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THE Bitcoin Podcast
Bitcoin Kidnappings, AI Slop, Quantum FUD, and Memetic Warfare | coinjoined Chris
01:24:50
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- [00:00]
Chris
Every two days in France, a robbery, an abduction happened. They stuffed his wife into the trunk of a car for 48 hours and they took one of his fingers. Don't be an idiot such as ourselves. Don't be public about bitcoin. That is something that might bite us in the ass in the future if like cash would be like a newly invented thing they would not invent or allow it to happen. We need to improve bitcoin and make it as private and as scaled as possible before, you know, the government fully captures bitcoin in one way or another. Satoshi left that left. He left us all on our own terms and now we have this great thing that he came up with and we should not that up.
- [00:44]
Walker
Curious too, because you mentioned scaling bitcoin and privacy around bitcoin, which sounds like changing bitcoin. And I just like to ask, when did you become compromised?
- [00:52]
Chris
If you truly believe bitcoin needs to scale to 8 billion people and self custody should be done by your grandma, then we need to improve bitcoin just a little bit. Let's dig in, you know, let's end some career.
- [01:15]
Walker
Are we in the midst of the fourth turning or have we. Or do you stand by the bugle thesis that we're actually already in the first turning? Where are you at with this?
- [01:24]
Chris
So this would be my first turning that I presently like observe, to quote Steve Lupka. Be gentle. This is my first turning. I don't know what to expect. I'm just, you know, you know, I'm here for a good time, not a long time, you know. And I always quote my grandmother, like she in French said problem if, if you like, don't worry about things that you cannot change, essentially like the, the essence of that. And I try to, you know, take care of me and my family and then, you know, what happens, happens.
- [02:09]
Walker
Yeah, it's a, it's a good mentality to have. It turns out that's like when push comes to shove, you realize what's really important. I've just had a bit of a health emergency recently. You just kind of realize like, oh my God.
- [02:23]
Podcast Host
Wow.
- [02:23]
Walker
None, almost none of the stuff I was worried about or was pissed off about matters at all. And so I've just cut so much shit out. Yes. Am I posting fewer memes, you know, and fewer trolls? Sure. Is that a loss for the world? Perhaps. But not, not for me, you know, so it's, it's all, it's all about that balance. But dude, I'm stoked to have you on here. People may know you as the moderately tall European guy who sells industrial grade washers with a 50x markup for Bitcoin self custody Sidor. Yeah, I jest, I jest, but you do a lot more than that. You've got bitsurance now. You are quite a memetic savant, I would say, which again is always pleasantly surprising to see as a European. Just that like, you know, to be
- [03:16]
Chris
a funny people as Germans, is that something like a stereotype I'm unfamiliar with?
- [03:21]
Walker
I actually didn't want to assume you're German. You know, I thought maybe, maybe Scandinavian. Just given the height. I wasn't sure if German, you know, emotional repression had led to more stunted growth patterns, but clearly not. You've managed to break free of that. So that's, that's fantastic. I know, I jest, but you do post some, some dank memes and they're very much appreciated. And we've got a bunch of stuff I want to cover with you today here. But I mean, maybe I actually don't know your origin story with like cedar and bitcoin. How did you end up when, when was the point where you're like, here's the thing, guys, we're just going to throw a bunch of washers on a pipe and it's going to be a really efficient cold storage solution. By the way, our marketing strategy is just me making absurd memes and it's going to work like, because it has worked pretty darn well, I would say.
- [04:09]
Chris
I absolutely agree and that is the perfect encapsulation of how that happened. So as this tradition, as a German person, I studied mechanical engineering and I worked in aerospace. And as a material scientist, I did like some process simulation, but I'm not a proper coder. And luckily I didn't go into coding because that is all useless now. But I thought about how can I contribute to bitcoin? Because I've been in this space for quite some time. I really enjoyed it and I saw what, you know, is at stake. After, like, of course, I entered the space by number, go up and I was amazed by like, wow, you can get rich. And then I realized, oh, there's more to this. It's freedom technology. And probably I should, you know, at least as a side project, help contribute, make this better. And like, the only thing as a material scientist that I could do is come up with the best, you know, backup for, for your private keys. And then I looked at all these 74 different competitors and went to the hardware store and went to my CNC milling shop. And yeah, created cdor and yeah, having no budget at all allocated for this, I just, you know, created a personal brand or like a heavily doubled down on my. My meme skills that I've honed over, like, I don't know, over a decade on Reddit. On Reddit, it was important to be original. Like, you were not allowed to repost or like steal other people's content. You would have been shamed. Something that is like, you know, on Twitter, like everybody does. But like on Reddit you have to like, oh, can't steal content. So I really like, pride myself in only making original memes. And they are an acquired taste, I would say so. But enough people seem to like them. And yeah, it helped Cedor not only grow for me, like site passion project, but into an actual bitcoin job. So it pays my salary, it pays all my travel expenses if I go to a conference and I enjoy time with friends on the company dime. And I can pay people a salary with, with cdaw, which is, which is amazing if you think about it. At the same time, I also invested in a small startup called Bitsurance where we, you know, again, deal with a topic of loss and the physical threats to bitcoin, or rather to bitcoin holders. And yeah, that's an insurance company that protects not your bitcoin but yourself in the event somebody robs you, threatens you or your family, and then asks for bitcoin. In the event that you are robbed, you can give the attacker the bitcoin and you would be covered. So far, only available in Europe. But my good friends over at Anchor Watch, they do something very similar in America and it is entirely underserved market. And yeah, so having observed this gap in coverage and being a mechanical engineer, as I always say, jack of all trades, master of none, I have like a good top view of things and I can, you know, contribute a little bit to all of these things. But I think bitcoin memes are my icky guy. I continue to do them.
- [07:28]
Walker
I want to get into the meme side of things a little bit too. But first I do want to say, I mean, it is good that you guys are providing this product in Europe because, I mean, in France alone, I don't know. I mean, I kind of know what's going on over there. I know there was somebody that somebody inside the government was like selling actually personal data and like basically working with the. I don't know if you call them gangs or whatever, Le gang or something like that.
- [07:52]
Chris
With criminals.
- [07:53]
Walker
Yeah, so like what was happening? Can you break that down? What was happening over there?
- [07:57]
Chris
So yeah, in general we've seen a very steep increase in five dollar ranch attacks globally. But like the number one country they occur right now is France. And that has to do with the fact that the IRS equivalent in France, an employee there leaked not just crypto or bitcoin holders addresses, but wealthy people's addresses for as low as €800 a population. And then it's not like regular criminals but like professional criminals. They are like masterminds in the behind scenes and then they hire like hoodlums off telegram to come visit you and they then know okay this person is showing me a decoy wallet. But given they you know, obediently paid their taxes I know they must have more. So you know, take a finger and yeah, there has been increasing number of these events. So much so that like just this year alone every two days in France a robbery, an abduction happened. Like Jameson Loft keeps tracking them and he only has public sources and he recently had to redact some of them because like or not he had to, he had to correct them because he said oh I only reported on 37 but so far it has been almost 50. The official police reports came out because if you are in such an like robbery or abduction event, like you're not necessarily talking to the media to have additional like press coverage and afterwards like the police crime statistics, they associate the encrypted with that specific crime. And yeah, so I always say like that the best insurance for that is to tell nobody about your bitcoin or that you have bitcoin. Don't go flaunting wealth. The second best thing is to have some kind of five dollar rent insurance that would give you a bargaining chip in the event somebody comes and robs you. There's kidnap and ransom insurance, there is like bitsurance where we can, you know, you can say here's €100,000, 500,000 worth of Bitcoin, be gone, go with God. And in the end you know like you save your skin and hopefully you get the bitcoin replaced or you're feared to buy bitcoin again. But, but these things, you know, they're on the rise and it just makes sense because it is this perfect asset that can be transferred under coercion and there is no like undo button. Like there was this very famous case like one and a half years ago with the co founder of Ledger, he was abducted in Viason and like he's no longer with the company but he's like 100 millionaire. And he took some innocent pictures of his new house and there was enough for, for the criminal gangs to find him and they abducted him. They asked for 20 million euros in bitcoin. They, they stuffed his wife into the trunk of a car for 48 hours and they, they took one of his fingers. And that is a guy who had like a special team taking care of his security. He had all these kinds of. Yeah. Training in that kind of situation. And, and there was a very smart negotiator apparently who managed to convince the criminals instead of taking bitcoin to take tether which was then instantly frozen. Which is kind of like you're getting that far. And then you take tether. Come on. And yeah, I mean he was luckily liberated on a pure coincidence. Like there was a police officer who noticed a. Reports coming in of a invalid or stolen license plate seen near a nearby hotel or something. And that's why they then found and rescued him and later found his wife in the trunk of a car. But like that scenario, that is insane. But bitcoin is an asset that you know, did 100x from 2017 and people go around flaunting their wealth and don't think they can be a target. And you know, people need to step up their opsec.
