Recorded November 15, 2025 - 923735
Business Cat speaks at Bitcoin Veterans
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[00:00:01]
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can't help myself, man. I'm just... Another thing, dude, this morning Harry sat on the toilet and took a little tiny poo. It is a beautiful morning this morning. great way to open this episode. Right? Yeah, hello dear listeners. Welcome to that. Yeah, you know, very famous like fish moment is there's this documentary and uh Trey reads this review about somebody saying, you know, fish is perfectly willing to piss in the ears of its audience and their audience is willing to accept it and like love it. He gets so triggered by it that like for the next like 20 minutes he's like in his car. He just keeps talking about how it's just funny.
uh What was that X post that you put out all about fish? Like, and then everybody was talking about it in the chat, but like, it's all over my head. So what was that about? I don't know, maybe I found a way to bring some levity to this knot situation because I've associated fish lure, I've associated this whole thing into fish lure in a very detailed way. So maybe Jason and I are gonna do this tomorrow on Back on the Chain. Alright, well, yeah, don't preview anything. Okay, that's got it. That's interesting. Yeah, if fish has done anything, if fish does anything, like, it is maybe like the ability to troll people without alienating them, right?
It's like you control the people you love into um continuing the conversation. And maybe that. authenticity thing. Like, they've developed an audience that trusts them and knows that they're authentic, so whenever they take the piss out of their audience, it's all in good fun. an outside observer is like, yeah dude, they're just like, they're pissing in their, they're just pissing in the ears, you know? But we know. never gotten the vein of fish, but yeah, I'm not to the point of feeling piss in my ears. Yeah, or I mean, you know, like this is just back to Harry taking a crap and that being the way we open our episode.
You know, I wanted to actually say something real quick because we don't like, we don't read boosts. We like them, we don't read them and feel free to like build on this for a second. just want, I really do want to appreciate the audience and this isn't like gratuitous. I don't get to do this. don't, know, business guy does the intro. He had, know, he's your best friend on the internet. I, it means a lot that uh I walk around knowing that I like, I have the support of people in this audience. It really means a lot and it fuels like the difficult conversations I go around having. just feel like my worldview, it's so much more meaningful to me than boost to be honest, that you guys are part of like part of the worldview and helping me to hone it, calling out bullshit, supporting what you guys agree with.
The community that we built is just, is everything to me. And so I just wanted to say that if you guys don't feel appreciated or we don't read boosts or things like that, it's just, this is just something I wanted to let you guys know. Like I'm out there having really difficult conversations with people right now. And um sometimes I feel badly when I get really bad pushback, but like this audience is everything to me. Speaking of the audience, we're definitely having quite a bit of new downloads. So for the new listeners, where were you last week? I was in Prague.
What were you doing there? What was I doing there? Man, so I was there for what's called uh BTC Corporate Day. And that is like a subsidiary of BTC Prague. So Matthias Kuchar is the organizer of BTC Prague and is now starting to have these satellite events that are focused on corporate stuff. Well that sounds perfect for with your book. It's so perfect. It's like, can't, I can't even tell you how great this event was. it was two, you know, it's BTC Prague is like 7,000 people and I'm starting to now really see the contrast of a big event versus what I got to experience here. 210 people.
It's invite only. And I know that sounds like elitist and shitty, but like I had the, you know, I brought Shadrack. I have the ability. Yeah. think of corporate events, like my wife, CPA wife, goes to corporate events, and a lot of those are invite only. CES is invite only. So Bitcoin now is to the point that it's large enough that there's invite only Bitcoin conferences. That's really interesting. OK. I'll just say a little bit about why I think it really worked relative to say, you know, what you might experience in Vegas or at a big conference, even in Amsterdam, was the next, you know, which was just the last two days.
Everybody is accessible to everybody for two days at this conference. It's in a small hotel. It's in like a normal sized hotel, I'll just say, right? That's big enough. It's got a ballroom. It's got, you know, dining and all that shit. It's big enough for 210 people to have to be in close quarters. And um so anyone who's going, you have full access. You really do have full access to pretty much everybody there. And I really felt that, um you know, that closeness and, you know, I can, I made way deeper connections than even like what we experienced in Canada, which is great. But it wasn't like you, it wasn't like you had access to everybody.
And that was probably two to three times the size. ah You know, I think that, you know, me being there in the context of being the author of this book called Bitcoin for Institutions and getting to be seen on stage, actually delivering signal from that book, which was far different from what I got to do in Canada. Right. Where I was basically in Canada, I was like, you know, I was kind of like Larry Lappard's lapdog a little bit, you know. You were there to talk about him, you weren't there to talk about you. which is fine.
Like I had to get out, um I had to get on stage and get some evidence that I'm capable of doing it without being a total retard, right? Like had to show that I can do that. And so Dan, the head of the Canadian event, like I'll never be able to truly repay him for, you know, what he did for me, giving me that opportunity. um It, you know, again, meant the world. And when Pataeus was trying to vet me, for this. There was no, you know, uh the Canadian conference hadn't happened yet and there was no video or there was nothing I could send. And I really have to shout out uh Andre Dragos, who is the author of the book, Exponential Gold.
And he just reached out to me and wanted to know if I'd want to do this fireside chat with him. And uh it really worked out like we went through this period where there was no way to vet me for an event like this and they trusted me. And I'm very, very, very grateful. we just, I can't say enough about how great this event was. Like I can't wait to go to BGC Prague and I can't wait to do one of these again. um Just, you know, I could go into detail like who I met and what I got out of it. But um it was just a tremendous event. Prague's an amazing place, but like I wouldn't.
I wouldn't travel the way I did just to see Prague for two days. You flew out of Philadelphia. Was it a direct flight or what was the flight like? Okay. three hour drive to JFK airport, then connected in Dublin, had a three hour layover there, and then flew to Prague from there. mean, basically both legs going there and coming back were essentially 24 hour affairs with various chunks of time getting edited out of the day because of time zone changes. Yeah. It's like time travel, kind of. It really was, and it's a miracle that I'm like on basic time right now. It's kind of a miracle.
But I'm still feeling the glow. I've never felt a glow from a conference quite like this. Speaking of your book, I've asked you this before, when are you going to record an audio version? it's definitely going to happen now. So I just released, I release, I just got back uh version two. So like I'm about to release version two and I was waiting for that. I was waiting to have this second version to be done. And now I think I'm going to take serious, like a serious attempt at audio. And now that also we have the ZooSpace site, it's a great way to just, you can basically download maybe chapters for a hundred sats or something like that, or download it. It's very easy now to deliver that content.
everything's in place now. So I'm totally going to do it. a man of many podcasts. Start another one. like, I want to be able to stream you sets for when when I listen to it. So you've got to have it in a form like, sure. Like, yeah, you could buy it on the BTC pay server or the excuse me, the Zeus, the Zeus pay site. But, uh, you also, you definitely need to incorporate a way that people can, as they're listening to it, just stream it directly to you. Yeah, once I have the rips and they're polished enough, you know, I think the RSS will then do the job there. You know, I've thought about a Bitcoin for Institutions podcast, but that like is going to require, like I can't do that the way I do these other ones where there's like no production behind it and you get what you pay for.
This would have to be polished, funded, find the right people who really want to do it. That's something I've been, you know, I've been slowly, kind of slowly building. Well, it makes sense with the intended audience for that, yeah, you don't... It makes sense that you'd want to have a higher production quality for that. Yeah, yeah. I'm bummed out, like I am bummed to have missed out on the Nashville thing. You know, when we had Gary on the show, I was sort of excited to participate and join you guys. So even though I was out in Prague and having the really the time of my life thus far, like I think since I lost my job, this was like the best time I've had professionally.
I still had FOMO with you guys. So you said there was like 200 people in your audience? Something like that. 200, 210 people. The video will be available. I just got sent all the pictures they took, like stills, still shots. I'm assuming the video will be up fairly soon. So yeah, the Bitcoin Veterans event was in Nashville for Veterans Day. yeah, so the first day was it was all like panels and stuff at Bitcoin Park in Nashville. And it was my, for the people that were there, we had a much smaller audience than you. I think there was probably 40 to 50 folks there.
I mean, for anybody who's been to Bitcoin Park, it's not a huge venue. So it was pretty full, but it was a smaller event, which was nice for me because it was my first time ever being on stage. at a Bitcoin event as part of a panel or anything. And it was recorded, but apparently they lost about half of it. they've made a clip or two from my panel and yeah, I've shared those, but there is no... what's with you and losing fucking footage? That's a great question. don't know, but it seems to follow me around a bit. For people that are hoping that they're going to get to watch the panel, don't hold your breath because you're probably not going to get to.
It was an ephemeral event. You had to be there. uh It could be. I was not in charge of the audio this time. It might be some kind of I just walk in. It's like uh the guy from Jurassic Park who just doesn't work with technology. He touches it and it stops working. Maybe it's like that. talking about, you guys remember the first time we went on a high hash rate together and it was like the incredible time we had and I was so excited to listen to it and... Got it. Had my old so that was my last laptop before this one and really that event was what I was like, okay I'm buying a new MacBook. That was my old what I called the MacBook adorable and it was just like running us It's an older Mac It was the first Apple's first attempt to add USB C to one of their devices and it was just so there was a single port in it and it was one USB port one USB C port and a very underpowered like a netbook mean to derail you on explaining that.
Yeah, anyway, that was my fault. But this one was not my fault, other than I was on the panel. But it was really good. uh Gary was the uh moderator, and we talked about freedom technologies. uh Gary, dude. Fucking, you know, we gotta always, I just shout out Gary any chance I get. an incredible dude. He's going to be a senator or a congressman or whatever the hell government we build after this one collapses. He is going to be highly placed in that government, the Bitcoin government. It's like he's watching him walk around and just schmooze with everybody. Everybody knows him.
He's yeah. Anyway, Gary's Gary's an incredible dude. If you if you're not familiar with average Gary, look him up. He's writing. He's a vibe coding incredible things, which he talked about on the panels. Well, also listen to the episode we did with him and then also check out Motivate the Math, which is a podcast he and I do together. I think he and I are going to record something for my other show, Rocky Ridge Radio at some point. um Probably along, like something to do with faith and Christ, but no hard plans for that. Anyway, yeah, he's an incredible dude.
So the first day was, yeah, the in-house, very cold. It was snowing in Nashville. People were very, yeah, it was nuts. It wasn't snowing up here apparently, so I put like... snows in ash? I didn't even know it does that. People were kind of shocked but yeah apparently it does snow in Nashville it just not this early not November snow. it cause car accidents, like an inch of snow? I'm sure it did there as we were having the event we were hearing sirens goes like there must have been people just like freaking out. my God, the ground is cold.
I remember it snowed in Atlanta. I remember one time snowed in Atlanta like an inch and it just like derailed the whole city because they're just never they're not used to it. They don't know what to do. Whenever I was in the Air Force, um I spent most of my enlistment in San Antonio and there was an ice storm. It was probably like 2007 or 2008. There was a massive ice storm and it just completely shut the city down for like over a week because there was just ice on everything. the cars are real-world drive and like nobody knows how to, you know, like, it, right? Yeah, I mean, there's no there's no there's no highway vehicles to spread ice or to spread salt to melt the ice.
There's no it's just they're unprepared for it, which is, yeah, the way the way the world's going. Like we've been sold global warming where I think global cooling is the actual scary thing. So anyway, so that's a day one was at epic one park day two was a range day and it was. that's what gave me FOMO, man. That's really the thing. It was a very, very interesting and fun event. so we, we separated into three groups, like beginner intermediate and the, uh, expert class. And I self selected to be in the expert class and then realized like, Oh my gosh, I have been neglecting my pistol training. And it's like, whenever I was able to get out of my head, I was, I was hitting consistent, like center mass headshot.
Um, but that, like, as, as I'm like getting in my head, boy, was I realizing like, I'm pulling all my shots down into the left. So I'm anticipating my shots. I need to work on that. It's like the last 10 times I've been to the range, I just focus on my rifle. And yeah, I need to focus more on my pistol work, I think. We had... so you got to self referendum on your ability. That's pretty amazing. On multiple fronts. Yeah. So the guy that trained that was doing the expert class was his name is Scott. It's like Scott Willie or Scott Wiley. He runs Paladin.
Let me Paladin Tower Tactics, I believe is the name. And he is he's a minister at a church in Tennessee and he is on the he's on a SWAT team for his local area. He's a he's a when he was in the military, he was a para jumper. He's an incredible dude. And so he was he was running us through all these drills. And yeah, I Every once in a while like you you come across the person that makes you realize like I need to be a better man and I definitely had that experience of like realizing like I need to reset a few things in my life and Improve myself in multiple areas, but yeah, it was it was cold is really though, like what I would have expected for myself in hanging out with 60 to 70 Bitcoin veterans.
Right? Like that's what you get. You feel like you want to be a better, yeah, you get challenged to be a better person. You get to see these guys and, you know, see some real humanity. Since I separated from the military, I have kind of gone out of my way to distance myself from it. I never got rated for disability. I just wanted to be done with the military, done with the VA. I went out. so on my separation day, the day after, I drove home and I never looked back. The first time I interacted with the VA again after I separated was using my VA loan to buy my house. ah yeah, starting to be involved with the Bitcoin veterans is It's like I'm realizing I need to get back involved in this world.
Kind of like what we talked about when Gary was on. We have VFWs scattered all across the country and my generation of veterans don't seem to want to have anything to do with it. And I really feel that Bitcoin veterans, they're becoming the internet's VFW. Bitcoin is the mission now. Once you're done with... getting through the Psyop that we were all sold by our recruiters. It's like, okay, we come home, broken men, broken men and women, and with no mission, and Bitcoin is the mission that we can focus on. Like they really pressed that, and I think there's something to that.
Yeah, so the way this gave you an avenue back into being a veteran, which you are, but you'd been sort of like, I don't know if the right word is, avoiding it or just ignoring it. You found a way. Now you've found a way that actually gives uh you maybe a sense of purpose. To me, that's a beautiful thing. similar at this conference myself because I had been, you know, I'd for a long time, I'd been like ashamed to call myself an actuary. Seriously, like I consider them such a stain on not only professional, not only the profession and the industries that they fuck up, but like honestly like a stain on fucking human existence to be honest.
