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QUANTIFYING THE VIBES: Bitcoin Sentiment Analysis, Memes, and Fiction | Michael Sullivan
01:27:23
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- [00:00]
Michael Sullivan
I realized I kind of like accidentally stumbled into methods that some of these, like, hedge funds are doing really quietly. I'm just like, putting them out there right now. For bitcoiners, it seems like they recognize that the Saylor strategy is clearly a better strategy than what they've been embarking on. They chose to spend their time in that manner by directly leeching the wealth out of the exact people who they claim to have as customers. I'm a fundamentally different person for having discovered bitcoin. I'm way more optimistic. I'm constructive, motivated. Just like so many different things, it's just impossible to convey all the things that you know about bitcoin to other people. These newer people that are just coming into the bitcoin market, like, disproportionately afraid. I have so much anger towards the way the system currently works and want that to change. I just want to hang the political class and all these things. Like, I have a part of myself that feels that way too.
- [00:45]
Walker America
I want to burn this thing down. What rises from the ashes will be so much better and more glorious and
- [00:51]
Podcast Host/Announcer
more fair and more true and more honest.
- [01:02]
Walker America
Michael Sullivan, author of Blood of the Bourgeoisie that I still. Every time I try to type out Bourgeoisie, I don't know, I tend to be pretty good at the spelling, but for some reason that word just messes with me. How many are you now the world leading expert at spelling Bourgeoisie?
- [01:19]
Michael Sullivan
On the first attempt, my fingers just naturally do it. I can't do it right anymore. The amount of times I've had to type this thing out. My favorite. Seeing how people pronounce it too. I never like to shame them for it because there's technically a bunch of different ways. But yeah, at the conference, I was just like walking up to people and be like, yeah, I'm that guy that wrote that weird named book. And people were like, oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about.
- [01:39]
Walker America
What's the weirdest way you've heard bourgeoisie pronounced?
- [01:41]
Michael Sullivan
The best one is Borghesi.
- [01:45]
Walker America
Okay, that's kind of like. It's like, hey, y' all read that book Blood of the Borghesi? Like, that's. That's what I'm. That's what's coming to mind right there. But yeah, no shame pronouncing things however you want. You can feel free to use the. The dirty words of Marx and pronounce them however you feel like. He's just making things up anyway, too, man. But stoked to have you on here. We. We got A few things to talk about today. Number one, you are the author of a incredible book, a piece of bitcoin thriller that is kind of what I've you and I talked about. I narrated the audiobook and thank you for that honor. It was a fun audiobook to narrate and it's. It's very much a sly roundabout way of I think orange pilling people and getting em to learn about bitcoin through the medium of fiction, which is really powerful and I think something we need more of. I want to talk about that. People should go check out Blood of the Bourgeoisie if youf Can Spell it by Michael Sullivan. If you just type Michael Sullivan, Blood of the should. Should populate. If you can't spell bourgeoisie or if you struggle like I do. But then you've also been doing this really interesting sentiment analysis stuff that's kind of. It's. I mean you've gotten a decent amount of like I would say acclaim or feedback on this now. Like it's, it's kind of making it out into the larger space. Want to talk about that too. And maybe that's a good place to start and just for people to. To know. You're. You're a man of many interests. You're. You're obviously an author of a multi written multiple books. Now you're also a, you're. You're a developer, computer programmer, engineer. I don't know what you know, moniker you prefer for that. And then you, you know, you do a lot of grappling, a lot of. A lot of BJJ and whatnot too. You do a lot of things. You're a dad as well. Anything else I'm missing there in the world of Michael Sullivan?
- [03:28]
Michael Sullivan
Oh, probably chess enthusiast. I like music a lot too. I basically just have like super high functioning ADHD where I like to do a million different things all at the same time. And it kind of fills me up with energy jumping around to different things.
- [03:41]
Walker America
It's something I notice is a common thread amongst many of us, many of us bitcoiners. But okay, let's start out. We'll talk about Blood of the Bourgeoisie a little bit again. People should go check out that book. Check out the audiobook too if you want to hear it in my seemingly dulcet tones. But let's start on the sentiment analysis piece because I think this is really interesting. We were talking just off camera that this in my mind, the way I think about this is like you are quantifying the vibes. You are. You're putting numbers, you're giving significance to the general vibes of. And you're looking at this individually. Right? But maybe we. Let's take a step back. What is this sentiment analysis that you are doing right now and how did you actually like, what prompted you to start doing this?
- [04:22]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah, this has been a weird evolution for me. I like, been a writer for a long time, been an engineer, been really obsessed with language. I like in writing stories and things, you can really use language as a tool to convey a lot about characters. You can insert words that kind of indicate how a person's thoughts and beliefs are changing over time. And the longer I've been in the bitcoin space, the more I've recognized this thing happens out there too. The average mood of bitcoiners is very different at peaks compared to at bottoms. And the amount of time people are arguing about things or at each other's throats during price dips is pretty high. I think people mostly intuitively recognize this and have experienced it, but I kind of want to see if I could quantify it anyway. And originally it was just like this curiosity for me. I like to write novels because I like to pursue a thread and think about something really deeply. And I wanted to analyze my own data on posts that I've done in the past and just see if there was any interesting stuff there. Like, did I say anything stupid at different times? Was I overly optimistic or annoyed at different bottoms and things? And the answer is yes. I've said a lot of dumb shit over the years. That was a emphatic yes. But what was really interesting is that I actually was able to really tightly correlate moods that I'd had time and stuff with bitcoin price enthusiastic uptrends. I was like, wow, this is really interesting. And I wanted to keep pursuing it. So I started doing it for other accounts too. Michael Saylor was the next one, just doing large ones and found surprising dynamics where he would really get optimistic before there was news out there on microstrategy or something like that, where he wouldn't convey anything. He'd have to be really close to chess with the words that he chose. But like, sometimes the mood leaks into your language in interesting ways. And I really wanted to see if I could, like, with like engineering tools and data analysis tools and AI evaluate these. And the answer was yes. So I've been really deep into that and coming at it through a more individualized lens, which is maybe one of the more unique things about it. As you mentioned, a lot of the sentiment stuff that's out there right now is really trash because it'll be like, let's just aggregate everything that was said on Reddit or Twitter today and look at what the mood is. And that's garbage. Cause there's all these bot accounts or people that'll say things that are inflammatory intentionally to get traction or interest. So I took it through the total opposite lens where I'm like, let's look at individuals that I think are legit bitcoiners who I know personally, I know they're real, I know they're relatively high signal, they've been around longer, they've been around shorter, various things, and look at them on a more individualized basis and then look at different cohorts of them. That's just super high level. But it's been this crazy thing where I've kind of started pulling on this thread and it's just compounded, compounded, compounded and turned into this wildly fascinating project that I've been just completely obsessed with.
- [07:04]
Walker America
Amazing couple questions. When you talk about these other sentiment analysis tools, are you talking about like fear and greed index, things like that? Are there other ones that you look at where you say, because the fear and greed's like, like, that's the one. At least I know. And probably most people know as like, yep, you know that's the sentiment index, right? Are there other ones or is that kind of the primary one that you look at with regard to bitcoin?
- [07:24]
Michael Sullivan
There's so much of this one thing I've. That's the main one I was referring to. But one thing I realized as I got deeper into this is that like, hedge funds behind the scenes have these tools all the time and are scraping all these things and have their own sentiment analyses and numbers that they're using in this kind of stuff. And I realized I kind of accidentally stumbled into methods that some of these hedge funds are doing really quietly. And I'm just putting them out there right now for bitcoiners currently. But there's a lot of different ways to measure sentiment. Sentiment is a super loaded word in the fact that we all will reference current bitcoin sentiment. But there is so much more granularity to that than I originally even thought when I started investigating this. And the one phrase I've kept using to describe it is kind of like the analogy of this is water. You're swimming in this thing all the time. You're kind of blind to it. Everything and every opinion that you have kind of exists within this broader sentiment that exists out there. Every time you engage with a bitcoin, every time you listen to a podcast, every time you read something on Twitter, it's through the lens of what broader people are feeling at the time. And people do brilliant jobs. Like, James Cech is just fantastic. I've learned so much from him with the. On chain analysis and the tracking of actual UTXOs, and I was so inspired by that. But because of my background and being so interested in language, I wanted to see if I could do similar things but look at the actual words and narratives people were using over time and see how beliefs evolved. So that was kind of like one of the high level ways I started doing that, and it actually ended up being pretty fruitful.
- [08:59]
Walker America
I find this super, super interesting. And I want to know, as you said, you started analyzing your yourself and you were looking for other kind of key people that, you know, you were, I guess, following already. People that are, you know, high signal in the, in the bitcoin arena. But so this, this is not necessarily aggregation of a bunch of people. This is more individualized. Or do you also then aggregate the individualized analyses as well?
- [09:26]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah, so this is where it got really interesting. I originally just started doing it on a few individual, few people, like ones that I theorized might be high signal or whatever. But then I would actually look at like how much was their language optimism increasing over a duration of time. Because basically what you do is you throw every single thing they've ever said on Twitter into a AI model that looks.
- [09:45]
Walker America
Oh boy, I'm thinking about my own now. And I'm like, oh boy.
- [09:48]
Michael Sullivan
I'm always conscious to share stuff because it's like, I feel a little bit creepy going through people's things. So I've been pretty like it's public
- [09:53]
Walker America
though, you know, like we all said it at some point, right?
