point is 00:38:17 I think as of right now, there's a few more on the blue side that are going to be confirmed. But one is Andrew Yang. So, I know he is, there's a love-hate relationship with him.
Starting point is 00:38:26 But, I think he's, he said some interesting things. And, it's just the people that believe UBI it's like Bitcoin accelerationist I mean Fiat is dead so
Starting point is 00:38:38 I mean they're doing UBI already just only to corporations so they might as well you know finish it off and give it to the plebs too yeah no but that's like one thing I truly there's this whole like Bitcoin for progressives movement I don't think
Starting point is 00:38:53 the people who believe that understand that Bitcoin is like it or not forcing a certain I think this is turning into the Rizzo show but I feel like he would strongly disagree on that one no you're not you're not allowed to opt out what do you think
Starting point is 00:39:09 what do you mean what do I think about what you disagree why where do you disagree the idea that Bitcoin aligns with conservative principles over liberal principles I don't I just don't understand where you would take that away like what's your evidence for that I mean that it respects property rights
Starting point is 00:39:25 yeah no I mean there's the classical liberalism in terms of like redistributing well so now you're talking about the implementation of the thing versus the thing itself right so yeah i guess i think the current democratic party certainly has its problems right but you could say you could have said that about the republican party 10 12 years ago you know i could say yeah today it was you know forcing unpopular wars on the people and you know it's funny how it's all shifted i agree whoever is in power is just fucking terrible i think you you have to I think you have to separate like the the Republican Party and the Democratic Party
Starting point is 00:40:02 that exists today and have existed in different forms in the past from like pure political philosophy which for sure you could argue that the current uh Republican Party is maybe more amenable to to Bitcoin today and supporting it I think that would be an argument that I would probably say is likely but I think to say that there is one group that is necessarily predisposed to that um you know i just don't think it's very i just don't know i don't see the what who benefits from us adopting that frame uh well the the and then that gets into the whole question is like the frame we adopt even manner is it inevitable is it inevitable so i want to try my hand at this honestly i i really like the bitcoin for progressive movement not just not because
Starting point is 00:40:49 i necessarily agree with all their ideas but more because like i really see bitcoin adoption as like this really incremental step for for people as a whole right and people need to see these different kind of framings to start dipping their toes in so i don't care about being that right and like rizzo can tell you historically how hardcore bitcoiners were really wrong so like I don't care about being that right. I just care about getting people in. So the Bitcoin American Dream, I was one of the co-authors of the section.
Starting point is 00:41:23 It's on this bookshelf. On the shelf. Nice. Of the section, Bitcoin is social justice. You think about these groups that have been- I agree with this. You agree with it.
Starting point is 00:41:32 Right. Okay. Well then, why would you say that there is no progressive case for Bitcoin? I mean, there isn't. And Marty, I think I should reframe
Starting point is 00:41:41 because I care about obviously being right, but like, I'm not holier than thou about what I think is right I'm open to allowing just like people to grind
Starting point is 00:41:52 and figure it out call me holier than thou I'm just talking about me I'm just talking about me but yeah go fuck with me back to you no no but
Starting point is 00:42:00 for me it's like entitlement stuff like you can't redistribute bitcoin automatically it's inherently like a push system
Starting point is 00:42:09 so you can't force bitcoiners to like But Bitcoin will make a more equitable world. I completely agree. Which ultimately, I would argue, is the classical case for progressivism. Agreed. Classical liberalism was probably progressive. Most people have property rights.
Starting point is 00:42:26 We've just been so confused as a society. I think it's like, look, for people like myself, who traditionally lean left, I think some of these issues have been really interesting. I've been classically very supportive of the green energy movement. which and i think the relevant criticisms have been brought up by the bitcoin community of late i would also say that i agree with i think that um i didn't understand how the energy grid operated i didn't understand that the solutions that like we were pushing for on the left side that they
Starting point is 00:42:56 didn't actually solve the root cause of the issue which is that we still need to generate electricity through some type of energy and that you know green energy doesn't solve that um and i think think those are all good criticisms right and i think that's helping push the conversation forward so i don't you know again i try not to buy into this like us them dynamic like i'm someone who can be like i think all people you have to believe on some level that all people can be given information and can make a rational decision that something is is correct or incorrect yeah it gets back to what we were talking about in the beginning how do we get people that's good information so that they can make better decisions right right well i think that like that like the
Starting point is 00:43:34 fact that bitcoin is moving forward the conversation about green energy it's bringing more nuance to that conversation and it's presenting solutions to i think things that on the progressive side like people have wanted to see right like people on the progressive side who have sat for like 12 it's been 15 years since obama's push for green energy right and what have the results been and the answer is next to nothing and i think there are a lot of people on the left who are sort of like well why is that the case and i don't see why bitcoin can't plug into that from that perspective so again i just think that like this idea of you know if you start thinking that other some other group can't believe these things or that they just don't have the incentive i just i
Starting point is 00:44:13 don't buy that yeah i would agree with that yeah my thing all goes back to like redistribution of wealth i mean the marxists can have fun staying poor yeah exactly like or they can just make their own tokens on cryptocurrencies and get fabulously wealthy. In the short term. That's definitely short term. I mean, he's calling ETH heads Marxist.
Starting point is 00:44:40 I'm not. He does. They are Marxist. There's definitely a lot of let's just call it more current democratic ideas within the Ethereum community. That's for sure.
Starting point is 00:44:54 I mean they just cancelled somebody for admitting that he was Catholic I mean they actually they actually did they did confiscate
Starting point is 00:45:03 and redistribute wealth like at the protocol level immediately so it's hard to kind of see them as being outside of that
Starting point is 00:45:10 yeah I think that'll be interesting I would say that that whole movement is just very skeuomorphic of the existing
Starting point is 00:45:17 clusterfuck so I think they're very skeuomorphic move on yeah they saw this Bitcoin thing they're like alright
Starting point is 00:45:24 right, let's take blockchain and make it look like what we have already, you know, and they have like a freaking shitty digital calculator pretty much. Hey, consensus just raised half a billion dollars. It did, and they invested it all in ETH, which was part of their plan to promote ultrasound money. Yes. Ultrasound money.
Starting point is 00:45:41 Ultrasound money. Sounds. I mean, I think that's a big reason why ETH plays so well with the current paradigm, because I truly think that, like, Bitcoin is a mental operating shift, and like, a lot of the cryptocurrency currency space fits in with the current like mental model for how the world works aka like
Starting point is 00:46:00 you know it's a complete clusterfuck and like bitcoin is just not intuitive to that it's just not and it just takes time to bridge people over and that's why i'm pretty empathetic to folks that need to bridge over you know i'm not mad at the progressive bitcoin empathetic to them this is why i would say the argument is you need to get as much people as many people to see your worldview as possible yeah and like whatever means necessary to communicate that as long as it's truthful right so you asked the question of what's a journalist well i think a journalist is ultimately someone who speaks and is honest about things and that is you know going to talk about things that maybe they don't want to talk about right yeah talking about issues right you've
Starting point is 00:46:35 raised issues right you're talking about the issues that might happen if the mining system gets captured i think there's a lot of value in that right you might be a journalist in that moment it's the same way that i make the argument about bitcoiner when when you go to starbucks in the morning and you buy your coffee with fiat are you a bitcoiner in that moment and i think the answer is no you're not yeah you're not in that moment making the best decision for the bitcoin network what if i'm using my cash card to get sats back you might be a bitcoin or nonsense you're supporting a bitcoin business i'm a piece of shit well this is what i'm saying it's like i think i think the i think one of the issues i have with the current like bitcoin or movement is it's
Starting point is 00:47:10 like it requires this like absolute buy-in and there's just like no understanding that like decision making doesn't function on that level you're not a bitcoiner in this moment like right now we're not we're not providing any value to the big one protocol currently shut the fuck up i'll see myself out thank you no no i can agree with that i think there's a lot of larping particularly in the west i was just saying like sitting in this room like this podcast is pure signal no before you said before maybe we are maybe somebody maybe we have right now just buy it yeah just smash buy uh do it if you're watching right now i'm helping i'm helping Logan to help us set up all these lights
Starting point is 00:47:47 and these cameras. He's getting paid hourly in Bitcoin for this. Right, but what I'm saying is I guess there's a relationship, right? You're not always a Bitcoiner. The same way you're not always a journalist. These are like states you can be in the moment. You can choose to be these things. Dylan's right now is being a DJ. I'm a Bitcoiner.