It's such a disappointing, know, when I, it's a group of people that's looked up to for expertise and willfully doesn't deliver on that. Cause then just is generally corrupted. corrupted by bad incentives. I noticed this, like, you know, I have a paper, I have an essay in the war. I've been talking about it really since episode one that I started it called, it's called an actuary without a society. And this is how I fell for a long time. But, you know, I didn't realize like I wrote this in the back of the book that it's like, Brian is trying to redefine the actuarial profession in the context of Bitcoin or something like that.
And for me, I found a way to bring dignity back to potentially back to the profession, uh the profession of being an actuary and the profession of being an educator. this conference really allowed me to express myself publicly with that intention. If I may just talk about a couple of the uh people I met and some of the experiences real quick. So firstly, um Well, first we got to meet Solex. Do you know Solex? um Solex, he's the, I mean for anybody who knows what the Masjidell is, he's the guy. He's the founder. I used to say loosely it was John and John would correct me.
Stop saying it's me, it's Solex. It was so great to meet with Solex. I met him at Lake Satoshi. So that was the first time. I got to meet him. But getting... No, he's in the Czech Republic. Okay, so he flew here to go to Lake Satoshi. Okay, wow. yeah. So I got to meet him and his family at Lake Satoshi and that was cool, but getting to, um just getting to meet him again this year in uh Czech Republic and he is a um avid listener of Motivate the Math and probably an occasional listener of this podcast. um He's somebody where I'm really building something special with, I think. um It was just so great.
Me and Shadrack and Solix and his family got to go out for lunch. And so it all started there. then what Solix did was um he tipped off Daniel Prince that Shadrack and I were going to be at this conference and that we should meet him. And so if you know Daniel, if you don't know Daniel, you should. We actually uh intersect a lot. when I got to meet him and spend time and have some beers with him, ah I started telling him about Rock, paper, Bitcoin. He's really somebody I admire in a podcast game. um so he looked it up and he sees the first episode with Caribou and he just immediately lit up. um He's like, my God, I'm absolutely going to listen to that.
And then I remembered that really Caribou only went on a sparing amount of podcasts during the time he went through what he went through. And Daniel's, think, was the first one he finally went on and told the story. um So, you we were able to sort of connect over that. Also, our first guest, Red Tail Hawk, is a guy that's been on Daniel's podcast like six or seven times. so, um Hawk, back, he showed up in our telegram again, he's been gone for long time. out Red Tail Hawk. Dude, fucking love you, um But like, so there's like, you know, there's like real connection here with just similar interests. And so um it was just really cool to meet him, spend time and make that, you know, just make the case for who we are and what we're doing here.
And, you know, let us let it be known we're here. um You know. The other guys I really want to shout out are, uh so this podcast, the people who listen to this podcast are not going to know what I'm talking about, but I want to just bring something. uh This company called Cartwright Consulting. Yes. What they're known for is that earlier this year, they got a pension plan to put a pretty significant allocation, a 3 % allocation into Bitcoin. They're in the UK. They convinced the pension plan to... put a 3 % allocation into Bitcoin. And so like they got on the radar of everybody, right?
All of a sudden they're, you know, they're just at, they're everywhere. Every conference, like in terms of Bitcoin, everybody wants to talk about this. They're on like every podcast, all like those corporate podcasts, you know, like what OnRamp and all those guys, right? They're making the rounds. But they're, you know, basically the main guy from who's, you know, the main guy driving it, this guy's name is Sam Roberts. um So Shadrack was in the UK like two months ago and he delivered a book to him. He basically found him. I didn't really know who he was.
Shadrack just saw him in the UK somewhere at an event and said, really, you know, you need to read this guy's book. And then he reached out to me and we started, he's an actuary too. And we kind of connected and then we found out we were both going to be presenting at this conference and ended up spending a good amount of time with him. And I feel like it's just developing a relationship with him and his colleagues who were there was absolutely tremendous. And they're working on some things that I think are going to be really significant. So it all started with Shadrach running around in the UK somewhere.
Right. Just give you. And so like this is what you guys have to understand. Like it's all about us and our friends and we're building everything from the ground up and it's real signal. Right. I I guess he could have read the book and said, boy, this is a real I'm really out of toilet paper today that I think this book would be useful for, you know, for cleaning my cleaning my bunghole. But a lot of these people are seeming to see signal. Right. I I put the book out partially. It's to be I wanted to be told if it was shit so I can just go back to my fiat job and get on with it. Right.
Or people actually like it. So, uh you know, so Sam seemed to at least see enough signal to get in touch with me. And we've been now going back and forth. uh It's a great relationship. Very excited to just know, you know, to know these guys and to be engaged in the things of thinking about. Hell yeah. And then the other big one is Andre Bitwise. Andre works for Bitwise. He's the head of research in Europe and um just a great guy. I mean, I'm not sure how. Oh, OK. I know how he got my book. um So he released a book at the same time with the same with consensus called Exponential Gold. And I call it a real book because he's he's PhD and it's actually researched and it's got charts and fucking numbers and supported, you know.
Whereas my book is just a bunch of theories on shit, you know? feel about your book the way I feel about being a podcaster. like I still can't, people tell me they listen and the numbers are showing that more and more people are listening, but I still feel like a fake podcaster. no, you guys don't actually listen. Yeah, I don't feel fake, but it's not supported. still like, you know, like my book is a lot of theories on things and it's thought exercises and things I want people to think about. then no one, you know, it's the first time anyone's really put anything out for this type of thing to be thought about in this way. So I'm proud of it in that respect.
But, you know, I tell Andre, I tell like, you know, your book is a real book, know, it's actually fucking cited and supported and, you know, with numbers and shit. So uh You know, what happened was ConsenSys did this like, they sent me like 40 questions and they said, answer these questions and we're gonna publish it on our blog like an interview. And they sent Andre the same 40 questions basically and they published it, it was like an interview, you know, tell me what you think are the biggest risks in Bitcoin right now and they have to show my answer and they would show his answer.
If I can find this thing, I'll put it in the show notes. I love ConsenSys but they... this thing got a little bungled in terms of it's not, it's on their blog. It's like not viewable. It's very strange, but I'm going to try to figure out how to get this thing seen. But Andre read it, which is really, there's, it's like some of these things that only matters if one person fucking reads it and sees it and likes it. So he read it and he's like, he immediately got in touch with me. He's like, would you be interested in going to Prague to do a fireside chat with me about the ideas in your book? And, So that was really how that happened.
Right. So and he, you know, he just made the whole thing happen. I can't even begin to tell you like what an incredible, what an incredible thing this was for me. Right. So, you know, Andre, a bit wise is now also like, you know, and I got to spend time with him as a man, you know, connect and really understand him and, you know, develop, start developing friendships with these people. Right. They seem like caricatures and people look at corporate, you know, these types of corporate people. But these are real people and they're cool and they want to be they actually want to do meaningful work. And I feel like we all want to just do meaningful work.
And we're in a space now where we can. uh You know, the demoralization that we all felt in Fiat is all gone right now. We can all just do shit. know, the whole you can just do stuff attitude applies very much in the corporate space. And some of these people are working for companies that can actually bring shit to market. So it's really exciting. Yeah, the social layer of Bitcoin, the layer zero social layer is like we are building the parallel network right now because like, and it's important that it's parallel, it's not the same network as all of these legacy, these corrupted legacy networks, because like as the legacy networks fall down, like it's important that we have our own integrity and we have our own social connections.
Whenever I started at Deloitte, like after college, One of the things they drilled into us in the onboarding training was you got to network. Because at Deloitte, you are your own advocate and you're only going to get the work of the people that realize they want you on their teams. At the time, I realized, okay, yeah, that's probably truth, but whatever. If I do good enough work, people will find me. And I've really, as I've gotten out into the real world, working for myself, And in the Bitcoin world, that's the truth, the network. we're moving into a works based economy where it's like, what have you done and what can you point to as like why people should trust you?
And it's like, that's the economy we're in now. Like, what have you done? It's like, you've got your book. It's like, I've got the podcast. It's like, these are opening new doors for us, which is fun. Yeah, it's pretty great. um you know, all of these, all of this is to say, right, it's like, it's just incredibly exciting right now. Just, it really is incredibly exciting. I feel like for the first time, I'm actually gonna actually get to work on something that matters again, which I haven't felt that way in two years. So where were you on this past Tuesday?
Tuesday? Tuesday I was in Prague. That was like the full day of BTC corporate day. It started Monday night, but then it was the full day of Tuesday. So Tuesday would have been like Monday night slash Tuesday morning for me here in Nashville. ah Were you aware of what our sun was doing, what the nearest star to us was doing on Tuesday? Well, our son, I thought we already covered what your son was doing already at the beginning of the podcast. You met the actual son in the solar system. Like your son was taking a shit this morning. That's really what we covered that.
Well that was this morning, but this past Tuesday, were you aware of what a soul, our nearest star, was doing? Was that on your radar at all? until you started talking about it. Okay. So Tuesday during the day for me, um our sun was having a very... So our current sun, the sun goes through an 11 year solar cycle and we're a little bit past the peak of our current cycle right now. And so the sun's doing a lot of crazy CMEs and coronal holes. And during the day on Tuesday, we had a coronal hole. that was lined up right along, aiming right at us. Like we were staring down the barrel of this coronal hole.
The sun rotates on its axis about every four weeks. as these events translate away from us, we can expect, if they're big enough, we're gonna expect to see them come back in about four weeks. So a coronal hole is allowing for significantly above average solar wind to be impacting us. So if you can just imagine the EM field around our planet pushed out to a certain amount, it was massively compressed because of this coronal hole that was uh abnormally violent solar wind at us. then Tuesday evening, it's like you didn't feel it. mean, generally speaking, these electrons are not something that our organic bodies can interact with us.
They do to a degree, but that's another conversation. um So to begin with, on Tuesday, we had a coronal hole aimed at us, which was compressing our field. And then there was a coronal mass ejection that was a full halo, like so aimed pretty much right at us, that was coming. And it take a coronal hole, uh and Pudhead right now trying not to crack up at all this terminology. We had a coronal hull pointed at us and then a coronal mass injection. Dude, you don't want to look down any of these holes. They're all bad news. Tuesday during the day, I'm out doing the range day.
And I'm aware, this was on my radar that I was like, the sun is very grumpy right now. Then Tuesday evening, we have the CME, and we have a massive amount of solar plasma headed our way. And this was up to an X class event, so significant. This was not on the level of a Carrington event. which was like an X60, but I believe this was an X5, an X4 or X5. This was a significant coronal mass ejection that was, we were staring right down the bunghole barrel of it. So we got basically attacked like with a bunch of solar shit. We got barraged and somehow, somehow something happened and we didn't feel it here.
this, it had, so Tuesday evening, I'm aware that this plasma is coming at us. I'm in my hotel room at the, whatever, it's not important. I'm in my hotel room with looking around like, what do I have? Like I was lucky, like I'm happy that I decided to drive down instead of fly down, because I got to bring way more of my weapons with me. And so like I had, I had a couple of rifles. I had my concealed carry pistol and, I'm sitting here in my hotel room realizing that there is a very real chance that during the night, I could wake up and there's no power. And 99.9 % of the people around me have no idea what's going on.
They don't realize that this could be the kill shot event that takes out all of the power on our planet. sure. a question? Are we sure we got lucky or is there some defense mechanism that is like a feature that went into place? Like do we know that maybe these things, the reason we didn't get impacted by this is by design. I mean, maybe God's design, um but the... uh I mean, so that I'm guessing what I'm asking is, we lucky that we have God's design or do we just get lucky that this thing missed us by an inch or something like that? design has allowed for these things to hit our planet in the past.
so, mean, yes, I mean, I pray that God put this off as long as possible to allow as many people to get ready for it as possible. But I mean, when it's time, it's time. Effectively, you know that scene from Pulp Fiction where the guy bursts out of the bathroom and unloads his magazine at Samuel L. Jackson and he misses all the shots? That's effectively what happened. In fact, another way to look at it is standing in front of a shotgun firing buckshot. Buckshot has about eight balls coming out of it. if you're lucky, if you're far enough away from it and you're lucky, all eight of those will miss you. And that's effectively what our planet did.
We were staring down the barrel of something that could have wiped out all of the power on our planet. And we got lucky. It missed us. were we Neo? I mean, that's not really the right analogy because Neo dodged it. Like we were just standing there. Our planet was going along its orbit just as like we didn't move at all. We just happened to be lucky that the buckshot missed us. That the guy bursting out of the bathroom missed all of his shots. And so like here, I mean, I've got my Tesla. Unless we have some electromagnetic resistance. You know what mean.
Sure, would involve like the kind of technology that would in that is beyond my current understanding of physics. So sure, maybe there's understandings, so good, like, yeah, there is a, you know, there's a lot we don't understand about physics that goes on outside of this planet, right? I'm not going to leave my preparation for the future to maybe there's a magic machine underground somewhere that's protecting us, but sure, maybe. Well, more like outside, know, just, you know, when's the last time we got attacked by a kernel mass injection that did, well, no, that like took out the power of the world. That would be the Carrington event in the 1800s.
But back then there was just uh telegraph. So like, yeah, the telegraph machines worked when they weren't plugged in, people were electrocuted. It was a massive event. And that was the electrification of the planet actually had an impact or was a contributing factor to us missing. I wonder about these things. So was sitting in my hotel realizing that, I drove my Tesla down here and we are potentially about to lose all power on the planet. And so I said, like, okay, I have access to Grok right now. I need to do some research. Like, okay, if I had to walk home from Nashville, like how long would it take me?
um And talking to Grok and doing some like walking a certain amount of distance per day, it... looks like about 40 to 50 days for me to walk home if I made good time. Then I was like, okay, well, I was looking around like, where's the nearest hardware store? Where's the nearest bike store? Because if I like I have weapons, indeed, right, right, that cash will be valuable right up at the front when people don't realize that this shit's not coming back on. So yeah, I went down to the ATM and took out a bunch of cash. I texted my wife and was like, hey, don't be alarmed by this.
I'm taking a bunch of cash out of the ATM. um So and should have called your bank and not your wife. Because it's like your bank would be the one that's like, why are you doing this? You know, we're declining your ability to take money. You gotta ask for permission, you know. Yes, it's true. Yeah, you do need to you need to have the bank's permission. Well, that's that's one of the reasons we keep so much in Bitcoin and keep so little in fiat is because I don't want to have to ask the bank's permission. But anyway, so I was looking like it.