- [09:56]
Michael Sullivan
And. And then from that baseline, see like if the optimism levels are higher or lower than their average thing they put out there. And I originally did this just for myself, but then I had some people that have been relatively high signal in the past. One who I've talked to, that I've previously even did a video on was a guy named Stack Hodler. He's a Swiss guy, a lot of people follow him. Brilliant. I originally pursued that because he's a very good writer, which is why I was very interested. So there's tons of text to go through and you can really get a sense for his mood over time. Um, and found out that he was crazy high signal. Like he was Disproportionately optimistic when Price was way down and kind of pessimistic when things were up. And it was just a really useful thing. We're like, okay, this person is clearly like not just going to bullpost at the top, which again, like, I just want to keep framing this with like, I do this, I have done this. Like, I am not like some like visionary like guy who understands what's going to happen in the market perfectly. I wanted to pursue this to like kind of resolve my own delusions and kind of get a better, more holistic view of like what the general vibes were out there. So people like him were really useful. I also done the inverse of people that are just new to bitcoin. How are they responding comparatively to these people that have been here longer? And look at the times when those have deviated over time. But you asked me about the different chunks. I started with these individuals, but then I started realizing that I kind of found interesting different cohorts and I've started to ball them up together and look at them against other cohorts. So one of the best examples and most interesting things is I've taken OGs or people that have been around much longer and then compare them to these shorter term people. It's kind of a similar thing to what happens with the long term holders versus short term holders. Kind of that similar idea where you could watch if there's deviations between the two cohorts. And even as of right now, one of the interesting things is that your average older bitcoiner is significantly more optimistic in the language that they're using than these newer people that are just coming into the bitcoin market, which is super interesting. These people are disproportionately afraid. The newer ones and the OGs seem to be weathering this. And we've been here before, we've kind of recognized this. And I thought that was really interesting. And again, it's kind of helped me, I feel, have a more balanced viewpoint of where things are at. Like, I'm not a trader, I'm not day trading on this side. Just like wanted to see what was here and form a more accurate worldview. Bitcoin view because of that.
- [12:13]
Walker America
Okay, there's so much stuff I want to dig into here. A slight digression, but just you mentioned Check James, check. And he's agree. He's like, that's my quant. You know what I mean? Like, he's fantastic. People should check out. He's come on the show a bunch. He's got a, you know, great newsletter. Go check out James Check, Check on Chain if you haven't already. And because he's also very like, he's got, he's checked the analyst and check the Hodler. And I'm curious, in terms of the, these different cohorts, you're looking at these different data sets that you're looking at, these different sentiments. Have you tried kind of overlaying some of that onto some of the analysis that he does from the on chain perspective? Just to see. Because you mentioned the kind of short term holder, long term holder like you met, you know, some of these, the, the OG whales versus the people who are currently, you know, in the red because they just bought six months ago.
- [12:57]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Have you overlaid any of that at
- [12:59]
Walker America
all at this point?
- [13:00]
Michael Sullivan
I'm getting there, but I, I tried to emulate what he did in a different manner. Actually. This is one. I haven't even put anything out with this really yet, but it was one of the most. Another just thread I wanted to pull on, see if anything was there. So I took every single user I have in my system and I looked through every single tweet they'd done for instances of talking about bitcoin price ever over time. And then I graphed every single one of those on a chart so you can see like the levels that people talked about bitcoin over time and how it relates to the bitcoin price. So you can see like when we were chopping like that summer of 2024, I believe, like people were really like, you could really see them talking about these lower bounds. And when we were at all time highs, people started Talking about like 200k and 500k and all these crazy levels. And then now people are talking about like lower things again before this. And now they're like, you just actually see. And the same kind of interface that Check looks at the same similar visualization like the specific price levels that people talked about. And some of them are these price levels that he's also found with like short term holder cost bases and these kind of things because those just naturally show up more in people's tweets when they're thinking about these numbers. So that was cool. And I also did a similar style where I looked at different cohorts and saw what price levels they were talking about over different time periods. And that was kind of interesting too.
- [14:15]
Walker America
This is all really fascinating. Do you, do you view this also? I mean, can it be used almost predictively? Like if you, if you had this set up to track some of these more high signal cohorts that, you know, based on historical data, tend to provide a pretty good signal one way or another. And I'm sure you have, like, counters. I imagine Peter Schiff's a great counter signal. We can maybe get into that a little bit later. But is there a way for this to be used predictively where you can say, like, okay, I've. I, you know, I just got notifications that, like, the sentiment levels based on these key cohorts are hitting this, you know, this, this level, which means, like, boy, it's like looking pretty bullish or it's looking pretty bearish. Like, have you. Have you got into that at all? Or are you still just kind of doing a lot of scraping right now, kind of a lot of the historical analyses to set that baseline?
- [14:56]
Michael Sullivan
Like I mentioned earlier, I've had a bunch of people from hedge funds in that kind of world reach out to me and be like, this is literally how they're trying to do those things. And it was kind of a different, interesting take on it, especially in the bitcoin space, is very different than some of the individualized stocks they were looking at in their domain. But this is exactly how they're trying to do some of those things. And I kind of looking back, realized there definitely have been inflection points where people like the OGs, for example, were much more optimistic than the newer people. And those have actually proven out to be pretty. Historically. It's like, you never know. Well, these things. And if these models keep working in the future, but they've been relatively predictive of times when things looked pretty good or it was a very opportunistic time to buy bitcoin, these kinds of things. So looking back in the past, there definitely does seem like there's some signal there to some degree. Like, like I said, though, this is relatively early for me. I'm only a couple, few months into doing this, and I. I really wanted to use it as a way to better understand things myself. So I haven't been trying to do any of that kind of stuff, but I am working with some other people now that have started to reach out and want to explore using these things. Adrian Morris from True north has been doing a lot of work in sentiment. That's crazy interesting to me. And him and I have been talking a lot about this recently where he wrote this brilliant essay about how sentiment has been such a unique thing in the bitcoin space. One of the dynamics of bitcoin, every market is very heavily impacted by sentiment. But bitcoin, because it doesn't have these metrics that people in the traditional finance world have traditionally traded on, like PDE ratios or cash flows, in these things, it's a lot more sentiment based. So I think bitcoiners in general are a little more familiar with how much sentiment impacts things. And then a derivative of that would be the M navs of treasury companies where there's an additional layer of sentiment on top of the bitcoin sentiment about each of these individual treasury companies. And I've even made attempts at measuring that where you can look at the rate these treasury companies were mentioned over time and what moods and these sorts of things. And there's definitely some interesting stuff there too. Yeah, lots there.
- [17:00]
Podcast Host/Announcer
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- [20:23]
Walker America
Stack harder this is also fascinating. I mean, you know, I don't mean to throw a million things. I think I've done this. Have you done this? I realize this is also like a side project, you know, hobby like you have. You're a dad and you have a job and you finally hopefully just got a little bit more free time because you're not writing the book anymore. Anymore. And we could talk about that too. But it is amazing. And I assume are you using a number of AI tools to help with this analysis to put this together?
- [20:49]
Michael Sullivan
Oh absolutely. I mentioned the AI models specifically to run the tweets through, but I'm an engineer of 13 years. I've just loved to make and build things my whole life and this is the kind of thing I would have always wanted to build in the past, but would have been something where it's like I would need multiple years and like a dedicated team to do these sorts of things. And because of my experience I was really quickly able to architect this whole thing, throw it together and do some of the UI layers and the visualization stuff and some of the other just challenges of this really, really quickly compared to what I previously could. And it's such a dynamic thing too where I'll get an idea and then I'll want to visualize the idea quickly. And it takes a lot of changing of things or building new stuff. But because of how much I'm able to leverage these tools, it's allowed me to iterate really, really quickly. Get you a new idea, test it out, see if there's anything worth pursuing more there, and then keep following that thread as it kind of shows itself to me that it might be Interesting. So those have been profound. At the conference, I was like, my panel was basically about AI because I've been like a crazy power user of these tools. Even when writing the book, I was too. But they've really changed the way that I think about building things completely. And it's been really, really powerful in this. And I'm quite the optimist when it comes to AI in general.
- [22:07]
Walker America
I do want to get into that as well. I want to poke at a couple more things in the sentiment side. First, in terms of, like you mentioned, Stackholder was is a very high signal. What are some other, I guess, very high signal accounts that you're looking at where you, you know, that you've decided, I assume you've run analyses on Saylor, I don't know, maybe Lyn Alden, people like that. Can you give some of those in terms of the ones that you're really looking at, where you're saying, these provide me with really good signal. And then what's the, what's the Peter Schiff cohort as well? Let's. Let's talk about that a little bit.
