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- [00:07]
A
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all. All the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for bitcoin.
- [00:32]
B
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
- [00:34]
A
Probably, should be.
- [00:35]
B
Probably should be. The hottest man in bitcoin this week. Alex Waltz, welcome to the show.
- [00:40]
A
Thank you, Marty. Thank you for having me. And when he says hot, just to be clear, he does mean physically hot, not in other ways.
- [00:48]
B
Yeah, it's a double entendre. You know, it's physically hot. And main character vibes this week with the. With the video that you launched after doing many months of research and production, getting back to the roots of what started bitcoin and trying to dissect who was the first person to launch or, excuse me, to get into the bitcoin project after Satoshi. Many people flagged Hal Finney and his node after he tweeted running bitcoin. But your piece argues that the real story is messier, more interesting. So I think for the context of diving into your piece first, Bitcoin miner and the video associated with it, which we'll link to the show, notes, what sent you down this journey? Why was this a nagging problem in your mind to solve?
- [01:39]
A
Well, for people who follow me on Twitter, they know for the last years, I just kind of really dove into this bitcoin archaeology stuff, right? And there were two instances, one last year, in one year before, where I did 30 days of 30 facts about Bitcoin. Sorry, 30 days of Bitcoin facts, you know, and clear. The historical one kind of made a bit more sense and I just happened to be more interested in them, you know, and I actually was. I realized that I want to find out more about this Hal Finney stuff, but I never really touched it because it always felt soft to me. Because, I mean, just how many times did you hear people mention the emails? And there's always this air of like, it's solved, we know exactly what happened. And it just feels like this. This has been around for such a long time. Clearly there's nothing to find there anymore, right? And I decided to write a thread about how feeding. I just could not believe. There's nothing written about this, right? Like zilch. Nothing. I mean, there's an article here and there, but nothing like concrete, right? Just people claiming certain things. And I found it so strange. And then I was like, all right, you know what, let's try to dig into this. And I started looking and looking and looking. I was like, oh my God, I think I'm the first person who looks at this. I just could not. Like the first part was I could not believe no one looked at this because it's such a low hanging fruit, first of all, right? And after this, after I realized I started digging a bit of things, I was like, oh my God, there's some interesting stuff here. And firstly, I figured out what bitcoin client he was running when he made the bitcoin tweet. And then when I did and I found the debug log file. So when Hal Finney tried bitcoin for the first time, it didn't work for him. And there used to be this forum called searchforge where people would post about bitcoin. And the first time he wrote he tried bitcoin, it didn't work. And he posted on this forum with Satoshi. It was literally the four for something day. And then the bitcoin node at the time has a debug log file, which is a file that saves everything that happens. Right? This is not new. This was known. Other people wrote about this and you could download it still today. And when I started looking at that file, I've realized that actually no one actually really looked at what the files means. And I went live by line, line by line. And when I saw there's two other people also, sorry, there, you could also see Satoshi's clearnet ip and we'll probably get into this a bit more in depth and whatever, but you can see the other two nodes. And when I saw the two other nodes there, which again, this is undeniable. Posted by Hal there's nothing speculative about this part. You can see it there. And when I saw that, I mean, I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh my God. I was like, grazia Radio. Yes. I started jumping around. I was, you know, I was bowing to the ground and I was just so happy. And I mean, I know I'm kind of rambling right now, but like there's just so much to it. And that's kind of when I was like, all right, let's just see where this goes deeper. And there was obviously more.
- [04:21]
B
Yeah, I mean, and so let's get into it. I think timeline is important and maybe we can pull in why understanding this is important just for the broader context of Bitcoin and maybe some misconceptions about who launched it or whether or not it was an NSA project. But I think we can get to that at the end. But jumping in, starting with block one timestamping, VM Deadpool Space API, you've caught that at January 9, 2009. And then I think that's where the big sort of mystery unravels, is between that block and block 78 to block 309, which were produced between January 11 and January 13. So you have two days of Bitcoin operating, essentially. And that's another thing. People have the Times of London headline in the genesis block, which was January 3rd. But what many other people don't realize is that the. The network was like up and running consistently on that date.
- [05:29]
A
Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, I'm not sure if you want me to address specifically something or. I mean,
- [05:37]
B
what was the misconception? People thought, how was one and like, what, within the debug file? I mean.
- [05:43]
A
Oh, yeah, well, so the thing is, like, when I saw those things there, so I opened the file and you could see. So the way Bitcoin worked back then, when Satoshi launched it. So as we all know, a Bitcoin node is peer to peer, which means it needs to connect to other nodes. But before you connect to other nodes, you need to find them somewhere. Right? So the way Satoshi solved this, he was like, let's use an IRC channel to coordinate this thing. What does it mean, an IRC channel for your younger audience? It used to be like a telegram group or a group chat that was just more bare bones, and you connect to the server directly and you could just chat there. And that's what satirist is. He created a group chat, literally, that was called hashtag bitcoin, and it was hardcore in the nodes there. So when your node starts up and connects to the Internet, you would connect to this RFC server and then you would go in the lobby there and you would start creating a username which will probably go in the name, how that is created, which is very important also. But it's mostly random. It looks like it's random and it looks like a bitcoin address. It uses the same stuff that you generate Bitcoin addresses with, which is also very important, which is why we call Bitcoin addresses addresses. So you can see, you can tell it's a username. And then there were two other usernames there, and these usernames the way it constructs them, it's like. I did say. I claim it's random a second ago, but it's not completely random because the way it is actually structured is that they take your Bitcoin, sorry, you join the channel and now you are. You have to construct your own username and register with this thing. It's. And your node will do this by default. It will take your IP address, which is 1.9Point, blah, blah, blah. It will take your port, which is 1.9.6, whatever, two dots, colon 8, 1, 8, 4. And. Well, it takes these things. Actually, that's kind of it. Actually, it takes those things and it converts them in base 58. What is base 58? I mean, if you look at a Bitcoin address, even though it looks random, you could tell it's a Bitcoin address. There's some. Something specific about it looks a certain way. So what it does, it just eliminates local, like, characters mostly, pretty much. Right. And. Well, there's some other stuff also, which maybe we'll go into. But you have this function which you take like a public key, which is a bit bigger and messier and whatever, and then you do some other stuff. You do the checksum and whatever, and then you apply this pretty fi function. You make it a bit more prettier, right? So Satoshi takes these IP addresses and so you take these IP addresses and whatever, and that's how you get the username. So now the reason why this is important is because, well, since we know the usernames are constructed in a certain way, deterministically, we can actually figure out what the username means because they're not quite random and have their information. I forgot to mention one thing. So they do take the IP address and whatever. But there's one more thing that it does. If your node is connected via Tor for some reason, it will actually have an X in front of it and then the other letters are going to be random. Why? Well, because there's no IP address. You could have an ip, but practically speaking, there's no IP address belonging to you. So it's like, well, just add some jumbled numbers. So now we can see there how HAL generated his username, which he did this thing that we mentioned. He takes his IP and whatever, and we know hal's IP address because they were public. And. And then you can see two other nodes. One has this X in front of it, which is whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then there's another username that has an symbol, the email Sign in front of it. The symbol on IRC means that you are the operator of the channel. So already just by looking here, you see those usernames and they leak so much information that you can get, again, provable information, not speculative. And, and also, like in the article, I had to read the old sources of Bitcoin. I mean, that was so fucking fun because you have to read the old sources of Bitcoin core and understand how this thing is done. And it was kind of crazy. And by the way, there's this GitHub repository that Jeremy Rubin shout out to Jeremy Rubin, boy genius. He actually looked at this like about, I don't know, a few years ago and he added comments and stuff like that, you know, so that was really helpful for me. Anyway, so anyway, so now you have this debug file, you have these free usernames. They're only free. One of them would know his hell, one of them, it's a Tor node, which we don't know zilch about. And then the other one, there's this nord, that's the operator who would be the operator of the channel, if not Satoshi? I mean, right, let's be serious. But also, so we know hal's ip. So that means we know how he generated a username. We can do the math and we can see generated username. So we can be certain we have this Tor node we don't know nothing about anymore. And now we have this operator node, but we don't know his ip. Well, if you actually scroll up a bit more in the debug file, you also see the ip. So now you can take this IP of the operator node, we convert it in this thing and they all match. So even from this alone, it's like again, it was something that no one ever talked about. And this is, again, there's no speculation because we trust that HELP updated a real file there, we can still download it today and we can inspect it for ourselves. So this was again, this was the first thing and the first part. And this was kind of like, wow, this is, this is quite interesting. But also, and I'll shut up and you can feel free to push this in any direction you want. I also forgot to mention that as I'm doing this stuff, I also gathered every single digital artifact that exists from that time, like emails, anything you can imagine. I convert them all to the same time zone, utc, because just to make it the same, you know. And I also like keep track of the time zones in each email and whatever what has and Then. And also email. Sorry, by emails, I mean private emails Hal had with Satoshi, which he made public. Public later on. But also public emails on the Cryptography mailing list and also the P2P foundation and other. Even the Cypherpunk mailing list. But the last year I didn't really mention because there was that much activity. So now that I know there's only two nodes and I know there's almost no activity there, you know, I was confident I'm onto something here. And I also was. And also, like, it confirmed what I find here. That's also very important. You find something and you find something else that confirms, you know.