Starting point is 00:48:04 Did you just buy? What did you just buy? About a hundred bucks. Do you have a face ID on there? Yeah, I'm not a Bitcoiner. In that moment, you are not a Bitcoiner. When you use face ID, yeah we're gonna get into the purity test
Starting point is 00:48:16 did you buy that or no I'll buy I guess where's my phone I'll do the smash buy we'll do a collective smash buy this feels right
Starting point is 00:48:24 okay the king of smash my mother tried to call me yeah so like in this moment we might be bitcoiners
Starting point is 00:48:32 maybe we're doing something that actively supports bitcoin I'm reinstalling cash apps Rezo hasn't bought bitcoin so long
Starting point is 00:48:39 that he has to reinstall his app that's true 2023 baby oh my god it's like that bottom you guys get paid in Bitcoin
Starting point is 00:48:47 at Bitcoin Magazine if you want to correct yeah you get whatever percentage of your salary in Bitcoin and we get bonuses
Starting point is 00:48:54 in Bitcoin no 401k but we get Bitcoin bonuses so I'll take it Bitcoin has 401k well I think
Starting point is 00:49:01 we're not talking about like how I think this conference is going to change the perception of people about Bitcoin right we're going to think
Starting point is 00:49:07 for the first time have like a real mainstream presence at a Bitcoin conference what do you mean by that we're going to have sound money fest
Starting point is 00:49:13 on the Saturday after the conference this guy just bought some sad snags Joe Rogers says wow Pete Rizzo cringe barren bad takes
Starting point is 00:49:22 well hey Joe I shot guns for the first time yesterday Joe so be empathetic to Rizzo okay he's slowly figuring it out
Starting point is 00:49:31 yeah oh god the Bitcoin magazine retweet the tweet because we've got a lot of bot responses how much did you
Starting point is 00:49:39 oh man how much did you 100 bucks I bought 200 150,000 sats. That's the wrong way to go. There you go. Dylan's not a real Bitcoiner.
Starting point is 00:49:47 There you go. All right, I'm going to buy 120. I'll just, I don't know, I'll do 200. Damn, dude, high roller. Abandon her tonight. No, no, that's paid. It has been, so Bitcoin has been seeping into the mainstream conversation.
Starting point is 00:50:01 Shout out to Mackenzie at CNBC. She's killing it. She's been doing a good job. Yo, I hooked Mackenzie up at last year's event and helped her get some VIP access. so I like to think that you know I built up her Bitcoin career
Starting point is 00:50:13 you're welcome Mackenzie you built up her Bitcoin career why don't you say like I made her like amenable to like Bitcoin no you know I just you know
Starting point is 00:50:22 got her into the parties she got to network and then bam there you go she's doing a great job covering the mining space my first Bitcoin purchase since
Starting point is 00:50:31 El Salvador day just completed wow dude you've been fucking bearish for a while the bear bought it we're going to 200k by conference day
Starting point is 00:50:40 Yeah, we're three weeks away. Here we go, baby. Well, back to that. So there's going to be mainstream musicians. You've got Run the Jewels. Steve Aoki. Steve Aoki. You've got...
Starting point is 00:50:48 Logic. Yeah. Deadmau5. Deadmau5 is a huge get. They all got paid in Bitcoin. Unannounced, can we talk about the comedy stuff that we're adding? Yeah, let's do it. Why not?
Starting point is 00:50:56 We've got Marc Maron, Hannibal Buress. Oh. We're going to have... Is this day four? Yeah, this is on Town Money Fest. Okay. So there's going to be mainstream politicians on the stage. I think, you know, there's also this value of talking about your political theme.
Starting point is 00:51:09 one of the things Bitcoin Magazine I think has done really well is scaling Bitcoin as counterculture people who are apolitical people who want to be outside the system
Starting point is 00:51:16 and I think there's a weird balancing act that's going to come up here yeah between the drive for some people to be political influencers
Starting point is 00:51:23 and you know for some of us who just want to you know promote counterculture yeah and abolish the federal government yeah
Starting point is 00:51:30 that's what I would love to do what happened to you as a child yeah don't speak more how did you get to where you are What is it like you being the age that you are,
Starting point is 00:51:42 which we will not say publicly. What did the government do to you? I was, I was red pilled hard in 2020, like so hard. Well, red pilled, orange pilled kind of in succession.
Starting point is 00:51:53 Um, I don't know. I just, I mean, and Vermont also on the, on the political spectrum is just so far, so far left, like university of Vermont in particular,
Starting point is 00:52:02 it's like probably like 20% of student body is like openly like communist communist without even knowing what that means their lacrosse team looks communist as people with like long dirty hair yeah i mean our lac seems pretty good i think you guys are pretty good yeah the bobcats right catamounts catamounts yeah so i mean i did a year there um and i like school uh i mean i in like in terms of what happened to me as a child uh for my uh i mean I don't know. I just like kind of just have a disdain for, for other people having a control over, over my life without really having a say in it. Um, I think, I think bipartisan politics is kind of the illusion of choice. Uh, and it's frustrating, especially like with Gen Z and social
Starting point is 00:52:50 media in general, um, like in high school and college, like politics was such a big, like talking point. And like people literally were like alienated for like liking Trump or being like republican or red or whatever um and so like i you know was impartial but like you know just just the like total alienation of anyone that had a dissenting opinion or thought it was just stupid in my opinion like i like i literally lost friends for being like no like i don't i'm not voting for either of these puppets and they're like what do you mean this is the most important election of our of our life it's like all right like i don't so was mccain to get uh versus obama when i was uh it's always the most important election of your
Starting point is 00:53:31 right yeah that's part of the buy-in of the system right it like requires you to like it requires the stakes to be like me i right yeah that's like the but that's why i'm worried about bitcoin being caught up in that right i don't i don't think we should want that i don't want that either i like to think of myself as counterculture right i'm bipartisan what i was trying to say earlier is I was like, I think there is like sound money and its implications do not jive with what many on the... It doesn't jive with the fiat world. No.
Starting point is 00:54:04 The entire fiat establishment does not jive with what Bitcoin is. So it's just a new system. I think Bitcoin operates in contrast to a lot of things. I feel like you could say that about most things. Well, we don't even know what it's going to turn into, which is... What, Bitcoin? Yeah. What do you mean by that?
Starting point is 00:54:19 Like how it's applied. I agree. The creative humans who are going to figure out how to use the protocol to do things we can't even imagine right now. Absolutely. What's an example of something like... I mean, the ways in which you can
Starting point is 00:54:38 hook into the internet protocol stack and then do unique things with that. I don't even think we brush the surface of how that's going to change. What's one of your borrowed ideas? I think it might happen. I don't know when people say like
Starting point is 00:54:59 oh we don't even know I'm like well there's a field of possibility Marty are you talking about Web 3? yeah well Web 3
Starting point is 00:55:06 I think Web 3 will be done properly on Bitcoin or using Bitcoin I don't think it's on Bitcoin I think Bitcoin's just a piece of
Starting point is 00:55:14 Web 3 this going out to podcasting 2.0 is Web 3 in my opinion just combining RSS feeds and lightning
Starting point is 00:55:21 addresses in and of itself. Bitcoin is the incentive for the personal server revolution and the self-hosted web is the future. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:55:32 That's how I frame it. I'm trying to answer Pete's question. This is like a hard question to answer. What is something you think is unfathomable to be built?
Starting point is 00:55:41 It's like, I don't know. Can I even think of it? Well, I think right now your comment is interesting because I feel like Bitcoin has kind of been in a large period where we've sort of
Starting point is 00:55:49 narrowed down the use cases of Bitcoin to you hodl bitcoin you're like hodl it for your future and you just stack right that's kind of the mentality and you just said was oh there's like all these possibilities with bitcoin we don't even know what people are going to do what was what was the original intention of the butt box you remember good question yeah uh so it was that you could experiment and and run bitcoin code right like yourself no well but what was i think bellagio had the right idea but he was too early the machine payable web right right the machine payable web that's right i forgot about that meme
Starting point is 00:56:21 right didn't catch on did not catch on but i think he was right it just was a bit too early i think now with like the lightning network you potentially enable the machine payable web an example of that is i remember somebody making a prototype a working prototype an application that allowed them to pay for a tesla charging system connecting with tesla's api over the lightning network in real time like sats for electricity second by second as soon as you unplug stop paying that's machine payable web that's your car with the lightning network wallet injected into it communicating with an electricity provider providing outlet and saying all right yeah I mean, I think the progressives would be super into that.
