TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Tales from the Crypt #113: Michael Caras AKA The Bitcoin Rabbi

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

Join Marty as he sits down with Michael Caras AKA The Bitcoin Rabbi, Author of Bitcoin Money: A Tale of Bitville Discovering Good Money, to discuss: - Writing Bitcoin Money - Michael's journey to Bitcoin - Charity - Gold's future - much more Check out Michael on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebitcoinrabbi Shoutout to this week's sponsors. Cash App. Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today. Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app. Casa. Use promo code “TFTC” to get up to $250 off your Casa membership … or hit their team up [e-mail] for a free demo, or to put them to the test with your hardest OpSec questions! Subscribe to our YouTube channel: tftc.tv Contribute to the show: https://tftc.io/contribute/

What is up, freaks? It's your boy Marty Bent here to introduce this week's episode of Tales from the Crypt with Michael Karras, a.k.a. the Bitcoin Rabbi. We sat down last week on a rainy afternoon, had a great, incredible conversation about how I got into Bitcoin, the importance of family, a bunch of other stuff. It's a great conversation. You freaks are going to enjoy it. This week's episode of Tales from the Crypt is brought to you by the Cash App. As you know, Cash App is the simplest way to send and save money. And now it's the simplest way to grow your money. Introducing Cash App Investing. Unlike investing tools that only let you buy entire shares of stock,

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you have any questions if you want to go check out the site keys.casa slash keymaster for their multi-sig tiers all right freaks enjoy this episode with the bitcoin rabbi uh we had again we had a great incredible conversation a great perspective on bitcoin and uh uh enjoy what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt it's your boy marty bent here on a tuesday afternoon rainy tuesday afternoon late october uh here to celebrate the one year twitter anniversary of our guest uh michael karras aka the bitcoin rabbi welcome to the pod hey thanks so much for having me glad to be here thanks for coming by you're on a little press tour right now just came from the new york stock exchange yeah i try i live uh upstate so

when i come to the city i try and you know make all the connections and hit up all the hot spots all the hot bitcoin spots so got the the uh tales from the crypt podcast i've got the new york stock exchange you know go out for dinner with some bitcoiners tonight all the important uh places to be in the city pack day trifecta what was it like on the stock exchange was that your first time yeah first time there um it was actually pretty quiet uh you know the you know the movie version of the stock exchange is a bunch of people running around and yelling at each other and it was just like pretty pretty uh low-key and just like a bunch of new studios around so we were on one of the little studios that was like on a perch like overlooking it and we just like did a

10-minute clip um i it was a woman that i met i was at the crypto springs conference in palm springs last month. And so I met someone there who does the show and she said, you know, you're in New York whenever you're there, come by and, and we'll do a little show. So it was fun. It was a nice experience. Yeah. It looked like a good time. And the funny, you mentioned that like the stock exchanges, uh, empty these days. And we were, uh, before we hit record, we took a nice little walk to the bodega, do a little pre-interview conversation. Uh, and we talked about how I used to work in Chicago and the futures fund. And I worked with a lot of people used to work on the chicago board of trade which is like the most infamous trade floor of people like screaming

at each other just like in a packed mess um and the traders that i worked with in like 2011 to 2014 just talked so nostalgically about the days uh of the floor being lively like that now it's all computers and computers it's probably quiet because computers can't yell at each other yeah they're speaking in bits yeah i've never seen anything uh you know i just know from movies and stuff but i don't not that's not my background at all like any kind of uh stock or trading or finance or anything they were they were originally going to ask me um about like the dc fin georgetown fintech conference going on now and i was like i have no idea like i'll i just i'm just a rabbi who likes bitcoin like i don't know about that like i heard the guy from ripple's gonna be there

so let's jump into this you're just a rabbi who's got into bitcoin what's your journey man how did you become a rabbi how did you find bitcoin what draws you to bitcoin why did you write a book about it a children's book particular yeah so um i mean i was raised really uh like not very religious like basically traditional um but not our family was not super into it uh as a teenager um i liked a lot of different things i liked uh you know uh economics i found like uh um milton friedman and like thomas soul and like i was really liked that kind of uh uh free market like libertarian thought like you know that's a something that can speak to a lot of people from a lot of different uh backgrounds like why don't we all just let each other do what you want and

because we're all different and so I really like that a lot um but I also uh liked uh I wanted uh some kind of like meaning and for me I was looking and finding a meaning I didn't find it in like my kind of non-traditional synagogue I looked into like uh eastern religions a bit uh like to see what they had to offer. And, uh, I really liked the, um, both like spiritual aspect and the practice of, uh, Orthodox Judaism. So that spoke to me. I decided that I wanted to study this. I moved to Israel and I, uh, went to rabbinical school for four years. I, you know, did all my studies there. And when I came, I was actually planning on living in Israel, but my brother lives there and, uh, he, my, I've got one older brother and, uh, I ended up coming back

to New York where I met my wife. And I've just been like a rabbi. You know, I don't have like my own synagogue, like we have a senior rabbi. And there are a lot of junior rabbis, you could say, but I do teach, like I'm a rabbi as a teacher for Jewish day school. And I give classes like adult classes. And so that's what I do. My, my wife is a graphic designer. And so I kind of work with her also so i got into like web design graphic design and so i've always kind of had this tech so i have like my rabbinical studies like jewish you know spiritual uh interest uh i liked economics and like free market and liberty and then i also like technology like i've always been like an apple fan boy and uh when i found out about bitcoin like very late uh i was just

like i jumped on it like it took me so short from hearing about bitcoin to like being fully uh blown into it uh actually i just heard a joke today i'll tell you that it fit very right someone said uh i'm i'm i fell into a quicksand i'm up to my ankles in it well that doesn't sound so bad yeah but i fell in head first so yeah so that's basically uh me that i like fell in hard and what uh what what drew you in uh so my older brother just like you know in 2017 lots of people anyone who was like tangentially connected to like technology or investment or that like everyone was getting in so my brother just would like mention it and he's like yeah look into bitcoin you know this uh and i i've looked into bitcoin i looked into everything else and i was like none of these

make sense to me but bitcoin makes a lot of sense to me and i just you know i started telling my wife about it and was like this is life-changing like this is world-changing and uh like a week of like you know hitting uh Andreas Antonopoulos videos pretty hard and then like that was when a lot of podcasts were starting to pick up also so like I absorbed like everything that I could uh you know at the end of 2017 and throughout 2018 as well so like the whole time the price was going down I was still people just kept saying like you still into that you still into that and I was like, yeah, really, more now than I was before. And, you know, because when you're looking at, like, the non-log chart,

the, what is it called? The linear chart. Yeah, linear chart. You don't see the whole, you don't realize, and you just saw it went just up, and you're like, hey, you don't realize that it's been going up and down and up and down, you know, when you look at it that way. So when you zoom out and you see, like, oh, Bitcoin goes up

and then it goes down, and, like, then you can kind of calm down as you go through your first bear market. Yeah, no, I think Trace Mayer was the one who really helped me conceptualize this. The fact that if you look at it in a log chart, Bitcoin moves like a lockstep nature, right? Yeah, and especially in the halving four-year cycle. That's what Preston Pish talked about. So that was like, one thing about coming into Bitcoin, which also I found similar about like going to rabbinical school,

is it's very humbling how many geniuses you meet, how many people are so smart. And whether it's in cryptography, in coding, in finance, in history, in all these things. And I just came into this field and realized there are so many smart people here from so many different fields. And they all realize that this is a powerful thing.

