A (2:27)

The getting his big media hits.

B (2:29)

Getting his big media hits. But he was like they were asking him about the difference between proof of work and proof of stake consensus mechanisms. And having been in the space for almost a decade at that point, I was like, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. And to think that he can actually operate a company in this space without any fundamental understanding of the assets that he's supposed to be securing and enabling trade around is. Is risky.

A (2:55)

Yeah. Just to keep a company afloat in the space, let alone to be like the market leader, like making all the big deals and going to Congress and like being the voice of crypto regulation all of a sudden out of nowhere. Yeah, that all screamed central banker to me. And the timing was really, really important too. Is it? Was it clearly built up with the bubble at this moment when central banks were realizing that they were behind on the digital currency train and they were starting to talk about their plans, but they clearly needed years to catch up. And I mean, bitcoin and crypto in general was just like charging has been for like a decade now at this point towards alternative solutions. And this again feels like right now, once again, like with Trump coming in with Elon coming in with rfk, like, all of these people have spoken pro bitcoin and pro crypto in various ways. SEC reform is on the table. And like, all those things just line up with, like, kill it, kill it as fast as we can. Like, rug all that momentum as quickly as possible so that we can just keep people in the sort of centralized mindset of like, no, we need centralized. Because this is what happens.

B (4:05)

Yeah, the. I mean, the FTX run up like the mainstream and be like, oh, bitcoin went higher than it was supposed to because FTX was manipulating the markets, but they were actually taking people's bitcoin and market selling it to give to all these things so that if you actually look at the charge, not that TA is ironclad or anything, but there's a good argument to be made that bitcoin probably should have gone to like, the $100,000 range in 2021.

A (4:30)

I mean, it's similar to like gold and silver markets. It's like a lot of people make these arguments that I find kind of weird that it's like, you can't manipulate precious metals markets there. That's why I buy gold. I'm like, bro, have you looked at the precious metals market at all? Do you know about JP Morgan and precious metals? And I don't know that much about it, but I know it's manipulated, but at least it has it's only manipulated within a certain range of fundamental principles. Whereas the crypto market, bitcoin, excluded crypto, like all these shitcoins and stuff. It's not only manipulated, but it's manipulated within a space that has no guardrails against manipulation whatsoever.

B (5:10)

No. And it's so trivial to spin up a market to manipulate.

A (5:13)

And what we've discovered, it sounds like. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what we're learning from this exposure of this, specifically this crew that was involved in the Melania coin and now in malaise coins in. What was it called? Libra.

B (5:26)

Libra.

A (5:27)

It sounds like what's integral to the shitcoin market is you have to have a purse of several million dollars coming into a project with you to artificially pump it so that when you rug it, you sort of are like doing this rinse and repeat of this massive pool of capital designed to manipulate your coins. And in the. In the shitcoin market, I know a bunch of people that are like, really down with the degen gambling in the Solana markets that have tried to spin up coins and they real. And they were realizing over the last or two that, oh, our coins don't move like everyone else's coins because we don't have a treasury of $5 million designed to manipulate our coin.

B (5:59)

Yeah.

A (6:00)

And they're like, man, that's.

B (6:01)

I mean, that's what Dumb Hayden was basically incriminating himself, talking about sniping and all of that and that.

A (6:07)

I think that, yeah, I haven't actually watched his interviews yet, but what I've heard of them is like, mind the fact that he would even just willingly go on Coffeezilla. I really want to watch that Coffee Zillow episode because it's like, I can only imagine how taken aback Coffee Zillow was to be like, bro, we're not filming a confession. Like, yeah, you don't have to admit to everything.

B (6:28)

Well, that's. It's like somebody who stumbled into, quote unquote, success, but just stumbled into some sort of position where it's like, oh, these people want to give me money to pull these coins. I set up these back channel out of band sort of communications networks to. All right, here's what we're attacking now. Here's what we're going to snipe. Blah, blah, blah. He was literally describing this. And I guess, one, I would not be surprised if it's intel psyop to degrade anybody's confidence in, I mean, I think crypto, but also it is the ultimate end state of where all this has been moving for the last 13 years, since the first altcoins emerged. And so I think whether it's a psyop or not, I think one thing that certainly a fact is that every other scam going back to history, so it started in like 2012, 2013, where you would have what were called fair proof of work launches. Those were like the first ones where it was like somebody would go on bitcointalk.org and they'd be like, all right, we're going to launch this proof of work coin with this scripting algorithm and we're going to launch it at this time on this day. So for it to be a fair launch, make sure you have your computer set up running the scripting algorithm and then as soon as the clock hits 11am, point your hash at this network and we'll begin the fair distribution of the coins via the block subsidy schedule set out by the certain, the particular dev team. And then that evolved to like proof of stake coins. Like proof of works like dumb and energy intensive. Like here's proof of stake and then ICOs and then NFTs, DeFi. And now Meme coins is the ultimate end state of this where it's just like, all right, we're not even going to pretend like we're trying to do something legitimate here. We're going to open up the casino. And it's funny comparing this like the 2017 cycle, where there was this facade of projected legitimacy about the sort of operations behind the tokens that were being spun up and the businesses behind them. And what people are finding is that these are not tech protocols. They certainly are to an extent, but they're in a open monetary competition with Bitcoin. Not that we're going to be able to beat it.

A (8:55)

The way you just described that progression is such a good tin foily space. Or rather it's such a good space to start to speculate on comparisons to other phenomenon. Like the one that comes to my mind is degeneracy in our, in our media and movie spaces where like at first it's like, oh, we'll just like show a little bikini and then we'll just like, oh, we'll just show a little this, then we'll show a little this and then pretty soon we're like, like having sex on stage in front of children. And that's like what our pop music is. And it's, and, and it's always a slow walk towards like any, any sort of like system that's based upon catering towards our lesser tendencies, in this case greed and gambling and in that case like sin and sloth and such like they inherently will slow walk you towards the most, the most egregious outcome. Right. Whereas bitcoin is built on, on principles of integrity. And so in some ways it's like this complete divergent train for this, what is really a banking revolution. I mean like in the same way that maybe this is the way I look at it, but I look at the history of the United States and how we were really founded as an exit from the central bankers of Europe, as much as taxes or tea or whatever else the story was, it's like we were breaking free of central banking and these monarchies and these sort of like just ultra oligarchs.

B (10:16)

Continental dollar. Right. Like when the first. Yeah, when we first had the Revolutionary War. So yeah, we're getting away from that.

A (10:22)

Exactly. And during that first several hundred years of our nation, there was just like currencies being spun up all over the place. Every state had a ton of different papers and it was, there was all these problems and a lot of those projects were like scam coins just like today or they were, you know, high integrity projects that like had poor fundamental values. And fortunately we arrived at the Federal Reserve System which is like the best system ever and it could never go wrong. So you know, I'm optimistic that this, this cycle will have learned more and bitcoin is obviously like an infinitely better solution than the solutions we've arrived at before. So.

B (10:58)

Yeah, and that's one thing, I mean you were asking before we sat down like, there's no shitcoiners on this floor. Was everybody. Is anybody but her crying? Like no, everybody's actually, mm, breathing a sigh of relief because it has been exhausting having been public in this quote unquote industry, being bundled in with the crypto bros for the last eight years, as I've been public in it, like many bitcoiners, many in this building and who run in the same circles and have the same view of what's happening, have been screaming from the rooftops for the better part of 12 years. This is all scam. It's all going to end well. And literally predicted the end state of meme coins, which was none of this is going to work and you're just going to end up at a spot where it's just a pure casino and people do like the casino. But that's what I think most.

A (11:51)

Like, fair. If you want to gamble, go gamble. But like, don't pretend like it's going to be some financial revolution or something. No, it's gambling.

B (11:59)

Yeah. And we're beginning, I mean you're seeing it in the market caps of Bitcoin and every other crypto is they're diverging very, very, very clearly on the chart, the market dominance chart for the first time in, in the history of Bitcoin's existence alongside shitcoins, which is, yeah, I'm.

A (12:20)

Really curious what happens to the broader sort of like Ethereum spaces and stuff where like, like. Because the ones that, even the ones that aren't like overtly meme coins that like, you know, portent to have value or utility even, they are sort of seriously tainted by this whole thing because the same mechanics that allowed for meme coins to become what they are are latent. In a lot of those other projects.

B (12:44)

Ethereum had a 70% pre mine itself. Like that's what all these meme coins are.

A (12:51)

Not to mention all the like the ethgate stuff and sort of like who really is actually owning all that? Who's behind metallic and like there's all these questions that, you know, you can go deep on and get tin foily but you don't have to get that tin foil to recognize the difference.

B (13:03)

It's not a very well kept secret in the industry. Joe Lubin owns most ether and I think his network of people. I forgot it was Goldman or JP Morgan. They're sort of backing it.

