You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 58: John Dennehy - Accelerate The Good, Over Fighting The Bad

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is a revolution, right? Bitcoin is a revolution, but only if we seize it. For us, success is empowering individuals, empowering ourselves, right? Like inside the team, it's empowering ourselves and it's empowering the students, it's empowerment across the board. If we're seeking success by the standards of the world in which we're trying to replace, then we will fail, right? We'll succeed in a dying world and not create a new one.

Starting point is 00:00:27 The problem with trying to change the system from within is it's not you who changes the system, but the system which will inevitably change you, right? You become part of it. And the more you become part of it, the harder it is to see what's happening and the harder it is to break away. so let's start with a shout out to bitcoin beach where we are mike peterson paco thank you so much for hosting me hosting us and hosting you're the voice welcome to you're the voice for an episode with john dennehy from el salvador i can't believe it hey john hey how are you good good how are you doing i'm good thank you so much for joining me yeah thanks for having me this is like my honor and pleasure this is a dream come true for a whole year i've been dreaming about sitting here

Starting point is 00:01:29 doing this being in el salvador actually walking on the roads here talking to the people seeing it with my own eyes right so important for me yeah for sure for me too it's i i think like the conference that just ended adopting bitcoin and other big events like that are so important because there's so much curiosity about what's happening in el salvador but i think many people need a little bit of a push to to actually come and see it for themselves and and i think the way that you're doing it is actually the best of everything you get to come and see like the big event and the spectacle but then you also get to see what it's like exactly just on a regular Tuesday exactly and speak to the people that actually live here so I can get the raw experience from them yeah

Starting point is 00:02:21 that is the most important for me yeah so that's why it was super important for me when I booked this trip to not just come for the conference but to stay and hang out and feel the vibes and talk to the people yeah so i'm going back for a second to bitcoin beach i just want to tell my audience to go to the bitcoin beach youtube channel if you don't know bitcoin beach yet it's a community in el zante in el salvador that mike peterson had pioneered a few years ago many years ago actually um and uh he's got a podcast called the bitcoin beach podcast so go to youtube and hit that subscribe button on their podcast yes i'm doing that for a podcast that is not mine but it's important they're hosting me this is win-win for everyone and

Starting point is 00:03:09 if you're listening on fountain then boost them or zap them because they are doing amazing work and i want them to continue to do that because i am a follower of their podcast so i want them to keep on doing the great job okay john so normally i start with an introduction for my audience that don't know my guest and i'm gonna give you the floor to do that not after right after i quote a tweet of yours that i really liked okay um it wasn't long ago it was a few months ago that you wrote it and you will recognize it straight away so 23 years ago the world changed my world changed and then you go on to talk about 9-11 and everything that happened and i would love you to share that with my audience but i'm gonna keep going yeah i was drawn to movements that didn't

Starting point is 00:04:04 ask permission and thus started a multi-year journey of arrests and state intimidation yes you heard right, arrests. You're not really free. That's an illusion. You're free so long as you don't challenge the status quo. And that's what I always say. I say, if you're in the sandbox, as long as you're in the sandbox, the permitted one, you're free. But once you try to step out of that sandbox, wait and see what happens. You're the Voice is brought to you by Trezor, the original Bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013, empowering individuals with an open source device, enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins. I find my Trezor

Starting point is 00:04:53 super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family. Enjoy my 5% discount on Trezor product by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code FLAT. And asking for permission to protest does not challenge the status quo. I agree with you. The first arrest of 14 was at an IMF protest a few months later. Some things have changed a lot in the 23 years since, but that same core problem still exists and has gotten worse. We do not control our own future. The one thing that has changed for me is I am no longer trying to slow the bad, but rather I'm now trying to speed the good. Three years ago, I founded my first Bitcoin, me premier Bitcoin, and moved to El Salvador. One year ago, my first son was born. Today, I'm as confident as ever that we can create

Starting point is 00:05:51 something better. That was an amazing tweet, and I'll put the link to it in the show notes. so take us through your journey john yeah um i mean that that is i think the right place to start it's 23 years ago it's hard to start much earlier than that um but yeah i'm from new york and i live there like i grew up there and i lived there until i was i guess 18 when i finished high school and i went to university in the neighboring state in connecticut um so september 11th happened the first week of my second year of university so i was 19 years old uh but i was very close to new york still like i had you know obviously i grew up there my family was still there. But literally a week before that, I was at an internship near the Twin Towers

Starting point is 00:06:52 and I would go there for lunch regularly. And so it felt very close to me, all the events that were happening that day. And it shocked me, right? Prior to that, I didn't really care about the world. I was, I just wasn't very interested in things like geopolitics and, you know, power redistribution and and all these things were were just foreign to me like they were they were for somebody else they weren't for me um and it shocked me so much the events of that day and it was you know to to to go back i don't know if people remember this or or how localized this experience was but so my family was all in new york and the the phones didn't work that day right like the the circuits were overloaded or whatever and and um i couldn't get in touch with

Starting point is 00:08:05 them like like my father worked very close to the twin towers my uncle was a police officer in new York city. Um, it, it was a, it was a day when it seemed extremely clear that something was wrong and we needed to first figure out what was wrong and then figure out how to, how to get back to, or how to find a different path. Um, so that, that evening And myself and my roommates, we didn't go to sleep. We just kind of talked about the world and what was wrong with it. And the conclusion that we came to was that people didn't feel like they had power in their own lives, in their own future. and a subset of that, if that's how everyone feels,

Starting point is 00:09:05 then a subset of that will push violently against that box that's imposed upon them and do terrible things, right? This isn't a justification for that, but I think it's bound to happen, right? If you put people in a cage, then they will react in unpredictable ways. So the solution was to empower people. Yeah, you provoke them to get that reaction out of them. Yeah. Yeah. And at first, what I personally did was mostly try to slow down the bad, right? So the main thing, you know, I was studying media at the time.

Starting point is 00:09:59 So I was interested in media literacy, and I worked with a movement called Independent Media Center. So there was an independent media center in our community that I worked with, and we created, like, some digital literacy courses. But the main thrust of my activism in those early days was anti-war, right? It was against the pending Iraq War, which had nothing to do with September 11th, but, like, you know, facts be damned. We want revenge. We don't talk about facts. And that was one of the things that also shocked me about September 11th. There was the day itself, but there was also how people reacted to it, specifically in the United States.