And so I was like, wow, it's humbling. So for the first year of being a year and a half, I just like sat back and listened so I was like a total anon like I don't think if I had it I hadn't maybe had an old twitter account with no followers and no tweets and stuff and I was just like soaking it in podcasts um I got to listen to your podcast into noted podcast and then uh after like a year I I started noticing connections between bitcoin and judaism things that some are like more meaningful some are kind of cute some jokes you know and i was like you know what i just want to like i've got a voice i've got a unique perspective i think people would like this so i

just started i was like i'll make the bitcoin rabbi and i took a picture of a bitcoin and uh and put like one of those black hats on it you might see guys walking around uh williamsburg and like a hat that i wear often myself uh and i was like that's it i'm a bitcoin rabbi let's see how this goes and i'm surprised like it's been exactly a year and i didn't think it would i didn't think people would be that interested but it's been the meeting people and talking to people and like being able to meet people like yourself and that's been like super fun and a great great time that's crazy like you mentioned like the the different walks of life that bitcoin attracts it's uh again it's inevitable right it's a tool that no matter what uh walk of life you come from you

can you can leverage and use right and it could be useful to you but i'm very uh interested to hear sort of the parallels uh with bitcoin and judaism that uh that you have noticed and and pay attention to yeah so it depends like really i talk to different groups so like when i'm talking to um orthodox jewish people that are interested in jewish law um i'll or like you know from the textual biblical stuff so i'll actually like go through and i've got a presentation i'll like look at uh different verses and different analysis of like abraham uses money i actually just quoted last uh from last week like gold i didn't even realize this i i knew in the back of my head but i only looked at it this uh this past week like gold is mentioned at the very beginning of the

torah the very beginning of the bible like there's just a random verse it's talking about the creation of the world and it's like and there's gold it's like it doesn't talk about copper it doesn't talk about silver it's just like people i know you're going to be interested in gold so like this idea of like the gold standard of you know that's an important thing money hard money is something that's like right at the beginning and then i actually had a really fascinating conversation in dms with nick sabo about um about like the development of silver how like it was used to be meant money was literally just weight and so there was like it was trustless because or mostly trustless because you weren't even dealing with coinage then coinage you just take it at face

value whatever it is and if the coins get clipped or if they get uh you know mixed with other metals but when you're dealing with like weights of silver and that's how early in the bible it talks about you know measure literally the word shekel which you might have heard before means a weight a measurement and it said it doesn't say you count out money it says you weigh out money so like they've developed but then later on even in the bible it starts talking about coins and start talking about coinage so like i go through that history um that's like actually can be relevant and like legal applications of like what is currency what is money so like when i'm talking to more advanced jewish crowds i'll kind of like focus on that and then when i'm talking like on

bitcoin twitter i'll like find something interesting like in the bible about that wherever just wherever finds money or wherever it talks about like uh anything not even like totally bitcoin related but like the bitcoin ethos of like uh you know personal sovereignty or of a low time preference or anything like that whatever fits in or possibly a carnivory way anything bitcoiners might be interested in i'll like try and find something that connects well uh i don't know if this episode will be posted before this date i think this uh this event will have come and passed by the time this is, uh, being, uh, published, but the, uh, November 1st, uh, fast for Satoshi day. Oh yeah. You were, uh, we were DMing and you were telling me that

there is, uh, some correlation, uh, or did you tweet it? I, I, I replied or something or whatever. So, yeah. So, uh, I thought it was great that you, uh, had the fast for Satoshi that, uh, you know, fast and then you said like that that uh religious people not only have religious fast but then they take that money and they donate it or something i know some people say you know tithe by selling your fiat for for bitcoin that's fine i also uh you know i'm a big proponent of good old-fashioned charity as well uh and uh but uh so that is there are actually several lots of people know the fast day of yom kippur which is like our major one but there are lots of minor fasts uh throughout uh that are like established and then people that can fast for their own personal you know spiritual or

health reasons as well and uh actually we were just talking about how there's just this week started a bitcoin fasting uh telegram chat started by katie anina which is just so funny there's just a lot of that one that's another thing i like about bitcoin i just it happens to me that i like a lot of things culturally and fit in culturally a lot with bitcoiners um and like that you know when you're dealing with a bitcoiner like you know that there are just certain things that you're gonna you know where they stand on some things right yeah and i know the the the the great question of is bitcoin a community uh there's definitely a there is a bitcoin community there maybe are many but like there's a bitcoiners uh you know some people call

the bitcoin pleb uh give me that kind of idea uh so i mean that's i it's mostly you know mostly what i do on bitcoin or on bitcoin twitter is like have fun i make jokes tell try to tell interesting uh uh you know stories or things but i also like um just to like be a face of somebody that is uh religious and also like different culturally because that bitcoin is growing and like there are going to be both for like that the bitcoin of the people have been here for a long time or that are maybe more traditionally like from the finance uh uh background or from the tech background to like know that this space is getting bigger and they're going to be a lot of different kinds of people coming in here and also for my community for the jewish community that

has seized bitcoin and maybe have uh either they don't know about it or they think like oh it's a bad thing and it's got like these uh bad uh uh connotations and you know they read the news and hear things and so i tell them like i do my presentation to synagogues and i say like is bitcoin kosher and i go through all the ways that uh you know that that it is and can be and you know it's a tool and a tool can be used for whatever good or bad you want it to be used for so that is uh i just like being a a face of like the growing the grown the grown community and growing user base of bitcoin no it's it's much appreciated i thought i mean the uh i can't believe it's only been a year that you've been on twitter uh i thought that was hilarious but i

think the the emergence of uh the bitcoin rabbi is great like it does like just objectively looking at it from an outsider's perspective it does uh like quickly make you think like huh yeah like rabbis are into bitcoin this is awesome like i can uh i can um have something in common with the rabbi and it's bitcoin and we can all this this can help a lot of people yeah a lot of backgrounds yeah so that uh that that is one thing that i do like to focus on is that like how if bitcoin is like a force for good globally that's what i believe i really think that it is uh something that's going to help uh you know i all these the whole crypto space is all of these sky high ideas of things but i think like plain and simple a bitcoin world with a hard money is

just going to be plain good for individuals families i don't know it's i don't think of at all as like a get rich but it's a just you know i don't remember who coined the term a not get poor you know just being able to save a little bit of money being able to know that your money is secure and like you look what's going on in lebanon uh this week and it's like banks are closed like it's a crazy thing to i mean we it's we're in america we think like everything's safe and god willing it'll all be safe and we'll be you know we could live just like and not worry about anything but as a jewish person i know our history i know the what uh jewish people have been through from world war ii and previous and that knowing that you can have your money your

little like slice of of of like of sovereignty and of hard money is is definitely like a comforting uh feeling um but so i i want to like yeah i like to focus on like the family like that bitcoin is for families it's not just like for young vc uh guys to get rich and like do 100 x's but just like some people who are trying to save for their kids futures uh and i think that's a uh a message that also a lot of people you know like to hear and like to see even if they're not like definitely nothing to do with like being specifically jewish or jewish focused i try to like make everything that i talk about relevant to everybody like all you know i could go in lots of different directions of what i'm going to focus on but i really want you know to be kind of like uh you know you connect

find what you connect on not what you are separated on no but even so like i really do appreciate the uh the religious perspective not even let's just not even specifically point out judaism but like a religious perspective on bitcoin like today's day and age we're talking about before we hit record like it seems like the world is uh our religion is dying the world may be losing its grip on religion or at least turning away from it especially here in america yeah kanye dropped jesus as king i know you haven't um i haven't heard that you haven't heard it yet but it is uh just as an outsider uh a kanye fan somebody who was raised catholic sort of uh got pretty jaded by the church and now in my approaching my 30s married uh thinking about