Starting point is 00:57:09 Yeah, I do too. I'll throw out a big idea. Like, honestly, a lot of people don't think of like Bitcoin being able to fix our fresh water problem. And what is our fresh water problem? And where we locate civilization. Well, I mean, we're really limited in where we can locate civilization. I mean, when it comes down to water problems, why aren't we rain collecting more?
Starting point is 00:57:29 That's my number one question. But again, like I'm trying to say is like, what if Bitcoin... All that rain just going away. It's going to the plants. Right? you can't have the plants having all that water am I an idiot
Starting point is 00:57:38 for thinking that it's us versus the plants I agree is it us versus the plants is that you gotta draw that line they've been sucking up our water
Starting point is 00:57:46 for too long wait no is that the case against rain collection I don't know I'm just like I don't know this is literally
Starting point is 00:57:51 the first time I've ever heard anyone talk about rain collection I was just like everybody's like we have water problems like it rains like why don't we just
Starting point is 00:57:58 make rain collection what will the plants what will the plants consume I guess that's like what if you want to live somewhere where it doesn't rain but there's salt water what if you collect
Starting point is 00:58:07 so much rain that the plants die and then we don't have any oxygen anymore because well you can ask this is another thing the progressives
Starting point is 00:58:14 would care about what if you catch well they should care about it in regards to solar energy what if you catch so much solar that it doesn't reach the ground
Starting point is 00:58:21 those plants under them can't grow that's true you know great yeah there's you know there's problems on all extremes
Starting point is 00:58:26 yeah I'm gonna drop a thread how to fix the water solution problem just start collecting it I mean I'm I was just trying to make a comment about
Starting point is 00:58:34 how I think bitcoin is going to expand our energy capacity to levels that we have never seen before and then all of a sudden you can desalinize you can do so many different things that were you know foreseen as impossible but all of a sudden because bitcoin has its incentives changes the dynamics of our grid it completely revolutionizes how we organize you know what we can do on an individual basis etc etc like i i really like i think thinking big about bitcoin something that bitcoiners need to do a lot more like stop worrying about alt coins stop worrying about this little petty bullshit start thinking like what is this thing going to do to the planet try to trans uh transposition
Starting point is 00:59:15 like the incentives and and how that plays out like try to think about what adoption looks like i feel like these are the kind of conversations that we should be focusing on yes so maybe this is a good uh riffing off something you just said that could be a good answer to the question that you posed earlier which i don't think is obvious to most people is that you said our grid our grid and that's like the way people think about this like grids are extremely centralized in the u.s and all across the world texas may be a an exception to that rule uh though i think texas is making a big mistake over producing too much unreliable but besides the fact grids are extremely centralized right now and i don't think people like what
Starting point is 01:00:00 it's becoming glaringly obvious to somebody who's been like in the off-grid mining world for a few years now and seeing where it's going i think what we're going to see is a a number of grids like an explosion in the amount of grids with bitcoin the bitcoin network right now is enabling micro grids to be built out in parallel to the mega grids that that we depend not these days and i think there will be crazy benefits to to that people don't even realize it yet like just building yeah i was telling ck earlier i think one of the things that was are you talking about earlier conversations in bitcoin like i don't think anybody early on really envisioned the idea that like mining's impact i think we're just starting to get to the point
Starting point is 01:00:44 where it's like a bitcoin is a expanding system we're starting it's starting to become so large that we're starting to see these energy benefits but like i don't remember anybody talking about this even four or five years ago no no i mean how finney can talk about it though yeah tweet number tweet number two is about the co2 uh yeah thinking about how to de-risk the proof of work co2 impact yeah his less popular tweet to running bitcoin and working on bitcoin how to make bitcoin more private yeah those are the first three i think yeah yeah legend fucking legend he'll be back yeah he's up there just hanging out
Starting point is 01:01:21 nitro nitro nitroglycerin cryogenically frozen is that the word nitroglycerin is it's like an
Starting point is 01:01:29 I'm sorry I don't know about cryogenic freezing or lightness cryogenic isn't that how they store them isn't nitroglycerin like an explosive
Starting point is 01:01:39 I think that's what Mr. Freeze was like frozen at the end of Batman and Robin that was before your time you do not remember Mr. Freeze
Starting point is 01:01:46 with Poison Ivy Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't popular at all during your life huh no I've never even watched Terminator dude
Starting point is 01:01:57 T2 is great T2 is a classic I've watched Arnold's like workout videos on YouTube though okay well let's try to get you as long as you got
Starting point is 01:02:06 some exposure what's Arnold's position on Bitcoin he'd be a strong he'd be a strong supporter he leans right but he's he was California governor
Starting point is 01:02:15 he wasn't a big fan of bodily autonomy over the last two years. Yeah, it's kind of pathetic. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. He's probably too old
Starting point is 01:02:25 to worry about it. The olds are like, yeah, I'm too old. The olds. The olds. Well, I mean, look, Bitcoin solves a problem for that generation, right?
Starting point is 01:02:34 They're worried about wealth and inheritance. I just think that, you know, some of the subject of this conversation is, you know, rich olds. You can either think strategically.
Starting point is 01:02:41 Rich olds. Or you can think myopically and try to keep narrowing the us versus them dynamic. Okay. you're locked in Pete alright
Starting point is 01:02:50 no I agree you know I don't know I agree to sir it can be a little when's the last time you were in a blue state man you going on vacation
Starting point is 01:02:58 over there I mean you don't you don't want to go to a blue state I'm trying to leave blue states here let's be honest
Starting point is 01:03:05 I mean Pennsylvania isn't really a blue state outside of Philadelphia so it's like hard it's purple yeah swings one way or the other yeah
Starting point is 01:03:13 while the autonomy is underrated and I don't know if Bitcoin fixes this but you know we're living in a world now that we need people
Starting point is 01:03:22 who respect Bali autonomy to buy the Bitcoin I definitely agree I think that that needs to happen it is happening to some extent
Starting point is 01:03:29 and we get those to Pete's point those who don't respect it maybe they should get Bitcoin too maybe it'll help them respect it
Starting point is 01:03:37 because I think Bitcoin is a tremendous teacher right and I think we should encourage people to interface with
Starting point is 01:03:43 Bitcoin as much as I do as well I would never encourage somebody not to get into Bitcoin really what about
Starting point is 01:03:55 Klaus Schwab get in get in Klaus get in Klaus Bitcoin for central bankers that's what we need to make like a
Starting point is 01:04:04 we need to make like a fake report and just send it to them and just really it's just all about how like their jobs like you don't need to work anymore
Starting point is 01:04:11 because you can take all these vacations but it should look like a professional like IMF report like you know have like a cover with like
Starting point is 01:04:18 lots of people no more needing to go in front of Congress and sweat yeah instead of money that is like you know randomly auctioned
Starting point is 01:04:26 at the whims of these like random individuals who no one elects you know it's just it's a protocol you have a reliable you know you asked
Starting point is 01:04:33 why I was bearish earlier I think one of my things is that you know Bitcoin does allow coordination around money right and and that coordination
Starting point is 01:04:40 is there's going to be lean time I mean there's going to be hot times so you You've got to take the good with the bad. Why does coordination dictate that there's going to be lean and hot times?
Starting point is 01:04:50 I don't think it's the coordination aspect. It's the having aspect. Because the monetary policy is predictable. Therefore, you can coordinate around the monetary policy. But you can't predict the demand, right? That's the other... At this stage in Bitcoin, it seems certain that you can predict the demand.
Starting point is 01:05:06 No, you can't. No, you cannot. You can't predict that Russia's going to invade Ukraine I can't predict that Putin will not buy Bitcoin, but I can certainly bet on the fact that it's overwhelmingly likely that no nation state within the current geopolitical conflict will allocate any meaningful resources to Bitcoin. Let's take the mic away from the bear. I mean, I think if you're going to be bearish at all, it's not because of Bitcoin's programmed monetary policy, but rather the unpredictable monetary policy of fiat over the short to intermediate term. I just think human beings, they're able to act dynamically and they're able to take advantage of information towards their own benefit.
