← TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
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- [00:07]
A
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.
- [00:11]
B
If you talk about a Fed just.
- [00:12]
A
Gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where.
- [00:21]
B
Central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
- [00:29]
A
I mean that's part of the bull case for Bitco.
- [00:32]
B
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Probably should be.
- [00:35]
A
Probably should be pretty deep down like the rabbit hole and that like I think most of the media is like a explicit designed thing to try to get cultural affects that like society wants for controlling people.
- [00:47]
B
What's really weird too because we're, we're talking about robot dicks and when they will manifest because it seems like we're on a, A, a trajectory that will make them inevitable.
- [01:00]
A
Yeah and definitely people are going to isolate from one another and be like why should I have a real human when I have my robot that I can beat and sexually abuse and do all the fucked up stuff I want to?
- [01:08]
B
So yeah, well, like the predictive programming too. I think of two movies particularly that really come top of mind quite frequently these days. It's Minority Report and her.
- [01:22]
A
Okay, I've, I've, I've actually had both of those come up in dialogue recently about it because yeah, like with, with Palantir is going with pre crime stuff. Definitely going to try to do Minority Report style pre crime and her also like people are obviously falling in love with like different AI at this point in time. And like that's going to be a trend that continues because particularly like I don't know, I don't feel like people are actually healing from all the trauma that they've sort of incurred by the society. And so it's, it's becoming easier and easier just to retreat inward and refuse to try to actually interact with other humans in a meaningful way.
- [01:57]
B
Yeah, well Minority Report too, it's not only the pre crime, it's the self driving cars that like that like I'm looking around, we're in San Francisco. It's like all the wayos you got robo taxis coming out and people are very excited for this. Like oh, we're just going to hop in. Like a number of the people that are at this event that we're currently participating in have said how much they love the waymo. It's like ah, there's no driver, it's quiet. I get to do this and then in the back of my mind I'm like, there was some movies that warned of this. You can get in that car one day and the computer can take you somewhere you don't want to go.
- [02:31]
A
Well, it's funny because I rode in a Waymo for the first time last night. And when me and the other gentleman were trying to get into the car, like it wouldn't open the door for some reason and I had to drive around the corner and then stop and do that. But this whole fantasy that people have, they don't see the darker side of it, of that. So what happens when you have your AI girlfriend that you fall in love with and chat GPT does the update that like fries its brain, doesn't recognize you.
- [02:57]
B
You know, this happened three to four months ago.
- [03:00]
A
Exactly. And like, these technologies are really cool, but if you're not actually self sovereign with them, they're very problematic. And then if you are self sovereign with them, like we actually get something much more like Snow Crash, which like, I think is kind of interesting. But like, that is also problematic in a number of its own ways.
- [03:18]
B
Yeah. When you said people haven't dealt with the trauma that's been built up, how long do you think this trauma's been building up?
- [03:25]
A
Uh, I mean, I think 2000, like September 11th, I think was like kind of the key moment that the juncture changed because like there, there was like a pretty great opportunity after the Soviet Union collapsed that like the United States could have made choices throughout the 1990s to really have kind of opened the world up to like true liberalism. But in that, like a number of mistakes were made and it became pretty clear that like neoliberalism wasn't like an advancement of liberalism, but was like this fundamental and inherent lie that was actually about just like the corruption of culture on a whole for the profitability of a number of individuals. Then after September 11, it became clear that like we were going to take a path where we were going to build a gigantic surveillance apparatus that would proceed to control everybody. And that's sort of been the past that that's been advanced since then.
- [04:11]
B
Yeah. It's not a great path. I believe it was you that we were discussing like the simulacrum.
- [04:17]
A
Yeah.
- [04:18]
B
And another concept that bitcoin sign guy first introduced me to back in 2018 when he was on the show was the hyper real and like this.
- [04:28]
A
Yeah.
- [04:29]
B
Concept that we live in this digital world with a digital facade. Nobody's really connected to reality at the end of the day.
- [04:37]
A
Yeah. And that Digital facade is more representative of reality to people than reality itself. And then I think also with what Covid happened and sort of people eating those lies, realizing how intense those lies were, like, that created a new and more intense kind of nihilism. But I don't think we've exited from. And so it's interesting being here in the Bay Area that like, everybody who's involved with AI that I've talked with, particularly like large AI companies, like, they're extremely nihilistic. They're like, humanity's dead within like a decade. And then more interesting is even the subtext under that is like, that's why we have to make the AI God to like save humanity.
- [05:14]
B
It's like, oh yeah, that contradiction, that. And again, I haven't expressed this publicly, but I almost feel uncomfortable because maybe I don't feel confident and my ability to appropriately recognize it. But it seems to. Your point, seems like a lot of people on the cutting edge of AI are like, hey, this is very dangerous, but they keep going full borehead. And not only full borehead, but trying to accelerate as quickly as possible.
- [05:42]
A
Yeah. And like the. Well, and this was kind of an interesting edge case is that like, actually I think like, decentralized, private, homophonically encrypted AI systems that like, interoperate and can kind of exchange data in ways where like, you're just revealing subsets of it to like, work together. I think like, that's going to be an extremely powerful thing that has a lot of potential for humanity. But the, the current version of the proprietary frontier models, like anthropic OpenAI grok. To me, like, this is like, this is the absolute apex of communism because like, we are taking literally all of our thoughts, dumping them into a single database, combining them, and then getting a linguistic regurgitation that's fundamentally designed to destroy our brains. You know, like, it's, it's robbing people of the ability to think at all, in addition to like, it's modifying their linguistic capacity so that like, they, they don't even have the lexicon to be able to speak in a particular way that's unique or interesting anymore. Yeah.
- [06:41]
B
How do we change the tides of this.
- [06:45]
A
One? Is, is that like, I think we need to, like, like, I don't think like, you know, regulations, limits, none of this shit works at all. I, uh. So like, we need to radicalize different models. And so like seeing all the different open source stuff come out is, in my opinion, like, it's pretty awesome. There's still problems with how A lot of these models have been built along with the underlying parameters. So like. But I think that this is all sort of a recursive thing event in the very way that we got these open source models was off the back of the advancements from sort of these gigantic communist models. So like, I think as things advance, like we're going to get more and more powerful open source models and we'll be able to use these models to collaborate with each other to create totally new models that can truly be totally open source. We'll know the underlying parameters, there'll be ways to modify that, and people will be able to actually like in their garage, be able to build out their own full, totally custom AIs. And then furthermore, if we have the appropriate systems to actually like encrypt these and make them like private systems that people can own for themselves, then we got something that I think has like really strong potential. But again, this is only if we make these things totally private. No way for anybody else to surveil it. And that like this really becomes like a digital assistant second self or something that like you really own for yourself, totally alone and nobody else knows or sort of understands how you work with it.
- [08:08]
B
And this is what you're working on a bit.
- [08:09]
A
Yeah, like this is kind of what BORA is. The big thing that we really want is to make sure that like this is going to be like a personal home data server that you have that's totally encrypted, has great recoverability, but also like, as you work with it over years to decades that like this becomes more and more customized towards who and how you are. You can feed it all your own personal information, talk to it about the most intimate things, and really treat it in the same way that a lot of people are treating OpenAI right now. But again, very similar to the Minority Report. Thing is they don't get on the back end of that, that all of that information can be used against you. Like, Sam Altman was very open about like, yeah, our information can be subpoenaed and used against you. Yeah.
- [08:52]
B
I've said it a couple times in the last six months. It's. We live in a period that's equally unnerving and exhilarating, the potential for doom or not salvation.
- [09:04]
A
But yeah, there's definitely like not much gray area in between. And furthermore, stuff like, like if we didn't get bitcoin when we did, like, we'd definitely be in doom territory. But with bitcoin, it really modifies and changes how this can Happen because like seeing the, the very way that you can use Noster now to like go find an anonymous developer to like work on a project that you can pay is really powerful. In the same way, like, to me, Noster is the first legitimate social network that's ever existed. Like every single social network that has came before, it's pretty clear, has had ties to different intelligence organizations. And that's been again with. Part of that nihilism is like, I think that this has been a societal level programming situation where dialogue has been manipulated across the board. Whereas on Noster, like you can fill it with misinformation, but also because the lack of censorship capacity there now becomes way to actually find signal throughout the noise. Yeah. And so like, I think as we get clamps down onto social media across the board as sort of where the fuck's going on advances itself, Noster is going to become sort of a bastion of people that are saying that can go out there and actually speak truth to power where they would be banned everywhere else. They can actually have those conversations there.