starting a family like thinking back maybe maybe religion and family values and the values that a lot of the world's religions preach isn't so bad and um i'm just interested to get your perspective of a man of the as a man of the faith what your thoughts on are like the modern state of religion especially in america yeah um it is it's definitely uh hard and i think the reason that it's hard is people do have a hard time um because of like the institutions and like having trust and having to like submit or or having to give up things um but religion doesn't have to be that it does rather belief or faith you know i think that i actually posted an article that i didn't write but i shared it that was like talking about the the tower of babel that it was

like what was so bad like they developed a new technology they realized that they were you know growing and they could make something uh great and it would be beneficial so like what's bad about that so it's that like they were doing it just for the sake of doing it like they didn't have a a human goal in mind or like a higher purpose it was just like advancement for the sake of advancement so i think with it like anybody who's a bitcoin hodler like anybody who's in this space and like what do you you have to kind of be thinking like what am i making this better for and so like you know for i i i posted once like uh you know bitcoiner without kids it's like i'm gonna be rich bitcoin are with kids like my grandchildren will have will have some bitcoin

like that's you know that's i think that like thinking about the about what the goals for the future and for mankind like what are we striving for like of trying to help each other care about each other and like even though i'm you know i'm jewish and i'm orthodox and so i like follow a pretty strict lifestyle of kosher and sabbath and a lot of different things but um there's actually like a misconception that like in judaism is has a very um utilitarian perspective of like what people what like it just means to be a good person and it actually is very nothing's coincidence but uh it it happens to be that it's actually in this week's torah portion with noah when noah who was actually pre-abraham so he was before the jewish religion before moses and all that so he's god's

talking to him and says like hey you know how to be a good person like don't kill people don't steal things you know take care of your family you know don't make idols out of out of creation of the world don't harm animals uh like be a good neighbor make a good world and these are like it's called the seven noahide laws it's it's really not like you don't have to commit yourself to like be this you know wear a cloak or do anything like that you can kind of just say you know i i want to live for a greater purpose outside of myself and outside of just like this my physical benefit so like you can do you know i know that you uh you know support charities i just saw i always thought it was uh owls al apostrophe yes i always thought it was

owls and then that's my philly that's my philly accent and then i saw it and i thought that was so nice i in where i grew up kids uh i grew up in maryland and lacrosse is like huge also in maryland i didn't play it i was a tennis player which i just had a great conversation with matt about uh that i i played tennis like my whole childhood not so much anymore these days i wish i had time for it it's hard to have time for much things outside of the house uh i have a lot of time for bitcoin because it's like in the house you know on your phone or just you know not uh active but when you have five kids and you're taking care of them and several jobs it's hard to like make it out i definitely need to do that um but like yeah do you know helping out other

people is something that whether it's in the name of religion or just faith or just caring about your fellow man uh it's something that i think people need to think about more having kids and having a family definitely brings that to your awareness so i'm very positive on uh family life i think it's i think it's good for all everybody no and i i agree completely and actually owls lacrosse um use the code stacking sats in the cash app if you haven't already get five dollars to owls lacrosse we actually i tweeted this out last night or a couple nights ago i caught up with uh sam angelato runs the program and was there i was probably one of the first volunteers when he started the program in 2011 and it was like an experience it really showed you actually the

importance of family values because i would take the the western bus to the west side of chicago and not every kid like there was this particular school that we were at when i was there there were a lot of kids with good families and parents that cared and stuff like that but there were all were also a lot of kids with were living with their grandmothers or their aunts and didn't really have stable homes and then the condition of the neighborhood it was a food desert and so the kids are eating sugar all day and then after school they have nothing to do so owls is a program basically it's to use the sport of lacrosse to help imbue leadership skills confidence more importantly um social skills and uh leadership skills via the sport of lacrosse and

then help with tutoring and actually educate about like good nutrition and stuff like that but it really does drive home the important like uh there's a reason crime rates are so high right it's uh the breakdown of the family in those neighborhoods it's it's so sad to see up front too but i do have hope it can be fixed and i do i do think people are starting to realize that uh maybe the hedonistic lifestyle that that uh society money money that it uh that it led to and fiat culture if you will and that's actually i watched an interview with kanye uh that he did leading up for the jesus is king press tour but he was telling somebody like it's he's he's like turning his back on the culture because it just it contradicts itself

Like everybody's rapping about taking perks and doing stuff that can get you locked up and then complaining about, uh, prison reform and stuff like that. And it's, what are we, what are, what is our culture? What are we, what values are we sending in the airwaves every day? And what does that really incentivize at the end of the day? Um, so again, like it does, and I'm not trying to preach about values or say you need to think this way. I'm just saying it's interesting, um, seeing the, the conflict of these two viewpoints sort of hit ahead here, it seems. Um, at least in my observation, I don't know where I'm going with this. I was just like a little rant.

Yeah. I, I, I would say, uh, just on that last part that you said about like preaching, like I very, I think that the best that you can do is just try and be, uh, the person that you, you know, think that the world should, should be, it should see and, and be the person that you can be. And that means, you know, taking care of others and spending time and, and doing things like that. So that's, I hope people, I think people resonate with that.

And so I think they do like seeing, you know, a Bitcoin rabbi come out and share, you know, once in a while, share a funny joke once in a while, share a Bible story once in a while, you know, share like an act of charity or, you know, a Bitcoin analysis and like, try and connect them all together. That's, like I said, it's like, I've got my range of like, more serious jokes and then things in the middle and try and get them. So, but I started off like with really nobody had heard of me and nobody, and I was like trying to like, I don't know, I was trying to like get information and try to like, you know, spread, uh, my perspective. And, um, some of the first people that I communicate actually was one with Matt, uh, Matt O'Dell and, um, Pierre Richard was like absolutely like totally, uh, springboarded me because he invited me. first we so pierre made the node launcher so what here's what happened there was s2x sega 2x where the companies tried to take over bitcoin and i was like no i had it was so confusing for a new bitcoiner who just came into the space who was trying to learn as much as possible it's like you just walked into a civil war it's like oh i didn't realize that i can't imagine how confusing that was it was scary so then i was like i've got it so like first thing i had to do is i got to run a node so i was um so that i was already running my own node so that was

uh that was already the year before that was like the beginning of 2018 um but uh i was trying to get on lightning that whole 2018 nothing was working it was still like this so pierre uh launched the node launcher in like november december but i could not get it working so i was just like tweeting out like tagging people like who can help me like i'm not smart i'm not good at this computer stuff i just want to buy some block stream stickers like somebody help me out so pierre was some he was like not responsive for like a day and uh uh so matt actually uh dm'd me or i dm'd he like commented or something i dm'd him and like we went through a whole thing and this was after i'd been listening to your podcast for i guess for a few months um and i

didn't realize i don't know how i didn't realize but i didn't realize that it was him i just thought who was just like a friendly helping guy on uh on bitcoin twitter well he is yeah that you're friendly you know man o'dell he's always there to lend a helping hand that's bitcoiners are extremely generous and and helpful with their time and with their education that is absolutely true so like i spent a lot of time with him and then like we got kind of stuck and then pierre came back online and he helped me out and uh i was i was just like oh man o'dell i know who you are oh thank you i and i like your podcast appreciate it and uh then then pierre like he's like let me help you let me call you on the phone to like help you with your bug that you were having because it

was actually a bug and we helped kind of like debug it figure out what was going on um with his software and then uh he's just like who are you and what is going on like i was like oh this is so he invited me onto his podcast and that was basically like which took me from like 100 followers to a thousand that was like pretty much the the springboard so huge big mensch big pierre richard huge mensch shout out to pierre he helped uh he helped jump start this podcast he was our first guest this podcast probably would not be where it is without pierre's endorsement beginning pierre i'm grateful i might have known that but uh but yeah so that was and then uh you know and then we actually we so then uh you know i'm just doing my stuff going through uh like no