Starting point is 01:05:49 So if you know that Bitcoin is going to be entering a period where we're far away from the halving, a bunch of moon boys are hopped up and they're no longer excited about things. And I know that in the future, they're going to get bored and sell. I love your perspective. And Tina has a great take on folks who think that the way that you think and that you're going to have less Bitcoin. you're going to have you're going to have a lot less Bitcoin I mean I
Starting point is 01:06:14 I personally think that like yes Bitcoin is going to act this way until it won't you know the game kind of changes
Starting point is 01:06:20 as soon as you know that you think you know the game so you're viewing it as just like the pure that description
Starting point is 01:06:28 makes it sound like a pure like get rich scheme where I don't think so I think you can coordinate around Bitcoin for your
Starting point is 01:06:34 economic benefit in this current period of Bitcoin like what about its inherent utility that many places around the world
Starting point is 01:06:43 is the only avenue to access that utility. Yeah, those people don't have the ability to take advantage of that as we do. You do that all the time. Anytime you're not
Starting point is 01:06:55 spending Bitcoin, you're taking advantage of your ability to arbitrage your life between the two systems. You're saying that that's just a weird
Starting point is 01:07:02 perception to have that you don't. I actually agree with you with that statement. What do you mean? Every Bitcoiner currently lives their lives arbitraging the two systems for their benefit.
Starting point is 01:07:14 That is the current system we live in. We are not pure Bitcoiners. We are currently economically advantageous actors. So, wait, really quick. You're saying we all need to get on zero? Is that what you're saying? Your definition of a Bitcoiner is someone who's fully in the Bitcoin overlay. I don't have a definition of a Bitcoiner. I don't think Bitcoiners exist.
Starting point is 01:07:29 I think your actions either align with Bitcoin or they do not. And I think part of being a Bitcoiner is accepting the fact that a lot of your actions don't align with Bitcoin. Wait, you just said Bitcoiners don't exist. Right. So how could part of being a Bitcoiner. People who are interested in Bitcoin.
Starting point is 01:07:45 We got them. People who are interested in Bitcoin. We got them. People who claim to be Bitcoiners. You guys win. You guys won. It's going to 200. No, it is weird though.
Starting point is 01:07:53 It's my conference day. It is weird that we live in this temporal anomaly where the concept of a Bitcoiner, we'll look back in history and be like, what? Everybody's just using Bitcoin. It's just weird. everybody will touch Bitcoin somewhere. My point is the argument
Starting point is 01:08:11 that you think I'm making is just the present state. Yes. You're just describing what the actions of people are. But you're sort of saying that like I have some different perspective
Starting point is 01:08:20 on what's going on than you do. No, I just... Like I'm saying that people right now act advantageously to Bitcoin. They save in sats and they spend fiat.
Starting point is 01:08:34 Thus they arbitrage the two systems for their benefit. Yeah. Right. So you're saying that won't increase? I'm saying that is
Starting point is 01:08:43 likely going to continue up until the point where it is not impossible to occur. Like, as long as you can take advantage of that system, why not?
Starting point is 01:08:51 I'm just going to keep passing it back to Dylan because, like, Dylan does talk about this a lot. He did a podcast with Stefan about how to take advantage of this arbitrage opportunity, you know,
Starting point is 01:09:00 why that is appealing. I mean, do you want to kind of, like, maybe give a little bit more light onto, like how people do that. And I agree with what you're saying. Like for me, like I save in Bitcoin,
Starting point is 01:09:11 I spend in fiat, like that is an arbitrage. But obviously if you're too poor to save in Bitcoin or you don't have access to a working fiat system, maybe you don't have that luxury. You actually just have to constantly be in the Bitcoin overlay. But I mean. Am I addressing why Pete said he's a bear
Starting point is 01:09:29 and he's not buying until 2023 or? I'm out baby, 2023, back that bottom. well I mean like yeah talked about like if you're talking about like fiat and bitcoin existing in parallel
Starting point is 01:09:39 and like the arbitrage that exists especially with like capital market interest rates and like you know the speculative attack leveraging
Starting point is 01:09:47 fiat liabilities to stack you know bitcoin on your vast side of your balance sheet like that's happening at scale it's gonna continue to happen at scale
Starting point is 01:09:55 is your home loan in bitcoin like you're somehow taking out like a home loan in bitcoin that I'm not aware of I don't know I don't know So then you have financial instruments that are
Starting point is 01:10:04 denominated in fiat that you currently use. I don't have a mortgage. Oh, okay. I do. Shitcoiner. Yeah. But I guess the point I'm trying to make, maybe you would agree with me, Dylan, is you can't time
Starting point is 01:10:19 one side of the arbitrage. What do you mean? The chart's literally like a static wave pattern. I'm talking about the other side of it. What's the other side? The US dollar and people's faith in that. Right. Yeah, I agree. But it seems like people really like the U.S. dollar just overall. Right now? You don't think that's changing?
Starting point is 01:10:41 I don't know. I was in Lebanon at the end of last year. They seem like they're pretty excited about the idea to be in the U.S. dollar. They don't want other alternatives to that. At the end of last year? Yes. I was in December. I went down to Lebanon. I was writing a profile for About Safety and for the Bitcoin Magazine. And how much has changed since you were in Lebanon? I don't know. That's a good question.
Starting point is 01:11:04 Well, they're using Tether. But, like, this is part of the process, right? And I don't know if everyone agrees with this thesis, but the way I see it is that step one is hyper-dollarization, and that is expedited via Tether and other sort of, like, evolutions to the dollar stack. And then step two is hyper-Bitcoinization. I personally, I'm, like, have the unpopular opinion that CBDCs
Starting point is 01:11:28 are something that will never ship. like I think it's just a complete LARP. The countries can't even ship a healthcare website let alone like a whole CBDC. I mean in the dollar it's about monitoring Is that like a 2009 Obama era criticism?
Starting point is 01:11:44 That's a deep one you really went back in history for that one No that doesn't get implemented until like 2014 2012. There's a working healthcare.gov website for sure. Y'all if you if you get any unemployment check
Starting point is 01:11:58 if you get any unemployment check your social security number is within the email within the the username that they uh they assign you so the last four digits of your social aka you know what they used to verify you across the web and across financial institutions they just plop that right into your username so uh yeah they're they're really competent another reason and you know don't don't shoot me here i think that altcoins are great because they're a fucking hydra to ddos regulators the regulate you know when what how many 2017 era shit coins actually got prosecuted illegal securities actually got prosecuted very few of them like maybe they're trying to go around and actually go to the exchanges that listed them all legally or illegally but who'd they get they
Starting point is 01:12:45 got kick kin they got bit torrent kind of i'm sorry not bit torrent uh what's it called uh it connect kind of they kind of got big connect i want to big connect was like wholly separate did they even use like was it even ever a blockchain I don't know it was a Ponzi scheme
Starting point is 01:13:02 who cares I'm just saying like they can't deal with this shit when are they gonna get to the NFTs I mean summer like in 27
Starting point is 01:13:08 2029 summer of 2018 Bitcoin sign guy came on this podcast and he described yeah yeah posed the question
Starting point is 01:13:16 what do you think of shit coins he's like yeah they provide cover as we go build out this network I agree with that
Starting point is 01:13:23 it's a straight DDoS and I agree with stable coins too I've had Matt Alborg on the show many times throughout the years and it became quite obvious via his research
Starting point is 01:13:31 at usefultoolups.org that people in emerging economies want stable coins. Yeah. Overwhelmingly, yeah. Yeah, the question is though, I think we're in the endgame. Yeah, the confidence.
Starting point is 01:13:48 I love the dynamic. These two on Slack are hilarious if you all aren't on Bitcoin Magazine Slack. That was literally a knee slapper for you. Come on. we're in the end game
Starting point is 01:13:57 like what is it like what's so special about this time in history there was what do you mean what's so special there's like one of the most special times in history
Starting point is 01:14:04 like there was the nuclear there was the Nazis in like the 1940s like what's well we're in the end game of global fiat currency
Starting point is 01:14:13 okay I mean okay fed funds at zero inflation at 40 soon to be 50 or highs they've already done
Starting point is 01:14:22 10 years of quantitative easing they can't materially raise interest rates the credit markets are actually in the midst of breaking and they haven't even tightened at all that well that's like the mechanical technical aspect of it socially though there's a social aspect to it i think people are losing confidence quickly well russia was a big lesson like russia canada uh in succession that like that showed the
Starting point is 01:14:49 West and anyone in the East to believe that the American property rights system actually mattered anymore. It doesn't. And, you know, even if you're investing internationally in Russia, guess what? If you're caught up in the crossfire then your property rights don't matter either.