A (13:12)

Exactly. Yeah. I'm getting really curious and I expect we're going to get answers within the next couple of months of like, what is the government and regulatory response to this going to be? Because Trump really got, whether he knew it or not, he really got drug into the mud with the Trump coin and the Melania coin and that's a serious reputation hit in general. And I can't help but wonder if that's not sort of their ultimate targeted hit is if you can kill Trump's administration's willingness to engage with Bitcoin or with that conversation at all just because of the Solana scams that are going on. That really sets JP Morgan up in a great position to go CBDCs to get his ear.

B (14:02)

And if I were Donald Trump, I'd be screaming at Don Jr. And Eric Trump because it seems like they're really the ones who've been driving this world liberty fight. And that's the other like the other thing too is these crypto scammers for, for. I think you have to give them credit in the sense that they network well and they have the ability to get next to, oh yeah, these people in the vicinity of power convince them to do objectively things.

A (14:32)

It's, it's an interesting space because the reality of how these things actually work is extremely complicated. The mechanics, the, the actual tokenomics, whether you're talking from a dev standpoint or just from a monetary standpoint, it's actually quite complicated to really understand what's going on. But there's this layer of expl. Like of surface layer, surface level explanation that can be given that feels like encompassing and is so obvious and like, oh my gosh, it's free value. There's like so much here. Like look at what these other one. And so it's so easy to convince people at the surface level that this might be a great idea. And man, it's just so obvious how many people that have the right intentions maybe have been swept into the wrong place in a huge way. And I'm worried that that happened to a lot of the Trump team and a lot of the RFK team on this.

B (15:24)

Yeah, well, Train, I think I've said this publicly on the podcast before, but it like, I mean it's, it exists. RFK's team in the lead up to the election, it wasn't his name, it was some like pack associated. Yeah, like I believe they reached out to me and they were like, oh, and they just sent me a link to the RFK Solana coin and we're like, will you share this?

A (15:49)

Was it Maha?

B (15:50)

I don't think it was Maha, no.

A (15:52)

Yeah, so I'm, I have this. Had this really interesting podcast with my homies in this Maha space last night. And these are two guys that are like pretty deep in the like shitcoin world and they totally own that. They're like for it. And this is Dustin Stockton and Kyle Kemper and they launched this Maha coin that was using the tax on the, on the, on all the transactions in the first, I think like six or nine months or something like that to fund like political campaigning, to fund like this bus tour, to fund all this media, to fund all this merch. And it was like actually incredible. It's how I met both of them by chance is because they were there and, and so they, they had like, they were like kind of two high integrity people that were in the space that were very optimistic and saw, I mean they saw the coins like the shitcoin nature of it, but they also saw the potential for if you had all high integrity people with purpose, you could do Something cool. But we live in a world full of people. And we had this really cool kind of come to Jesus conversation like four or five days ago where I was like, guys, I can't do a podcast that's associated with a shitcoin. Like, I can't even if it's an idealistic shitcoin, like, I can't be associated with that. And I'm not going to be. And I want to keep, you know, hanging with you guys and talking with you guys, but we've got to confront this. And Kyle, I didn't know the extent of the drama. And Kyle's like, yeah, I'm fucking over this. I'm so done. Got Dustin on the phone and Dustin's like, the shitcoiner, shitcoiner you could ever shit coin. And he's like, yeah, I'm fucking over this. Like, I am done. This is not the path. Like, like, it doesn't matter how optimistic you are. You have to, at a certain point just like, admit that you are barking up the wrong tree. And so we officially split it and was like, this is not. We have to focus on the real. Like, yeah, it is what it is.

B (17:37)

That's. I mean, and that's whether it's Trump coin Melania Maha, RFK took. And I mean, that's the advice I've given when people have come to me, like, I'm launching, like the same advice I would give Dave Portnoy. He may be in trouble now, but should have called me. Dave is like, think about. What is it called? A meme coin. What are memes? They're these ideas that are succinctly articulated, whether it's via an image or a saying like Maha that really connect with people. But as we with the Internet, things come and go. Trends come and go. Exactly. And when, like, the political class would come to me and ask about politician focused meme coins, it was like, no, this is a terrible idea because you're going to have like hardcore supporters that are going to buy into this. The price may go up temporarily, but they believe in the politician that this coin is supposed to be representing. And what happens if he drops out of the election? What happens if he doesn't get elected? What happens if something happens like, or.

A (18:40)

If there's just manipulation?

B (18:41)

You're going to have a bunch of supporters holding. Yeah.

A (18:44)

And then you've just undermined specifically the people that support you the most. You've just fucked them exactly.

B (18:50)

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A (20:39)

100%. Very well said. It is funny how many metaphors are baked into bitcoin from the. From the start. Yeah, like just proof of work baby. And it is cool to see sort of the evolution of people's thinking in the space and to what? Like myself being sort of like a. I mean kind of like an outsider, like orange pillar. But knowing a fair number of people in the bitcoin space and also knowing a lot of people in the more general crypto space, especially novices that are slowly getting orange pilled because of the progression of the meme coin trajectory has been really cool to watch because there's no better proof of proof of work than watching all the other modalities just burn.

B (21:22)

Yeah. As bitcoin's only getting stronger, I do have grace for the archetype of the individual who thought bitcoin was too hard to build on and they wanted to build these cool financial products or social interaction applications, whatever it may be. And going back to proof of work, it's going to take time. Lower your time preference. I think the timing of this meme coin shit show that's happening and the maturation of the stack being built on Bitcoin is perfect because you've recently joined Nostr. And I think Nostr is a perfect example of the manifestation of a meme that was big last cycle, which was web 3.0, which is this idea that you'd spin up a utility token for different use cases, whether it's a podcast, you want a token associated with the show and people can accumulate it and send it back to you. Like doesn't make economic sense at all. But what we're seeing on Noster podcasting 2.0, which we talked about last summer when you're on, is like this. You just combine these open source protocols, communication protocol and Noster RSS open content distribution with Bitcoin and it plays nice.

A (22:36)

Bingo. Yeah, it's like the. I was really taken in by the Ethereum crowd's arguments for utility based coins really of blockchain based stock markets and blockchain based this and that. And it's like, it's very enticing those arguments because there is logic within them. But I think it's taken a long time for people to start to real for the masses to start to realize that the point of that is that it's not a currency. Those are not monies. Like what, for example, it would be great for a public good, like public shares of public companies. Put it on a blockchain. Nothing wrong with having a public share being on a public blockchain if it's because we don't want counterfeit shares. Like we want them to be immutable. And currently they don't seem to be immutable. So that's great. But it's not a currency. It's not like you don't need it to have like monetary mechanisms built into it. And so what NOSTR is doing, where they're combining the positive elements of decentralized technologies that make sense in this use case and then just Combine it with the bitcoin currency system. Yeah, you don't need to reinvent a new currency that's built in this in a way that is not optimized for currency. You know, use the technology elements for what they're good for.

B (23:55)

Exactly. And when it comes to whether it's the big, this is where I think a lot of money is going to be burned, particularly from tradfi this cycle is the meme around real world assets. Rwas tokenizing real world assets, stocks being one of the top priorities. And you nailed it. You don't even need it on the block. This is already possible on a side chain of bitcoin liquid, which is a federated side chain, has its own blockchain. But yeah, you can issue tokens that have no monetary value. And so if you were a company issuing shares of stock, you could do that on the liquid network today. And some people have already, I believe. But yeah, the whole point is like you really honed in on is like that's not like you don't invest in that like you would invest in like an Ethereum or Solana, like.

A (24:46)

Exactly.

B (24:46)

It's literally just a changing of the form of the representative value of the underlying stock and the rails it runs on. And so like to think that you're going to invest in a real world asset and it's going to increase the volatility of the underlying stock. That's not conceptually what's going to happen. You're just going to change the form of how you buy and sell, make.

A (25:07)

It harder to counterfeit it or impossible to counterfeit it. You can still manipulate all these systems just like you can manipulate any system. Like same. Bitcoin is manipulable, but it's manipulable on the rails that are the way you want a currency to work. The point is because I think that there's, there's like this novice perception that the right currency wouldn't be like people point at bitcoin and like it's just a gambling asset. Look at its, look at its crazy thing. Like the dollar doesn't do that. So why would bitcoin? It's like, yeah, the dollar kind of does do that. But beside from that, it's like you don't want to build in control mechanisms that prevent manipulation that are part of a free market because then you're inherently undermining the actual nature of your currency. You have to deal with the free market if you're going to build a real free market currency. And unfortunately the free market is a pretty messed up place these days.