intention of like i'm just i've got a bunch of other jobs i do a bunch of other things like i just like talking about bitcoin and sharing and then this like crazy idea popped in my head literally overnight i tweeted out to um safedine safedina moose and said like hey uh what is there like anything like your book but for kids and he said no there's not but that sounds like a great idea and i i within 24 hours i had this book written i had the whole book every word of it written i mean went through some revisions there and i was like i this is gonna like i really like this i think i might have shared it yeah you did first draft i shared it to a number of bitcoiners i got some feedback it went through a lot of i didn't know it was 24 hours of writing that oh

yeah it's just uh no i mean it's not that long it's only a thousand words i it was just a flat well i i think you still have to tie it all together yeah i the i really don't know i don't i i can't people ask me like am i going to make a sequel or something of of uh this book don't force it yeah that's the one i don't want to force it and like i don't even know how i i could because this was just like inspiration it just like really came you know the the chat i didn't plan it out in advance i really wrote it chapter by chapter and i actually added the last chapter as a chapter six was like an afterthought that i wasn't going to put in at the end but it's about altcoins it's called copies it's where it's where uh the bad guys try and make their own uh altcoins

and it doesn't work out so well for them and then uh elizabeth stark and lalu uh school them with the lightning network so yeah i saw people buying a coffee uh with bitcoin at the lightning network conference over the last weekend yeah well first of all they're basically that's the only doing it for a fun uh experimental uh thing i actually just today was listening to um uh stephan laverre with uh jack mallers it was fantastic i what i love listening jack mallers just like go off on finance stuff that like i've never thought of and never considered and he's just got this like you expect him to like be awesome technologically which he is but he's just got like such a unique fun uh analysis so he's like everybody in bitcoin now everybody in lightning

network now is doing it for fun like is doing it to help uh bootstrap the the projects like that's what every single wallet i've ever done which i've tested all of them like that's a hobby of mine is to test the uh every single lightning wallet that comes out and play around with them do you have a favorite um i mean i really like zap connected to my um btc pay server um and that you know with full node and everything um and that because that i can get paid i sell these books on my website um bitcoinmoneybook.com and people pay with lightning and then i've got that lightning on the app on my phone and i can use it but uh as far as a standalone um app i really like the breeze wallet right now where they i just think that they um are really thinking forward about

how people are going to be using it they're not going to be managing their channels they're not going to be dealing with liquidity and stuff um which you know is a very like advanced thing which i've been dealing with and working with that i was actually uh not one of the first but i was like number 60 in the lightning um torch so i was there before matt and before uh uh twitter jack um and uh i you know i actually was one i have to have to say i was using a non-custodial which i know a lot of people there was a lot of custodial uh use of uh lightning wallets during that because that was a time when the blue wallet came out and and wallet of satoshi so there were a lot of people that were pretending they were using i had to uh it was a big learning

experience for me going back to channel management like i was not good at managing channels in the beginning and and like my first couple lightning network torch attempts did not go through because my channels were all messed up i had to set up some channels and stuff like that yeah it's it was that's a you don't nobody gets it until they actually start it and you realize you know what it takes to get set up on lightning and it's a lot and so it's got a long way to go before it's really usable outside of just like fun fun use cases but i do think i saw at the lightning um conference in berlin which i was kind of almost supposed to go to um which i'll tell you in a second but i the the like video game uh thing i think that's that's great i've played some uh

some koala lightning chess with my brother and uh so i think that's great use cases and that really is you cannot do that with other right you can't do that with fiat um so that's a great use case but i was i was kind i was supposed i have a hard time with conferences because most of them are on um sabbath on shabbat on saturdays like a bit uh bit bop bit block boom i really wanted to go to i saw you guys had a blast and i would have loved it um but uh most of it was on saturday so unfortunately that doesn't work because like i don't use electronics or travel or lots of stuff um but uh the the lightning conference in berlin was a different was a holiday called sacote where we have like uh we build booths maybe you saw some around here in williamsburg we build

booths outside and like uh and uh you know eat and live outside for a week uh that's like at the end of the jewish high holiday so i couldn't go to that but i was um originally invited to go to that conference um by elizabeth stark seriously i i i mess with all these apps i play around with all of them and i do report some bugs sometimes so i reported a bug to the lightning labs team and then um elizabeth stark who i also is included in the book so i had spoken to her a little bit she was like hey do you want to come to the to the lightning conference and like i was like oh i would love to i really would but uh and i i haven't watched all the video but i've seen some of it and looked like a blast um but uh i couldn't do that in bed so she invited me to crypto springs crypto

springs was a conference in palm springs it was about a month ago and that was a lot of fun and i met a lot of uh cool it was a diverse crowd um i when i got in the car to go you know one guy told me that he works with um uh the uh like coin foundation another person a girl in the car said she works for the z cash foundation or whatever like that so i mean you know there was a variety but all the speakers were like 100 bitcoin which was nice and a lot of lightning and stuff um so i met up with cool people i met uh alex svetky i met with um i met brecky von bitcoin um i met uh Preston Byrne, which was great. Some quality Bitcoiners.

I watched Preston Byrne. It was hilarious. He was, like, the stage was by a pool, and he, it was, like, lunch break or something, and he was reading a book, and we were chatting out, like, on, you know, on chairs for a while, and then he's like, I want to sit by this pool.

I want to sit in one of the floaty things. He's in his clothes, and he's like, I don't care if I get wet, but I don't want this book to get wet. when I was like, I am 100% certain that if you get in that floaty thing on that pool, you are going to fall in and get everything. It was not a half a second after getting in

and he's just like face first into the pool on the thing. So that was one of the highlights besides meeting awesome people like Elizabeth Stark and probably a dozen others who I can't remember everybody's name now, but that was cool. I really like meeting Bitcoiners. like i just have a a desire to like be you know i kind of like live upstate and not really there's

not much of a community there um and so i just want to like i came down one time um for the uh nyc bitcoiners meetup and pierre again uh great guy uh changed the whole uh schedule of it and the location stuff so that i could come on a sunday to a kosher restaurant so that was me that was the first time i hung out with bitcoiners and that was actually when we launched the book i had had not even the real final finished copy but i had the uh like prototype uh like printed out at staples like the real books were coming the next day and that was like that was the first time i ever met a real bit corner in real life and i went to uh magical crypto uh and then uh then this crypto springs and you know more more stuff to come but it's it's been those were like

my my top things of the year but one of probably the funniest was um when we we raised money we sold i just had like a crazy idea when all these libra hearings were going on and i was like these senators like don't know what they're talking about no they're like i mean forget about the most recent one which was like a shame which they were they were not even talking about cryptocurrency they were just shaming for like diversity and stuff and like stuff that had nothing to do with libra but even the ones beforehand they just like don't know what they're talking about so i put out there i was like hey if anybody wants to uh send a book to congress i'll i'll do it at price like at actual print costs and i'll mail it to a congressman and i thought i'd get like 25 or 50

or something i got 300 books donated like i was like oh this is crazy so i sent i sent to the president i sent to the whole senate i sent to like half of the united states congressmen and i got a few less than i would have hoped i got maybe like a handful of responses back of them just like saying thank you for the book very interested in bitcoin yada yada but that's actually uh that's uh surprising i thought it would be zero you know sometimes they just have automated things if gifts are received you know they they did um i don't even remember exactly who all did send me but so you know that was these are the fun things uh that you get to do just if you you know come into bitcoin i i wrote out like uh you know i came for the i came for the uh for