- [12:08]
Walker
No, it's, it's very true and it's. Sadly in Europe you guys don't have, don't have guns. Which, which makes things.
- [12:16]
Chris
That is a misconception. We have, we have all of the guns and I would even say like except for weapons of war which would probably also be quite difficult to get maybe outside of Tennessee. But like we, we can have guns. It's no problem. Like we don't have these open carry licenses unless you're like a licensed investigator or something. But home defense, like with guns is possible. But yeah, the best defense is a good security strategy and like to not let it get that far. But yeah, I mean there have been cases in America as well. Like in New York they had a guy abducted in like for like several days and they tortured him. And very, very gruesome cases because it's just, you know, information that can be beat out of you. And then there's this reports by Guard, Guard IO accompanied by Elena of Satoshi Labs and Max, formerly Wasabi. They looked at all the reported cases and what I've heard like a lot of feedback that I've gotten due to all these five dollar range attacks. Is it actually smart to have your bitcoin in self custody? Should I not have it on an exchange and like that report flat out showed us that it doesn't make a difference whether it's on an exchange or self custody. Either you log into your coinbase account or you have to unlock your hardware signer. There are ways with like time lock, multisig, etc to, to, to protect you or rather protect your Bitcoin, but not to protect your like your health I would say. And yeah, it's, it's again the perfect assets. And that comes with a lot of downsides too.
- [13:58]
Walker
It's an interesting point on the, let's say the multi sig front because like, you know, like without getting into details, like there's no way that I can even act like I can't do anything with my Bitcoin, you know, if I'm at my house and I can't even do it in the country. Like there are, you know, are multiple geographic redundancies and like the difficulty there is that some people may be too. Your attacker may be too stupid to understand that. Like look, like I'm telling you I can't access my, like it's literally impossible for me to do anything. They'll be like, okay, we'll take another finger, then we'll see. Then we'll see if you can access those bitty coins. And you're like, no, I'm, I'm telling you don't understand. It's, it's, it's multi sig. Like come on manuscript.
- [14:44]
Chris
I have this very mimetic slide in my presentation of this guy next to a whiteboard frantically explaining like, oh, it's geographically distributed. I cannot access right now. Like the hoodlum that is hired, he does not care. Like you will have to give up something if it is a kidney or something else. So in that event it is probably smart to have a decoy wallet or like an old ledger that you can give out with some sum that seems plausible at least. So make it worth their time and then yeah, I'm turning my own horn, but insurance can be a part of that. But I don't want to lose the Last Noster Life. We should probably stop talking about insurance now.
- [15:24]
Walker
No, no, I mean I think the operational security side is like a really, really important thing for people to pay attention to because it's also a function of like, okay, you may not think that you have a lot of wealth right now, but fast forward, you know, if Bitcoin does what we all believe it is going to do and what it has done historically, like yeah, you know, I like if you're like me and you know, you only got into bitcoin a few years ago and you're like okay, yeah, it's not like I'm a big whale, you know, like why would anybody target me? Well in the future, anybody who's buying right now in 20, you know, if you go to 2035, if you were buying in 2025, people are going to be like, or 2026 people are going to be like oh my God. They must have you know, bajillion trillion dollars in bitcoin. Like it's, it's all just like a game of time, right? And so I think being better prepared in the present just is the, is a prudent choice for people. Like you should be paying attention to these things. You should be careful. I was going to be just like, yeah, careful about what you post more broadly because especially with, with AI, it's so much easier to geolocate these days too. Like you can do it trivially easy. And so people are like, you know, you should be conscious of that. Right?
- [16:28]
Podcast Host
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- [17:19]
Walker
through every market cycle in the last
- [17:21]
Podcast Host
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- [19:52]
Chris
Yeah, I mean like everything becomes much more accessible through AI like deception, social engineering like voice models, video fakes, all these things. Yeah. Be vigilant and like don't be an idiot such as ourselves. Don't be public about Bitcoin. That is something that might bite us in the ass in the future because even like 17 years in everybody that gets into bitcoin now is in my opinion very very early to this. And yeah no price prediction but nominally I will would bet my ass that we will see an increase at an all time high in your time. Like and all these things like correlate very closely. Like these five dollar range attacks correlate really closely with the price. And yeah there's don't, don't trust. Yeah verify I would say. And don't count on other people helping you in that case.
- [20:50]
Walker
Yeah, yeah. Speaking of things that AI enables, AI has enabled you to post previously unimaginable levels of mimetic slop. But it's unfair to call it slop because you have, you have quite a, quite a gift for mimetics I think. And I'm curious too. Do you think the vibes right, the vibes have been weird for a while but from my limited time in bitcoin I was around for the 2022 bear and that was the memes were the best during that time. The memes were bad because all, you know, all the, quote, tourists or whatever, the lettuce hands got out and it was just a, it was a lot of people who became really hardcore bitcoiners or already were, but. Or were forged in the fires of the bear market and then decided to just start using memes as their outlet for frustration, for hope, for whatever it might be, for the, you know, for dunking on Greenpeace that, you know, like Carl and I, that was when we really started, like, going hard into making our videos was in the depths of that bear market. And I'm curious if you think right now the memes feel bear market ish or bull market ish, does that make sense?
- [21:58]
Chris
I mean, they, they feel very institutional ish. Like, currently bitcoin is captured by a ton of institutions and every other week there is a new synthetic derivative that, you know, promises yield. And it is, I agree, like, it is different. Like, I remember the Reddit days, I remember early bitcoin Twitter days. And like, I, I try to keep this kind of spirit alive by memeing as much as my time permits. And I'm. Luckily I'm not alone. But. But it feels, I agree, it feels different this time. I guess everything is different this time. But yeah.
- [22:39]
Walker
What's the best meme? Not one that you posted. What's the best meme that you've. That you've seen recently?
- [22:46]
Chris
So I promise to not say this publicly, but, like, there is a person that I think is the better memer than I am and it's my guilty pleasure to see these memes. He works at BDC Inc. Dan Webb, Heartland Bitcoin. He does some other things under pseudonym. 2 But like, there are so many of these memes that are like hyper targeted into my center of humor. Difficult to pick a favorite. It's like Sophie's Choice. Like, if you ask what is my favorite meme that I made, it's always my last one. Like, you always need to be better. You can always improve. But usually there is no correlation between how well a meme performs and how much of a great meme I think it is like, or how much effort I put into it. Like, there is no proof of work that is associated with like, performance. Like, I've done, I don't know, hour long capcut edits on my phone and that they hardly made like 12 likes and they pooped out like a meme quickly. And usually it's a Michael Saylor meme and there's like a thousand likes and then. All right, okay, give the people, what they want.