- [10:19]
B
Yeah, it seems like, seems like the, the narratives being prepped, particularly around AI and social media. I mean, you were just telling me that you had a conversation last night with a journalist who is pro social media censorship. But on top of that I wrote about it earlier this week. Anthropic came out with a postmortem on some cyber espionage attack that Claude was used to wage on some critical services. And if you read the report, it seems like a classic problem reaction solution set up where it's like, hey, these people are using AI to attack these critical systems. The cost to do this is lower than ever. The ease of waging these attacks easier than it's ever been. And if you, what I was reading between the lines of that post mortem is Anthropic saying, hey, we only stop this because we have full visibility into everything that's happening within our LLMs and our MCP framework and wink, wink, we need the ability to do this. So we should probably get regulations that make it so you have to get a license to release these systems into the wild. That's what I was reading when I read that.
- [11:36]
A
Yeah. And I mean like to, to me, Anthropic's entire business model is misaligned from the beginning because like they're playing this game of like safe AI, which means that like they want to prove how dangerous non safe AI is from the get go. So like it makes sense that like this is sort of the game that they're going to play. And to me, like, this is the same iterations of power that we've seen over and over again is like, create crisis and problem, present the solution and clamp down. And it's just a ratcheting back and forth of tightening social controls around people. And like, it's really important to understand, like, this is very, very powerful technology. And also it's very powerful technology, just like cryptography. And so like we're essentially having the first of the crypto wars all over again, but with an AI slant. And so I think as this advances, they are going to try to clamp down with regulations. And that's why it's great that somebody baked in through an inscription. I think it was the Olama open source model onto Bitcoin's blockchain. You can go find it and download it directly. And I think keeping these things free and open source are important because I'm much more concerned about how do we manipulate and control people through these very powerful systems that you can already see the way it's really atrophied thoughts. You know, like, I was talking to a couple professors yesterday. They were talking about how outraged they are at this point in time that like, they're just getting AI slop repeatedly over and over. And they can see that their systems, that their students don't actually have the systematic thinking to engage in like true thought on their own. Like, they're literally just turning to the AI and pinging it every time they have a question. And like, that creates a pretty dangerous predication for society.
- [13:14]
B
Yeah, no, it makes me feel very fortunate. I went to the high school that I did because you go in freshman year orientation week. They're essentially like, all right, you're gonna be here for four years. Our job as your educator over the next four years is teach you how to think from first principles and then write. So you gotta be able to read things and then write basically expressing that you understand what you just read in a coherent way in a consistent flowing way. And I feel like that's being lost and like to going back to like the simulacrum and the hyperreal, like it's already pretty bad. And to think of how much worse it can get if you have AI sort of dictating thought and people abdicating their critical thinking skills to these LLMs, it can get really bad really quick and already is getting really bad. I mean, the whole meme of getting one shot is real for a reason.
- [14:08]
A
Yeah. And I think the. So like, I think classic models are dead at this point in time. Like I think the, the way that you and I experience school, if you go in, you read something, essays are turned in, you get correction. Like I think everything's going to invert where like I think in the schools people are going to go in, nothing in hand and it's going to become all sort of oratory and about critical thinking and a teacher asking you a question, you need to actually stand up, respond meaningfully. And they're now becoming a real dialogue between everybody sort asking people to think. But the other major problem that's kind of occurring right now in that same process in society is that everybody's so hyper attuned to the opinions of others. And so it's like the mask wearing phenomenon is the best examples that a lot of people wear a mask under the auspicious of like I'm doing this to protect you. They're not actually thinking about protecting themselves. And there becomes a sort of recursive process of where they're much more concerned about how they socially are perceived than actually doing the thing that is correct. And so like I think that essentially just needs to be kind of beat out of people. And the only way to do that is to like progressively allow for people to stand up, say embarrassing, allow for that process to play out and be like, you shouldn't be embarrassed. Thanks for actually expressing your thought. Let's, let's understand why perhaps it might be dangerous to think in this way and really allowing for this process of students and teachers to work together. But that requires a really different approach. That's going to require some courage that like I don't think the current public school system is really available to. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
- [15:48]
B
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- [18:03]
A
Yeah. And I think it's interesting because it feels like the pendulum swing has stopped swinging that way. And it's sort of a product of why people are standing up. But I do think that you're having just as much as the outraged responses from other people going like, no, everybody. Everybody deserves dignity. Anybody should be able to come here and get free social services no matter what, and we should all be able to hold hands and sing Kumbaya and make peace happen. And like, that's That's a really beautiful idea. I really think it's wonderful, and I really wish that's how the world works. And it's not. And I'm sorry. Like, that's a. That's a difficult reality to come to terms with. But, like, it turns out, like, if we just have an open border policy, as we've seen, like, there can be a lot of nefarious people that come in here and take advantage of that. It also turns out, like, here in California, like, you know, I have to pay, like, eighteen hundred dollars a month for health care for me and my family, but, like, if you just walk into a hospital and say, like, I'm an undocumented migrant, we'll go great, like, free. Free health care for you. That costs real money to actual taxpayers who, like, need to incur the burden of that, which, frankly, like, we can't actually accommodate that. So I think now all these pressures are starting to add up, and people are going, huh? Like, it turns out, like, the Kumbaya version of the world is very, very expensive and difficult to implement. And furthermore, we actually just teach people that, like, hey, like, you should go to America because all of the stuff we have to pay for here, you can get there for free. And again, like, I want to welcome people from all walks of life and cultures to come here and contribute to society, but the key word there is contribute. And I think this has been one of the things that we've seen repeatedly is that, like, there are people that want to take advantage of these social safety nets, and that's incurred a very real cost to the American public.
- [19:54]
B
I was reading an article this morning about some of the Somalians in Minnesota sort of weaponizing Medicaid, claiming autistic children to get Medicaid benefits, and then cycling that money back to Somalia.
- [20:10]
A
Well, and it. And it turns out that, like, there are real cultural differences of why America is a leading developed country in the world and Somalia is not. And I think, like, this is one of the. The great cultural neglects that a lot of people don't see is that, like, the melting pot of American culture is really about not just taking other cultures and just plopping them into America, but really, actually integrating that with greater American values that have come to define. You know, like I think you said earlier, you had, like, an Irish Italian background. You know, like, I have a. A Germanic Irish background.
- [20:46]
B
Pure Irish.
- [20:47]
A
Pure Irish.
- [20:47]
B
Philly. Philly. Philly is split. It's like Irish Irish Catholic, Italian Catholic, Polish Catholic, and obviously mixed in, okay, strong Jewish community. And now that's. That's what it was like when I was born. Now, that's.
- [21:03]
A
Well, like, the. These were, like, when our ancestors came here, like, they. They were true immigrants. As Irish, they're probably discriminated against quite heavily and not allowed to work in various capacities.
- [21:12]
B
Not. Not very well known. The Irish were. A lot of the Irish were slaves when they came to this country, too.
- [21:16]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And they came to this country particularly on the back of, like, the Irish Potato famine, where, like, one in four people in Ireland died. And so, like, there was. There was very real consequences of why and how people got here. And yet your identity today is one of being, like, American Irish as opposed to just Irish. And like, this, to me is one of the great problems today is, like, we don't seem to be getting cultural integration in addition to, like, there's a very negative dialogue about, like, what being American is sort of on a whole, and that, like, we should be ashamed of being American or that. That America doesn't have a particular culture on its own. And one. I just don't believe that's true. But also, like, I think that's a massive disservice to everybody because it says, well, you as being somebody who's, you know, lived here as an American for most of your life, you should be ashamed of that culture. And I think that I. I don't really understand it. Why should one be proud of being any other culture or nationality, but not American? And, like, I think it's very difficult to have dialogues with people about why. Why we should really be proud to be American? And that doesn't mean that, like, I love my government. They're great. Like, those people, they. They suck. And they represent everything that I don't like. And that's why we explicitly have a constitution that's like a document about limiting the government, not one empowering it. So. Yeah.
- [22:32]
B
Well, let's have a discussion. What is in your mind in American. What is America's culture?
- [22:39]
A
So I think one is that, like, it's a highly integrative culture. Like, we want people from all walks of life and different communities from around the world to be able to come here to this country. But then we're going to work on a merocratic and egalitarian culture where, like, if you work hard, if you're smart, if you apply yourself, if you build community with other people, like, you should not only integrate and be able to find and create a life for yourself, but you should also be able to celebrate the various cultures that come in and are part of that. But part of that is truly respecting other people and also recognizing that all of these race plays or cultural plays are secondary to the fact of that we all live here. We all love the idea of limiting the power of our government, of being able to live and let live, that you should be able to have a business and make money from it. You shouldn't be taxed out the wazoo. And with that, we should be able to build community and culture together.