Where's the nearest hardware store? Where's the nearest bike shop? And then doing them. OK, if I manage to procure a bicycle, how long will that take me to get home? And that was optimistically 12 days, 15 days of biking. up the Appalachian Mountain, all the way up the ridge to get home. then thinking about like, okay, well, I'm very fortunate that I have my weapons with me because like don't have to go procure a firearm. But yeah, was a very interesting mental exercise to go through and then try to go to bed after that. And then very thankfully, I woke up at four or 5 a.m.
and all the power was still on. We dodged the bullets. And I was very thankful about that. But yeah, it was like this, this event is coming. Like maybe if we're, if we're lucky, this solar cycle, it's not going to happen, but very likely the way that the, but with Ben Davidson and the research that I've been doing, seems like the next solar cycle, the late 2030s, early 2040s is when things are going to be spicy, even spicier than they are now. And so, yeah, that's, we have time left to prepare for this, but in the meantime, it's like I've I'm aware of this in the back part of my brain that this is something that I need to be preparing for.
But in the moment of realizing, I have less than 12 hours to prepare for this and I'm very, far from my family, which is going to need my protection was a very sobering moment. And it was not fun, but it's like now that it's passed, it's fun to talk about. that's my question. Like what were you doing Tuesday? Like you could have been stranded on another continent. Could have been. I wonder if it's one of those things where I don't think ignorance is bliss is the right terminology. I think it's more of like actively just trusting in God in this one. um it's like, feel like trying to win this event is a little bit what like Luke Dash and et al is trying to do with Bitcoin.
Like they're trying to win an event that they have no fucking control They really can't, they have no power over, but they're really trying to win. They do see a problem, but they're trying to win this problem that maybe the better course is just to sit back for a second and actually just try to think about, okay, what is really, what is the real problem here that we're worried about? You know what I mean? Do we want to throw like, do we really throw our lives away to try to solve this problem? Right. Is that like, and I just wonder about it.
Like I think about the pole shift a lot. Like do I, is this one of those things where I just say, you know what, if it's my time, it's my time and it is what it is, but I'm going to just maybe, maybe it's not for me to worry about. It's for me to just build my life for the scenario that I don't get got and try to do the best I can there. I, this is how I, tend to think about it. For clarification for the audience, I'm not talking about the pull shift. This is a different event. And this is an event that has happened in the last 200 years. this is something, just the taking out of the grid is, we have 50,000, talking with Grok, we have roughly 50,000 Transformers in this country.
um How long does it take to order a new one? Buying one today is about a nine to 12 month delay before you would have a single transformer, high voltage transformer to replace it. And then also like in a Carrington event, so we are just fucked. The world is fucked. interesting. Like there, is no strategic reserve of, of transformers, but there is a, there is a certain amount of them that, I mean, everybody that doesn't have a pacemaker, there, there are people that will die from it. Um, the, so the, country, the USA does have a certain amount of transformers sitting around, but interestingly, during the previous administration, Joe Biden sent a significant amount of our transformers to Ukraine to repair their, their grid.
which has again since been shredded. So all of those transformers were destroyed. Yeah, we're low on transformers to begin with. And yeah, if this happens, there's no recovering from it for decades. I mean, so yeah, mean, again, it's one of those things where the faith that everything in risk can be boiled down to the likelihood and severity, right? So like, how likely is it to happen? And then what's the severity? then, you know, so the more likely something is to happen, you may pay more attention to it than you say, okay, well, what's the severity of the outcome? But there's a certain severity, like we're all gonna die, where it's like, Well.
You better get right with God. Your soul is in your keeping alone. Yeah, exactly. But there's more of a sweet spot where it's like, we're going to have to probably survive this thing, right? But it's... a Bitcoin or to get ready for governmental collapse. Like don't depend on the government because it very likely will collapse in our lifetime. So this is the same kind of equation with the a solar kill shot. It's like they happen about once every 250 years and we're due for one. We're over that. it is like so just. if this time is different and cycle theory is dead?
I mean, the only case I could make for 250 years that this time could be different is just the fact that our planet is now electrified completely. And maybe there is some physics going on that repels some of these things that, you know, the same way that damages our bodies, you know, probably causing cancer and all this causing problems for us on this planet the last 250 years that we've never seen before. Maybe it's also defending us from the outside shit. electromagnetic field from all of our electrification of this planet, is uh not even a decimal place percentage compared to our magnetic field from the spinning nickel-iron core of our planet.
And it's decreasing. the force field that protects our planet is, sure, it is augmented to some very tiny percentage by our electrification. But it's don't understand physics that go on. Like we just don't really don't understand a lot about astral physics. Like we don't understand, like when I say that I say. I think a lot of people don't, yeah. Well, no. mean, there is nobody on this planet that actually does understand the entirety of that physics. That I can say fairly confidently, because actually the entirety of what we know about physics would only explain why trees grow 30 feet. And we see that some trees grow much further than that.
There's no explanation for that right now. It's outside of our attack. physics from electromagnetic physics, but you're not wrong. because we're not in a, you know, we don't have a, it's not a closed system. So they're thinking, right. I will grant you, there is a massive amount about the natural world that we have yet to learn. um But that being said, the fact that we are talking via the internet right now, we have understood a certain amount of physics to harness it this far. So I mean, there is stuff that we know. we don't want to confuse ourselves The worst thing you can do is to lose your delude yourself and actually thinking you understand the complete system when you don't You know what I mean?
use that to pivot into the knots versus core boy, God. I kind of promised myself I'd never talk about this on this show. But like, I think we just, it's hit our doorstep a little bit. So maybe we just hit, I don't know, it's affecting me personally a little bit. Maybe I'll talk about that. But like, it's affecting you personally. Don't let me force you into saying anything that you don't want to say. But on my side of the mic, um I've always kind of been quietly on the side of Core, really because of Luke. He's not ever really struck me as a person that I wanted to follow.
um His interaction with the ocean mining pool has kept me from being super excited about the ocean mining pool. his like in using datum to mine your own, it's like you can make your own templates and mine your own blocks much more sovereignly than using soloCK. Like not interested, like just because of its relationship with Luke. um real quick that I thought that they were... I want to say year and a half ago, I thought it was really healthy and good that they were bringing this conversation of at least like template construction and hash decentralization.
thought that like nobody was having that conversation and it was fairly important. And um if I recall, Daniel Prince was like one of like the real guys who latched onto it at the time. That was like a real loud voice and I guess got me to think about it. uh And I thought they were actually doing decent work then, but even then it was starting to become clear, I don't want to interrupt you, I just want to interject real quick that I thought that was useful, but they were clearly being propped up and funded by the big podcasts. I just wanted to drop that.
I certainly agree that they raise important questions and they have prompted important conversations. um That being said, there are problems with Core. I wish Core was more modular. I wish there was more optionality in what I am running with Core. But at the same time, looking at the alternative did not seem any better to me. I mine Bitcoin. I've been mining for a long time. And since I've had lower powered miners, like the bit axes and my whatever it is, the brains minor. I have a couple of minors and they're like, I have used the solo CK. like the firmware, right?
They have also they've released their own mining mining package. Yeah, it's it's it's low power. It pulls like 25 watts and it mines at a terror hash. They're very quiet. They're fun. But it's like. You could it would be I wouldn't recommend it. You need something more powerful than that to drive you tricky. But like in their fight, like I've pointed them all at solo CK, which is it's a pool. And I mean, it's you get like the miner that finds the winning hash. You keep most of the block reward, but I mean, there is some of it that's sliced off for solo CK. And like that was for a long time, like, all right, this is the best of both worlds.
This is where I'm going to point my solo miners. um Yesterday. It's the it's the best global lottery ticket ever. um And so yesterday, I like I have an umbral and a a uh app called Basset, Basset, Basset. I'm not sure how to pronounce it was released yesterday. which is a based on Solus UK and it's just you are running a local version of it running off of your own node. And so I installed that last night and I am it's awesome. I mean for anybody who's who's done that, like you could have done this a long time ago using datum with knots and I just I didn't choose to go that route. And now that I can finally be like I'm fully sovereign in my stack or maybe not fully, but more sovereign in my stack.
It's a good feeling. And for anybody who has to just quickly interject that you could have done this a year and a half ago because John of Ungovernable Misfits, John Jockamo and Urban Hacker actually worked on a solution to be able to do this, had pretty good documentation. uh Our boy Shadrack was a tester on this and it existed and it was one of those things where nobody found out about it. And as Datum was, uh I think this started to begin part of my frustration, not with Ocean, but with the people, like the, you know, the people that make up the mass media or whatever.
It was just like, you couldn't get past their messaging that they're the only way to do this. Whereas this solution was perfectly good and existed. And I have talked to Urban Hacker about coming on our show. uh We just haven't really been able to figure out a good, a good... We haven't been able to, the stars have not aligned to make it happen, but I wanted Urban Hacker to come on our show and talk, actually tell the story. The stars never aligned to be able to do it, but he's somebody I'm still in communication with. I just wanted to drop that, you know, our community developed this ability to do this.
a new uh development, uh for people that are really not technical, they think that I'm technical. I'm really not a technical dude. I can follow some basic instructions, but the simplicity of just installing an app on my home server and just pointing, it brought the barrier down low enough that even me being a, I consider, boy, sitting in. to give credit to Umbral for making it a plug and play solution. Yeah, great. It's made by Duck Axe is the developer. I can't find him anywhere like on X or on Nostr to follow him. But yeah, that's the developer that has ported the soloCK code to run locally on your node.
two thumbs up and it brought it down even like to my level of idiocy that I can run it. And boy, so on my level of technical idiocy, I sat in on, so Tuesday evening, I sat in on the BitDevs in Nashville. And it's it's advertising, this is for everybody. for me, man. I wish I could have been there. They advertise it. This is for any Bitcoiner. Like you don't have to be technical. You can come sit in on it. And to a degree it was, but yeah, listening to Gary talk about like merging code and it's okay. This is above my, this is immediately above my technical level. It's like one of these fronts that I realized, oh, I have work to do on.
like I've, there's some level of stagnation in my mind that I have not pursued. Like I don't, I don't have a GitHub account. I don't have a repository. It's like, these are all things that I could be doing better. Going to a bit devs is like going to a range day with veterans in a certain way, right? It's like you really do get to do a referendum on yourself. So maybe it's so funny that that's the summary of your core knots issue is like that you're now mining to your own node and that's the end of it. It's pretty great.
That's so us right there, that's perfect. Yeah, that's great. mean, so like we really didn't get into any of like the tribal drama. It was nice. I don't want to do that here. Can I just say what I am? I'll just say what I'm doing. Okay, I'm doing something. You know how you could just do things. I decided to do things. um What I'm going to be leading a conversation about. um Let me just say the knots thing. um I think there are problems with core that are, so I agree with all of them. I agree with them that there are problems with core. What I don't agree with is that these are, don't, I neither agree or disagree right now that these problems are existential.
I don't know the extent to what they all are. So what I want, the conversation I want to have is let's lay out in the goriest of detail what everybody thinks the real problems with core are. personal attacks, like, know, you see these glory as I was edited videos of things are all over Twitter now. Like, you know, it's just all very tribal and not helpful because what's happened, you know, before there was this fork idea. It was kind of like, all right, let's just try to talk about this. But now that there's this fork, the whole game has changed and they're not, it's almost bad faith and it's very hard to find signal here. What I want to have is a conversation and say, I need someone who can do a good job of saying, really what I think all the real big problems of core are.
And then I need somebody to say, people to say, well, okay, let's just first say why is there a solution? Is, know, can we, is there a solution or no configurations? Yes or no? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. Right. And then the question is, okay, so like, what is Is this existential? Is the sky falling? Do we really need to all jump off a bridge right now? I don't know. I honestly don't know the answer. Like I'm searching for a good answer. I'm searching to, cause these people aren't all stupid, right? Normally you think people jumping off a bridge are kind of stupid, right? But these people aren't all stupid, right?
They're just very upset. there's legitimate reasons to jump off a bridge sometimes. But they are very upset. uh I have searched far and wide and this morning I really, I've actually given up. like, I'm not going to find a nuts guy to make this case. I unfortunately, it's just over. tried, I really did try. And uh I found that they, first of all, my technical resource for this conversation is the giggler, unfortunately, the giggler, Rob Hamilton, who it though. He is. And the thing is, I don't think there's a better person on earth who can articulate the technical case for whether or not the thing works the way people think it does or not. But I found most of these nonce people wouldn't even be in the same room with this guy.
And um I had no idea, honestly. I was not close enough to any of this to know. Rob's the kind of guy that if you actually are genuinely curious and sincere, he will stop at nothing to answer your question. I mean, I met Rob three years ago just DMing him. I was like, you run an insurance company? I'm an actuary. Can I ask you about that? And he was like, oh, dude, of course. And that's how like he just, he just answers DMs for people who are curious about things. But if he starts to think that you're not arguing a good faith, he will start trolling you and. the relationship is over.
So he's a little bit polarizing from that respect, but you know what? He's still the only, he is the guy. So. impressive. He was on the Freedom Tech panel that I was on as well. at BitDevs, actually, like, I think I'm using these words right, he merged a pull request in his GitHub repository on stage while they were presenting. yeah, he's in his futures market for is there going to be a fork and who wants to take the sides of those forks is fascinating. And it's interesting, yes. And he can't find anybody on the not side to take him up on the offer currently. I mean, part of it is a troll, but part of it is actually really he's willing to be wrong.
He's willing to be told, no, you know what, we will gamble on this and... uh Who's willing to put their money where their mouths are? So, you know, to me, Rob is unassailable in my opinion and he is the guy that needs to be that guy. But I still thought that this discussion, I felt like it needed balance from somebody on other side to give it more signal. And I just started giving up because all these people were like, I won't even talk to that guy. I'm like, fuck you. So I finally found somebody this morning. who I think is going to represent the not side.
I'll just say stay tuned. We were gonna rip this conversation next week, but I think now that I found an adult who, a pretty big account, who's an adult, well known, well respected, and I've now observed him tweeting like an adult, right? that's a good, well. one? My original thought was to use Motivate the Math for it, but this person has a gigantic podcast that maybe will use that platform to give it a bigger reach. oh We're going to start now, talk offline and slow this conversation down now. Talk offline and see what happens. tuned.
We will let you know the details when we know them. It's really important. Again, my problem with not, I just want to be clear is that I think it's a distraction from the real conversation, which is like, is uh the thing we're really upset about? We're really worried about, you know, are we fucking slaves? Are we serfs to this group of people? You know, I mean, this article comes out yesterday that Bitcoin Core was funded by fucking Epstein. You saw that, right? Yeah. the latest iteration on the CIA created Bitcoin. Look, you know, like the question really for us and for anybody who is seeking sovereignty and freedom is, you know, how much darkness are you willing to dance with to be free?