- [11:50]
B
Yeah, let's get on the Block 49. Why is Block 49 so important? It is fun just relearning how Bitcoin worked in the early days.
- [12:01]
A
It's nuts, though. It's nuts because you kind of like I just even said that there. It's like, this is the way you can see how you can feel how that was, you know, and you can trace it with code and stuff like that. Block for nine. Yes. I forgot to mention this. So before we had this stuff in the debug file that I just said with the nodes and whatever. So when there's a back file, you see the history of what the node did there. But the first thing a node does there. No, sorry, it does connect to the irc. It finds one of these peers it tries to connect with and then it says to one of those nodes, hey, how far are you in the blockchain? And give me the block headers. The block header is not the blocks yet. What does this mean? It's kind of like just the import. It's just the short version of the block, just like the main fields and stuff like that. So the hal's node was like, hey, how far are you? Give me all the headers. And the reason why this is important, they're not blocks and headers because we know they were easy to transmit. Right? So it wasn't like an Internet interruption or something like this. Right. So now we see in hal's debug file, he gets a list of all the blocks from zero or maybe to one. I don't think they got zero. Right. Because it was hard coded. Yeah. From one and it goes all the way down to the block fortnite and we have the first character of the hash. Right? So when you see this thing, you're like, oh, my God, this is as far as this. I think the absolute correct thing to claim would be this is as far as death's node went on the blockchain. But practically speaking, that's as far as the blockchain was going. Right. So now you can also see like this is when Hal entered. So now the. Yes, of course, it makes sense now. So now you're kind of thinking like, oh, block 49. Well, why isn't it block 0 or whatever? And that's when the emails came in handy because another very important thing. And I know, I feel like I'm jumping all over the place, but I promise you it's in the correct chronology in the article as things happen. But the thing is that in 2014, hell, before he died, he shared his private correspondence with Satoshi and he did this once with the Wall street reporter and then he did it with some. Then after he died, some other reporter from Coindesk got some. Some few other emails and his. His wife authenticated and says, though those emails are sure. So now we also have some private correspondence from Satoshi to. To Hal, which we. One of them were submitted by Hal. We're going to operate on the assumption he was not lying. And the others, by the way, which again, I think we should operate. Well, I'm gonna operate at least you do whatever you want. I'm gonna operate on the assumption that they are truthful. And now we have these private emails. And now if we look at these emails, we can actually see that initially Satoshi posts on the cipher on the Cryptography mailing list and people get whatever. Hallie's the only one that likes it. A bit more time passes. But then when Satoshi actually launches the bitcoin again, the white paper was launched in 2008, early 2008. And then the Bitcoin was like the 8th of January. I don't know by. I think it.
- [15:12]
B
The Genesis block was the third and then depending on time, it was like the eighth or ninth. Right. Depending on time zone, was like the first block. Block one.
- [15:22]
A
Absolutely. Absolutely. Exactly. Yeah. But it's around eight, so there was a bit of time. And then when Satoshi actually announced the client on the Cryptography main list, since literally Hal was the only one who kind of liked this thing, he obviously sent it to him and he said, by the way, I launched this thing, here's if you want it. And he goes like, I'll take a look at it over the weekend. Which already this was, by the way, I'm sure a lot of people know about this. Take a look over at the weekend. Because I've seen the shared around. But when you. Again, now we have another source that confirms like, oh, so Bitcoin started mining in block one. When he makes the announcement and whatever and all these things. And then he sends this email. So he's already getting late. So by the time he gets, he looks at it, I think this was like a Thursday in California, PST time. And by the time he gets to look at it over the weekend, it gets to Block 49 and when he does do this, it crashes because as we'll see, there were like, it just didn't work and whatever. So now we have a confirmation because we see block 49. We can look at the time when he sent the email and whatever. And now we have another thing. So this was the first part which I was like, oh my God, this is insane. This is nuts. I cannot believe it. I just couldn't, I couldn't believe it. There were a few days when I just thought, there's something I'm missing. Because there's no way. It's too easy. That's why it was, you know, it was just too easy to figure it out.
- [16:45]
B
And hal's node crashed when he originally tried to connect to the network because of the Tor node. Right. There was some intricacies around how to interact with the Tor node that.
- [16:55]
A
It wasn't that, it was just that. So Satoshi, and he says this in the email, he did all the tests he can, but you know how it is when you do testing, then you have launch day. It was just some weird error and no nodes work, not just the Tor ones, none of them work. So.
- [17:12]
B
So yeah, okay, so what, what was the do not mine unless connected to appear rule? Didn't that shape part of your conclusion?
- [17:21]
A
Yes, yes, yes, he did.
- [17:23]
B
So this, this comes to the interaction between the Satoshi node that you're assuming is the, the IP because he's the operator of the IRC channel, and the Tor node, which was the first two nodes that were in the IRC channel before HAL joined. And so there's. He couldn't have mined unless he had another peer on the network, right?
- [17:45]
A
Yes. So what Marty is trying to say here is that, I mean, this is also kind of. This is fairly a known thing. And I mean, I even wrote about this in the past at some point. But what Martin is trying to say here is like, so when Satoshi made a Bitcoin client, he had this condition where he said, if you are on the Internet, don't start mining straight away. You need to have at least one peer connected to you either he connects to you because you have to have one peer connected to Elizabeth. For now, you have to have one peer connected to you. And if you're just alone, solo on the network and you don't have anyone connected to you do not mine. And the reason why he may he added this, I mean it's pretty obvious this is why he had is like, let's just say we both connect right now on the Internet download Bitcoin, but just because maybe there's a bit of lag or something, we have some problems and we don't yet connect to each other as fast. So now you start mining on your own block, I start mining on my own block and then we meet each other and we have a fork. So that's why this rule was out there. And I know, I think I may have even claimed this in the past and people have speculated us to avoid pre mining and stuff like that. I don't think so. I mean I don't think anyone cared about it really.
- [18:50]
B
It was more coordination to make sure there weren't no forks.
- [18:53]
A
Absolutely. I think that it seems very obvious to me that's the reason.
- [18:58]
B
Well, so let's dive into this TOR node more.