Starting point is 00:10:47 It wasn't to seek understanding. It was to seek revenge. It was to seek blood. It gives me the chills because take it 23 years forward and I experienced the exact same thing in Israel on October 7th. right? That thing happened. And then everyone around me becomes this bloodthirsty vampire, just wanting revenge. Let's wipe out this. Let's kill all of that. Let's go to war. What happened to you people? Of course, nothing justifies a massacre. Of course, nothing justifies people dying in the Twin Towers. But from there going so far to

Starting point is 00:11:26 raging violence like that what happened so that just goes to show the state of the human psyche at that point yeah yeah and i and i think i think humans like all of us are just really vulnerable to being emotional and reactionary right um having this knee-jerk reaction where it's like i was hurt so now i need to hurt others exactly and that that is you know an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind right like that doesn't solve anything that reinforces what already happened that makes it more likely for that event to happen in the future so if you're and this is how i thought about it then if the intent is to make this less likely then we need to understand we need to like kind of take a step back and reevaluate things and

Starting point is 00:12:24 if we want to make it more likely we should react you know that that first gut reaction like okay i hurt now others have to hurt um and let's find a villain and kill him so that everyone can dance on his grave and feel proud again in their in their war uh there'll be a justification for that right yeah right um so i did a lot of anti-war organizing for the next i guess i guess 18 months or so um but like all in right i went from not caring at all about what happened outside of my periphery to caring very deeply and i like i graduated university but i basically stopped going to classes i stopped doing everything else except for activism um and in fact kind of incorporated into my studies and created like a different major and everything but um

Starting point is 00:13:17 but that led to so you know from from the tweet whether it was the imf or anti-war then i was very drawn to acts that didn't ask permission from the state right so the the imf protest which was right after september 11th um it was one of my first protests maybe even my first protest actually going to and the the intent of the protest one it didn't ask for permission there was actually this whole movement which i i studied in the months after september 11th um this like anti globalization movement which is probably the watershed moment from that was the wto protest in 1999 so this was set up to be similar to the wto protest in 99 but the imf in in it would have been the the spring of 2022 um and the tactic was to disrupt the meetings right to to prevent

Starting point is 00:14:18 uh the imf from functioning as they wanted to the imf the imf that we know and love yeah the international monetary fund okay i wanted to make sure that yeah because you know to to tie it all together that if the problem is that people feel that they don't have control in their own lives i mean the imf is uh is is near the top of the list of of these bodies that make decisions that affect all of us that we have no say in it's nice that so quickly you connected all the dots to get to that yeah yeah um to the money scam right it's quite early actually yeah i mean for me it was it was power right like wherever power is concentrated that's where the problem is good um because i wasted like many years in the streets with just yelling at the

Starting point is 00:15:17 at the government you know i didn't go higher up but actually no i i also got it after like I know why you're laughing, because we understand how much energy this is sucking. This is crazy. And kudos to all people in the streets, right? I'm not taking away from activism. I think this is great. I just highly doubt the effectiveness of it. And I think that it has some virtue and some useful outcome in certain cases,

Starting point is 00:15:51 especially when it's a global thing that is kind of infectious like we've seen in canada like the the freedom convoy that then spread there are certain things that work but on the most part being on the street on a regular basis is just a tactic i think for the state to suck your energy rather than you actually winning your cause yeah correct me if i'm wrong so i mean i mostly agree with with some i gave a photo to paco to put on the screen of you being arrested paco did you get it yeah okay yeah it's a great great photo it is a great photo and you're you're 18 there how old i was 19 19 yeah and like no fear on your face or is it something else what is it i mean it's it's no there's no fear it's it's um you know this was one of my first times getting arrested but

Starting point is 00:16:46 a lesson that i learned over time and and maybe i understood a little bit of it already at that point was there's some there's some liberation in being put in a cage for your beliefs right And that liberation is like, that's it? Okay. That's all you can do to me? This is an attempt to change my mind effectively, right? To get me to stop believing what I believe because I'm doing something because I believe in it. This isn't a mistake.

Starting point is 00:17:19 I'm here on purpose. Yeah. And I know it's illegal. I know you don't want me to do it. And you caught me. And you put me in a box because of it. But I feel exactly the same. and there's something liberating about about that that you could control so much but you can't

Starting point is 00:17:35 control my mind you can't control how i think you can't control how i feel and like it's it's all theoretical until it actually happens until you're bound and put in a cage right and then it's like okay well i feel the same way so you didn't you have failed yeah you failed yeah to change me yeah so there's something in fact sometimes it makes you even strengthens it yeah yeah yeah reinforces it yeah um did you get it yeah i sent it again i just really want people to see it's such a cool photo yeah i know it's like um i didn't think about it at the time this this was before everybody had a i mean this is before smartphones right so cameras weren't if you had a camera it was just like a regular camera so they

Starting point is 00:18:29 weren't they weren't that omnipresent like they are today so it's like the photo was actually in the washington post like it was like journalists that took the photo um so it was in the washington post hey mom yeah yeah yeah i'm also barefoot which is something that people point out but that is the the backstories the police just took my shoes it's not because i was barefoot at the protest um but yeah so going back to what you were saying i i think there's so many different threads to pull on now so let me try so you're you're being arrested you're on the streets you're an activist for a while how long how many years have you spent yeah So in the U.S., about two years, and in that two-year time period, there were other things, right?