Starting point is 01:15:05 Let's just address the elephant in the room. Let's just say that Dylan's correct about this being the endgame. The Bitcoin network is not currently equipped to handle that. This is the elephant in the room right here. That is actually the elephant in the room. The Bitcoin network itself could not handle that demand. so you don't actually want that outcome
Starting point is 01:15:21 even if you're predisposed to thinking what you think then you would admit that the current network is very limited into its ability to actually handle global commerce at the scale that it would require 8 more years I mean maybe then well
Starting point is 01:15:35 I think I would be yes I agree the network certainly needs a bit more reinforcing to get to that point and if you used it for daily commerce maybe it would be more
Starting point is 01:15:49 potentially but again I think that's wholly separate from what we're talking about which is I just think
Starting point is 01:15:56 so I mean a lot of my a lot of me and Dylan's conversation are like I fundamentally just don't believe in doomsdayism
Starting point is 01:16:03 I think it's it's almost never correct like I'm not a doomer like I mean it's like we are potentially
Starting point is 01:16:10 facing one of the biggest recessions ever in 2022 well I'm trying to just look at what's going on
Starting point is 01:16:17 Saudi Arabia met with China today to talk about doing oil trades in yuan over the dollar. You have a commodities crisis that's only going to get worse. You have a supply chain crisis that's only getting worse. But don't you find it very pessimistic that you just don't
Starting point is 01:16:33 think people will solve these problems in the short term? There's just a weird outlook to have that you just think that these problems can't possibly be solved by the free market. Let's just take your perspective that the markets solve problems. Then why are those problems not big enough to meet a market demand and be solved in the short term? But again, these problems,
Starting point is 01:16:49 again, it's not whether or not they can be solved. I do think they can be solved. I don't think they can be solved in the short term. They're like massive problems right now. Like you can't materialize wheat in a moment's notice. You can eat something else. I mean, Rizzo.
Starting point is 01:17:06 You could if you wanted to, but like. The market will solve this, but a lot of the reasons why these things are happening are like non-market reasons, right? So it takes time. And personally for me, like this conversation, it's like Bitcoin has been progressing in a really, in my opinion, like impressive way. Like it has progressed in an impressive amount in 12 years. And when you look at a lot of other technology adoption, especially technology that Bitcoin's built on top of, like the mobile network infrastructure and all the other networks that Bitcoin relies on, this stuff escalates really quickly. Sure, but at the same time, there's also still physical commerce. You can still walk into a store and buy a shirt.
Starting point is 01:17:53 Sure. There's not this idea that this change between these systems is going to happen radically. You can walk into a store and steal a shirt right now in San Francisco and not have to pay shit. But I mean, again, like that's kind of like the interesting thing is like Bitcoin is this alternative system that is working. Yes, it's small, but it's working. And then on the flip side, the existing system that people rely on is falling apart. So there's kind of like this really nice and gradual shift. And yeah, it can be traumatic for some folks.
Starting point is 01:18:25 Like let's say in Ukraine you have a traumatic, but. I'll find my criticism of this. If you believe that Bitcoin is a pure free market system and ultimately all of commerce gets rebuilt on that system, why is it that you don't think that a system that is not free market can compete with that in the short term? And they could even do like extreme things like just reset like basically all economic activity in there.
Starting point is 01:18:45 I mean, the existing system is definitely free market. It's just also manipulatable. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I would say like we're on a dollar standard and that was a free market emergence over time. Go for it. do you guys believe there's an order of operations to all this yes so what does that mean things have to happen if we want your so i've come to the belief that there is an order of
Starting point is 01:19:11 operations to this and again falling down the mining rabbit hole i think bitcoiners have been looking at it all wrong in terms of like adoption like merchant adoption big big meme 2013 2014 obviously that's what spun off Bitcoin cash you're talking about it now people adopting using spending Bitcoin but again below that is mining hash rate very tightly connected to
Starting point is 01:19:38 energy like you get I think it starts with energy I think the first merchants important merchants that will lead to mass adoption are energy producers like not your bodega yes it would be cool if your bodega didn't accept Bitcoin
Starting point is 01:19:54 talking about when we're talking about like bitcoin's competitive competitiveness and the macroeconomic involvement is there's always this evocation of this future where like people will just the system will fail on some level and they'll like you know people will have to flood into the bitcoin system there's some part of the analogy that's always used where this is the this is the construct and i'm just saying like i just i don't accept that construct it's it's failing but it's not evenly distributed right i agree like it failed in russia it failed in in ottawa Like it's, it's like kind of like falling apart and the cracks are showing the, the water is seeping out.
Starting point is 01:20:29 And for, again, those who have the asymmetric, like the information, information, asymmetric, asymmetrical advantage, you know, they're taking advantage of it. A lot of people are losers in this process. Obviously it's painful, but like, I don't know. I always zoom out, man. Like, it's not like I'm, I don't think that you're wrong. I just like, I mean, the Soviet union lasted for how long? Close to a hundred years.
Starting point is 01:20:51 then you get into the whole information like yes there is asymmetrical information distribution right now however the capacity for information spread via the digital world accelerates the pace of things like the Soviet Union lasting as long as it did maybe you can make the argument it was due to the facilities to or the ability to facilitate information transfer was much slower The logic of violence is changing. Shout out to the sovereign individual. But I agree. People had to sneak books into the Soviet Union
Starting point is 01:21:27 to actually get subversive ideas in, where today somebody can link in a Tor VPN and access it. Yeah, I feel like there's the thing where, you know, your proximity to information also biases your thought on that information. So right now as Bitcoiners, we're like sort of very biased towards this macroeconomic data. But I find a lot of it fascinating. I read the deep dive.
Starting point is 01:21:49 I think a lot of the stuff that you lay out is very interesting. I think that we ascribe a lot of meaning to this data. And the issue is not with the data, it's not with the theory, because I think the theory can be correct. I think that there can be long-term problems with the fiat system. I think that that doesn't really necessarily always equate it to immediate or even short-term issues. You just might see that not materialize.
Starting point is 01:22:12 And then you have to change your whole thesis. I mean, we've seen it time and time again in the Bitcoin stock to float. Well, look, that was something that six months ago, everybody accepted that. I'm so happy I never pushed Dr. Flow. And now it's like that guy is the biggest pariah. He'll never be allowed back
Starting point is 01:22:31 anywhere. What is the legacy of Plan B and Stop the Flow model? It's not good. It's not going to be good. Fantastic propaganda. Oh my God. There's great hope at the 3K bottom. Yeah. And I have big
Starting point is 01:22:47 trust in the Bitcoin process. I have the biggest trust in the Bitcoin process. Like everyone's hating about Plan B. Like y'all, Plan B orange-pilled so many fucking people. Plan B created a framework for people to understand- Did he or did he? Or did he give them unrealistic expletations that were not delivered on? Whatever. This is hyper-Bitcoinization. Now people have bad taste in that. Yeah, maybe, but this is the process. It's
Starting point is 01:23:08 just the process. And like people need framing. People need, like, people need to be moved into the direction of the Bitcoin- we're constantly crowing about the system failing and then over years the system doesn't fail like at some point you need the system to actually fail to be correct no i mean the system has failed it already failed most people just haven't recognized it that's the uh objectively like yep i mean my life seems all right i'm walking around i'm like i ate at a a restaurant this morning. I went to a coffee shop.
Starting point is 01:23:46 Check your financial privilege. Yeah, wait, talk about Lebanon and how life was seemingly fine and falling apart simultaneously. Yeah, one of the weird things about it, so I went to Lebanon, they're experiencing hyperinflation, right? Like their dollar is actively being devalued
Starting point is 01:24:01 against pretty much everything. And the thing about hyperinflation that I experienced was that it seems very normal. It's like all the same stuff is there. Everybody has the same relationship to each other. You go into a restaurant, people are eating at restaurants.
Starting point is 01:24:12 it's not a humanitarian crisis there's not people in the streets who are dying all of a sudden under hyperinflation it's very different it's a frog boiling in water though life is getting progressively worse supply chains are breaking down and it will continue to get worse
Starting point is 01:24:27 and it will become a humanitarian crisis but at least in the short term you're able to live under extreme hyperinflation without really any disruption in your daily life human beings can deal with extreme situations like the COVID lockdowns Or an example of that.
Starting point is 01:24:43 I think this is a question of time horizon, right? Like, yes, day-to-day life, you may be able to go to a restaurant, you may be able to have some laughs, have some beers with your friends, but over time, I think the system has failed people, families, individuals
Starting point is 01:25:01 who probably could have had a better life. And they need an alternative, but they think the alternative is, almost unanimously, they think the alternative is to go to the U.S. dollar. And I think what is very interesting is that even the Bitcoiners there, because they're effectively debanked, they are buyers of the crypto economy first. They have to buy Tether. Even the people who want to stack sats and buy Bitcoin there, they have to purchase US dollar stablecoins and then convert them to Bitcoin on exchange because they're debanked.