- [22:37]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah. So, yeah, you mentioned a couple names in there. Lyn's crazy high signal and proved out to be in some of the data too. No surprises there. I don't think for anybody. Maybe one that's less talked about was Andy Edstrom. He ended up being incredibly high signal and he's very optimistic in his post right now. That was one thing I just kind of discovered as of this weekend. Honestly, Saylor is. Some of these are interesting because there's different lessons that can be gleaned from different people. People like Saylor are speaking in a totally different manner to people like you or I, where he knows his tweets are like, analyzed out there and he's not. He's being very careful with the things he's saying sometimes. I think that's part of the reason he uses some of the AI generation for the stuff that he does too. So that one is. I think there's interesting stuff there in a different way where it might like show different moods happening under the surface that he's not saying. Like, that was kind of interesting when it comes to him, but he's not like this crazy high signal person in the sense where he's like really much more optimistic at bottoms, more pessimistic at tops. Another one is Joe Carlassari. I have huge respect for Joe. He just finished his book too. Him and I have talked about. I have a huge amount of respect and learnings from him, frankly, because he's like, when I first came to bitcoin, I think what most people do, you're like a little bit overly optimistic about where things are going and you're more euphoric. Joe is very calm and middle of the road and I always just really respect that. It's powerful to help have a more realistic worldview. So he ended up being one of those people that was really high signal as well and kind of related to this. I know I haven't even asked your answered your Peter Schiff question yet, but like maybe one of the most interesting findings was something I called like sentiment volatility, where I've noticed this across every single bitcoin user I've ever looked at now where when you first kind of come to bitcoin and start posting on here, your like average volatility of like your ups and downs and your mood across every different mood is wild. And then over time those people tend to be more muted. And that's part of the reason why some of the OGs and stuff I think are a really good signal here because they've kind of been around the bitcoin ecosystem longer and they are a little bit less taken by whatever new narrative is wrapped up the average pleb out there. So I've seen that in my own data too. Like looking at what I was doing early on compared to now, I'm a little bit more realistic about things. And yeah, that, that was super interesting. I think probably follows what people naturally think too. Like intuitively that made sense for me. And then Peter Schiff, like that was. I don't want to call any people out necessarily as like anti. Anti signals, but Peter Schiff is a very obvious one and because of that I wanted to analyze his stuff too. Couple hilarious findings with him. He is absolutely posting in a more annoyed kind of way and using more angry language language when bitcoin runs up. And I have data on him from a very long time doing this because he's been doing this repeatedly for like since a long time, but since 2020, like crazy. And that was just comical. The other thing with him is that he, when I, when I started looking at the rate at which he was talking about different things, people view Peter as like a gold account. Like he's the gold guy. He actually has tweeted the word bitcoin more than the word gold more times since 2020. So he is arguably more of a bitcoin account at this point in time by his overall language and usage than he is a gold account since 2020. It flipped. Like, he was always talking about gold pre Covid. And then afterwards he's been talking about bitcoin more often than gold, which I just found absolutely hysterical. And then the last thing with him is that if you were to buy bitcoin, whenever he tweets about bitcoin, you perform insanely well. I think you did some cool stuff on that too. If I remember correctly.
- [26:25]
Walker America
Mine was probably far less involved than your. But I did just like a baseline analysis of this. And yeah, it was basically like if you bought a dollar of bitcoin or a dollar of gold every time Peter tweeted the word bitcoin, like your. Your bitcoin return, I'm forgetting the exact date. But, like, it was like an order of magnitude greater returns. Like, it was a massive amount if you know. And even that was. Even with. That was when gold had like been running up too, and bitcoin was down and it was still like an order of magnitude greater returns denominated in fiat, of course. Federal Reserve notes. But I think that that's. That's fascinating. Well, can I ask you then, what is the. What is the Schiff counter signal anti signal saying right now then?
- [27:03]
Michael Sullivan
Pretty good, honestly. Most markers are honestly pretty good right now, at least in the sentiment stuff. I haven't been like, very predictive about it. I've been right, very cautious. Like, this is. This is sort of new to me and I don't really want to be prescribing much stuff. But seriously, like, across the board, things are looking pretty darn good. The most recent one, that was kind of a good counter signal, perhaps. I've been trying to mostly look at bitcoiners because, like, they're talking more about bitcoin and they have a really strong signal if they're hyper focused on bitcoin generally. But out of curiosity, I wanted to ingest some crypto trader folks and see what they were at right now. And I had like one of the most ridiculous things yet that stuck out to me around them where I ran. I have a. It's a smaller cohort of these people, but their average use of like, disappointed language, which is like one of the. There's a handful I use. This has been one of the better ones, is like absolutely going parabolic right now. Like, the average crypto trader out there has never been more disappointed than they are right now. In a wild degree. Like one of the highest outliers that I've ever seen. For this. At least in the sentiment stuff. I did A small post about it yesterday, but that's kind of a good counter signal as well. And again, like I mentioned these, like the OG is this other cohort that I found that's very high signal, generally are much more optimistic than the average person right now. Those are all trending aggressively, more optimistic currently. Yeah, I can keep going on other ones, but I think I kind of answered that question.
- [28:32]
Walker America
It's super interesting on the quote, crypto side of things too. And that just mirrors anecdotal, like non quantitative, just qualitative observation from my side for basically this whole kind of bear market. There's this general vibe. I think that the crypto, the crypto thing is kind of like people are realizing it's like, oh shit, the ship is really sinking this time. Yeah, we can print other ships out of thin air, but they just sink immediately too. Like the, you know, the jig is up a little bit. And I think you've also seen that mirrored in the actions of the large crypto exchanges. You've seen Gemini, Coinbase, Robinhood, like we can call Robinhood, basically they had the same gamification. I mean they basically invented a lot of that gamification, same vibes there, but they all, at like about the same time, rolled out prediction markets to their users. And then, you know, Gemini and Coinbase are like rolling out stock trading as well. So they're all becoming, I think it was Alex Leishman of Rivers. They're all just becoming one app. Like it's all just the same app.
- [29:36]
Michael Sullivan
Right?
- [29:37]
Walker America
And most of it is just most of it. I mean like 80 to 90% of the volume, volume, not volatility, but the volume on prediction markets is just sports betting, which is like, fine, do whatever you want with your money, but like, let's just be honest about what it is. And so I think it's really interesting that you've seen this sort of quiet pivot by the big crypto casinos to say it's basically implicitly saying, look, we're done with like the, you know, the tokenized gambling. We're just gonna do real gambling now. Like just, okay, call it, call it what it is. But they're kind of like lessening up on the crypt side of things, focusing more. Coinbase has had the focus on stable coins obviously for a while, yield generation, but then also just the prediction markets where it's like, I think it's kind of the realization that, okay, people just came into the crypto side of things for the gambling. Let's just cut out the middleman. And give them the gambling. Like, we don't need to slap some defi sticker on it and pretend that we're doing something innovative. Let's just give them gambling and, like, we'll make more money. But I find that that vibe has been. I mean, if you've been holding Ethereum instead of bitcoin this whole time, or holding any crypto besides bitcoin, like, you're not doing very well at all. And if you were trying to trade every shitcoin under the sun, like, you probably got wrecked. But I don't know, maybe those people just pivot to prediction markets too. Maybe they come around to bitcoin. Michael.
- [30:55]
Podcast Host/Announcer
I don't know.
- [30:55]
Walker America
But, like, you, boy, it is tough with some of those people.
- [31:00]
Michael Sullivan
You're kind of reminding me. I totally forgot to mention this, but one of the interesting group that I looked at was crypto exchange CEOs, so I literally bundled all of them together, basically the ones that you just rattled off there and looked at the language they'd use compared to other bitcoiners, because at the time, one of the really prevalent narratives was STRC continues to be. And I wanted to see if, like, these guys were talking about that at all. And almost every group of bitcoiners I've looked at across the board has talked about STRC to some level or not. What was so interesting is, like, these guys are not talking about MSTR or STRC a single time. Like, I didn't have a single instance of them talking about this thing. I just thought that was interesting because it's like a really big narrative out there. Regardless of what you think of it, it's like a very defining thing out there in the ecosystem. And these people, I think, like, I'm going to, like, put words in their mouth a little bit here. Like, there's no data behind this to prove it, but, like, to me, it seems like they recognize that the sailor strategy is clearly a better strategy than what they've been embarking on. And it's kind of like that same saltiness thing that gets out there. Like, well, you don't talk about the thing that's like, outperforming you or doing well. And like, like, to your point, like, their actions of getting into gambling BS is. It speaks volumes to where they're at right now. And they're, they're, they're clearly, I think, a little bit. Have a little bit animosity towards Segway right now.
- [32:19]
Walker America
I think that that's a, a very interesting point there. And it, it Makes sense too, right? Because they've spent all of this time trying to, you know, basically put lipstick on a, on a crypto pig, right. And it turns out like everybody, everybody can still kind of tell like, yep, okay, that, that a, that's a pig. Like a disease ridden pig. Nobody was going to eat that pig. You've like, you've tokenized that pig's. I don't know, something. I'm going to stop with that now before it gets gross.
- [32:47]
Michael Sullivan
I was enjoying it, man.
- [32:48]
Walker America
Yeah, but, but the point being, it's like Saylor has kind of come in here and you know, I, I know a lot of bitcoiners too will do not love what Saylor is doing. I don't. I think personally, I think he's a huge net positive for bitcoin with all the stuff he's doing. I think anybody, like, it'd be very difficult to make the case that he's in any way a net negative. You can argue that you don't like what he's doing, but he's free to do it. And I think it's ultimately positive. That's my personal opinion, you know, non financial advice or whatever. But these guys, like, they've tried to just create this, you know, incredibly complex Rube Goldberg machine of, you know, trying to extract value from people. And it's honestly I think it's like, it's just like shocking to them perhaps that look, we could have been creating value for people like Saylor is doing or like Alex Leishman for, you know, take out the stock side of things. Leishman and river, not a sponsor of this show, just very happy user. Their whole these is like they're giving you 3.3% paid in Bitcoin on any cash that's sitting in there. They're, they could keep that like your bank does, but they're giving it to you. They're creating like bitcoin products in that financial ecosystem that are actually valuable to you as a customer. Whereas every single crypto exchange has just been finding new ways to list new shitcoins to basically fleece investors at the, you know, at the expense of invest at retail. They're pumping their own bags or pumping their friends bags and it's just like it's so extractive and now it's pivoting to the strike. Gambling. It makes sense like that, that that tracks. But it's like you could have just been trying to do things that are actually beneficial to your end customer. Like instead of wrecking your end customer that's something I've talked with Alex Leishman about. He's like, look, like our philosophy is like, we want our customers to be happy and get value. It's crazy. I know. And like, we want them to not become dissatisfied because they've been wrecked so many times. Like, we don't want them to get wrecked. We want them to keep being our customers. And so it's like. But boy, I think it'd be pretty difficult for any of those big, you know, crypto casinos to do a full Bitcoin only pivot at this point. Like just especially like Coin, like there's no way Coinbase is doing that. There's no chance. They can't. They're publicly traded. There's no, like, I'm sure investors wouldn't like that. You know, they're going to lose a bunch on fees. There's just no way. So their hands are tied a little bit. I'm not excusing them by any means. I'm just saying, like, there's no way they're ever going to pivot there. Like, they just maybe should have kept it to Bitcoin in the first place.