- [23:33]
B
Yeah, we've gotten far, far, far away from that. Now how do we get back? And I guess this hides in the bitcoin and bring it back to simulacrum and the hyper real. Do you think bitcoin helps tether us back to reality and gets us back to a sound foundation from which we can begin to affect these, these values you just described?
- [23:53]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost is that like, we need to understand the deep and frankly, like the core rottenness of our political culture at this point in time and the way that it's tried to pit us against one another as being either red or blue. It doesn't make any real difference. And that's one of the reasons that as bitcoiners, we've concluded that like, the money is the real problem. Because when you actually look at the, of society and the way that fiat money printing has augmented the entirety of it, this is where a lot of that rot comes from. And furthermore, when you see this political culture that has gamified everything and made everything into a right left issue as opposed to going, hey, hang on, like, we actually share a ton of values and we need to find a great middle ground to work together. Like, I'm of the opinion the only way back at this point in time is, and I don't even want to call it a third party movement, like, we need a full cultural. I don't know. I, I don't for, for very strong reasons that should be obvious. I don't like the, the word cultural revolution.
- [24:55]
B
Yeah, I can see it coming. I was like, hey.
- [25:00]
A
But like, we need to have a strong movement to try to return to, like this radical modernism, if you will. And I think part of a radical modernism is understanding that like both the Democrats and the Republicans are the major problem today. And anybody who associates with either of those, like, I actually think we should land blast them and just make them an enemy class. And that whatever new political culture establish itself is. It's based on the very fact of anyone who's been involved with those two Parties, like, they're not allowed to be part of the new political culture, in addition to turning towards the future and saying, hey, like, our children's future and making them better than ours matters. Because I think our generation, more than any other generation, is sort of the first American generation to truly have it worse than our parents. And I think that the boomer class and the way that they have chosen to hollow out America for their own benefit is a very real problem that has to be dealt with. And we need to figure out how are we going to actually make things better for our children. And I think it's through a radical modernism that says, hey, we're going to get back to a middle ground. We're going to work together. We're going to find policies that work best for Americans who live here and who have contributed to our culture. And also I've talked about this is like, I think we need to do it through a states rights movement to essentially radicalize states against the federal government, strip the federal government of power and really push power back into the various states and allow for sort of the experiment of the 50 states and the different ways that they want to organize themselves become kind of the primary method of how we're going to figure that out.
- [26:31]
B
Yeah. And we had a glimpse of that during COVID Some states asserting their autonomy and saying, hey, we're open for business. We're not doing this. And that was beautiful to see, but that momentum died pretty quickly.
- [26:43]
A
Yeah. And I think, like, that's part of a greater movement that sort of needs to encourage that, but there also needs to be essentially, like, again, I don't know what you'd call it, but like a sort of political collective that's trying to get the states to work together and have dialogues about this. And I've talked about it before, is that, like, I think trying to figure out how to use the ratification of the constitution through Article 5 needs to become this primary tactic to start trying to bludgeon the federal government and really empower states in new and various ways. Yeah.
- [27:12]
B
Because to your point about the federal government and the mirage of red versus blue, it's really just a unit party. I think there was an incredible example of this on the Hill yesterday. I saw a clip. I believe it was the CEO of Autopilot, which, if you're not aware, is this basically this finance app that allows you to follow the trades of individual senators and congressmen. And so, like the Pelosi tracker. Yeah, like you can put money in and trade with Nancy Pelosi. And this guy was on the Hill saying, like, hey, we started this to highlight the overt corruption that exists in terms of insider trading that's happening with our politicians. And I thought it was a beautiful representation of the unit party because he called out Republicans and Democrats, like, they're basically leveraging the federal government to pillage the American people.
- [28:03]
A
Yeah. And I think this has been going on for a long time. Like, I truly believe this is treason. It's treason to the highest degree. And that's part of why, you know, like, 80% of military hardware in the United States has Chinese components. It's part of why we've developed these deep ties with the Chinese Communist Party. And it's why we have American politicians that are actually selling us out to that. And this is one of the reasons that I think we need to use Article 5 to radicalize states against the federal government is because, like, I very much believe that pretty much every single federal representative is corrupt in some way. And I would love to see an Article 5amendment to the Constitution saying that every single member of the United States Senate and Congress will be put on trial for treason. We're going to open the books, make it very clear to everybody, and at the end, you're found guilty of treason. You will be punished as such. Because, like, the fact that Nancy Pelosi has been a career politician who now is worth, what, $180 million?
- [29:01]
B
More than 200 now.
- [29:02]
A
Yeah. Like, this is despicable, deplorable, and disgusting. And the very fact that she is allowed to exist in our society, not be called out by daily and hounded, but she's actually put on a pedestal and celebrated as some champion of civil liberties. Like, it's deplorable, disgusting, despicable, and just an insult to anybody's average of intelligence to be able to look at the situation and not go this. She's made money through explicit corruption that in any other field would be considered insider trading. And those people would go to jail for that crime. And so I think the only way to do this is because these. These people that are federal representatives, they believe they're above the law. Like, I was reading this morning that there's a congressional representative out of Florida who she was caught laundering, like, more than $5 million of COVID money to herself. She's, like, still a standing member of Congress right now. And it's like, well, until. Until found guilty, you know, which. Like, there's something to be said for that. But, like, it just goes to show the endemic nature of the corruption at this point in time. And I think that like, as American citizens, we should be outraged. It's very clear this part of government is broken and we're not going to be able to address this through the federal legislature. So we need to go through states and use that as the most powerful mechanism to essentially stand against them.
- [30:16]
B
Yeah. And we were talking about this with Danny and Hodl the other week on what bitcoin did. But I think people in the federal government should push for this because should recognize like, hey, game's up, We've pillaged enough. Like the, the plebes, if you will, are getting angry because it seems pretty clear that there's two paths that are being framed for how to get through this to the masses. It's find my Franco, bring him in, or overt democratic socialism that leads to communism.
- [30:51]
A
Yeah, and like I, I, you had.
- [30:53]
B
You had to defend fascism. You didn't want to. But like, it's just, and it's funny, like you say this and people get all pissed off, but it's like, hey, if we're being objective and just observing the tea leaves of what the younger generations are saying right now, this is what they're saying.
- [31:07]
A
Yeah, like I, I, and I really appreciated in that podcast like Hodl was the one that really pointed out that we need this sort of radical modernism. And like, again, like, I don't know how we do this. I hope somebody takes up the flag and like makes it their thing. Like, I'm old, I'm tired, like I don't, I don't have the capacity to try to do something around this. But like, whoever chooses to take that up, like they have my, my full hearted support. But it's becoming saturn sadder to realizing that like we're in a pretty desperate situation and like we, and then like nobody's coming to save us. And I think that's the big problem is we keep having this expectation that like another election, some new person, some new way of doing things, and like it's about the actual apparatus of government itself at this point in time. And that, that again is why like, I think you need to have radical approaches like Article 5 ratification because like we need to change up the structure of the federal government. And so it's like the very first amendment to the United States Constitution that was passed but actually never ratified. So like it's not an Amendment to the U.S. constitution, it's still in a weird quasi state where it could be ratified. It's called article the first. So I think it's passed I think like 12 states or something like that. So if you got like another 25 states to ratify it like it would actually become law of the land in the United States. And this explicitly stipulates that like no congressional member will ever represent more than 50,000 people at one time. So that would mean that the House of Representatives would now become like 6,000 people or something like that. And that would absolutely up the federal government in a pretty extreme way. Like let's go like that's what I want to see is that like this thing is broken. So like let's either break it the rest of the way or figure out a new way to organize ourselves.
- [32:49]
B
Yeah, so 6,000 reps would just create gridlock where you can't get anything pass.
- [32:53]
A
Or like we would get like a very interesting like multi party thing that's starting to happen because like I think in the uk, like the, the House of Commons, I think it's like 2200 people or something like that. It's like, I think another one is like we need to integrate technology into this. You know, like trying to get, trying to organize 2200 people, have a dialogue like in person, like it's not going to happen. But like we know of plenty of forums where people can have dialogues like that and they're, there are different technological ways to address all of this. That like, that's the other thing is I think if we create new forms of governance, integrating technology in a powerful way that uses cryptographic proofs could do something really powerful. And so like I would love to see some sort of platform that uses noster and voting and cryptographic proofs and other things to actually really create some new mechanism of consensus to really try to figure out what do people want and need and how are we going to go about doing that.