Starting point is 00:19:27 There was the IMF, and there was media literacy, but the main thing was anti-war. That was kind of the mood of the country that kind of dominated a lot of things. And so myself and a group of friends, we started an organization literally the night of September 11th, People of Tomorrow. And we had a festival later that year, which a lot of our work was just building up to this festival. And then we kind of absorbed what was a pre-existing organization that the university recognized. like we were just just a group of friends but a progressive student alliance and they had you know they had funding they had a budget and uh they didn't have any people and the advisor was like hey do you guys want to just like step into the shell and you guys would have money and

Starting point is 00:20:23 like legitimacy and all that so we did that um and then that organization grew very oh look at that yeah thank you look at that we got it you look like such a kid here i mean i'm very young right i was um and all the robocops i own you yeah it's like a scene from a movie this thing yeah yeah you know that that's one thing that really struck me during the demonstrations I took part in, in Israel in the past, in 2021, 2022, a bit of 2020 as well, like the police violence and the realization you have as a citizen in your own country that the police that is supposed to protect you and be there to serve you is your enemy, or at least it feels like it because they're so

Starting point is 00:21:21 against you and they're so violent that you sometimes stop and ask you know how many times we try to speak to the police officer and go like which side are you on who are you with are you protecting the politicians or are you protecting the people and we are not violent so why are you guys so violent and you know I took my son to the streets with me oftentimes and he would have to see some police violence and that was a real awakening for him right and you know me having to physically with my body protect him and hide him from certain things that happened on the streets was quite an experience you know there's a water hose being uh directed at us and i'm putting him behind the tree and i'm hugging the tree and i'm like don't worry it's just water

Starting point is 00:22:11 it's surreal you know yes yeah who's doing this to us mom oh it's our police that we're supposed to trust but yeah but that smashed so many of the preconceptions that i had so in this in the in the two years after this photo i guess i was already part of the two years but in that time period of my life where i was very active um like i i was the president of this organization and i was associated with it uh so we we organized protests ourselves and we never got permits for them so the police would come after me outside of the protests right they would like come to my apartment not even they would find excuses to come like they got a noise complaint and they had to come in and they'd go through they'd like drop um like they'd say my name like

Starting point is 00:23:05 They knew who I was, and they would look at the books that I was reading. But it was intimidation, right? Of course. They were not my friends. They were the enemy, right? So they are the status quo. That's what their job is, is to enforce the status quo. And if you challenge that, then they are the enemy, and you are their enemy.

Starting point is 00:23:27 And that was a really hard lesson. it made me really I want to say like depressed and pessimistic to be like this is so different what I from what I thought the world was but I only realized that because I tried to exist outside of the status quo and push things outside of that and then it comes down full force on you yeah right um you met the boundaries of the matrix yeah yeah like as long as you're in the boundaries then everything's great and like boundaries include protest it's like truman show when he sees the door right yeah yeah and that's when it's like oh so this is how the world really is right um but that's sometimes we wake up through

Starting point is 00:24:20 the tough realization right through the the pressure or the suffering yeah so i at another at another moment um when i was in jail this was after the iraq war started and i did civil disobedience and and spent the night just one night um but i i was arrested and there were a bunch of us there were like 50 people that that were arrested then and we were in you know a small cell like overcrowded but we were all in the same wing like the same section and the police i mean I mean, it's, you know, probably pretty present for you. I'm sure it was the same in Israel after October 7th. But there was the phenomenon rally around the flag, right?

Starting point is 00:25:10 Of course. There were a lot of people that were against the war a week before it started. A week after it started, almost no one was against the war, right? It's like, well, you know, we got to support our country, like patriotism, all that stuff. Yeah. Which actually is nationalism. It's not patriotism. but that's of course that's a whole separate topic um and the the the guards the police

Starting point is 00:25:37 they kept the lights on all night and they brought down a boombox and played the star spangled banner on repeat to teach us some sort of lesson that we weren't you know we had to fall into line and be patriotic and that that's the night that i gave up on the united states i left the country on a one-way ticket to latin america a few months later when was that so this would have been so i i left in january 2024 but this was not 2024 2024. Oh, I'm sorry. Minus 20. 2004. Yeah. I made the decision in March 2003, but I finished my studies and then left the country in January 2004.

Starting point is 00:26:34 So you've lived in Latin America for a while? Yeah, kind of off and on. um i mean one thing that i realized is that the u.s isn't that special in the sense that like oh yeah the system is broken here but like everywhere else it's going to be different it's kind of the same everywhere right which was a lesson that i learned in ecuador i moved to ecuador first and i lived there for a few years and participated in some really powerful street protests that overthrew the government there um and then i i was arrested and deported there even though i was like on the side of the protesters it kind of had anti-american undertones and when the new

Starting point is 00:27:18 government took over then they didn't recognize yeah the visa that i had from the previous government and i kind of just got caught up in this political uh yeah mess but like that experience was like oh so it's like this everywhere right like uh but there was there was at a certain point and i think bitcoin is really what to bring it back to the present um for a long time whether it was in the united states like protesting a war or the imf or it was in ecuador protesting that government and certain policies that they had, it was mostly pushing against, right? It was mostly trying to slow the bad. And Bitcoin for me was such a revolution because I now, I mean, this has been a journey, but

Starting point is 00:28:19 at this point, I don't really care about the bad. I care about accelerating the good, right? And making the bad irrelevant. Like the more we push against the bad, the more we empower it. Yes. So my favorite, I don't know what to call him, author, philosopher,

Starting point is 00:28:39 the work of literature that has most influenced my life is Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. And he writes that if you really want to if you really oppose the state, you should remove yourself from it. Because even if you act in opposition, you're still part of the system and you're actually strengthened in that system by giving it credibility, right? Like, again, I don't want to discourage people from going out into the street and protest, and that's really important. And I intend to, you know i haven't been to my last protest right there will be others i'm sure um but

Starting point is 00:29:30 usually that actually reinforces what you're trying to stop rather than i agree and and the way to same realization i had yeah if you really oppose something and for me i oppose this i oppose the the status quo of this world right i oppose the way things are at a fundamental level like the incentive structures are broken this system will not reform itself it is done like there's no hope for it and all the great people they that think that they can change the system from within oh i so don't subscribe to that i really uh hats off but the problem with trying to change the system from within is it's not you who changes the system but the system which will inevitably change you right you become part of it agree and and the more you become part of it

Starting point is 00:30:33 the harder it is to see what's happening and the harder it is to break away so So, yeah, this, this. But when you put your energy in building the new. Yeah. You're then creating something that doesn't exist. Right. So you can have all the power in the world. You can have all the energy you want because it doesn't exist yet.