Starting point is 01:25:29 So if that's the situation today, the situation of hyperinflation is that people who are debanked have to buy Tether in order to have financial access to Bitcoin. and those people still prefer the dollar, then I would say that Bitcoin is in a somewhat weaker position than it could be within that environment. Okay, I mean, I hate that fucking argument because you have to look at it at the spectrum. So here is this massive spectrum of liquidity. Bitcoin is number 20 amongst all fiat currencies.
Starting point is 01:26:00 Let's have this conversation when Bitcoin's number eight. It's actually the sixth largest. But as long as the volatility continues to range with Bitcoin, as long as it is very volatile, people who are looking to for alternatives to volatility are always going to want something that is not volatile you always going to want the thing that the world is priced in but guess what soon that's going to be fucking sad because it's actually stable and i mean again like you have to like take these things into the context whereas like we live in a dollar world obviously fucking
Starting point is 01:26:28 permissionless dollars are going to be preferable people do not they're like literally their mental operating system is the dollar it's actually ridiculous to expect them to not like default to their mental operating system which is why i'm so empathetic to people who are on their journey to getting onto the bitcoin standard because like that's a freaking journey you have to question so many aspects of your how your mind operates your incentives how you were taught you you got to fucking burn it down you got first you got to find a window to like to bridge it and then you got to walk that bridge and then you got to
Starting point is 01:27:06 burn the bridge on the other side like those are significant steps before you're on the Bitcoin operating system you might also you might say that
Starting point is 01:27:12 it's very early in Bitcoin we're fucking early I mean population divided by 21 million we're fucking early but simultaneously the system is on
Starting point is 01:27:20 a verge of collapse and will benefit tremendously well let's see again I think that's I think that hey they're not using their fiat
Starting point is 01:27:27 well no it's like it's not a fair dig at Bitcoin right like they're separate and mutually exclusive from each other to a certain extent
Starting point is 01:27:36 the failure of the fiat system and bitcoin maybe bitcoin success depends on that a little bit but bitcoin is not contributing to the failure of the fiat system I don't think that was my assertion I think all I was trying to say is that I think that
Starting point is 01:27:52 we're able to I'm just playing around with the kind of framing here I'm really glad that Rizzo's not drinking I don't know what I would be saying if I was drunk grab a beer sir probably just be very what do you think the perfect framing or not perfect framing
Starting point is 01:28:11 I don't think there is a perfect framing per se I think that you can challenge framing and you can ask about framing this is again I think people traffic in absolutes they want to be a bitcoiner all the time they want to like you know be a republican all the time people like these like mental constructs that they just find very comforting they want to think that the world
Starting point is 01:28:28 is going to collapse Dylan what do you think I think the world is going to collapse yeah but look i mean like major religions have been saying that for years i mean this is a part of their operating system as well like right like the i i'm i'm catholic you know i'm supposed to believe that at any moment the world could end and the divine the rapture is a rapture you know everyone will be judged but that's that's not how everyone is judged at every every moment of every day right but i'm just saying like that's a good example of like what's incorrect about
Starting point is 01:29:03 their thesis than, you know, and do we take them as, so you're like, obviously because there has been no fall of civilization over 2,000 years, we take Christianity's message of, you know, there being a rapture
Starting point is 01:29:13 less seriously. So we're promising a financial rapture. I mean, civilization has fallen. It's degenerate. I don't think Bitcoin needs a financial rapture. I think we need to get,
Starting point is 01:29:25 we need to spell that. I think it's outrageous. I don't think it does either. That's what I was trying to get to. I don't think Bitcoin needs it. Obviously it doesn't. we're using it right now so without that like the communism and capitalism remained alongside together for a while yes to this day yeah still to this day i don't know i mean i feel like central
Starting point is 01:29:48 banking is a mark is a marxist i mean yeah sure we're still we're still grappling with the fact that we have centralizing institutions but like economic uh calculations via central coordination like there was a battle the battle was concluded obviously you know our says i mean right now our position with china is the weakest that it's been in decades and i mean you could say that china is also shooting themselves in the foot by you know by moving away from the free market uh philosophies that made them relevant again all i'm trying to say is that like there was this battle these two these two uh side-by-side systems did exist simultaneously and it fell apart because one system was much better at
Starting point is 01:30:33 allocating capital and I just think that like they do currently coexist I think that there's like this reemergence through the corruption of centralized institutions that has you know creating a in one one quarter of the world's population lives in a communist country
Starting point is 01:30:48 like you know one seventh okay a totalitarian country I don't know if they're actually communist well that's actually I guess that's a yeah with China it's like the weird particularly in Bitcoin for me somebody who grew up like hearing
Starting point is 01:31:02 China's communist communist communist it's very interesting that in my opinion the most capitalistic
Starting point is 01:31:09 part of Bitcoin today has been the Chinese mining community like by by far like it's like
Starting point is 01:31:17 how are they the most capitalistic well those those guys were people who grew up with Western values right and they broke from their culture
Starting point is 01:31:24 and they ultimately paid a very heavy price because they all got kicked out of the country a lot of them so I think like I think the Chinese old Chinese miners
Starting point is 01:31:31 a lot of them left their country and are doing very good here in the United States sure I agree yeah but I think those guys are hardcore
Starting point is 01:31:38 and like that's the kind of you know to ask Bitcoin asked them to endure that hardship and they did yeah like this
Starting point is 01:31:44 like this machine like the Camry the Camry of Bitcoin miners yeah it wasn't that long ago that like these were some of the
Starting point is 01:31:54 most maligned people by the Bitcoiners in the west yeah Chinese miners yeah I mean I again I honestly think
Starting point is 01:32:01 that Bitcoiners don't know what is good for Bitcoin hey I've been I like to think I've been very well everything is good
Starting point is 01:32:09 for Bitcoin yeah no but like when it comes to like Bitcoiners don't admit that they think a lot of things are bad for Bitcoin I need to say something
Starting point is 01:32:15 that Dylan would like I think when it comes to like giving the Chinese mining industry like props where props are due I like to think that
Starting point is 01:32:25 I mean they built that without any venture capital they built it all themselves they out-competed literally all the rest of the world mining companies yeah
Starting point is 01:32:32 so I think like one of my favorite dichotomy stories is that you know Silicon Valley goes and invests all these millions in 21.co you know
Starting point is 01:32:40 Silicon Valley like has Intel building mining chips for them in 2014 they have this huge like advantage right they have the best
Starting point is 01:32:48 American manufacturer who's just today entering the market making their chips this is 2014 and then they go and they totally like totally lose
Starting point is 01:32:56 that opportunity to a bunch of Chinese kids who like grew up in like rural nowhere who like you know build mining build mining facilities
Starting point is 01:33:02 with three fucking walls yeah you know like don't have don't have a ceiling there you got 15 people like sleeping around the mine and they rose to like
Starting point is 01:33:11 actually like they ran the game yeah they had 60% of their network hash rate until last year yeah so I think those guys
Starting point is 01:33:19 like talking about getting a raw deal I think they really went all out for the coin but at the same time they knew they went all out and they felt like
Starting point is 01:33:29 the coin owed them something to some degree and I'm not trying to like I'm not trying to throw that on all miners but there is definitely a cohort within the Bcash realm
Starting point is 01:33:38 I think I think the most underrated of the Chinese Zed is Wang Chun who's like within the pantheon
Starting point is 01:33:45 of Bitcoiners like I would say like top 10 top 15 yeah top 10 he might be the he might be the number one Coinbase
Starting point is 01:33:51 message troll of all time oh yeah that stuff which has been fantastic and then also his undermining of Gion
Starting point is 01:33:58 and the activation of Segwit on Litecoin, which was all Wayne Chung. I think Wayne Chung, but he's somebody nobody knows about, right? He's happy about that. His boss freaking won Bitcoin donation to Luke Dash Jr. It was pretty badass.