- [19:01]
A
Sorry, one second before because you actually had a really good point bringing this up. Right. So why is this important? Because now getting back to the initial thing, it's like, so we have this debug file. We know there are HAL joins and there are two other nodes there. And now the question is like, but why would there be another node there? Why would there be a Tor node? And this is like, well if there wasn't this tornado or there was just another node, Bitcoin should have been to Block 0 or what could have happened. Maybe there were other nodes and maybe they left. That also could have happened. There were two other nodes before they started chain and then live. But that's not what happened. We know for a fact at that point there were two nodes and it seems like maybe there were others, maybe some came in and left. But at least because there was that Tor node, this confirms that that's why. At least that's why Bitcoin was vent. Sorry I cut you off.
- [19:47]
B
What are your thoughts behind the tour node?
- [19:50]
A
Well, the thing is like now I'm kind of like I have this thing and I figure it out and I'm like, you know, it's quite interesting and whatever. And I kind of like started going on a. I couldn't find any more stuff from back then, you know, so I'm just scrolling through the article, because I feel like we kind of went over the place. Should have went chronology, but anyway. Well, the thing is, like, at this point, I'm like, I can't believe I made this stuff. This is fucking nuts. This is incredible. This is whatever. And might I want to say, I'm not going to give names, but I will tell you this. I sent it to some people and they shit on me so fucking hard, man. They shit on me. They said, this is bullshit. What you call this fucking piece of shit? These are not discoveries, whatever. But, you know, again, I won. So, you know, seeing their history books, you pieces of shit. Um, so the thing. But, but, but, but think about. And I do want to mention this because I find this thing out, I don't want to share with someone. I give it some people. And again, I know it's real at this point and they're just giving me shit. And I will tell you this. I know this is very pity, but I'm a very fucking pity person. And they gave me some shit and I. And that's when I knew, when it happened. I said, like, oh, okay, all right, fine. My life becomes about this. I'll make the video, I'll make everything. We'll see what happens. But. So now I'm filled with anger, you know, in my soul, in my mind, and I want to get vindicted. And I said, I need to fucking come up with something just to fucking shove in these people's face. But I didn't have any more leads because I looked at the emails, I looked at all the things that everyone knows, and I just couldn't find anything else. Then I remember Dustin Tramiel. And I'm sure a lot of people that are somewhat involved in bitcoin and whatever know who Dustin Tramiel is. He's a bitcoin vc and he's been around for, like, a lot of times. And. And I remember around when, actually, was that 2000, 2000. Oh, in 2021, I think. Or maybe the first one was 2018. He makes a tweet and he says, guys, I think I was the first bitcoin miner. And I think I was the. Sorry, I think I was the second bitcoin node. And I think I may have even beaten Hal. And the thing is, like, he makes this tweet and he claims this, and then he posts all this again. It's linking the article. Everything we're talking about here, go see it in the article. It's explained all the assumption, everything can find everything on it. So I remembered this tweet. And then just to like, you know, Justin had empty words or whatever, he also posted a proof that he mined that block. So the thing is like this. In Bitcoin, I'm sure everyone knows that the blockchain is a chain of digital signatures. What is a digital signature? A digital signature. So you have a private key, you have a secret that belongs to you. And then a digital signature does some mathematical operations which are more simpler than you think, actually. And the output of that could prove to someone from the exterior that you actually own this public key. Well, you own the public key and the private key, which you don't share without actually revealing the private key. Right. That's the main thing. That's what a signature does, and that's what Bitcoin works on. And maybe it sounds overcomplicated, and I know everyone understand what a signature is, but the reason why I'm explaining this is because you can use this signature to prove any other things. It's almost like you can sign anything. So if any data is signed by this private key, you can say, oh, it belongs to this private key. So you can also do this with random text, first of all. Right? And the reason you might do this, so you might make a bitcoin transaction where, I don't know, maybe donated to a cause you want to, like, brag about. People are like, well, I don't believe that you. Anyone could claim you prove the signature. It's 100%. There's no denying. There's no nothing. You can't really say anything about it at this point, you know, so he was like, well, I claimed I mined a block. I mined block. I mined an early block. I have to do the. I have to prove this thing. Right? He post the proof there, and you can use Bitcoin core and you can verify the proof and it's true. So Dustin Tramiel, from this proof that he pointed here, we know for a fact that he might block which. What was it again?
- [24:08]
B
Rio 9.
- [24:10]
A
Yes. So. So, yeah, sorry. So he posted two proofs, actually, he posted a proof that he might block 78. Am I right on 78? I really don't want to, like, people are going to be crazy in the comments.
- [24:23]
B
Yeah, 78.
- [24:25]
A
78 and 309. All right, so when he makes the proofs he makes, he shows two proof that he mined block 78 and block 309. Now, the interesting part is, like, the block 78, which he mined, he said that those coins are unconfirmed. Maybe you can take that Sus. But that's what he said. But the proof still verified. But it's just that we can't see the coins unchained. But then block 309, it's still today, we can still inspect it and whatever. So I'm looking at this stuff here and now this kind of like another thing fell in my lap because I'm like oh my God. Now just by incidentally I also solved the problem and the question what happened with Dustin? Because we know we have block 49 from Hal's debug file. We know Dustin may have mine block 78, but certainly has block 309. So we kind of know this for a fact. And okay, this is interesting but it's not really like pushing me in the right direction. So what else could I do right now? And I also forgot to mention that there's also this other article where Hal at some point shared pretty almost close to him dying. He shares this screenshot of his bitcoin wallet. Another reporter. So now and there we can see the first block that hellmined which was
- [25:53]
B
Block 170 or no, that was the first transaction I guess he received.
- [25:58]
A
Okay, wait, I'm so sorry. So correction. So Dustin Tramill mined block 70, 76 is the one that wasn't confirmed and 390 is the one that is confirmed. And now Hal in this article mine block 78 which we can still see here and whatever and we can see in this wallet. So we can be fairly certain. So now there's also quite interesting because so maybe, maybe Dustin was before hand by two blocks but we can't prove it, you know. So where are we going at this
- [26:37]
B
started with the Tor node. Do we get back to the Tor node?
- [26:40]
A
Oh yeah. So I looked at, we left us at Dustin. So I look at Dustin stuff and this is all great. Another discovery. Graziara. Dio Grazia. You know, I'm going crazy. I'm doing this underground, you know. But this didn't really help the investigation and I just couldn't come up with any idea of where to look for data anymore. And I just needed more data. And I also like, I kind of feel that there isn't going to be any data to find because they just, you could tell from the emails on the, on the cryptography mainly, there wasn't anything left. Then I'm just sitting there, you know. And also as it's dramatizing the movie, maybe not as dramatic with the lighting and whatnot, but it was pretty much that I'm just sitting there And I'm like, dude, why don't the fuck. When I just look at a blockchain, maybe I'll find something there, you know? So I took the. The first blocks and I started looking around and I'm seeing. When I look. Let me just pull this up here. So I started looking at. I took all the blocks from like up to block 49. And I started looking around there and I looked at the times and I'm like, dude, there's one instance from block 14 to 15 where there's like 24 hours and 12 minutes between blocks. There's another one which is 30 minutes statistically probable, but still worth looking at. And there's another one that's 8 hours and 34 minutes. So now I'm like, oh, I think I want to something here. There has to be something. There's so much stuff that doesn't fall into place. Another one. So why don't we look here? So then I started looking around even more and I took this all the way to Block 170. Sure, we should have said this is actually well known and well established, which is actually exactly what you hinted at earlier, that there is the famous transaction that has hell sent, that Satoshi sent to hell. And this was at Block 170. And it's the first bitcoin transaction. So I was like, ah, let me just try to see what's happening up until there. So now I look at all the blocks and I'm like, whoa, there's like eight instances where there are big time blocks between. Time gap between blocks. Bitcoin is not working, which we know from here. There's all this weird fuzziness going on here. And I'm like, oh, man, there's no way this is not connected. There's no way this is a coincidence. But like, how the fuck can I figure out Now I found the sound suspicious, but now I need another one. So, like, I just spent so much time because it's like, there's no way I could get more from the blockchain. How could I possibly get more from the blockchain? I'm looking at a blockchain. And then again, after I spent a bit more time and prayed to God and whatever, and you know, when Fukushima retard, I realized, like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's that guy, Sergio Damian Lerner that estimated how much money bitcoin satoshi has. And you may think, well, what does this have to do with everything? Well, the way he does it, he actually looks at Some other parts of the data which I was mistaken in the blockchain. And that's how he was managed to figure out how satoshi mine blocks. Now here's the thing, he didn't really figure out how much bitcoin satoshi mined. What he did, the conclusion that comes from this, from what he looks at is like you have a group of blocks and this seems to be mined by a single entity. Well that's exactly what I'm looking for here. I'm looking to find a way to group blocks to draw the conclusion if there's an entity or another entity.