Starting point is 00:31:01 You're sucking energy into something new. you're not fiddling into some existing energy that is so rigged and and rotten anyway that trying to purify that energy is just so hard yeah rather you bring something it's not hard it's impossible yeah it's impossible um yeah and and and when if you could build something outside of those walls then you could reimagine what it can be right we don't have to accept what is we can reimagine what can be and and i there is nothing that empowers that more than bitcoin itself um for for different people in different ways which is really special about it right we don't have to agree on all the details but it's a we can create alternative frameworks

Starting point is 00:31:56 uh so then you created one called my first bitcoin yeah when did you create it yeah um so you know there's a long long uh long gap between the it's like pushing against um and in 2013 i heard about bitcoin for the first time and uh was like wow this is amazing i went all in but then i had kind of a negative experience with it i mean the police raided my house because i was selling bitcoin peer-to-peer but um that kind of made me take a step back like you have experience with everything that's amazing yeah go on well that's the thing like if you if you exist beyond where it's permitted then things like this happen yeah right those are the yeah yeah the the agent smith will come knocking on your door yeah yeah for sure um but in 2021

Starting point is 00:33:06 In 2021, I had never, so I had been into Bitcoin for like eight years at that point, but I had never been to a conference. I'd like tried to orange pill friends and family and stuff, but I never really worked in the space, never been to a conference, never been to a meetup. and i saw this speech that jack mallers gave with with bukele to that they were going to adopt it as legal tender and that was that was also shocking to me but in a very different way from september 11th it was shocking like are we this far along like are we at this point in the timeline where this is happening uh it was a glitch in the matrix yeah yeah you saw it and but how did you feel about it because you're coming from a background that the state is something that is you know either dangerous or evil so then you have this cognitive dissonance between your ideology and then here you go there's a political leader that actually wants to embrace

Starting point is 00:34:14 something that will strengthen the people that will liberate his people right how does that work so what did you feel about it i mean this this whole this whole chapter like this whole experience over the last few years here in el salvador for me has been um surreal surreal right like i can't imagine i would never have imagined that i'd have friendly meetings with like government with with government and ministers and all that um i i do think that you know you should probably be careful what i say let's just say i'm taking a pause because my audience wouldn't know what my first bitcoin is so my first bitcoin is an educational organization that does not take funding from the government yeah and educates the community

Starting point is 00:35:09 yes and you'll say more everywhere you can on bitcoin and the new possible monetary system that can come to life under a bitcoin standard yeah yeah so we yeah just kind of like maybe a baseline for what uh bitcoin is so we started in 2021 so we're about a little bit more than three years old at this point and we are just a bitcoin education non-profit uh we think of bitcoin as the means and bitcoin education as the means and the end is empowerment right bitcoin education is a gateway drug to having control over your own life and and and realizing that you don't have agency and and realizing that it would be better if you did um but not not just for money but for so many things i mean money is super important though so since we began we yeah so we're pretty

Starting point is 00:36:18 principled in that we take no money from any government and we are extremely selective with money that we do take so we mostly reject corporate money and we we're majority grassroots funded so just from the community people just donate in um and that's been our model for for three years now and we have taught here in el salvador so we've developed a bunch of different materials or kind of our flagship product is the bitcoin diploma which is a 10 week program that takes you from off of zero basically the first half of it is just financial literacy and then the second half gets into bitcoin 10 weeks right yeah 10 weeks and how many languages has this been translated to so far so everything that we do is open source

Starting point is 00:37:17 which is really incredible because then that allows people to take the initiative and do their own thing so we have i know that the so there's there's a new edition every year um so cumulative i think we're probably at 16 or 17 languages that it's been translated into um we just do english and spanish and then the community if they want then they translate it into other languages and we put it all on and publish it and yeah there's no problem of rights or anything like that it's all open source yep yeah um so we've taught here in el salvador since we began over 35 000 students in person about bitcoin and schools through their schools meaning yeah uh some of that is in the school system here and some of that is

Starting point is 00:38:10 um you know at coffee shops or basically wherever we could get free space uh so it's so it's a mix there initially we did it on our own just wherever we could find a space but then in 2023 um we started to work with the ministry of education with with bitcoin beach as well to train some public school teachers to teach a modified version of the bitcoin diploma so they it's open source so they they took that curriculum and they used that as the base material made a couple of tweaks to it um and now they have their own bitcoin diploma uh so but step one this is bitcoin country but most public school teachers don't know know anything about bitcoin so you have to train them so we had to train them first so we've trained i think about

Starting point is 00:39:11 500 since this program started amazing um and we actually we have a separate project with for younger audiences so we're it's in development still but we're developing curriculum with with lena from the little hodler for for children basically um and that will probably follow a similar trajectory so next year is likely when we'll when it will appear in the first schools here the first public school excuse me but that our concession there you know because we don't take money from the government and they asked us if we could help create this curriculum so our ask wasn't like okay yeah but you need to pay us x our ask was okay but it needs to be open source everything that we work on needs to be open source we're happy like we think this is a great idea

Starting point is 00:40:01 great initiative but it needs to be open source and free for everyone to use so other countries can copy the model yeah wow yeah yeah so this this will be the curriculum that comes out for younger audiences will also be open source even though it's kind of like a ministry of education project it will also be open source which is awesome that is so amazing this is like streams of energy being sent around the world to other places to start the revolution yeah and and we we work with you know still trying to lay the foundation for what is me for bitcoin we we work with um educators around the world we have what we call a node network of educators educators And so much of what we do is trying to bring the revolution that is Bitcoin in the digital realm, try to translate that into a physical space, into the physical world.

Starting point is 00:41:04 That really guides so much of what we do. And because of that, we copy some terminology from Bitcoin with the node network and try to copy. uh so in terms of the node network in order to join the network where the genesis node so we created the consensus and that consensus is that the education must be independent impartial community-led high quality bitcoin only and focus on empowerment so if you agree to the consensus rules then you could apply to join the network and at this point the network so the network's about a almost two years old at this point um at this point it's self-governing so we actually don't decide you know for the second node third node fourth node we we did because yep we had to right

Starting point is 00:41:58 but it's been a journey to decentralize the network and at this point it is there's there's still more to go but it's you said in the adopting bitcoin el salvador you said 50 projects running around the world in about 30 countries so over 50 projects from over 30 countries so some countries have multiple multiple projects in different cities yeah in different cities um so like the the u.s probably has the most of any single country so project is always like based on a geographical location or could be like maybe an education system in a country or something like so thus far all but two are geographically focused um two of the nodes in the network one is uh operation bitcoin which is focused on teaching military veterans about bitcoin