- [35:13]
Michael Sullivan
To me, like, one of the most beautiful aspects of bitcoin is the alignment of incentives where we can play these games together and create value and all get lifted up up. Like that is absolutely what places like river are doing. And that's the opposite of what places like Coinbase are doing. They're directly extracting value in aggregate from their users. Like, this is a short term strategy. And what's crazy to me is like, if you understand Bitcoin, you kind of like understand that inevitably, like those kind of strategies probably aren't going to work over a long enough time horizon, but they still chose to do them. It's such a trip like that that happened that they chose to spend their time in that manner by directly leeching the wealth out of the exact people who they claim to have as customers
- [35:56]
Walker America
really is just honestly, like shocking. It just seems incredible. It's like a very fiat mindset. Right? It's very short term. It's very high time preference. It's very extractive. It's, it's. Yeah, it's very, it's very fiat. I would say. I gotta ask you too, and then we can maybe we'll circle back into this prediction stuff. But I do want to get into some other topics with you, but I have to ask, have you run the analysis on me by any chance?
- [36:17]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah, I did.
- [36:18]
Walker America
Oh boy, do I want to know the. Do I Want to know if I'm a good signal or not.
- [36:23]
Michael Sullivan
So you and I actually have a similar dynamic in the sense where I'll
- [36:27]
Walker America
take that
- [36:30]
Michael Sullivan
my data is not always great because when I launched my book, I had so many people reaching out to me being like, dude, this is amazing. I loved it. So I'm like, my tweets completely flipped when the book launched where I had so many replies to people being like, I'm so grateful for this thing. Thank you so much for all the positivity. So like, my level of like usefulness on that data is not particularly high.
- [36:51]
Walker America
After that skewed a little bit. Okay.
- [36:53]
Michael Sullivan
Whereas like before that I was a great anti signal. Like, and a lot of the times like I definitely bull posted at tops and whatnot. I definitely did say some smart things. But like on average it probably was not the best signal you recently, with everything that happened with Carla, it was like there you had like this crazy high levels of like gratitude and positivity. And it is like interesting seeing that because like there's this data is not always perfect. You can't just be like, all right, well this optimism thing is going to perfectly track the bitcoin price. Like, we're all humans. There's a really human element to this and which makes it very unique and kind of interesting too, and creative because it's like there's no. It's not like this perfect like data driven thing. There's like a human element behind it which you need to be cautious about who you choose and listen to and whatnot. But I just thought that was interesting. I looked at your stuff, I was like, oh, wow. Like the kind of things you've been talking about have really changed since.
- [37:42]
Walker America
That is super interesting. It makes me think too that this is really could be, you know, not just as a tool for bitcoin sentiment analysis, but just sentiment analysis in general. Like to almost check yourself a little bit, like to see, you know, your own, you know, mood swings over time and how much gratitude you are practicing. Like, I think this has super interesting implications kind of more broadly. Just as like a tool for self reflection is that kind of has that happened for you at all through this process of exploration?
- [38:11]
Michael Sullivan
Seriously. Yeah, it was kind of interesting looking at that and then seeing times where I definitely knew I was kind of depressed in this time period. And then seeing I had like lower levels and it literally came out in the language and the way I was relating to people. We kind of know we do that. But to actually visualize the data and the things you said, and then I have it set up where I can go back and look at my tweets in that time period. Be like, damn, man, maybe you should practice a little more kindness when stuff is down. I remember vividly getting into arguments with people that were totally unnecessary when bitcoin price was down because I was kind of aggravated and I was spending time on Twitter about it or during, like, big conflicts, which is an interesting dynamic too, because, like, around some of these events, people disproportionately are angry, that kind of thing. And that shows up in the data too. There's all sorts of interesting things there. But I, like, honestly, you could just run these tools over the things you say out there and kind of get feedback on, like, the, like, if how kind you're being to other people, which is an interesting thing. Like, maybe a more depressing one is like, the people that have had, like, people die or negative things happen to them. That also shows up in here, which is always a little bit heartbreaking too. It's a weird thing because it's like this marriage between this really analytical data side of things and this really human and emotional side of things, which is why it makes me so curious. But it's also just a strange thing.
- [39:30]
Walker America
Maybe one other question, because the questions just keep popping up because this is fascinating. Have you thought about running this on what have you applied this sentiment analysis that you're doing to, for instance, Fed press conference differences? Like, you, you know, analyze and use, like, you throw that together and are able to use it in some sort of a predictive way like that. That. That becomes, I think, an even more interesting product to. To a lot of people. But have you thought about doing that? Like, have you looked at some different types of data sets just to sort of check the assumptions even about this, the assumptions you're making within the bitcoin data sets? Have you thought about looking at any other sort of, you know, macro, let's say, elements of. To analyze for sentiment or geopolitical even? Hell, I mean, like, you could throw this at anything, right?
- [40:15]
Michael Sullivan
I know people have done that for, like, Trump and Jay Powell, like, to actually look at things and see if there's stuff there. Some of the hedge fund dudes, like, they've mentioned that kind of thing is happening behind the scenes. It's just usually not public, which is interesting. Like, again, I didn't really know this existed that well, because it's not out there, but apparently it is out there. It's just these things are happening behind the scenes and they're not sharing it with you because it's a way that people find alpha. They like really old. Like, a lot of this is done through the lens of political people or famous folks. Like a sailor. I guarantee you he's aware that this thing's happening with the things that he says because he's head of such a big publicly traded company that has a lot of volume on it and these sorts of things. You can definitely do some interesting things with this. You can even look at different world events and see how different cohorts of people reacted to that. Narratives that popped up around it, narratives that change over time. So, like, for example, Saylor was the first to say, like digital credit, pretty much. And then you can watch that narrative spread across bitcoiners, proliferate through the entire system and see which channels it's going through, which is really fascinating too. To answer your original question a little more directly, though, there's some reasons I gravitated and kind of had this idea around the bitcoin space. Well, because I'm a bitcoiner, obviously. That was the main thing. It was just like the water I swim in. I wanted to understand better, but. But the bitcoiners talk about bitcoin to a crazy degree. It makes up a huge part of our lives. And the entire reason I used Twitter in the first place was to talk to bitcoiners and make friends in the bitcoin system, which makes our moods a little bit better representations of where things are happening compared to somebody who's just buying some Walmart stock or whatever. There's a lot of people that invest in little companies that aren't as directly impacted by the bitcoin price. It's very instrumental to those of us in here, which makes it much higher signal. There's also some things with different data sources. I did look at ingesting podcast data, and that's possible because you can get transcripts relatively easily from videos and see how stuff is trended. But what's interesting about Twitter data specifically is that it's much more frequent and over longer time horizons. So, like a podcast. Like Saylor again, because he's a pretty good example of this because he does tons of them. We'll go on a podcast one day and then maybe a two weeks pass and he goes on another one. And then maybe they were filmed at the same day. I don't know, maybe they were filmed farther apart. There's just a lot more like messiness in here here, where if you look at tweets over time People are tweeting almost every day, so you get, like, better accurate representations of how people, like, their underlying mood is changing over time. So those kind of things are arguably better done on Twitter data sets. Podcasts, however, are oftentimes where, like, narratives will start or somebody will say a really interesting idea for the first time. I, again, I'm very interested in language. I like the study of etymology and like, how languages change and evolve over time. And these things are just fascinating to me. I am curious if you notice as like, a very. Somebody, like, very much in the bitcoin podcast realm of, like, I will see somebody mention something on a bigger bitcoin podcast, and then that phrase will proliferate to all sorts of other podcasts. Like, it happens with Saylor all the time. But I've even seen it happen with what bitcoin did before where, like, some new guest is on there. They say, $milkshake theory, and then suddenly every Bitcoiner says $milkshake theory, and every bit of analysis they do subsequently. And I always just noticed that and, like, found it interesting. And now I'm literally, like, analyzing how that happens in Twitter data. But that happens a lot in podcasts too.