- [23:59]
Walker
It is funny. I've noticed, and I think anybody who's done any sort of content creation has noticed that too, that it's like. And maybe it's the fact that when you pour so much time it into something, perhaps it ends up getting too in the weeds or it's, you know, it's. It becomes too complex. I don't know. But, like, this was always a frustration for Carl and I when we were making. Making our crypto couple videos was like, you know, it'd be like multiple days of, you know, of script writing, of filming. You know, then she's like, you know, she's editing, she's getting, you know, within a centimeter. I'm saying this for the, you know, for your European mind. Centimeters, not inches, a centimeter of the computer screen and, you know, for multiple days and. And so much thought and. And care goes into it. And you post it, like, it does pretty well. But then, you know, if she was to just, like, post a picture of, like, her foot hold, you know, holding a bitcoin, it would, you know, that's like 5,000. Like, you know, but maybe that would be for other reasons. I'm not sure. She hasn't done that, but maybe she should. I know. I know. It. It's. It is. It is interesting, though. You mentioned kind of the institutionalization of bitcoin. Do you think that that is what's happening, or do you think it's like, who's trapped in the room with whom? You know what I mean? Is bitcoin trapped in the room with the institutions, or are the institutions trapped in the room with bitcoin?
- [25:19]
Chris
I mean, I would say every bear market in the past has seen some kind of, you know, sacrificial lamb. Something that, you know, needs to blow up, something needs to unwind, something needs to, you know, crater. And, like, it has to get worse before it gets better. Like, we have to go deeper into the crevasse. And then, you know, we will see the light eventually. And at that point, we will see, like, who is wearing pants and who's not, like, if the tide goes out. So I'm. I'm holding judgment on that. But, yeah, I mean, some of those AI memes Michael Saylor posts, like, I die inside. Like, when I see, like, the. The earnings calls and, like, people are AI dancing and like, oh, my God, send it to zero like this. I try to, you know, I'll take
- [26:13]
Walker
the other side on that, though, because I. I did hear him talk about once, he was like, they strategy basically got rid of like, a ton of their market. This was like, previously, I think with strc, they've probably poured a lot of marketing money into that, obviously, but prior to that, they basically, like, got rid of most of their marketing budget at strategy for a long period of time. And there's that. I'm forgetting what the. There was a particular account sailor was reposting a lot or like tweeting the guy. I'm. I'm forgetting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm pretty sure they just like, brought that guy on like, you know, a fat salary and like, you know, cut their marketing budget by like 95. They're like, okay, you just make these sailor AI, you know, people pictures, Michael. Repost them. They get more visibility than any of our other marketing stuff. So, hey, let's. Let's do that. But it, it is interesting, I guess it speaks to the changing dynamics around marketing, around, let's just say around propaganda more broadly. Like, because there's good propaganda and bad propaganda. Right? Like, not all propaganda is bad. All that we do with memetics is propaganda. Right. And it's.
- [27:16]
Chris
Propaganda is good, you know, confirming our biases.
- [27:20]
Walker
Yeah, exactly, exactly. But even, like, I don't know if you've seen this is like a US politician thing, but he's blown up a lot on. On X, so maybe it's come across your radar. But the Spencer Pratt in la, this guy who was like previously a reality TV guy, and he's just like his, you know, AI video, like campaign videos have just been just fantastic, you know, like, really fantastic stuff. But we're entering this sort of new world where it's like, you don't have to spend $10 million on political ads to have the same impact. You can have the same impact with a guy buying, you know, a couple hundred bucks worth of, you know, of. Of image generation and video generation tokens versus a budget of a couple million and a massive team and this whole market and like, the AI slop may reach more people and be more effective. And I feel like that's like the old world is not ready for that yet.
- [28:13]
Podcast Host
Like, boomers.
- [28:14]
Walker
Boomers will see like Jesus Christ riding a unicorn on Facebook and be who was able to get this image. This is incredible. Where was this photo taken? You know, no natural defenses.
- [28:26]
Chris
Boomers. Getting one shotted on Facebook is like kind of a poetic justice, I think. Like, you know, you got to buy a house cheap now you get like, your wallet drained by, like some really, really bad AI slob that is kind of poetic. But yeah, I would, I would underwrite that. Like AI is like the cult, like the great equalizer. It does not have to be slop. Like I've seen wonderful art, wonderful campaigns made on a very teeny tiny budget and you would not know it at the same time you see slop. But I don't think the amount of slop has, I mean it probably has increased but like not necessarily due to AI just because, you know, people don't have taste. If you have taste, like the world is your oyster right now. And I've seen developers who were not able to design, build something themselves now and the same vice versa designers who did not know how to code make their ideas now into reality. And I myself like, like initially I wanted to make my parents not proud and not become a mechanical engineer. I wanted to go into moviemaking, I wanted to become a cinematographer. And I always like I've written as a passion project, I've written screenplays and like I've written movies and television show screenplays and like five people have read them. And now I think we are getting to the point, maybe there will be a crisp production like in the near future, even if it's just a short movie because now you know, there is nothing that you can lose and there is just, you know, you spend some time, some credits and maybe your idea, you know, connects with people and then you can make it properly. But these, these kind of tools are, they, they arrive just at the right time I think.
- [30:16]
Walker
I mean even podcasters can, you don't even have to be a designer or a developer or a mechanical engineer. Like Peter McCormick had posted just recently, he was like, you know, I basically was using Claude and what would have cost me a couple hundred thousand pounds previously because I've done this same thing before and like I had to pay for it. Like I just, I did it, you know, for negligible cost and just me and it's of high quality and it works and like, you know, it's, it is really being able to just, just do something like you know, like you can just build things right, but, or, and you can just do things. But prior to this it was very difficult for a non technical person, for a non developer to build any sort of software because you needed to bring in developers, you needed to pay them a lot of money or if you're building a company, you need to give them a substantial portion of equity since they're going to be doing a large part of the work. Now you have this ability to just build things yourself. And that's not to say that really great developers are irrelevant. I think they, they're even more relevant because they become, you know, as much as AI makes the non technical person able to do things they never could before, I think it also makes the highly technical person, the highly skilled person. It turns them into like a superhuman.
- [31:28]
Chris
Right?
- [31:28]
Walker
Like they could because they actually know how all this stuff works. You're going to be able to do so much more with a greater depth than you know, you or I. Certainly more than me. I can't speak to you, but.
- [31:40]
Chris
No, but I mean, if you look at Kali like that guy, like I don't know, when he sleeps, like he has five different projects and tweets five times a minute. That is so impressive. And like don't roll your own crypto and don't, you know, vibe code a wallet is what I would say, like stick to, you know, proper security hardened premises. But like all the other things, like the things that make your life more efficient and the day to day things that then can be freed up if you know and how have a healthy use for AI. But yeah, I'm surprised that Peter McCormack jumped on that train. Instead of asking him what's an expert, we should ask him what's a markdown file or something like, we need to update the meme on that.
- [32:31]
Walker
That's a good meme. Look at this. This is a brainstorming session. No, I think Peter, Peter is not a dummy. He just plays one on tv, you know, his charming act, you know. Yes, we know Peter.