- [30:10]
B
What's up freaks? This work was brought to you by our good friends at bitkey. Guys, things happen, things get lost, you need to replace your phone. Life happens. And bitkey has been designed with this in mind. So if you're looking for the easiest way to secure your bitcoin off the exchange, go get a bit key doesn't come with any seed phrases. There's no single point of failure. It's a two or three multisig. You have your device, you have the mobile app and block stores a key in the server. So you have collaborative multisig there. On top of that the new bit key has a screen so you can actually see and verify what you're approving. You can look at transactions, addresses, account changes. The difference between trusting and knowing has been built into the new bit key with the screen. They've changed code delegation in other advanced features like inheritance recovery. If you're looking to get your bitcoin off exchange, you haven't done so you're looking for the easiest way to do that. Go get a bit key. You can use our code today TFTC to get 10% off the new bit key. So go download the bit key app, use the code TFTC to get 10% off the new BitKey and start your self custody journey today. This episode has been sponsored by our good friends at bitkey. Freaks. Look at me, I'm glowing. I've got like an angel's halo going around me. You know why that is, is I feel good, I feel taken care of, I feel blessed, healthy, happy. That is because I'm a crowd health member. My family and I have been crowd health members for five years now. Literally this month, five years ago, we joined crowd health. We've had two babies, we've had multiple health events and we're never going back to health insurance. Crowd health is crowdfunded healthcare. So you, you sign up for crowd health, you pay a monthly fee, you Help out with other people's bills and it's significantly cheaper than health insurance. We were on COBRA as a family of three when I, when I left my last job before I went full time with tftc, went on the crowd health. Now as a family of five, we pay, I believe, $700 a month. It's significantly cheaper. They're going to negotiate prices lower for you. They've consistently negotiated health care prices as much as 50, 60, 80% in many cases. They help out with babies. You have a pregnancy, you pay the first $3,000 and the crowd covers the. If you have a regular health event, you pay $500 and the crowd pays the rest. Go to joincrowd health.com sign up today. Use the code TFTC. Opt out of health insurance. I'm uninsured, baby, and I love it. Use the code tftc@joincrowdhealth.com you'll get $99 a month for the first three months that you're on the crowd health platform in the community. Bitcoiners, you found sovereign money, now find sovereign health and sovereign healthcare. This is famously known as the Patoshi pattern. And so this is what led you to have an understanding that, correct me if I'm wrong, the Tor node address in the IRC channel probably belonged to Satoshi too, correct?
- [32:54]
A
Well, that is where it gets right. But I didn't knew that. I didn't even dare to suspect that at this point, right? So now I'm looking at this stuff, I have this data, I was like, shit, let's do the Patoshi pattern. So we need to bring a bit of context here on how bitcoin mining works. So I know I'm more than certain any one of the listeners is familiar and knows that the bitcoin mining is just a big lottery and you have to try a lot of numbers until you get lucky, right? The thing is like when you hash something, and this may sound very counterintuitive, every output has the exact mathematical probability of being valid. Like if you sit down and you do a block by hand right now, you have the exact same chance as another miner. That's why, you know, people are talking about the bitaxes and all these things. The only reason the miners are make more money, they just try more times than you. That's really what is, it's just pure dumb luck. There's nothing you can do or to game or whatever. That's how mining works. But the thing is like, okay, great, but now we need to look specifically what that Actually happens. So what happens is that you're a miner, you get some transactions, you make the block header, which you say, this is block number, whatever, it was mined here. Some other things, I'm hand waving a lot. And then you have to put the transactions in orders and you hash them. And is this block valid or not? I'm sorry, I should have also clarified the way the mechanism works. What draws the. Well, sorry, I'm sorry, let me backtrack again. So you take this transaction, you have the header, you put a transaction and then you hash them all and you get a number, all right? And then you can submit this to the Bitcoin network. And the Bitcoin network needs to tell if this is a valid block or not. What makes this, this, this, this block valid or not? Well, anything you have on a computer is pretty much can be translated to a number, right? And the thing is that we want. So, so the thing is like you have this process that is random that you could have, like that could be any number and whatever. Then you have this number and you can set a number here and you can say, well, if this is below this threshold, this is valid. Or if this is, you have this number and you want. Sorry, you have the number that draws the validity and then you have the hash and then you can say if the hash is bigger than the number is valid and if the hash is smaller than number is valid. Now if you have the valid number, very small. Look at all this gap here. There's so much valid numbers, right? But if you actually make the numbers smaller, smaller, smaller. Like if you made the number 10. Well, there's only 10 possible outcomes out of the. Literally all the numbers. Well, it's not all the numbers, but it's 2 to the 32 minus 1. But, but pretty much. And I'm sure at this point everyone goes like, whoa. Well, that's what makes it difficult is like the smaller you make this number, the less number they are. And the reason we have this mechanism and Satoshi came up with this, which is truly probably the only thing that actually he did invent in this Bitcoin stuff. Everything was used is he figured out a way, the more people come in, we have to make it harder, how you just make this number smaller. But that's how mining works. And so, so I, so you, you take the block, you put the transactions there, you start hashing them, and probably the first time you're going to hash them, this is not going to be, it's not going to be in the target There, unless you're extremely lucky. And, and Satoshi realizes and says like, well, let's just add a counter here which you just literally increment. You go, and you can try these things, right? And this, this counter in the block, it's called the nonce. I'm sure a lot of people heard of this. Nonce means number used once, right? And the single purpose of this number is just so you can have lotto tickets pretty much, right? So you can keep iterating. Iterating. Now, this number here is 2 to the power of 32, which even though may seem a very big number, it's not. And because of statistical variations and other things and the distribution of, well, distribution of luck, pretty much you could absolutely, because this is strictly purely random process, you could go for the full range of these numbers and you're just not going to get lucky. It's not enough. So you have to try one more time. And Satoshi knew this also and he said, well, you can go for all these numbers from 1 to the power of 2 to the 32. And if you don't have another one, we just have a second number here which you increment. And because another very important thing with a hash, like if you change one small minute thing anywhere, it changes the whole output completely. So now you already went for all the options, you can go from 1 to the power of 32. So you have a second number. You tweak this and you just get a fresh new set of numbers. Quite simple, quite brutal, but quite elegant. Now the first number that I'm talking about, you can see it in the block header. If you go on memple space or ever, you will see there it says, well, actually it's called bits, but that's the nonce. And equivalent is kind of the same thing, but the extra nonce is kind of a hack the extra nons. Because you're the miner and when you're the miner, you create all this transaction. You create a coinbase and in the coinbase you pay yourself and et cetera. She was like, well, just tweak a random fucking number here. Just tweak this part of the coinbase here so you can get a fresh new set of numbers. This is again from first day, right? So Sergio de Malerna, which, I mean the guy to come up with this fucking idea in 20, I don't know, 13, wherever it was, because everyone looked at this. But to look at the second number that you tweak and be like, you know what, I think we can extract something from here. So what ended up happening? This second number that you. So not the nonce, the nonce is one from two to the power for two. And it's just really random. But the second tweak number here, this has a bug Satoshi fucked up when he implemented this thing. All right? So you would be thinking to yourself, well, this makes pretty much sense. You, like you're a miner, you start mining 1 from 2 to the power for 2, you go for it, you start from 1, you make it 2 and I go again. Maybe you go 3 times, 5 times. But then let's just say it takes you 5 times. These numbers are just. They don't reflect reality, by the way, just to be clear. So you do that five times, you found the block. Really makes sense to reset this thing and start from zero, like a respectable gentleman, right? And the thing is, Satoshi, when he implemented his bitcoin mining, he made some small mistakes. And this number doesn't reset, right? Even though this number should reset, it