B (25:56)

Yeah, well. And once you introduce the free market, anything could be manipulation is me going to the Strike app right now and selling some of my bitcoin. Manipulation technology does affect the order book in one way or another, but the volatility does really throw people off. And it's not surprising that it does because it is a bit jarring. If you're getting into it, you're like, oh, I'm going to put my savings in this. And that's why you have to really drive home. This is a long term thing. Make sure you're willing to hold it for multiple years. But then also take a step back. You have a new monetary asset monetizing in real time and people are becoming confident and less confident based off of information that is coming out every day. And therefore you're not going to have this new monetary asset just fully monetized overnight. It's going to be filled with volatility.

A (26:54)

That's what I love about it, man. That's my favorite part about bitcoin being it being like entering kind of financial literacy in general from a gamestop investor perspective. I'm down with volatility. Like, I'm super into that and I'm down with holding forever. Like, I got that. And so when I look at bitcoin, it's just such a no brainer of yeah, I'll put my. Because I think a lot of Americans genuinely don't have the ability to really make savings right now. And so, yeah, it's not it that makes it impossible to look at. Because if you need your money today, you know, it's not the asset for you. But when you're trying to, like when you are taking your finances responsibly and doing something like, like the old adage of put 10% of all you earn away forever as you're growing wealth, like that is just so clearly a bitcoin position. As in so many people are looking at their IRAs now and they're like investment portfolios that are being managed at like, you know, 3 to 5%. It's like, why would I keep that? Like, a lot of people are starting to realize, and I'm not telling people to do this, it's like people are realizing, like, I should just take the tax hit of withdrawing all my money from my retirement account right now and put it all into bitcoin right now. Because even if I were to give away half of that money to taxes, I would still make it all back and then some in the Next bitcoin cycle.

B (28:09)

Yeah.

A (28:10)

Total no brainer.

B (28:11)

Yeah. And that, like, whether it's liquidating your IRA or 401k or simply just buying, like, yes, most Americans cannot afford, like, a $400American or emergency expense. Excuse me, but if you have the ability to squirrel away, Even if it's $50 a paycheck, $50 a month, just start slow and build that nest egg.

A (28:34)

Yeah. I mean, I didn't seriously start accumulating bitcoin until, like, less than a year ago now because I was just living kind of on fumes and reinvesting everything back into what I was building in my media space. And once I did start, seriously, like, I had enough extra capital to start putting away, like, 500 there, a thousand there. I like, it was an immediate. I think it said it, like, up 10%, 20% just on this little cycle here. And it's like, fine if it goes back down, but it's just crazy how. How scary it is from the outside. But once you're inside, it's, like, so refreshing and relaxing to know that. And this is the thing that all bitcoiners know, and this is why bitcoiners are such fun people, and you're a great example of this, is that I've noticed that when I meet bitcoiners, they're just calmer. They're just chill, and they're not stressed like regular Americans. Because I think most of us don't even realize how much of our daily, like, stress and tension is coming from financial instability. And this sort of subtle knowledge that I'm the system has constantly got me on this. And most people don't realize they're on this treadmill of, like, why is it that I can never afford anything? Why is it that I'm always trying to make rent and I'm always trying to pay my bills and, like. And the moment you start to put more and more of your assets into bitcoin, you don't even notice it at first. Maybe if you're not paying attention to the tokenomics of why this is happening, but it's like, oh, I'm gonna be. It's like, it's gonna be fine.

B (30:02)

Yeah.

A (30:02)

Because as this all gets harder, my number's going up in the background, and I'm just chilling.

B (30:08)

Then you have the. The peace of mind that you're actually contributing to something worthwhile and that is separate and that. I mean, I just had Peruvian bull on, and we were going over, proven he's the man. He is. And we were going over like that's the other thing most Americans don't know. Like number one, they're on the hamster wheel. All those feelings of financial stress are because we are printing so much money. But then on the other side we have all this debt that's being, being accrued that is enabled by the fact that the Fed will always come in print money and buy the debt. But it's going to get hairy here, particularly this year. I mean the big meme at the end of last year was the interest expense on the debt surpassed military spending. But that, that's going to increase I believe like 10 to 20% in the first six months of this year. Just that interest expense.

A (30:59)

And Doge is doing great work, but you're kind of like running up a mountain. Like, like you're, you know, interest expenses on debt, growing the debt. Like you have to shave so much off of our, like off of our budgets in order to even catch up to the growing rate of how fast we're falling behind that. I'm glad that we're cutting all this like total out of our, out of our tax dollars. But it's like, man, it just feels like we're definitely too little too late and the American dollar is just, it's going to die.

B (31:33)

Yeah, well, and that's the thing with Doge too is if they were, and it looks like they are having a material effect on how much taxpayer money is being wasted, but it could take the market 6 to 12 months to realize that. And like the problem with the debt and the rollover of the debt right now is that the treasury yields are so high. And so you're rolling that over and the. I wrote a piece about it last week we had $66 billion of 10 year treasuries that rolled over last Saturday and when they were issued 10 years ago is at 2%, rolling over at 4 and a half percent. And so that alone added like $20 billion a month in interest expense payments.

A (32:12)

Yeah, yeah. I'm really.2 billion. Right. I'm really curious. Like there's been talking of auditing the Fed right now. There's talk of visiting Fort Knox. There's talk of them actually examining the fundamental pieces of the Fiat scam.

B (32:32)

I've got a Fort Knox tinfoil hat theory.

A (32:34)

Yeah. You want to go into it?

B (32:36)

Yeah. The gold's going to be there.

A (32:37)

You think so?

B (32:38)

Yeah, because are you paying attention to what's going on with the gold markets right now?

A (32:42)

No, no. What's going on? Well, so I've heard about gold Moving from London, from Europe and London. Right.

B (32:49)

Moving out of London to the US and Singapore. But that, it seems like that's what's happening right now is a combination of tariffs and an implementation of reserve rules that goes live later this summer from Basel III regulations. So backing up from latter to former Basel 3, this new reserve ratio, not requirement, but something that's going to become acceptable is using gold as a reserve as a fully reserved asset on a bank's balance sheet. And so many are surmising that people are like, okay, I'd rather use gold as a Treasury asset compared to US Treasuries, which are mostly the reserve assets in the banking system right now. And then tariffs as well. The question is if Trump's going to go and all these tariffs, we need to get our gold in US borders before that tariff begins to hinder our payback on that gold or how much we pay for having that gold outside the US and so it's all been coming from the lmba and there was a complete run on that bullion deposit and they've had to go to the bank of England, be like, can we borrow some of your gold to facilitate these withdrawals that are happening. And then similarly, here in the US you have people who have gold futures contracts on the cme, you can call those in kind. And as this is all going on, people in the US with these futures contracts are calling it in kind, and the comax is having to facilitate the delivery of that gold. And the underlying assumption around all of this is that because of state of US treasury markets, the dollar and the geopolitical show that the world is in is that you're going to have this reversion to a hard asset, whether it's a global monetary system or bifurcated global monetary system. And so I think the gold's going to be there when they go to Fort Knox. Whether. Whether it's been there the whole time. I don't think it's been there the whole time, but I would not be surprised. Like, think of Donald Trump.

A (35:05)

He's about right to me.

B (35:07)

Yeah, he's not going to want it. He's not going to signal weakness.

A (35:09)

No.

B (35:09)

Like, he's going to get a fortnight. Knox are like, oh, look, we have gold. You know what? We actually have a little bit more than we thought to send a signal to the rest of the world. The US Is strong right now.

A (35:18)

I mean, I don't know how to. I'm not smart enough or connected enough to know how to verify this or not, but I've been hearing and seeing a lot of stuff about China on a similar trajectory of just hoarding gold right now too.

B (35:28)

Oh, China's been buying mass for 20.

A (35:30)

Years and it feels like there's a certain element like this is. I'm kind of just piecing this together right now. But when, when the world went onto the US dollar as the global reserve currency, it was after a state of extreme turmoil and warfare all around the world. And so there was this wide open playing field for manipulation of political spaces for intelligence agencies to kind of consolidate. I mean, I guess they weren't exactly intelligent agents at the time for the most part, but just consolidation of power by the powerful to sort of put the Federal Reserve System and the dollar supremacy into place in a very orchestrated way. And now we're really currency reset without so much of a. I mean Covid was a bit of a global catastrophe, but it didn't exactly feel like it put one group of very powerful men into a position to control the entire rollout of the next system in any way. Right. And so it kind of feels like a whole different version of history repeating itself where people are fighting for like we're realizing that the fiat experiment is failing and it's all going to burn sooner or later and everyone is kind of running for the hills to the next best, to whatever currency system makes sense to them. And I mean, I'm very stoked that countries seem to be going gold, but I think I'm probably personally going to go Bitcoin for the most part.

B (36:54)

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A (38:04)

The.

B (38:04)

There's so much, particularly with this new Trump administration, like, Doge, it's like, yes, go in there, fire the IRS agents. Thank you for finally letting the world know that USAID is a front for laundering money on behalf of whatever political party is in power in the US but then you have things like Larry Ellison and Sam Altman being like, we're going to deliver you MRNA specific vaccines for cancers. You have Howard Lutnick like, we're going to by equity in these MRNA pharmaceutical companies. It's like, what?