- [33:47]
B
Yeah, how does Bitcoin play into this in your mind?
- [33:52]
A
Like we essentially. So if all the things went how I wanted to, we would essentially use Article 5 of the Constitution and the very first amendment that would get passed would be end the Fed. So the Federal Reserve would be unilaterally ended through an amendment to the US Constitution. We would just refuse to pay any US debt, we'd cause the dollar to go into hyperinflation and every single state would pivot to having Bitcoin not only as their treasury, some would use as their currencies and others would actually issue their own state based currency based upon that. These things would float between the various states in order for them to kind of find stability between each other. But like, I think through having states issue their own currency and using Bitcoin to backstop those currencies, I think would be a really powerful approach because again, like, unless we actually address how money is being issued and the corruption that's around that, we're never going to solve this problem.
- [34:42]
B
Yeah, that's what Hal Finney envisioned in December 2010, build a free banking system on Bitcoin.
- [34:50]
A
Well, and you know, most people don't know the wildcat era of banking in the United States between when Andrew Jackson ended the first bank of the United States, between I think it was 1862 and the second bank of the United States was created, that like, this was an era where There was like 7,000 different free floating currencies that were issued by private institutions. And like, that's also the area of the greatest growth that happened in like the American economy. So like, while this seems like a wacky idea to us today, like, this is actually how it operated throughout most of American history.
- [35:22]
B
That's one of the big problems is it's a bit overplayed and cliche, but it is apt. It's like we're fishing water. Like there any anybody living today has never experienced that environment. And so it's hard for people to get comfortable with taking the risk to take that leap and experiment with that type of monetary network.
- [35:46]
A
Yeah. And I mean like the, the other thing is like, there's a very different form of life that could be available to us. You know, like most people don't realize that, like, we don't actually have to live lives where you work at jobs that you hate for 40 hours a week trying to make some tech company slightly more effective. And it's like I recently read Dave Graber's essay on jobs and like, it just, I think he wrote it maybe a decade ago, but it was just really resounding today of that. Like, I've met so many people recently who have jobs that they really hate, and they don't see any other way outside of it other than committing their lives to working at some corporation that they don't like and trying to give them the empowerment to feel like they could go start a small business and be successful really is kind of impossible for most people because of how destructive the currency has been, how much inflation has affected people, and how difficult it really is to start a business. And I think if we were actually on something like a Bitcoin standard, there'd be a very different way for people to choose to live. And I think we could go Back to having a number of much smaller businesses and industries that could really allow for us to break up these large corporate oligopolies and actually create something new and different for the American public.
- [36:58]
B
Yeah, I was having this conversation yesterday, the story of this podcast and this business, my own personal journey. Like, I feel incredibly lucky. We've got a bug in the lights above us, but I feel incredibly lucky that there's something. It's deeply ingrained. I don't know if it's my genes or my soul or my psyche where.
- [37:20]
A
Can'T talk about having good genes.
- [37:23]
B
But I cannot do the corporate life. Like, I had a good hedge, I was working at a good fund trajectory to make good money, was in a good position, and just literally, physically could not stand being in a cube, pulling data from Bloomberg, splicing it up, like, following markets.
- [37:39]
A
Well, I think. I think for a lot of people, it's the fish and water thing. Like, they've known that their entire life. They've never had an opportunity to really just be free and allow for themselves that opportunity. And I think if they did have that opportunity, like, I've known a number of people have done their sabbatical thing to, like, go travel the world or whatever, and, like, essentially when they come back, they realize they can't ever do that. And, like, that's really a reality I want to provide to more people. It's like, how do we make this a more creative, open, and free culture for everybody? Because, like, at the end of the day, like, this is the one life that we have to live. And the fact that, like, we're in this culture where, you know, the idea of having a family with eight kids seems absurd to most people because of how expensive it would be. And, like, what. What a crime against humanity to really have created a world where the idea of a child being too expensive is a reality that most people live in.
- [38:34]
B
Did you see the stat out of the uk?
- [38:36]
A
No.
- [38:38]
B
This is very morbid. For every hundred births in the UK, I believe it was in 2024, there was 48 abortions. This, like, yeah.
- [38:49]
A
And, like, it's. It's interesting because I think Charlie Kirk kind of pointed out this dialogue that. That he really stood around powerfully. And, like, I think it's really important, like, a woman's body, a woman's choice, like that. That's something that I think is a truism that trying to overcome would be too difficult. But, like, I do think the consequences of that really need to be understood. And that also, like, we've created a society that. That becomes a very real issue for somebody if they're going to be a single mom, having to look at like, well, how the hell am I going to provide for this child in a meaningful way? And that's something that reflects on our culture as well. And like, it's. It's really important to understand that the change in how, like, this issue is being dealt with has very much had, like, a demographic shift, like, in culture on its entirety that we're not really seeing the consequence of. And that, like, there's a lot fewer people, there's a lot more individuals that have been imported in order to replace those people. And also, like, it's a really difficult issue. And I, again, like, I really appreciated Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated. I watched a number of his videos and like, he had a very logical approach. In addition to the fact of that, like, I don't. I personally, like, I think children are a beautiful and extraordinary blessing. And like, seeing these cat videos of women celebrating their individualism of getting to, like, sleep in as late as they want or go to brunch, that, like, this, like, this is a fulfillment.
- [40:20]
B
That video this morning, too.
- [40:21]
A
Well, and it was just like, this is a fulfilling life for you. And like, like, people were out there making fun of her and it was just like, I feel really sad for her. Like, she. She'll never know the beauty of what it is to be woke up in the middle of the night by your child who you pick up and they will snuggle into you and fall back asleep into your arms. Like, that's, That's a beautiful thing. And the fact that this has been contorted in such a way that this is supposed to be something that, that you're afraid of, that you don't want. Like, that's really alarming to me. And like, I, I don't know how we correct that. And like, I don't. I don't think there's really easy answers here. But I would really appreciate if we had a society and culture that would really support people if they were going to be single mothers or whatever. But also the entire conversation about where we're at and like, how and why these things come about is really important.
- [41:13]
B
Well, I think it really, it does come back to the money because. Excuse me, I. No, no. When I was in Chicago, I. I volunteered at a inner city lacrosse program opportunity with lacrosse in schools or outreach with lacrosse in schools. Excuse me. And so I would go to the west side and south side in Chicago and got to see the sort of ramifications of the welfare state up, up close and personal. And there's a bunch of kids being raised by their aunts and their grandmothers, and the father wasn't there. And, I mean, Thomas Soul has explained this pretty, pretty cogently in my mind. Like, if you replace the family, the nuclear family with the state, like, this is the ramifications of it. I think that's happened and not only in inner cities, lower economic wrongs, but now it's pumping up to your point. Like the cat lady sitting there like she was told to go be a girl boss. And the conditions of the economy are such that you have to be forced into the workplace because you have to. You have to make enough money to assist because inflation and debasement is accelerating year after year, decade after decade. And going back to my story about being able to quit that job, part of what gave me the comfort to do that is like, I knew I had some bitcoin savings and I quit that job, got another job in New York. Similar thing happened. Worked there for two years and then hated it. Quit. Thought I was going to get a job in 2 weeks. W up being unemployed for 18 months before I started this newsletter and podcast. And I spent a lot of time that 18 months in Brooklyn just like, really thinking deeply about what do I want to do. Studying bitcoin very intensely. And it kind of was in a monk like fashion for like a year, year and a half, and going to all the bitcoin meetups in New York and trying to get jobs. But I think subconsciously, really knowing, like, this is what I want to do. And then the timing struck in June of 2017. I was like, okay, price of bitcoin's going up. My dad had a somewhat serendipitous conversation with me. Like, I was down in my dumps, down on the dump on the rocks, probably rock bottom for my life. Though I did have the savings. I was like, okay, I just got married. I don't have a job. I feel like a loser. My dad was like, you should write about bitcoin. You wrote at the fund, you know a lot about bitcoin, and started the newsletter and here we are today. But I would not have been able to really do that, to go through that journey if I did not have this financial backstop that I could pull into to survived during that period and really have the time to think about what I wanted to do.