only resets when you turn off your node on and off. Let me just pull this bit of code here, right? So you would expect this number to reset, but it doesn't reset. So now if you turn on your node and you start mining and this number doesn't reset, this number just became an uptime counter, right? It's just like, so how long has this guy been mining from? Well, as long as his extra nonce was on and the extra nonce is on the blockchain, the coinbase. So now you have this as a counter. Now the thing is that there's like a few things to understand here. I'm not sure if it makes sense to really explain it, but the thing is, it not only doesn't reset after this thing, but it also increments when it checks for a block. What does this mean? So you are a miner and you're mining, you're doing your own business, but as you are trying to, as you're mining and you're constructing this new block with this new nonce, you have to check, is this valid? Is this below the hash? So because again, it was just like where he placed the function to. Well, it's a while loop. It's not a function to check this thing. He just, he just made such a small error, it just triggers it more times. So the extra analyse counter doesn't reset when you find a block and it also increments when you look for blocks. So not only that, it doesn't reset and it tells you how long this Node has been online. It also does it at some kind of a random thing. So it makes it like a fingerprint, makes it even more identifiable and whatever. Now I should be very clear here that and this was pretty much the criticism that a lot of people threw at the Patoshi pattern, Which I don't 100% agree with, but it is somewhat valid. It's like, right, but if you have tens of thousands of miners, which the Patoshi pattern focuses on a biddler, period, other things could happen. There's statistical anomalies and whatever. So maybe you shouldn't be too sure of this. Well, who cares? Who gives a fuck? Because for me, I know at block 49ers only three fucking people. One of them couldn't get it up. Can't get the note up. Hal Finney is what I'm talking about. And there's two other nodes, like the chance of having more nodes. Let's just say maybe there's five more that came up and whatever. Get out of here. Forget about it. There's no way. There's no way that happened, you know, so for me, this analysis and this logic, it's like sin from heaven. Because guess what? I have almost no noise here. So I could start drawing. I could start looking at and draw my conclusions. And so I did. Let me just take a sip because I just ranted for such a long time.
- [41:48]
B
No, it's. It's a good refresher on the difficulty target nonces, extra nonces. And the fact that Satoshi was fallible in the beginning. Launching with this, this bug, this hard code bug.
- [42:01]
A
I mean, he was so fucking fallible. So fallible. And he said the word retarded, which counts for something. Is there any way by. We can. We can add this, this picture on the screen? Because I think I would be able
- [42:17]
B
to share if you hit share.
- [42:19]
A
Oh my God. Share my browser. I think it's easier to convince.
- [42:24]
B
Just send me the link, I'll pull it up.
- [42:28]
A
Easier to convince me to have unprotected sex. What you think?
- [42:32]
B
Bitcoin miner.com.
- [42:35]
A
so I sent it here in the thing and then this other one also.
- [42:42]
B
Oops. Well, all right.
- [42:49]
A
So where we're looking at, we have a chart here which is. I'm telling you, it's way more simpler than you actually think it is. So on the horizontal ox axis, we take blocks. So the number there means that if you go at 50, that's block 50, it goes to zero to 200. We're focusing on the spirit because we know block one. Hundred and seventy is when we know how many the transaction. So we'll just focus on the spirit. And then on the all Y axis, on the other thing there, we're just charting this value, this value of the counter, the extra. The second counter that I was talking about, right? And the thing is like, remember this. What happens here is that this number goes up all the time, right? And it tells us how much. How much it goes up. And the thing is like, when it resets, we know for a fact it only resets in this particular version of Bitcoin code, it only resets when you turn off your node. Like if you turn it off and you turn it on, that doesn't get saved anymore in the memory and gets resetted. So every time we see. We see. Sorry. So we have all these like. So. So a blue dot here on the chart. If you look there and it's like around 50 and 50, because you can see it there, that means at Block 50 there was an extra amount of the value of 50. Right? That's what this means. So now we can kind of see that they form this kind of like squiggly things that go like this. And then they're kind of like grouped a bit more. You can always see there's some kind of a grouping or something like this. And the thing is, like, this is the way we interpret this. So the number starts from zero at the bottom and it goes up, it goes up, it goes up, it goes up. And then nothing happens. And then we see it starts another line. So that means that the. No reset. Sorry, you were going to say.
- [44:31]
B
No, no. So I was going to pull up the other chart, which I think highlights.
- [44:37]
A
Let's leave this one for a bit more because I think there's a bit more to clarify here. Right. So the thing is, like, we can see the reason these groupings form is because again, at some point the chart goes up, but then it starts from zero. So if we know the number starts the second count or the extra non number goes to zero only when this. When a node resets. And now here's another thing to understand. Like, well, if you have two consecutive. If you have the groupings and it goes from one to two, that could be really lucky because all nodes start from zero. All nodes go to one. Right? But the thing is, as each number you add, it's less likely to be a random occurrence, right? It just makes sense. It's like if you have one random event and you're like one. Okay. It's like the more Coin flips you do, the harder is to guess, you know what I'm trying to say. So not only that this means that the, so the, the bigger this, this, this thing goes, the, the more certain we are because it's like really, what is the chance someone is going to go up to 200. Come on, let's be honest. On a smaller one. Yeah. You know, you can't be sure. So this is. So just by looking here we can see that. Oh, wait a minute. This is quite interesting because we see, we kind of see these groupings here, so we don't know if they're all the same node, but we can say maybe, Maybe one turd like that with the red thing, I think that's a node.
- [46:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. Again, going back to the probabilistic chance of different nodes having consecutive higher extra nonce numbers is very low, particularly at this point in time in Bitcoin's history.
- [46:16]
A
Absolutely.
- [46:17]
B
And so we're assuming, looking at, if you're looking at the screen, if you're not looking, we're looking at the Potoshi pattern and you basically just assume that Satoshi mined all these blocks that we're highlighting here. Or one entity did.
- [46:30]
A
Not yet. Not yet. We're saying one entity mined at least one third. That's for now. For now. But yes, of course we're going to get there. But that's where we are right now in the story. That's all we can claim for what we have from what we have.
- [46:43]
B
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- [49:01]
A
Yes please.
- [49:02]
B
So now we have included context here which gets back to the fact that the network was halted or may have been halted eight times based off the time analysis that you did on the first, what, 170 blocks? Yeah.
- [49:20]
A
So the thing is now this is pretty much the same chart. It's just a bit more elongated. And the earlier chart was just more obvious that to point out the groupings. Right. So every time we see we go from so now we have these groupings and I was like, you know what's so interesting because remember I found the big time Gaps, right? So now I'm just looking at this thing and I was like, oh man, wouldn't be so strange if somehow there would be some alignment between when this event of node reset happens and the times. And I look at it and I'm like, Jesus fucking cries. This is nuts. It actually happens almost every single time with two exceptions. And those actually help our case. We'll see later. Every single time the node resets so like it goes from top to down. There's a big time gap between blocks, right? So we know that's an event. That means the node resets and then we see a big time gap between gaps between blocks. Oh, this means whoever is mining this stuff is turning off their node. That's why there's no more blocks to be produced. And now you're gonna be like, yeah, sure, I mean, you know, maybe there was Internet, whatever, right? But the reason why I'm so certain it's turning off because. So you can look at all the other time gaps and be like, maybe, I don't know, whatever. But it's like when it's 24 hours, clearly that person turned off their node. There was no one enough to get online and, you know, no one mined any blocks. And so the 24 and the eight hours one, I mean, I don't think anyone could argue with me right now. There's another two hour and 45 minutes one also the same. And there's a three hour one and there's a few like 30 and 44 minutes. And you're right, that would be statistically sound, but it's statistically sound to have some of them, but not to have so many, right? So when I looked at this, I'm like, oh my God. This is kind of interesting because this kind of means there is just no one here. And the network halted eight times. And this, I mean, again, it's just feels so together to not make any sense.