Mmm, that's great way to put it. And I think that's why I think these conversations are important. If it's true that there may be an existential problem, I'm willing to consider this, right? And maybe something needs to, and the question is, is there a solution to it? That's the conversation I want to have, and I think that's high signal, and I think it's going to focus at least the people in good faith who are really curious in the right direction. I believe nots is a big distraction. from that. But the people that are supporting that are so upset that they'll basically do anything that's an alternative. They'll do anything that's an alternative.
I can understand if you think that Epstein is like creating a funding core and you're like, I'm so disgusted. I need a different implementation. But then again, it's like you are in Bitcoin and things have to work technically. And what they're proposing doesn't seem to work technically. at all. This is kind of in vain in in line with what I was talking about in the freedom tech panel at one point I like each of our ability to be sovereign is directly related to our ability to stomach like The darkness of what it means to be sovereign like if you have like and I like I pointed this out like everybody deserves Bitcoin at the price they buy it at because there's a and there's a if you have the ability to sort the signal through the the noise and find the signal of Bitcoin There's a direct monetary uh reward for that.
Same thing with legacy media. the sooner you figure out that they are selling propaganda, not news, you will free your mind from that. And on the weapons side, if you have the stomach to use an oil can as a suppressor, you will benefit from that. But there's a lot of levels of sovereignty. People just don't have the stomachs to... to sit with it, they'd much rather offload that responsibility to some third party and just go the direction of the third party. like, and. me, this is why purity tests are unacceptable. And I did release a fundamentals of fundamentals episode in the past two weeks called the fundamentals of plebslop colon uh purity tests.
And it was maybe a 25 to 30 minute rip about why I seek to fail purity tests intentionally and why I will never be subjected. And to me, the, you know, the, uh The BIP444 crowd seems to be... It's weird. It just seems to be a a weird purity test. I feel like the... So, can I talk about Pellapsalop real quick? Sure, yeah, I mean, I didn't listen to it and I'm sure a pretty big percentage of our audience hasn't listened to it. You want to summarize it? Yeah, well, Plobslapp, we've had Rod Palmer, shout out Rod Palmer. ah He created, he found two words that summarize something I think we've all been thinking about for years, which is like this engagement forming Bitcoin propaganda type, you know, all of these tropes that were high signal maybe in the last couple of cycles, right, and helpful.
are no longer helpful, I don't think. they're just, we just call it plebslop, which is like the plebs lap it up. The plebs, you know, and then it keeps them from, it keeps them from becoming pioneers. It keeps them from thinking for themselves. They just stay in this kind of lane of serfdom. And I have this idea that plebs want to be ruled. And that's so they'll just gonna keep purity testing people until they find somebody that they can accept being ruled by. And I think plebslop is a big way in which they're just fed sort of opiates and it's like the bread and circus now for plebs. And, uh you know, it's like almost all these movements.
So all these movements are driven by plebslop, right? And uh these tribal, these kind of like really tribal movements, it's almost like these are like almost affinity scams. So that is all to say that I think thinking for yourself, and dancing with darkness for freedom, right? For your own freedom. It's like you don't even know. Nothing's given and nothing's promised. uh It requires now being vigilant and not accepting slop in your narratives. Yeah. There are a few things that I think are more subjective than the term plebslop. like children don't come out of the womb with the ability to eat steak.
They need to start with oatmeal. And so like all of us are on a journey. like, and I said this in the telegram chat, like one plebslop is another pioneer's signal or I said something like that. And so like, I think Agree completely. Yeah, vilifying plebslop is just kind of an easy way to box something, a conversation up and be like, I'm not gonna, I don't have to address this. It feels that way to me. Uh, that's the point. It's actually a way to dismiss noise. uh like McDonald's cheeseburgers, I agree, should be dismissed. But there's a lot of people out there that really enjoy McDonald's cheeseburgers.
And if we put up a wall between ourselves and them, they're never going to realize that the advantage is mistake. ah I would say that it's not really putting up a wall. It's more of, okay, I'm gonna bring you back to a conversation we had a long time ago on the show where we talked about the difference between being a standard bearer and meeting people where they're at, right? How they're sort of like, and people just have their roles. Like there are diplomats out there that their job is to meet people where they are and then to move them along. I think you and I have those roles in certain areas of our life and probably in certain areas of Bitcoin too, where we like, okay, there's certain areas where we're just gonna meet people where they are and move them forward.
For me, it's definitely like certainly in the corporate space and the institutional space and like where I wanna work, right? I wanna work with people so you have to meet them where they are and then try to move them forward. I think when it comes to teaching math, I wanna meet people where they are. Like, okay, where were you last? good and let's move, you if you want to move people forward, I do think there is a role for that. But then at the same time, there's a role for standard bearers to say, you know what, this is the standard and then on certain things, I'm not meeting you where you are. I'm holding a standard.
And when it comes to like what we consume, you know, what we consume, think it's fair. to say, well, this is a low standard. I think it's fair for the bugle to target a guy like, you know, they target Pete Rizzo who isn't, you like if you ever talked to a dude, he's a smart guy, right? And that the reason, it's like the reason why they are so hard on him is because his Twitter account tends to be sloppy, right? It tends to be putting out things that are sort of propaganda-like that are below his level of intelligence, below his, you know, And, you know, there's a reason why people do that, right?
They're building something. want their build. need to build reach and follow. You know, I'm the only idiot who released a book with a thousand followers thinking that I was actually going to fucking make a difference with it. Right. The reality is you got to have a big account. You got to have, you know, to there are people that have to go and do that stuff. Yeah. So my point is to say that I think there's a I as a standard bearer. I love I love the innovation. discovering plebslop. And I think that we live in a time, this is almost like we live in a time in the fourth turning here, where you got to wade through a lot of that slop now. And you know, for me, I just want to put signal out, right?
I don't think we do plebslop here, really, but then again, that would be unself-aware, I'm willing to be told otherwise. I don't know, just from the way that it's been, the nebulous description of it, I feel like I'm a purveyor of plebslop occasionally. It's like I'm not above sharing an article on one of my Telegram chats that is probably could be classified as like plebslop. The question is why are you doing it? Are you doing it to spread propaganda? Are you doing it to keep plebs as plebs and keep yourself, you know, I feel like plebslop keeps is what keeps plebs plebs and keeps them from hitting the frontier. It validates their plebhood and it's like it's a vicious cycle in my opinion of just like keeping people in the lobster trap.
And so That's where I would be introspective about it. And I think it's good for all of us. I really do think it's good that we're like, shit, am I putting out plebslop? Let me ask myself that question. I think that's healthy. That's where you want to be. Yeah. is like, definitely, if you're, yeah, I definitely agree. There's a difference between being a standard bearer and the pleb slop side of it. We're both meetup organizers. own that. We like, we both have that side of us that wants to, you know, that meets people where they're at and brings them along. We all have that.
dismayed by the number of Bitcoiners I meet that are fascinated by Monero. And that's an area that I will not compromise on. But I've also realized that me being a dick about it is not a productive way to go about expressing my opinions. I think it's the same question as with a lot of these other things and with what we're doing with NOTS. It's the same question being, okay, there are clearly issues with privacy on Bitcoin. The question is, are they existential? Are there solutions? Do the solutions that are out there now work? And what else should we be thinking about?
I feel like it's the same frame of question that like... mature people need to go out and have. I'm so glad we did the episode of Monero. oh I know there are people that avoid our podcast because of it, but who cares? Honestly, those are low-thinking people, not forever, but at the moment of that exclusion, I'm happy to select them out. Right? Like our audience are people who are just higher, frankly higher signal. They can tolerate, they can tolerate more questions. we do have the very best audience. So, like this question about Monero. you know, so another guy I met at the conference in Prague was I met Rational Root, if you know who that I didn't really know who that was, Rational Root.
He's a carrot. His icon's a carrot. He's a pretty big account, very privacy-focused. And we had a conversation about Bitcoin privacy. And it just got me thinking on the same lines. It's like everybody knows. Privacy is a problem on Bitcoin and you we didn't get into the samurai issue But like the government throwing the fucking book at samurai Was very upsetting and Set a really really bad message in my opinion and frankly makes Bitcoin less valuable. So like when you look at the You know, we never talked price on this podcast, but like it's pretty down. It's down pretty bad right now, you know, I Would say there's a certain uh decrease in value that to me is very justified because uh you signal the US, not to go into a whole nother segment here, but when the US government signals that the Blanche memo is meaningless, the Blanche memo is the memo that uh says that software developers are not responsible for the actions of their users, which this guy Blanche who works for the DOJ, he's like the deputy of the DOJ put out and a lot of these non-Custodial Wilds came back to the US because of that memo.
But I want to shout out Frank Corva, who we met at the Bitcoin John a couple of weeks ago also. This is a lot happened in the last couple of weeks. But Frank... uh Frank was saying that um he has tried for the last year to meet Blanche. he had White House credentials as the journalist from Bitcoin Magazine. And this guy ghosted him basically for an entire year. he was telling us that he started to get this idea that this Blanche memo is fucking bullshit. performative only. When was the Blanche memo released? Is that under Trump or Biden?
Yeah. like one of the, was either January or February. And so he's saying he started to get this, this inkling, the Spidey sense that this thing was performative and bullshit. And now the Samurai sentencing really, really hammers home that this thing is meaningless. And, you know, I show, I posted, everybody remembers my Bitcoin 2024 recap for my Odell derangement and my comments about Odell. But the reality, of that episode was I also talked about how Trump wasn't going to do shit for Samurai or anybody like that. that privacy would be reduced to a niche movement because Trump's speech, all he talked about was Gensler and the SEC.
And the guys that are donating to Trump from the Bitcoin space, that's all they care about is getting their fucking bags pumped. And it doesn't appear that anyone, you know, they cared about freeing Ross and everyone had their free Ross t-shirts at the Bitcoin conference, but nobody really gave a fuck. about really to me the important issue. Samurai is important. mean, a lot of people think they did it to themselves, but this was a really important case and the government's aggressiveness in sentencing them really to me shows that they're gonna continue to attack Bitcoin users.
Watch what they do, that's right. is another example of Trump talking out of either side of his mouth. Like he said one thing to be elected and now he's in, he's doing something else. admit, to be fair, the samurai case is being prosecuted by the Southern District of New York, is, that's quite all right. what's happening in my house right now. But it's the Southern District of New York, for those that don't know, is like the worst of the worst of liberal prosecution in the country. um They're the district that decided to pursue no other than the one guy in the wake of the 2008 collapse. They put all the blame on one guy and let all the bankers walk free.
That was the Southern District of New York. So they are not good actors in this space. to be fair, like this is Trump's administration. He talked about being the most friendly and like Bitcoin friendly and crypto friendly and he was going to turn the corner on this. And then what is he doing? It's like not being friendly. And really to be fair, like don't think he's paying attention. I think he's focused on foreign things and he's focused on appeasing the people that are um giving him money and not the people that got him elected. at this pace, He's like the Republicans are gonna lose the midterms and he's gonna spend the second half of his second term being impeached.
And at this point, like I was upset about his impeachment the first time. I will applaud his impeachment at this point. Like he is not performing based on the reasons I voted for him, that's for sure. I would go to Fountain and check out the clip that I posted from the episode a year ago because it really did capture exactly what you're saying. It captures it all and we called it. It was so obvious from the speech that this was going to be the... I hate to be... I really wanted to be wrong about it and it's upsetting that I am, but it is what it is. uh It just is what it is and it's too bad.
I guess I'll say I I mentioned the re-release of my book, the one thing I actually added besides editing and polishing. So I edited and polished it for, um because it's going to be translated for Finland. So I had maybe needed to, needed to make it better. But so the one thing I really added though, cause I thought I missed the first time around was um the power of open source programming. and I wrote uh a small chapter about uh samurai. The reality is you could arrest them all you want. You could throw the book at them all you want. But guess what a year later, Ashiogaru's up and running.
And by the way, that was like one of our best episodes we ever had, we ever did. uh Shout out Jordan. uh But Ashiogaru's up and running. We mentioned this then, right? It's like what a... You can't cut the head off fucking snake here. the reality is open source programming is unstoppable. if you're just a corporate douchebag, right? Trying to figure out your Bitcoin thesis. This is the big one in the pro column. This is just like, oh yeah, dude, this is really hard to shut down, man. Like if the government wants to shut this down, it's gonna be really fucking hard. If the government wants to even shut down an aspect of it, it's gonna be very hard because a lot of this, it's just too late.
The open source, The open source software has been vetted, it's operating. ah I don't think people really understand in Bitcoin how much technical operations go on correctly that need no review every 10 minutes. In a company, you think about QA testing for the slightest change on a model, and you go through this regression testing, so much goes wrong. And yet in Bitcoin, so much really deep technical operations take place every 10 minutes that are never reviewed. And we're talking like 800,000 consecutive instances of complete success. And we have people like Average Gary working at our backs, making this technology even more sovereign and even more decentralized.
Like his work on Stratum V2 and like also like I'm very intrigued. Yes. why I want to have this conversation, by the way, because these people think that Gloria Zhao and people like that are the devs. I don't think that's the case. People need to understand that's more of the implementation team. They're not thinking, you know, the real devs are people like Gary, right? People who are, you know, Gary, like Kale, you know, people hate Kale because he is very outspoken. about very intrigued by Ecache and what Gary's working on with E-Hash um is... Oh yeah, like...
That's a that's like a whole podcast. That's not even an episode. Like that's an entire podcast. super technical, dude, Gary, whenever you get that running, I will run one. I will be the OG Bitcoiner that finances the E-Hash pool for central Pennsylvania for sure. the second he talked to me about EHASH, I immediately thought of the Citadel game. And we got Mike, Rev Hottle, and Gary on a call immediately and started talking. Basically, what the EHASH concept allows is for this game to now exist online. So not to get too into that, but you guys remember the Citadel game we talked about a couple of times?
uh What is it? Expansion Packs? Was that the episode we brought it out? Yeah. So the Citadel game is still, uh it's like a, it's a kind of a shit coin that won't die right now. It's still, it's still, it still exists. It's online, know, sort of online support, but it still exists. And Gary, Gary has now entered the mix. So thought I'd mention that. is open again. They're not releasing numbers. But yeah, they managed to take taxes out of all of our paychecks in the meantime while they were closed. But hey, go get a suppressor, folks. The ATF's working again.