Starting point is 00:42:57 so they're thematic yeah good it's a community yeah yeah but they don't have like a city that they're attached to they have that's great and there's another another node um a pretty recent node i think just in the past block or two so we call when new nodes come in we so can we do like a call to action if any of my audience that has a community or a geographical area that want to start a node in their either geographical jurisdiction or their community of like-minded people yeah that they can put together they can become a node yeah yeah 100 on the website they see all so yeah on the website which is myfirstbitcoin.io there's a tab i think maybe the tab is called education network but there's a tab there that gives you more information

Starting point is 00:43:45 we've actually the past year we've built a lot of infrastructure and um we're building like a whole platform for this network now like an independent platform that we control um you know rather than a third-party platform and yeah anybody could apply and you don't have to right like you could do you can just take the material and run with it material and run with it um but if you if you want to have the support and the community and the structure right so so kind of the idea of the network is to share best practices speed up the timeline and entrench ourselves right so there are because it's all decentralized yeah yeah it's all decentralized so like it doesn't matter if you stop one of us yeah uh but we because we have the same core philosophies

Starting point is 00:44:41 and use many of the same materials then we have these general assemblies once a month and there's always somebody like oh what i found was like this is just an example so we had we had an issue or many people had an issue with the course being free and students come into the first one but maybe like you know not coming to the second or not not attending but they didn't want to so you you could charge for it right but but many people in the network want to keep it free to not have any barriers of entry um so this is something that we've experimented with and other nodes have experimented with it is something along the lines of you pay some amount in fiat at the start of the course and if you graduate then you get it back in bitcoin at the

Starting point is 00:45:40 end and if you don't if you don't it then that's a donation to the project right um so but things like that like there's a there's a lot of experimentation and we don't all have to reinvent the wheel like if if you know somebody in kenya figures something out like that then they're going to share it with the whole network and it's going to right yeah right and we also just try to just generally support each other and i think it's really powerful to know that you're not alone exactly right that you're part of a movement because that's what it is it's not you're you're not just a couple of friends in a city trying to teach about bitcoin you're part of this global movement and again it's it's that's all well and good in theory but like to

Starting point is 00:46:31 have these gas every month and like communicate with these people meet them at conferences and another kind of branch of of the meet my bitcoin movement is the the unconference which which you went to just twice yeah in nashville and now yeah the two most recent ones yeah um and then conference again for those who don't know so an unconference is a conference that the most of the content of the conference is actually being determined on the day from the people, by the people, on the venue itself.

Starting point is 00:47:11 So everyone comes in and there's like a pitch, a pitch, I'd say, you know, just go through each person that wants to pitch their idea of what they're going to talk about on the day. And then people just say, yeah, I want to go with him because i share similar needs or or interests and then those groups just come together and we fill it up on the board and the conference just happens yeah so so the unconference is kind of sort of the ga in the real world you know the ga we do digitally the general assembly that we do monthly

Starting point is 00:47:48 um but you know many at the especially in nashville as well but especially the one last week in san salvador there were people from nodes around the world who were there and and you know i'm sure they a lot of wisdom was shared right a lot of like experience was transferred from from one person to the next because we don't a lot of this is because i think there's an urgency we don't have forever to do this okay say more about that yeah there's a what's coming down what's happening is it the what are you talking about say more yeah um they're getting crazier the world's about to explode i feel it i don't know if everyone do yes yeah they're getting crazier and crazier the world the legacy world is on an unsustainable path

Starting point is 00:48:55 and it will crash i don't know when but i know it will uh the way that i see it with analogy is like we are speeding towards a cliff and as we're speeding towards the cliff like i think the node network is probably the best representation of this we are trying to build wings right like yeah if we don't build wings then we're going to crash right we're going to crash on on the bottom here if we do build wings then we're going to launch off from that cliff and go to a much higher place right and and i think that is the the contrast of these parallel possibilities of the future And it's not neutral. Like if we don't take action, if we don't do this, it's not neutral. It's actually, it's a world that gets worse from the current state. Doesn't stay the same, it gets worse from the current state.

Starting point is 00:50:01 um and i say that that that could be subjective but i say that from the point of view of the individual and their relationship to power right we are going to have less power which has these really negative downstream effects right it means that people will lash out in violent and unpredictable ways it means that people will be depressed because they're not in control it means that they don't want to create because they're not incentivized to build to create like everything we can becomes congested yeah um so so that is that is one path and that is the path that if we do nothing the path that we will take that's the probable path yeah right now and then the other path which we have to create is basically the converse of that right it's where the individual

Starting point is 00:50:57 has more agency in their own life and all the positive downstream effects of that um you know they're incentivized to to build to create to look further into the future to start families and that that changes everything that changes everything like that changes it changes the big stuff but it changes the little stuff too it changes how you relate to your neighbors right because you see a future that you can help create rather than being subservient if you're subservient to your own future it just ruins your incentives like you don't care about your neighbor you don't like you don't care about anyone really care about yourself you don't care about yourself because you because you can't caring about your neighbor or even

Starting point is 00:52:00 yourself is you're just setting yourself up for disappointment because things will happen outside of your control. It's just not a good way to live. I think that's actually how most of the world lives today. I agree with you. And I want to pause there for a second and maybe dive deeper because a lot of my audience will resonate a lot with what you're saying right now, but I know that some of them will have a hard time to take this forward because the knee-jerk reaction to this is, okay, so what do I do? And what I always try to show is if what you have in your life is fear and you are trying to fight the system and you want to get out of it because you're aware that it's rotten, you're aware that it's not going in the right path and you do want to build a

Starting point is 00:53:04 sovereign life. But there are many underlying traumas and things that are still in your life with you all the time that you haven't let go of. It's like your big bag of stuff that you're carrying. It's quite heavy. It's quite hard to build something new when that bag is on your shoulder all the time you want to put it down at one one point and that's why i always say if you want to transition to building a new world but not just talking about building a new world and saying what you resist saying i want cash i resist the abolition of cash i resist 15 minute cds i resist you know whatever climate agenda i resist any experimental pharma medicine that's Oh, good. You resist. You say no to stuff. But then what do you say yes to? And that part is