- [51:19]
B
And so this is where it ties into the Tor node, Right, right, the tour node.
- [51:23]
A
Exactly. I forgot about. So now. Because that's why we started on this whole fucking thing. So now I'm looking at this thing and I'm just kind of thinking to myself, well, we know for a fact there weren't that many people around here on the network as the first thing. And then we know that there were the. We know we have this condition and we need two people to mine two nodes. Two nodes at least to mine on the network. That being said, you could have opened the code and changed that. However, I doubt it. And here's the thing, why I doubt it, because even Satoshi had trouble compiling the code and make it run. So whoever was running this was most probably like using Satoshi's code and whatever. Anyway, so we know there's very low activity. We know we need two nodes, and we know from House Debugfeld at least at Block 49, and there's a yellow line there. So we know at least this, this realm we can be very certain. We know what I'm trying to get at. Sorry, I'm over explaining right now. It's like the fucking network is halting. We know there's two nodes there. Jesus fucking Christ. Clearly they must be the same entity because they're too in sync, right? They're too in sync. Like when they go out, both of them probably look like they go out, right? And here's the interesting part. There's an exception. There is an exception to where there's no big time gaps between blocks. You know where the exception is at Block 49, when we know both of the nodes were there, right? You can see there, it's a 12 minute. All the other have big time blocks, only these ones have 12 minutes, which is like normal and whatever. And I also do a very crude statistical analysis here. And I looked and this is from Block 29 to Block 77. And it looks like again, and the average here is about 10.7 minutes, which is what we're going for. It's not a proof per se, but it's actually like, looks like it was a healthy thing. Which again, we know this was happening in the, in the node. So you know, when I looked at this stuff and whatever, I was like, oh my God, I just think it's so hard to not really be like, it must have been Satoshi, because Satoshi started off, see there's. He saw not even Hal was like, yeah, sure, let's, let's jump in and whatever. He's like, dear God, if I don't have anything here on this network, it's not gonna go further. People need to jump in and also like, maybe they start their own bitcoins or whatever. Let me just spin up a tornado, you know, and then to tie it in a bow and whatever. There's this other email that Satoshi had. So after this whole hullabaloo happens and whatever and whatnot, Satoshi writes an email to Hal and says like, dude, you were keeping the network alive. And sorry, I can't try things out right now because I'm in a place where I can't accept incoming connections. And that is what a Tor node could do, at least in the context of this node and whatever, it cannot accept incoming connection. So I was like, oh yeah, this is fucking nothing.
- [54:08]
B
He couldn't get to his clearnet node to accept incoming connections.
- [54:13]
A
I don't know why.
- [54:14]
B
Tor wouldn't have done it anyway. Is that what you're saying?
- [54:17]
A
Not quite. I could have been more clear one second. So the thing is like in the Bitcoin Core Version 0.1, the one we're working with, you could not accept incoming connections. So Satoshi says here, Unfortunately, I can't receive incoming connections from where I am. From where I am, which has made things more difficult. You're not receiving incoming connection was the main thing keeping the network going for the first two days. So Satoshi, what I'm reading here is like where I am. So Satoshi is somewhere else where he's not home, but he's on setup. So he's probably just connecting via Tor to be private. And with Tor you can't accept incoming connections. So it's a hint towards the fact that again, I mean, again, what is the coincidence he mentions this when we have the Tor node and whatever.
- [55:11]
B
What fascinates me about how much work you put into this, some research, is that it's just like the first few days of the network going live because there's so much in this short period of time, the 72 to 96 hour period that I mean, you articulated in the video and in the article, so much rested on this early interaction with the bitcoin network.
- [55:35]
A
Yes, yes. And the thing is, by the way, so we didn't really touch this, but most of the emails with Satoshi and Hal, Hal says this doesn't work and they try to fix it and it's just hair pulling and nothing works. And this doesn't work and there's one node and whatever, dude, this thing almost barely take off. I mean it was the most dinkiest. It almost is like, God, it's like was pushing it from behind because it's like everything that could have gone wrong went in the absolute worst way that could have gone wrong. You know, it was, it was a fucking shit show. And think about it like this, with all this shit showing, whatever this, how this. It's Hal Finney and Dustin Tremel. I don't even know what I mean, they're probably fucking retarded or crazy or something because you have to be so retarded to look at this and to be like, you know what, man? I think this deserves a chance. I think we need to look at this. Well, again, we can't ask how, when we should ask Dustin at some point because it just almost makes no sense. It just. Wow. Wow. That's all I can say.
- [56:36]
B
Yeah. Now I feel like I need to get Dustin on if he would come on to talk about this stuff because it's fascinating. And you highlighted too, you have the emails lining up with satoshi sending version 0.1.1 to HAL and then him tweeting out a few hours later running Bitcoin. So you can tell that the tweet sort of lines up with the back and forth email. He had to try to fix the bugs and get a new version.
- [57:01]
A
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I think we can turn off the screen share. I don't think we need it anymore. Yeah. And also another question that you may think, well, what if Dustin was the Tor node? Sorry, I forgot to mention, Dustin also had some private conversations with Satoshi which she also released. So I also looked at those emails for some other stuff and he actually shares his IP address with Satoshi there. So that's why I think it's not him and I think he even said this.
- [57:31]
B
So the thesis is essentially that to bootstrap the network in the early days, Satoshi had a clearnet node and a node running through Tor that were connected and mining blocks so that when other individuals join the network like Hal and Dustin, it looked like there was activity already and they could have peers and begin mining immediately to improve the user experience. So why, why is this important? Why is it important to know all this?
- [58:00]
A
I don't. Because it's cool, dude. What do you mean why it's important? It's like why do you fall in love with a woman? Why do you go there? Why do you sometimes feels like you're like there? That's. I have to go there. That's where it is. That's the prize. I fucking see it. I know it. That's why you do it. I mean, how could I have ever first seen this, you know, There was no way. It just. I just couldn't leave it alone. I just could not fucking leave it alone. And I was right. I mean, I'm always right. Everyone when they feel like, I see you're always right. It doesn't matter what. When you just like, you know, it's like this tiny string that kind of like. And you have to listen to it, you know, that's why you can't have bullshit around your head because you have to listen to that tiny whisper, you know? Or maybe this is how I'm going to. I'm telling the world that I'm fucking crazy and retarded. The whisper that told me, we all are.
- [58:46]
B
But no, I think you made a good point in the video and in the article. It's like, I think if the thesis that you put out there is believable, which I think it certainly is, what does it debunk? Like, was bitcoin created by the nsa? What was the type of person. Like, what type of person was Satoshi?
- [59:03]
A
I think that's a very good point. And I even forgot about it. That kind of came to me later. But it was like, dude, when you see how fucked up this whole thing was, and again, how many, like, things were just happening wrong, I just feel like the chance that thinking this was created by the nsa, I mean, you have to be really, really, really. I can't prove it, right? Because you could say, well, the NSA may have done this and whatever, but that. I think that's a bit retarded because, I mean, I just feel like if you'd give me a million dollars and you would say, construct the chaos like this, I don't think you. I don't think you could do it. I really don't think so. So, yeah, when you look at it and the biggest. The fact that it went so bad and so poorly and nothing worked and whatever, I think this is the biggest proof that it was organic. Really. You know, so, yeah. And also, like, this whole bullshit about it was a woman. Nothing against women, by the way. I'm not trying to say anything. It was. Maybe it's a woman. Maybe it's a group of people. Dude, come on, look at this. This is some fucking guy with a laptop like you and me. For some fucking reason, he figured this out. He put it on the Internet. He was talking with. With some random guy on the Internet and with two random guys on the Internet, that was it. He made a fucking pet project. Come on, let's be honest. This is what happened, you know?