A (38:37)

Yeah, I had pretty low hopes for Trump coming in despite voting for him just because, like, we've, I've never in my lifetime had a politician enter the Oval Office and do like a single effing thing they said they would do. And almost every time they do the exact opposite of what they said they would do. Like, Obama's a great example with the 08 banking collapse. And so I really had relatively low hopes for Trump, and I was going to be happy if he even just appointed RFK to where he said he would appoint him at all. And so I'm almost more confused by it looking like he's delivering on a lot of his promises, especially with these other really weird curveballs like that Larry Ellison conference are talking about. It's like, like it's very hard to figure out what to trust and what is a play and what is not. And especially because Trump plays dumb so often. And even when he understands something, he often says things in ways that sound really. That's like. But he's not always actually as dumb as he sounds. And so I'm very confused by what the play is.

B (39:40)

And there was. I forget exactly what it was. This was a couple weeks ago. But he did something and the media was like, oh, my God, look at it. It's like you, you haven't learned. You've watched this guy for 10 years now in the political realm. Obviously 4 he was out of office for he was in. And then two, leading up to that, like, he has a strategy which is like, I'm gonna say something completely insane. I'm gonna anchor, like, so far on this end of the spectrum.

A (40:05)

Yep.

B (40:05)

See how people react.

A (40:06)

I think God, he said was a good example of that.

B (40:08)

That's What I was talking about before.

A (40:10)

He started talking about. And that one started a lot of a shitstorm in my world too, where it's like he starts talking about the US Occupying Gaza, and at first it's like, yeah, it's kind of retarded, bro. Why would you even say that? But then overnight, within three days, we had three of the most powerful Middle Eastern nations come out against that plan and say, no, we will do it. Which has always been the best option, is that, like, you need them to take. Like, you can't. You know, terrorism is bred in poverty. And. And just like, you know, if you leave that destruction there, you're never going to solve that problem. You need to rebuild and create prosperity for everybody. So that way you, like, there's. You're not incentivizing more conflict. And the only way you do that is with insane amounts of investment. And we don't want it to come from us. No, it's inherently got to come from them. Although I did make a joke that, like, all right, and then in 30 years, we have global jihad, because they all are like, hey, we really still hate those guys because they bombed all of us and now we're strong.

B (41:06)

Well, then we know that if the CIA gets disbanded, they figured out a way to keep the charade going.

A (41:13)

Yeah, exactly. It's gonna. I mean, I'm super not optimistic about what happens over in the Middle east, but I'm also like. Like, I don't. I. I care, but I don't really care that much anymore. It's like, we have so many problems here that we need to be focusing on taking care of our own. And my. My perspective on that whole stuff is basically just, how can we get it out of our stuff? Because there's so much money being sent to Israel and some money being sent to Ukraine, and that's based on lobbying, that's based on corruption coming in. It's not like we're doing it because all of our politicians woke up and were like, I want to do this. They were incentivized, they were lobbied, they were blackmailed, they were coerced with access and all these other things. And so I talk about that stuff a lot in the Middle east, but it's mostly at this point coming from this perspective of, like, get. Get us unentangled. Like, let us be sovereign.

B (42:02)

It's very.

A (42:03)

The whole point of America.

B (42:03)

Washingtonian of. Yes. Like, George Washington's parting thing. It was like, just stay focused on what's happening here. Don't worry about international. I mean, be diplomatic, but don't worry about getting entangled in other people's matters.

A (42:16)

Yeah. And I mean, I'm sure we'll never go back to that. Once you become the global empire, you're always destined to be on that storyline. But I really see us as America being in this trajectory now of we are an empire unwinding. The question is, how do we want to unwind? Do we want to unwind in a blaze of glory and fire and just screaming and kicking all the way down, or do we want to try to be as graceful as possible and roll back our global control and bring that prosperity back in? Because inherently, I think when you lose dol supremacy, when you lose global domination of the oil markets, when you lose global supremacy in the intelligence services spaces, like, not only do you have all these enemies that have kind of been latent and waiting and, like, under your thumb for so long, but you also have all of these policies that have sort of been propping up our American monetary and, like, society in general. And. And so I think we kind of need all hands on deck here. As the empire kind of like collapses or unwinds, whatever you want to call it, we need as much positive growth and movement here in order to sort of fend off the inherent, you know, instability we're going to face.

B (43:27)

Yeah. And I'm very optimistic about it. I mean, obviously a bit biased considering the nature of my professional life and career, but I think bitcoin, like.

A (43:36)

No, I'm with you. I'm totally with you.

B (43:39)

Yeah. But if he gets, like, history and like, all the dominant global reserve currencies that have risen and fallen, like, it's been hand. The baton's been handed from one country to another with periods of gold sort of playing this apolitical reserve currency status, or for most of history, it did. But like, in the last.

A (43:56)

Since paper.

B (43:57)

Yeah, but like the last 100, 150 years, maybe 200 years, it's been passed. The baton has been passed from a country to country. But like the US if there was ever a time to have sort of destabilization of the empire and a need to really get back into the hole and focus on rebuilding the homeland and making sure American citizens have dignity and the actual ability to pull themselves up from their bootstraps and live a relatively high quality of life, it's now, because I believe this is still true. Like, per capita, Americans have the most bitcoin.

A (44:39)

More than El Salvador, Huh? I guess it makes sense because El Salvador is so poor.

B (44:43)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, the other thing is, like, industry. Like, despite the fact that the US has expanded its empire and gotten pretty weak, lazy, and drunk on power abroad, I do still think the inherent fire that lives in the bellies of individual Americans, that American spirit of you, I'm gonna go build this. Still exists. And I think it's personified in the industry. Yes, there's a lot of shitcoins, but when it comes to bitcoin companies, they're actually building the infrastructure that people will use globally. I think it's safe to say a lot of that's happening here. So we have a strategic advantage from an industry perspective. We have a lot of bitcoin in the borders of the United States and in the balance sheets of individuals. And if they just embrace bitcoin, I think it'll be fine.

A (45:36)

Yeah. I mean, something we haven't really mentioned yet is this. I'm really optimistic about this shift that's about to happen between the old guard and the young, intelligent, rising kind of Gen X gen and kind of millennial class, where it didn't really. I think it didn't really dawn on most Americans for the last 12 trillion, 15 years, whatever, just how geriatric our leadership is and just how out of touch our reality is. Exactly right. And he just announced that he's not running for term again. And I mean, and I think that if. If what we hope is happening with Trump and this Doge and this purge and everything happens, I'm. I'm of the perspective that that is going to basically force a lot of resignations and, and sever a lot of the sort of incentives that have been keeping those people in place. And. But I think that there's a swelling rise in class. All these technologies, be it social media in the information space or bitcoin and crypto in the kind of currency spaces, all these different technologies, they incentivize people to learn the actual fundamentals of these principles that we've taken for granted for so long. And so it's now incumbent upon every American to understand how currency works, because there's no central bank doing it for us or we don't trust them. It's incumbent upon all of us to understand the nature of how information spreads, how disinformation spreads, how propaganda spreads. Because now all of our Twitter feeds, all of our Instagram feeds are like, in just overtly propagandized, like, battle spaces, whereas it used to be, oh, just trust the news, and I just watch the news. And so there's like, this rising generation of like, Gen X and down mostly are people that are suddenly way more in tune with the like. It's like we've leveled up in an understanding of what it means to be a civilization because everyone has been forced to be a part of understanding the solutions as they decentralize more and more and more. And I think as those people get into positions politically, we sort of wind up in a future that's like one step further towards utopia. The, you know, impossible utopia. Theoretical.

B (47:47)

No. And I think the like we're millennials. I remember taking the AOL CD out of the case and putting it into my gateway and downloading the Internet for the first time and interacting with a very cucked Internet. And then the progression of the open web, the web browser, Napster, things like that. And point being like 30 years of literally getting introduced to the Internet at consumer scale. And again similar to Bitcoin where it's not going to monetize overnight. I think people's understanding of the Internet and how to properly use it wasn't going to happen overnight too. And I think we're at a point where the Internet is certainly a double edged sword. It is a deluge of data and noise that you have to learn how to filter through. But I think over decades people like yourself, I'd like to think myself have learned how to filter at least decide which information is even worth sort of taking in and digesting to, to make a decision based off of.