Starting point is 01:34:15 What was it? $9,999 change transaction. He gave him one Bitcoin, zero fees, mined it with his own pool, gave himself back $9,900 Bitcoin. at statoshi
Starting point is 01:34:31 on twitter if you're looking to help somebody that is the western perspective does definitely perturb our view
Starting point is 01:34:43 of what bitcoin is what it has been how we think of ourselves in the context of it like I think like the stablecoin thing that was a very hard thing and still is
Starting point is 01:34:55 for a lot of people who consider themselves like hardcore bitcoiners systemic it's like you have to recognize that oh right now it's serving a needed onboarding function both for bitcoiners and developing a world and also for people who are not just straight access to dollars yeah it's needed yeah well that's the other question like is it actually access to dollars or just some synthetic that doesn't matter i mean are your dollars real are dollars in your bank real like the whole the whole system's how do you not square like you have
Starting point is 01:35:23 this like perfect model of like the credit system but then like you know nobody really cares if any this stuff is real like literally the stable coins like nobody cares that they're really backed so the market still operates like you know
Starting point is 01:35:34 that's the whole the whole system is the same shit this is why this is why Bitcoin will ultimately allocate capital better that's the end of the game
Starting point is 01:35:43 is Bitcoin will allocate capital much fucking better than the fiat system and therefore that's why everyone will migrate it to it because
Starting point is 01:35:50 they will have fun staying poor otherwise it's kind of funny I mean like someone I think a hedge fund just took on like a four billion dollar short of Tether
Starting point is 01:35:56 they like borrowed oh yeah that was super weird they like got USDC was it Ackland I don't know I don't think so
Starting point is 01:36:04 I forget who it was I saw that the other day but like yeah let me finish they just borrowed they borrowed four billion dollars of Tether
Starting point is 01:36:11 somehow sold it and bought USDC or another how did they benefit from that trade though if Tether
Starting point is 01:36:18 if Tether collapses then they cover their shorts and profit the difference yeah the peg breaks but the whole Tether like reserves
Starting point is 01:36:26 like I think people severely discount the fact that Bitfinex tether company was holding Bitcoin in the reserves right they started holding Bitcoin in the reserves like at a way
Starting point is 01:36:42 lower price well this is why like on the paper all the gox people could be yeah but that's a whole nother cluster wait no oh yeah well in the US dollar set in the u.s dollar sense yeah yeah like i think i'm contrarian in the world right now uh i think
Starting point is 01:37:03 tether is probably like over reserved so i just feel like this is one of the biggest differences between the bitcoin system and the beyond system and cryptocurrency system that we don't talk about whereas like bitcoin is very logical like it needs to add up and it has this mathematical certainty and then the rest of the system is just like there's just it can just operate on anything like literally it doesn't have to make any sense and like how is that not a strategic advantage for that system but I can just literally wipe this like
Starting point is 01:37:28 because it works until it doesn't right there's but see there are trade-offs Pete and it exists within a world where Bitcoin also exists
Starting point is 01:37:36 and then you have to weigh the cap and out the the advantages and disadvantages within capital allocation like there's no
Starting point is 01:37:44 so like there's no current equation that sums up why life in the universe exists like you can't math that out so therefore the universe
Starting point is 01:37:51 exists in a way that is like mathematically improbable like we don't know how to define that so then why does that why should that apply to
Starting point is 01:37:57 it's a good catholic I want to thank you god it's been a lot of religious big ups in this conversation oh man I mean hey
Starting point is 01:38:04 there's a lot of like kind of religious kind of trends that emerge within bitcoin I said the universe and the fiat system
Starting point is 01:38:11 are both infinitely expanding it's just a question of how fast they're expanding when they dissipate yeah like is the fiat system
Starting point is 01:38:22 just the universe on another scale yes i win it's not it's not no everything is math yeah it's all fractals except the universe the universe is fractals rosa maybe bitcoin was the one equation for the universe wow you're all that's bullish i knew that tweet it tweet it tweet it maybe it was einstein's equation for the world let's get cosmic yeah i just felt like we had to push that there because that was expected of us. I'd probably get like
Starting point is 01:38:54 10,000 likes on Twitter. Can I just say that this might be the only podcast where no one addressed the freaks on TFTC. So. Make up to the freaks.
Starting point is 01:39:02 Kind of a disappointment. Wait what do you mean? I already did. I said what's up freaks. Oh. Well none of us did. What up freaks. Hey.
Starting point is 01:39:11 Sorry for the bearish stuff I guess. I thought we were going to talk about Bitcoin magazine and then it's just the Rizzo bear diaries. I plugged it.
Starting point is 01:39:19 I plugged it. I was trying to plug it. I was talking about the comedians that we're having and the celebrities. That's the conference. Derek Zoolander was like the beautiful celebrity. Fuck the celebrities. The best things about the conference
Starting point is 01:39:33 is the fact that there's going to be 30,000 fucking Bitcoiners coming together in one place. The fact that these celebrities are there, that's because they're serving us so they can get down on their knees and continue to They're serving us. They're serving the Bitcoiners.
Starting point is 01:39:48 We are really important and they want to entertain our demographics so I was talking with Pierre yesterday about this I was like I think what we could do is like do you think it's still too late for us to get
Starting point is 01:39:57 the Guinness Book of World Records we can do the world's largest smash buy we can just have 20,000 people smash buy I think Cash App
Starting point is 01:40:03 would love that we tried that at Bitcoin 2019 and the price immediately went but like you know you get 20,000 people just smash buy
Starting point is 01:40:11 you bring Sailor on the stage and he smash buys on Cash App he just smash buys 10,000 Bitcoin the crowd would like be really into it
Starting point is 01:40:20 I think we should put it into the programming. Let's hit up P. Hey, we started the Smash Buy in 2019. It has to be a... In the programming, we're going to credit Marty and Matt and just say like... Guinness World Records. Smash Buy in honor of TFTC 2019.
Starting point is 01:40:36 What a funny entry where it's like, largest cryptocurrency smash buy. Honestly, that's how we get hyper-Bitcoinization is we orange pill people via that record. Right. We don't have any records in there, I don't think. Is there a Bitcoin record in there? You don't want to get a book of records.
Starting point is 01:40:54 I mean, it's a long blockchain of human achievement. It's the longest running blockchain of human achievement. I don't know about that. Remember buying the Guinness Book of World Records as a kid? Yeah, I mean, kids love that stuff. You got to get them while they're young.
Starting point is 01:41:12 Speaking of getting them while they're young, I want to bring it up. When we were at Cooper's last night, gentleman we were with noticed the kid had to be like 13 years old and he was like
Starting point is 01:41:25 buying NFTs and just like asked some questions and I wanted to bring this up because I was like alright what do the youth think of this like are they even
Starting point is 01:41:31 thinking of Bitcoin and I was asking this guy he was like why are you buying these NFTs he was like oh because celebrities are talking about them
Starting point is 01:41:37 he was like do you like it like why do you get into NFTs he was like oh I want to get into investing this kid's like 13
Starting point is 01:41:43 and he was like do you own it what cryptocurrencies he's like yeah just nfts and eth he's like don't have any bitcoin it's like no so that made me wonder how is gen z viewing the stuff i mean i think you know the answer and i think it's very unfavorable yeah yeah but doesn't matter i think well we have a a gen z right here yeah yeah i mean we have no capital so i mean like i mean this kid was slanging at nfts last night yeah his parents capital i mean i've i've orange pilled quite quite a lot uh of my fellow zoomers but you know
Starting point is 01:42:22 more broadly it's definitely more of a crypto focus yeah for better or worse y'all like i don't think bitcoiners need to be concerned about the the crypto focus like this is the crypto focus is like an incremental step to bitcoining it's just i'm not concerned about i'm just like interested as kids yeah stupid kids gonna listen to celebrities
Starting point is 01:42:43 get burnt gonna grow up buy bitcoin or work part of the process or have fun they will work for bitcoin
Starting point is 01:42:51 sure just like the celebrities are gonna serve us at the conference what do we solve during this conversation are we solving anything we learned that
Starting point is 01:43:02 bitcoin has solved the universal equation the world is ending buy bitcoin yeah or the only way to save the planet is by buying Bitcoin
Starting point is 01:43:11 which I endorse that message it's one or the other it's both it's both no what are you going to anchor yourself to
Starting point is 01:43:17 is like blocks are produced if you want to send a transactional likely get included in a block but you can't think about the price can't try to time
Starting point is 01:43:25 the fiat world either like I remember 2013 2014 when I first got into Bitcoin I was making my wife cry at brunches
Starting point is 01:43:33 she was my girlfriend then we were long distance she'd come to Chicago and I'd just like lock myself in a room that week like learning about Bitcoin
Starting point is 01:43:41 she shows up and I nobody to vent about my Bitcoin views on and then we go to brunch and she'd be crying by the end because I'd be like it's all gonna fall
Starting point is 01:43:50 it's like around your age like oh man it's like it's all gonna break down the map doesn't add up it's
Starting point is 01:43:58 it's literally a pond dude it's like people are gonna be starving so like thinking like I've been there yeah
Starting point is 01:44:06 see the thing is is that none of that none of that's gonna happen because Bitcoin exists so we'll be alright we'll be alright fam
Starting point is 01:44:13 this is a comment more towards like alright you can think like the world's ending but it's not I just think the world has a long history of not ending
Starting point is 01:44:22 that we need to acknowledge yeah this conversation we are here I second that the world's not gonna end and yeah
Starting point is 01:44:31 we're gonna keep innovating with Bitcoin so that's why we there's hope yes there is who's that looking it's Jimmy Song Jimmy
Starting point is 01:44:38 me yeah he wants your attention okay yeah y'all as someone who's gonna completely dethrone austin it's pretty impressive pretty fucking impressive how many uh how many bitcoiners we've been just rubbing shoulders with by being here so the bitcoin comments pretty chill place yes sir pretty chill place so marty i think we have to have a bet oh god i i think if an austinian moves to nashville then i need to get some stats and then if the nashvillian moves to austin then uh then I can pay you out some sats. No, I'm not making that bet. No confidence.