- [43:29]
Walker America
It. It definitely does. I think that's a good way of describing, in terms of podcasts being more of like a narrative setting function versus a. A tool for actual, you know, vibe checking for. For sentiment analysis. Right. Just because, again, like you said, like, you don't know when it was recorded. You don't know, like, that's. There's gonna be so many confounding variables in there that would throw that off. But there. I've definitely noticed that as well. And. And I think that one of the reasons that that happens too, dollar Milkshake, obviously, is something that's, know, it's a good example, but it's one that's been around, you know, for. For a long time. But maybe people hadn't heard about that before until that, and then they start looking into it and it's like. But there's also, I think especially with Saylor, I think especially during his kind of early run of podcasts, because he's. I mean, he's done so. So I don't know how many between. Between Saylor and Lynn Alden. Just the pure breadth of podcast appearances is incredible. But you. You would see kind of coming up with things in real time, like, because it was part of his journey, I think was going on and talking about these things, you'd see him actually, like, you know, creating new analogies thinking up on the spot with new ways of saying things, new ways of phrasing them. And I think that that was, I think you get less of that now because now he's, he's got it, let's say, quote, figured out more and from. To your point earlier as well. Like, Saylor is a great PR guy. He knows that he needs to be very, very, very careful about what he says, you know, anywhere publicly. And so it's, it's a little bit not, not, not, not scripted or anything like that. But he, he's got a tighter vernacular, let's say, versus when he was in more of his just like, you know, going galaxy brain phase with all of this. And there's just all these crazy analogies coming out. They were like, you know, really, really good and really helpful for a ton of people. But it's, it's fascinating. I was just thinking about this and really, like what. Because you mentioned the, the spreading of different ideas, like the digital credit, for example. Saylor's kind of, you know, these patient zero for that. And then it spreads. It's really like what you're able to analyze through this, which I think is fascinating, is essentially mimetic propagation.
- [45:30]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah.
- [45:30]
Walker America
You're able, you're able to see how memes spread in a very real and kind of analytical way. And I think that's fascinating. You could probably do some really neat data viz, work on, on the mimetic propagation specifically. But I find all this fascinating. I could keep asking you questions about this all day.
- [45:49]
Michael Sullivan
That's the one more thing before.
- [45:50]
Walker America
Go for it.
- [45:51]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah, I've already started to do some of the things you're describing here. One but amazing. Something I, again, I'm like obsessed with language. I think language is crazy and I think people under estimate how powerful it is as a tool. I know you have to have this experience doing podcasts where language is more than just like a thing you communicate with. The having being forced to form thoughts out of your brain and make mouth sounds with those thoughts is like a profound thing that forces you to actually crystallize your own ideas too. Like you were describing with Saylor. One of the reasons I fell in love with writing is because of this dynamic where I had all these ideas, but they're kind of messy in your head. And then writing them down and refining, refining, refining is really powerful. Like there's something crazy with language interrelating to humans. LLMs being another example of this where like, like the way we found AI to work is by like leveraging the Power of human language and, like, aggregating it and pushing it out in interesting ways. Like, I don't know what the takeaway here is. I just think it's crazy interesting. And that, like, language is still an underexplored thing, which was one of the drivers for my interest here.
- [46:54]
Walker America
No, absolutely. And obviously you. You must love language because you wrote. You've. You've written two books now. Let's talk about Blood of the Bourgeoisie a little bit. Again, if you have not. Have not read it yet, if you're. If you like to read, go order it. You can find it on Amazon. If you like to listen to the audiobook, I've got my copies around here. My studio is very messy right now. It is somewhere right around here underneath a bunch of sound panels that I have not yet installed. So go order it. Go listen to the audiobook. If you want that. You can hear me do multiple different female voices as well, which was a
- [47:27]
Podcast Host/Announcer
very
- [47:30]
Walker America
fun experience for me. Honestly. I was, like, a little bit daunting at first, but you created some really great characters in this. Can we. Can we maybe back up a little bit? And why did you decide to write Blood of the Bourgeoisie in the first place? What was the catalyst for you saying, I'm going to write a bitcoin thriller, but it's not just going to be about bitcoin, but it is going to be about bitcoin. How did you decide what was the. I need to do this moment?
- [47:57]
Michael Sullivan
So I've been writing for a while. I originally just started writing and did journaling for quite a long time and had some ideas I wanted to explore deeper, and I had some takeaways that I wanted to share with people. My first book was about the importance of embracing your genetic differences, like neurological diversity and these kind of things, and what that might look like in a world where people were wanting to eliminate diversity among people, like in neurological issues, and get rid of, like, autism, adhd, Tourette syndrome, et cetera. That was a whole thing, a lot of learning processes. But I learned about bitcoin on the journey of writing that book. And as soon as that one wrapped up, I was like, I've developed this skill of writing and a love of writing, and I felt like I just owed something to bitcoin. I think a lot of people feel this. I'm a fundamentally different person for having discovered bitcoin. I'm way more optimistic. I'm constructive, motivated, just like so many different things. And I felt overwhelmingly, like, called to do something for bitcoin. Right? Like a lot of people do that. I think that's a pretty normal thing. Like, hey, you're doing a bitcoin podcast. Like, I imagine you have similar sentiments around that, right? So I just started writing and wasn't sure where it would take me again. I like to pull on threads. Part of the reason I fell in love with novel writing is not because I had a perfect vision for a story. It's like, I know something in my heart, like, wants to do this and we're going to see where it goes. So that's all I really started with is I wanted something around bitcoin. And the longer I spent just like throwing tons and tons of time and proof of work added, like the thing kind of naturally evolves, which I think is one of the more beautiful things about artistic creativity, is you get to just like kind of see where an idea takes you and it turned into something really cool that was very different than what I was originally envisioning. But it kind of turned into this thing that I wished I could give to people. Like, I have tried orange peeling many people, which I'm sure that you have too. And. And it doesn't typically go that well. I have given my bookshelf over here the bitcoin standard or Len's book. I've directly given those books to people. They not gave a single shit about the book and ignored it completely. I was like, man, this sucks because these things changed my life and were really positive. So I wanted something that I could package up in a way where I could give to somebody with literally no interest in bitcoin that might read a thriller and see if they could have some sly, roundabout exposure to bitcoin in the process. So that's kind of what it turned into where it's written in a thriller format, but very captivating, which was tactical in a sense where like different chapters and switching character POVs and like really making sure like it's always. It's very quick read and fun read. Like having that but having bitcoin laced into it, particularly in a way where like, it's not throwing technical concepts at you from like page one. You don't even like see the word bitcoin until like maybe three chapter, four chapters in. And then it slowly incrementally levels up to the point where like, the way things resolve in the story and the stuff is fundamentally related to how bitcoin works and what bitcoin is. So it's kind of high level overview of it at least.
- [50:50]
Walker America
I. I love the book like, and it is. It is very dynamic. The chapters. There's 69 chapters total, I believe. Nice. I remember when I first saw that, I was like, was this on purpose? You're like, you know, maybe, but. But. But they're. They're quick, right? They're snappy. They're. They're keeping you on the edge of your seat. It's a. It's a very. I mean, it's a. It's an intense book. Also, like, it is, as the title implies, like, there. There is blood. And it deals with some really. I think some of the concepts that it deals with outside of just strictly bitcoin. Right. Because it's. Yeah, it's a. I mean, it's a bitcoin thriller, but it's not just a bitcoin thriller. Like, a lot of what you. You know, and without, you know, giving away any spoilers, and I think this is fair to say a lot of what you get into in the book is really about sort of the. The class struggle, but then also about, let's say, the. The American hegemon more broadly, what, you know, our military actions, or lack thereof, in different places, the. The marriage of various, you know, political and corporate interests. Like, it digs into a lot of different things. And it also digs into, I think, very largely the theme of anger and resentment towards the current state of things, but approached from different perspectives with very different methods of, let's say, alleviating that frustration. You know, was. How much of it did you want to be a. An. A comm. You know, let me ask this differently. Was your goal in the writing to provide a commentary on some of these things or just to write a good story? Because I feel like so much now, whether it be the written word, whether it be visual media, whatever, it is so much, let's say, ideology is injected into so many things, often at the expense of the story itself. I don't think that you did that. I think that you just wrote a great story and these things work together naturally. But I'd love to understand kind of your process, because I'm sure you were thinking about that. I'm sure you were trying to grapple with those things as you were creating this story.
- [52:56]
Michael Sullivan
You were spot on there. That story was first and foremost, literally, at every time, every time there was a major decision point in the story or went in writing the story, it was like, okay, everything that always matters is story. First. It has to have a great story that matters more than anything else. Great story. Captivating trap of mind. Every single minute of writing that thing. Some of those things kind of came out subconsciously through me. Like these are things that I'm struggling with and thinking through and they came out naturally in the book. The theme of violence is high in there as well. Martial arts, I train in firearms and other stuff like that. I'm very interested in these concepts of what it means to defend oneself and when you should use violence and that kind of thing. And that was definitely a theme. But in the sense of like bitcoin, it's like I feel so much like I have two people inside me, right. Like I have represented by a couple different characters in the book. The, like I have so much anger towards the way the system currently works and want that to change. Like the Eric Cason style. Like just want to hang the political class and all these things. Like I have a part of myself that feels that way too, but I also have a part of myself that's like much more pragmatic about the way the world works and how bitcoin can have a more positive view and a more slight roundabout view perhaps. And I see that in a lot of bitcoiners too. So it was like I really wanted to explore that and I didn't go into it thinking like it's gonna, the story is gonna interweave in this specific way which the story eventually kind of comes together. Right. I didn't have a super concrete plan for that right away. I just knew I wanted to explore these concepts and kind of see where it took me. Like which writing is a weird trip. It's kind of like a, A, a self reflective process. You kind of like learn about yourself along the way. You sort of like don't know where it's going to take you. Like I writing it, like I, I wrote the last chapters of that when like bitcoin price was at like under 20k and I. The very first iteration of it, like it was terrible but like the, I kind of like found parts of it in different times and I was sort of different people back then too. Like you're kind of a different person every day and like you go over the book and edit it through a lens of like the different parts of you and through enough work and just like sitting down and doing lots and lots of stuff. It comes like lots of parts of yourself come out through the story. And I definitely think I had a lot of that that formed those things. It's maybe not as clear of an answer as you were hoping for, but
- [55:14]
Walker America
like that's no, no, no.