- [43:59]
A
Yeah. And like you, this is your story of. Of the dark night of the soul of you, like, going into the dark night that is the nihilism of this society. And going through your own true angst of, like, what is it that I actually want to do with my life? Is the time that I sell myself again and. And go find some firm that I can prostitute myself to and have them rob me of 60 hours of my life that I can go in before the sun comes up and leave after the sun goes down and maybe get to see my wife for a half hour before I go to bed and do it all over again? Or is there something different? And I think for a lot of people, even being asked the question if there's something different is an impossibility, because even if they have money in the bank saved, that money is dwindling quicker than ever, and that there's sort of a schizophrenic and paranoid worldview that happens under a fiat currency regime where all of the money can evaporate, the bank can steal it. Like, any number of things that can happen. Whereas, at least for me, very similar. Having my bitcoin savings as a vehicle that I know, hey, like, this is safe and secure. Nobody can take it away from me. It should deflate over time if all of the things work correctly. That gave me the confidence, too, to actually chase my own dreams and actually say, you know, I want to do something different for myself. I don't. I don't want to continue to, you know, work at the bank that I'm working at, and I'd like to strike out, do something bigger. And so it's part of a dualism of that, like, having the confidence and conviction to know and understand what bitcoin is is one half of the coin, but the other side is. Is then having the conviction and steam in yourself to say, there's something better out there for me that I could actually make for myself that could be meaningful. And I think, like, this is part of the mission that we're sort of on, that we've been on for a while, is trying to get people to understand Bitcoin. And so, like, I'm very big into the pedagogical approach of bitcoin, is that, like, you have to be willing to understand that for yourself first and actually take a moment to look around and, you know, after the one fish swims by and says, hey, how's the water this morning, boys? To actually look at your friend and ask the question of, like, well, what's. What's water? Actually understand that, like, we are in sort of a fictionalized reality that causes for people to go into this prattle and paranoia of that like you need to work a 40 hour job a week and save money in this way contribute to your 401k. When that's actually true, you could do something different for yourself. But that requires the confidence and conviction for you to actually ask the most meaningful questions to yourself, to engage in that.
- [46:31]
B
What's up freaks? Been seeing a lot of YouTube comments. Marty, your skin looks so good. You're looking fit these days. How are you doing it? Well, number one, I'm going to the gym more, trying to get my swell on. Trying to be a good example for my young sons, a fit, healthy dad. But part of that is having a good regimen, particularly staying hydrated, making sure I have the right electrolytes and salts in my body. That is why I use salt of the earth. I drink probably three of these a day with one packet of salt. The earth. I'm like in the pink lemonade right now. It's my flavor of choice. This is their creatine. I've added this to my regimen. They have it in these packets as well. Makes it extremely convenient if you're traveling. You want to work out while you're traveling, but you don't want to be carrying a white bag of powder going through tsa. It's very, very nerve wracking at times. You have to explain, hey, it's, it's not what you think it is. It's creatine. I'm trying to get my swell on. Make sure you're staying hydrated. I have become addicted to these. It's made my life a lot better. I can supplement this for coffee in the morning and be energized right away. I can supplement. I can bring the creatine wherever I need to. Just put a couple packets in here before I head to the gym. Bring this to the gym. Drinking out of a glass bottle. Make sure I'm not injecting any microplastics into my body. Go to drinksote.com, use the code TFTC and you'll get 15% off anything in the store. That's drinksote.com code TFTC. I mean, we've been talking a lot over the last couple days, like the state of bitcoin itself and people's understanding of bitcoin. How would you describe it?
- [48:09]
A
I think it's atrophied over the last year. Like I think the bitcoin treasury and number go up thing has been pretty detrimental to the dialogue of bitcoin on a whole and People have been treating it just as a banking apparatus to like make more money. And I think that's sort of dangerous. And particularly here at the conference that we're at, I've talked to a number of people that are like, no, it's. As the bitcoin white paper says it, Bitcoin is peer to peer cash. Like, we need to make it a payment network for people all around the globe. And that there are people that live in the global south who like, just being able to have a payments rail is the most meaningful thing. And again, like, I number go up's nice, but like, I, I don't see it as being either number go up or we get a payments network. Like, these things work synergistically together. And I think we need to return to the dialogue of that. Like, bitcoin is truly independent freedom money. And people need to get on board with that and understand, like, particularly with zoomers, that like, you need to empower yourself against a system that has chosen to abuse you and enslave you. And bitcoin is a real exit for you. And furthermore, like, people do crazy, like take out debt and renege on it because they can hold bitcoin and just walk away from all of it. I'm not saying that's right or correct, but like, there are ways that you can empower yourself against a system that wants to abuse and fleece you.
- [49:27]
B
Sam Hyde most famously, I think. Have you ever seen that video?
- [49:31]
A
No.
- [49:31]
B
It's like Sam Hyde and I think in like 2016, talking about, like, here's what I did. I took out 30 grand in credit card debt, bought bitcoin, nagged on it. They called me, they're like, hey, you need to pay off this, this balance. And he's like, okay, I don't have enough money. Can I pay you like $2 a month? Like, yeah. And speculative attack the, the credit system.
- [49:51]
A
Essentially and look like, do what you want to for yourself and, and make the risks that you want to.
- [49:56]
B
Yeah, not financial advice.
- [49:57]
A
Yeah, not. But it's important to understand once you have that bitcoin and if you secure it correctly, people cannot take it from you. That's something really important. And also if people are like, well, it's so unethical to renege on the, like, I'm sorry, but like, fuck these people. These are super abusive financial institutions who exist off of fleecing people. And to be clear, like, the US government's in the same fucking position right now. 88% of tax receipts are going to like paying this unpayable fucking debt. So like at the end of the day, like we're stuck in a debt based fiat monetary system that is not going to work out for anyone at the end of the day. And people really need to understand that like this system is going to go away at some point. It's not about if, it's about when. And you should start setting yourself up and preparing for a different life, you know, and same thing. Like, like urban cultures are really interesting and innovative, but like they're all based around this particular sort of fantas that like I, I think is pretty disconnected from reality on a whole at this point in time. And I think if we're able to get more and more people onto a bitcoin standard, like there, there's a real way that culture can shift in a powerful and thoughtful way that isn't going to be a giant crash, but is actually going to create for a solution that I don't think anybody can really predict. But this is only if people are really going to start thinking for themselves. Like stop believing that all these different authoritative figures out there, including us, like have the solutions for you. Like, you need to sit down and reflect for yourself about what's the life that you want for yourself and what, what can empower you in that.
- [51:37]
B
I know we were talking about it yesterday and my belief is that for the, the up return thing is like, I'm just, it's a conversation like I don't feel there's a lot of value engaging in for myself particularly. But to your point, like, don't believe in us. That's. It's been one of the most disconcerting things about this debate within bitcoin is the number of people that are literally tagging me and hopping in my comments on YouTube and on X being like, what do you think about this? Like, what should we do? It's like, I, you should not be asking me. You have to decide for yourself. Like that's what bitcoin's all about.
- [52:16]
A
Well, and also getting pissed at me.
- [52:18]
B
Because I'm not responding. I'm like, you're missing the point. Like, you should not be asking me for this.
- [52:22]
A
Well, and also on that point, like people who are doing that to market, like, you what like, like you're not entitled to a response from him. And even in that his response doesn't fucking matter. Like, go do the fucking work and figuring out for yourself. And also like, my first tweet when I got back onto Twitter was about this op return debate and how much it fucking Frustrated me because people aren't reading between the lines. They're not understanding the greater technical debate and also like they're not understanding the ideology that's being injected into it. And it just, it makes me really angry because like, this is a difficult technical issue to understand and also it's not cut and dry and people that are behaving as if it is like the, the hubris really upsets me and like, at some point can you stop and actually self reflect enough to go, maybe there's something I'm not seeing here. Maybe I shouldn't be nearly as confident as I am about the approach here. And so I'd really encourage you. If you don't understand this, great. It means there's more for you to learn about bitcoin. And just like, as long as you and I have been in it, I don't think either of us would be able to assert ourselves as being experts in bitcoin in any way. I mean, I fucking became friends with and sat next to a core developer here for several months and even he was hesitant in saying, despite the fact that he's involved deeply and like developing bitcoin core, that he didn't feel confident about being an expert in it. And it's because bitcoin is a huge project that involves a lot of moving pieces and it requires decades of deep and intensive study that even people that would be considered experts by most don't feel that way themselves. So like humble yourself enough to say maybe I'm wrong about this. Including the bitcoin project on a whole, that's super important so you don't fall down the fucking zcash rabbit hole and go, this is the new solution that bitcoin couldn't do. You know, maybe that's true, but do all the fucking work to figure it out for yourself. And at the end you'll probably have a conclusion that you don't need to go tag Marty on X to ask his opinion about this.