- [32:42]
Chris
Quite cunning and he is curious. That is his superpower. He's curious and he knows how to ask a question. I always say, like when he interviews Lynn Alden, I'm like, I'm the grug brain listening. And then I just telepathically, you know, I would ask this question because I'm dumb and then suddenly like Peter comes out with the exact same question. Like, he's a wonderful interviewer. So nothing but love Peter.
- [33:05]
Walker
Yeah, no, he's, he's the, he's. Nobody ever. Nobody ever did it quite like him. And he still continues to do it.
- [33:11]
Chris
Rest in peace.
- [33:12]
Walker
It's interesting too. I think his pivot was very successful. Initially I was like, oh, sweet. I'm gonna fill the vacuum. Peter is leaving and then Danny comes in. He's like, well, look at me, I'm doing what bitcoin did again in it,
- [33:25]
Chris
you know, just give Danny an Australian, a British accent.
- [33:30]
Walker
Yeah, okay. My Australian accent isn't isn't as good. Neither is my American mind. But yeah, they're just there. One's a penal colony of the other. It's. It's basically the same thing. But. But no, I think it. It is interesting. I'm curious too, in the realm of mimetics, just. And what made me think of this is Peter kind of pivoting to not just being a bitcoin podcast, but being like, it's just a. It's a politics, it's a, you know, it's a current events, it's a culture. He very much lean into politics, obviously, because there's things going on in the UK that require the hero, you know, of Peter McCormick to put on his Batman cape and go save them. But I'm curious how much you think a kind of bitcoin only, or let's say bitcoin specific content continues to be this viable niche versus how much it is actually beneficial for bitcoin to have more branching out like that, to have, you know, as Peter says, like, bitcoin is still the heartbeat of this show. He still brings it up, but it's not what he leads with. You know what I mean? So it's kind of the. Maybe the foot in the door versus door in the face. Like you're starting off, you're not even mentioning it, you know, and then you come around to bitcoin later as a logical conclusion. But I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
- [34:42]
Chris
Yeah, I mean, he sold the top quite well. Like, he figured out like, I mean, like the Trojan horse. Like he has this like star prowess. He gets a lot of really important guests that would otherwise not come on a bitcoin podcast. And it's probably growing the space much further than a circle jerk bitcoin only podcast. Not that I don't love them, but not feels personal. Every, Every. If you, if you dig long enough into every problem that society has, you inevitably end at like corrupted money. And bitcoin is the answer to that. And by the Socratic method of Mayo tech, like, you can lead people to the solution without having to spell it out for them. And I think he does that quite well. And I think it was a really smart play of his. And then you see like other podcasters or like content producers or like entire teams like BTC sessions. Now moving to sovereign sessions, which is very important because, like with AI, everything becomes easier, so becomes surveillance, so becomes all these things that we are like out of convenience, we use all these Google and Facebook and whatever tools or some of us do, and it is important to broaden the horizon. And if you create this content, like, you can. Yeah. Don't have to lead with bitcoin. Bitcoin inevitably becomes part of the conversation and you reach people. I think it's. It's smart. But I'm not saying you should change the name of your podcast.
- [36:21]
Walker
Is mine too on the nose? Is that what you're. Is that what you're getting at here? The bitcoin podcast is on the nose?
- [36:26]
Chris
I thought that was. I'm not.
- [36:28]
Walker
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It goes by many names.
- [36:31]
Chris
By.
- [36:31]
Walker
By many names. No, it's. It's a good point. And I think that is basically the conclusion that every bitcoiner comes to when you go deep enough down the rabbit hole. Right? Is that kind of. All roads lead to bitcoin. Some just take more meandering paths to get there. And I do think it's interesting too. It's from my own experience. Again, I have not experienced that many cycles, you know, now, but from the recent, let's say recent price action, you know, like, fuck the cycles. Like, let's just assume they don't exist. But just speaking in near terms, it has felt like there hasn't been, let's say, a new class of bitcoiners. Do you know what I mean? Like, where it's like, there wasn't a massive retail influx or maybe I just missed it. Maybe that new class appeared in different ways. Maybe it appeared in the treasury companies, maybe it appeared in people just passing ETFs. I don't know.
- [37:20]
Chris
The suit coiner is the new class that is here probably to stay. That the suit coiner is not interested in the privacy or in the freedom aspect of it. They are interested in the scarce properties of Bitcoin and that is fine. Does not interest me that much. Like leveraged yields and whatever. I wouldn't say they need to be fought, but I would say they can be wholeheartedly ignored during discussions about bitcoin policy or relay or whatever. Like, we need to definitely, in my opinion, improve Bitcoin and make it as private and as scaled as possible before, you know, the government fully captures bitcoin in one way or another. But yeah, I think the new class is the suit coiner.
- [38:16]
Walker
That's. That's an interesting perspective there. I'm curious too, because you mentioned scaling bitcoin and privacy around Bitcoin, which sounds like changing bitcoin. And I'd just like to ask, when did you become compromised? When did you first notice you were compromised?
- [38:31]
Chris
Yeah, when Luke Dasher sent the FBI after me. No. So I've always. First off, security is a moving target. So everybody who says bitcoin can ossify does not know fuck from shit. And it will always have to have security vulnerability updates. And we will, it probably won't be quantum, but like there will be some upgrade and security because even classical computers improve vastly. Maybe not during my lifetime, but again four decades from now. So we should very prudently, very conservatively, very well debated, talk about improvements. And there are very many improvements to bitcoin. Some of them are more urgent and necessary. Currently we're discussing bip54. There are four known vulnerabilities in bitcoin as of right now. Like a miner with sufficient hash rate could mine all of the rest of bitcoin within two weeks and all these things can be patched. And we should do that not just to prove that we can still soft fork bitcoin. Then there are proposals like CTV or template hash, French ctv. That would make bitcoin far better in many regards. It would be able to scale lightning. It would be better for bitcoin itself. Custody, we would have reactive security instead of proactive security. We could have much easier self custody, meaning more people would not rely on Clownbase or Bitfinex or all these exchanges as they are right now. Because not many people use lightning in a self custodial way. Not many people use bitcoin in a self custodial way. And if we did just that like Jeremy Rubin proposed it like 10 years ago, I think like 2015, 16, CTV, it has been velvetted. There is no bug in there. We could just, you know, push that immediately scale lightning immediately make bitcoin much, much more secure. And suddenly we would see more on chain activity, pricing out all of the spam that some people worry so much about and actually use bitcoin as intended as peer to peer and not peer to exchange to peer.
- [41:00]
Walker
I would just check to mempool space. Medium priority is 1sat per V byte, low priority 0.8 sat per V byte, high priority, 2sats per V byte, which is great. So if you need to do some moving some bitcoin on chain, you know, boy, it's been, now is a good time and it's been a very good time for quite a while. It's been incredible.
- [41:23]
Chris
Insanely underpriced. But the free market gets to decide that price. And currently it's valued at less than 1sat per V byte, which is sad because that allows spammers to Put idiotic spam on there. And if more people were excited about bitcoin and would use it in a self custodial way, that would not be the case. So that's why I think bitcoin. You know who said it? Was it Paul Stortz? Not to endorse Paul Storts, but he said like Bitcoin developers lost 40 IQ points during the block size wars. They became too scared to ever, you know, champion another soft fork. And we have been, you know, yeah, lost our way in that, that regard. So I, I hope in the near term future we see bip 54, we see a variant of a covenant proposal, whether it is ctv, CSFS or a TX hash or template hash, all of these would be fine in my opinion. But don't take my word for it, don't trust, verify, have your own opinion. The materials out there. I just think if you truly believe bitcoin needs to scale to 8 billion people and self custody should be done by your grandma, then we need to improve bitcoin just a little bit.