- [60:18]
B
Well, that's the other point too. Like, could bitcoin have easily died in the cradle if Dustin and Hal didn't care to actually try to get it working?
- [60:28]
A
My opinion is that, I mean, the thing is, like, you never know, right? But I just feel like. Do you guys know that video? It's a very old video. There's this guy, this rave on a hill, and he's dancing like this and whatever, you know? And then there's one, the first person that comes and the other one and whatever and whatnot. And he goes. And then, oh my God, it's so passe to not be a part of it and do that. I just feel like that's really what it is. It's like, well, the narrator says the second guy doesn't come and nothing comes afterwards, you know, So I really feel like it's hard to even put into words how important was not only Hal but also Dustin equally? Equally. Absolutely equally. Just being willing to do this, you know, and to participate there.
- [61:15]
B
I mean, I know you're focused on the first 170 blocks, but like, did you research how long it took for more note? Like, when did Marty mommy join? Like, when did it get beyond three people and the tour node that we're suspecting is Satoshi?
- [61:32]
A
Well, I haven't really looked because fucking it took a year to look at this. I don't know. So maybe in the next research we'll see. But while Mami came way later. Actually, when Mami came, he was. I think he came before they have. They had Bitcoin Talk, which wasn't even called Bitcoin Talk. It was hosted on Bitcoin.org, but it's the same interface. I really don't know I have any minus. But I don't know by. But it was. It was way more popular at this point. There were people talking. It was. It had a community at that point we can claim at least that.
- [62:01]
B
Yeah, well, that brings up another good point. Like, what other forensic excursions do you plan on going on? Or what other.
- [62:08]
A
Oh, I have a few other things that I'm going to. I mean, I already filmed one video. It's not as big as this one is, not as grandiose or a bit more smaller. I also figured out some very interesting. I just don't want to like share them because they're not super important. But people have questions about why Satoshi made certain weird decisions in the code and whatnot. And there's so many questions on Stack Exchange and the answer is always like, you have to ask Satoshi. And I think I figured out one of this, but it doesn't change anything. I just kind of have enough context from the chaos and I'm like, oh, that's why it was actually nothing Burger. I just traced this part of the code. But what other thing that I want to do and whatever. I mean, I don't have any more, for instance, investigations. But I'm making movies, man. I'm a movie director. That's what I do. So are we wrapping up, by the way?
- [62:55]
B
No, we don't have to keep going. I actually wanted to touch on that, like the, the art side of this because, I mean, the production value was incredible. And I think telling.
- [63:04]
A
Thank you.
- [63:04]
B
These bitcoin stories in this way, in this engaging way is very important. And I know you've been sort of iterating on this art form within bitcoin for years and I think the output is incredible. So your worldview and bringing this artistic touch to the bitcoin world.
- [63:23]
A
Yeah, well, I never really think about like that. It's going to sound so insane, but like everything I said here. But I just want to see that video. I know no one is going to make this video, never, ever in a thousand years. And I have to see. I just need to see that. I need to see it on the screen. I don't get this bullshit about I don't watch my stuff. Shut the fuck up. I watched it. I watched it yesterday, I watched it today. I love it. I fucking love it. How good it is, you know, And I just want to see that video. I like it so much. I love this stuff. I can't get enough of it. Everyone that knows me in real life knows this is how. This is what I breathe every time if I'm somewhere. I talk about bitcoin, weird things. I just want to see this thing. So I just wanted to do it like this. That's what I was thinking about. But I do kind of feel like, I don't know, we'll see where it goes. But I feel like without sucking my own dick, fucking set a new standard. I think, I think I sound. As I said, I think this is a new standard. If I don't say so.
- [64:23]
B
Well, good. We need to raise the standards. It's a pretty high standard. I mean, the behind the scenes sort of B roll cut that you include in there, we have the camera on the track and you're pushing it towards your laptop. And took a lot of time and effort to set it up.
- [64:39]
A
Yeah. But the thing is like, dude, what is Dirt House to do in life? When you think about it, man, you're gonna die, dude. You're gonna die. Everything you know is gonna die. Everyone know is gonna die. And. And the craziest part is that you can't even be sure that when you're awake, this is real. I mean, just think about, think about how many times I'm sure everyone can relate this. You have a dream, you think it's so sure and it goes away.
- [65:06]
B
This Morning.
- [65:07]
A
I don't believe. Really?
- [65:09]
B
Yeah.
- [65:09]
A
Are you serious?
- [65:11]
B
Yeah. I mean, I. I have pretty vivid dreams. Yeah.
- [65:16]
A
Well, anyway, the point is, like, that's what life could be. So the only thing you could do philosophically, if you want to be philosophically rational, is you have to pick something and go get the high score on that. That's the only thing. And it doesn't have to be stale. This is just my own retardation, which is fine, but it could be other things, you know, so the reason why it's like you have to put everything in something. When you do something, it has to be the best of all time. You owe it. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to whatever data you kind of. It's kind of like life is like a bag of goodies. You keep taking back things only you can put something back because it's so vast and so big and such a crazy hard thing to contribute is you have to really, really, really give it everything. And even if you don't contribute something back, at least you spent your time well, you know, so that's how I think about it anyway. It's never like the stuff. But yes, I like to brag. I'm very braggadocious. Absolutely. And I do like this. I like to be like, ah, look how good my stuff is. Yeah. I put in the work, though.
- [66:17]
B
I appreciate the confidence. We need more confident people in this world. What movies are you working on right now, if you're allowed to elaborate?
- [66:24]
A
Absolutely. I have two movies coming out then one that's gonna come out the next month. I don't know if it's gonna be 30 or 40 days. Depends. It's filmed. It's a short movie about bitcoin core and it follows this fictionalized story of myself where I use bitcoin core and I need to verify the PGP keys. And I'm so retarded that I decide that I need to find. So when you verify the PGP key, there are certain people that sign it. And I'm like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go across the world, take planes and find the people to who verify the PGP key to verify the PGP key around them. And you have in this video, MZ Shorz Provost. You also have some. A few other cameos there. And it's, again, it's still very jokey and whatever, but it's way more narrative and, and, and by the way, if you like this stuff, you want a place in history, you know what I'M looking for sponsors in this. In this movie. Because, I mean, well, I just. In this specific video with a thing. I really didn't want to add any sponsors because I wanted to be pure and I didn't want to taint it in any way. But I'm a businessman. I'm a fucking priest and cost a lot of money out of my own pocket to make these things. So I would. I would be very happy to have sponsors. And your logo will be included there. And it's not going to be just the fucking logo there. Put. It's going to be an object, as you can see at the end of the video and whatever. So if you want to do that, please hit me up. And I also have this other movie that I've been working on, which is called Satoshis Don't Exist. I started in 2023 and, well, again, it was just one of those things that annoyed me. It was like, when you think about it, the satoshi units don't exist and they're not present in the code. And I was trying to have conversations with people like this, and they were so like, you're wrong. You're stupid. I was like, can we please just look at a code? And I said, no. I was like, I'll make a movie about it. And. And the thing is that when I started that movie, I wasn't so versed in cinematography, but I kind of got to that point. And then I was like, oh, you know what? And I got some money. People are very helpful. It was. It was absolutely cool. But I just feel like I know at this point, with my own two hands, a light bulb and a camera, I can rival any college production. Of course, not in scale or like this, but I know. I mean, I know I could do that. I've done it now. So anyway, so I wanted. I feel like the Satosh don't exist because that's a proper feature film. And I also went to Azores. I filmed there. And there's a lot of stuff I wanted to really, really show that I'm good at cinematography, give me a lot of money, because I know this could be a great thing that's going to go all over the world. So I took all the money that I raised for that one and I made this MVP version of the video short movie how to Install Bitcoin Core. And then, I swear to God, I was ready to launch it. This whole thing started when I was ready to launch it last year. I was absolutely ready. And then this thing fell in my lap and I was like, okay, here we go, another side quest. Let's go. I promise, listen, I promise I'm not taking any side quest. And for the people, like the movie is filmed, by the way. It's not going to take. It's filmed, it's ready. I could release it tomorrow if we want to. I just need to find some sponsorships and whatever, you know. And I mean, again, just think about it. If you want to see more content like this, send me a donation or something because again, you cannot imagine how hard it is. And I mean the minimum amount of takes is 50 takes. So you know, there's, there's moments in this movie like the beginning of the dusting thing that took two weeks. That's a four second shot. Took two weeks just doing it and doing it. So you know, damn.