- [55:15]
Michael Sullivan
Like writing is very much like it's a scatterbrained thing, at least the way that I do it. And there's a lot of different ideas that end up getting melded together just because that's who I am. And that just like that's what I wanted to see in a story.
- [55:27]
Walker America
No, I, I, I loved it. I think that was very clear as I was reading and then obviously, you know, talking to you about it extensively in the process of recording the audiobook, just to make sure that I was, you know, I was going to understand the characters and the motivations well enough and everything. It was very clear, though, even just the first time reading it, that I was seeing again, without trying to give too much away, you know, couple of the characters in there very much were representing sort of two sides of your own experience. Two different or perhaps the same ultimate urge, but two very different ways of expressing that urge, of, of trying to bring about the future, the reality that you want into very, very different sides of the spectrum in terms of how that's approached. And I think that that, again, to your point, that is something that as bitcoiners, I know I personally, like, I saw my own kind of, you know, mental struggle in that, that thing that we all go through where it's like you want to. And I'm speaking in hypothetical terms here for anything. For any of the sensors out there who may want to flag this, please don't remove this. This is too good a conversation to rip off. But that's why we're doing it on nostr. And thank you to everybody who has zapped this already in the live stream on nostr. Appreciate you all very much. But that struggle of I want to fucking burn this thing down and what rises from the ashes, we will be so much better and more glorious and more, more fair and more true and more honest. And then also, like, boy, if we burn this down, a lot of people get hurt along the way. And I also don't want that to happen. That's not that there must be a different path. There must be a middle path. There must be the path of absolute complete peace. You know, just metaphorically burn this thing down and, you know, utilize the incredible open source technology that the freedom tech that we have, the. Whether it be Bitcoin or whether it be, you know, NOST or whether it be different forms of encrypted communication, we need to use those tools and that will help us usher in this future, but in a very peaceful way. But it's like those two ideas so often necessarily Come into conflict with them, each other, and with reality. Right. There's. There's the world, or as we would like it to. To. To go on, and then there's. You know, there's what actually happens. Right. And so I think that that was just such a. That was a really impactful part of the book, was seeing both you as the author, seeing you come through and then realize, yep, I'm seeing Amir into myself as well. I'm seeing my own experience. I've. I've had these same sorts of conversations, you know, with myself or, you know, with Carla, with other bitcoiners. Like, it is a very, very relatable experience. And the way that you presented it was through the mindsets of multiple characters, which I thought was a pretty brilliant way to do it. You didn't try to wrap it all up into one person having a struggle. No, it was actually the struggle of the characters with themselves, but also with each other. And I thought that was, like, from a literary perspective, I thought that was very, very effective.
- [58:26]
Michael Sullivan
Thank you very much. First and foremost, that was definitely a big challenge of it, too, to not be too prescriptive and tell people how to think and just, like, help the characters guide you. Right. One of the things that was tricky in writing this was, like, I did want to write this for the average person who had no interest in bitcoin, but, like, you spend, like, I literally spent thousands of hours writing this thing. Like, it was a ton of my life that I threw into this. I couldn't not have, like, these deep, existential bitcoin conflicts that, like, were in my own head come through. So, like, there's, like, a layer that's, like, right there for anybody that's just, like, it's just a good thriller that'll. You'll read it. Like, maybe you don't like the bitcoin thing, but it's, like, still going to be good regardless. But if you're a bitcoiner, there's, like, a really, really deep level that's running through the whole thing about this constant struggle about, like. Like, how revolutionary should we be about this thing and how do we think about that? And some of the trickier parts to sell in the book, too, are kind of, like, really, like, I don't want to give too many things away about this, but, like, the best parts of it are things that I don't want to spoil about it that bitcoiners are going to adore, probably.
- [59:28]
Walker America
That's. I mean, a really difficult line to tread. Right. Because I know that your goal was to make something that again would be approachable to people more so than a non fiction bitcoin book. But at the same time. So you don't want to put too much bitcoin stuff in there to quote, scare them away. But at the same time you also want to apply to or appeal to a core audience of bitcoiners who you know are going to read the book and are going to really love and relish those parts that are about bitcoin. Was that, was that a pretty difficult balancing act? I imagine just like you're like that. That must have, I imagine been a near impossible task.
- [60:03]
Michael Sullivan
Hugely. So I'm like it's been relatively successful with that in mind. I've gotten people that have were a bitcoiner, loved it, then immediately gave it to their mom or either a family member, that sort of thing. And one of my favorite ones, just like their mom read it in 32 hours or something like that, just cruise through it completely. And it was asking them all these follow up questions about how self custody works and these things because that's kind of central to how things play out. So I know this works. I literally just had a friend from jiu jitsu world reach out to me yesterday being like, dude, I just finished your book. That was amazing and insane. He's not really into the whole bitcoin thing yet, but he's kind of curious now because of it. And that's been really interesting too. I know this has been relatively successful in some small way, but you can't not be a bitcoiner and want to make something great for bitcoiners. It was just an impossible thing to not do to some degree. Just in the same way it was impossible for me to not bring out some of the things that I've been actively thinking about. So much relating to bitcoin in the book. It just kind of comes out through you when you're in the mode of artistic creation.
- [61:06]
Walker America
Can I, can I read a couple of quotes from the book that are not. That are non plot related but I just think are really good lines if you're okay with it. Like there are no spoilers here, but just there's one. These are ones that I jotted down as I was going through and recording the audiobook and I just like they were ones that really jumped out at me. So I'll read a couple for folks and hopefully it piques someone's interest out there because these were ones that when I was reading them I was like, damn, that's like that's a. That's a banger of a line. So starting out from Harold's vantage point, the financial system probably seemed fine. Why question a machine designed to serve you? Most rich CEOs never bothered to understand Bitcoin because it didn't affect them. I think that's just a really, like a simple statement, but it's actually what we see playing out here right now. The next one here, the wealth of generations was embedded in her brain. I thought that. That is a. That's a. A very poetic way of talking about self custody right there. Investors lined, lined up to hand them free money during capital raises. Politicians, on the other hand, couldn't fathom why the people they governed would turn to Bitcoin when you can't. When you control the money printer, you can't imagine a world without it. Alan was just like. Like chef's kiss. Let's see. The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government. That one. I was like, yeah, damn. Damn right. The American spirit wasn't born of bureaucracy. It was forged in rebellion. Again, just beautiful. Liberty is wasted if it's not used to make hard choices. Again, th. Those are a few in a row where I was just like, man, those are very profound statements and ones that kind of like. Like you get the. You get the goosebump moment when you're reading and you're like, goddamn right like that.
- [62:55]
Michael Sullivan
That.
- [62:56]
Walker America
Yes, yes. I got a couple more here. No spoilers again, I promise. Let's see. Ah, this one was. Is just frustrating, but also just very true. The average person doesn't care if the financial system is designed to make them poor.
- [63:13]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Even when presented with a way to
- [63:14]
Walker America
escape from the system, they'll come up with every excuse not to learn about it.
- [63:19]
Podcast Host/Announcer
It.
- [63:20]
Walker America
That one was just like the way you put that. Because that's the frustrating thing, I think, for so many bitcoiners, right, is we feel like we're shouting it from the mountaintop. We want people to know maybe we're not always the best at delivering that message.
- [63:32]
Michael Sullivan
Right.
- [63:33]
Walker America
But there's a lot of us delivering it in different ways. And that message does get out there. And yet this escape hatch exists, this lifeboat exists. But people wrote that that way you phrase that they'll come up with every excuse not to use. It was just like, yes, but, but. But why is it. Because people just. The part of it is just like almost being obsessed with one's own suffering or not wanting to perhaps not wanting to accept that there could be a way out. Just because this is, you know, this is the water you've been swimming in. You just. You just don't know any better. I. I don't know, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, because that one, I was just like, Like. Yep. That is the experience of basically every bitcoiner trying to talk to people about why bitcoin is important and they should, you know, adopt it.
- [64:20]
Michael Sullivan
But that one hurts a little bit because it's like, I. In writing the book, like, the goal is to convey this concept to people. Right. But, like, at the same time, I know it's not going to be successful in every way because, like, we've all failed to do so so many times. Yeah, there. There's a lot there. And like, the one. Thank you so much. Those were amazing. Hearing you read them once more, this perspective, a couple of them I cannot take credit for, though. It was other characters quoting Famous American.
- [64:47]
Walker America
Yeah, yeah. But. But still important. Like, important parts that were like, oh, yeah, that's. I'm glad you included that, you know.