A (49:00)

Yeah, yeah, it's such a double edged sword like in the sense that now everyone is like it used to be that you wouldn't fall into that wrong clique, like you wouldn't fall into that wrong like druggie click at school unless they were around you. And that metaphorically applies to all the kind of like things you can find on the Internet that are bad for us. Whether it's like pornography or like gambling addictions or like radical just ideas. Now it's like everything is in front of all of us. So there is this element of in some ways we have to take a few steps backwards to take more steps forwards because now we're all stuck in all of the potential permutations of information and, and outlet and such. But that's like forcing growth in all people and lots of people are falling into all these traps and, and kind of like falling victim to the Internet in a lot of ways. But man is it sparking a lot of growth amongst the people that are sort of like leveling up on it. And I, I'm hoping and I'm optimistic that that is that that is laying the groundwork for kids right now for like Gen Alpha and below watching their parents generation and seeing who fell into the traps and how do we avoid them and how do we like, I think that as we watch the generational gap between our generations, like leaders that have learned to overcome these problems and the generation below us looking up to our leaders, I think that that's going to be an amazing gap because those are going to be kids that grow up with all the access, with role models that show them how to navigate the, the, the second edge of that sword. And I'm optimistic that there will be some really incredible leaders coming out of the next generations below us.

B (50:46)

Yeah, no, this is something I think about a lot. I've got two young boys and especially with the emergence of AI. Yeah, at first it was very scary and it still is scary to an extent if open source AI doesn't win. But I think open source AI is going to win. But I've become particularly in the last six months, incredibly excited about the prospect of leveraging Open LLMs and OpenAI and maybe not self hosting, but there's actually a company out here open secret, they just released a private AI chatbot called Maple AI and try Maple AI if you want to go to the website. But they've essentially created a way where you can use secure enclaves in the cloud, even like on an AWS gpu, a GPU hosted on aws and you can interact with an LLM, but it's end to end, encrypted in transit and then the data is computed on the secure enclave which the server can't see, the person running the server can't see and Maple can't see. So you can create this extremely private connection with these LLMs and you can imagine a scenario where you can. Like when I think about my boys, I'm thinking about like what curriculum I want to create. Like a Roman tutor, like AI that my boys interact with so they can just ask questions about anything they're curious about.

A (52:13)

Yeah, it opens up so many possibilities.

B (52:16)

Not have Sam Altman spying on them while they're doing it.

A (52:18)

Bingo. Or Jeff Bezos or whoever it is. Because I think that that is getting to the fight of our generation and of our time is data privacy. And what is the constitution of the web, which for some reason we still don't have long overdue. Some form of just. And it's a touchy subject because like the constitute a good constitution of web of rights for citizens on the web is just one Small step away from regulating the Internet and controlling everybody. And I think we have all know there's plenty of people that would love to regulate the Internet and control everybody. But this, the, these sort of like bottom up solutions for privacy rather than top down are so exciting because every single time that one of these bottom up solutions like Bitcoin for example, is invented, it just, you never go back behind that threshold. Like Once open source LLMs are out there, you can't like what are you going to do? Take over the whole world and destroy every computer running an open source LLM? It's never going to happen. So that genie's out of the bag. And as more and more of these genies that empower regular people and protect regular people are let out of the lag, technologically speaking, I'd get more and more optimistic that we're not though we should always be vigilant about sort of the technocratic worst case scenario that a lot of people are vying for. I'm getting more and more optimistic that we're going to graze right past it and wind up somewhere in the middle. Won't be Utopia, but it'll certainly be better than. There's a lot of doomers online right now. I interact with a lot of doomers and the kind of conspiracy space that are like, it's, they're just gonna like, they're gonna have your AI, they're gonna have your prints and they're gonna have your biometrics and they're gonna like have brain chips in you and they're gonna control everything and they'll know everything. It's like, yeah, that's what they want.

B (54:08)

But will they get it?

A (54:10)

Yeah, I don't think so.

B (54:11)

It's another question. And again, if you zoom out, look at the progression of the Internet. I think when you mentioned like a constitution of the Internet, I think the cypherpunks.

A (54:18)

Yeah.

B (54:19)

Had it right. Which is like, you don't need a constitution. It's like we are cipher punks. We write code, we're going to plant our flag in some uncharted territory in the digital landscape and make technologies that are so good and are so powerful, equally as powerful for the individual and the nation state that it's going to be impossible to grow. And we had this in the 90s with the PGP wars. We had to go through a war that went all the way to the Supreme Court about the legitimacy of individuals access to pgp. Pretty good privacy technology. Similarly, we've seen it and that's the Beauty of it too. If you don't have privacy on the web, the individual is obviously at a disadvantage, but so are the large nation states and large corporations. They don't want their data getting access and hacked as well.

A (55:10)

Yeah, well said.

B (55:11)

And so we've seen this progression from HTTP to HTTPs where in transit everything's encrypted and that I just recorded with these guys. So it's top of mind. The next progression is the data that's not encrypted is the data sitting on all these cloud servers across the world. And now with the progression of secure enclave technology, we can begin to move to a standard where you can have the cloud servers with secure enclaves and the servers simply just run the compute. But they can't see, they put the firmware or the software in the chip. It does a certain thing. People can access that software, but they can't see what people are doing with it. They just know the computations are happening.

A (55:59)

Yeah, you actually put it really well in the context from the start here talking about digital constitutions. And that is why I love Bitcoin so much, is because there's this sort of old mentality which I kind of slipped into again, there's this old mentality of like, we need an arbitrary solution to our problems. Like write down on this piece of paper our arbitrary solutions. These rules we're going to follow so that everyone is taken care of. But the beauty of technology is that code is immutable. And so you don't need to write down an arbitrary solution on paper when we have the ability to encode a real solution that is immutable. And Bitcoin is like the perfect example of like, don't ask the government for a currency that will not be the dollar. Just go build it with technology, code it in and then everyone has trust because that's the nature of math. Like math is math and we're getting. And it's cool to watch like kind of the whatever. Like, I mean they're not really cypherpunks anymore, but like the, the evolution of the cypherpunks, like the communities that have spawned out of the early days and how all communities are working on all these different solutions that slowly are encoding more and more of the things we needed solutions for finding ways to put them straight into code and skip this layer of like we need an intermediary to hold the rules down.

B (57:20)

Yeah, I mean to the point that the corporations need as well. Like there's a new VPN that launched called Obscura and They've created a new way, new architecture. So when you download a vpn, typically you turn on your VPN and you go to a website and you send that information to the vpn, then it goes to the website. The VPN knows your IP obviously and you're trusting that they're not doxing your information.

A (57:49)

They weren't founded by the CIA. Yeah, that, yeah, I don't trust that.

B (57:53)

Obscura. What they've basically created is almost like a Tor like hop system with two nodes. You send it to the first node, it knows your IP but not the information you're trying to access. And then that sends to the second node, it knows what you're trying to access, but doesn't know your IP and sends it off to the web. And this was actually a design architecture that Apple open Source for their iCloud, Secure iCloud architecture and actually got adopted. And the reason I trust it is because it got adapted by the Ieft or ietf, which is like, like people literally working on the HTTPs layer of the Internet. They adopted it into their protocol because it's so secure and Apple made it that way so that they could secure their users data.

A (58:41)

Yeah, I mean love them or hate them, Apple's done a good job of actually leading the way in security in a lot of ways.

B (58:48)

Yeah, they were the first of the secure enclave on the phone, I believe.

A (58:50)

Exactly.

B (58:52)

But we're getting too optimistic and too to not vigilant enough. What do you think we have to look out for with this administration?

A (59:01)

Great points, dude. I'm actually intending to make a lot of content about this in the coming months because a lot of like, I'm in like the journalism space kind of the conspiracy theory space more so than any other like individual niche. And, and in my world there's an awful lot of people that are saying the same things as me today, but they are just like Trump fans. They're just on team, this team. And that's not really journalism and that's not what journalism is for. And that's not what like that's just partisan hype. And the whole point of journalism is to hold the powerful to account. And no matter how idealistic Trump or RFK or Elon or any of them really are, in their hearts they represent a nexus of power so vast that there's just going to be infinite vultures and interests and you know, people coming in trying to do all sorts of things that we do not want. And, and so regardless of how optimistic someone is about Trump or Elon or Whatever the plan is, or, you know, you should, we should be vigilant because the plan can be subverted, even if all the people enacting the plan are truly perfect, which they're not. Not as you know, the whole Ashley St. Clair drama clearly helped remind us of and his video gaming scandal and all these other scandals. And so I think, I mean, I, I defer to people like Whitney Webb on this one in the sense that she's been to her guns for a long time about the technocratic sort of like oligarch class and how they're walking us further and further towards sort of the digital version of you'll own nothing and be happy the ditch, like the, the, the. Not the. Not like in terms of our assets, but in terms of our digital lives. And, and there's an awful lot of money and projects swirling around and sort of like the Peter Thiel Palantir military surveillance systems world that Trump is very taken in by. He's very, very with. Elon just tweeted yesterday about how Palantir had integrated Grok 3 into it and was like, great, Palantir's the shit. And it's like, no, they're not, dude. No they are not.