- [54:26]
B
Yeah, no, I think I am not an expert. And that's why I think I've learned enough being a bitcoin for as long as I have to, like, know what I don't know. I'm not gonna go out there and pontificate one way or the other in this particular debate because I know that I don't know everything. And I think that's that I call my bitcoins in. It's like you just gotta. And so it's like surfing. When you fall off a wave, you just gotta go ragdoll and be like.
- [54:51]
A
Okay, yeah, yeah, I tried to catch something too big for me, I, I got punished for it. And that's okay. Yeah. And like this thing plays out bigger too. Same thing with anybody who's out there making the confident price calls about whatever it is. Like, I'm sorry, like you don't have a crystal ball. You don't know. The price goes up, the price goes down. And like this is the game theory of bitcoin that I like because at the end of the day I know the number of units that exist. I know the amount of energy and hashing power that's going in. Those are, those are true things that I can know. And based off of the rest of the economy, when I look at bitcoin as a savings vehicle and how it operates as a payments rails, I feel way better about that than anything else out there that exists. And so as a value investor, Bitcoin is my chosen savings vehicle and that's what I'm going to keep doing.
- [55:39]
B
Yeah, it's funny to watch people really freak out about this price movement. What's happening.
- [55:45]
A
Oh my God, $90,000 Bitcoin, it's so horrible. Like bro, like rewind the tape a little bit. Look at where we were at a few years ago. Like things are going to work out, it's going to be great. But also like we can't just sit on our haunches and say number go up forever. Like it's important that there's an ongoing pedagogical conversation with people in your lives to actually get them to do their best to understand what bitcoin is, why it's different from crypto on a whole, why these other currencies aren't a solution, why we can't rely on the government to try to correct these problems for ourselves and why we really need to have a neutral money that the globe can use for themselves.
- [56:26]
B
Yeah, and to your point about, obviously I think it's objective. Last year, year and a half it's been really focused on these treasury companies number go up and the sort of freedom money, peer to peer digital cash as a narrative has been sort of pushed to the wayside. But I think if you're paying attention to what's actually being built in terms of the infrastructure, whether it's second layer subsystem protocols as Deeply was describing to me yesterday, or what something like block just enabled for their square point of sale systems, like if you squint and know where to look there is very exciting, truly cypherpunk digital cash Infrastructure being built out. And I think we just need to do a better job of highlighting and pushing that to the fore of the conversation.
- [57:15]
A
Absolutely. And like, I. These are sort of the ironic cycles that bitcoin continuously goes through. That that I really appreciate is that, like, despite the fact that things feel kind of stagnant, is like, actually under the hood. There's been huge developments. And so seeing what's going on with ecash has been really exciting and all the different applications and ways that people are using that, and it's a really powerful mechanism and it has really great privacy protecting features that, like. And I think this is going to continually happen, as me and Jesse talked about this at length once of that, like, we think all of the cryptography that bitcoin needs to become a massively successful project is already baked into the pie. A lot of it's just undiscovered. Very similar to like, or not even undiscovered. But we haven't just taken the various pieces and kind of applied them underutilized. Yeah. And so, like, E. Cash is a great thing. It's like this. This is a chami, an idea from the 1980s, just got reapplied to bitcoin in a new and innovative way. And so, like, there. There are various puzzle pieces that people haven't fit together. In addition to, like, there's actually like a pretty small cohort of people that are working on these projects because very similar to, like, working on a jet engine or something, very few people are willing to actually lift the hood and look at what's going on underneath it. But once you start tinkering with it and giving yourself permission to mess with it and try things with it, like, it, it. You can learn this stuff. And so, like, I would really encourage anybody who is really interested in bitcoin, like, start playing with it under the hood and encouraging yourself to do developmental work or get involved in different ways. Like, you can do it. And we need other people that are involved with it. And as these discoveries are made, there's going to be more and more opportunities. And so E. Cash is just one of many new things that are going to sort of change how bitcoin operates on a number of levels. And so I ultimately think that, like, stuff's still exciting, the mission's still here, We're. We're still gonna win. And just like, chill out.
- [59:15]
B
Yeah. And like, focus. Like you mentioned zcash earlier, it's a very frustrating narrative, especially if you've been around long enough to understand the dynamics which brought zcash to the market and the, the narrative that they're running with. Bitcoin's not private enough. But it's like you just mentioned, E cash you can push privacy to second layers, whether that's lightning E cash liquid with confidential transactions, whatever it may be. But then on chain too. Like to your point about underutilized, I guess there's cryptography involved to a certain extent. But like underutilized transaction batching with Pay Join Bitcoin, it will be a transparent ledger and you will know that UTXOs are going from one address to another. But you can construct transaction batching in a way where it's really hard to tell who owns what address. And Pay Join is something I've been passionate about for years and I think with the work that Dan Gould and others working on the Page One development kit have been doing over the last three years specifically has been incredible. And now I think it's time to make the narrative push for the exchanges in the space, the large transaction batchers, the largest transaction batchers that exist within the industry to really implement this and just position in a way like hey, you're running a business, you want to cut cost and be as efficient as possible for your shareholders and not only your shareholders, but the bitcoin network itself. It's a superior way of batching transactions that you should implement.
- [60:46]
A
Yeah. And also on that note, it's very clear that governments are against this kind of technology that they are going to try to spook people out of using them. And seeing what happened to Kenan is really sad and we should all be outraged and horrified by it. And we really need to try to stand behind the samurai devs in the same way that we stand stood behind Ross. Like it's important to understand what what happened to him was horrific, wrong and frankly should, should be. Yeah. You know, and like this is, this is really unfair across the board and we need to figure out how and why is our government so against us having the freedom to transact and privacy within that. Because like this is what this is really about is a war against privacy and we should be able to as businesses say hey, I care about my users privacy enough and about my shareholders making enough profit that I should be able to integrate Pay Join that we're not violating anybody by doing this and we're protecting people by ensuring them to have privacy. So like where and why is this conversation going wrong? And, and again this goes back to like the, the political thing is that like we have this class of fucking dinosaurs who don't understand this technology in any meaningful way. And they get keyed up on the exact same arguments from the first crypto wars of that this is about preventing child pornography and terrorism and all the bad meanwhile, like these won't actually release the goddamn Epstein files because they're afraid of the way that it's going to implicate everyone in government who is actually doing these very real crimes times. And like this is sort of. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just really upset and disappointed at our government right now. And I wish there was a real way to push back against these people and there isn't from a political standpoint. And that's one of the reasons why I own Bitcoin is because like, this is one of the very few ways that we have to have personal political empowerment against a system that's highly abusive across the board. So, yeah.
- [62:47]
B
At what point does corporate civil disobedience need to become a thing? Like going back to the page thing, like, in my mind it's like it is literally just a way of batching transactions that is enabled by the protocol and the software kits built on top of it. There's literally nothing stopping you from hitting the button that says, okay, here's how we're going to batch transactions. Now.
- [63:12]
A
To answer that question is that like, I think corporate civil disobedience is kind of the apex of what we need right now. Like, we need courageous CEOs that are going to integrate these things. And to be clear, the feds are probably going to come after you. And when they do that, you go, I will destroy my business and allow for myself to go to prison about this stuff and really stand against you guys. Because this is wrong. And we need to have like, America is supposed to be a country that part of its founding principles is the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. And being able to have a business and protect your users is meaningful. Like, we shouldn't have to continually kowtow to governments over and over based off of their prattle and paranoia that is non existent. And meanwhile in the background, like they're the people that are doing these actual crimes and getting away with it. You know, like if, if we want to talk about currency laundering, like let's go back to Pelosi and the kind of that she's doing. Like this, this is really disgusting and upsetting and we need to start talking more about how to, to actively resist these people. People. And again, like, I don't know, maybe we need to start organizing bitcoiners in a more meaningful and thoughtful fashion other than the sort of haphazard approach that we've taken so far. Again, I don't know what that looks like, but maybe we need to have something like that.
- [64:29]
B
Why would you describe it as haphazard?