- [42:47]
Walker
You know it's interesting because I think, I think you and Luke are actually in full agreement on that. He's literally said ossification to ossification. Like ossification is death. No, but he's literally like he said, he's said exactly that. Like you can just search ossify or ossification on his X feed and you'll find he's very clear about that. He thinks that if bitcoin ossifies, it is dead. It's interesting that many adherents have the opposite position.
- [43:12]
Chris
If I argue like if, if I, you know, relapse on my very excellent time management and I go back on Twitter and argue with NOTS supporters, a surprising amount are vehemently against ctv first of all because likely they do not understand the implications. But they are very, they're not aware that like Dathan Ohm and Chris Gitter and Luke Dash here and all of these people are very big proponents of that. And Luke Dash here, despite our disagreements, like he wants what's best for bitcoin. From his point of view where I disagree with him, like Luke Descher thinks bitcoin is his project. So you know, there are some difference of opinion there. But yeah, on that regard, like I can find common ground with most everybody, even Michael Saylor. So you know, that is the message that you can take away from this. Like instead of looking, you know, to differentiate you from one another, find the common things and ignore the rest. And then you will realize we probably get much further in this community if you focus on what we have in common.
- [44:26]
Walker
I mean, I completely agree with that. And that's the thing. At the end of the day, it's like there are different flavors of bitcoiners and many, many different opinions about what should or shouldn't be done with bitcoin. What needs to be done to save or to not save bitcoin. Who is a good actor, who is a bad actor, who is compromised, who is the knight in shining armor. And that's fine. And I think that that's ultimately good. The, I truly agree with you that the important thing is remembering that I, I like to assume at least, and perhaps this is a, you know, a naive assumption, but I, I will assume good intent if I have the, you know, the, the evidence to show that the intent is good, that the person's coming from a place of genuinely wanting to do what's best by bitcoin, which I believe that Luke absolutely is. And I think, you know, certainly everybody I've tried not to talk about, I don't, I haven't talked about, you know, that whole side of things happen.
- [45:22]
Chris
Let's end something.
- [45:23]
Walker
I don't know. I don't, I don't even know.
- [45:27]
Chris
I cannot wait for them to fork off in August. Hopefully they will wake up, you know,
- [45:33]
Walker
but you know, yeah, it's going to be interesting. I, I think that. Well, this brings me to something I wanted to ask you about which is there's. Everybody has a different opinion about what is the biggest threat to bitcoin. Some people may say it's you know, spam on the blockchain. Some people may say it's a nation state level type co option. Others may say it's centralization of coins in the hands of corporations. Others may say it's failure to ossify that if we, you know, if we, or, or failure to off. Others say that it's. If we don't ossify it or if we do ossify it's death. You know, so many different perspectives. What do you actually think is, you know, you mentioned privacy, you mentioned scaling, you mentioned, you know, some of these bips. What do you think is the biggest actual threat to bitcoin at this time?
- [46:19]
Chris
Yeah, so let's go through this like one by one. You, you mentioned like large single institutional holders. I don't think there's a threat there like if Michael Saylor is not taking his coins and self custody. First off, they're not just his coins. They're like hundreds of Thousands of investors coins. Like it's not just microstrategy but like there's people or investment funds behind this. Maybe you know, it will be seized by the government and that will be like the budget neutral American Bitcoin reserve. Which would be nice for you, I'd be happy for you. But I don't think that is a threat. The game theory works such as, you know, who's the most greedy protects the network the most. And he's doing that quite well. Nation state attacks, they can be a thing in the sense, you know, like oh, we could do some secret mining, we could do some supply chain attacks. These things need to be watched out for. The thing that I fear the most, like there are two things like at the social layer. So there is this famous video, it's called Operation Orchestra. Everybody should watch it. I'll send you the link. It's by Paul Camp. He came up by the way with a phrase of bike shedding, like he coined that term. But that is a way where like open source projects are subverted by NSA actors or like Secret Service people that, you know then without doing it overtly, sabotage a project from the inside. So again with open source code, everybody says don't trust verify. You and I, we probably can't read code. So we have to trust, we have to trust other people. And we need more code review and we need more developers and we need more people that are at that level that is adequate for this many trillion dollar assets. And we have a few of these, like there's 40 people I would say that are on that level. And what has been demonstrated the last one and a half years, that is the second point. A lot of people have been violently attacked and smeared and their, their private and social lives have been scrutinized and people that led a private life, you know, have been again attacked for like insane reasons. Up to the point where they then called quits and then like left the project and having to replace these, I think that has done the largest or the biggest amount of damage to bitcoin as the project. Like just recently with Gloria Zhao, like having a developer of that nature, she was great. She worked relentlessly. She had so many contributions, she was so good that even Luke Dasher recommended her for maintainership. And then she merged one single line of code that she didn't write, that others reviewed, her peers reviewed and marked up for. It's ready to be committed and she merged it and that was then enough for quacks and people with a, you know, very sorry life to smear her. And that led to her like quitting the project, which again, like find somebody else like that you won't be able to find somebody like one in a million. And that is I think the biggest threat that we face right now. And one way you can like help ameliorate, that is fund people, be generous with your stack if you are early to bitcoin or if you're not that early, but like everybody can donate some amount of bitcoin to either one of the organizations that distribute this fairly or directly to a developer to help them, to encourage them to give feedback on their work, actual feedback, not just brigading on GitHub and speak words of encouragement that can be privately, that can be openly, and a single message can help somebody from burning out. And that is I think what we saw the last one and a half years or so that the community, you know, is not as grateful as they should be about the people that help bitcoin what it is today. Because Satoshi left. That motherfucker left. He left us all on our own terms. And now we have this great thing that he came up with and yeah, we should not fuck that up. And I think we need constant development and we need the best developers and so we should not scare them away.
- [51:20]
Walker
So you don't think quantum is the biggest threat to bitcoin?
- [51:27]
Chris
So quantum, again, I'm just a dumb engineer. I'm not a quantum physicist. I talked to very smart quantum physicists. So like we as Europeurs in Austria and Innsbruck, we have one of the world's leading quantum laboratories. And I've talked to them like early as 2022, 2023, because we had a bitcoin conference in that town and I've been keeping up with their progress. And I've been again from a scientific mind, you know, I used to be a researcher. I try to grok these things and AI of course helps me with that. But from my understanding and from the people that I respect and have talked to, it is far from an urgent threat. And as an engineer, I'm missing quantifiable data points to even extrapolate anything from that. There are all these charts. My good, dear friend Nicota puts out these charts and he has this wonderful vehicle that recently gave out a 1 Bitcoin prize for somebody who submitted a random number generator which, you know, it's a good use of your money. And like there they, they say like by 2030, like ECDSA will be broken and 256 or 128 bit keys will be broken, which I think is some gobbledygook. Cryptography is always on the side of the weaker people. And we already with a lot of really smart people like Jonas Nick or Ethan Hallman, like we are working on defense and it's much, much easier to defend yourself I always say like against a nuke than to build a nuke. And like we already have post quantum signatures of a certain size. They could be implemented but they would cuck the chain. Right now we would have to do a block increase. And we know how that is like going down but we continue to work on that. And it is I think correct. And I wouldn't say it's due to Nakata because we've been doing it for like years prior. Like there's Presidio Bitcoin conference and all these people have been working on that. Like we, we should pay attention to it and we should have a plan. Mike Schmidt said in the bullpen in, in the event there, there is a canary that you know, shows us hey, quantum is not just fake, but we have so many more urgent problems facing bitcoin. I would say that we should not focus all of our developers time on that and we should not be a crying wolf. And I'm very confident sooner or later we will find a PQ signature as small as nicarta and then we'll save. You know,
- [54:24]
Walker
it's interesting to on the quantum thing because if anything I hope that if people have been paying attention to this, one of the things that they've taken away from it is just the practical tip that what's one of the best ways to make sure that you're to be, are going to be quantum safe? Well, just don't reuse addresses like that. You know, just don't, don't reuse your address which you shouldn't be doing anyway. Like that's a, that's a good bit of advice anyway you should, that's a best practice you should already be practicing is don't reuse addresses. And, and that basically mitigates, you know, the vast majority of even the, you know, longer tail risk on these things. Which I think is like it's a. You know, and it's like hey, that's something you can do literally right now and nobody has to do it for you.