There you go. I gotta piss so bad. Stop!
can't help myself, man. I'm just... Another thing, dude, this morning Harry sat on the toilet and took a little tiny poo. It is a beautiful morning this morning. great way to open this episode. Right? Yeah, hello dear listeners. Welcome to that. Yeah, you know, very famous like fish moment is there's this documentary and uh Trey reads this review about somebody saying, you know, fish is perfectly willing to piss in the ears of its audience and their audience is willing to accept it and like love it. He gets so triggered by it that like for the next like 20 minutes he's like in his car. He just keeps talking about how it's just funny.
uh What was that X post that you put out all about fish? Like, and then everybody was talking about it in the chat, but like, it's all over my head. So what was that about? I don't know, maybe I found a way to bring some levity to this knot situation because I've associated fish lure, I've associated this whole thing into fish lure in a very detailed way. So maybe Jason and I are gonna do this tomorrow on Back on the Chain. Alright, well, yeah, don't preview anything. Okay, that's got it. That's interesting. Yeah, if fish has done anything, if fish does anything, like, it is maybe like the ability to troll people without alienating them, right?
It's like you control the people you love into um continuing the conversation. And maybe that. authenticity thing. Like, they've developed an audience that trusts them and knows that they're authentic, so whenever they take the piss out of their audience, it's all in good fun. an outside observer is like, yeah dude, they're just like, they're pissing in their, they're just pissing in the ears, you know? But we know. never gotten the vein of fish, but yeah, I'm not to the point of feeling piss in my ears. Yeah, or I mean, you know, like this is just back to Harry taking a crap and that being the way we open our episode.
You know, I wanted to actually say something real quick because we don't like, we don't read boosts. We like them, we don't read them and feel free to like build on this for a second. just want, I really do want to appreciate the audience and this isn't like gratuitous. I don't get to do this. don't, know, business guy does the intro. He had, know, he's your best friend on the internet. I, it means a lot that uh I walk around knowing that I like, I have the support of people in this audience. It really means a lot and it fuels like the difficult conversations I go around having. just feel like my worldview, it's so much more meaningful to me than boost to be honest, that you guys are part of like part of the worldview and helping me to hone it, calling out bullshit, supporting what you guys agree with.
The community that we built is just, is everything to me. And so I just wanted to say that if you guys don't feel appreciated or we don't read boosts or things like that, it's just, this is just something I wanted to let you guys know. Like I'm out there having really difficult conversations with people right now. And um sometimes I feel badly when I get really bad pushback, but like this audience is everything to me. Speaking of the audience, we're definitely having quite a bit of new downloads. So for the new listeners, where were you last week? I was in Prague.
What were you doing there? What was I doing there? Man, so I was there for what's called uh BTC Corporate Day. And that is like a subsidiary of BTC Prague. So Matthias Kuchar is the organizer of BTC Prague and is now starting to have these satellite events that are focused on corporate stuff. Well that sounds perfect for with your book. It's so perfect. It's like, can't, I can't even tell you how great this event was. it was two, you know, it's BTC Prague is like 7,000 people and I'm starting to now really see the contrast of a big event versus what I got to experience here. 210 people.
It's invite only. And I know that sounds like elitist and shitty, but like I had the, you know, I brought Shadrack. I have the ability. Yeah. think of corporate events, like my wife, CPA wife, goes to corporate events, and a lot of those are invite only. CES is invite only. So Bitcoin now is to the point that it's large enough that there's invite only Bitcoin conferences. That's really interesting. OK. I'll just say a little bit about why I think it really worked relative to say, you know, what you might experience in Vegas or at a big conference, even in Amsterdam, was the next, you know, which was just the last two days.
Everybody is accessible to everybody for two days at this conference. It's in a small hotel. It's in like a normal sized hotel, I'll just say, right? That's big enough. It's got a ballroom. It's got, you know, dining and all that shit. It's big enough for 210 people to have to be in close quarters. And um so anyone who's going, you have full access. You really do have full access to pretty much everybody there. And I really felt that, um you know, that closeness and, you know, I can, I made way deeper connections than even like what we experienced in Canada, which is great. But it wasn't like you, it wasn't like you had access to everybody.
And that was probably two to three times the size. ah You know, I think that, you know, me being there in the context of being the author of this book called Bitcoin for Institutions and getting to be seen on stage, actually delivering signal from that book, which was far different from what I got to do in Canada. Right. Where I was basically in Canada, I was like, you know, I was kind of like Larry Lappard's lapdog a little bit, you know. You were there to talk about him, you weren't there to talk about you. which is fine.
Like I had to get out, um I had to get on stage and get some evidence that I'm capable of doing it without being a total retard, right? Like had to show that I can do that. And so Dan, the head of the Canadian event, like I'll never be able to truly repay him for, you know, what he did for me, giving me that opportunity. um It, you know, again, meant the world. And when Pataeus was trying to vet me, for this. There was no, you know, uh the Canadian conference hadn't happened yet and there was no video or there was nothing I could send. And I really have to shout out uh Andre Dragos, who is the author of the book, Exponential Gold.
And he just reached out to me and wanted to know if I'd want to do this fireside chat with him. And uh it really worked out like we went through this period where there was no way to vet me for an event like this and they trusted me. And I'm very, very, very grateful. we just, I can't say enough about how great this event was. Like I can't wait to go to BGC Prague and I can't wait to do one of these again. um Just, you know, I could go into detail like who I met and what I got out of it. But um it was just a tremendous event. Prague's an amazing place, but like I wouldn't.
I wouldn't travel the way I did just to see Prague for two days. You flew out of Philadelphia. Was it a direct flight or what was the flight like? Okay. three hour drive to JFK airport, then connected in Dublin, had a three hour layover there, and then flew to Prague from there. mean, basically both legs going there and coming back were essentially 24 hour affairs with various chunks of time getting edited out of the day because of time zone changes. Yeah. It's like time travel, kind of. It really was, and it's a miracle that I'm like on basic time right now. It's kind of a miracle.
But I'm still feeling the glow. I've never felt a glow from a conference quite like this. Speaking of your book, I've asked you this before, when are you going to record an audio version? it's definitely going to happen now. So I just released, I release, I just got back uh version two. So like I'm about to release version two and I was waiting for that. I was waiting to have this second version to be done. And now I think I'm going to take serious, like a serious attempt at audio. And now that also we have the ZooSpace site, it's a great way to just, you can basically download maybe chapters for a hundred sats or something like that, or download it. It's very easy now to deliver that content.
everything's in place now. So I'm totally going to do it. a man of many podcasts. Start another one. like, I want to be able to stream you sets for when when I listen to it. So you've got to have it in a form like, sure. Like, yeah, you could buy it on the BTC pay server or the excuse me, the Zeus, the Zeus pay site. But, uh, you also, you definitely need to incorporate a way that people can, as they're listening to it, just stream it directly to you. Yeah, once I have the rips and they're polished enough, you know, I think the RSS will then do the job there. You know, I've thought about a Bitcoin for Institutions podcast, but that like is going to require, like I can't do that the way I do these other ones where there's like no production behind it and you get what you pay for.
This would have to be polished, funded, find the right people who really want to do it. That's something I've been, you know, I've been slowly, kind of slowly building. Well, it makes sense with the intended audience for that, yeah, you don't... It makes sense that you'd want to have a higher production quality for that. Yeah, yeah. I'm bummed out, like I am bummed to have missed out on the Nashville thing. You know, when we had Gary on the show, I was sort of excited to participate and join you guys. So even though I was out in Prague and having the really the time of my life thus far, like I think since I lost my job, this was like the best time I've had professionally.
I still had FOMO with you guys. So you said there was like 200 people in your audience? Something like that. 200, 210 people. The video will be available. I just got sent all the pictures they took, like stills, still shots. I'm assuming the video will be up fairly soon. So yeah, the Bitcoin Veterans event was in Nashville for Veterans Day. yeah, so the first day was it was all like panels and stuff at Bitcoin Park in Nashville. And it was my, for the people that were there, we had a much smaller audience than you. I think there was probably 40 to 50 folks there.
I mean, for anybody who's been to Bitcoin Park, it's not a huge venue. So it was pretty full, but it was a smaller event, which was nice for me because it was my first time ever being on stage. at a Bitcoin event as part of a panel or anything. And it was recorded, but apparently they lost about half of it. they've made a clip or two from my panel and yeah, I've shared those, but there is no... what's with you and losing fucking footage? That's a great question. don't know, but it seems to follow me around a bit. For people that are hoping that they're going to get to watch the panel, don't hold your breath because you're probably not going to get to.
It was an ephemeral event. You had to be there. uh It could be. I was not in charge of the audio this time. It might be some kind of I just walk in. It's like uh the guy from Jurassic Park who just doesn't work with technology. He touches it and it stops working. Maybe it's like that. talking about, you guys remember the first time we went on a high hash rate together and it was like the incredible time we had and I was so excited to listen to it and... Got it. Had my old so that was my last laptop before this one and really that event was what I was like, okay I'm buying a new MacBook. That was my old what I called the MacBook adorable and it was just like running us It's an older Mac It was the first Apple's first attempt to add USB C to one of their devices and it was just so there was a single port in it and it was one USB port one USB C port and a very underpowered like a netbook mean to derail you on explaining that.
Yeah, anyway, that was my fault. But this one was not my fault, other than I was on the panel. But it was really good. uh Gary was the uh moderator, and we talked about freedom technologies. uh Gary, dude. Fucking, you know, we gotta always, I just shout out Gary any chance I get. an incredible dude. He's going to be a senator or a congressman or whatever the hell government we build after this one collapses. He is going to be highly placed in that government, the Bitcoin government. It's like he's watching him walk around and just schmooze with everybody. Everybody knows him.
He's yeah. Anyway, Gary's Gary's an incredible dude. If you if you're not familiar with average Gary, look him up. He's writing. He's a vibe coding incredible things, which he talked about on the panels. Well, also listen to the episode we did with him and then also check out Motivate the Math, which is a podcast he and I do together. I think he and I are going to record something for my other show, Rocky Ridge Radio at some point. um Probably along, like something to do with faith and Christ, but no hard plans for that. Anyway, yeah, he's an incredible dude.
So the first day was, yeah, the in-house, very cold. It was snowing in Nashville. People were very, yeah, it was nuts. It wasn't snowing up here apparently, so I put like... snows in ash? I didn't even know it does that. People were kind of shocked but yeah apparently it does snow in Nashville it just not this early not November snow. it cause car accidents, like an inch of snow? I'm sure it did there as we were having the event we were hearing sirens goes like there must have been people just like freaking out. my God, the ground is cold.
I remember it snowed in Atlanta. I remember one time snowed in Atlanta like an inch and it just like derailed the whole city because they're just never they're not used to it. They don't know what to do. Whenever I was in the Air Force, um I spent most of my enlistment in San Antonio and there was an ice storm. It was probably like 2007 or 2008. There was a massive ice storm and it just completely shut the city down for like over a week because there was just ice on everything. the cars are real-world drive and like nobody knows how to, you know, like, it, right? Yeah, I mean, there's no there's no there's no highway vehicles to spread ice or to spread salt to melt the ice.
There's no it's just they're unprepared for it, which is, yeah, the way the way the world's going. Like we've been sold global warming where I think global cooling is the actual scary thing. So anyway, so that's a day one was at epic one park day two was a range day and it was. that's what gave me FOMO, man. That's really the thing. It was a very, very interesting and fun event. so we, we separated into three groups, like beginner intermediate and the, uh, expert class. And I self selected to be in the expert class and then realized like, Oh my gosh, I have been neglecting my pistol training. And it's like, whenever I was able to get out of my head, I was, I was hitting consistent, like center mass headshot.
Um, but that, like, as, as I'm like getting in my head, boy, was I realizing like, I'm pulling all my shots down into the left. So I'm anticipating my shots. I need to work on that. It's like the last 10 times I've been to the range, I just focus on my rifle. And yeah, I need to focus more on my pistol work, I think. We had... so you got to self referendum on your ability. That's pretty amazing. On multiple fronts. Yeah. So the guy that trained that was doing the expert class was his name is Scott. It's like Scott Willie or Scott Wiley. He runs Paladin.
Let me Paladin Tower Tactics, I believe is the name. And he is he's a minister at a church in Tennessee and he is on the he's on a SWAT team for his local area. He's a he's a when he was in the military, he was a para jumper. He's an incredible dude. And so he was he was running us through all these drills. And yeah, I Every once in a while like you you come across the person that makes you realize like I need to be a better man and I definitely had that experience of like realizing like I need to reset a few things in my life and Improve myself in multiple areas, but yeah, it was it was cold is really though, like what I would have expected for myself in hanging out with 60 to 70 Bitcoin veterans.
Right? Like that's what you get. You feel like you want to be a better, yeah, you get challenged to be a better person. You get to see these guys and, you know, see some real humanity. Since I separated from the military, I have kind of gone out of my way to distance myself from it. I never got rated for disability. I just wanted to be done with the military, done with the VA. I went out. so on my separation day, the day after, I drove home and I never looked back. The first time I interacted with the VA again after I separated was using my VA loan to buy my house. ah yeah, starting to be involved with the Bitcoin veterans is It's like I'm realizing I need to get back involved in this world.
Kind of like what we talked about when Gary was on. We have VFWs scattered all across the country and my generation of veterans don't seem to want to have anything to do with it. And I really feel that Bitcoin veterans, they're becoming the internet's VFW. Bitcoin is the mission now. Once you're done with... getting through the Psyop that we were all sold by our recruiters. It's like, okay, we come home, broken men, broken men and women, and with no mission, and Bitcoin is the mission that we can focus on. Like they really pressed that, and I think there's something to that.
Yeah, so the way this gave you an avenue back into being a veteran, which you are, but you'd been sort of like, I don't know if the right word is, avoiding it or just ignoring it. You found a way. Now you've found a way that actually gives uh you maybe a sense of purpose. To me, that's a beautiful thing. similar at this conference myself because I had been, you know, I'd for a long time, I'd been like ashamed to call myself an actuary. Seriously, like I consider them such a stain on not only professional, not only the profession and the industries that they fuck up, but like honestly like a stain on fucking human existence to be honest.
It's such a disappointing, know, when I, it's a group of people that's looked up to for expertise and willfully doesn't deliver on that. Cause then just is generally corrupted. corrupted by bad incentives. I noticed this, like, you know, I have a paper, I have an essay in the war. I've been talking about it really since episode one that I started it called, it's called an actuary without a society. And this is how I fell for a long time. But, you know, I didn't realize like I wrote this in the back of the book that it's like, Brian is trying to redefine the actuarial profession in the context of Bitcoin or something like that.