Starting point is 00:54:02 missing for most people. And I think for a lot of my audience as well, because you need to then start saying yes to something else. And in order to say yes to something else, you need to sort out your shit. You need to do some inner work, mental work, and drop that baggage so that you can have the space, the mental space, even sometimes the physical space to start building something new. And as long as you are just shouting on the old and resisting the old and saying no to the old, and you have that baggage with you, there is very little chance that out of listening to this conversation, you'll be able to leave and take something practical to your life. What I urge people to do is to then, you know, close off the phone or the computer or wherever

Starting point is 00:54:46 it is that you're listening and start looking into your life. What do I need to change? What do i need to start working on what do i need to drop so that i can be free to create so that i can start thinking what do i actually care about where do i want to create yeah right yeah absolutely and and and money ruins everything right like there's there's something that that i try to stay true to personally but it's also um an axiom that we applied to me from our bitcoin yeah and it's i wouldn't do anything for money that i wouldn't do for free and same with me from bitcoin we wouldn't do anything for money that we wouldn't do for free um which same for me i said many no's to many sponsorship opportunities because they're not aligned with who i am and

Starting point is 00:55:43 what i stand for and i wouldn't let anyone dictate what i do in my content and journalistic work and i wouldn't go to work for any mainstream media publication so i'm an independent journalist right right we money cannot buy me right right and that's that's so important and so underappreciated undervalued right because when you live in a world where everything is for sale nothing's real right and then you say oh but but i have to right so yes there is some extent that there is a necessity you have to bring food you have to survive i understand that but then there's always this small area that you can actually maneuver in and bring something new you you have to do certain things but then you can always leave some space for creating something new yeah

Starting point is 00:56:43 for saving for for looking at the future and you could work toward it right it's not something that happens overnight exactly you could work toward it and that's it's such a time preference means so much right if you're only thinking days ahead then it's hard to conceptualize that but if you're thinking years ahead or a decade ahead yes you can't you can't make these radical changes overnight but you can you can but in order to make them you have to be in control of your own destiny right you have to be in control of your own future and that's what's really powerful about bitcoin is it's a tool that that helps in that regard um and and i think i think the people that say like well i can't do this i i need i have bills to pay right so i i can't quit my job

Starting point is 00:57:39 i'd rather do x but i have to do y and you see that a lot where you are right now there are a lot of people here that are not well off that are poor and and that's true for that day It's not true for five years from today, right? So if you're thinking into the future, then you really open up new possibilities, right? What is impossible today and what you just have to put your head down and accept it today, you don't tomorrow, right? And the realization that you can control your own future changes everything. And we all can. We all have the ability to control our own future.

Starting point is 00:58:30 I'm with you. It is harder. It is much harder. Oh, yeah. So it's kind of on my mind because November, the election was recent, the U.S. election. And, you know, congratulations if the person you voted for won, but that's not where change is going to come from. It's too easy, right? Voting tricks us into thinking that we could have change and convenience at the same time.

Starting point is 00:59:05 You cannot. if you really want to live in a different future it means that you have to be uncomfortable in the present right you can't you can't be comfortable in the present and create a different future you can't and and like one of my gripes with voting is is that it deceives us into thinking like oh yeah like just tick a box and everything will be better yeah it's that instant magic fix yeah yeah um it's harder like what we're doing with me from our bitcoin we since the very beginning uh there have been many people that shared their opinion that like what you guys are doing is great but but what if you ran it more like a business like then scaling would be easier then you

Starting point is 01:00:02 wouldn't have to worry about funding and it's like yeah but that that's and this is a really important point if you want to change the world you can't seek success from the world that you are trying to move away from right like you need to create new metrics you need to create new ways to measure success and it's not a lot of people just apply the logic and even in the bitcoin space they apply the logic of the legacy world to bitcoin right for us success is empowering individuals empowering ourselves right like inside the team it's empowering ourselves and it's empowering the students empowerment across the board um it's not how much money we raised it's not how many retweets we got you know like those are metrics of a world that we are

Starting point is 01:01:07 trying to replace so we need to reject them and maybe one of your metrics will be counting how many smiles you saw in a week yeah yeah how many smiling children you made through your work in one week like no one no one thinks or talks about that right it's it's quite insane that we have become so um used to a society that measures things that are digital or are a a descendant of the digital world yeah but they don't necessarily reflect happiness or empowerment or joy or things that really matter in life or sovereignty i don't know we need to think of new ways how do we measure sovereignty that's a really good question let's start let's let's board a project team that that's what they'll do they'll come up with like new matrices for for life how

Starting point is 01:02:08 do we measure life on a bitcoin standard that could be really amazing yeah yeah if we're if we're seeking success by the standards of the world in which we're trying to replace then we will fail right we'll succeed in a dying world and not create a new one there is one amazing sentence you said i think it was at the talk at the conference you said scaling which is all about growth scaling by giving up control yeah which is so amazing like people you gotta really like stop and think about that sentence you scale by giving up control it's uh it's it's a beautiful notion because when you give up control and you surrender and you trust some other people or entities or life to just take it from here because you've given it what you needed to give and now

Starting point is 01:03:06 it's like okay it's it's in other hands and i trust the system the people the the the standard that we're operating on and it will scale and that's what happens with the nodes and that's what happens with the premier bitcoin that's what happens with with bitcoin itself yeah right you scale by giving up control not by centralizing and taking more control yes a hundred percent and and I'm so inspired by, you know, without Bitcoin and without Meepamera Bitcoin, I think I would be pretty pessimistic about the future. But with them, I'm super optimistic. And one of the reasons, you know, specific to Meepamera Bitcoin is we are doing things differently, right? Like we have a global network.

Starting point is 01:03:56 we could have a global network of educators but instead we've consciously moved away from that and like you know with a lot of little decisions so for example there was early on in the network then

Starting point is 01:04:12 a lot of the nodes wanted to some of them were existing projects but for the ones that were new just starting out they wanted to use our name for their country or in their language uh and we actually you know we have very few restrictions but one of the restrictions was no every project should have a separate name because

Starting point is 01:04:42 is it because of centralization yeah because it would point to us right it would make us that makes so much sense now yeah i think about like like it would all go back to the source then So the diploma has the same name, but not the project or the entity. Yeah, yeah, like we want entities to really be independent. And, you know, that's not normal, right? It's not normal to, like we… To not want the credit. Yeah, to not want the power, I think, is what that is.