- [69:44]
B
Yeah, but Alex, I was told AI is going to take all the, all the filmmaking jobs. Is this true?
- [69:51]
A
I think there is true this because, you know, I, first of all, I never use the eye in my stuff because I'm at a as as of this recording. There's no AI in the planet that could do things better than I could do with a camera and a light bulb. But it's gonna change, you know, what's gonna happen. Here's what I predict and I'm probably, I hope I'm gonna be one of these people. I think we're gonna have the first feature film dead by a single person. And there's gonna be one guy in his living room and he's gonna act up all the parts and whatever because that's the hardest part is directing really what AI and being processed. I think there's gonna be one guy in his living room acting out all the parts and the AI will get so good at augmenting this stuff and then you're gonna see a lot of stuff like this. You know, there's Francis Ford Coppola and there's the film, the famous movie Apocalypse now. And he went through hell and, and again he's. I love these stories. I like it when someone just tells the world you're wrong and everyone just tries to fucking bash them and then he wins. But the thing is like, and that being said, collaboration is really good. And it's not like I'm trying to say like that's always better, but sometimes you can just eliminate the people you don't really need there and they're just trying to bring the vision down and they don't believe in it and you just eliminate overhead. And we're going to get better. Better. Everything for that, you know.
- [71:03]
B
Yeah. I love to hear it. I love to see you making this art because I'm putting these short films and feature films out. Very much looking forward to what you release next month.
- [71:15]
A
What are they called? What are they about? What are they called? What are they about?
- [71:19]
B
I'm talking about you. I said I love that you're making that.
- [71:21]
A
Oh, sorry.
- [71:23]
B
Because like I said, we need to elevate the aesthetics and the attention to detail when it comes to storytelling within Bitcoin. I think your first Bitcoin miner short film is what I'd call it. Or expose. I don't know what you're calling it, but that's what I view it as. It was beautifully done, engaging, and highly educational. So thank you for doing it, brother.
- [71:47]
A
No, thank you for watching, man. And, I mean, I just couldn't be more happy, you know, because I will tell, like, there was some time, because here's the thing. I knew this was good. I knew I had lighting in a battle, and I. If there's something in my control, there's not an ounce of doubt. I will fucking find a way, and I'll find it. It never happens that I know I can make. There's nothing that will get in my way to get the vision that I have. It never did. Of course, I kick and cry along the way, but. And scream, but. But I get here eventually, but. But the thing that you can't control is how people react to it. And I was. There was this moment where I was like, oh, man. I mean, what if people don't like it? And also, it is just like, even if they would have shot me in the head, I still could not change a single pixel of it. Right? So it was never, like, an option to be like, oh, well, if you want people to like, it changes. Like, that's not an option. I make the art. That's all. I make the art. You consume it. End of story. There's no changing or anything like that. My vision is pure and goes out in the world, you know?
- [72:41]
B
Yeah. How was the reaction? What you expected, or.
- [72:46]
A
I mean, I feel like this. There's a million fucking views. I'm not gonna look. 220k is respectable. And thank you to everyone who retweeted. I really appreciate it. And there are so many people that I know from a long time, and they really kind of championed this a lot. And. And I. I, without a doubt, if they would have not done this, he wouldn't have got all the, you know, the push and whatever. So I'm very happy and very thankful for that, you know, But I feel it deserves some. I mean, it's the most important and the most discussed moment in bitcoin history, you know, but in all fairness, in all jokes and all arrogance aside, like, the thing is, like, if you would give me this video or this article a year ago, I'm going to be honest, it would have took me more than probably two weeks to really understand what the fuck is going on here. And I think I have the best context. So as this is going to become more mature and whatever, I think people are going to look at it. People are going to find things. I hope they find things that are wrong. I hope they build on it, you know, And I think I'm pretty confident we'll get to a million views at some point, you know.
- [73:44]
B
Yeah, it's evergreen content and it'll get out there. This will be something that professors reference in the future when they're saying, you want to understand the early days of bitcoin, go check out Alex Waltz's first bitcoin miner expose.
- [74:00]
A
I don't. I mean, of course you can see how vain I am as a human being. Of course I wanted to have my name there. But in all fairness, you know, I think the, the thing that I'm super happy is that I just got to contribute to this thing, man. I got to contribute this. This thing. I've. I've. It's like 30 years now of my existence was pouring this thing and. And I've only got benefits from it really. And I actually made a contribution right now, a perfect contribution. And. And again now I'm switching arrogance back on. You know, all the clients and all these things that you have here, they're going to become obsolete. The story will never become obsolete, you know, so 100 years from now or whatever, they will. Even if it doesn't matter if they don't see what's down mine. But in this darkness of what the bitcoin moment was, I added just a tiny bit of a spotlight and that's everything.
- [74:49]
B
Yeah, no, if anything, it shifted conversation towards a more productive. More productive topic, I would argue, because the discourse has been pretty pissed forward last year.
- [75:03]
A
Yeah, well, you know, I also feel like the problem with the bitcoin stuff you were saying, like, do you see Coinbase, man? They have the best marketing on the planet. They are up to up with Apple right now, you know, and I really don't. I mean, I know I'm asking for money. I'm probably Going to piss off a lot of people. But like, guys, come on, you really think you're going to be better than Coinbase and take over the world and being the bitcoin domestic, when you share fucking memes that are low resolution coming step up your game, fucking hire me to make a commercial for you. You know what I'm saying?
- [75:32]
B
If you're listening, and I know many of you are working at bitcoin companies, seriously, take them up. We need, we need to elevate the game when it comes to competing with Coinbase commercials and telling the story.
- [75:43]
A
Yeah, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, it's like your responsibility to tell the story, you know, because you're going to spit the people to get it and whatever. And I think everyone has a really interesting story. The problem is you really need to be able to articulate it, you know, and I think I know a thing or two about that.
- [75:58]
B
Yeah. Well, we're gonna link to it in the show notes. If you haven't watched it yet, make sure you watch your freaks. And then if you're out there, I'm gonna support Alex. It does work. Reach out. Got more great art coming, coming to market. But thank you for telling the story. It was fascinating and I think it's a, like you said, it's an incredible contribution that will give people better context of the literal early days of bitcoin. The first few days of bitcoin, which again, I think that that was my favorite part is like the attention to detail to a. Thank you. 96 hour period.
- [76:33]
A
Thank you. Well, again, thank you very much for having me on. And alexwalt.com waltz spelled like the dance. If you want to find other shit that I did, find me on Twitter, Rado, tweet at me. Send me dick pics. I'm kidding. Only tits. Only tits. I don't like tits. And I don't know if you, if you, if you, if you feel like you want to do something great that could change the world and whatever, fucking hit me up, let's fucking do it. Let's turn the world fucking upside down.
- [76:57]
B
That's it. Peace of 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. Subscribe 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.