the financial freedom and hard money i'm staying for the financial freedom and hard money but the friends have been good along the way too it is always incredible meeting uh meeting bitcoiners in person i mean we've talked about this a lot on this podcast but it cannot be understated uh like you said it you feel like you you know where you stand sort of almost immediately and it's easy to sort of jump right into conversations and stuff like that and it does feel like again like it does feel i don't know it does feel like we're at a really important point in human history and bitcoin seems to be very important something we should be focusing on yeah there i mean besides for the technology of like the communication like do you think it's imperative that is bitcoin

imperative bitcoin or something like it i mean i think that that's a good question i kind of want to i i so i've got like my what i personally like think and then there's like the professional view you know it's like i think bitcoin is tell us what you think yeah it's like i think bitcoin is so inevitable like i think that it's just like it's so hard to say and that it's i mean you don't know what you don't know so like it could fail or whatever this but like it just seems like you know i'm mentally like all in in in that sense that it just seems like we've been waiting for like some good news and this was and this is good news like there's a new technology that and a new uh type of trust and cooperation that's fair it's just fair and it can work for

everybody and it's just going to take some work and it's going to take a lot of time but i like i think it's immensely better than the system that we have um and i think you know that if you look if your view is that the best most powerful force of good or of raising people up out of poverty and out of oppression and out of um dictatorship has been freedom and free markets and capitalism um then something that like puts that on steroids i like how if that's what you know i can understand people disagree in their other theories and whatever fine not everyone has to agree but if you do if that's where you know if you were into all of that perspective and all of that uh philosophy beforehand bitcoin is just like amazing for for that so i see it as i see it as part of

the force like it i think it'll be when it is that when it actually does achieve that it'll be like in the background because it won't be like it's bitcoin it'll just be like oh money works now just like you know phones work or something like wi-fi like did we say you know wi-fi changed the like it's just it's everywhere it's literally wi-fi is everywhere now it makes everything work like i'm pretty sure we're doing this podcast on wi-fi like we're using wi-fi right now there we go like it's just it permeates society and it just makes all the things that we like appreciate in life just work but it's kind of it's almost an afterthought yeah and then how long do you think we are away from that like we were just talking about lightning it's definitely far away but even

at the protocol level we still got a ways to go i don't know i don't i i don't like to predict because people are on both sides people have strong opinions on both sides and like who am i to know one way or the other um i i really i can't i i don't want to be wrong like i don't want to say like i think this i really don't know i don't know if we're 10 years away or for 50 years away i don't know what uh you know there's the stock to flow model and there's people's give their price predictions i don't give any i don't really have any price predictions um other than number go up like that's very i'm very strong believer in the number go up uh it's you know that's pretty much the, the, the foundational thing. I'm very against, not against, but I think

that for most people, the technology is, like, going to be not the focus, and not, like, what they're focused on, but really, like, just the plain old effects, and, like, the number go up, the 21, the scarcity, like, that's, these are not hard concepts, like, people can understand that, and that's why, in my book, like, there's not any ounce of technology in it, there's not any ounce of like, I don't even mention mining. I don't mention, it's just like, it's like something that I think is intuitive. Everybody kind of knows what money is, but they've just never thought of it. And they kind of never questioned it. But like, once you start telling them, they're like, oh, obviously these are the qualities of money. Like, and if you go like, I think kind of the

beginning of the book goes through like the Socratic method. It's like, well, we need money. well what's money what does it do it well it helps this and this okay well will this work as money no that won't work because of x well this work as money no let's try okay and you kind of go through it like question and answer and i think any like from a child to a senior citizen can like go through that process and realize like oh well if we could have the perfect uh solution that would like solve everything you know that would i don't want to say solve everything but bitcoin fixes everything bitcoin uh did not it has still not fixed the my uh my fan is on my refrigerator still making clicking noise it hasn't fixed yet i'm thinking somebody might have hooked up a

bitcoin miner to the back of my refrigerator because it's been isn't internet enabled no i'm just joking that's just something i wrote out i was like how many bitcoins do i need to click to fix my fan the refrigerator clicking noise uh no it is it will come natural to people hopefully and i do i agree like the uh unabashed uh bull in me does think it's inevitable as well even though i will caution uh the same um caveats that you did earlier but how does that change society like today the bent that i wrote was uh was about growth at all costs is stupid There was a great post by Ratham Don, who was quoting a book called Small Towns, I believe. Let me check this real quick.

I'm not familiar. It just came out. It was called Strong Towns, excuse me, Strong Towns. And basically described, we were talking about this earlier, low time preference and stuff like that, building for the future. But this was a great anecdote, not an anecdote, just great data over the last 50 years, 60 years, since 70 years now, since World War II. You basically had the need to stoke the economy, which led to the government doing massive infrastructure investments and building out the highway system and the suburban networks that we now come to know and hate today in America all spread out. And that was basically enabled by a mandate of growth at all costs. We need to grow the economy.

People need to be building, need to be buying houses. But what we found is, looking back 50 to 70 years later, all that infrastructure being built out is now tech debt, right? It's essentially tech debt. Like if you're working on a software project and you try to scale it too quickly due to demand and you make hasty software development decisions and you have what's called tech deck

that could come and bite you in the ass in the future. And you might not be able to pivot or change your product and it might ruin the product at the end of the day. And with America's infrastructure, we just did that. And this is what the event was about today. And it's crazy what that thirst for growth enabled. Talking about fire hydrants per capita in Lafayette, Louisiana, going from per 1,000 people going from like 5 to 50.

so you have like a pretty pretty expansive increase there and this was all fueled again by debt and as we move into the future and the uh the don't forget marty debt is just money we owe ourselves we we owe ourselves but that's then somebody else paid for areas and enjoyed but it's something i'm i'm starting to like we're at least not starting to the last 12 hours in particular or 18 hours i've been thinking about this for almost a day now um the basically the how am i trying to explain this the um functions that enable that expansion basically central bank money printing we're finding today uh they may not have the control that we perceived they had when they were able to do that so the tools that allowed us to build all that stuff

may not be available when we need to inevitably uh fix it due to decay because you have roads pipes and all that stuff they need to get fixed and um so we may have to actually like rebuild a lot of stuff and and the point i'm trying to make is is this was incentivized by high time preference growth at all costs thinking and how is um a bitcoin standard or and that forces low time preference gonna what's the world gonna look like once that happens if it happens in our lifetime yeah well so that's the another thing i'll say like bitcoiners are gonna not only bitcoin fixes this but bitcoiners are going to need to fix this you know it's going to be just like it's up to us you know that if we don't want uh you know government to control our lives and try and

fix everything then we've got to uh and now i i don't know how any of us can right now be fixing the roads and the pipes and stuff but you know it is going to be incumbent upon you know in the new world and whenever in the future to be thinking about these things of like how to grow uh and how bitcoiners are going to be or people uh the future the future generation of which you know i think we're about pretty similar in age of like this is going to be our world to be trying to improve and stewards of yeah exactly and like you it's terrible that when we think about the the world that we inherited that like it just seemed like it was so much easier like financially for our parents generation and that seems to be universal and like it's just

a weird uh thing like you don't expect especially with how much growth and how much you know development and how much wealth there is or apparently is like how did that happen like how does it happen how does it happen that from 1970 or uh yeah i guess it's 1916 whenever the gold uh 1971 there we go 1971 how does it happen that from 1971 which is like basically the time when our parents were growing up to uh to our generation this this all happened it uh it's a mystery you know what what could it be possibly be yeah why can't we that's what i again brought up in the bin today is like why it seems that as a society we don't have the ability to uh take a 30,000 foot view put our current condition in the context of human history and and attempt to uh