Starting point is 01:05:16 And because of that, you know, I've spent some time recently trying to think because when I moved here in 2021 I met a number of other people who intended to start Bitcoin education projects and along the way

Starting point is 01:05:34 there's been many other attempts and I call me biased but I don't think any of them have had the success of Meepam or Bitcoin in like what makes it different and i think what makes it different is that we don't try to control it i think that is

Starting point is 01:05:58 it's a different it's an alternative way and i see me premiere bitcoin as a grand experiment in trying to push the boundaries of what's possible today in order to reimagine what's possible tomorrow i see it as a grand proof of concept like if we could reject traditional funding sources and rely mostly on the community if we could make that work then it proves that it's possible proves that others could do that it proves that we don't that we could reject the existing funding models um if we could scale globally without controlling it and you know bitcoin has already

Starting point is 01:06:54 done this but but again we're we're trying to do this in the physical world and yeah um if we could prove that that can happen then others will copy it right like i love it like it's a proof of concept we're trying to create a proof of concept for an alternative future right um and the only reason why it's successful why it's been successful is because of the community itself right like we are we are captured by the community right like intentionally so i said this at adopt in but but it's it's something that i've thought about a lot i i think that education will always be captured by those who fund it right on a long enough timeline whoever funds the education will capture it we'll control it so it's very intentional that we are community funded

Starting point is 01:07:49 so that is who we answer to we're not trying to please sponsors or governments we're trying to please people who have been down the rabbit hole and want to see a different future that's who that's who we owe this to that's that's who our donors are um that's where the funding comes from that's where the support comes from and if we stray from that course then they can and should stop funding us right like that is who that's your promise yeah that's your brand promise and and that i'm i'm really inspired that so many people understand that and support it um because without it then we're just like you know a few crazy people right then are just saying wild things that don't match reality well

Starting point is 01:08:54 Well, I can tell you as someone who has been traveling around all the different Bitcoin conferences and have been around many different communities in the past one and a half years or so, the name of MePremier Bitcoin and the work that you guys are doing, it echoes very far. And everyone's talking about it. Everyone knows. I mean, if they don't know, they're starting to know. It's very easy for people to explain what it is. It's very clear. um there's a lot of uh air freedom space in that conversation because there's no rigidness there's no uh you know a set a strict set of rules that people have to abide with a friend of mine

Starting point is 01:09:39 that lives in thailand that visited my house recently i showed him the my premier bitcoin book in English, which I got from Reina when I was in Prague. And he was like, whoa, that's amazing. He lives in Copenhagen and he does free Bitcoin meetups every Tuesday on the island and people come, new OGs, everyone that wants to learn about Bitcoin, they come. And when he saw that, he was like, wow, I could use something like that. And because he's Israeli, even though he lives in Thailand he was like I want to start a project and translate that to Hebrew so I put him in touch with you and another guy and it's starting to happen and he's going to do it so it's so accessible it's so easy to start you just have to want to initiate these new things in your life and they

Starting point is 01:10:34 can happen yeah like what what we try to do is we try to create the framework but the individual is the one that actually has to do the work. Exactly. Right? Like, we've tried and, you know, we made a lot of mistakes along the way, but translating the next Bitcoin Diploma, which will be out January, so pretty soon,

Starting point is 01:10:59 will be much easier than the last one. And this one was easier than the one before that, right? Just, like, the file formatting and, you know, like, we're actually creating new software and platforms to make this easier okay uh but we're not going to do the work right like we we set up the chairs but the people sit down and have the conversation and that's awesome and that's and that's the message right the medium is the message so if we're talking about empowerment then you kind of have to walk away otherwise those words are hollow you have to walk the talk

Starting point is 01:11:36 yeah we're not just saying we're all for empowerment we're actually empowering you to get off your ass and do the work. Wherefore you have an agency in your own life and this is exactly how you have to do it. Exactly, that's not how it works. And we're here if you want to ask something and here's a community of like-minded people that do the same.

Starting point is 01:11:56 You can ask them, but it's on you to take it from here, which is amazing. It's incredible. I love what you guys do. And since we're in El Salvador, I cannot not ask you, how it's actually going for you for the past three years with the government and with Bukele and with the system that is in place here is it really like in your in your view is it something

Starting point is 01:12:23 that can really succeed can it then be the blueprint for other places that want to do the same yeah i mean you know the the situation here in el salvador is is a lot more nuanced than i think is how it's generally presented i think it's generally like always in life people think it's so simple and it's always so much more complicated yeah people either think like oh it's perfect they figured it all out um you know like we did it guys um or it's like well you know so many people still don't use bitcoin so it's a failure and uh no it's going down guys it's over yeah let's go so yeah it's somewhere it's somewhere in between um i'm very optimistic about el salvador generally but about bitcoin specifically i think that they are creating a

Starting point is 01:13:21 blueprint and the story of el salvador adopting bitcoin is is uh you know it was so fast right like they you know going back to to the announcement which is june of 2021 you know i'm sure there were people that knew about it ahead of time i didn't i was i was pretty obsessed with bitcoin and pretty obsessed with latin america and like i had no idea right um and and i think even here you know people that were in charge of implementing that policy didn't know anything about bitcoin right it's like okay 90 days is legal tender which is crazy fast right fast so so i moved here in in that in that window in between right so and i moved here in august 2021 and there was here in bitcoin beach um you know there's lots of uh bitcoin knowledge and adoption but this is one

Starting point is 01:14:28 town right this is one village it's it's relatively small uh in san salvador in the capital which is where where i live that is you know most of the country lives in the in the metropolitan area and nobody knew anything about bitcoin nobody accepted bitcoin like it was it was what do you want from me with this kind of look of what bitcoin what it was very nearly zero in terms of knowledge and adoption in in san salvador and basically outside of bitcoin beach um and so considering that starting point there's been so much progress right and how el salvador could be an example you know again uh this is my own your own view this is my own position yeah but what i would do differently so i think i think this like overnight sort of legal tender is i have no

Starting point is 01:15:31 critique about that right uh what i would say should be different for the next country is there should be a big focus on education not just from day one but from day zero like before it even Before it even starts. Before it even starts. And I think that is something that El Salvador has been playing catch-up on. So, you know, and now they're doing great, right? Now there's a lot of programs. Like I said, there's over 500 teachers who are trained in Bitcoin education for, you know, teenagers for that level.