B (61:18)

They're not.

A (61:18)

And all of. There's, there's a common thread that ties a lot of these problem companies or problem visions together and it's the concept of pre crime. And Palantir is a big player in pre crime and so are a lot of Israeli tech firms for a long time. And it's, it's this push towards. And the problem, just like a lot of what took liberalism off the rails in the last 10 years is that pre crime conceptually is built on a great concept. Like, yeah, ideally, if, like the elevator pitch of what if you could stop all crime before it happened? Like, what if you could stop bad things from happening? That'd be amazing. Like, duh. But at what cost? And there's never a way to predictively police that is not based upon mass surveillance and control. That's like the most deeply Orwellian thing in the world and it's the most anti American thing you could ever conceive of. But because Americans are so cluttered with information, so bogged down by debt and fear and stress, so distracted by sports and entertainment and music and such, that we're not noticing that it's actually already being implemented in places like our schools. Like, like there are already school like shooter alert systems that are getting integrated into our public schools that, that ostensibly are to prevent mass shootings but they actually are allowing backdoor access to these same companies, to all sorts of data, all sorts of surveillance that no one ever consented to. Same thing is happening with our emergency response systems. Carbine911 is a company that is actually Jeffrey Epstein affiliated.

B (62:55)

Yeah, Whitney's talked about this on the show before.

A (62:57)

Yeah, yeah, Whitney's really, like. I mean, like, Whitney is my primary source on this stuff. And if it weren't for Whitney's reporting, I would hardly even know where to start in digging into this stuff. And she's a great lead generator for how to start to learn about this whole scope of companies that are basically trying to create Minority Report in real life. And that's deeply troubling. And I'm. I'm far more optimistic than, like, the Whitney Webs and Derrick Roses of this world. And we've, you know, fought online about it a lot because I just. I feel like, though that is a serious risk, I feel like the American and the human spirit is greater in the exact same way that Covid. I feel pretty strongly that Covid was supposed to be much worse. It was supposed to be much more profitable for those that profited. It was supposed to be much more totalitarian for those that were instating totalitarian policies. And I think it was supposed to last much longer with more effect in the most, like, evil little pockets of conspiratorial people, like, their minds. I'm not trying to say that, like, the whole world was in on it.

B (64:00)

That's. That's one thing I'm looking for in terms of validation one way or the other. Like, all right, are they actually here to help? Is like, if they go. Because we had Kevin McKernan on, who's been doing a lot of research into the jabs and particularly turbo cancers and it leaking into DNA. And we discussed a study that came out of Japan earlier this week or last week that basically highlighted excess deaths in Japan. Wasn't only post Covid. Actually, in 2020, excess deaths went down. And it wasn't until the jabs started getting rolled out that they went up significantly higher than it was when they had the tsunami in 2011. And if you look at the cumulative deaths of people who died from COVID but could likely attribute to the jab taking them out early with the people who died of cancer bigger than Hiroshima, lost of life. And I think the signal, the smoking gun that really connects the jab as the main cause of this increase in cancers, particularly, is that the distribution of cancers that exist in pre jab versus post jab completely changed. And the post jab cancer distribution is in areas of the body where the vaccine was congregating after it got injected. And I think to me, they ripped the paper off the peer review server that it was sitting on. I don't know if it was because we released the episode yesterday, Logan.

A (65:38)

But they're gonna do everything they can to try to fight for their last breath.

B (65:41)

That's like. And there was a lead up to with Maha. Like, that was a big thing. And that's again, trying to validate one way or the other was. Was RFK's change in framing of Maha as a movement of like, preventative health. Let's get all the shit out of the food, let's get kids working out, let's take out all these bad prescriptions. And he really didn't talk about.

A (66:08)

They played really coy around his vaccine stance.

B (66:10)

Yeah.

A (66:10)

During the media craze, like, was that.

B (66:12)

Like a, hey, shut up. Up. We'll let you get in if you don't talk about this. Or is that like a strategic. I'm not going to kick the hornets nest until I get in and then go after them.

A (66:21)

And his very first speech, just like entering into HHS just a couple of like maybe almost a week now, was. I've made me very optimistic. Like, he. He didn't come in and kind of like tread lightly. He came in and I mean, he was very pro science. He was very. He wasn't like, my way or the highway. I'm firing all of you if you don't agree with what I say. But he was very. We're going to study it all and we're going to find the truth of it all and we are going to actually go there. And it sounds like. I don't think it's coming from rfk. I haven't seen him talk about it, but it sounds like there's many states going after Fauci at least. But I'm with you. It's like we are far from having enough evidence to be sure that they are delivering on those promises. But I'm optimistic based upon what I've seen so far. But the thing that I. The fundamental difference of opinion, I think, between someone like myself and Whitney Webb in terms of technology applies here as well, in that we are not powerless actors. We are the American public. And we have more voice now than we've ever had in all of our history. And we've seen on this campaign trail in multiple cases how our. Our loud voices can shift their political decision. Making in real time very quickly because there's never been a campaign more tuned in to public sentiment than this one. And if we all just black pill on like no one's ever going to go to jail from the vaccines, they're not even going to hold anyone accountable. We are allowing them to get away with not holding anyone accountable.

B (67:53)

You're almost manifesting it.

A (67:54)

Exactly. Whereas if we are loud and we're unwavering and we are calling for a full investigation and full trials and full punishment for everything, that if we accept nothing less than that, I feel very strongly that we're in a position to actually get it from this administration during these four years. But even if, even if they don't deliver on all those promises, that is no reason for us to stop. Then we just vote them all out and vote in someone that'll do better the next time. Like, I think that we're at this phase where we have as much power as we take. Which, I mean, that's kind of a ridiculous thing to say, but it's a good heuristic to live by right now because if you don't take the opportunity, it'll pass you right by.

B (68:32)

I mean, that's my co host on the show that I'll be recording after this, Matada. I mean that's one of the, the lines he's been trying to beat into people's heads for the seven years they've been doing the show is that freedom isn't given, it's taken and defended. So you literally have to go take it and defend it. The hope is that in the digital age, double edged sword, you have closed sourced, pre crime, AI, whatever it may be, financial surveillance, or you have the open source option that allows you to actually defend these digital rights of freedom, security, privacy, all that.

A (69:06)

Yeah. And I wonder a lot if like I, I assume that in a lot of those debates we're eventually going to have to wind up in some sort of uncomfortable middle compromise. For some of them though, I'd. Maybe I'm just naive and there actually are digital solutions that can essentially code beyond the, the intricacies and actually encode best possible solutions that don't require us to compromise. But the example that I'm always rolling over in my head that's really unpopular to talk about online is digital id. Because for example, just this last week the exposure of multiple Twitter accounts that were seemed like subversive actors, like intentional plants within the conservative movement. This patriarch of Hannah, patriarchal Hannah account, that's like a fake trad wife you heard about her at all? This is a. She's a account that was faceless and had posted a few photos occasionally that are turning out to be random Facebook photos. And she presented as like this trad wife with 12 kids that was like, like women should be subservient to men. Like women are belonging the home and like, like very super trad conservative. But then it came out little by little by little by little and then it broke all at once that actually she has no, she doesn't have kids, she's not married. She is £400 and she does like fat kink porn. Porn. And she's like simultaneously running this dual life and is clearly a subversive actor that has been infiltrating the conservative movement.

B (70:33)

So the Raw guy too, right?

A (70:35)

Yeah. Rawler is another good example and that one's a little murky in terms of like. Like, I guess. No. So it's coming out that I believe that Roz alerts. I don't really give a what you do with your sex life in your personal time. If you're not hurting kids, if you're like consenting adults doing random weird. I probably won't subscribe to your news channel if that's the kind of brain you have have. Because I don't want my news coming from that. But I don't care. I don't have any judgment for him in a personal way, but I think it came out that he was running a bunch of antifa accounts and that is like political subversion straight up. And all of that comes from the fact that they are anonymous. But I don't want to. I'm not advocating for no anonymity online. It's just this questioning balance of like how do you know what's real? And that's not even to mention AI video at this point. And the way that we're very quickly going to have like AI. I mean AI influencers already exist and AI porn already exists and AI politicians are already popping up and running scam coins on like YouTube every day. And so there's this element of digital ID that we're going to need a solution for it. But we have to be so careful about what those solutions are and what are the long term complex implications. Once you take, take the first solution and you walk it down through three iterations of like subversion and control and you know, trying to vie for power on it, it's like, how is that going to play out? And that's where I get concerned. And I think that's where like Like a person like Whitney is rightly very concerned is that there's so many opportunities for us to get fooled into thinking we've got a solution that's actually just a slippery slope into totalitarianism. But I'm optimistic that the human spirit will win out in the end. It's just going to be a crazy wild ride on the way there.