And for me, I found a way to bring dignity back to potentially back to the profession, uh the profession of being an actuary and the profession of being an educator. this conference really allowed me to express myself publicly with that intention. If I may just talk about a couple of the uh people I met and some of the experiences real quick. So firstly, um Well, first we got to meet Solex. Do you know Solex? um Solex, he's the, I mean for anybody who knows what the Masjidell is, he's the guy. He's the founder. I used to say loosely it was John and John would correct me.
Stop saying it's me, it's Solex. It was so great to meet with Solex. I met him at Lake Satoshi. So that was the first time. I got to meet him. But getting... No, he's in the Czech Republic. Okay, so he flew here to go to Lake Satoshi. Okay, wow. yeah. So I got to meet him and his family at Lake Satoshi and that was cool, but getting to, um just getting to meet him again this year in uh Czech Republic and he is a um avid listener of Motivate the Math and probably an occasional listener of this podcast. um He's somebody where I'm really building something special with, I think. um It was just so great.
Me and Shadrack and Solix and his family got to go out for lunch. And so it all started there. then what Solix did was um he tipped off Daniel Prince that Shadrack and I were going to be at this conference and that we should meet him. And so if you know Daniel, if you don't know Daniel, you should. We actually uh intersect a lot. when I got to meet him and spend time and have some beers with him, ah I started telling him about Rock, paper, Bitcoin. He's really somebody I admire in a podcast game. um so he looked it up and he sees the first episode with Caribou and he just immediately lit up. um He's like, my God, I'm absolutely going to listen to that.
And then I remembered that really Caribou only went on a sparing amount of podcasts during the time he went through what he went through. And Daniel's, think, was the first one he finally went on and told the story. um So, you we were able to sort of connect over that. Also, our first guest, Red Tail Hawk, is a guy that's been on Daniel's podcast like six or seven times. so, um Hawk, back, he showed up in our telegram again, he's been gone for long time. out Red Tail Hawk. Dude, fucking love you, um But like, so there's like, you know, there's like real connection here with just similar interests. And so um it was just really cool to meet him, spend time and make that, you know, just make the case for who we are and what we're doing here.
And, you know, let us let it be known we're here. um You know. The other guys I really want to shout out are, uh so this podcast, the people who listen to this podcast are not going to know what I'm talking about, but I want to just bring something. uh This company called Cartwright Consulting. Yes. What they're known for is that earlier this year, they got a pension plan to put a pretty significant allocation, a 3 % allocation into Bitcoin. They're in the UK. They convinced the pension plan to... put a 3 % allocation into Bitcoin. And so like they got on the radar of everybody, right?
All of a sudden they're, you know, they're just at, they're everywhere. Every conference, like in terms of Bitcoin, everybody wants to talk about this. They're on like every podcast, all like those corporate podcasts, you know, like what OnRamp and all those guys, right? They're making the rounds. But they're, you know, basically the main guy from who's, you know, the main guy driving it, this guy's name is Sam Roberts. um So Shadrack was in the UK like two months ago and he delivered a book to him. He basically found him. I didn't really know who he was.
Shadrack just saw him in the UK somewhere at an event and said, really, you know, you need to read this guy's book. And then he reached out to me and we started, he's an actuary too. And we kind of connected and then we found out we were both going to be presenting at this conference and ended up spending a good amount of time with him. And I feel like it's just developing a relationship with him and his colleagues who were there was absolutely tremendous. And they're working on some things that I think are going to be really significant. So it all started with Shadrach running around in the UK somewhere.
Right. Just give you. And so like this is what you guys have to understand. Like it's all about us and our friends and we're building everything from the ground up and it's real signal. Right. I I guess he could have read the book and said, boy, this is a real I'm really out of toilet paper today that I think this book would be useful for, you know, for cleaning my cleaning my bunghole. But a lot of these people are seeming to see signal. Right. I I put the book out partially. It's to be I wanted to be told if it was shit so I can just go back to my fiat job and get on with it. Right.
Or people actually like it. So, uh you know, so Sam seemed to at least see enough signal to get in touch with me. And we've been now going back and forth. uh It's a great relationship. Very excited to just know, you know, to know these guys and to be engaged in the things of thinking about. Hell yeah. And then the other big one is Andre Bitwise. Andre works for Bitwise. He's the head of research in Europe and um just a great guy. I mean, I'm not sure how. Oh, OK. I know how he got my book. um So he released a book at the same time with the same with consensus called Exponential Gold. And I call it a real book because he's he's PhD and it's actually researched and it's got charts and fucking numbers and supported, you know.
Whereas my book is just a bunch of theories on shit, you know? feel about your book the way I feel about being a podcaster. like I still can't, people tell me they listen and the numbers are showing that more and more people are listening, but I still feel like a fake podcaster. no, you guys don't actually listen. Yeah, I don't feel fake, but it's not supported. still like, you know, like my book is a lot of theories on things and it's thought exercises and things I want people to think about. then no one, you know, it's the first time anyone's really put anything out for this type of thing to be thought about in this way. So I'm proud of it in that respect.
But, you know, I tell Andre, I tell like, you know, your book is a real book, know, it's actually fucking cited and supported and, you know, with numbers and shit. So uh You know, what happened was ConsenSys did this like, they sent me like 40 questions and they said, answer these questions and we're gonna publish it on our blog like an interview. And they sent Andre the same 40 questions basically and they published it, it was like an interview, you know, tell me what you think are the biggest risks in Bitcoin right now and they have to show my answer and they would show his answer.
If I can find this thing, I'll put it in the show notes. I love ConsenSys but they... this thing got a little bungled in terms of it's not, it's on their blog. It's like not viewable. It's very strange, but I'm going to try to figure out how to get this thing seen. But Andre read it, which is really, there's, it's like some of these things that only matters if one person fucking reads it and sees it and likes it. So he read it and he's like, he immediately got in touch with me. He's like, would you be interested in going to Prague to do a fireside chat with me about the ideas in your book? And, So that was really how that happened.
Right. So and he, you know, he just made the whole thing happen. I can't even begin to tell you like what an incredible, what an incredible thing this was for me. Right. So, you know, Andre, a bit wise is now also like, you know, and I got to spend time with him as a man, you know, connect and really understand him and, you know, develop, start developing friendships with these people. Right. They seem like caricatures and people look at corporate, you know, these types of corporate people. But these are real people and they're cool and they want to be they actually want to do meaningful work. And I feel like we all want to just do meaningful work.
And we're in a space now where we can. uh You know, the demoralization that we all felt in Fiat is all gone right now. We can all just do shit. know, the whole you can just do stuff attitude applies very much in the corporate space. And some of these people are working for companies that can actually bring shit to market. So it's really exciting. Yeah, the social layer of Bitcoin, the layer zero social layer is like we are building the parallel network right now because like, and it's important that it's parallel, it's not the same network as all of these legacy, these corrupted legacy networks, because like as the legacy networks fall down, like it's important that we have our own integrity and we have our own social connections.
Whenever I started at Deloitte, like after college, One of the things they drilled into us in the onboarding training was you got to network. Because at Deloitte, you are your own advocate and you're only going to get the work of the people that realize they want you on their teams. At the time, I realized, okay, yeah, that's probably truth, but whatever. If I do good enough work, people will find me. And I've really, as I've gotten out into the real world, working for myself, And in the Bitcoin world, that's the truth, the network. we're moving into a works based economy where it's like, what have you done and what can you point to as like why people should trust you?
And it's like, that's the economy we're in now. Like, what have you done? It's like, you've got your book. It's like, I've got the podcast. It's like, these are opening new doors for us, which is fun. Yeah, it's pretty great. um you know, all of these, all of this is to say, right, it's like, it's just incredibly exciting right now. Just, it really is incredibly exciting. I feel like for the first time, I'm actually gonna actually get to work on something that matters again, which I haven't felt that way in two years. So where were you on this past Tuesday?
Tuesday? Tuesday I was in Prague. That was like the full day of BTC corporate day. It started Monday night, but then it was the full day of Tuesday. So Tuesday would have been like Monday night slash Tuesday morning for me here in Nashville. ah Were you aware of what our sun was doing, what the nearest star to us was doing on Tuesday? Well, our son, I thought we already covered what your son was doing already at the beginning of the podcast. You met the actual son in the solar system. Like your son was taking a shit this morning. That's really what we covered that.
Well that was this morning, but this past Tuesday, were you aware of what a soul, our nearest star, was doing? Was that on your radar at all? until you started talking about it. Okay. So Tuesday during the day for me, um our sun was having a very... So our current sun, the sun goes through an 11 year solar cycle and we're a little bit past the peak of our current cycle right now. And so the sun's doing a lot of crazy CMEs and coronal holes. And during the day on Tuesday, we had a coronal hole. that was lined up right along, aiming right at us. Like we were staring down the barrel of this coronal hole.
The sun rotates on its axis about every four weeks. as these events translate away from us, we can expect, if they're big enough, we're gonna expect to see them come back in about four weeks. So a coronal hole is allowing for significantly above average solar wind to be impacting us. So if you can just imagine the EM field around our planet pushed out to a certain amount, it was massively compressed because of this coronal hole that was uh abnormally violent solar wind at us. then Tuesday evening, it's like you didn't feel it. mean, generally speaking, these electrons are not something that our organic bodies can interact with us.
They do to a degree, but that's another conversation. um So to begin with, on Tuesday, we had a coronal hole aimed at us, which was compressing our field. And then there was a coronal mass ejection that was a full halo, like so aimed pretty much right at us, that was coming. And it take a coronal hole, uh and Pudhead right now trying not to crack up at all this terminology. We had a coronal hull pointed at us and then a coronal mass injection. Dude, you don't want to look down any of these holes. They're all bad news. Tuesday during the day, I'm out doing the range day.
And I'm aware, this was on my radar that I was like, the sun is very grumpy right now. Then Tuesday evening, we have the CME, and we have a massive amount of solar plasma headed our way. And this was up to an X class event, so significant. This was not on the level of a Carrington event. which was like an X60, but I believe this was an X5, an X4 or X5. This was a significant coronal mass ejection that was, we were staring right down the bunghole barrel of it. So we got basically attacked like with a bunch of solar shit. We got barraged and somehow, somehow something happened and we didn't feel it here.
this, it had, so Tuesday evening, I'm aware that this plasma is coming at us. I'm in my hotel room at the, whatever, it's not important. I'm in my hotel room with looking around like, what do I have? Like I was lucky, like I'm happy that I decided to drive down instead of fly down, because I got to bring way more of my weapons with me. And so like I had, I had a couple of rifles. I had my concealed carry pistol and, I'm sitting here in my hotel room realizing that there is a very real chance that during the night, I could wake up and there's no power. And 99.9 % of the people around me have no idea what's going on.
They don't realize that this could be the kill shot event that takes out all of the power on our planet. sure. a question? Are we sure we got lucky or is there some defense mechanism that is like a feature that went into place? Like do we know that maybe these things, the reason we didn't get impacted by this is by design. I mean, maybe God's design, um but the... uh I mean, so that I'm guessing what I'm asking is, we lucky that we have God's design or do we just get lucky that this thing missed us by an inch or something like that? design has allowed for these things to hit our planet in the past.
so, mean, yes, I mean, I pray that God put this off as long as possible to allow as many people to get ready for it as possible. But I mean, when it's time, it's time. Effectively, you know that scene from Pulp Fiction where the guy bursts out of the bathroom and unloads his magazine at Samuel L. Jackson and he misses all the shots? That's effectively what happened. In fact, another way to look at it is standing in front of a shotgun firing buckshot. Buckshot has about eight balls coming out of it. if you're lucky, if you're far enough away from it and you're lucky, all eight of those will miss you. And that's effectively what our planet did.
We were staring down the barrel of something that could have wiped out all of the power on our planet. And we got lucky. It missed us. were we Neo? I mean, that's not really the right analogy because Neo dodged it. Like we were just standing there. Our planet was going along its orbit just as like we didn't move at all. We just happened to be lucky that the buckshot missed us. That the guy bursting out of the bathroom missed all of his shots. And so like here, I mean, I've got my Tesla. Unless we have some electromagnetic resistance. You know what mean.
Sure, would involve like the kind of technology that would in that is beyond my current understanding of physics. So sure, maybe there's understandings, so good, like, yeah, there is a, you know, there's a lot we don't understand about physics that goes on outside of this planet, right? I'm not going to leave my preparation for the future to maybe there's a magic machine underground somewhere that's protecting us, but sure, maybe. Well, more like outside, know, just, you know, when's the last time we got attacked by a kernel mass injection that did, well, no, that like took out the power of the world. That would be the Carrington event in the 1800s.
But back then there was just uh telegraph. So like, yeah, the telegraph machines worked when they weren't plugged in, people were electrocuted. It was a massive event. And that was the electrification of the planet actually had an impact or was a contributing factor to us missing. I wonder about these things. So was sitting in my hotel realizing that, I drove my Tesla down here and we are potentially about to lose all power on the planet. And so I said, like, okay, I have access to Grok right now. I need to do some research. Like, okay, if I had to walk home from Nashville, like how long would it take me?
um And talking to Grok and doing some like walking a certain amount of distance per day, it... looks like about 40 to 50 days for me to walk home if I made good time. Then I was like, okay, well, I was looking around like, where's the nearest hardware store? Where's the nearest bike store? Because if I like I have weapons, indeed, right, right, that cash will be valuable right up at the front when people don't realize that this shit's not coming back on. So yeah, I went down to the ATM and took out a bunch of cash. I texted my wife and was like, hey, don't be alarmed by this.
I'm taking a bunch of cash out of the ATM. um So and should have called your bank and not your wife. Because it's like your bank would be the one that's like, why are you doing this? You know, we're declining your ability to take money. You gotta ask for permission, you know. Yes, it's true. Yeah, you do need to you need to have the bank's permission. Well, that's that's one of the reasons we keep so much in Bitcoin and keep so little in fiat is because I don't want to have to ask the bank's permission. But anyway, so I was looking like it.