Starting point is 01:16:13 uh and next year they'll start a pilot for younger audiences uh you know for elementary school teachers and you know they're they're they're both going to take a couple of years to really reach every school right um the ministry of education is this might be like breaking news I don't know, is going to start a Bitcoin department. Oh, really? Yeah. So there's like, you know, a history department, social studies. So they're going to create a Bitcoin department to own it, right?

Starting point is 01:16:53 Because up to now, it's outside organizations such as Meepamare Bitcoin that have been helping them. And the idea is in the future, they do it all on their own, right? And we're always going to educate people in these other organizations, but we'll just focus on a different demographic then. But it's empowerment. It's like, hey, we don't need to hold your hand. You can do this, right? And so it's taken them, so this is three and a half years.

Starting point is 01:17:29 I think they're in a good place now, but imagine if they were in this place three and a half years ago. And it'd be really hard to be in this place three years ago or impossible. But the next country could be. The next country could have all of the progress that's been made. And again, the materials that they're using are either open source for the one next year or based on open source. So there's no restrictions. We are very aggressive in trying to put out teacher guides and plans and just do this. So the blueprint is there for the next country to do it. A lot of it had to be created here in El Salvador, and there were lots of bumps along the way. And there will be bumps along the way for the next one and the one after that and the one after that but i think

Starting point is 01:18:28 you could compress you could compress the timeline significantly for the next one like you could start with this program on day zero you don't have like yeah so i'm very it will happen right it the there is now a new template there is now that had to be developed here right it didn't exist before else out there now one does exist and that is going to be so important education is is just the foundation of success for for this right because otherwise that that void that knowledge void will be filled one way or another. It will be filled by scammers and people with their own interests, or it will be filled with material that

Starting point is 01:19:33 empowers the individual, right? Again, the contrast is stark. This isn't neutral. There is no middle ground it's either we're either driving off of a cliff or we're learning how to fly yeah exactly wow amazing so um any of my audience that is listening that has any ties with teacher organizations ministry of education um schools if you want to make a difference in the education system where you live even independent education if you took your kids out of school and you have a community schooling system then you can take this and start working with this and because i know that a lot of my audience is trying to make a difference through politicians they try to educate politicians or go to them and speak to them sometimes you have to drop that

Starting point is 01:20:28 leave that alone maybe try other ways so you can you can actually try and make a difference or an impact through education so that's another idea for people out there you can just find all the information on the me premier bitcoin website yeah absolutely i mean this is we we've tried to design it the whole movement in such a way to make it easy to plug in right make it easy to to put your your energy into it um and take energy out of it but you know but but use that uh i should have brought the book to show yeah i've got it i've got the big one and the small one now yeah the small one is so cute the small one is is is nice it's cheaper you know it we're getting better because the the large books are expensive i'm sure um but they're more like workbooks you can

Starting point is 01:21:21 actually work in that book yeah right in it yeah yeah pros and cons but um yeah it's expensive i'm sure it's expensive it's like a pretty big cost of ours so so in fact we we would sometimes not even use we would use the book but like in digital format just like pdf just to save money and that's not yeah and a quick practical question can people take that curriculum and develop a digital course out of it yeah um so yes people could take it and do whatever they want with it uh we have over the past year we've been this is maybe also breaking news um i get two yeah uh more than denny sparter i'm gonna do two breaking here yeah go on

Starting point is 01:22:15 why don't you get pocket this to laugh yeah we go on breaking but we have built an lms so learning management system uh-huh uh which has kind of been like soft launched so we've taught some people on it and a couple of the the nodes are teaching students on it um but it's very new So we haven't really hard-launched it yet because I'm sure there's some kinks to work out still. But it is a very robust structure to teach digitally, and it is free for all Bitcoin educators. So anyone that wants to use it can. It has basically boundless capacity, some really powerful features. And next year, to lean into that, we're basically making an online version, trying to translate some of the physical activities to the digital space.

Starting point is 01:23:21 So it's something that we are actively working towards. But if somebody else wants to do it in their own way, then they absolutely can and should. Because those are the rules of the game. That would make all of us more effective at what we do, right? And that's the really cool thing about this. Like Bitcoin itself is when you add something to the movement, maybe you're doing it to help yourself, right? You have this specific use case that this is applicable toward, but it actually helps everyone, right? As you help yourself, you could help others as well, which is, you know, this is not how the world works today, but it's the world that we want to build, where I win, you win, not I win because you lost, right?

Starting point is 01:24:19 Amen. Yeah. Yes. Well, on that note, dude, we shouldn't add anything else on that. This is perfect. um where should people follow you and me premiere yeah so for me twitter or nostra would be best i'm on j denny he writes um and i don't know on twitter and pop seven find him on

Starting point is 01:24:54 Noster yeah and for meet from our Bitcoin there's the website as I mentioned

Starting point is 01:25:00 before which is just myfirstbitcoin.io or in Spanish meetfromourbitcoin.io we're on everywhere like all the

Starting point is 01:25:10 socials the same name so the uniform name is myfirstbitcoin underscore so that's Twitter

Starting point is 01:25:16 Instagram I actually don't really know about facebook i don't know if it's like a group that maybe is an exception but yeah uh and yeah i think maybe a closing message is that this is a revolution right bitcoin is a revolution but only if we seize it there we have an opportunity to not just change who wields power but change our relationship to power and that has never happened before and it won't happen if we're not active in that pursuit

Starting point is 01:26:00 if we wait for someone else to do it then we're going to end up in a very similar place to where we are today on a very similar trajectory that is the problem with the world today is because we are and to be fair we're kind of forced into this right because we don't have another option but we're waiting for someone else to do it if we want to create an alternative something better then we need to do it ourselves and that is every single person right so take action in your own lives and change the world. That's how we change the world by taking actions on a smaller level that actually ripple out. Let's go, dude. Yeah. Let's build it. Well done. I'm inspired by you and what you do. I thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you. It's amazing. You're

Starting point is 01:26:54 amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for watching!

You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 58: John Dennehy - Accelerate The Good, Over Fighting The Bad

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