B (72:22)

Yeah. So a couple things on this. First, I think digital id, that issue is going to be forced at the border if we're going to get rugged by the Trump administration. Like, we need to secure the border, we need this digital id. That's where I think it's going to come in. And then two, the whole. I think framing is important. That's what Bitcoiners have really been focusing on for the last 15 years, is like, how do you frame Bitcoin? And you need to own the frame to ultimately win the battle you're trying to fight. And I think people who are worried about the digital ID battle that is upon us, whether you recognize it or not, we need to own the frame of a digital id. Like, what is it? An identity is your. You're like. An identity is very personal. It's like literally down to your soul. Like, I am me and you can't tell me that I'm not who I am. Like, this is my identity. I own it. So I think the frame should be. And there are protocols, nostrs pseudonymous. But there was a protocol that got built. They stopped working on it internally, but it blocked Web5. I've talked to one of the lead developers there. His name's Daniel. But point being, setting the frame of if it is deemed necessary to have some form of digital id, individuals should be able to create the id. It should not be issued to them by a government. You should be able to tap into a protocol like Web5 is one of them nosters. And I guess that's the whole debate. Do we actually need digital ID where, you know, my full name, my address, all that. And I think what Nostr is experimenting with is this pseudonymous online identity with web of trust, social credit scores, if you will. What's going to win out in the long run? Is it something where you actually have to tie your name, address, Social Security number to the Internet? I don't like that idea. And I think it's going to be the onus is going to be on the people building out protocols like Nostr, maybe Web5 something else to really build the tools to give people certainty that you can trust this web of Trust and this score on this identity system and it should be valid enough in meat space to give people comfortability if you're interacting with somebody like hey, look at my nostr web of trust social score.

A (74:45)

Yeah, choice is so important there in the sense that the dystopian view of digital ID is this forced digital ID that is issued to you by the government and then is you are forced to use for everything. And that obviously is like the worst case scenario. And, but, but there's a very, there's definitely like a gray area of very workable versions of that where as long as I have the choice to like, I create my Twitter account that is a digital ID and I own that, you know, digital identity. And it's only valid because of the web of trust that you're referring to. But like as those, as these sort of like some sort of official digital ID system is enacted, whether it's like through social media situations or through our banking, whatever it is, as long as, as long as I'm not forced to use it where I don't want to use it, I think those are workable solutions probably. But the thing is that when I picture a digital ID system rolling out, whether it's from our government, our banking system, whatever it is, they're going to try to get us to use it for everything. Like they're going to try. So our government gives me digital id, the bank is going to try to link my bank account to it, the school system is going to try to link my school system to it, the HOA is going to try to get my digital ID linked to my housing situation. And, and the only thing that could stop that power creep of everyone wanting because like more data is more power. Like if, if you could get access to everyone's digital id, even if you're like, you know, a little organization, a business, a coffee shop, whatever, that's value add. If I can get your digital ID at my coffee shop, then I have more data with which to like sell your data, do whatever, you know. And I think the onus at a certain point has to fall to us to say no. And like if, if a bank starts to say I'll only give you a bank account if you give me your digital ID is to say no, I'm not going to use your bank. Right. I'll go use Bitcoin or I'll go use this other bank. And so I'm hoping that we are all like aware of the complexity and problems enough that by the time these systems start being put in front of us, and they start trying to link us into all of their little webs of. Of identification that we have enough awareness of the market of ideas to say, no. If we demand a bank that won't link our digital id, someone will create that in the free market. Right. Or whatever.

B (77:11)

Bitcoin already exists.

A (77:12)

Exactly right.

B (77:13)

Just send me a bitcoin address.

A (77:14)

Perfect example of it.

B (77:15)

Yeah. And the. I mean, we already had, I guess, a trial run with the vaccine passport.

A (77:19)

That's gonna go too.

B (77:20)

Well.

A (77:21)

Yeah. And it was. That was exactly. I mean, such a good example. The perfect training is there's an awful lot of people that were, I'm not gonna get vaccinated. And then when they started to give out the vaccine cards and the vaccine passports, you had three classes of people. You had people that said, okay, fine, I'll get it. That's. Don't be that guy. Then we had the class of people that were like, all right, I'll game this system. I know someone that can give me a fake, fake passport. It's like, I like those guys. Those guys are fun. And then there's the people. This is what I was. That are just like conscientious objectors that are like, no, I'm not going into your store. And where I was living at the time was like a super liberal town. I basically didn't go anywhere for two years because I couldn't. And it was just a form of protest. It's like, cool. I won't feature. I won't go to any of your businesses. I will just go to the gym that lets me go in because they're awesome. And I'll give them all my patronage and I'll love them forever. And I'll go to the one grocery store where they're okay with me going in with that. And it's like. And that's all I need. And then I remembered all the businesses that were super, like, heavy on the vaccine passports during COVID And I never went to them again, ever.

B (78:24)

Part of the reason I'm in Texas, Bingo. I was in. In an area where vax. Like, we. We left New York to the Jersey shore early In Covid, like March 6, I believe, 2020, we evacuated Brooklyn, and we ended up in Cape May County, New Jersey, which is pretty based. We were living on this island town. It was fine. Like, the restaurants didn't even have mask mandates or anything, but got to the point where we thought we were there for two weeks to flatten the curve. It turned into the better part of two years and at the end, I had a son, I had a career that I was like, I can't live in this beach house, do everything.

A (79:11)

Yeah.

B (79:11)

And not many young people on the island outside of the summer months. And Philadelphia, where I'm from, like, the. The passports were a big thing. And I was like, I don't know if I can do it. So, yeah, we're gonna go to Texas for a few years.

A (79:24)

Yeah, I was just thinking about it, driving through Austin here, too, how there's this sentiment in Texas in general and in the Austin area too, especially of like. Like all you. All you people coming in here, it's getting all big. It's getting. It's growing. It's crazy. It's like it's out of control. Like, just leave Texas. Texas. And. And yeah, I. And I hear you. And don't worry, I'll be leaving in a couple months. But I think that all the people coming to Austin are actually making it more and more and more based and red. And I think that all the Texans that have this issue with non Texans moving here, it's like, Californians don't move here. I think that actually you want more of them moving to Austin because Austin, before this, this exodus from all these other places, Austin was the weirdest place in Texas because of the university, largely, and because of the culture that had kind of grown up in Austin is my impression of what it is. And now there's this exodus of people that are extremely based from all around the country that are fed up with everywhere else, that know it's important to fight for our freedoms and fight for what's right and liberty and like. Like bitcoiners like yourself that are flooding to Austin because it's a hub of. Of this kind of new media markets, of all these great, great things happening. And I think it's probably a serious net red for Austin, ironically, to this sort of like, Texan sentiment, I think for the rest of Texas, maybe not, but to Austin for sure.

B (80:40)

I mean, excuse me. I'm sure you felt the energy in the city is palpable.

A (80:44)

Yeah, it's electric. I love it.

B (80:46)

What's going on here in bitcoin? We've got Rogan's comedy.

A (80:49)

Yeah, I went down there the other, like, a week ago for the first time was great.

B (80:52)

Yeah, you've got that, like, cultural side of things really building up. And then obviously you've got like the tech sector more broadly, like Tesla. SpaceX X is now moving.

A (81:03)

I mean, in the media space too. Like, in my world, in the Podcasting world specifically, it's been. I have done more podcasts since I've been in Austin than I have in all of my journeys so far around the country in the, like, so far this year and half of last year. It's just, it's unreal how many great people I'm meeting and how many awesome projects there are. And a lot of them are interconnected and know each other in great ways. And a lot of them are also just like. There's just all these different bubbles of cool people here doing cool things.

B (81:31)

Yes.

A (81:31)

So fun one.

B (81:32)

And before Maha was even a thing, that was one of the first things I noticed when I moved down. I was like, everybody's healthy.

A (81:38)

Yes.

B (81:38)

It's. It's a very health conscious city as well.

A (81:41)

Ranches. There's raw milk. Yep. Yeah, I haven't found my raw milk connection yet, but I will.

B (81:48)

What, you've been doing a lot on Infowars?

A (81:50)

Yeah, yeah, no, I just, I just love those guys. They're so much fun. And when I. I'm not like, none of it's paid. It's just like podcast appearances essentially, but they're just such homies. Like, I'm gonna go hang out with them later today, actually. I really just enjoyed. I got to know Chase and Harrison especially. I've done Chase, Harrison and Owens shows at this point and met Alex a number of times. But I just like immediately jive with their personalities and their perspective on the world in general. They're fun people. And so when I got here, they, I think it was Chase first invited me on his show and then Harrison invited me on his show. And then as I was filming on Harrison's show, I. Alex's producer popped in, in one of the breaks was like, hey, do you want to like, take Alex's desk in the fourth hour? I was like, what did you just say? Like, what? It's like, yeah, it's in like three hours. Could you do that?