- [64:54]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah. But the. It's a hard thing, like, the amount of concern that's out there around bitcoin from people. Like, the. When I say bitcoin, like, there's so much embedded in those. In the word bitcoin for me. Like, it's hard to not see when you understand bitcoin to this degree. It's like the. I'm blanking on the word for it right now, but, like, there's a kind of, like, bias that one has. Once you've been doing something a long time. Oh, man, doesn't matter. It's just impossible to convey all the things that you know about bitcoin to other people. So having different perspectives, like, one of the reasons I did that in the story was just to, like, try different angles. But I think, like, a framing that I've been thinking about a lot more recently is that sometimes it's just about taking shots on goal. Like, I got exposed to bitcoin a few different times from different people and totally ignored it, as many people do, I think, when they come to bitcoin initially. Yep, yep. We pretty much all do this. And that can be heartbreaking if you have somebody you love that you're trying to convey these concepts to. I've given my book to people who probably still haven't read it because they're, like, family members or close people that I just, like, wanted to make sure I put this in front of them. And it hurts when it's not going to Work to actually orange pill them. But I think a more constructive way to think about it is be like, all right, well, it took me a bunch of exposures. It's going. And probably take other people a bunch of exposures too. Like, just because I threw something out there, put a book in front of them, or mentioned bitcoin to them, like, and they just totally shrugged it off. Just because it failed in that single instance and in that moment doesn't mean it was a failure. Because you could be that second touch point and they needed five or they needed six touch points, and there was still something worth doing in providing those touch points. Even if it wasn't the thing that ultimately orange peeled them in that moment, it still was part of their journey potentially. And I think to get, like, more comfortable with that, where we're not going to. You're not going to go in front of somebody immediately orange pill them. Despite my desire to. I'm not just gonna be able to give my book to people and immediately, like, they're gonna be a bitcoin maxi overnight. Like, maybe had a little bit of success with a couple. But, like, overall, it probably ain't gonna happen. But I think it's a more constructive mindset to have to be like, all right, well, at least I'm making positive movement towards this thing and helping in some really, really, really small way to spread this really great message.
- [67:04]
Walker America
I like that framing a lot. And that's absolutely the way I've been kind of come around to thinking of it too, because I myself, as you were describing that I'm thinking about my own journey. I've ignored bitcoin still to this day. The time I spent ignoring bitcoin, as in, I heard about bitcoin and then, you know, from first hearing about it, hearing about it multiple times since then, and then finally, finally getting some SATs. That time is greater than the time I've been holding bitcoin. I heard about Bitcoin in 2014, and Buddy was acquiring some things off the Silk Road, asked me, walker, have you heard about this? You're an engineer. Have you heard about this bitcoin thing? Whatever. I'm like, no, I haven't. Nerd. Back to whatever Fiat shit I was doing, dismissed it, dismissed it again in 2017 and got a couple of litecoin because I didn't realize you could buy fractions of a bitcoin. So I always have empathy for people who are operating from that perspective, you know, less excuses to think that way now with all the education that's out there. But still I have, I have empathy. But it wasn't until 2020, right? So it took me multiple, multiple instances of exposure, of hearing about this thing, of, of ignoring it, essentially dismissing it, whatever, before I finally went down the rabbit hole, just, just a little bit, just peeked into it and then got some sats. And that's the, that's the start of it. All right. It's like you, you know, getting off zero. That's the hardest part. Once you do that, a lot of the rest of it follows because you just naturally get more curious about this. You come for the number go up, then you find out about the freedom go up side of it. And it's like, holy shit. Okay, this is, this is something I didn't even realize existed. A whole new world just opened up to me that I wasn't privy to before. But I think that that mentality that you described from an orange pilling perspective, it's like the term orange pill, like, it is a good term. It's has a lot of mimetic power. That being said, it's. It's almost a little bit like, you can't give anyone. You can give some the orange pill. You can't make them take it, right? That step. It. It has to be somebody willingly taking it. Like, you know, I know there's the, like the Max guy joke too. And, you know, love Max. Like the, you know, the orange pill now or the orange suppository later. Like, and which is hilarious, but really, you do have to. You have to make the decision to study bitcoin yourself. You have to make the decision to take the orange pill yourself. Nobody can take it for you. You can't force anyone to take it, but you can just, hey, here's this bitcoin thing again, presented in a different way. And you never know which one of those interactions that somebody has is going to be the one that finally flips that switch and gets them to get off zero and to start learning about this thing. And so that's why I think these different angles, I don't want to say angles of attack, angles of enlightenment, let's say enlightenment vectors for bitcoin are so important. And I'm curious too, if I mean, one, do you think you'll write more bitcoin fiction? And then two, do you think there just needs to be more bitcoin fiction or bitcoin tangential fiction, broadly?
- [70:04]
Michael Sullivan
One, yes, I really like writing. I'd like to do another one. Yeah. This is a very long process, though,
- [70:09]
Walker America
especially the way that I write same universe. You think or would you?
- [70:12]
Michael Sullivan
Okay, yeah, yeah. I've got rough plans for it too, but it's. Yeah, it's been, it's a, it's a very like arduous thing, man. Like I, I really love people and like writing just like sitting alone over the chair in the corner of my office over there for like literal thousands of hours is quite the undertaking. It, it's AI tools have changed the way that writing works quite a lot. I mentioned I leveraged anyone writing the book. But even with that, like, it's more about like how much love and a piece of your like soul you put into the words. Like if there's a way you can leverage that, that anybody can produce AI swap these days. But to really. The thing that makes people connect with stories is deep levels of care for them. So it's a very long term process. Anyway, I would like to write another one. That's definitely going to happen at some point in time. Just might not be very quick. I have a little shelf over there behind me actually. I don't know if you can see, but there's a bunch of bitcoin fiction books on there. Different levels of India. There's different things in that realm. So it's out there. But man, there is. It's like, it's crazy still. Like, I see people having things like the. There's like a comedy coming out that's like something like satoshi related or whatever. It's going to be terrible probably because it's mainstream. Like there's so much of this out there and it's so like if you just bring up the word bitcoin to people in any kind of fictional realm, like most of these people are not interested. I've also noticed like something I did not realize when I was writing and I maybe was overly optimistic about was like the average fiction reader has a very different perspective of the world than the average bitcoin person. I figured this out the hard way when writing my first book too, where I got a little bit canceled because of some of my optimism around neurological diversity. But a lot of people use fiction as an escape tool. They're not wanting to challenge beliefs. They're not wanting to be told that technology actually is this abundant creating thing for humanity. So there's some very challenging things to put in front of fiction readers and have them just devour if they, if you can persuade them and say the book was really good or whatever, it's one way to get them. But in general, the market for fiction is so overpowered by romance, fantasy stuff that people are just hoping to use to escape into magical worlds and these kind of things where it's a different tool and it's great for conveying things. And me being more engineering brained, I've had a bad habit in the past of trying to convey really technical concepts like bitcoin in logical ways to people. So doing it from a more emotional angle is oftentimes more successful. And I think books are a really good way to do, do that. But the cohort that is reading books are very much less likely to be optimistic around technology or interested in like, things like bitcoin, unfortunately. So it's a, it's still a really good tool, but it's kind of tricky to get them to read it over there. Like dragon smut books.
- [72:59]
Walker America
I. Yeah, I've seen like a couple of memes about this that I had to like actually check if like the book existed. Like there is just so much. Yeah, weird. Yeah, weird fantasy smut out there. I mean, maybe that's. Maybe that's, you know, your next. But just, just churn it out. Just real sloppy, real smutty, you know, a little. A little. Who's writing bitcoin smut? That's the real question.
- [73:21]
Michael Sullivan
Negs has got plans, apparently.
- [73:23]
Walker America
Okay. Oh boy, here we go. That's. That is interesting though. It's also interesting because I'm somebody who I. I've loved fantasy and science fiction generally for. For a long time. I took kind of a break from it actually from reading it when I got into bitcoin, when I started going down the rabbit hole, just because I felt like anything I wasn't. Anything that I would be reading that was fiction would somehow be like a waste. I literally thought like, this will somehow be a waste of my time because, like, I should be reading more Austrian economics. I should be reading more mon. I should be reading more, you know, philosophical texts. I should, you know, I'll read anything but fiction, fiction. And you kind of get burned out on some of that after like a little while without like a little bit of fiction. And it was, it was Devin Erickson's book Theft of Fire. It sort of reignited that love for, well, in this case, you know, hard sci fi, but just fiction more broadly. And Lynn Alden's given some really great recommendations on other. More fantasy side things and sci fi, but like, you know, the Mistborn, Bren Sanderson. Awesome. If you haven't read Mistborn, it's a killer trilogy. Go check it out. And also the Stormlight Archive. And just recently I'm doing the audio, listening to the audiobook right now for just finished Hyperion. And now I'm on the Fall of Hyperion, which I don't know if you've done it, Dan Simmons. It's, it's a really good, good audiobooks. Also just a fascinating story written in 89. And the way he talks about AI and the, the multi planetary future and all these things are like super, it's super wild when you read that. Like, or like Snow Crash is another great one. I hadn't done Snow Crash before. That's a solid audiobook as well. That's like, for those that don't know, like that's where the metaverse comes from. I'm also pretty sure that's where B's network state theory basically comes from because he's just basically describing a more utopic version of Snow Crash. But anyway, my point being in all of this, there's like, science fiction generally makes me really optimistic and fiction more broadly. I think good fiction should actually like. It's a great teacher. It's a great teacher. It's a great vehicle for self reflection as well. And it's interesting to me that the experience that you see with a lot of, let's say the average fiction reader is that they're not looking at things in this optimistic way. That they're not looking, you know, that it's all, you know, doom and gloom essentially.
- [75:43]
Podcast Host/Announcer
And I'm.
- [75:43]
Walker America
And I'm just kind of, you know, maybe that's just also. I don't know if it's what they're reading or if it's. They're searching for things because of their own state. They're searching for things that will reinforce that state. Does that make sense? Like what comes first? You know what I mean?