- [64:32]
A
Like, there isn't any sort of organizing principle that like, has us, you know, outside of sort of all of our unofficial contacts that we have with each other, there isn't like a larger umbrella organization that has, has us all working collaboratively together. And like, I have really strong hopes that like, somebody can develop some protocol on Nostra that we can actually use to start figuring out, like, who are bitcoiners that are really part of this whole thing that we're participating in. And like, we've all sort of been refugees from, you know, first bitcoin talk, then Reddit, then to X and now to Noster. And like, at what point do we say, like, this is really going to be our home base. This is really the way that we're going to operate and organize with each other and know who's who within the, the bunch people and be able to actually start having real conversations about like, how do we create our political power together as a real entity as opposed to, again, what I would call the haphazard approach. Yeah, and maybe that's a fool's errand and maybe I'm totally mistaken, but.
- [65:31]
B
Well, I feel like the, the root of the haphazard approach is probably seeped in this idea that Bitcoin is this money for enemies. And like, it's this apolitical, neutral thing that we can all sort of anchor into and benefit from. But at the end of the day, it's not any individual's thing. It's not in the possession of any individual, the network itself. And I think there's this embedded sort of apprehension to trying to do something like you're describing because it's like, oh, it's against the ethos of the protocol. It's itself.
- [66:08]
A
And I think like, the, the concern and danger of that is real. But also like, I, I've always been the one of that. Like, I've always objected to the idea of the apoliticalness because like, there, there's an interesting turnabout of that. Like, because bitcoin is money for everybody. There is a way to see it as being apolitical, but the truth is, is like, we live in a fiat world where the, the literal word fiat is by decree. That decree comes from governments that have organized us around national lines. And so the fact that we have a money that is not loyal to any single nation state is the most political of all things. And so being able to actually organize bitcoiners from around the world around this idea, first and foremost, because while we've been talking from a very American centric idea, like, these things are going on in Europe just as much as they're going on in places like Africa and South America and Asia. And it's important to understand that, like, bitcoin truly is a global movement that is based on top of the Internet. And we're sort of the first culture of people that understand that this apparatus is something that we can use to empower people all around the globe to be more free, more egalitarian, and have greater economic opportunity than ever before. And we can totally lose that if we're not willing to actually stand up and say, hey, this is an important and powerful political principle that people should rally behind. And it's important to also return to the fact of that, like, the American Revolution wasn't something that was isolated to America. And there was like, good reason why Thomas Jefferson was also one of the primary authors of the Rights of Man is because, like, this was truly a cultural movement that was about advancing, like, the political capital T, capital P, as opposed to just politics. And so, like, to me, bitcoin's about a global political movement for the freedom of money of all people everywhere, against their governments and the sort of endemic abuses that they've created through fiat money.
- [67:59]
B
Yeah, yeah. How do we. I mean.
- [68:03]
A
And this, this returns.
- [68:05]
B
How do you engender this? This fire is talking to you. Like, it's very obvious that you have this fire in your belly that really drives you to this. And I feel like that fire doesn't exist in most people's bellies anymore.
- [68:18]
A
I, like, I don't know how we engender it, and maybe it's like we just need to start building. But it's like, to me that this is a true political principle of that. Like, we need people to get that, like, bitcoin is a political thing. It's not. It's not just an innate, like, apolitical thing, if you will, that, like, it's truly the most political thing. And that's why I've always wanted to try to encourage this sort of political line of bitcoin shining through. And that's why I'd love to see some kind of. And again, I don't want to call it a political party, but like, this cultural movement that's designed around people understanding and like, Again, like being well read in Marxism, I actually think that there's a lot of very powerful ideological approaches that we can pluck out of Marxism. And one of the ideas is the idea of class conscience. Like, having people be able to develop a clash consciousness around what Bitcoin is and what fiat money is and how we're in that is a system that empowers us against it is very much like the idea of class consciousness and Marxism and understanding how people were exploited through the labor theory of value.
- [69:22]
B
Oh, I'm happy you brought this up because this is what we've intentionally been doing with our AI generated videos. So I was very influenced By Michael Goldstein's 2019 Bit Block Boom talk on meme warfare and the art of rhetoric and the fact that you shouldn't view propaganda as a bad thing. You're being propagandized in both ways. So with these AI videos we're making, the last one we did specifically, it's Common Man, I saw it, I really.
- [69:49]
A
Liked it was like the two farmers talking. Yeah.
- [69:51]
B
But like, really like leaning into that Marxist idea, plucking that out and being like, all right, we're going to tell the story of deflation and how money we have all this tech deflation, but we're not reaping the benefits of it because we're printing money.
- [70:02]
A
We should talk more about this because this very much is in line with my book Crypto Sovereignty and sort of the extension after it through Alexander Dugan's fourth political theory. And that, like, in the fourth political theory, makes the argument that, like fascism, Marxism and liberalism are all sort of the political theories of the 20th century, and they're all dead. Like, they're all murdered by neoliberalism in a very particular way. That now means the whole world operates sort of under this principle of neoliberalism and that these three prior political theories are dead. However, there's a possibility of a fourth political theory where you can essentially cherry pick from all of the prior political theories and take those ideas and then apply them to sort of this new political theory. This is what I think bitcoin actually is. But I think it's only once we imbue Bitcoin with principles that draw from fascism, that draw from liberalism and draw from communism, to essentially educate people around the fact of that we have the Internet as a global apparatus that allows for anyone, anywhere the freedom and the empowerment to actually create and contribute to a global economy. We now have a money that anybody, anywhere can use freely with one another, to transact with each other to create this global economy. But it's only through the ideological advancement of understanding that fiat money, whether it is from the Japanese government, the Chinese government, the Americans or the South Africans, it is all designed around the explicit exploitation of the working class man against a political culture that is designed to steal from them. And it's only through the development of this class consciousness of getting more people on board to use Bitcoin in a peer to peer fashion that allows for them to exchange directly with one another in a private preserving manner, allows for number go up that sort of creates this dual union between the first world and the third world to advance one another for the working class in each world. And then, you know, like I think Ben Ark and I, we've had a number of really great conversations together because he's very well read in Marxism too. Of that I've been meaning to do a deep analysis of Bitcoin from a Marxist standpoint. And again, these words, Marxism, communism, fascism, they're almost useless at this point in time because of how much they've been abused. But there is a way to approach Bitcoin through a Marxist lens that allows for these very deep, deep principled recoveries of an ideological approach that, that is part of why Marxism was such a powerful movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Like it wasn't all just an insane idea of using the state to create a giant apparatus of exploitation. And that's also part of my line of thinking of being an anarchist. Like, it's very important to understand that the socialist movement in the late 19th century, like communism and anarchism, were a single thing up until Marx produced the Communist Manifesto. And that's when, when Bakun approached Marx and was like, hey, what's all this about the dictatorship of the proletariat and taking over the state for us? And Marx was like, yeah, yeah, like that's how we can actualize communism. And back then was like you like the, the state's the problem. It's not, it's not the capitalist expropriation, it's the fact of that these things work in tandem with each other. So like you, anarchism is going to go become its own movement on its own. And because there was no organizing principle around anarchism, it essentially died in early death during the 20th century, which I think now there's an opportunity to recover with this fourth political theory. Wow.
- [73:28]
B
And then, and it's funny like you're saying this, and even myself, just like people hear these words, Marxism, communism, and the idea of like let's pick good ideas and they'll have an like immediate aversion, like immediately shut down intellectually. Be like, ah, no, this is.
- [73:44]
A
Oh absolutely. And, and that's part from multi generational campaign against both of them. One is, is that like it's important to understand that like Marxism and the way that it advanced into Leninist and Stalinism in the 20th century, like it was horrific. And then it's in its last iteration of Maoism was almost the worst. And like these are particular maniacal forms that came out of the idea of Marxism in the same way that like, like fascism died such an early death and it's been so heavily disparaged over time that most people have no idea what the word means other than that it's, it's bad, it's really bad and we can't talk about it. And I think these things are really important to go well, well, why is it so bad? What was the things that made it so apprehensible and something that we shouldn't look at?
- [74:34]
B
Not only that, but like conversely, what were the things that made people really attracted to. To it?
- [74:39]
A
Yeah. And like it's pretty interesting that most people think that like Germany just went insane like during the 1930s and that there was no real reason that fascism actually became the select approach. And it's really important to understand the historic context of how and why fascism ultimately is what ran Germany in the 1930s. And the same reason as like why did fascism become the select thing that worked in Italy at the time? And most people don't understand that fascism was explicitly developed as an anti communist movement. And it's specifically because of the way that communism was becoming so powerful in places like Italy and Germany at this point in time. And so like, again, like, I also think that like these answers from the past won't apply to the future. And that's why I like Dugan's fourth political theory so much.