B (82:43)

What was that?

A (82:43)

Like, it was awesome. It was so much fun.

B (82:45)

Did they give you like a list of topics you're talking about?

A (82:48)

Zero. Yeah, zero. Like they, they were like, I, I mean, it was a trial run. I'm not naive. Like, they were basically like, does he have the chops to be a fill in if we need him to be? Or. And maybe they're like, I don't know if they want to ask me to do more in the future, but, like, I'm staying independent. I'm not trying to do that. But. But no, they. Daria basically was like, like what? Like, do you feel like you've got a topic? Like, could you fill an hour and stuff? Like, oh, yeah, no problem. Like, it's. It's maha day. Kennedy's just got confirmed. Like, I'll talk about Kennedy. And then when I did get in there, Alex, as Alex is, he was kind of trying to be like, all right, so you could, like, talk about this news if you wanted to. And, like, and I don't. I don't care. Like, do whatever you want, but, like, if you need. Just as like, it's his baby and he's like, giving his desk over to a dude who he, like, hardly knows, which is kind of mind blowing on the first place. And so he was kind of doing like the dad thing for a second of like, you got what you need, right? Like, you got what you need. I was like, dude, I got it. No problem, man. I appreciate it. And then, yeah, he bounced out. He had a meeting and I had zero direction. I just said whatever I wanted. I could have literally. And I intentionally didn't, but I literally could have just done a whole hour section of just shitting on Israel if I wanted to. And I don't think they would have cared one bit, like, because they're like, they all have their own belief systems and they're all pretty fricking based on everything. And when I finished, I was just like, how'd I do? And they were stoked. They were like, yeah, awesome, man, that was great.

B (84:07)

So what's. Yeah, I can't imagine having to go for an hour straight. Just.

A (84:11)

It's bizarre, dude. It was. I mean, I really.

B (84:13)

Were you playing clips? Were you taking calls or.

A (84:16)

No, I had a clip at the beginning and a clip at the end. And then there was one ad break, so it was a 20 minute monologue. No, no breaks. Live with everything with no notes or anything. And then an ad break and then a 20 minute monologue. And I really love the art form of this job and the art of communication, be it through a TikTok video or a YouTube video or a podcast or in that case, that. I see that, like, that live monologuing as the, like, one of the highest skill art forms in this industry. And anyone that. That doesn't realize how much goes into keeping a cohesive train of thought that is informative and factual. A. Because it's so easy. I mean, it's easy to ramble if you're not trying to be factual or you're not trying to be informative. If you're just spouting opinions, that's one thing. But if you're trying to be informative and factual and like thread together a narrative for like 20 minutes of talking without stumbling over your words or forgetting something or like misspeaking or getting lost in your own, like, head and not remembering where trying to go, there's so many ways that you can just wind up kind of like blubbering on camera. So I have tons of respect for people that do that on a daily basis. It's. It's unreal.

B (85:33)

I can. That is a medium that I don't think I would thrive in. Like, I, I did before Tucker left Fox. I did a, literally a two minute spot with him right after the Canadian trucker stuff, talking about bitcoin like it was a Friday night Live on Fox News. And like I was in a production van in the drive, was on a family vacation with my wife's family. And I got the call that day. They were like, I'm gonna talk about the truckers and bitcoin on Tucker. I was like, yeah, let's go. And it was. He asked me two questions. It was two minutes, but it felt like an eternity. And like I wasn't even in the studio, but like in that little production, man, the lights were on, the red light was on.

A (86:10)

Yeah. All the little elements you have to kind of. You don't have to pay attention to, but they're kind of inherently taking up attention space.

B (86:15)

Yeah.

A (86:15)

Yeah. And in the Infowars studio, there's like, like multiple boom cameras and there's timers and there's like count in and outs. And it's like. And it. I. I thought I. So I totally nailed it actually, is that they have a countdown to the next ad break. And the last one we had planned, it's like Nicole had this great video she, she had just posted that day of for Bobby. That was like seven minutes or something like that. And so we kind of plan it out of like, if I could end right at 2233 or whatever it is, that's when we roll the clip and it'll take us right to the end of the show. And. And I, I didn't. There's a lot of things about that monologue that I did that I would love to have done better. But that ending, I like walked it right to the end and just like nailed it right on. Like the perfect kind of sentence to summarize everything up of like, we're gonna make America healthy again together. And it was like right on my second. And I was like, nailed it and I just, I like that art form of sort of like orating and, and being an effective orator that also is doing the. All the other elements of like. Because it's not just being able to talk, it's also being able to coordinate to the timing, work with your team, bring in the clips. So I have so much respect. And that team like Harrison, Chase, Owen and Alex that do all that is like, man, what a hard job.

B (87:22)

Yeah, it is a, a skill that. Yeah, many, like you said, many people don't realize how hard it is.

A (87:29)

Plus Alex's desk is badass. The Infowars studio, I rewatched my section on it like two or three times just because like, like looking at the map behind it with like, it looks like there's like global war fits like a very like Alex Jones background he's got in there and this giant desk and stuff. It's just like a sick way to produce a piece of media. It really got me thinking of like, man, Ian, you should get serious about this business thing so you can save up and buy your own studio and just like have a sick ass studio too. Yeah, because it's pretty cool.

B (87:56)

It is. It's. We've got a nice humble studio here, but it's a great, nice having a home base. But yeah, I think up having a.

A (88:02)

Place you can go sit down and press play, that's like high quality. Makes a world of difference.

B (88:08)

Yeah.

A (88:09)

So I do love my freedom of like having my. I've got like the kind of studio that I can pack up into like two bags, throw it in my van, drive across the country with my dog and pop into an Airbnb and I've got a new studio. So I, I do love that freedom but you know, settle down before too long probably.

B (88:24)

Well, that's why I was happy to find out you're in Austin because I think we had a great conversation last summer. In person is just so much better.

A (88:32)

So much better. Yeah, I'm a big believer of movie. I'm actually, I'm about to announce I'm planning an event in June that's like an in person meetup. Kind of like a truth seeker, kind of like middle of the road, like end the corruption event. That's focused specifically on like amazing things happen when you get high quality people in a room together to meet face to face in a way that you just can't do over the Internet or over Twitter space or something. Something.

B (88:57)

That's what I think has led to a lot of Bitcoin success.

A (89:01)

100%.

B (89:02)

Like tonight we have BitDevs here in Austin and that's sort of. This meetup tonight has been going on for four years now, five years now. I believe it started in 2020 and they didn't stop doing it. That's part of the reason many bitcoiners moved to Austin is because during COVID during the lockdowns, the Austin meetup kept. They put the flag out there like, we're going to keep meeting.

A (89:24)

Then you travel to come attended and then you see how great it is here and you're like, oh shit.

B (89:28)

That's what happened. People were flying from all over the country once a month just to go to BitDev's meetups.

A (89:32)

Yeah, that's funny.

B (89:35)

Before this one even started, there was one in New York that I started going to in 2015 and we go to every month when I live there. And these organic meetups, whether it's bit devs, which is highly focused on the technical details of the protocol and what's happening, then you have social meetups and educational meetups and. And this sort of meetup culture has really, really began like a decade ago on bitcoin and has expanded. And I think that has led to a lot of bitcoin success as people bitcoiners all around the world congregating wherever they are to talk about what they need to work on.

A (90:07)

It's a very. It's just so paired with the decentralized mindset too. It's like a very Burning man mindset of before this decentralization. It's like the mindset is generally who's throwing the event. Like, are you going to put on event? Do I buy a ticket? How do I, like, I'll show up. And this decentralization makes us realize that that's not the way. Like, no, what are you going to contribute? We're all part of the system. We're all part of the event. Like, you don't need a big organization to throw an event necessarily. Although those events are super fun. It's also just possible to just post like, hey, I'm in this town and I want to go get coffee with a bunch of people that are into bitcoin. Y' all want to meet up. And so just like allowing for the organic. The community to build its own organic meetings, events, whatever it is, without having to sort of have like in the political space. It's like Turning Point has to organize an event if you want to go to a right wing event. It's just such a natural and intelligent way to structure it, where everyone takes ownership and then everyone learns to contribute, and then everyone gets the benefit, and it all ties. Ties us all together. So much better.

B (91:13)

Yeah. Go meet people on meatspace about these ideas. Ian is my great.

A (91:18)

Likewise. I'm glad to be here, man.

B (91:20)

You should stay in Austin for a while. I probably will. Yeah.

A (91:23)

I got to go away for a few months, but I'll probably. I haven't found a better place to base up yet, so I'll probably be back.

B (91:29)

Hell, yeah.

A (91:29)

For the long term.

B (91:30)

Well, glad to have you here.

A (91:31)

Yeah. Thanks, boss. All right.

B (91:33)

Peace of love, freaks.