- [76:00]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah, a couple things there. One of the most interesting dynamics of fiction in my opinion is like the ability to ride around in another person's head. Like that doesn't really exist in any other format. I, I am a huge podcast consumer, but even if I'm listening to podcasts, it's like not in my own head. If you're literally reading fiction, you are, as you read the character's thoughts, they're like going through your mind and something about that makes you think like that person. And fiction does that in a really creative way because you're like literally in their thoughts. So it lets you really play with ideas in a way that it's almost impossible to play with other domains, which is one of the Reasons it attracted me to that in the first place. Second thing there was. I'm a huge Brandon Sanderson fan as well. Mistborn's one of my all time favorite books. All of his stuff's good. But Misborn Born was like the magic system in that was like one of the best ever magic systems. Super cool. It's literally the coolest magic system ever created in fiction. If you haven't read that yet, really cool. Especially if you have more of like a problem solving brain and you're not a big fiction person. That might be one of the best ones because the way he does magic is hyper logical and you get to see how he thinks through stuff. It's just brilliant. I have not read Hyperion. That's on my list now for sure. What was the third question?
- [77:07]
Walker America
The third question just I guess general. Like what. What comes first in terms of the. The. Do people seek out things that just reinforce their own mental state and mood for the most part when it comes from a fiction reader or fiction listener perspective? Or do you think a lot of it is just driven by the type of content that is content, the contemporary content that is out there. Like you know, because again I read science fiction like and it like makes me hopeful and interested about the future and gets me thinking about all the. Even if they're talking about dark things that are happening in a potential future, it's like just the act of talking about it opens you up to so many possibilities. Do you know what I mean?
- [77:46]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah, for sure. I think it's like a multivariate thing where there's a really bad industrial complex around fiction in general. Couple things there maybe take it a slightly derailment. But I used to ask friends questions about the world. Like what percentage of people do you think are this thing or this thing? See what they said? Because a lot of the. The narratives that come out of Hollywood are disproportionately making you think the entire world thinks and believes that thing. Because the vast majority of our fiction is produced in Hollywood. And Hollywood is not representative of me. It's not representative of the average person in the world. If you live anywhere else, it's not Hollywood. And I think that is a really toxic thing where this really small group of relatively extremist people are exporting their belief system on the rest of the world. World really resent that. That's the way it works right now. And I wish there'd be a little bit better free market of ideas in creating the stories like. Like right now. Oftentimes the best story does not rise to the top and then become the thing that gets made into a movie instead. Places like Netflix will do a bunch of market research and figure out what things they're going to like, get money for and they'll make another Christmas movie. My wife loves them. They're good. Like I, they're. They maybe warm your heart a little bit, but they're not the kind of story that I crave. Like I, I like really like these like deep ones that make me think in different ways, feel like I've changed a little bit as a person having read them. Like that's what I want more of. And it's out there. Like there's amazing books that have been written, but a lot of the way the market is currently structured around fiction is very fiat. It's really a toxic thing. I don't totally write off the people that read smut either. Like, I think like there are really great stories out there as much as I like poke fun at them and criticize them and like these other like more escapist styles of fiction writing. Like even Brandon Sanderson, who I mentioned and I really love, like a lot of people like to read that to code to go into a fiction world and like not have to deal with the problems of their day to day. And I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. It's just kind of a different preferences with reading. I feel like it's kind of a. If that's all you do, it might be a little bit of a fiat thing. But I know people directly that exclusively read these like fantasy books as a way to escape problems in their own life. I think that's a really big problem. So I think it's kind of like both of those things acting at one time on the same person where the market caters to it because people want it. It's downstream of how badly the average person's may be doing. But there's still amazing books out there at the same time. It's like one of these whole like the future's here. It's just not evenly distributed dynamic where like both of these things exist. There's amazing books out there that people just like don't read as much as they maybe should or like, or kind of unknown relative to how amazing they are. Like that's. It's kind of sad, but it's, it's just the world we live in.
- [80:31]
Walker America
Yeah, no, it's a fair point. Another let's. We can just throw out some recommendations here because another great first of all Blood of the Bourgeoisie. Go check it out. But even just recommended you, have you checked out, have you done the Dungeon Crawler Carl series?
- [80:44]
Michael Sullivan
You are one of many people that's recommended that to me, so that's high on the list too.
- [80:48]
Walker America
Lyn recommended it to me, and I was like, what? Dungeon Crawler Carl. Okay, what is this? But it's fantastic. And as somebody who's narrated some audiobooks now, the narrator for it is like the greatest audiobook narrator I've ever heard. Like, he's incredible on so many different levels. Like, to a level lesser men cannot even fathom. Really great, though. And that's a big series. What else are you, are you reading anything right now in the fiction space? Do you have any current books open? Any books on the shelf waiting to be read? What are you reading right now?
- [81:27]
Michael Sullivan
Now I'm really eclectic in my reading preferences. I'm in a weird place right now because I read like crazy. So I read a bunch of different genres too. In writing Border Bourgeoisie, I wanted to have, like, I literally was reading romance elements because there's, like, human relationships in that book. And it was my worst thing on, like, early passes is I had, like, weak relationship building. So I wanted to read a bunch of stories in that realm just so I understood that how to write that better all over the place. Um, some of my favorites and ones that I've read recently are like, Blake Crouch. I have a shelf over here with a bunch of his books on me. He's a sci fi author that I. Sci fi and thriller author that I really love. Yeah, I actually do have fourth wing open right now too, which is one of those dragon smut books that my wife was like, you have to read this one. It's gonna be good. And it's pretty good. She was right. So far, I haven't gotten any of the smut parts yet, so I can't speak to that. But the actual story in that writing is really, really good. Um, I also have, I'm, I think I mentioned the very beginning. I'm very all over the place. Like, I, I, I'll like, I'm reading like seven books at a time, and I'll like, hop around different genres and things, which is kind of weird. And I don't, don't know that I would recommend that to anybody unless your brain works that way. But I got lots of random things open right now across genres and that sort of stuff.
- [82:39]
Walker America
Nice. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to check out Blake Crouch. So he did Dark Matters. Is that the one they made into a show?
- [82:46]
Michael Sullivan
Show, yeah. Show's okay. Book's fantastic.
- [82:49]
Walker America
I saw the first season of the show. That's why I was asking. I'm interested to check out the book then.
- [82:55]
Michael Sullivan
That's high concept sci fi that moves like a thriller pace. If you couldn't tell one of the movies was. Yeah, I really like that. Thriller dynamics for attention reasons. We live in a crazy short attention span world right now. I think shorter attention span fiction is underexposed, explored and there's a lot of it out there. But like, I think those sorts of things in writing are really powerful and I want more of them in like more philosophical genres, I suppose is a way to put it. I want really deep, deep topics for books to explore, but packaged in a way that just makes me cruise through it. And that's kind of hard to find, actually.
- [83:29]
Walker America
Yeah, no, that's fair. I wouldn't be conscious of your time here because we're butting up against it. People should go and get Blood of the Bourgeoisie. You'll learn how to spell it in the process of searching for it. By Michael Sullivan. Check. Get the physical book, get the audiobook. Check it out. I really think I can guarantee bitcoiners will like it. Like, if you're listening to this and you're a bitcoiner and maybe you haven't picked up a fiction book in a while, like, go check it out. Give it a try. Like, it's a smooth read. You will. It is a page turner as well. The character development is great. There's a lot of good bitcoin info in there too, like the way you present it. So I really encourage people to. To go check that out. Give it a shot. Especially if you've just been like me, you were stuck in a Austrian economics rabbit hole for too long and you emerged not remembering what fiction was like. Go give this a try. You have my ringing endorsement. And you had it before. I narrated the audiobook as well. But now you've got my double endorsement on that. Where else? Anywhere else you want to send people to, direct people to. Anything else you're working on that you want to bring attention to? Uh, let me know.
- [84:35]
Michael Sullivan
Yeah, let me just say before that that like, Walker's narration of this thing was just like top tier. Like, I. He absolutely killed it and it's fantastic. There's a reason I reached out to him too. Like his alignment with some of the bitcoin ethos that's in the book, like, just could not have been Better. I again don't want to spoil stuff. Like there's very much like American Central theme that's part of the book too that like he was my first and basically only choice for narration. So if you like walking podcast, you're gonna, you're gonna like the book and especially the audiobook book. As for where to send people, the best place is usually on X. I'm Sully Michaelvin. Like my name Michael Sullivan, but inverted. I also have a couple links on there to like the book and all the sentiment analysis stuff I've been doing recently, which I'm just exploring. Feel free to shoot me DMs if you have any other things you want to see around that. I'm on substack too. But yeah, any of those normal places you can find me. And then the books available where books normally are. It's relatively easy to find as long as you can spell the weird word.
- [85:28]
Walker America
Yeah, yeah. And it is tough to spell. Michael, appreciate this so much. Anything you want to. Anything else you want to leave folks with. Anything else before we close out.
- [85:38]
Michael Sullivan
Stay bullish, y'. All.
- [85:40]
Walker America
There we go. The sentiment supports it and we've just added another podcast based sentiment data point to this while also steering the memetic propagation narrative. So you're gonna, you're gonna hear memetic propagation out there now on the interwebs after this podcast episode, I think. But man, appreciate you. Appreciate your time. Go check out Blood of the Bourgeoisie everyone. Thank you to everybody who joined on Noster this show live stream Noster. So if you're not on Noster, you won't see the live stream. So go on Noster and thank you for the zaps everyone. Michael, great chatting with you man. Good catching up. Hope we can do it. I hope we can do it in person at some point soon.
- [86:15]
Michael Sullivan
I love that.
- [86:23]
Podcast Host/Announcer
And that's a wrap on this bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching, 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.