- [55:07]
Chris
You can just, I mean there is
- [55:08]
Walker
obviously the question is Satoshi's coins and all that. Yes, yes, yes. But like so for you as a
- [55:12]
Chris
person there is this like maybe benefit of this quantum panic. Like the, the biggest people Messing this up with address reuse exchanges, like we should bully more exchanges into not reusing addresses. There's no reason to do that. And again like the short range attack of like attacking a transaction in the mempool when like the public key is revealed, like that is so, so far out there. And like most quantum computer types like are not capable of doing that. Like those neutral atom quantum computers, they, they can't do a nine minute attack. Having said that, I think the actual quantum debate won't be about actual PQ mitigation. It will be way earlier than that. There will be a class of bitcoiners afraid of quantum and they want to act now and others who are not afraid and then there will be like a split and then the discussion will come, you know what to do with tertiacious coins. That is like the only like foreseeable, actionable thing that I see right now. And I believe there will be a futures market somewhere as we had with SegWit2x or something and then the free market gets to decide. And I believe like bitcoin's promise is immutability and it's permissionless and property rights need to be respected. And Satoshi had any amount of time or any chance to burn those bitcoins if he actually wanted to show us that he's not just larping and he wants to never move them. Like he could have known that sending it to an up return would forever make them unspendable and it would have saved us a lot of headaches. But maybe like the game theory of bitcoin is so strong that it just mutates that in the end the biggest holders like Coinbase or Blackrock or Michael Saylor, again also just Coinbase, they're incentivized to protect their bag. And so they after nation states got their quantum computer. They will not play their hand. They will, you know, crack encryption of like Chinese governments or whatever. They will not go after bitcoin and say hey by the way, like we have this thing and we can read all your communications. The next people who will have a common computer will be like private companies. They will be very expensive, they will be very slow and the largest holders want to protect their bags and they will go out hunting. And Satoshi's bitcoin are I believe on 22,000 individual P2PK addresses. And then you have to expand capital and you have to reclaim those bitcoin and then maybe you have to sell some of them and then you can put some of them into your balance. And because you want to protect your investment, you maybe do this transaction and add an up return signifying hey, by the way, Coinbase, it's us, we not dumping it, we're putting into our balance. And that sounds strikingly similar to mining. And that is the future that I envision that there will be mining and there will be like a security budget upgrade just in a different way with post quantum. But again, that is way, way, way out.
- [58:40]
Walker
That's a really interesting way to think about it that it's almost this new form of mining or treasure hunting that kind of develops out of this. So safe to say you're not a fan of some of the even like the, the rate limiting, you know, kind of let's say the hybrid approaches because there's obviously like the full like freeze them, you know, freeze it. Anything that's in a one of these addresses, not just Satoshi's coins, but any coins, freeze them. Then there's like the kind of bip360, the rate limiting side of things. There's various proposals on how or various kind of sub proposals on how to do that. You're. You're saying just like the kind of like do nothing if it happens. Okay, it happens. We haven't changed the core premise of bitcoin in such a way that it would be ultimately like invalidating of the bitcoin thesis by taking one of these actions that subverts one's property rights within bitcoin.
- [59:32]
Chris
Yeah. So I would think it would do greater damage to bitcoin to change the property rights proposal or the promise than to like have bitcoin move again. Mount Gox was hacked for 800,000 bitcoin and the market survived. Again, you could argue it was at a much, much lower market cap, but I believe a million point one and some bitcoin. It is possible again, of the I think six million, six and a half million bitcoin that are supposedly quantum vulnerable, most of those are on reused addresses and those are probably likely still with owners who are alive and kicking and they can mitigate and migrate. Essentially we're talking probably about 2 million bitcoin. And you know, we will have a future where we have post quantum signatures and people have ample time to move and migrate. And yeah, I'm adamantly against freezing and burning. I am not opposed to having this hourglass thing where you only have so many Peter Pubkey spends in a block. But again, let's discuss it. It's worthwhile to have the discussion and again, I am thankful for Ian Smith and what's his name, Luke and Jameson lobb for like bip361. They got a lot of flak because people only read the headline. But that is a bitcoin room proposal discussing potential things. They are not in favor of those. But like it's worthwhile having the discussion and we should separate who brings those ideas to the forefront from the idea itself and we can, you know, explore and talk about it for the next 25 years at least.
- [61:23]
Walker
It is. I, I'm of the same opinion and kind of the base case and then also with regard to the rate limiting hourglass, I think that's the most, that's the most palatable of the potential options that have been thrown out there in my mind at least. And yeah, the nice thing about this conversation is that it is one that is not purely technical. Like there are technical solutions for how to do this, but the larger question is actually more philosophical or game theoretical. Right. And so I think that's a nice thing because it allows actually a larger group of people to be able to contribute to that conversation and in a meaningful way who may not be, you know, they don't understand how different address types work at a technical. You know.
- [62:05]
Chris
You're talking about Bitcoin podcasters. Exactly.
- [62:09]
Walker
Exactly. What I'm saying is there's still room for the humble bitcoin podcaster to get their two cents in. So, you know, we, we need the, the Post Quantum podcast now. The Post Quantum podcast, that's, that's gonna be, it's gonna be necessary to, to get us through this, I think, man. Okay, so maybe a couple, a couple other things I wanted to, I guess just more broadly get into with you is state of a kind of like medium of exchange adoption versus store of value adoption. Because we talked about the obviously like the sud. Ification, let's say of Bitcoin and, and very much especially in the, in the west, especially, especially in the United States of America. The primary kind of, you know, use case for most people has been store value right now that if you go outside of America, that obviously changes drastically. Right. You know, the future is here, but it's not evenly distributed yet. Places where people need to use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, where they don't have stable banking, they don't have, you know, the US Dollar, they, they use it far more as a medium of exchange. They also use stablecoins and many other things that's. There's also much higher usage of that obviously outside of the U.S. you know, that's where you know, the Global south, right. I'm curious because I've seen the debate recently about you know, is. Is holding Bitcoin, is just holding bitcoin using it or do you have to spend bitcoin to, to use it? Where do you fall on this in terms of, you know. I guess I don't like to tell anybody how to use their money in whatever way. Like do whatever the you want. That's the whole point of bitcoin. But I do, I would like to know your perspective on, you know, does. Let me ask a different way. Does Bitcoin need to be widely used as a medium of exchange either on layer one or subsequent layers for it to achieve its true potential? Or is it being a pristine piece of capital, pristine collateral, is that enough?