Where's the nearest hardware store? Where's the nearest bike shop? And then doing them. OK, if I manage to procure a bicycle, how long will that take me to get home? And that was optimistically 12 days, 15 days of biking. up the Appalachian Mountain, all the way up the ridge to get home. then thinking about like, okay, well, I'm very fortunate that I have my weapons with me because like don't have to go procure a firearm. But yeah, was a very interesting mental exercise to go through and then try to go to bed after that. And then very thankfully, I woke up at four or 5 a.m.
and all the power was still on. We dodged the bullets. And I was very thankful about that. But yeah, it was like this, this event is coming. Like maybe if we're, if we're lucky, this solar cycle, it's not going to happen, but very likely the way that the, but with Ben Davidson and the research that I've been doing, seems like the next solar cycle, the late 2030s, early 2040s is when things are going to be spicy, even spicier than they are now. And so, yeah, that's, we have time left to prepare for this, but in the meantime, it's like I've I'm aware of this in the back part of my brain that this is something that I need to be preparing for.
But in the moment of realizing, I have less than 12 hours to prepare for this and I'm very, far from my family, which is going to need my protection was a very sobering moment. And it was not fun, but it's like now that it's passed, it's fun to talk about. that's my question. Like what were you doing Tuesday? Like you could have been stranded on another continent. Could have been. I wonder if it's one of those things where I don't think ignorance is bliss is the right terminology. I think it's more of like actively just trusting in God in this one. um it's like, feel like trying to win this event is a little bit what like Luke Dash and et al is trying to do with Bitcoin.
Like they're trying to win an event that they have no fucking control They really can't, they have no power over, but they're really trying to win. They do see a problem, but they're trying to win this problem that maybe the better course is just to sit back for a second and actually just try to think about, okay, what is really, what is the real problem here that we're worried about? You know what I mean? Do we want to throw like, do we really throw our lives away to try to solve this problem? Right. Is that like, and I just wonder about it.
Like I think about the pole shift a lot. Like do I, is this one of those things where I just say, you know what, if it's my time, it's my time and it is what it is, but I'm going to just maybe, maybe it's not for me to worry about. It's for me to just build my life for the scenario that I don't get got and try to do the best I can there. I, this is how I, tend to think about it. For clarification for the audience, I'm not talking about the pull shift. This is a different event. And this is an event that has happened in the last 200 years. this is something, just the taking out of the grid is, we have 50,000, talking with Grok, we have roughly 50,000 Transformers in this country.
um How long does it take to order a new one? Buying one today is about a nine to 12 month delay before you would have a single transformer, high voltage transformer to replace it. And then also like in a Carrington event, so we are just fucked. The world is fucked. interesting. Like there, is no strategic reserve of, of transformers, but there is a, there is a certain amount of them that, I mean, everybody that doesn't have a pacemaker, there, there are people that will die from it. Um, the, so the, country, the USA does have a certain amount of transformers sitting around, but interestingly, during the previous administration, Joe Biden sent a significant amount of our transformers to Ukraine to repair their, their grid.
which has again since been shredded. So all of those transformers were destroyed. Yeah, we're low on transformers to begin with. And yeah, if this happens, there's no recovering from it for decades. I mean, so yeah, mean, again, it's one of those things where the faith that everything in risk can be boiled down to the likelihood and severity, right? So like, how likely is it to happen? And then what's the severity? then, you know, so the more likely something is to happen, you may pay more attention to it than you say, okay, well, what's the severity of the outcome? But there's a certain severity, like we're all gonna die, where it's like, Well.
You better get right with God. Your soul is in your keeping alone. Yeah, exactly. But there's more of a sweet spot where it's like, we're going to have to probably survive this thing, right? But it's... a Bitcoin or to get ready for governmental collapse. Like don't depend on the government because it very likely will collapse in our lifetime. So this is the same kind of equation with the a solar kill shot. It's like they happen about once every 250 years and we're due for one. We're over that. it is like so just. if this time is different and cycle theory is dead?
I mean, the only case I could make for 250 years that this time could be different is just the fact that our planet is now electrified completely. And maybe there is some physics going on that repels some of these things that, you know, the same way that damages our bodies, you know, probably causing cancer and all this causing problems for us on this planet the last 250 years that we've never seen before. Maybe it's also defending us from the outside shit. electromagnetic field from all of our electrification of this planet, is uh not even a decimal place percentage compared to our magnetic field from the spinning nickel-iron core of our planet.
And it's decreasing. the force field that protects our planet is, sure, it is augmented to some very tiny percentage by our electrification. But it's don't understand physics that go on. Like we just don't really don't understand a lot about astral physics. Like we don't understand, like when I say that I say. I think a lot of people don't, yeah. Well, no. mean, there is nobody on this planet that actually does understand the entirety of that physics. That I can say fairly confidently, because actually the entirety of what we know about physics would only explain why trees grow 30 feet. And we see that some trees grow much further than that.
There's no explanation for that right now. It's outside of our attack. physics from electromagnetic physics, but you're not wrong. because we're not in a, you know, we don't have a, it's not a closed system. So they're thinking, right. I will grant you, there is a massive amount about the natural world that we have yet to learn. um But that being said, the fact that we are talking via the internet right now, we have understood a certain amount of physics to harness it this far. So I mean, there is stuff that we know. we don't want to confuse ourselves The worst thing you can do is to lose your delude yourself and actually thinking you understand the complete system when you don't You know what I mean?
use that to pivot into the knots versus core boy, God. I kind of promised myself I'd never talk about this on this show. But like, I think we just, it's hit our doorstep a little bit. So maybe we just hit, I don't know, it's affecting me personally a little bit. Maybe I'll talk about that. But like, it's affecting you personally. Don't let me force you into saying anything that you don't want to say. But on my side of the mic, um I've always kind of been quietly on the side of Core, really because of Luke. He's not ever really struck me as a person that I wanted to follow.
um His interaction with the ocean mining pool has kept me from being super excited about the ocean mining pool. his like in using datum to mine your own, it's like you can make your own templates and mine your own blocks much more sovereignly than using soloCK. Like not interested, like just because of its relationship with Luke. um real quick that I thought that they were... I want to say year and a half ago, I thought it was really healthy and good that they were bringing this conversation of at least like template construction and hash decentralization.
thought that like nobody was having that conversation and it was fairly important. And um if I recall, Daniel Prince was like one of like the real guys who latched onto it at the time. That was like a real loud voice and I guess got me to think about it. uh And I thought they were actually doing decent work then, but even then it was starting to become clear, I don't want to interrupt you, I just want to interject real quick that I thought that was useful, but they were clearly being propped up and funded by the big podcasts. I just wanted to drop that.
I certainly agree that they raise important questions and they have prompted important conversations. um That being said, there are problems with Core. I wish Core was more modular. I wish there was more optionality in what I am running with Core. But at the same time, looking at the alternative did not seem any better to me. I mine Bitcoin. I've been mining for a long time. And since I've had lower powered miners, like the bit axes and my whatever it is, the brains minor. I have a couple of minors and they're like, I have used the solo CK. like the firmware, right?
They have also they've released their own mining mining package. Yeah, it's it's it's low power. It pulls like 25 watts and it mines at a terror hash. They're very quiet. They're fun. But it's like. You could it would be I wouldn't recommend it. You need something more powerful than that to drive you tricky. But like in their fight, like I've pointed them all at solo CK, which is it's a pool. And I mean, it's you get like the miner that finds the winning hash. You keep most of the block reward, but I mean, there is some of it that's sliced off for solo CK. And like that was for a long time, like, all right, this is the best of both worlds.
This is where I'm going to point my solo miners. um Yesterday. It's the it's the best global lottery ticket ever. um And so yesterday, I like I have an umbral and a a uh app called Basset, Basset, Basset. I'm not sure how to pronounce it was released yesterday. which is a based on Solus UK and it's just you are running a local version of it running off of your own node. And so I installed that last night and I am it's awesome. I mean for anybody who's who's done that, like you could have done this a long time ago using datum with knots and I just I didn't choose to go that route. And now that I can finally be like I'm fully sovereign in my stack or maybe not fully, but more sovereign in my stack.
It's a good feeling. And for anybody who has to just quickly interject that you could have done this a year and a half ago because John of Ungovernable Misfits, John Jockamo and Urban Hacker actually worked on a solution to be able to do this, had pretty good documentation. uh Our boy Shadrack was a tester on this and it existed and it was one of those things where nobody found out about it. And as Datum was, uh I think this started to begin part of my frustration, not with Ocean, but with the people, like the, you know, the people that make up the mass media or whatever.
It was just like, you couldn't get past their messaging that they're the only way to do this. Whereas this solution was perfectly good and existed. And I have talked to Urban Hacker about coming on our show. uh We just haven't really been able to figure out a good, a good... We haven't been able to, the stars have not aligned to make it happen, but I wanted Urban Hacker to come on our show and talk, actually tell the story. The stars never aligned to be able to do it, but he's somebody I'm still in communication with. I just wanted to drop that, you know, our community developed this ability to do this.
a new uh development, uh for people that are really not technical, they think that I'm technical. I'm really not a technical dude. I can follow some basic instructions, but the simplicity of just installing an app on my home server and just pointing, it brought the barrier down low enough that even me being a, I consider, boy, sitting in. to give credit to Umbral for making it a plug and play solution. Yeah, great. It's made by Duck Axe is the developer. I can't find him anywhere like on X or on Nostr to follow him. But yeah, that's the developer that has ported the soloCK code to run locally on your node.
two thumbs up and it brought it down even like to my level of idiocy that I can run it. And boy, so on my level of technical idiocy, I sat in on, so Tuesday evening, I sat in on the BitDevs in Nashville. And it's it's advertising, this is for everybody. for me, man. I wish I could have been there. They advertise it. This is for any Bitcoiner. Like you don't have to be technical. You can come sit in on it. And to a degree it was, but yeah, listening to Gary talk about like merging code and it's okay. This is above my, this is immediately above my technical level. It's like one of these fronts that I realized, oh, I have work to do on.
like I've, there's some level of stagnation in my mind that I have not pursued. Like I don't, I don't have a GitHub account. I don't have a repository. It's like, these are all things that I could be doing better. Going to a bit devs is like going to a range day with veterans in a certain way, right? It's like you really do get to do a referendum on yourself. So maybe it's so funny that that's the summary of your core knots issue is like that you're now mining to your own node and that's the end of it. It's pretty great.
That's so us right there, that's perfect. Yeah, that's great. mean, so like we really didn't get into any of like the tribal drama. It was nice. I don't want to do that here. Can I just say what I am? I'll just say what I'm doing. Okay, I'm doing something. You know how you could just do things. I decided to do things. um What I'm going to be leading a conversation about. um Let me just say the knots thing. um I think there are problems with core that are, so I agree with all of them. I agree with them that there are problems with core. What I don't agree with is that these are, don't, I neither agree or disagree right now that these problems are existential.
I don't know the extent to what they all are. So what I want, the conversation I want to have is let's lay out in the goriest of detail what everybody thinks the real problems with core are. personal attacks, like, know, you see these glory as I was edited videos of things are all over Twitter now. Like, you know, it's just all very tribal and not helpful because what's happened, you know, before there was this fork idea. It was kind of like, all right, let's just try to talk about this. But now that there's this fork, the whole game has changed and they're not, it's almost bad faith and it's very hard to find signal here. What I want to have is a conversation and say, I need someone who can do a good job of saying, really what I think all the real big problems of core are.
And then I need somebody to say, people to say, well, okay, let's just first say why is there a solution? Is, know, can we, is there a solution or no configurations? Yes or no? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. Right. And then the question is, okay, so like, what is Is this existential? Is the sky falling? Do we really need to all jump off a bridge right now? I don't know. I honestly don't know the answer. Like I'm searching for a good answer. I'm searching to, cause these people aren't all stupid, right? Normally you think people jumping off a bridge are kind of stupid, right? But these people aren't all stupid, right?
They're just very upset. there's legitimate reasons to jump off a bridge sometimes. But they are very upset. uh I have searched far and wide and this morning I really, I've actually given up. like, I'm not going to find a nuts guy to make this case. I unfortunately, it's just over. tried, I really did try. And uh I found that they, first of all, my technical resource for this conversation is the giggler, unfortunately, the giggler, Rob Hamilton, who it though. He is. And the thing is, I don't think there's a better person on earth who can articulate the technical case for whether or not the thing works the way people think it does or not. But I found most of these nonce people wouldn't even be in the same room with this guy.
And um I had no idea, honestly. I was not close enough to any of this to know. Rob's the kind of guy that if you actually are genuinely curious and sincere, he will stop at nothing to answer your question. I mean, I met Rob three years ago just DMing him. I was like, you run an insurance company? I'm an actuary. Can I ask you about that? And he was like, oh, dude, of course. And that's how like he just, he just answers DMs for people who are curious about things. But if he starts to think that you're not arguing a good faith, he will start trolling you and. the relationship is over.
So he's a little bit polarizing from that respect, but you know what? He's still the only, he is the guy. So. impressive. He was on the Freedom Tech panel that I was on as well. at BitDevs, actually, like, I think I'm using these words right, he merged a pull request in his GitHub repository on stage while they were presenting. yeah, he's in his futures market for is there going to be a fork and who wants to take the sides of those forks is fascinating. And it's interesting, yes. And he can't find anybody on the not side to take him up on the offer currently. I mean, part of it is a troll, but part of it is actually really he's willing to be wrong.
He's willing to be told, no, you know what, we will gamble on this and... uh Who's willing to put their money where their mouths are? So, you know, to me, Rob is unassailable in my opinion and he is the guy that needs to be that guy. But I still thought that this discussion, I felt like it needed balance from somebody on other side to give it more signal. And I just started giving up because all these people were like, I won't even talk to that guy. I'm like, fuck you. So I finally found somebody this morning. who I think is going to represent the not side.
I'll just say stay tuned. We were gonna rip this conversation next week, but I think now that I found an adult who, a pretty big account, who's an adult, well known, well respected, and I've now observed him tweeting like an adult, right? that's a good, well. one? My original thought was to use Motivate the Math for it, but this person has a gigantic podcast that maybe will use that platform to give it a bigger reach. oh We're going to start now, talk offline and slow this conversation down now. Talk offline and see what happens. tuned.
We will let you know the details when we know them. It's really important. Again, my problem with not, I just want to be clear is that I think it's a distraction from the real conversation, which is like, is uh the thing we're really upset about? We're really worried about, you know, are we fucking slaves? Are we serfs to this group of people? You know, I mean, this article comes out yesterday that Bitcoin Core was funded by fucking Epstein. You saw that, right? Yeah. the latest iteration on the CIA created Bitcoin. Look, you know, like the question really for us and for anybody who is seeking sovereignty and freedom is, you know, how much darkness are you willing to dance with to be free?