basically um to uh sort of evaluate what we've been doing for the last few decades and sort of make a conscious decision what we want to do going forward like how do you even approach like having that discussion yeah well i'm actually from this i'm extremely optimistic because i do think that kids today and kids that aren't born basically everyone who's everyone who's born after uh the genesis block if you were born after uh january 3rd 2009 you're a bitcoin child you're a bitcoin person and i think they're gonna i think people are gonna get it i think if you you know bad ideas don't last like forever or last you know like uh i'm not comparing the united states to to uh like communist rush or something but like it can't be things bad ideas

run out of money uh and like bad ideas don't get passed down after generation like one person can try it runs for a while and then it runs until it runs out of money and then maybe can go two generations or something but good ideas come back and i think that and good ideas uh uh remain over the generations even if they go in hiding um for certain amounts of time they last um and you know that's uh that's why that's where part of where i get my inspiration as a uh follower of torah that i think you know it's been it's been going pretty strong uh sometimes stronger sometimes it's uh it's been more in hiding but it's been going on for like 3 000 years and so i think that kids that are growing up and see have the opportunity of bitcoin and aren't um like uh aren't uh what's

the word i'm looking for like um turned off from aren't like brainwashed isn't the right word but like aren't um conditioned yeah yeah there you go they are not conditioned with the fiat system of like oh well it's always been this way well it's like well it actually hasn't always been this way and maybe there are other uh there are other ways that we can run our our politics and our culture and our society and all of this like i think that we are going to uh see a positive future and i think that kids are just going to get it and especially because of technology i think they're going to get smartphones and get their own their phones and not going to want to be you know locked up and not going to want to feel like they're a prisoner of a system that they didn't you know

they don't have a part in and and that doesn't isn't fair to them do you see this with your kids at all um i mean my kids are pretty young my oldest is seven um i'll give you actually today i was a i was a statist censor uh i my daughter went on a field trip today and i don't know if the teacher said that they could or if a kid asked but somehow it got declared into the classroom that they're allowed to bring money to buy things at the gift shop at their field trip now that's the biggest waste you feel sorry to any uh uh you know museum uh workers but i'm not letting my kid waste her hard work earned money on gift shop uh tachkas you know so i i censored her uh censored her her transaction i said no you're not you don't get to spend my money

on those things and you don't get to spend your own money on it either so i was that and sometimes you know sometimes you just gotta be a daddy yeah sometimes gotta be a hard ass but uh so i mean she's she's only the oldest is seven my youngest is uh is uh almost one and actually the day that i literally got my lightning node working uh was the day that my youngest my fifth daughter my fifth child was born and so i like tweeted out both like i'm like this is the greatest day of my life i finally was able to order those block stream stickers and i had my and i had my adult my wife gave birth to a beautiful daughter everyone's like what i was like i've got four already i mean it's a great day it's a great day it's a great day and for me extra memorable

it is it is i since it's my uh you know twitterversary twitter anniversary i went back and like looked at my greatest you know greatest hits to like remember like what have i been doing this this whole year so i did look back at that and that was that was pretty popular people like babies so well when you say your daughter has her own money how do you approach that do you have uh chores allowance yeah so now so she gets money yeah she she gets birthday gifts and stuff like from her grandparents and from um i guess mostly from her grandparents give her from both sides give her money for birthdays or just you know sometimes they'll just hand some bills or something but uh she for me started getting all of her allowance on lightning so she got an ipod

touch um and uh i uh set it up with a lightning wallet and so that's where she gets you know a quarter here a quarter there and she's got well she's got two one she's got her hodl stack so she's got a one chain you know cold uh cold wallet that uh that that's for for the hodl position but then she's got her her hot you know uh lightning wallet as well and that's for i mean she doesn't really she hasn't spent any of it but she gets some but she also has her you know her little fiat uh you know uh somewhere in a hidden underneath her her mattress or something like that so but she's not thinking about you know i don't think she's thinking about uh the besides for my uh oppressive uh treatment today about like the man keeping her down but

they like bitcoin i mean she's read the book she understands the book she understands what the attributes of money are like why you know that you can't just i mean it goes through it spells out pretty pretty quick you know pretty easily in the book it says you know really all we want is trade with each other we just nobody actually wants money for anything you can't live in money you can't eat money you can't do anything with money we want goods we want commodities um so but you can't just trade with each other so you need a placeholder that acts as a store of value a medium of exchange, and a unit of account. So you find some item that fits that, and it has to be, I know that you've heard this and that all your listeners have heard it, but just say what

the book goes through. And so they reason out, you know, well, it's got to be portable, it's got to be durable, it's got to be divisible, it's got to be fungible, you know, it's got to be uniform. And they figure out that, you know, they go through is, can you use rocks, can you use grass, can use lemonade can use uh whatever and uh they settle on gold because gold is the thing that made the most sense really gold and silver uh historically but and then uh fiat happens you know that's you start you start with gold and i'm i'm actually i'm very bearish on gold i know some people are like gold and bitcoin but i don't see how gold has a future in a bitcoin world like i i think it's because i mean it's it has all of these disadvantages you know it's confiscatable

it's not easily divisible not compared to bitcoin it's not easily transportable not compared to bitcoin um it's not easily uh um verifiable not compared to bitcoin so it's got all of these it's in some ways it's worse than fiat because you can't even get you know you can't do a credit card i mean it's totally it's centralized oh yeah exactly and then on top of that like the supply has been so centralized like do you is there do we know how much gold there is like and do you when you have gold do you even have it and even of the gold that we do know exists i'm pretty sure that is very centralized and is there a strong possibility that that becomes more distributed over time and i just find that hard to believe i bet the mining is also centralized

as well um i'm just assuming but i yeah i don't see that that's a future i think that gold is going to become this like status it's still going to be this valuable thing but i think it's going to become it's not going to be locked up in those in those vaults anymore what's it doing there it's wasting space let's let's start getting let's get gold back on our clothes and gold back you know like let's let's go all out rappers you know like that's the bitcoin world we deserve it we owe it to ourselves get all the gold out of fort knox make it more beautiful there yeah melt it down Now, actually, there's a verse. Trump's beating us.

There's a verse, not a verse in the Torah, but a quote from one of these sages that actually says that, you know, when God was creating the world, you know, really the world didn't deserve gold. But you could, you know, he decided to create it for, to use it to serve him, you know, to beautify service of God. So that was enough to be worth it, too. so yeah gold shouldn't be uh just sitting there vaults it's got to be used you know make these uh nice nice uh tools or whatever to to serve god with so that's what i'm that's what i'm for i i'm pro gold actually coming and being used for something like that i uh i can get down with this cause i'm all for better aesthetics that is another thing uh another theme in today's band was these citadel citadels are what do you think they're going to be built out of like uh

aluminum no we need no it's not the uh it's not the fiat enabled quick suburban homes even used to for the last five decades and and even you can go trace mayor out and we can all just pet pieces of gold and that did you hear that no what was that great he's i mean he said like gold and i i guess i get what he's saying he's like gold when you feel it like there's something like this raw power of it you can feel it like you can feel it like it's so small and it's so light and it's like this is worth like three thousand dollars or something he's like i just like to touch it he's like it helps you focus your mind and like become a more uh a longer uh a viewpoint the longer term thinking person so that's like the it's like you know it doesn't need to be the money