- [64:01]
Chris
No, you have to use Bitcoin as money in order for this to work. Not everybody has to do that. And saving is a valid monetary use case. And like if you just hold hodl it, that is perfectly fine. And if you hodl it and proclaim that you will never ever ever spend it, that is also fine. I think that is retarded. But that is fine. That is your right. But in order for miners to make a living you have to have a transaction and you have to eventually, you know, pay, pay a fee. And Bitcoin was not intended as a peer to peer digital rock, but cash. So I always encourage people to spend and replace. I understand that like law abiding people have a problem with that due to taxation in Germany just now there has been. Because accidentally it was very easy in Germany to spend your bitcoin because if you held it for longer than one year, there was no capital gains tax. That was like entirely by accident because they classified. That's similar to gold. It's one of those like Germany still uses fax machines and had very, you know, idiotic Internet laws but that they, they actually got right. However now the Greens supposed proposed a new amendment to have capital gains after like forever similar as they have as they changed like in Austria because. Because there's like a crypto accounting company that like lobbied and made some phenomenal moon math and told them hey, if you change the law like that you will have billions upon billions of taxable surplus next year which never materialized. But they are trying to run the same scam again now and it's being discussed in Germany so long tangent there but I myself again use bitcoin literally daily in my company privately. Like we send and pay and receive bitcoin and it Brings me so much joy and it doesn't get old if I pay a distributor in Australia or like an influencer in Canada or something globally. That is the whole reason for me as a businessman to use Bitcoin. Of course I also do save on Bitcoin because it is the best store of value and with again advanced miniscript also inheritance is a perfectly good use case. Therefore I believe it is perfectly fine to also store output descriptors data on the blockchain, which is also another controversial subject. But yeah. So your question was, is Hodling using? Yes, it is, but it should not be the only one. And it is perfectly fine. If you're thinking like in this, in the history of something becoming your money, you always start out with store of value and then it becomes a medium exchange than a unit of account. And these things, they like overlapping and they don't occur globally at the same time. And some of us have to use this technology now to build the tools so that we are ready once it becomes more broadly adopted or when like the government is putting the thumb screws tighter that we are not caught unprepared. And it's great to see in the global South. Just today I saw that in Kenya the tando released that 40 million Kenyans now have essentially just your phone number. At Bitcoin Co KE in South Africa they have 800,000 merchants that do not know that they accept Bitcoin through money badger similar to the square terminals in the US and that is huge. So I want to see as much adoption of Bitcoin as money. And again that's why I also want to see these certain soft fork proposals happen so that not people are reliant on custodial solutions.
- [68:03]
Walker
I saw the Tando thing which was fantastic and on the square piece as well. I think that that was genuinely one of the most just bullish developments that has happened at least since I've been in Bitcoin. Like, I mean what an like 4 million plus merchants. And first it was opt in but now they're just like using City of just using Bitcoin as the rails by which you move either, you know, fiat value like if you know, I mean the amazing thing about square is they have both sides of the counter, right? They have cash app on the customer side and they have square terminals on the merchant side. They've got a lot of customers and like just that alone turning that ability on and using Bitcoin in such a way that it's not necessarily evident to the user unless they are actively trying to use it, but it's not necessarily evident. They're just getting, you know, lower fees, a better experience. Like all of these things. They're getting an improved experience without even realizing they're using Bitcoin. And I think that's a really, really powerful thing. And like shout out to Jack and Miles and you know, the whole teams over there at Square and Cash app, because that to me was one of the most bullish things I have, I have seen in all of my time in bitcoin. And again, because I do think the medium of exchange side is so important. I agree with you 100%. Holding Bitcoin, just saving in Bitcoin, that is using it as well. Absolutely. It's just an earlier part of your. Of your progression along, as you said, from store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account. Like this is. This is naturally. And again, you know, the future, the future of bitcoin is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. But I agree also that spending bitcoin is just fun. Like you can spend and replace. Not that I ever would, nor that I would ever, you know, like, there's another cool thing that somebody could do, which I would never advocate for. I would never do it myself as well. But you could just engage in commerce with somebody via bitcoin and not tell anyone else about it. Of course you should.
- [69:59]
Chris
It's possible as a podcaster to pay somebody in bitcoin and not have videographic evidence of that.
- [70:06]
Walker
I wouldn't know because again, I actually don't have any bitcoin at all because of the unfortunate boating accident. I'm such a bad driver of a boat. Bang. But you could just do that. You could just engage in commerce between two people. Just like handing cash back and forth. Cash is actually. Cash is great. Fiat sucks. Cash is fantastic. Cash is so very private. It's. It is wonderful. Right?
- [70:33]
Chris
Yeah, you can do that. Cash would be like a newly invented thing they would not invent or like allow it to happen. Like it is. It is too good. Like it could not be done again without the select precedent. They would say, no, no, let's not have that.
- [70:50]
Walker
Christy Christine Lagarde would be out there being like, I think not. You know, like, I mean, it is, but this is where we're going also, there's with, you know, that I don't want to say they, but I'll just say they generally, whether they're in Europe, whether they're in America, whether they're in China, they don't want you to use cash. They want to get rid of cash, they want to implement complete surveillance coins, they want to implement central bank digital currencies. But because that's, the cash is like this within the fiat system. It's the last vestige of private transaction that you have. There's nothing else, anything you send through the banking system, there's no way, you know, you can't custody fiat digitally. It's not possible. Right. It necessarily needs a custodian. You can custody fiat in cash. Granted, it's still a promise of a central bank. Right. So you know, do you actually own it? Do you own anything, whatever? But the point being, it's like cash is still something that you can use outside, even though it's using fiat, still, still outside of the surveillance panopticon. That is really powerful. And that's also why they need to get rid of cash so that you know, they can. And this, this is where what you see happening too. I think this all goes in tandem with all the age verification stuff online. All of the language about how dangerous VPNs are. You need to be ID before you get into any sort of social media. It's to protect the kids, Chris. It's to protect the kids. Somebody think of the kids, somebody think of the kids. It's either counter, you know, how'd you like it wrapped? Counter terrorism or protect the children. But, but all of that dovetails together and you, you enter into this, you very easily get to the place where you see, oh, crack down on access to, to physical cash or just get rid of it entirely. Make any interactions that you have in the Internet traceable back to you. And your real identity no longer allows pseudonymity or anonymity because everything's been ID'd. Perhaps not even at the, at the application layer, but at the ISP level. I think that's going to be the next step, right? Get rid of VPNs, make the punishment for VPNs incredibly, incredibly harsh. All these things to remove any vestige of privacy that you have left. And it's one of those things, once you start going down that very, very dark, black pilled rabbit hole, you just say, oh my God, thank God for Bitcoin. Like I'm so, you know, like Bitcoin doesn't solve all of that. You need a lot of other freedom tech tools to do that, to protect yourself, to still move along that spectrum of sovereignty. But at least there are those tools. And that's why, yeah, to your earlier point, go and thank a developer or zap a developer on nostr or you know, donate to them somehow. Like it, it makes a difference. And you want these people to keep developing open source freedom tech because many of us need it already and certainly all of us will need it before too long. But a lot of people just don't give a shit is the other thing. They're just like, oh, I'm, I got nothing to hide, you know cool about me, bro. Yeah, I don't. There wasn't even a question there, Chris. That was just me ranting on this because it's like I'm like Charlie Day, you know, and, and it's always sunny, like looking at all these things coming together. I'm like, don't you see it guys? Like why, why aren't you paying attention to this? But the sad thing is most people don't care. And perhaps my question would be, what does it take for the majority of people to actually give a. About freedom money and freedom tech and privacy tech or will the majority just never do it? And it's giving a. About these things is a Fibonacci distribution or rounded to a Pareto distribution. Like, and it's just most people never will and that's okay. I don't know.