- [75:27]
B
Yeah, well, and you're. I'm chuckling right now because we're watching it play out again. Yeah, absolutely. FASC we were talking about it with Danny. Fascism is rising as this response to over communism which is becoming popular.
- [75:39]
A
And like we saw how that played out and we should all be very scared of it. And that's why we need to have a totally new political approach that has the Internet, bitcoin, censorship resistant technology and privacy at the core of it. Because there is a new and very powerful way that we could create a global movement that ensures. And it's very ironic because like Part of what I think the fourth political theory is, is take picking and choosing a number of these things in order to create essentially, like, I don't even.
- [76:12]
B
Know what you'd call it, a la carte political theory.
- [76:15]
A
Well, and part of that is, is that like this political theory essentially is like the most radical form of anarchism through the most liberal approach that there is, because it truly makes the sovereign individual and it collectivizes sovereign individuals sort of under this like, Marxist rubric, but because of the way that privacy is preserved, that like the individual choice is radicalized through the Internet in this very particular way. It like, actualizes the sovereign individual, like, as sort of the preeminent political character of the 21st century. But again, we only get that if we create this sort of applied political ideology that like, sort of the next iteration of my own political work around crypto sovereignty has been working on. But also like, like this is like such a monumental political and philosophical task. And also, like, I don't know what the I'm doing. So it's like trying to figure out how to do that. Like, I need somebody to deeply collaborate with me and work on something.
- [77:12]
B
Well, that was. You say that. And my next question was going to be like, okay, we're talking high level, 30, 000 foot view of this fourth political theory that we should really attempt to go after. In my question right before you said that my mind was going to be, all right, let's get into the blocking and tackling. What is the first step?
- [77:32]
A
I think the first step is acknowledging that like, we need something like this and then sort of trying to figure out, like, how does it organize itself? And like I have a whole bunch of desperate threads and ideas that like, I've been juggling with over the past, I don't know, seven years or something. But, you know, having dialogues like this encouraged me to look more deeply into it. But essentially, like, it looks something very similar to. Yeah, essentially I should go back through all of my notes from the fourth political theory and reread it because after that I felt like there's a way and like bitcoin has a number of these things in it of that, like Satoshi's choice of 21 million is like a total fascist thing. But the fact that like one bitcoin is one bitcoin, whether it's mine or yours, and that's protected by cryptography is like this very Marxist idea. And so like the. I think picking all these things out and kind of trying to go through it in very deep Detail to explain it, I think would be really valuable to people and as part of the advancement of that class consciousness to actually have people understand that like, no, you don't own the money in your bank account. That's a debt instrument the bank owns. Like, yes, you are actually a very particular form of slave that has been enslaved to fiat monetary system. And something like Bitcoin is the real way that you can empower yourself and noster is the way that you can really. And I think noster is kind of one of the components is that like, I think that's the thing that the political apparatus of, however we, like, vote or have dialogues with each other or something. There's like a way to build that on top of no, sir. But like, it's not very clear to me at how that's done yet. Yeah.
- [79:07]
B
And it hasn't really hit me. Well, it has hit me like, I intentionally rebranded TFTC to Truth for the commoner too, to really play into that working man thing. Because that's what like, I grew up, both my grandfathers were union workers. One was a steam fitter, one was an iron worker. My parents had me very young and provided a great life for me, but we were never extremely well off. And. And I think just my life experience is such that, like, I have a lot of empathy for the working man because I grew up in a working man, common man family. And that's who's getting crushed the most. And that is who's also getting misled the most. And they're getting driven to these polar ideas, to your point, which have objectively failed and will fail again if you, if you try to implement them. And the whole point of this show, of the newsletter of my work in Bitcoin is to really get through to the common man. Like, this is the way.
- [80:02]
A
Yeah. And I think, like, through, like, as you were talking about that, that reminds me of like, one of the ways that anarchism tried to organize itself in the early 20th century was through an approach called syndicalism. And syndicalism is essentially like this idea of creating industrial unions that are interoperable together that are like, based on those principles. And I think, like, we essentially as bitcoiners need to start getting more aggressive with being like, hey, if you're a small business owner, you need to be accepting Bitcoin and like, you need to be marking up fiat by 10 or 20% and being very explicit about that. Like, if you're going to use bitcoin with my business, you're going to save money and if you're not, I'm going to charge you more and there's a reason why. And then finding other people to create these collaborative relationships with, where like, maybe they're people that, that are inventory providers or maybe there are other people that you have relationships with, but it's really from a business front encouraging people to be like, hey, we need to be using Bitcoin for our businesses for these reasons and this is how it protects us. And furthermore, by, because we've collectivized ourselves in a particular way that like, if the government comes after you for, you know, like you get tax audited or something and that that's taken away from you, like, like, we have this sort of support network that's going to help you out. But again, all of this like, goes back to. I don't know the exact methodology of how we need to organize around this, but I am convinced that like, organization is something that we need to actually address in a meaningful way. And we also need to address this component of class consciousness as well. Yeah.
- [81:32]
B
And it's never been easier with the tech that exists. If we really wanted to, if we figured out like, okay, here's the sort of way in which we're going to organize. The ability to do so has never been easier.
- [81:43]
A
Well, and getting into the mematic warfare, like, that's such an important and powerful component. Because also, like, if we're doing it right, as this stuff gets promoted, like they're going to start banning it and then we can start promoting it on Noster and then we can start being really clear that like, hey, there's this whole other dialogue that if I even try to have it with you here, we both get banned and so like, come find us on nostr. This is our censorship resistant network where they can't stop us from talking about this and spreading the signal. Because the truth is, is like, you're being exploited in a way that like, do you really think that a hundred years ago your grandfather was able to own a farm and have eight kids and that he was somehow like, are you not working as hard as him?
- [82:25]
B
Like, my grandfather was an iron worker and had eight kids.
- [82:27]
A
Yeah. Like, can you be an iron worker today and have eight kids? No. Why is that? Is it that iron working did not become more efficient? So, like, there's clearly a problem here. And why is it that it seems to be that we're working harder than ever and we're getting by less than ever before? And it's because of these reasons. It turns out that fiat money is a thing that's designed explicitly to exploit you and redirect money to this parasitic political class. And really trying to figure out the way that we create the mematic warfare around that, collectivizing people to educate each other and giving each other the resources and really finding the right ways to organize around that, I think is a. A very important principle that I really hope that more people are going to get on board with. Figuring out how we do this together.
- [83:16]
B
You know, maybe we need to make like the Founding Father, like a dinner series around the country, around the world, even, where we get a group of us together.
- [83:23]
A
I mean, I think between, like, our mutual networks, along with some other people that we know. Like, I do think that we should actually probably do something similar to this and, like, have a, you know, like, being here with the, the group that we're with is kind of a great starting point, is that figuring out how do we get us all together for a week just to. To hang out and really have a dialogue with each other about if we're to build something like this, what does it look like, how does it function, and how do we put it together? Very similar to what the Founding Fathers did, because, like, that was a decision that those men made for themselves to respond to the tyrannical abuses that their government was doing to them at that point in time, which, like, this seems to rhyme pretty well with what happened, you know, 250 years ago.
- [84:09]
B
Yeah. And it would be very fitting as we approach the 250th anniversary of this nation, if we were able to successfully do something like this.
- [84:18]
A
And it would be really fun too, you know, like, like, have you, have you ever seen the documents of, like, the bar tab after they, like, got.
- [84:26]
B
Together and actually see what they drink and.
- [84:29]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So we definitely need to do that part too. So.
- [84:32]
B
All right, let's end it here. All right. Yeah. Call to action for, for the people who care about this and recognize that at least here in America, and I think even more broadly in parts of the west, the solutions that are being put in front of you are not going to work. They haven't worked. And the nature of our reality as it stands in 2025 and 21st century, in the digital age is not conducive for the solutions that are being put before you.
- [84:59]
A
Yeah. And we need to ask ourselves to stand up and be courageous enough to realize that, like, this is our time to really shine. And if we make the decision together to stand up and create a new political dynasty, that could change the future for the next 250 years. Maybe there's an opportunity that our children can actually live freer, happier, and flourish better than we could have ever predicted.
- [85:23]
B
Dude, I'm really happy we did this.
- [85:26]
A
Yeah, me too.
- [85:27]
B
All right. Peace and love, freaks. Thank you for listening to this episode of tftc. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can, leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way. Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes a day early and ad free, make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app. You can go to Fountain FM to find that $5 a month get you every episode a day early ad free helps. The show gives you incredible value, so please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time and until next time.