Mmm, that's great way to put it. And I think that's why I think these conversations are important. If it's true that there may be an existential problem, I'm willing to consider this, right? And maybe something needs to, and the question is, is there a solution to it? That's the conversation I want to have, and I think that's high signal, and I think it's going to focus at least the people in good faith who are really curious in the right direction. I believe nots is a big distraction. from that. But the people that are supporting that are so upset that they'll basically do anything that's an alternative. They'll do anything that's an alternative.
I can understand if you think that Epstein is like creating a funding core and you're like, I'm so disgusted. I need a different implementation. But then again, it's like you are in Bitcoin and things have to work technically. And what they're proposing doesn't seem to work technically. at all. This is kind of in vain in in line with what I was talking about in the freedom tech panel at one point I like each of our ability to be sovereign is directly related to our ability to stomach like The darkness of what it means to be sovereign like if you have like and I like I pointed this out like everybody deserves Bitcoin at the price they buy it at because there's a and there's a if you have the ability to sort the signal through the the noise and find the signal of Bitcoin There's a direct monetary uh reward for that.
Same thing with legacy media. the sooner you figure out that they are selling propaganda, not news, you will free your mind from that. And on the weapons side, if you have the stomach to use an oil can as a suppressor, you will benefit from that. But there's a lot of levels of sovereignty. People just don't have the stomachs to... to sit with it, they'd much rather offload that responsibility to some third party and just go the direction of the third party. like, and. me, this is why purity tests are unacceptable. And I did release a fundamentals of fundamentals episode in the past two weeks called the fundamentals of plebslop colon uh purity tests.
And it was maybe a 25 to 30 minute rip about why I seek to fail purity tests intentionally and why I will never be subjected. And to me, the, you know, the, uh The BIP444 crowd seems to be... It's weird. It just seems to be a a weird purity test. I feel like the... So, can I talk about Pellapsalop real quick? Sure, yeah, I mean, I didn't listen to it and I'm sure a pretty big percentage of our audience hasn't listened to it. You want to summarize it? Yeah, well, Plobslapp, we've had Rod Palmer, shout out Rod Palmer. ah He created, he found two words that summarize something I think we've all been thinking about for years, which is like this engagement forming Bitcoin propaganda type, you know, all of these tropes that were high signal maybe in the last couple of cycles, right, and helpful.
are no longer helpful, I don't think. they're just, we just call it plebslop, which is like the plebs lap it up. The plebs, you know, and then it keeps them from, it keeps them from becoming pioneers. It keeps them from thinking for themselves. They just stay in this kind of lane of serfdom. And I have this idea that plebs want to be ruled. And that's so they'll just gonna keep purity testing people until they find somebody that they can accept being ruled by. And I think plebslop is a big way in which they're just fed sort of opiates and it's like the bread and circus now for plebs. And, uh you know, it's like almost all these movements.
So all these movements are driven by plebslop, right? And uh these tribal, these kind of like really tribal movements, it's almost like these are like almost affinity scams. So that is all to say that I think thinking for yourself, and dancing with darkness for freedom, right? For your own freedom. It's like you don't even know. Nothing's given and nothing's promised. uh It requires now being vigilant and not accepting slop in your narratives. Yeah. There are a few things that I think are more subjective than the term plebslop. like children don't come out of the womb with the ability to eat steak.
They need to start with oatmeal. And so like all of us are on a journey. like, and I said this in the telegram chat, like one plebslop is another pioneer's signal or I said something like that. And so like, I think Agree completely. Yeah, vilifying plebslop is just kind of an easy way to box something, a conversation up and be like, I'm not gonna, I don't have to address this. It feels that way to me. Uh, that's the point. It's actually a way to dismiss noise. uh like McDonald's cheeseburgers, I agree, should be dismissed. But there's a lot of people out there that really enjoy McDonald's cheeseburgers.
And if we put up a wall between ourselves and them, they're never going to realize that the advantage is mistake. ah I would say that it's not really putting up a wall. It's more of, okay, I'm gonna bring you back to a conversation we had a long time ago on the show where we talked about the difference between being a standard bearer and meeting people where they're at, right? How they're sort of like, and people just have their roles. Like there are diplomats out there that their job is to meet people where they are and then to move them along. I think you and I have those roles in certain areas of our life and probably in certain areas of Bitcoin too, where we like, okay, there's certain areas where we're just gonna meet people where they are and move them forward.
For me, it's definitely like certainly in the corporate space and the institutional space and like where I wanna work, right? I wanna work with people so you have to meet them where they are and then try to move them forward. I think when it comes to teaching math, I wanna meet people where they are. Like, okay, where were you last? good and let's move, you if you want to move people forward, I do think there is a role for that. But then at the same time, there's a role for standard bearers to say, you know what, this is the standard and then on certain things, I'm not meeting you where you are. I'm holding a standard.
And when it comes to like what we consume, you know, what we consume, think it's fair. to say, well, this is a low standard. I think it's fair for the bugle to target a guy like, you know, they target Pete Rizzo who isn't, you like if you ever talked to a dude, he's a smart guy, right? And that the reason, it's like the reason why they are so hard on him is because his Twitter account tends to be sloppy, right? It tends to be putting out things that are sort of propaganda-like that are below his level of intelligence, below his, you know, And, you know, there's a reason why people do that, right?
They're building something. want their build. need to build reach and follow. You know, I'm the only idiot who released a book with a thousand followers thinking that I was actually going to fucking make a difference with it. Right. The reality is you got to have a big account. You got to have, you know, to there are people that have to go and do that stuff. Yeah. So my point is to say that I think there's a I as a standard bearer. I love I love the innovation. discovering plebslop. And I think that we live in a time, this is almost like we live in a time in the fourth turning here, where you got to wade through a lot of that slop now. And you know, for me, I just want to put signal out, right?
I don't think we do plebslop here, really, but then again, that would be unself-aware, I'm willing to be told otherwise. I don't know, just from the way that it's been, the nebulous description of it, I feel like I'm a purveyor of plebslop occasionally. It's like I'm not above sharing an article on one of my Telegram chats that is probably could be classified as like plebslop. The question is why are you doing it? Are you doing it to spread propaganda? Are you doing it to keep plebs as plebs and keep yourself, you know, I feel like plebslop keeps is what keeps plebs plebs and keeps them from hitting the frontier. It validates their plebhood and it's like it's a vicious cycle in my opinion of just like keeping people in the lobster trap.
And so That's where I would be introspective about it. And I think it's good for all of us. I really do think it's good that we're like, shit, am I putting out plebslop? Let me ask myself that question. I think that's healthy. That's where you want to be. Yeah. is like, definitely, if you're, yeah, I definitely agree. There's a difference between being a standard bearer and the pleb slop side of it. We're both meetup organizers. own that. We like, we both have that side of us that wants to, you know, that meets people where they're at and brings them along. We all have that.
dismayed by the number of Bitcoiners I meet that are fascinated by Monero. And that's an area that I will not compromise on. But I've also realized that me being a dick about it is not a productive way to go about expressing my opinions. I think it's the same question as with a lot of these other things and with what we're doing with NOTS. It's the same question being, okay, there are clearly issues with privacy on Bitcoin. The question is, are they existential? Are there solutions? Do the solutions that are out there now work? And what else should we be thinking about?
I feel like it's the same frame of question that like... mature people need to go out and have. I'm so glad we did the episode of Monero. oh I know there are people that avoid our podcast because of it, but who cares? Honestly, those are low-thinking people, not forever, but at the moment of that exclusion, I'm happy to select them out. Right? Like our audience are people who are just higher, frankly higher signal. They can tolerate, they can tolerate more questions. we do have the very best audience. So, like this question about Monero. you know, so another guy I met at the conference in Prague was I met Rational Root, if you know who that I didn't really know who that was, Rational Root.
He's a carrot. His icon's a carrot. He's a pretty big account, very privacy-focused. And we had a conversation about Bitcoin privacy. And it just got me thinking on the same lines. It's like everybody knows. Privacy is a problem on Bitcoin and you we didn't get into the samurai issue But like the government throwing the fucking book at samurai Was very upsetting and Set a really really bad message in my opinion and frankly makes Bitcoin less valuable. So like when you look at the You know, we never talked price on this podcast, but like it's pretty down. It's down pretty bad right now, you know, I Would say there's a certain uh decrease in value that to me is very justified because uh you signal the US, not to go into a whole nother segment here, but when the US government signals that the Blanche memo is meaningless, the Blanche memo is the memo that uh says that software developers are not responsible for the actions of their users, which this guy Blanche who works for the DOJ, he's like the deputy of the DOJ put out and a lot of these non-Custodial Wilds came back to the US because of that memo.
But I want to shout out Frank Corva, who we met at the Bitcoin John a couple of weeks ago also. This is a lot happened in the last couple of weeks. But Frank... uh Frank was saying that um he has tried for the last year to meet Blanche. he had White House credentials as the journalist from Bitcoin Magazine. And this guy ghosted him basically for an entire year. he was telling us that he started to get this idea that this Blanche memo is fucking bullshit. performative only. When was the Blanche memo released? Is that under Trump or Biden?
Yeah. like one of the, was either January or February. And so he's saying he started to get this, this inkling, the Spidey sense that this thing was performative and bullshit. And now the Samurai sentencing really, really hammers home that this thing is meaningless. And, you know, I show, I posted, everybody remembers my Bitcoin 2024 recap for my Odell derangement and my comments about Odell. But the reality, of that episode was I also talked about how Trump wasn't going to do shit for Samurai or anybody like that. that privacy would be reduced to a niche movement because Trump's speech, all he talked about was Gensler and the SEC.
And the guys that are donating to Trump from the Bitcoin space, that's all they care about is getting their fucking bags pumped. And it doesn't appear that anyone, you know, they cared about freeing Ross and everyone had their free Ross t-shirts at the Bitcoin conference, but nobody really gave a fuck. about really to me the important issue. Samurai is important. mean, a lot of people think they did it to themselves, but this was a really important case and the government's aggressiveness in sentencing them really to me shows that they're gonna continue to attack Bitcoin users.
Watch what they do, that's right. is another example of Trump talking out of either side of his mouth. Like he said one thing to be elected and now he's in, he's doing something else. admit, to be fair, the samurai case is being prosecuted by the Southern District of New York, is, that's quite all right. what's happening in my house right now. But it's the Southern District of New York, for those that don't know, is like the worst of the worst of liberal prosecution in the country. um They're the district that decided to pursue no other than the one guy in the wake of the 2008 collapse. They put all the blame on one guy and let all the bankers walk free.
That was the Southern District of New York. So they are not good actors in this space. to be fair, like this is Trump's administration. He talked about being the most friendly and like Bitcoin friendly and crypto friendly and he was going to turn the corner on this. And then what is he doing? It's like not being friendly. And really to be fair, like don't think he's paying attention. I think he's focused on foreign things and he's focused on appeasing the people that are um giving him money and not the people that got him elected. at this pace, He's like the Republicans are gonna lose the midterms and he's gonna spend the second half of his second term being impeached.
And at this point, like I was upset about his impeachment the first time. I will applaud his impeachment at this point. Like he is not performing based on the reasons I voted for him, that's for sure. I would go to Fountain and check out the clip that I posted from the episode a year ago because it really did capture exactly what you're saying. It captures it all and we called it. It was so obvious from the speech that this was going to be the... I hate to be... I really wanted to be wrong about it and it's upsetting that I am, but it is what it is. uh It just is what it is and it's too bad.
I guess I'll say I I mentioned the re-release of my book, the one thing I actually added besides editing and polishing. So I edited and polished it for, um because it's going to be translated for Finland. So I had maybe needed to, needed to make it better. But so the one thing I really added though, cause I thought I missed the first time around was um the power of open source programming. and I wrote uh a small chapter about uh samurai. The reality is you could arrest them all you want. You could throw the book at them all you want. But guess what a year later, Ashiogaru's up and running.
And by the way, that was like one of our best episodes we ever had, we ever did. uh Shout out Jordan. uh But Ashiogaru's up and running. We mentioned this then, right? It's like what a... You can't cut the head off fucking snake here. the reality is open source programming is unstoppable. if you're just a corporate douchebag, right? Trying to figure out your Bitcoin thesis. This is the big one in the pro column. This is just like, oh yeah, dude, this is really hard to shut down, man. Like if the government wants to shut this down, it's gonna be really fucking hard. If the government wants to even shut down an aspect of it, it's gonna be very hard because a lot of this, it's just too late.
The open source, The open source software has been vetted, it's operating. ah I don't think people really understand in Bitcoin how much technical operations go on correctly that need no review every 10 minutes. In a company, you think about QA testing for the slightest change on a model, and you go through this regression testing, so much goes wrong. And yet in Bitcoin, so much really deep technical operations take place every 10 minutes that are never reviewed. And we're talking like 800,000 consecutive instances of complete success. And we have people like Average Gary working at our backs, making this technology even more sovereign and even more decentralized.
Like his work on Stratum V2 and like also like I'm very intrigued. Yes. why I want to have this conversation, by the way, because these people think that Gloria Zhao and people like that are the devs. I don't think that's the case. People need to understand that's more of the implementation team. They're not thinking, you know, the real devs are people like Gary, right? People who are, you know, Gary, like Kale, you know, people hate Kale because he is very outspoken. about very intrigued by Ecache and what Gary's working on with E-Hash um is... Oh yeah, like...
That's a that's like a whole podcast. That's not even an episode. Like that's an entire podcast. super technical, dude, Gary, whenever you get that running, I will run one. I will be the OG Bitcoiner that finances the E-Hash pool for central Pennsylvania for sure. the second he talked to me about EHASH, I immediately thought of the Citadel game. And we got Mike, Rev Hottle, and Gary on a call immediately and started talking. Basically, what the EHASH concept allows is for this game to now exist online. So not to get too into that, but you guys remember the Citadel game we talked about a couple of times?
uh What is it? Expansion Packs? Was that the episode we brought it out? Yeah. So the Citadel game is still, uh it's like a, it's a kind of a shit coin that won't die right now. It's still, it's still, it still exists. It's online, know, sort of online support, but it still exists. And Gary, Gary has now entered the mix. So thought I'd mention that. is open again. They're not releasing numbers. But yeah, they managed to take taxes out of all of our paychecks in the meantime while they were closed. But hey, go get a suppressor, folks. The ATF's working again.
There you go. I gotta piss so bad. Stop!