- [74:15]
Chris
Yeah, so that, that is my, my bearish case. Most people will never. And there will always be some form of fiat like the glorified hyperbitcoinization will look like that there is 20% or let's have a 21% of people who no longer will be willing to share their goods and or services for anything but Bitcoin. And then like they, they will use it to the fullest extent and they will reap the benefits of that. And again, it's a free and public monetary system. Anybody can join. But the rest, they like the convenience of a CBDC and they, they like the promises of, you know, oh, I first have to, you know, scan my ID before I can post this tweet. And that is probably okay. I wish it weren't so. But like history and everything that I have observed, everywhere I've been, there's always like 20, 80%. That is like usually the distribution of producers and consumers or people that are like a vogue and awaken. Like I would not believe if people tell me like, oh, I just came from my time machine and it's the year 2040 and everybody's using bitcoin and everything is fine and there's no more wars and we are multi planetary would be great. But maybe that's the German in me. Like I'm a little pessimistic on that. But if you don't have any expectations, like, you cannot be disappointed. Therefore, you know, I'm will be gladly, you know, shown. Shown an opposing view in the future. But, yeah, so if 20% use Bitcoin, that will be a huge win.
- [76:04]
Walker
Yeah. Happiness is reality minus expectations.
- [76:08]
Chris
Right.
- [76:08]
Walker
So it's, it's a. It's, it's. It's a simple formula. I want to be conscious of your time here, so maybe just a little speed round suggested by our friends at the very storied publication, the Bitcoin Bugle. They wanted me to posit some questions about should plebs be allowed to do certain things? So we'll just go down a list of a couple of them here and I'll just get your. You just give me a yes or no. Should they be allowed to. Yes. Should they not be allowed to know? So should plebs. First one is obvious. Be allowed to have sex?
- [76:45]
Chris
If it is consensual, sure.
- [76:49]
Walker
Okay, I agree. Should plebs be allowed to start podcasts?
- [76:55]
Chris
I mean, can we have enough? Yes. Yes, we can. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. Like, at one point, we do have enough, but we do not have enough good ones. So maybe, you know, like, even a blind chicken finds, you know, So I would say yes, like, just like monkeys on a typewriter, eventually its greatness will. Will arise. Yeah. So, yeah, the.
- [77:22]
Walker
In. The interesting thing about that one, though, is as soon as you start, you may be a pleb, but as soon as you start a podcast, you. You become a compromised, simple influencer. So it's like, can. Can a pleb even start a podcast? Because at the moment of starting, it's like when you observe the photons.
- [77:36]
Chris
You got me Paradox on. Yes. As soon as you start a podcast, you ascend. You become a better person. You become a podcaster. Yeah, all right.
- [77:45]
Walker
Or a Quartard influencer, you know, whatever it may be. But. So you, like, you can't exist in both states, you know, like, it's, It's. It's a tricky one. It's. It's actually a quantum problem, which I hope that we'll crack with once we get some more.
- [77:58]
Chris
Compute the pleb paradox. Yes.
- [78:01]
Walker
Yeah. Should plebs be allowed to control the thermostat?
- [78:06]
Chris
So a friend of mine is an H Vac engineer, and, like, he has installed hundreds of H Vac systems in large office spaces, and usually he gets calls back that people complain. Or like, we need to change this. We need to change that and he has taken to installing thermostats that appear to be connected to the system, but they are not. And then the complaints stop. So if you give monkeys the choice to change the temperature, like it's not automatically regulated, but you have like a knob, like, suddenly people, everybody is happy.
- [78:41]
Walker
That's actually like a fascinating social experiment.
- [78:44]
Chris
That's. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. All these. These kind of things. Like, oh, people were complaining about the closed door button on elevators, or people were complaining about the duration waiting for an elevator and just putting a mirror there. Like, all the complaints went away. So if you give people the illusion of a choice or like a distraction, you know, so, yes, they should be allowed to. To twiddle all the knobs.
- [79:06]
Walker
Yeah, Okay, I like it. We didn't even get a chance to talk about bitcoin knobs, but maybe another time. Okay. Should they. Should pubs be allowed to ride motorcycles? Huh?
- [79:17]
Chris
I do not know the mimetic background behind that question.
- [79:21]
Walker
Me neither. But the bugle guys made me ask. They're like, this one's really important.
- [79:25]
Chris
I mean, it is such an esteemed publication, so there must be some meaning to that. So I myself, I'm too comically tall to, to like ride a motorbike. Like, all the coolness that like a cafe racer would like, give a regular person, like, goes out the window when they see my, my frog legs, like, to the left or to the right, like you would like in any like, curvature, like I need. Needed, like, I don't know, assistive wheels on my. On my knees, like, it entirely depends on your stature, I would say. So
- [80:01]
Walker
now I kind of want to see you ride a motorcycle though, you
- [80:04]
Chris
know, shout outs to the bitcoin racing team in the uk. We're sponsoring the mini races there. Shout out to Chris MacKenzie. I will personally fly over on the island and I will try to fit myself in into a racing mini car. So you will see how my knees protrude from the windows.
- [80:31]
Walker
The memes are going to be glorious from that. I can already imagine them. And then last one, should plebs be allowed to vote?
- [80:39]
Chris
So that's, I think another trick question, like, what is voting and does it change anything? So you can vote with your wallet. That is the only vote that I believe has proven to work. Therefore, yes, you are allowed to vote with your wallet.
- [81:02]
Walker
I like that. What's that old expression? It's like, if voting made a difference, they wouldn't let you do it. But we were positing before. This is the last thing I'LL say, and then I'll let you free from this hostage situation. But that perhaps the fall of Rome was actually because they allowed the plebs to vote. And I think we've got a thesis that we're cooking on on this. There's going to be probably a long 12 part essay series on this. Maybe a venture capital fund started on the back of this additionally. So there's a lot of things in the work there. But that's a question I think that everybody should ponder is did plebs cause the fall of Rome by voting? Yeah, I think that's, we have to end it with that.
- [81:46]
Chris
There's historic precedent. Look further into that. The plebeian council directly led to the fall of Rome. So pond on that.
- [81:55]
Walker
This is my new rabbit hole now right after this. You know, screw bitcoin podcasting. I'm going to be a plebeian truther now about the fall of Rome. Chris, this was a great time talking with you. Appreciate you sharing your time with us very much. Where would you like to send people either to get your, your industrial grade washers or to not get kidnapped and have fingers cut off, whatever it might be. Send them your way.
- [82:20]
Chris
Yeah, check out cdor, check out Bitsurance, Follow me on Noster or on Twitter. You will probably put the links down there. And yeah, if you see me at the conference, get marked, take a picture and put it to the long list of people who I was, I was,
- [82:39]
Walker
I was loving the updates that you had from, from Vegas. Just, I loved all the green line tests as well. Just really, really nice, really nice work. I was living vicariously from afar. It was, it was excellent.
- [82:52]
Chris
And I will model you. Will you be coming to BDC Prague?
- [82:57]
Walker
No. No more conferences for me. I need to stay, stay close to
- [83:00]
Chris
home, close to the makes again. If people, if people want to come and meet and talk to me next, I will be at BDC in Vienna and afterwards in Prague June 11th or something. Yeah. See you there.
- [83:17]
Walker
Love it. Oh, Chris, appreciate it. Appreciate everybody on Noster as well. Thank you. We did actually we had more than 10 people joining on Noster, Chris. So that's fantastic.
- [83:25]
Chris
New record, new record. He just told me that's the highest that's ever been. Wow. Wow.
- [83:30]
Walker
It's true. It's true. And thank you guys for the zaps. I appreciate every sat. Thank you for spending bitcoin. It means a lot. Genuinely. So appreciate you guys. Appreciate you, Chris. And we'll see you next time.
- [83:42]
Chris
Bye bye.
- [83:43]
Walker
All right.
- [83:50]
Podcast Host
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin Podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening, and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on noster@primal.net walker and this podcast@primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Titcoin Podcast. Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links, head to substack.com walker America to get episodes emailed to you, and head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.