that you use to transact it can just be the thing that you like pet to train yourself to like think like this is this is for generations this gold is like for the future so that i'm cool with that but i'm not uh i'm not long gold in the uh you know in the in the market yeah it's uh well yeah it's do you think like well we already talked about like gen so i'm a believer like gen z is entering the workforce now i was gonna like so i was just about to be like do you think like uh your average institutional investor is gonna be able to uh like i could see gold having another pump just because of lack of education about bitcoin in the meantime but long term i agree with you yeah i don't the kids today they are not going to buy gold kids today kids born

after uh you know bitcoin kids kids that are born after january 3rd 2009 are not going to buy gold they're going to buy bitcoin i don't even i don't even have to say genesis block you know like again gen z like 96 and above i would even say like yeah sure fine that's whatever i just you know i think that's it gives me a nice uh a nice breaking point of like there's kids born pre-bitcoin and you know my all my children were born after bitcoin uh so that's that's crazy to think about that my children will be as well yeah they're all you know they didn't live in a world without bitcoin like they didn't they didn't live in a world with you ever see a kid you have got a niece or nephew you ever see kids with touchscreens oh my god they know from eight from like six

months old they know what a touchscreen is my one-year-old neil should be not gonna dox her birthday um uh she is addicted like not addicted it's not like her my uh sister and brother-in-law are handing her phone and they're just like she just like sees that we interact with them and just like wants to do what we're doing and it's like yeah i mean they're pretty phones are quite amazing that's the it's some people are like oh you have to buy the people waste their money they buy the nicest newest phone i've used this thing more than i anything else in my life i i'd rather spend more money on this than on my clothes or on my you know whatever is that a good or bad thing that's interesting coming from you how is uh how are sabbath saturdays without any electronics

you know it's i mean it's in lots of times uh it's it's it's extremely relaxing actually and it i would say you'll never get withdrawal you know maybe uh so it goes by the sun so in the summer, it starts late at night, Friday night, and it ends late. So when it's a late night, you don't get any withdrawal, because like, you're kind of chilling with your family, you're like having a big meal, you maybe like have some wine. And so you're kind of like, you could just go to bed whenever. So like a winter night, like as is coming up. And then similarly during the day, you like go to the synagogue in the morning, you have lunch, you read a book you learn torah you go back you know you you spend time with your family and by the

time it's 5 p.m it's over that's that's fine in the later summer months when when it's with uh with your your daylight savings so when when the sun sets at like 9 p.m in the summer so then you're kind of like you've done everything and you can you're kind of like one and oh like oh what's going on in the world so that i mean that's me some people they're not you know i'm i'm a ju but so that's sometime i i do you know try to uh stay away from like bitcoin stuff uh on i mean i'm not on any kind of tech stuff but even just like talking about it people come up to me and talk to me about bitcoin like from my synagogue or you know friends or uh but uh i try to like make that a day of real rest and like peace and like family time and other you know focus on my

kids school learn a little bit like learn the bible like whatever different things like that no it's because i mean hand in hand with the conversation i've been having the whole time it's got to be refreshing it's got to be healthy i am definitely addicted to my device and probably not in the best way i wake up and six minutes later it's in my hand scrolling falling on my face um they make devices for that yeah and like strap it to your body so it won't fall yeah and i Actually, I was speaking with somebody this morning who was telling me about a family member who lives in Switzerland, and everything's closed in, so it's not even a religious thing. It's just like everything's closed, or maybe it is a Puritan thing.

Everything's closed on Sunday, and families are forced to just hang out and go on road trips and spend time with each other. Yeah, then you can go on. So we have some holidays that are not Sabbath. There are different levels of holidays in Judaism. them a lot are their sabbath and and uh that like we don't use electricity and stuff some holidays you can you know drive around and go on trips and things like that so you know i like both and i like there is something really special i recommend people do it you know sign off uh just sign you know different people do it for for other you know uh technology sabbatical or or even a social media

sabbatical or something um something don't don't read the news don't like you know if you want to do something like let's say like playing a game or you know whatever you know i mean even we don't like a lot really like we don't cook we don't use fire we don't use like you prepare all your food in advance so like that's a heavy duty i mean if you're not an orthodox jew and then that doesn't mean but like cutting out social media and twitter and stuff like definitely good for your brain for you know at some some points if if if you're like really into which i am i think you are like very like to be connected no i think i'm unhealthily connected i've actually been cutting back more recently trying to tweet less and check in less but i did uh when i was i think my summer after

my freshman year of college and the summer after my sophomore year of college uh i broke my phone memorial day weekend i worked and lived down the shore and uh my parents like hey yeah you're not getting a new phone you can buy one yourself and i was like you know what i'm on this island i can with that one for two summers in a row i went without a phone and it was oh wow incredibly relaxing um had a little black book that i would carry around with me with people's numbers i annoyed the shit out of my friends because i'd always be like can i borrow your phone uh texting friends from my mom's phone but uh most of the time i did not have a phone it was very relaxing just going with the flow going to work knowing where people were going to be at

some point just showing up being like hey what's up and just going with it uh wow that's uh yeah i don't know i don't know if i could uh i haven't tried other than other than uh shabbat i have not tried uh to to take away from it i'm pretty well i'm like the i'm not only just like that i'm also like i'm a uh and i'm i might get in trouble from uh matt or anybody else that listens i'm i'm like big into the home uh like the home kit stuff like siri and alexa i can stay away from that i'm i'm really because you know what i and i had this conversation with this this uh um woman that uh worked for zcash and she's like can i ask you questions like what do you think about privacy or stuff and i was like i gave up i'm like i gave up i like i feel like it's too late for me for me

i'm not saying i value it i do i i feel like i'm just like look take it take whatever you want like this you've already got my whole shopping list you know everything about me you know where all the time like just take it all and like i don't believe that there are any settings you can change on any of the devices to make them not or any like you can't turn yes so it's either you have the the device or you don't have the device and i'm like i like these things i like my phone i it's probably listening to me all the time i like the alexa thing it's probably listening to me all the time i like you know the i tell my lights to turn on and off i tell my uh my doors to open and close like unlock and lock and stuff so i'm i it's bad and i just am like i'm done i'm

lost i've lost that uh don't give up hope michael don't give up hope i don't know listen this is what we're fighting for well you know listen i i said uh you know i'm kidding but all i need is if if we've got i know there's like a lot of i mean this is the like in bitcoin they're the different uh different uh facets of like there's the site i'm really not a cypherpunk like that's the thing i'm really a like hard money austrian well if you're bitcoin you're a cypherpunk you may just not know it is that it well i'm just a bad you know um meltem demir has put out a thing that was like there's like the the degree of cypherpunk product there's like cypherpunk on one end and my dad on the other end and like certain products exist somewhere in the middle

spectrum yeah it's a spectrum of that so i'm pretty close to the my dad side of it um i like i guess i don't know i guess i have a cold card so like i'm pretty i feel pretty cool there like that's no i mean i do you know i i've got my uh i've got my uh i i have my cold card and my and my wasabi so like all right that's i just i'm cypherpunk just with my bitcoins not with not with any of the rest of my life no well that's another internal debate that i have as well as like if this is successful do we all really have to be afraid or like i'd like to believe in a peaceful world where i think that i i'm optimistic i am optimistic of the generally a peaceful world most people are good right do you believe that i do i think so i i think so i think that in certain

cultures or certain societies there can be um they can be led astray so you could have people that are on their own good but led massively to do bad um because of leaders of their uh of their societies so you know various examples of that but i think that people in their hearts and if they are have the right uh surroundings are good and i think that and especially in america i i think in america where there is prosperity and basically like and the more that it grows i think that for the most part prosperity will lead to more peace um and that the more people have the less they are uh jealous of each other so like i'm i do think that we are going towards both more prosperity and more peace together hand in hand i agree and and that's another thing that sort of