Starting point is 01:45:11 Because all it takes is one. No confidence. We need like a list of people. I mean, verified Bitcoiner. Huh. What is a Bitcoiner? Don't talk to Pete Rizzo. That was some Pete Rizzo bullshit.
Starting point is 01:45:25 There are Bitcoiners. I'm 100% correct about that. There are Bitcoiners. You can identify as a Bitcoin all the time. There are no Bitcoiners. You can identify as a Bitcoiner. I don't think anybody's moving to Nashville. I don't like that bet
Starting point is 01:45:38 no confidence it's just not exciting enough I need to be thrilled if I'm going to bet Matt always has the worst bets too you know we can bet on them shaving their mustaches who does it first
Starting point is 01:45:57 that's a good one who's going to shave their mustache first Dylan what was it like being a openly mustached Bitcoiner it was great got a lot of got a lot of compliments not really
Starting point is 01:46:14 it was a pretty bad mustache yeah it was yeah it was my first committed committed stache but mom wasn't a fan my wife makes me
Starting point is 01:46:25 like I'll do the same where I'll grow my beard and then I'll shave it all but my stache and I'll walk out and she's like honestly you could you could rock it
Starting point is 01:46:33 you could rock the fireman policeman look we're getting deep into the fantasies here I gotta take a piss should we keep it going and I'll come back bitcoin 2022 in 22 days go to b.tc
Starting point is 01:46:55 slash conference it's airing right now so 23 days I just got an email No, there's going to be like a live broadcast. Oh, yes. Yes. Do you want to be on the news desk?
Starting point is 01:47:08 Yeah, was I not supposed to mention that? No, that's great. Yeah, I'll do it. I'm going to sit there for two hours and just talk about what's going on. No, y'all, if you're not going to be there, watch the live stream. But if you can be there, you need to. Bitcoin 22 is an investment in yourself, truly. I mean, it is fun getting together with Bitcoiners.
Starting point is 01:47:29 and you can arbitrage dollars by spending them on the conference that's true or you can give us Bitcoin and get a 30% discount and you can be part of
Starting point is 01:47:37 the Guinness Book of World record breaking record smash I wonder how hard they must have somebody on standby right like in case
Starting point is 01:47:44 something happens we should coordinate that urgently some sort of record right like how do you know we'll put you on the task you could probably
Starting point is 01:47:52 look at book order a cash app probably has that data yeah they would like to be in there it's a good sponsor perk you got you in the Guinness Book of Records
Starting point is 01:48:01 thank you Cash App also sponsor the pod not right now but we'll get it back well you shouldn't have smashed by god damn yeah
Starting point is 01:48:10 Cash App's a very very fun partner of TFTC the Bitcoin 2022 man I can send you some of the Bitcoin that I that I purchased making a transaction that thereby increases the health of the network
Starting point is 01:48:28 yeah well again we did the smash buy 2019 obviously it wasn't as many people there but we went into
Starting point is 01:48:36 a two year bear market after that well that's not good we were in the midst of a bear market no we were we were going up to $14,000
Starting point is 01:48:46 back yeah I mean that was that was pretty much all plus plus token was it plus token I think like
Starting point is 01:48:52 they started dumping so yeah we smashed buy and then we went we didn't hit the bottom until March 12th honestly
Starting point is 01:49:00 Bitcoin 2019 was really special like we're we're all hanging out there watching talks and then every single time a talk was over the price would come back up
Starting point is 01:49:08 and it'd be like a thousand dollars more I found out I was having a my wife was pregnant with my son at Bitcoin 2019 went on to go do a
Starting point is 01:49:17 do a panel discussion with Dhruv Unsolved from Unchained and Zach Prince from BlockFi and right before I walk on stage
Starting point is 01:49:25 my wife's like I'm pregnant I was like what the fuck I'm about to go on stage for the first time in front of a couple thousand people that's awesome thanks I was like up there like trying to talk about multistick I was like oh fuck I'm gonna get dead
Starting point is 01:49:37 well cheers to you man that's amazing thank you yeah I mean it was an amazing event and honestly like looking back it's just incredible to see going from like you know 1800 people to like now we're talking about 20,000 people
Starting point is 01:49:55 plus uh and i mean as much as like i would want to take credit for like making a big event in a great event like it's really like the bitcoiners that need to take credit because like back then the bitcoin industry could only support 1800 people at a conference and now you know we're talking about the bitcoin industry can support 30 000 people at the conference and i mean like we couldn't do like that's not us like that's the bitcoin industry so i think it's like it's really we exist to serve people who are
Starting point is 01:50:26 interested in Bitcoin and who may identify as Bitcoin speaking about serving you aren't serving seed oils at this conference are you I mean sure why not
Starting point is 01:50:33 not that I plan on but I mean there's going to be a lot of food trucks there can't make any promises here comes Rizzo in the case of why seed oils are good
Starting point is 01:50:41 I don't know anything about seed oils I just respect canola oil is good for you why do I want to even take the time to interface with
Starting point is 01:50:48 that argument for your health why did that even come up Marty are you concerned about seed oils seed oils is my favorite meme right
Starting point is 01:50:55 like meat I like vegetables I like things that don't fall into those categories I'll eat whatever okay I mean I'm drinking
Starting point is 01:51:02 beer right now is there any seed oils in China there's wheat there's wheat I put the seed anti-seed oil stuff like up there with
Starting point is 01:51:12 the tungsten cubes there's no they're completely different they're the same tungsten tungsten is a shit coin
Starting point is 01:51:19 keep sacking stats freaks all right we'll see you guys at Bitcoin 2022 I'm about to piss myself read Bitcoin magazine we definitely don't want
Starting point is 01:51:28 to end the episode with that that would be really bleak it's going to be worth it right guys what this life
Starting point is 01:51:38 Bitcoin the conference I'm kidding absolutely Jesus Christ I mean we've all been there we know how it's going to be we haven't even really got into the
Starting point is 01:51:48 you know air market yet you can't be saying shut up no I mean you can't be questioning the worth of it there's absolutely
Starting point is 01:51:56 no question in my mind that if you don't invest in yourself and buy a conference ticket you know at least you can buy bitcoin but you're gonna be regretful
Starting point is 01:52:05 where can we buy conference tickets b.tc forward slash conference and what code should they be what would you say to people who would rather take that money
Starting point is 01:52:12 and stack sats it's fine watch it on live stream so you're not gonna make it Marty's literally about to piss himself right now let's make this take longer I'm actually good at holding my pee.
Starting point is 01:52:23 I can hold my pee. You're not going to make an argument that they should buy conference tickets over Bitcoin. Well, they just hate themselves. It's fine. Hey, I bought chairs for this studio. I'm sitting in a chair. You can't replace the experience of the conference,
Starting point is 01:52:38 even with sets. Sure. I honestly think going to the conference is going to help you make more sets and hang out with more Bitcoiners. So I encourage it. Well, I mean, a story that I heard recently, last year Natalie Brunel was there
Starting point is 01:52:50 handing out t-shirts for coin stories like literally showed up bought a ticket as an attendee like doing her own merch and now she's going to be on the main stage
Starting point is 01:52:59 at the Bitcoiner she got involved she got on Peter McCormick's podcast did a podcast with McCormick and the rest is history
Starting point is 01:53:07 dreams are made at Bitcoin in 2022 well that dream was made at Bitcoin 2021 new dreams at the Bitcoin conference
Starting point is 01:53:16 it doesn't matter what year that's for sure alright b.tc slash conference come join some fellow Bitcoiners we're going to smash by into the Guinness Book of World Records
Starting point is 01:53:26 it's going to be it's going to be incredible gentlemen let's go have a night alright cheers Marty thanks peace and love

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