gets lost in the whole bitcoin verse uh fiat currency debate is is the whole reason for money right is to to enable trade free trade in particular and that's which makes which makes people better yes trade is made for win yes both sides win went in a free trade yes and and right now the world of trade is such that you have all these different currencies and you literally out of a world where you have to barter and then trade and there's just a literal point of friction in in the global trade markets and bitcoin consolidating that creating a borderless thing where nobody can censor your trade i think will be overall while it scares a lot of people allow maduro to trade but uh i think uh i think the net the net net will be very much positive

yeah exactly and like you know what they're you know i'm not an anarchist so like there will still be police and the police will still go after the bad guys who do there are people that do bad things people that do bad things with bitcoin you know as was an example recently uh but like that's what a society and whatever police and if you believe in government like that's that should be that that's what they'll that's what they've always done and that's what they'll continue to do and the rest of us will live peacefully and just keep on doing our thing yeah yeah let's yeah i'm hopeful it's been a great conversation yeah i i i really appreciate it i think that's the that's really my main thing of like bitcoiners and what i hope to like bring to this is that i'm very hopeful

i'm very uh optimistic and i think that like bitcoin is good and does good and will make the world better and like we are seeing it happen i feel like a lot of people are apprehensive to say that bitcoin will be good for the world though right like i'm i'm not i i say that unabashedly like i it it kind of does go hand in hand it's like well it's how's it going to be good well number go up we'll make it good that's those two do have to go hand in hand uh and i think both are going to happen what would be your low time preference investment in a post hyper bitcoin eyes world what would you want to build oh like what just like if i um yeah i think that that uh you know education that that anybody anywhere can get the best of educate which is already

happening i think that that's a sign of like what good there is to come that anybody can learn and you know learn at the highest levels of a thing like i didn't go to access the best knowledge yes information exactly like i did not go to college for uh for economics or for you know history or any of this stuff i went to school i learned rabbinical studies such as you know kosher uh food production and the laws of sabbath and uh you know the prayers and and hebrew and aramaic analysis so that's my uh my uh professional training but i was able to glean all of this information so i think that the more the the wiser that the global conscious becomes the the better we will be right i like that framing the wiser the global consciousness and the fact

that we're able to teach ourselves more things by ourselves will just enable the individual to become wiser yeah over time yeah and it's just a random question but you described how you didn't at a college for economics or anything was your decision to become a rabbi startling to you not startling did it uh surprise your family oh yeah yes um my well it's somewhat because my parents are not really uh religious they're somewhat traditional and have become more so but my older brother who lives in israel who got me into bitcoin also got me into religion and um so he kind of started the path down first um and then but he's not a rabbi he actually worked he's a he's a uh i'll coin an investment fund trader oh jesus christ

no whatever he's probably i think they're like mostly bitcoin but anyways they're uh but we talked but we talked bitcoin and crypto like every single day like a lot uh because we we learn tor together and we chat and we talk uh crypto together like all the time um so he started the path he went to yeshiva didn't finish like go through the whole rabbinical path um but i was a better student than him uh and i mean he like he was kind of a wild child i'll admit this this isn't bad stuff so he was like finding religion was like a path for him me i was like on my way to like law school and then my parents are like why do you have to go why do you have to go and become a a rabbi couldn't you do a nice jewish job like become a lawyer so uh so that was like

tough for them but i mean they're very happy and they actually really like uh bitcoin and they like they like that i've uh didn't just like um leave you know technology and the world behind me like that i kind of brought it back i brought it in and like incorporated in my life so they really are very proud of like that i'm the bitcoin rabbi that's like the they're like they're like you did it you made you know you you made uh made it in life like that's yeah i'm not gonna lie you uh your interest at least does not fit the stereotype from which i would believe a rabbi would fall under right yeah i mean i'm you know somewhat unique but there will be more of us and there are you know there are rabbis that are into different sports and athletics or different

all different kinds of things some of them just don't uh make a platform of it they just kind of have their own interest which is what i did for the first year and a half that i was into bitcoin and i was like yeah i could you know if everybody else is just mouthing off on twitter well i might as well too yeah it'll be funny to to see what uh what people think what future people think of our twitter uh fights if they even go back and listen to it maybe they'll just fall into the ether i don't yeah we'll see we'll see but i i think hopefully they'll be in a better that's what i i write my the dedication of my book is uh that i write it to my children for whom i hope to be making a brighter better world so hopefully if they are looking back at our twitters or just

wherever they are that's the world that they have and i hope that that bitcoin is part of that that's beautiful your intentions pure at least right yeah i mean and that's what i i mean that's really what i think makes the difference between a bitcoiner and like a crypto person because bitcoiners really want to change the world and make a better fairer financial system for everyone and not just like lambos somebody tweeted somebody tweeted recently like uh what's so you know what happened to bitcoin it used to be all talking about lambos and now we're all like buying uh buying dollar store shoes and cutting our own hair having babies yeah you know what it's like oh sorry i i got into this uh you know for for the uh for the world

revolution not for my like i'm just it's not listen i'm a teacher my my my salary is that i teach at a jewish day school i'm on a rap you know on a rabbi's budget like and i bought my first bitcoins like in the second half of 2017 like it's gonna be a long like i'm not in here to you know i could be lots of other things like making money in different ways but that's not you're not trying to move order books on bitmex or anything like that no that's not uh that's not really my interest if people are and if that's what if they're doing it and doing good things with their money like you know that's great like i don't i don't have any problem with people making money but like that is not what interested me that's not why i'm here that's not why i spend

my time thinking about and talking about and writing about and and you know sharing with my family and sharing with my community about bitcoin it's not that you're all going to be rich in this It's like, no, I think that this could, I am hopeful that this is a technology like lots of many other technologies that it just is going to have a ripple effect across the world. That was a roll of my eyes at the word ripple. Nice creeped up on the throw in there. No, I completely agree. It's fucking, it's, I think the world needs it. I think it's time.

and i do think um i do think it's happening inevitably um and it it is uh it's fun to be on the front lines with you it is yes it is i'm glad to be here with all of you with you marty and with uh everybody on the front lines uh because that's what it takes i mean it's not gonna no matter how good the technology is it's not gonna happen unless there are literally like it is you know the the the block is the uh the the the the 10 minute blocks are the heartbeat of bitcoin but you know where the where the breath and where the limbs and where the body that makes it you know the heartbeat is that are those miners churning out blocks and that hash rate but we're the you know it wouldn't be anything it would just be a technology that

nobody nobody would be interested in it it's got to actually be people that care about it and you know share it yeah you got to breathe life into it and i was stuttering there a little bit because i was trying to think what i wanted to say and i was going to say yes we are nowhere near finish this battle that we're on because it is going to be a battle yeah um it is a fight we have to fight for this freedom it's a freedom and again like i said earlier we're at this cross points of modern humanity we have to decide do we want the panopticon or do we want the freedom yeah um michael thank you for what you do if you freaks haven't bought it yet bitcoin money a tale a tale of better uh of bitville a bit filled uh discovering good money yes i'm trying

to read it upside down right now um it's been a pleasure do you have any parting notes for the freaks um yeah you guys do the best uh shout out to matt odell stay humble sax hat you guys you guys just got great uh yeah i love all of you you guys have really uh memorable lines and it makes it it's you know have fun do it whatever make sure that you're having fun if in bitcoin if you're not having fun then you're then you're doing something wrong because uh you guys are doing it right and so for all the listeners out there you know make sure you're having a good time well thank you and i i agree you always got to be having fun stay in touch with the inner kid freaks peace and love